"Hey Fred how was the mystery convention" "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT"

or: Chomps always gets his man

It’s been too long since I’ve drawn a human, so I was just itching to make this piece. I used watercolors here, then added details and shading with watercolor pencils.

Warning: political rant incoming. If you don’t live in the US or aren’t in the mood, feel free to skip this paragraph. I just can’t contain myself anymore. The text accompanying this illustration is based on how frustrated I felt, heartbroken and furious, really, after seeing the results of the latest round of elections. The Democratic primary has essentially turned into Biden and the corrupt establishment versus Bernie and the people. The fact that Bernie continues to lose, despite being so widely and passionately beloved, and such a rare gem of a man who fights for human rights and is motivated by compassion as opposed to greed or ego, the fact that this race has turned out to be just like the last one, makes me sick to my stomach. Bernie represents an enormous threat to everyone in power who preys on the weak and benefits from the corruption of American politics, so they have all joined forces with their insane amounts of money and media manipulation like a coalition of evil villains to do everything they can to stop him. The DNC isn’t even being remotely subtle about it. All of the candidates have pooled their influence together against the one candidate the people actually want, and the one who could actually have beaten Trump and helped the US embark on a thriving era of benevolence as opposed to fear, hatred, violence, and oppression. Clearly, America isn’t a democracy; I just wish they’d stop pretending they are.

In other news, the influence of the coronavirus in the US and throughout the world has officially escalated to a new level. If you’d told me at the start of this week that we’d have reached this point so quickly, or ever, I wouldn’t have believed it. Yesterday, the World Health Organization officially classified the outbreak as a global pandemic, an event that neither me nor my parents in all our lives have ever witnessed. And one of the colleges where I teach has had to call for all classes to be taught online for the next two weeks, and likely for the rest of the semester. When I said goodbye to my students last week and sent them off to enjoy their spring break, I never suspected that I could have been saying goodbye for good; we’ve been following the developing stories on the coronavirus in class since the beginning of the semester, when the novel strain was just a remote news story about a random tragic incident in a city in China and the death toll was barely in the double digits, and suddenly those news stories have burst into our own lives, subhanallah. Seeing that number rise so rapidly and keeping track of the global outbreak map these past few weeks has been sad and surreal. Now I have to figure out how to teach a college course online for the first time in my life, and in the middle of the semester! Of course, I’m not alone; my coworkers are in the same boat, as are teachers and workers across the country and world. So much of daily life has been fundamentally disrupted. May God protect us all.

I’m actually feeling a bit optimistic about this strange, historically momentous era we are all now living through; I believe good will come of it, insha’Allah. It can bring us together, or make us snap out of our old bad habits that needed changing. It might distract the oppressors from oppressing and give the world some sort of clean slate. When a system is disrupted, it has to be rebooted, and sometimes in the reboot, long-standing errors get wiped away. Earth is undergoing a period of great turbulence and change right now, and I am in awe as I witness God’s will unfolding. Let’s make use of this time and face it with the best of intentions by looking out for one another; may we all come out the other end of this experience changed for the better. May these be blessed days.

Update: Jum’ah was just canceled; Allahu akbar. If you’re Muslim, you might know how Earth-shattering that is. More Earth-shattering than all the colleges that have shut down physical operations. Now it feels like we’re in apocalypse mode. And the stock market has just crashed to a historic extent. Alhamdulillah, this too shall pass, but my heart goes out to those who can’t afford to take time off work, yet have been forced to do so, those whose livelihoods have been impacted by current events, as well as those who have fallen ill or lost loved ones. Insha’Allah we all treat each other with extra mercy in these strange, strange times. <3