TWO CENTS FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES

Sup, errbuddy?

There is a fine line between the simply personal and the confessional. As an artist, I constantly ride the fence. Blogs are an interesting medium as they represent the digitization of the journal or daily diary, albeit in a public sphere (even if it's not published, Googly Googs knows what you're thinking... they know...). Blogs represent the temptation to type a constant outpouring of neurosis and insecurity writ large all over the internet. Even established journalists have to park the personal in favour of a broader, more objective journalism, but again, the ease of confession on such a wide scale remains Damoclean for the individual and his thoughts and opinions.

So what does a fence-rider like myself do about such a glaring spotlight? I perform well under pressure and literally in the spotlight, but any performer adopts a stage persona, even if it is only loosely fictional. The internet provides a pseudo anonymity that allows the inner devil to the forefront of argument, and boy, does that devil like to argue. Everyone gets their 15 minutes; their two cents. Unfortunately for some, that's a constant stream of back-to-back, 15 minute fame sessions and many should have gone broke by now for pitching in their two cents. Hell, if I had a quarter for every time I put in my two cents, I'd have recouped at least ten years of shoddy emotional investment at an alarmingly favourable interest rate!

I suffer from the anonymous devil inside. I think of myself as reasonable, logical if often passionate; but not blind nor deaf. Anyone with a Burner account knows this dichotomy: Burner accounts allow total anonymity as they are not linked to Gmail or Facebook or Twitter, etc. but the blind passion with which one can rant in forums can lead to an obviousness of character, solidifying the ranter as an actual, human entity on the internet. The beauty of a Burner account is when one is burnt out, so to speak, the account can be deleted forever. Not the "be right back" forever of Twitter and Facebook, but actually gone forever. As long as the browser cookies are set to remember the Burner password, the account will exist. Clearing the cache and refreshing the browser can act as a sort of cleanse for toxic, trolling activity.

Exhibit A: we've all been on one end or the other

Many have inadvertently left their indelible mark on the cave walls of the internet. Perhaps a data-mining anthropologist of the future will find my Facebook wall deep in the strata of the digital past and interpret it as an important message left for the citizens of the future. Perhaps other strata will reveal a self-important, cat and sloth worshiping culture glued to their glowing, corporate, deified altars. The galaxy of would-be stars that are every individual on the internet further proves our insignificance in the universe. After all, if everybody is a star, then we are all destined to burn out and fade away anyways. If everyone is special in their own way, then nobody is special at all.

Here's to expressing our individuality... just like everybody else.

LITTLE RED ENVELOPES AND ALL THAT JIAOZE

2014: Year of the Horse. More like 4712!

I look the part, but I am about as Chinese as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley in Iron Man III or the plastic restaurant chain). My family has no formal meal the night of; no vegetarian cleanse the day after. This year, my mother had a culturally existential crisis on the matter when a family friend told her nothing short of "you are not Chinese enough; you need to learn your heritage". My mother is almost seventy and her friend is in her forties. 

Tough break, eh? I digress.

I am throwing a last minute Year of the Horse party at my mother's house for a few friends. It will be as sloppy and informal as it is last-minute. I write this before I've even come up with a menu. All I can think of is that this is a perfect excuse for a party. "Happy New Year" is the rough English equivalent of the only thing I can say in both Cantonese and Mandarin and even then, the Cantonese is my late Grandmother's dialect.

Relevance? There are a million other things I could be doing today, many of which are far more productive than my feeble attempts at maintaining some kind of sub-culture or family tradition.  I may look the part as I have mentioned, but then again I look the part for anything but black; though I have been mistaken for such through the sheer ignorance of my accuser and my choice of attire. Chinese New Year has always been that strange, exotic thing that I embraced as a part of my bloodline. In kindergarten, the teacher asked me to tell the class about it. I just described the glorious spread that used to push the family to the margins of the dining room on Lord Robert's Drive in Scarborough. I've never known the significance, if any.

Chow Kien & Chow York-Ying

Chinese New Year for me has always been about food, friends and family. China is no longer exotic, with Mandarin paving the way for a new lingua franca. I've been told I was "not Chinese enough" in my own time, albeit by a triad gangster addled by MDMA at a rave. If I choose to throw a party and give away jiaoze (dumplings) and booze instead of cash money in little red envelopes, is it "not Chinese enough"?

Who cares? Well, I obviously do a mote, or I wouldn't feel the need to write this. It would have been easier to go grab dim sum and then get drunk. It would have been of no significance if I did nothing, or simply joined the guys at the pub like any other Friday.

Little dumplings and tall cans of beer. That's what the year of the Horse is getting kicked off (har har) with.

To the glorious diversity of my ridiculous generation.

J

Xin Nian Kuai Le! Goong Hey fat Choy!

PS: I'm allergic to horses...

Black Holes and Revelations (Never Stop Dancing)

I was at a memorial recently for my dear great aunt Audrey Isabel Jones, 87. It was not tragic, but it was of course sad. Under the circumstances, it was so good to see family.

The reverend was a delightfully military-looking old English ex-pat in Niagara named Jeff Davison. I have the utmost respect for this man.

I am an Athiest. I capitalize the word because it is a title. I firmly believe that there is no god to believe in. All of this means I walked into my Aunt's memorial service with prejudice in my heart. I assumed that a tiny chapel in an old funeral home that was there in Niagara before the vineyards would be run by compassionate if not curmudgeonly Christians with whom I share nothing in common but this earth. I could not have been more wrong.

Reverend Davison closed the service with a sermon that caused my Physicist brother and lapsed Catholic father and I to make triple-head-turning eye contact with one another. How often does a priest at a funeral bring up how our perception of the laws of nature, math and physics has evolved to our modern understanding and that our thirteen-plus-billion year old universe was obviously big-banged into being by God?

My father said he can respect any man who is reasonably trying to reconcile a belief in the supernatural with a scientific understanding of nature. I replied that it sounds like he has reconciled.

Reverend Davison tried, somewhat stumblingly to marry a metaphor about my Aunt Aud's love of dancing with ever-changing landscapes and celestial physics. He pulled it off. He said that if you fall out of time, out of step, you will not be able to follow the rhythm of life. Fear not death for the universe is teeming with life. We are all stardust anyways.

One day the music will stop, followed by a moment of silence. That silence could be the blink of an eye, or many billions of years. It does not matter, because the music will start again.

Never stop dancing.

SPECIALIZATION IS FOR INSECTS

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein

My level design teacher once lamented of the video games industry that his major problem was that companies, while impressed by his vast and varied body of work, just didn't know where to put him. He is a man who has worked as an illustrator for comic books, concept artist for film and games, level designer, 3D modeler, programmer, cook (maybe), and just about any role that could be filled. He is also a military veteran (invaluable consultation knowledge for games - think about it!) and, quite obviously, a teacher. That old saying comes to mind, "a jack of all trades, master of nothing". The thing about my teacher is that he is a master of all trades it seems, and permanent employment has been a struggle for him. I should note that while he has found an excellent and lucrative contract now that classes are finished, it is not in the games industry. I'm not sure if this is the effect of what the old folks like to call a recession, or if it is simply that I have chosen a young, belligerent and exceptionally competitive field. My recent job applications - to every single possible game job in Toronto - have led me to meet some pretty spectacular people and network with some incredible companies, but no fruit has been reachable from the tree. I am only 5'8", but come on! Whining aside, I do wonder how my $30,000+ debt while attending a top Ontario college has prepared me for the games industry other than equipping me with cynicism about not only my own abilities, but the state of the industry and furthermore the economy as a whole.


I never had to fight a war, but those long days and nights in busy kitchens hardened me and trained me to deal with immediate adversity (and assholes - lots of them). It also taught me that if you're charming enough, you can grab a job that you otherwise had zero experience in before. Not a "fake it 'til you make it" approach, but instead, a sincere approach and a do-or-die attitude that lets the prospective employer know that if they take a chance on you, their time will not have been wasted. It is, of course, a hell of a lot easier to say "Okay, kid. We'll give you a chance" at $10/hour rather than $40-$50k a year. Maybe I got those jobs because I'm a hard worker and a fast learner, or maybe I got those jobs because I happened to walk in and ask to speak to the chef right after someone was fired. Or maybe it was a friend who referred me. Any way about it, I've woven quite the web in terms of networking, but my patience is wearing thinner than my silken strands.


I really do wonder where this world is going; this world my post-boomer brethren and I have inherited. Will we be engulfed by the sun before I sire children, or will the law-makers blow us all up? Should I learn Mandarin before China takes over? Will 2012 be the next Great Depression, or are we already there? Are any of these inquiries even valid, or am I just whining about my uphill battle? My family and friends and the odd stranger all seem to support that "the economy is fucked" but that just seems like a cop-out in hard times. I've had tougher times than this, but it's easier to crawl out of a hole at 20 than it is at 30. Come what may, I've got to pull up my bootstraps and kick some ass before I get mine kicked. Or I just need to get a job. Any job.


Thanks for listening.


J

ONLY SOMEWHAT GAME RELATED

I love penny-arcade. I feel a kinship with my Seattleite elder brothers. Especially when I realize that being a nerd can be a badge of honour, as long as said nerd has an open enough mind to A) See what exists outside of his screens and books and B) can laugh at himself. This comic almost single-handedly defines what me and the boys like to call the "Highschool Resident Evil Psilocybin Experience".



Don't worry parents and employers, I was but seventeen, young and not-clean.

J