Thursday, July 29, 2010

A Letter

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to my attention that you are one such individual who enjoys indulging in the mastication of an artificially sweetened preparation known more colloquially as "chewing gum."

Big words aside, I'm hear to talk to you a little bit about your habit, and why it's really started to get on my nerves as of late. Allow me to begin by drawing a family tree and placing you in the same branch as smokers. For a quick second dwell on the fact that on this hypothetical arboreal construct you are rubbing elbows with a group whose habit is such that they deserve their own section in restaurants. Now we move on.

As many of you may have noticed, smokers care little for their general surroundings. For some far-fetched reason that continues to elude me many have come to the conclusion that if there is no ashtray in the vicinity, the logical choice would be to throw used butt on the ground before extinguishing it with a well-practiced turning of the foot. This individual has probably probably finds this somehow satisfying, and it is thereby a form of positive reinforcement to dirtying the environment. This action leads to most waiting areas (bus stops being an obvious example) bearing a liberal dusting of cigarette butts, a trait that has, over time, even become characteristic of such areas.

At this point I would like to apologize, as I did mention in the first sentence of the second paragraph that big words were, to an extent, to be laid off to the side for the time being. There are times when irritation leads to a building up of my diction as opposed to a breaking down, and I ask that you bear with me.

The point that I made in the paragraph before last is that smokers, to put it simply, are a dirty people. However, it is to be noticed that at these same rest stops where cigarette butts litter the ground there are often, accompanying them, a healthy number of dark spots on the sidewalk. It was sometime last month when, to my disgust, I realized that aforementioned dark spots were actually wads of chewing gum, spat on the ground and turned black by dirt and the (unlucky) soles of passers-by.

Please explain to me, good sir/madam why this is. What possesses a person to take the wad of sweetened chicle from their mouth and simply leave it upon the ground for other to trod upon? I am aghast at the thought that it never occurs to you that this may make the ground appear, to be blunt, filthy. Dark spots do not appear to be a beautifying characteristic in almost anything anywhere. Dalmatians are clearly the exception.

I would like to conclude this brief letter by imploring you to rethink your choices. Not the choice to chew gum, since as vices go it is quite tame compared to partaking in heroin, methaphetamine hydrochloride, or the groundless licking of amphibians to obtain a state of altered consciousness. No, the choice I beg you to consider is some sort of alternative to tossing your exhausted inedible on the ground. Please consider the surroundings and soles of those around you. In short words: Be Considerate.

Thank you for taking time away from your busy days to glance through this note, and I dearly hope that you take something away from this, and that that something is a staunch decision to from here on end always dispose of chewing gum in a polite and sanitary manner.

Yours Sincerely,

-Evan Yeong

Monday, July 26, 2010

Dirty.

This is a very spur-of-the-moment just-because-I-can post. It's nine o' clock and I have three hours before this is late, so I am going to write about what is on my mind.

I hate flies.

Why do I hate flies?

Because they are dirty.

I also hate flies because they buzz around my room and nestle in my lamp, the only source of illumination down here. They sound like little German Fokker biplanes that are being piloted by large-lunged vuvuzela players. They are also quite large.

When I finally swat these flies with a rolled up copy of Nintendo Power, I have found, to my disgust/may, that many of them are pregnant. Their twitching bodies release a slowly growing pool of tiny, near-microscopic maggots, which crawl around blindly searching for some corpse to inhabit.

It's gross.

Then I got to thinking about animals people are afraid of, and how they all go under that finger retracting heading of "Dirty." Flies, cockroaches, rats, and vermin of all shapes and sizes; people are afraid of them, and they are all known as being filthy, filthy creatures.

Where did this come from? Is this a Western fear that we have? I'm not implying that in the East people are loving on cockroaches and sharing bags of Doritos with them, that's just absurd(of course that doesn't happen, Doritos are hard to come by in Asia). Since when have we all become Purell-grabbing germaphobes?

I think about how when I see pictures of Africa there are kids squatting on the ground, flies on their faces, just chillin'. This is an awkward example to use, because it's highly likely that they were too weak to swat them away, so let me move on- How about markets in the Philippines, where everything is in the open air, and animals are cut up in front of you and blood and other liquids flow down little drains all around you? Is that any less hygienic than the food you eat now (unless you're in the Philippines, in which case this obviously doesn't apply to you)?

I guess the bottom of line of what I'm saying here is that we (yes, I suppose I count as well) Westerners are terrified of things that are "dirty," and maybe we don't even know why. Or maybe we do know why, but we are being directed by the hype of the media and all that. Just something to think about, y'know?

Notes:
  • One night in Thailand I woke up and there was a cockroach on my hand. It was one of the worst nights of my life. I spent the rest of the night in the living room.
  • There was a lot of unintentional product placement in this post. I'm really sorry for that, it was completely unintentional and I have no idea how it happened.
  • If you go to urbandictionary.com, the second entry for germaphobe has a second definition that is as follows:
2) Someone who is scared of German tourists

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Documentaries

I've watched a few documentaries in my time. And I really do mean a few. They are, if I can recall correctly:

Food Inc. (which is about food)

Supersize Me (which is about fast food)

Capitalism: A Love Story (which is about capitalism)

Good Hair (which is about hair)

This (short) post is deceptively titled "Documentaries." Deceptively in that I'm really only going to focus on Good Hair, which I only really saw about half an hour of.

If you don't know, it's basically Chris Rock going around and researching, for lack of a better word, black hair. This was probably one of the most enlightening documentaries of the bunch for me, because it was legitimately something I had never given any thought to.

Mr. Rock explores the techniques used to "tame" black hair, many of which involve crazy noxious chemicals that will give you terrible burns. Another stratagem used necessitates taking hair from other people and weaving it onto one's head. This hair typically comes from India.

I'm bringing all of this up because the woman I work for currently is black.

This documentary has done something which none of the others have, and that is given me this heavy sense of awareness. Whenever I look at her hair I notice that her straightening (or whatever it's called) is loosening up a little, and that she should probably go get it redone. More importantly, I look at her hair and I judge.

My friend Gordon is used to getting that look from me. To be fair, with him I'm usually kidding, but this is serious business. Every time I look at black women now I'm constantly scrutinizing their heads, silently passing judgement on what they choose to do with their own hair.

It's an issue I'm dealing with. I just thought I'd share it.

An Excuse [Also: Partially A Late Update for Monday]

I didn't update on Monday because:

a) I got back from work and left as soon as I had changed to attend the Scott Pilgrim's Greatest Hour release party at The Beguiling, Toronto's comic store of choice.

Whilst I was there I met cool Americans (crazy, I know), met the Brian Lee O'Malley, and got both the first and sixth books signed. I'd tweet more about how incredibly amazing these comics are, but that is for another day.

Suffice to say, I returned home at three in the morning, because I waited for over three hours to get the last book signed. Worth every second.

b) The next day my aunt and cousin were around (and had arrived the night before), so we all went out and got all-you-can-eat sushi. Then I fell asleep for a while.

When I woke up I went and saw Despicable Me with other cousins. It was pretty good.

c) On Wednesday I had to go to work. So I did that.

When I got back home there was a big potluck-type thing with the whole family because my mom was leaving the next day.

The house was like a sauna, so I left with two of my cousins to walk around. We bought a box of twenty-four ice cream sandwiches, and ate half between the three of us. I feel like a fatty.

d) My mom left this morning to go back to Thailand so that she can return in time for my brother's last few radiation treatments. Oh, fyi, he has cancer. The good news is that it is almost all gone.

That's why I didn't update on Monday, and I couldn't get around to it until today. There you have it. Now I will go write a real update for today, Thursday.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Dream, June Twenty-nine, Two-thousand Ten.

I'm really sorry I suck at this, you guys. Today I got home and there were a billion family members everywhere, and then I had to clean up my room like a person who has OCD and who relies on cleaning things to stay sane.

I don't feel like I have time to put up a post before it's Friday (and I did promise that this blog would be updated Mondays and Thursdays) so I am going to be lazy and put up something I have already written.

Most people don't know this, but since May Twenty-Fifth of this year I have been recording my dreams when I can remember them. I have roughly thirty dreams recorded, some of them paragraphs long and some of them only a brief scene I can scarcely recall.

Below is a dream I had last month, and I hope it will suffice until next Monday. I tried to pick one in which there weren't any people I knew, and one that didn't contain weird cultural references or memories only I would know about. I also rewrote it slightly, to make it easier for you guys.

Dream, June Twenty-nine, Two-thousand Ten.

It's nighttime. I'm walking around in a parking lot, large supermarket to my right; I have no idea what I'm doing. As I walk around I begin to get flashbacks of what happened in this world. Earth basically fell apart, as resources were depleted, and it became polluted and run-down. People drove their cars, sure, but eventually there wasn't any gas to make them run. Not even the nearest planet cared enough to help them out [Editor's Note: I guess this was the future and we had reached the stars somehow]. Eventually people began taking their cars and burning them to create huge signs, beckoning those on the other planet to come engage in their drug-fueled parties and orgies. Some simply said the name of the planet, which might have been SODEXO, while other had messages as inane as FRANK DILLON IS AWESOME.

In spite of the apocalyptic flashback I had, everything around me seemed contradictory to what I had envisioned. The supermarket to my right appeared extremely well stocked, albeit closed, and as I hide in the parking lot, back against the tire of a parked car and two white pillows under my head, a truck pulls in front of me. I hold my breath and hope I blend into the darkness. I have documents and I need to bring them somewhere, so I rise and talk to the portly man in the truck.

A little ways off, near where the parking lot ends, I see a leather messenger bag with a gun and an axe inside of it. I leave it alone. A man who looks like a bum tells me to just take it, so I walk over, place my documents inside of it, and begin to head off. The owner comes over and says, "That's mine," so I take out my stuff and hand him the bag. "Man, you one badass mofo," I tell him. I begin following him. We walk away from the department store and its parking lot, into the woods.

As we near the woods I spy a really old looking book, which I pick up and put my papers into. The man who looks like a bum begins begging us to take him and let him follow us, but we ignore him. He begins grabbing onto me, almost as if he's trying to climb on my back. The owner of the bag comes over and begins grappling with him, and I can tell he's going to be the one to protect me and keep me safe; no one's going to mess with this guy. I grab a blue ballpoint pen from a pile I see on the forest floor.

The man is dealt with, and we begin to continue on into the forest. A second man, the driver of the pickup, I think, is behind us. He reminds me of the big white guy in Remember the Titans. We begin to cross a bridge, and from where he starts yelling at us. "Why you gotta cross a bridge that's too wide?" It wasn't that wide.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Tell Me What You Think

I've decided to stop putting these before each post. They take up a lot of room, and I don't like how it looks.

For those of you who haven't glanced over at the little sidebar to the right or who didn't know me back when I still updated it, allow me to inform you that I used to have another blog. This blog, angel's asylum, was (and is, I suppose) basically all very short stories, a place where I could flex my creative muscles and test out my theories on "episodic literature."

Glancing through it a few weeks ago, I number of thoughts came to mind, which I will list even though I promised myself I would stop with the lists on this blog.

(1) Writing fiction was a lot of fun.
(2) I wouldn't mind starting that up again.
(a) But it's already difficult enough writing this Mondays/Thursdays
(b) And I don't want people feeling like I'm posting all over the place/too much.
(3) I would actually like new readers of this blog to look through and comment on my old one.
(4) I would also like to rewrite a lot of those old posts.
(5) I want to consolidate all of my work under one email, as both blogs are under different addresses.

My solution to this would be to begin a new blog that would connect directly to this one, and slowly (perhaps once a week) repost old material there. Eventually I would run out of older writing and I could actually begin to delve into fiction again (maybe even intersperse newer stuff with the old if I feel so led).

What I'm asking you (the five[?] or so people who read this) is whether or not you would actually read more of what I write, and if you would if you could comment on it. Please get back to me in the comments section and let me know, since it's something I'm thinking about pretty seriously.

To end this off, here's a piece posted on March Twenty-Eighth, Two-thousand Nine. It was an effort to write a short scene using every single character in a text message. It was written to one (1) Renee Roberts.

The branches reached skyward, scratching the cloudy, troubled heavens and failing to leave a mark. Eleanor Ruby Greenway stood at the bus station and sighed; it should be illegal to have to wait more than fifteen minutes for public transportation.

Only a little past three on a Sunday evening and this weekend had already begun its slow, sullen march to its grave, filled with a heavy sense of resignation. Going to the park was sort of a social excursion, right? After all, there were a lot of people there, and she had even spoken to a man selling red balloons; they had been just like the ones the man in the park had sold in Curious George. Except, that of course there was no Man in the Yellow Hat to buy her one, and there had certainly been no antics or adventures.

A strong breeze blew down the street, as if a semi had roared down this quiet, suburban road. Elly clutched her bag closer to herself and shivered.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Fun Facts about Canada that Elisa Probably Doesn't Know

Last week I posted in the comments that whatever topics you suggested, I would write on. In this case "you" refers to Elisa Shearer, as she was the only one who thought it would be cool to offer her thoughts. She thought I should write about:

"Canada. Fun facts about Canada that I probably don't know."

I thought this was a great topic, and since I usually don't break my promises, here you go-


As you might have gathered from the title, these are fun facts about Canada that Elisa probably doesn't know. To make this even more fun, I have decided to do no research whatosever on the topic. I guess we'll have to see how this turns out. There are twelve facts, ten for each province I remembered, and two for the provinces I didn't.

EDIT: There are ten provinces and three territories. I had originally counted out eleven provinces AND territories. I forgot Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. That's what happens when you don't do any research.

Fact One. I live in Ontario, which is one of Canada's provinces. There's a chain around here called Pizza Pizza, which, in spite of having a redundant name, serves some pretty decent pizza. The best part about pizza from Pizza Pizza (feel the redundancy) is that they give dipping sauce, default setting creamy garlic. Gave dipping sauce, I should say- I don't think they give it free anymore, I think you have to buy it.

Fact Two. The Gay Pride Parade happened in Toronto last weekend. There are a lot of gay people in Toronto, particularly on Church Street. This area of the city has been dubbed "the gaybourhood."

Fact Three. People don't really like Montreal, because apparently they wanted to leave Canada at one point. I don't really mind people from that province, since I think it's cool that they speak French and that their city is so old and cultural.

Fact Four. Margaret Atwood is Canadian. If you don't know who she is, then I will tell you: she is the lady who wrote The Handmaid's Tale. People who read books know about her, which is cool.

Fact Five. Once Canada and America fought each other. We burned down each other's capitals, so we sort of evened it out. Canadian history is actually surprisingly cool.

Fact Six. Speaking of Canadian history, Kate Beaton is one of my favourite Canadian webcomic artists. She writes/draws the webcomic Hark, A Vagrant!, a webcomic about historical things, and is a really nice person. You should read her comics.

A few of the other Canadian webcomic artists I know are also women, and they are Jenny Romanchuk Alison Acton, who write/draw The Zombie Hunters and Bear Nuts respectively. The former is about zombies and the second is about bears.

Fact Seven. My favourite Canadian blogger, MGK aka Mighty God King, recently wrote on national anthems. He claims that the Canadian anthem is one of the only anthems that sounds good sung in two different languages, and I am inclined to agree with him on that.

Fact Eight. People always think of Canada as cold. That being said, I recently heard a weather person on TV announce that it would get "as hot as the tropics" here this summer. He was right.

Fact Nine. All of the Canadian authors I've read these past few months, Douglas Coupland, Robertson Davies, Joey Comeau, and Gail Anderson-Dagatz, have been pretty sombre folk. I often wish that Houghton (the college I attend) had a Canadian Literature class of some sort. Not that I mind American literature, but I think we read enough of it, y'know?

Fact Ten. When I used to think about the word "Canadian" I used to equate that with white people. I also used to be six years old. Now when I think "Canadian" I think multicultural and multiethnic. I suppose I've come a long way from asking my mother whether or not I'm Canadian, confused that I didn't look like some of the people I saw around me.

Fact Eleven. Back in middle school we had extended field trips, and one of those trips was to Ottawa, our nation's capital. While we were there we visited the Diefenbunker. The Diefenbunker was a big ol' government bunker with walls of three metre concrete, or something like that. Important people were supposed to hide down there when nuclear war happened, but now it is a museum.

Fact Twelve. These are just all the Canadian facts I can dredge up in two minutes. Canadians you might know: Jim Carrey, Pamela Anderson, Mike Myers, Russell Peters, the band Three Days Grace, the inventors of Superman, basketball, and the telephone. Canada is the third largest country in the world. Beaver tails are wonderful long flat pastries served with toppings like chocolate syrup or jam; traditionally they are served with lemon and sugar. People are always making fun of Newfies, or people from Newfoundland, but I don't think I have ever met one. On the east coast a lot of America's pollution travels northward and messes up our skies and stuff. Loonies and toonies (one and two dollar coins) make far more sense than one dollar bills. Canada is a large, beautiful country, and I hope to explore more of it one day.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Books

This wasn't intentional, but I am writing this blog post in the nearby public library. I've been meaning to do this for a long time, to go somewhere else besides the dark, cool sanctuary that is my basement, but I just haven't had the motivation 'till now.

So here I am, Psychology, Computer Instruction, and Self-Help books to my back, prepared to defend the written word in a format different from the one you are reading at the moment. If you can see my point, then great; if you can't, that's what the Comments section is for.

EDIT: The title for this was originally: The Written Word (and the Printed Page), but I decided that I should make up for last Thursday's and make this one short and sweet.

The above is a panel taken from the comic Gunshow. Being a very cool guy, KC Green, the creator of Gunshow gave me permission to use this panel for my blog. Clicking here will bring you to the full comic, and the full site.

Sometime during the middle of last week I stumbled upon the comic above, and soon after found in my Twitter feed a link which directed me to Huffington Post, to Marc Ruxin's article "The Death of Touch and the Lost Joy of the Unexpected."

In his article Ruxin spells out the inevitable demise of the Compact Disc (the Music Store), the DVD (Movie Rental Places), and the Book (Book Stores in General); being in the digital age, with inventions like the iPod, Netflix, and the Kindle, soon all media is fated to end up in convenient little handheld devices, a turn of events which Ruxin conservatively describes as being "good and bad."

As someone who cares a great deal for the environment, I'm thrilled that someday the resources and raw materials used in books and CDs might one day be spared. What I find distressing about all of this is the disconnect that will occur, and is occurring, because of this not-so-subtle move from hard copy to soft.

At a mall last year I walked into an HMV (a large music chain, for you Americans) and saw that they had a sale on graphic novels. Upon walking up to the counter and handing the cashier my purchase (DC's Final Crisis), I was surprised to hear her tell me, "This one's really good."

The shock of meeting a girl who knew comics aside, this was pivotal to the first of two points I want to make: people should sell books.

I know a lot of people who might describe HMV as one of those massive soulless corporations, interested only in profits and nothing else. That may be true- but HMV hires people. I've bought many, many books on Amazon and Half.com, but have never had the opportunity to talk to the seller about the book, to ask them their favourite part or if it's even a decent read to begin with. If there's a bookstore you frequent, you know that the people who work there have opinions, and that they're always up for providing them if you ask.

My second point is difficult to separate from my first, but I believe that books should be exactly what their definition(according to WordWeb) entails: "A written work or composition that has been published (printed on pages bound together)."

I can't imagine a world where instead of walking up to my bookshelf I pull open a drawer and take out a Kindle, a gadget that can hold up to fifteen-hundred books. Instead of walking up and down the aisles of a Chapters (a large book chain, again for the Americans), or perusing the shelves of my favourite used bookstore, I'm downloading a full novel in less than sixty seconds. If I don't feel like reading a book, no huge loss, I can just delete it and look for another one. Instead of buying a book strictly on the basis of its cover (not always a bad decision) I can just see what Amazon recommends based on my previous books downloaded.

This might be a strictly personal thing, but I genuinely enjoy feeling the pages of a book between my fingers. I love the feel of a brand new book with the spine intact just as much as I love a book that's worn from many readers, spine creased in their favourite parts. Real books feel and smell and look. I defy Amazon to provide a book open for download where I stumble across a receipt someone has left as a bookmark, or a note left in the margin for a class they took years ago.

Ruxin dealt with music and film as well as books, both subjects I care about strongly in their conversion to a media built for convenience instead of interaction. For me, however, literature has the most to lose in all of this. People will continue to listen to music and to watch movies, but I don't think people will always read books.

Call me a Luddite, but you can keep your Kindles and your e-books to yourself. I don't mean to judge you if that's what you're into, but when it comes to the written word, I strongly believe it belongs with the printed page. Call me a hypocrite, but if I could print this out and hand it to you in person, I would gladly do that instead.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

This Post is Ego"list"ical (and its Title isn't Funny)

Good news, everyone, this italicized text is a Futurama reference! Also: my mom is here. That being said most of the family came over, and after I sat reading in a crowded room with them, I fell asleep.

I have just stumbled down here and thrown myself onto my wondrous double bed. It's opening my laptop that reminded me: This is a Thursday.

So now I lie here, fingers on keys, typing and trying to think of what to write about.


These Are Eleven Things About Me That Some People Know And That Others Do Not

Number One. When I write, I like it to be in ten point dark blue Garamond; I am writing in it right now. As an addendum to this point, I also
prefer to write out my numbers, especially when writing dates.

Number Two. I eat cough drops like they are candy. I asked my mom to bring me back Halls from Thailand, and I have dozens of packs down here in the basement now. Hopefully I can make them last.

Number Three. Gordon Brown and I have been talking about concepts for video games, and I have been writing them down. Some of these are (in my opinion) seriously good, and I hope to one day flesh them out enough to present to a video game studio.

Number Four. Most of you know this, but I have been waiting for the game StarCraft II since they announced it in May of Two-thousand Seven. I spend far too much time keeping up to date on the minutest tidbit of news released on it. If it wasn't coming out at the end of this month, I don't know what I would do with myself.

Number Five. There are times when I do not write with contractions. I attribute this to webcomics. Faye of Questionable Content made this a habit, once upon a time, and many webcomic artists often lapse into writing like this for comic effect.

Number Six. I read a lot of webcomics. Some of the bookmarks on Chrome (my browser of choice) are set up from Sunday to Saturday. Each folder, when pulled down, reveals all the comics to update on that particular day. Thursday's folder contains fifteen; Monday's contains twenty-six.

Number Seven. The Last Airbender came out today, and I'm almost sad at how terrible it is. I really do have a lot of respect for Shyamalan, and to see internet critics the world over simultaneously weeping and laughing makes me feel sorry for the guy.

Number Eight. I use woman's deodorant. For this one Christmas party thing a girl received some Nivea roll-on deodorant, and she gave it to me as a joke. I started using it and haven't stopped since.

Number Nine. When I was in high school I once had dreams of doing stand-up comedy. That was added to the list of "Occuptions I Probably Won't Attain But Wouldn't Mind Being," alongside comic artist, graphic designer, musician and/or singer, and professional eater.

Number Ten. For the past few nights I have been doing crunches and sit-ups to a cover of Katy Perry's California Gurls, ft. Snoop Dogg. You can listen to it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0R_V1RkSDY

I had to go back and change the word "girls" to "gurls." Spelling is important to me, and having to change that hurt me a little inside.

Number Eleven. This list goes to eleven because I didn't want it to go to ten, and I was too lazy to push it to thirteen. I also really like the letter eleven when it's written out.