Author Archives: allen.chan1

I’ve scrapped my old idea in my previous post and after going through many old volumes of Chinese Poetry, I have finally found one a poem that is semi-compatible with the modern times (read: something that I could reasonably write a 5-7 page paper on).

The Poem is called “A Song of Chariots” by Du Fu. This poem is ostensibly about the plight of the poor/non-gentry during times of war. I believe I could tie the poem to the current perspectives with the thesis. Du Fu’s A Song of Chariots” is a poem that presents a unique viewpoint (for its time) that rings true throughout history as it describes the disproportionate burden the poor suffer during times of war – a view that is not shared by many of his contemporaries as he often writes from the perspective of the “lower classes”. That would be my “thesis” and of course, it will be subject to edits in the future.

For my Digital Essay, I have chosen a 2:30 minute piece here to be the background music for the video.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/9deywC7sY6c" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

The piece is called “Asia” and its from the Senkou no Night Raid Anime OST (aka. NightRaid 1931). This theme has a very Chinese feel to it as it blends the Chinese Fiddle (erhu), piano and percussion very well. My plan is transition my own drawings of past and present along with the music. The old, when the erhu is playing, and the new when the piano is dominant.

Video wise, I don’t really think I could “animate” the whole thing. But I could do a very interesting “storybook” like style. Where there will be a main background image (more than one I would think) and there will be a smaller images overlaying it as time goes on. I am not sure if I will still have dialogue boxes as I really can’t draw faces really well. Anyways, I got my inspiration from the h-game Quartett.

So when I first heard about the Digital Essay in class and how we were to make a “AMV” for part of our final project, a song immediately popped into my head.

Its this..

song is called Rainbow Girl

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/UkRHo-DggVw" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

(Lyrics is in vid)

Now this version is sung by a voice synthesizer known as Hatsune Miku. The original version was sung by a group of “supposed” lonely nerds on 2ch (message board). The song is essentially about their 2D love. (note: a bit of background, this 2D love phenomenon is a type of subculture in that some in Japan and small groups of Japanophiles outside the country follow. The gist is that they “reject” love with real women  and either by a combination of self-esteem problems, extreme shallowness, constant rejection, social awkwardness, and with just a splash of misogyny, prefer their pure 2D characters be they from anime, manga or dating sims).

Now the reason that this appealed to me at first is that if I do use this song, it will be a bit self-depreciating (as I am unfortunately, seem to be one of “them”), which appeals to me quite a bit. However, I also realize that the “topic” that would be related to the song, which would most likely be something about high-expectations or false love/happiness will be a bit hard to find among the poems listed in the readings which would mean I would have to work hard to search it. And the fact of the matter is, its going to be hard to find a working thesis for such a topic.

So yeah….thats my update.

Any help or tips would be much appreciated.

This response “paper” is probably the hardest one for me to write as I am not that creative at all (or at the very least, a person whose creative instincts were not nurtured and was left to wither and die in a small, desolate place in my mind) as it requires be to visualize some aspects about “Creativity”. In any case to answer the questions posed by Ms. Kaufman, I do feel that there are times where I am given the chance to be creative, but I often choose not to. One such example for me would be my background in the arts (oil painting  and piano). I was never particularly interested in composing my own works or painting my own abstract works. Instead, I preferred to concentrate on playing classic pieces or reproducing famous works and painting still life/landscape works. So as a result, my creative muscle is not very strong and thus I won’t be able to “paint” as vivid a picture of my “creative” impulses.

I can only give you an example of the level of creativity I am capable. The most important requirement for me to be creative is that it have to have some basis in “reality”. For example, I can fantasize about fictional military engagements (though that could just be an extension fantasizing about playing strategy games) or put myself into a fantastical situation in a world that had been already been “created” (as in, any sci-fi /historical-fiction/military-fiction universe,though I admit, some of those “fantasies” are probably subconscious wish fulfillment stuff). That said, I do not engage in fanfiction writing as no one should ever be subjected to the horrid stuff that I would churn out if I actually did write (this fear comes from seeing the loads of horrid sh*t I see on those sites which leads me to believe that most people are not creative by nature, or conversely, non creative people like me, gravitate towards fantasies other people have created).

On the question of ambiguity, I prefer to have things answered as if the world was like that, it would simple and easy to understand. But knowing that its impossible to expect to know everything in life, I can live with a bit of ambiguity in my life. If something was so ambiguous and I can’t find any answers to on the INTERNET, I’ll just chalk it up as something I’ll never understand (or that its not my place to understand) and just go on with my life. And no, its not that “exciting” when your confused but it is exciting when you resolve the source of your confusion.

Option #2 : Comparing and Contrasting Happiness in “The Birthmark” and “Hills like White Elephants”.

Since I’m not used to writing informal blog posts, I will keep this post in a semi-academic manner with a bit of freedom given to the writing style and organization. It would feel more like a “forum post” if you will as opposed to a typical paper, but not as informal or personal as “blog post”.

In both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” and Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills like White Elephants”, happiness is shown as a very elusive goal that both the characters in “The Birthmark” and “Hills like White Elephants” were most likely unable to achieve at the end of each tale. To elaborate, I believe both sets of characters in essence achieved “Pyrrhic Victory” at the end of the stories as although, it seems as though the goals set by author for the characters in the stories. In “The Birthmark”, Alymer was finally able to be rid of the horrid blemish on his wife’s cheek at cost of her life while in Hemmingway, although the couple (Jig and unknown man) were able to come to a consensus on their “decision” but the story ends with an ambiguous ending that at least to me, implied that the relationship between the two of them will drastically change after this event. Whether it would change for the good or worse, is up to the reader to infer. I also noticed that in both situations, the characters could have just learned to “live” with their lot. For example, Alymer could have just tried harder to ignore Georgiana’s birthmark or the couple in “Hills like White Elephants” could have kept the baby (although, this would still also have been a change in their relationship just like their abortion). Other than that, I really can’t see any deeper comparisons about “happiness” in both stories.

The movie Best in Show directed by Christopher Guest (who also stars in the movie as Harland Pepper) and was released in September 2000 as a mockumentary about a fictional dog show known as the Mayflower Dog Show.  It stars Christopher Guest (as Harland Pepper), Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara (the couple from Florida) Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock (as the neurotics from Chicago), Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Lynch (the coach from Glee) and John Michael Higgins and Michael McKean (as the homosexual couple from NY).

The movie was quite well directed and the actors managed to give it quite the “documentary” feel. The only time where you lose the suspension of disbelief is when the film does its running gags. The main ones being the Catherine O’Hara’s character’s promiscuous past and the ridiculous commentators during the dog show itself. But even though parts of the movie break your suspension of disbelief, the humor is quite good. The hotel manager’s straight-faced recounting of the horrors of managing the hotel and how hard it is to wash the “smell of blood and cumin” from the drapes. Obviously, since this movie is a “documentary”, there not much in the area of special effects. The cinematography has a realistic feel to it.  There is little to criticize in this movie other than at some parts the pacing feels a bit slow and some of the gags do get old, (such as the American Commentator during the show). However, the movie was entertaining and had a good ending. 3 out of 5 Stars.

Allen Chan