Like Czernobog blood lingers the longest and revitalizes

In light of my hours being cut and knowing full well that I shan't be called into work anytime soon, I need a change of pace. I need to go somewhere that wasn't the same skytrain route 5-7 stops at 6am or 7am in the morning, one block up or one block west and 3.5 blocks south. I need something that was not downtown. What better place to go for something different than to a place that I already know but is in amidst a change.

I went up to the Burnaby SFU campus, the first time in a year but truly the first time in 5+ years. I've shown SFU to my brother a while back, showing him the sights and the sounds of the place but hardly toured it for myself to absorb in the changes. The main thing that brought me back to this place of...failure is the new addition of a small market (or glorified convenience store) and other anemities that once was only availble in a pathetic in school corner market or shitty cafeteria food. The Cornerstone features some small cafe restaurants, small services something that have been popped right out of downtown Burnaby. Quaint but not as grossly overinflated as the downtown core. In all it's so called glory it disappoints me to no end how little we progressed in creating a true university (or in this case a univer-city) campus but more of a band-aid to the obvioud lack of non-school related activities and services available on campus. However the near downtown landscape of the new residences look great, almost make me do a double take in light of all this 70's/80's architecture of the rest of the campus.

So I walked through the hallowed halls of SFU. Looking at some new places, but mainly retracing my steps through the hallways just like it was yesterday. Some things were expanded, such as the SFU pub. Some things were lost such as the SFU arcade. A wise choice upon reflection considering how fucking much time I wasted there in a ever continuing pattern of sub-standard excuses for what they represent. The Ghandi bust was moved indoors into the library which is a shame. I thought one of the more appealing and in turn detrimental aspects of SFU campus life was the small little nooks and areas that were almost hidden away on campus. Spots of design who's purpose was to relax and provide a quite place of relfection for people from the huge hallways that cattle you from class to class. The bust of Ghandi imho was always a sort of beacon to invite you to discover a hidden area on campus, off the beaten path so to speak. Now it's in the library greeting many a student but sorely out of place amongst the collection of frame photographs of caucasian administrators that decroate the lobby wall.

I kept walking, looking for remnants of my past. Reliving the times when I was just a stupid young kid who probably shouldn't have gone here as soon as he did, scurrying in the hallways with no direction in any sense of the word. The stairs are familiar, the non-slip floor was familiar, even those wonderful blue paper recycling bins fill me with memory. Looking at the changes where the library walls are more colourful and thus less suicide thought inducing, makes me understand in the face of such a powerful architectual design that the best thing anyone can do is put lipstick on the so called pig. The cafeteria was dolled up to look less like an institution and more like a foodcourt and yet it still clashes with the population of the school. People stand out like sore thumbs amongst the warm reds, pasturized beiges and hospital greens. I can still see the bit of shadow that hangs over them that all this concrete and grey always does of SFU. The golem continues to victimize people.

My final stop of memory lane was into the area above the bus loop. The first place where I thought I could make friends the A.R.C. (Altered Reality Club aka an anime/geek club) seemed to have disappeared. Even the attempts of conversation amongst my potential countrymen ended up in failure and the A.R.C. is either located elsewhere on campus because only small hints of their existence in the bus loop still lingers. A poorly sketched out manga comic page, a small flyer. The rattiness of the bulletin board covered over with pastel paper. A student looks over at me, possibly catching her eye as I disturb her periphery vision and quietly goes back to looking at her laptop.

In light of the construction, the progress this "home" that called home, it just reminds me more of how much of a failed venture this place was to me. It was not UBC (which was my first choice but I never go in) and little remains to indicate that whatever past I had here still survived to this day. What gets me the most is that life continues on, the school stays the same and I don't and I feel a sense that I was never welcomed there. SFU makes sure that you don't feel welcome there by design and by it's very nature. More to the point perhaps SFU didn't welcome me because I didn't want it originally and we used each other to our own ends.

Progress of the campus development marches on but I see no progress here. Instead I see a continued emphasis on creating a sub-par society on the hill that is as natural as the molded hills of the park on top of the Academic Quadriangle. The efficiency of education continues as much as the potential to stunt the personal growth of the population.

This is what I missed last week.

I still have my Weezer ticket on my desk not for any sentimental or mental reason. Just the reason that I'm a bit of a packrat/lazy bastard for not cleaning up as much as I should.

That is all.

I saw Fight Club on TLN the other night.

I've been feeling pretty shitty the past few days. Pinched a nerve, hurt my back, slept on my neck wrong, aggravited the muscle, whatever, it all cumilated into the same thing. A reflection on myself. I remember a lecture a grade 11 teacher told me about dreams and how you have to other back up dreams to fall upon just in case your lose your shit and fuck up. I for one am just a lazy mother fucker. Hiding behind the idea of being an artist while hardly showing the ferral dedication to be one. A drunken friend pointed that out to be truthfully one night and I accepted wholly as a serious character flaw. As I sit here typing and tending to my nagging back it's at this moment that I have to reflect on what my career is supposed to be.

While I might be showing the chops to be a cook this injury just brought up ideas of whether I am cut out for this cutthroat lifestyle. I'm already too much of a fucking pussy to work fulltime and go to school fulltime only working part time. Now I hurt my back during a time where my job is short staffed and I feel like I'm going to lose my job for being completely useless in the face of being so reliable before. I like doing my job. I like pleasing people. I like to be part of the mchine that runs smoothly. And while I'm in a great position to continue working with this establishment, I don't know how I would react if I get fired. I might be imagining things, work has given no indication that they would want to let me go because of this but what if I were managing this well oiled machine? I'd have to replace the broken cog as soon as possible in a market where a lot of fucking cogs are availble.

How this relates to Fight Club is that it was one of the first films I saw in Vancouver when I first moved down here. It was the beginning of my Vancouver life and defined me as a person at school. A school degree that I never finished. Now my casual Sunday belief in karma is only reinforced by the stupidity that lead me to this situation. I could have exercised more, I could have done a lot of things to prevent me on being on the steps of being kicked out of the culinary program and from my job. It seemed coincidental that Fight Club should have shown up to foreshadow a potential second (or third?) supreme failure in my life. I had a moment where I reflected as to what the hell this career path is going to get me if anything.

The good news is that Fight Club is still as every bit enjoyable as it was back in 99. Also the worst of my culinary education would entail would be me withdrawing for the week and having to repeat it at a later period. My worries about work is still less quelled but life goes on. It's all a matter as to how I can deal with it and trust me it's all my fault. If lesser people could survive then certainly I can.

Street Fighter 4 as a sign of the times

I've been out of the gaming loop as a whole for a long time. It's been years that I've owned an up to date current console since the N64 era and even then owning that system meant being stuck in a bygone era. You might as very well said, I love slim pickings. However I still have my opinion and even though I might not be in the experience, only getting what small chances I can to barely update myself on the ubermesche of gaming from time to time; the recently released Street Fighter 4 does bring up some ideas of what gaming is and where it's going.

It makes me contemplate whether the idea of a good game or even a decent game had already been established long ago when Capcom decided to backpedal one of it's flagship franchises around Street Fighter 2. For those who might not know the history of the franchise, SF1 came out, then the blockbuster of SF2. After countless sequels a prequel franchise of Street Fighter 2 came out in the form of the Alpha Series which was used to showcase the CPS-2 graphics board. The in game timeline set the Alpha series before the events of SF2.

SF3 then came out setting the in game timeline far after the events of SF2. However SF4 is set in the very aftermath of SF2. So if anyone is following it goes as such.

SF1 -> SFAlpha -> SF2 -> SF4 -> SF3

Fuck Capcom inable to count to 3, they can't even count in the proper order.

However enough of that. What's most likely just trying to relive theold days of success I still feel that SF4 has something significant to say about gaming culture. With the resurgence of remakes, uprgrades and the new market of aging gamers, a new sort of niche or gaming market is coming out. Where we laughed at the Namco or Atari collections of the silver age of gaming of Centipede, Asteroids and Pac-Man; as an aging gamer myself we are beginning to see collections of gaming childhoods being presented to us either through download services ala Virtual Console or X-Box Live Aracade, repackaging ala FF updates or just plain collections such as the SNK collections.

This idea of a retro gamer market of the 90's emerging seems lucrative not in the sense bringing back old franchises in a current gen setting such as Golden Axe: Beast Rider or Rygar...but to bring back the gaming we like in general such as Bionic Commando Rearmed. However the interesting idea behind Street Fighter 4 is that it straddles between the new and old. SF2 being the money maker it is and with the cast being literally plucked out of that franchise with nary a care in the world makes SF4 seem like another in a long line of updates than an full fledged installment to SF2. Sure there are new characters in it, but the lengths that Capcom decided to try and mesh them in with the old guard falls very short. The simple fact that they placed the in game timeline nearer to SF2 than even SF3's timeline makes for a simple statement about the gaming community: gaming was good in the 90's and while a lot of new franchises have refined the idea of game design, it goes to show that there's a recognition of the design concepts of the 90's far more than we realize in the jump between 2D gaming into the 3D world or even trying to progress the 2D world itself. With Super Mario Galaxy essentially being Super Mario Bros. 3 3-d it goes to show that perhaps being stuck in gaming nostolgia isn't necessarily a bad thing since it shapes how well we receive games today.