Cosplay Karaoke Gets More Relevant Every Day.



So I'll be at San Diego Comic-Con 2017 tomorrow, and to honor the occasion made a bunch more cosplay karaoke videos featuring Spider-Woman, Jessica Jones, Mystique, Dr. Strange, Shadowcat, among others, karaokeing character-appropriate songs.



I wrote a piece on why karaoke culture is so important to me over here at YOMYOMF. And in this very blog, a listicle on how you can support, if you feel like it, without spending a cent or more than two minutes of your time. The point is, please subscribe, share, traffic, comment, critique, disparage, engage all the KaraokeRhapsody.com things, I will appreciate it mightily, and see you at Nerd Prom.

I Guess I'll Be An Ace: A Listicle


There are so many things I like about the idea of being an ace/asexual which happily correlate with things I already am. I'm not a great student of the subject, but can assert confidently that I....

1) Don't go for sex as the main thing. Don't get me wrong, I like sex and all the pageantry around it. Sex is natural, sex is good, yadda yadda. But the main thing I'm going for is usually comforting intimacy and that's a different animal with a lot of overlaps.
2) Believe it's awesome that you get to call yourself an ACE.
3) Am generally interested in women, but not so much in a "I need to get laid critically-soon or some sort of bomb will explode" kinda way.
4) Am exhausted with the default-heterosexual narrative of being hard up, in a dry spell, or lacking game. The narrative enforces the idea that if you don't have a regular sex life, you're doing something wrong. It's particularly tough on Asian-American dudes, who are the most desexualized of American ethnicities, consistently labeled in media and in online dating as the Not Fuckable Type.
5) Believe it's a very important vowel to maintain in the more-or-less-all-encompassing acronym QUILTBAG, which I'm told stands for Queer Undecided Intersex Lesbian Trans Bisexual Asexual Gay.
6) Don't try really hard, and in sexual pursuits, it's a sort of sin to not even try. I don't try because the thing I would try for is so often misinterpreted, it is not even funny.
7) Am envious of those who own a sexual identity and can plan their lives around it.
8) Don't really know anyone else who identifies as asexual, but would be eager to meet someone and talk about it!
9) Don't really know anyone else who identifies as asexual, so it must be the hippest one.
10) Maintain that hookup culture is an asshole.
11) Just wanna be me, man.
12) Believe in real-shit love with someone you've never had sex with. Still a problem, but to me, a much more interesting problem.
13) Am probably seeking a path of less resistance on some level, since it's the one least subject to obvious persecution 'cause you pretty much aren't fucking with anybody.
14) Am well-prepared for any form of stigma or persecution that does occur, if it's on the level of being perceived as some sort of asexual freak, because am an Asian American dude, and that's not unlike what the mediasphere is saying about us every day anyway.
15) Don't want to belabor the point, but ironically, "Ace" is one of the sexiest words you could categorize yourself as.
16) Also like the terminology" gray-asexual" because you get to be a GRACE, how fucking rad is that.
17) Need to make a coherent move past the depressing loop of "You want something, I want something, but the murky potential of sex activity sabotages the important objectives like companionship warmth and understanding so we both end up feeling worse than when we started."
18) Am a huge fan of WILD CARDS. (My affection towards being an "Ace" on a purely linguistic level might be as whimsical as others' fixation on certain people's sexual equipment, okay.)
19) Am really full of love, so fuck you. :)
20) Wish to be part of the open-minded restorative solution, not part of the overcompensating creepy-guy problem.
21) Blackjack! The end.



(Ace card img courtesy of this Tumblr.)

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, a found poem.



It's Valentine's Day 2017, and I know of no more romantic movie than STAR WARS EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Here's my associative transliteration of the film in poem form, which may or may not appear in this sci-fi novella I'm working on, tentatively titled 12 VALENTINES (it does have something to do with Valentine's Day, and it'll all make sense in context, maybe):



THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK


Legend. Scroll. Gold over blackness.
Seed pods. An ice planet, an explosion. A crab rises out of the crater.
A Wampa.
The pirate and the princess. Solo and Organa. Their faces lit in an ice cave, from reflection. 
"The temperature is dropping rapidly."
"That's right, and my friend's out in it."
You will go from here to a jungle. A swamp. A planet.
And this will keep you warm. 


Have we ever known the story of that long night in the deathly freezing, in the shelter,
when Han watched over Luke, smelling of tauntaun entrails?


This is Rogue Two.
I have herded nerfs, up on Laserbrain Mountain. 
"I didn't hit it that hard."
Darth Vader sits in a semi-lotus position.
Leia briefs the daredevil pilots. 
The Ion Cannon shoots at the sky. The transport slips past the shark.
"We have spotted Imperial Walkers."


The snowspeeders are spitbugs, overmatched. 
Wedge is that guy who does everything right.
The AT-AT's soft spot is the armor at the back of their neck. It goes without saying. 
"I'll get her out on the Falcon." 
"Someday you're going to be wrong and I just hope I'm here to see it."
(That's an expression of true love.)
Vader's breaths as they leave. 
The chase of forever begins. The asteroid belt.
"You don't have to do this to impress me."
(The Millennium Falcon cockpit is the best 4-shot in the history of filmmaking.)
Scoundrel One, Slave One, Sith Two.


A swamp planet. Thick air. 
The Master plays the Fool. Grumpy, needy, dependent on a stick.
"Don't do that."
Yoda welcomes him with food. 
Anger. Like his father.
"Where he was. What he was doing." 
Yoda has his doubts. Look what happened with the other Jedi.


The peaceful hum of the Falcon in a cave. In a worm.
Mynocks. Chewing on our ship. Rebels cannot rest anywhere.
"I am not a committee." 


"Anger, fear, aggression. Easier, more seductive.
Knowledge and defense.
There is no try.
Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter. 
You. Me. The tree. The rock. Everywhere."


The Bounty Hunters. 




Also, how is Luke on Dagobah for only a day,
or
are they chasing the Falcon through the asteroids for a month?


Bespin, also known as the planet of constant sunset.
"I don't like this."
"Well, what would you like?"
"What have we here? Who might you be?"
"I don't trust him either. He is my friend."


Luke makes a necessary bad decision.
Remember your failure at the cave.
Leia is the another. She's the last one if Luke loses.


The carbon freezing chamber.
"There'll be another time."
"I love you. I know."
Hands up. 
"Luke, don't, it's a trap."


Force jump.
Dad knocks me through the spiderweb window.
R2's smokescreen.
Dad cuts off my hand.
"No. I am your father."
"That's impossible."
Dad watches me fall into the netherclouds.


"We've got to go back."
"You know better than to trust a strange computer."
The last chase.
"I'm standing here in pieces, and you're having delusions of grandeur."
Hyperspace, after all that.


The Medical Frigate.
A new hand.
The trust of siblings.
The rendezvous point.
X-Wings, to John Williams's most heartened theme, unto the end.