Why does my racial identity matter?

Or: What Being Multiracial Means to Me

TW: mild homophobia, trans*phobia and racism, mild language

Race isn't something I usually talk about on this blog. It's partly because I had a white suburban middle-class upbringing and identify primarily with (most) of our dominant white culture. In part because of this upbringing, I don't feel a strong tie to any one racial culture enough that I would identify as a person of color (or as having much of "a race" to begin with, which if I'm being honest, is a white privilege). That's a huge part of my experience.

At the same time, I'm often perceived as a person of color. I get the "What kind of asian are you?" questions (since it's well known that I'm a quarter Japanese) and the "I'm so jealous of your perma-tan" (because even at my palest in late-February, I'm still darker than most of my peers) and the "Look at you, little Filipino ladyboy" (because just because I'm kinda brown and gay and dabble in drag apparently means I fit into a whole subset of trans* identities). And, yes, technically by blood I'm mixed race. As my mother revealed to me the weekend after I graduated high school, the white man I grew up knowing as my father wasn't my biological father. My middle-namesake, some man in a grainy  2x2 photograph whom I'd never met or even knew existed until that moment was my father, and he most definitely wasn't white.

Does this mean I have an answer for what kind of not-white I am? No, it means that anything you arbitrarily decide to label me is a viable guess, but since those aspects of my race aren't something I have experienced, that I have lived my life completely divorced from, I literally cannot answer you because I don't know. And I know, that's troubling for some people. The only reason I'm not having some kind of racial identity crisis as I write this post is because I've created other spaces for myself and grounded my sense of identity in other intersections. I can afford to not worry about my race because I've already established my identity as a gay, atheist, queer, English major, artist/poet, runner, leader with a flair for making odd choices in outfit work (to give a few examples).

This is also a huge part of my experience.

When I see friends and activists stand on stage and talk about not belonging, of not being enough one or another, of forever existing between, they're telling part of my story. I see the need for the anti-racist projects in the United States and they're something I care about and am constantly thinking about how I can be a better ally and stand in solidarity with, but I also don't feel comfortable taking up active space in communities of color because the way I experience oppression is primarily as a gay male and not as a person of color. To use some of the language I've been gifted through academia (another privilege of my background, and an opportunity I'm grateful for), my racial being is situated in a liminal space that reifies me as both a POC and as not. Or if you prefer, I'm a bit of a walking , fucking contradiction.

I bring this up because I recently read a Jezebel article about this Cheerios commercial:



In my opinion, it's pretty innocuous and exactly what I'd expect from a Cheerios commercial. There's the innocent child who doesn't know anything about heard disease, but is highly concerned with it because our media does a poor job educating us about the realities of cardiac disease, and there's the parents who are there to explain things only to realize they themselves are the objects of their child's concern. Which, when you put it like that is kind of a bittersweet, fucked up narrative and points out a troubling reality of our culture. But of course, that's not what people are up in arms over. Apparently it's the whole bit about this being a biracial family.

Which is ridiculous because how does the representation of a family in a cereal commercial affect any of us other than potentially showing that there are a variety of valid family experiences? If you're afraid of or offended by that, get out from under your rock.

And I guess the question that it comes down to is: Why does this matter?

Why does my racial identity matter? Why does the racial identity of a fictional television family on a cereal commercial matter?

It matters because our race is part of our story. For many of us, it's integral and (in most cases) inseparable from our experience as a human being because as an American society, it's part of the underlying social narrative we create about people's lives. Even if I don't identify as brown in the majority of circumstances, the fact that other people read me as such means that it still has a concrete effect on my life.

Videos like this one that made the social networking rounds:



Shouldn't ring so painfully (and humorously) true.

I accept my place with the unique set of privileges and oppressions that come with being multiracial while socialized white, and do my best to use my autonomy as a human being to not let these preconceived conditions dictate who or what I will be.

For me, my racial identity will always be complicated. I have no history except those that I have adopted as my own and have adopted me in turn. That's part of what makes me so wonderfully (and problematically) American in the most Melting Pot of ways, and I will do my best to make sure that my experience doesn't impede on or co-opt (see appropriate) the identities and experiences of others.

And it matters because I've asked told you it matters. This, too, is part of my experience, and I am not alone. And if you respect me, or anyone like me who has had similar experiences (and trust me, we've all had similar experiences), as a human being, you will listen to what I say matters.

A Short, Informal Treatise on the Keratin Sprouting from my Scalp

I know I've shared this video before. If not on this blog, then through other social media. It's fairly well known as a viral video. A cute little girl standing on a bathroom sink affirming all the things she loves about herself and her life. I've watched it enough times that I've memorized it and trust me, if I could, I would stand on my bathroom sink and proclaim the same.

I'm not a four year-old though and my current housing situation doesn't really have counter space in the bathroom. So I'll blog something I love about myself instead: I love my hair! I love my haircuts!

Seriously.

I love my hair.

I don't think I put that much effort into my hair. Half the time I'm rocking the day-old-gel look (except I don't use gel, I use this or this), but it looks good on me and fits my personality.

I've been cutting my own hair for almost three years now, five if you count having my friends in the dorms cut it for me, and given the versatility of my 'do, I think I do a pretty good job.

I can put it up:

Or I can fold it over:

I've even shaved it a few times:

It feels like I've both come a long way and come full circle from the days when my mom would drive all the way up to Seattle to have Grandma Sy cut my hair at her salon for free. Please don't turn over in your urn, obaa-chan, but I think I do a better job, even if I am forced to trimming an entire side of my head blind since no matter where I place the mirrors I still can't see the back of my head.

I'm also a little proud of the fact that I'm graying at 23. Not in distinct patches the way a lot of people do, but kind of mottled all over. It started around the 6th grade and has continued ever since. People occasionally ask me if it's stress when they first notice, but I'm pretty sure it's just genetic. I don't ever plan on dying my hair. I don't need to.

Hair is a fairly superficial thing to be proud of, but my body is my temple and sometimes the roof needs new shingles to stay in proper working order.

If you were to pull a line from Jessica's Daily Affirmation, what would you be proud of?

That one time I had a song written about me.

Spring Quarter 2010 Sophomore Year of College

He was kind of tall. Almost gangly, but you wouldn't know it for the way he stooped and hid behind the shyness of his voice. We'd had a class together the previous quarter, Parasites, but nobody knew he was there. He was a guest with a host, a ghost.

Maybe three of us in the entire class noticed him in the back corner. Even for the online assignments on a social networking site called plurk, he was scarce. His posts, few and far between as they were, were regularly and systematically erased because the most successful parasite (or houseguest) leaves its host with no traces that it was there.

I was drawn to him. I could feel the red thread of fate unraveling the slack necessary to pull us together. 

So I crossed the gap. I read and commented on his posts. I made eye contact as direct eye contact as I could when he walked past. I invited him to share a meal with me.

"So I ate beside [Teddy] today. He's a quiet, awkward soul and underestimates the power he has within himself. I'm so drawn to that. He offered to teach me guitar, but then immediately said he wasn't very good. I asked, and he's played for 10 years."  - Excerpt from personal journal, March 10, 2010

I suppose it helped that at the time he was hopelessly infatuated with one of the two other people in class who'd taken the time and energy to notice him, my friend Kai. We went together to watch her perform at the Naked Truth on Stereotypes.

We got to know each other. We became friends.

When he graduated after winter quarter, I stopped seeing him as much. He was still in town but lived far beyond even my walking prowess. Still, we kept in touch; exchanging emails and continuing an impossibly long conversation thread on plurk.

Late in March, he sent me an mp3 file via email. There was no caption, no commentary. The only way it related to the conversation we'd been having was that at the time I had just started an Independent Study Project (blogged about and mostly contained here) on a postmodern examination of music and society. Just 912 kilobytes, the song was a cover of "Holland, 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel.

The quality was crap, recorded with a webcam on a shitty computer. But despite that, it was beautiful and powerful. It bit more low key and folksy single-man-with-guitar than the original.

"You have a completely different kind of energy when you're singing than you do talking in person. The closest I can think of to describe it is to compare it to the feeling I get when I'm dancing. Everything else drops away. There's just me and the music and - and it's like making love, by which I mean creating love. I dunno, it's not really something you can put into words. If you have any other music recorded and feel so willing, I would love to hear it." -Excerpt from personal correspondence March 22, 2010

 This was soon followed by two songs he'd written for past loves, a cover of Daniel Johnston and a song he wrote for/about me.



Three minutes fourteen seconds about me dancing.

Danny you dance all through the room.
Danny you dance like nobody's looking at you
And it's beautiful. And it's beautiful.
And it's beautiful.
Danny your hands move where you want them to
Danny you know this what all of us want to do
Because it's beautiful. Because it's beautiful.
Because it's beautiful.
Though it's beautiful.
Though it's beautiful.
It's beautiful.

The lyrics are so simple and drawn out so much in the song. I listen to this, and I want to live up to it. I want to be that beautiful by forgetting about the world for just a few minutes and dancing.

In a later email he told me how I was one of the only friends he'd made in college, which I found sad and beautiful at the same time.

***

We still talk occasionally. Exchanging emails and catching up. About two months ago, I joined him in partaking of conveyor sushi with his girlfriend. We don't talk as often as we should and if he got that job in Portland is now quite a bit less easier for me to find than when he was in Bellingham. 

At the idea of him writing a song about me I'm touched and a mite flabbergasted. It seems... strange somehow to realize yourself as a muse, as inspiration, the uncanny feeling of a writer being written about.

You can listen to the song on my tumblr: http://acelessthan3.tumblr.com/post/27448822390

Acelessthan3: Branding

Our culture is an amalgamation of identity groups, and we the individual bearers of those seals and symbols and markers.

 The thought came to me the other night that I am branded. I am imprinted and encoded with the diverse runes and sigils of contemporary culture, the bitten apples and swooshes and golden arches simplified and amplified to the point where a passing glance is enough to embody and recreate an entire experience even if you've never partook.

In the essay Pop, Magic by comic writer, Grant Morrison, Morrison describes the sigil as “one of the most effective of all the weapons in the arsenal of any modern magician”and later talks about the viral sigil or logo, powers of intention created by corporate or cultural processes. Like Susan Blackwell's memes, they are self-replicating ideas that seem to have no traceable origin.

According to Morrison, what separates these sigils from any passing desire is the intent. Intentionality or the investment of energy maintains the magic of a sigil. By inscribing it repeatedly, forgetting the meaning and mindlessly reproducing the image of the sigil we make it happen.

So then, the genius of branding in a certain sense is the way that the corporate manages to perpetuate idea(l)s through their sigils. I'm thinking in particular of clothing.
 

In Scott Westerfeld's charming YA novel So Yesterday, Westerfeld explores ideas of marketing and fashion and what exactly makes something cool. The way the protagonist, Hunter, describes his job as a “cool hunter” formats the experience into a pyramid scheme: at the top of the pyramid are the Innovators. They're the truly original people.

In the next level are the Trend Setters, they see the Innovators and adopt and create trends based on what they see. They're the reviewers and managers who disseminate the idea. Directly below them are the Early Adopters, the first wave of people who hear about a trend and incorporate it. They're the reason it becomes big enough to receive the kind of placement that gets the attention of the next level: the Consumers.

Interesting and hipster as it is, I'm going to ignore the Laggards and the Jammers and the rest of the pyramid in favor of focusing on another concept that gets brought up in the opening of the novel, that of the Logo Exile, or as I would describe it branding incognito. Essentially it's corporate namelessness: the active removal of branding and logos from attire.

I bring this up in relation to Morrison's writing because there's a different kind of power inherent in namelessness. With intention, it is a subversion and reaction to the sigil power of corporate branding, of the logo. Comparatively it carries a fairly minimal impact. Within corporate, capitalist culture, we are barely teeth on the cogs and wheels of the great profit machine.

But while there may be minimal social impact, the personal impact of adopting Logo Exilism is both easier and more difficult than one might expect. Many clothes, especially basic layers, only contain some kind of logo on the tag, which is easily removable. But even then, certain styles have become their own kind of sigil. Knee length mesh athletic shorts with high top athletic shoes = basketball for example. Or even simpler than that, most of us have learned to recognize a certain American brand of Apparel that visually displays very few signifiers.

By wearing clothes with logos, we project and broaden everything that logo represents both surface level and subconsciously.

As you would have guessed, I wonder sometimes about my personal style. I tend toward Logo Exile, seeing very little aesthetic appeal to emblazoning myself with corporate names, but I also am in process of creating my own brand with my own logo.

A<3

I've explained the meaning of this little sigil so many times I've almost forgotten what exactly it means. I can tell you where it comes from, and what the pieces mean, but not the intention behind it, which as Morrison states is key to “powering up” a sigil.

I wonder sometimes if it's things like this that make me memorable. How much does style affect and interact with our relations with people? Surface-level though they may be, the clothes make the man as the adage goes. My style, while fairly colorful and DIY, is also kind of plain if you ask me. Are all my little sigils contributing to the perceived essence that is me?

Because of the way in which intention and perception and belief play into the magic of sigils, you can't quantify it, and thus I am unable to scientifically measure one way or another how my style creates me. But it's an interesting thought.

Musings On the Life of Playing Card

I am a playing card.

You call me, Ace because I am less than three. But I wonder, and here I question myself even, am I really?

What is less than three? In becoming Ace, it was <3, a simple way of saying a heart.

I could just as easily have made myself the lovers, two less than three, which would mean I am one and two and three. But no, I am Ace. Other than a number, but not quite royalty. I do not seek to put myself above.

And yet... and yet, and yet, and yet, it is a question we always start with: "Ace's high?"

No, thank you, I tend to stay away from marijuana on my own, though I find I'm less averse to recreational substances in social situations, except when athletic or scholastic endeavors expressly forbid it.

You see, numbers are tricky things with their subtle in-betweens. They are gradients full of infinities. Less than three is more than me, so I'll take that nasty little letter (better than an F as they taught us in school) with it's up down illusions of grandeur parked right at the beginning of the end.

But nay, do not set me aside to fade in the glory of the sun. Shuffle me back into the deck with my brethren.

I'm touched. Really, I am. Your dirty fingerprints are all over me. Stains of chocolate and juice and grease embed themselves in my vinyl-plastic coating.

Shuffle, bridge, shuffle, clack. Cut the deck and there I am, hiding right on top. Did you ever see such sleight of hand?

Acelessthan3 Revisited (Part One)

I wrote once already about my existence as Acelessthan3 and later revisited this identity when I unveiled that I was thefoolofbubbles as well.

"Creating this identity allowed me to spin narratives on several fronts at the same time, and to produce persona as shareware." Rhythm Science - Paul D. Miller

But now I come to a kind of crossroads wherein it has become obvious that the lines of this identity are blurring. Among the parasites now, I respond to both Ace and Danny equally. My identities are blurring and overlapping and quite frankly, I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

"I started DJ-ing as a conceptual art project, but as the Spooky persona took on a life of its own, I came to regard it as a social scripture coding a generative syntax for new languages of creativity." -RS

I started this pseudonym merely as a placeholder internet handle, but as the Ace persona took on a life of its own, I came to regard it as a social existence generative of its own interactions.

I've said before that Ace is not Danny and Danny is not Ace, but I don't think that necessarily holds true anymore. To make a metaphor, can we say that Superman is not Clark Kent? No. There is multiplexity in his existence, like Shrek's onion, there are layers. The layers are separate, but they are all the same onion.

In my third thought experiment, I started with an exposition on facets, but the onion or perhaps a Russian nesting doll make the more appropriate metaphor because it offers the possibility of containment. Unlike a cake, the layers are within each other and in developing these layers and creating that mulitplex relationship of self, we foster a transparency that allows these disparate identities to communicate amongst one another.

In other words, we open the door to the alterity of self.

I speak not about dissociative identity disorder, more commonly called multiple personality disorder or colloquially schizophrenia, but rather the complex and differentiated states of consciousness that in part we engender and develop based on the social and personal interactions and mental associations created as such. When I talk about "my" identity, am I talking about the "me" that is a rower and athlete? Am I talking about "me" the loud, boisterous dancer, constantly smiling and laughing? Or am I the quiet student typing away at his computer in the corner of the classroom?

It cannot be denied that me, "I" encompass all these identities but the cross-cutting influences between them, where they overlap, when someone else crosses that line and glimpses into a layer of what is "me" that they are not used to seeing effects that transparency between one layer and another. You remove one layer to find another underneath and there are an infinite number of layers underneath existing simultaneously on the same metaphorical level in the same metaphorical space.

"Stickers are like infinite multiples, small spots on a landscape that convey a brief message, a pun, an intent." - RS

All these stickers are the same sticker, but not the same physical sticker. The multiple, multiplex identity of a self is similar but in opposite. It is that oft quoted passage from Whitman's Song of Myself "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)" Rather than the multitudes of one, they are the multitudes within one.

But in all this self-contradiction, there is chaos. When, in the course of DC comics history it came about that the proliferation of multiple alternate universes created a problem for the continuity of the DC Universe, they had to clean cup, reboot and solve the problem of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

In this plurkiverse where I exist as both Ace and Danny, however, I am also another. I am also thefoolofbubbles, or as has been the case recently, simply theFool.

There's something masturbatory about theFool's existence, something inherently dirty. Which makes sense if he is supposed to represent an id-like extension to balance Ace.

But there is another level here, another riding influence controlling theFool's identity. He has been adopted by others in the plurkiverse. They miss "him" when I as Danny neglect that account for too long.

To maintain it is a drain upon my personal reserves because I am playing a character that is not natural to my identity in the way I have made Ace. What I'm saying is that TheFool is Other and so to create and use him constantly is a fight and in fighting oneself there is only one loser.

And so I come to a Crisis of my own. Worlds are colliding.

"How does one give oneself death [se donner la mort]? How does one give it to oneself in the sense that putting oneself to death means dying while assuming responsibility for one's own death, committing suicide but also sacrificing oneself for another, dying for the other, thus perhaps giving one's life by giving oneself death, accepting the gift of death, such as Socrates, Christ, and others did in so many different ways."

This passage from Derrida's The Gift of Death made me think of nanotext who, admittedly, I hadn't really considered much since his death and replacement with the_author. But in as much as they both represent facets of Tony and his persona as a teacher, the question of death becomes relevant.

Within context of this passage though, there's also a level of control to that life and death. In "assuming responsibility for one's own death" and accepting that gift, you own it. It does not control you

Since I've been trying to read the collected graphic works of Grant Morrison and Alan Moore (The Invisible, Swamp Thing, etc), this just reminded me of Sandman as well.



All of Dream's actions throughout the majority of Neil Gaiman's run on the series, pushed him towards this inevitable action of dying at the end of The Kindly Ones. There is no direct line of causality that makes this decision, but it is not merely by chance either, which is why we cannot say it was a decision of Dream's to die so he could be replaced by Daniel. Which is why we cannot say it was a decision of Tony's to kill nanotext so he could be replaced by the_author, or at least not fully. But it was not an accident.

As has become a theme in the classes I've had with Tony, when faced with alterity, we are at first faced with a dichotomy of options. To truly face the Other, we either destroy it (the path that leads to death) or we accept it and integrate it and somehow finding ways to peacefully coincide with that which is not. And there is danger inherent in either option.

It is this dichotomy, this binary nature of dealing with the Other that pushes us to such extremes. We are so ingrained in this binary that in even trying to push our way out of it is to confront and create a new one. To connect to an idea proposed in my GLBT Lit class Fall quarter, it is one of the key problems of identity. In choosing to represent an identity we also deny the other possibilities. To escape the box, to come out of the closet, frees us from a confined set of rules, but also enters us into a new set. You come out of a closet and into a room.

So we escape the binary into another and perhaps the best way to avoid this is to instead shift, to move sideways in such a way that allows us to see what lies between, to see the line connecting the two polarized points. The spectrum is the connection.



So in creating this character of theFool, to express and free those inhibited thoughts, I find myself trapped in another box. Because theFool is not who I consider myself to be. TheFool is not who I want to be. Insofar as I can tell, it is this box of being my own Other that has troubled my mind so much and in part inspired this post.

But where do I find the line connecting him to Ace, or rather to "myself?" I can reject it, suicide theFool's plurk account, I can blindly accept it and let it go as it is now, which would essentially end Ace or I can try to find this elusive middle ground that bridges the gap and narrate a new story, creates a new context by which they can more or less peacefully coexist. I'm out of the closet, into the room, let's try to open a window (though not, I might add, for defenestration).

A Precursor

Here, I'm going to revisit a briefly touched on topic from a previous blog post.

"I have a few parasites of my own, and for once I'm not talking about the Fool. These are more vampires upon my time and energy than mental illness."

What do we consider our friends and peers, especially those whom we acquaint ourselves with through that amorphous realm we call the classroom? Through Nanotexts, Parasites and interactions further provoked by and because of these settings, I’ve come to learn the difference between @cephalopod and @vladislavxodasevic (the url doesn’t lie, he is not @nerbiotxiste), and Kai and Andrew the same as they have learned to tell Acelessthan3 from Danny.

But in this triumvirate, what role do we each play? As Jack (Joe? The man in the hat) put so concretely in a comment on one of my blogs, “And is this what you want? To be the host, to be the giver, to be the useful? Or maybe this role [is] symbiotic in your eyes; you extract joy from the parasitic encounters. Is that more accurate?” In short, what do we want from each other, from this interaction?

I responded in a separate post:

“I think you hit the nail on the head as the saying goes when you ask if I have been feeding, guesting, leeching ‘all along, under the mask of the host.’ Because when it comes down to it, is not the rule of the extrovert to do so?”

But that only answers the question of what I want, or rather what I do, in general. When we change scale and zoom in on the specific interactions that happen between Andrew, Kai and I, we find a quantum tangle of interlocking and overlapping wants.

“Acelessthan3 asks What do you want of me?”

Before I deleted the responses and effectively rebooted this update, Andrew had asked me if it was directed at anyone in particular. I lied and said something akin to “No one. Everyone. Anyone who cares to answer.” It was directed at him specifically in an attempt to goad him into giving me the biggest thing I want of him, his attention, to see some of that energy come my way.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that part of it had to do with the fact that I’m attracted to him and have been essentially since Nanotexts spring quarter. It’s not something we talk about, like the bats lurking in the shadows of the belfry, but the elephant in the room acts as an invitation.



Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you

In the perfectly parasitic relationship, we find that both these statements hold true. The included wants to use, the excluded wants to be used.

I have something Andrew needs: namely books, the ability and willingness to listen, to act as someone to bounce ideas off, to push him past these creative and innate barriers keeping him from producing. But despite all outward appearances, this host has his own agenda, seeking to leech and feed in a libidinous want for attention. And it can never be quite satisfied, is always “Hungry for love,” so the host invites again and again.

Then in this plurk: http://www.plurk.com/p/3oyhk2 a little after Andrew responded with this:



We find a short discussion about Ace/Danny in relations to Ceph/Kai and Vlad/Andrew, the kind of thing you would expect to find in a private plurk, the kind of thing I don’t think I was ever really meant to see. In a sense, it was Awkward Sauce.

I can’t speak much on the Kai/Andrew relationship except for what I’ve observed, which is a slight parallel to the Danny/Andrew as I know it. Insomnia manifests from this relation, perhaps the spreading of an infection. He wrote a lot about sleep in his last thought experiment so I think he’s been infecting her and not the other way around.

Kai and I seem to have more of a mutualist relationship than parasitic. We gain in each other an outlet, a vent for all those little frustrations that we don’t allow ourselves to express in the greater population of our peers. We foster in each other an openness that allows the id room to stretch.

But we also seem to share in what I’m sure Rickels would call an oral fixation, namely our cookie connection. We put food in each other’s mouths, just as we are able to put thoughts in each other’s heads.

We ingest the food, the cookies, the parasite of each other and so are interrupted. And we spread this infection as well with our inside jokes that carry over between irl interactions and plurk interactions, the private and the public. Andrew is infected, bacon snickerdoodle, anyone?

Acelessthan3

I'm pretty sure I set this one as a scheduled post for last Thursday. Dammit, blogger, quit doing this to my scheduled posts. I schedule them to post at a certain time, post them at that time, geez, is that so hard? Oh well, posting now.

Who is Acelessthan3?

I'm pretty sure that at his most basic level, Aceless is some extension of me. It's been my chosen pseudonym for over half a year now, the façade I hide behind whenever I need to come up with a new username.

I like to think though that Aceless is a little more and a little less than me. Aceless is me in a mask, the parapersonality through which escapes all the jokes and intelligence I don't let myself show, the elegant fool on stage. He is the Locke and Demosthenes to my Peter and Valentine (please get that book reference whether you love or hate the books). But at the same time, he's so much more superficial and surface level, lacking the depth and experience of his own identity, always sharing and drawing symbiotically upon my knowledge and experience.

Of course, it's getting hard to tell the two apart. It's not like Aceless is some exclusive avatar I use while gaming with a specific circle of friends, no, virtually all of my presence online has become or is in the process of becoming an annex to the construction that is Acelessthan3.

And to think, it all started with a deck of cards.

Origins

I was at summer camp up near Leavenworth (yes, Power of Hope, the same one I talk about all the time. You would too if you had the chance to experience it, which you do have the chance, I'm telling you that you do. Look them up: http://powerofhope.org) a little over a year ago. One of the youth there with me was a boy by the name of Cyrus.

Now, Cyrus was a bit of a clown and a thespian. He had a knack for taking your attention that made him a natural magician of the stage. It was really no surprise that he did card tricks. At the end of the week, he gave away his deck of cards. Pick a card, any card and it's yours to keep. I think you can guess which card I drew.

Well flash forward to I think it was around January 2009. I'm signing up for some internet site; I don't rightly remember which one, but the site's asking me to create a username and I want one that's unique to me. I flip through the pages of the journal I got at camp and still write in, and I stop on the page where I've taped the card.

That's it! I'll use the card. But to put as my username theaceofhearts is altogether too mundane and in all likelihood already taken. I need something original. So I look at the familiar ace of hearts shape and imagine how I would type that. Perhaps if I used the well-known emoticon for a heart: A<3? No, special characters aren't allowed. And then it hits me, spell out A<3. Acelessthan3 and my internet pseudonym is born. Incorporation

It was around this time that I started talking to a rather tech-savvy friend who convinced me to sign up for several more social networking and data storage sites, each requiring a username. By now I'd become fond of Acelessthan3. It's distinctive and with the creation of my plurk , thanks to my enrollment in a literature class called Nanotexts, and twitter accounts had gained a level of personality as I wrote through Aceless.

When I started designing and silk-screening my own t-shirts, A<3 became my signature so you would know it was an Acelessthan3 original print. When I make mix CDs for friends, I always take the time to create cover art to go with it and invariably sign the bottom with "An Acelessthan3 Original Mix." Hell, I've even begun to sign personal letters with Danny A heart (since I don't know the coding to make an actual heart appear there, with the heart being underneath the A in true card style). If I weren't so comfortable in my identity as Acelessthan3, I'd be worried about this overlap.