NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

The image above is drawn from the universe of Starcraft 2 or as I refer to it in Chamorro " Sahyan Estreyas Dos."      One of the reasons the Chamorro language is dying is because it isn’t used for that many things. I try my best in my personal and professional life to use the language for everything or for as many things as I can. This is one instance. Many Chamorros today will draw a line between their "Chamorro" side or their Chamorro identity and the popular cultural forms, such as video games, movies, books, comics and so on, that they enjoy on a day to day basis in what they often feel is very fundamentally different. For me though, those other popular cultural things are not the enemy of the Chamorro language, but universes and domains in which we can extend the language into, find ways to make it at home there, and to expand our own possibilities with our language. Make no mistake, the Chamorro language is a real language, but over the past century,

For almost my entire life I've played video games. I played Double Dragon, Startropics and Dragon Warrior IV for the NES. I played Street Fighter II, Final Fantasy III and NBA Live 95 for the SNES. I have played a bunch of games for SEGA Systems, including Night Trap and even Dune for SEGA CD. On the computer I played games like World Builder, Pool of Radiance, Pirates! and Civilization in many incarnations. Most recently I've played games like Monster Hunter, Starcraft II and Hearthstone. Video games don't take up as much of my life as they used to, as I am busy with working, family life and activism, but they still play a role in my identity and how I see myself culturally. For some their "Chamorro" identity may be rooted to visiting ranches on weekends and attending mass with their grandmothers. For me, Chamorro identity comes not just from working with my grandfather in his blacksmith shop or reading the Chamorro Bible with my grandmother, but also yelling

Grooming the Champions of the Keyboard Alan Feuer The New York Times 9/28/13 ALAMEDA, Calif. — On a picture-perfect East Bay afternoon — 75 and a clear blue sky — a few top players for the Evil Geniuses were holed up in the Lair. Preparing for a qualifying match, a StarCraft prodigy named HuK was sitting in one of the gaming rooms, communing with his monitor and limbering his fingers on a keyboard. Down the hallway, his teammate DeMusliM was running through a replay of his own last match and working on his manual dexterity, swirling a pair of worry balls in his hand.  It was 3 p.m. and the California sunlight was beating at the windows, but the Lair’s front shutters were drawn tight, leaving the gamers to focus in the darkness on their training, which meant playing video games from dawn to dusk each day, or from dusk to dawn each night. Their physical needs had been seen to: the kitchen refrigerator was stocked with bagels, the living room cooler with

This coming year looks so exciting for me in terms of the many projects that I will be organizing or be involved in. For the next few months I will literally have three full time jobs. I will be teaching Chamorro language and culture classes at UOG. I will be leading the writing team for the Guam Museum. Finally I will be coordinating a 3 year grant, totaling more than $600,000 to create a standardized text for teaching Chamorro at the college level. This is in addition to all the other many activities that I will be continuing. I may find it hard to even find time to play any SC2 before the end of the year. One thing that has unfortunately suffered as I become more and more busy is my painting. For years I would have every couple of months marathon painting sessions, where I would paint for hours and cover the entire floors of apartments with paintings and often times paint splatters. I have a CAHA grant that I received to paint an image that combines the experiences of both Cham

  In my continuing efforts to ensure that I destroy myself I have started up yet another blog. This blog on the website Team Liquid, which is the largest community site for things related to the game Starcraft, will be naturally dedicated to things dealing with the limited amount of time I get to spend gaming every week. This blog will join the scattered and rag tag band of social online media that I try to run. I have this blog that I do not update as frequently as I used to. I have 3 tumblrs. A Twitter account I don't use much anymore. I have a Chamorro email sentence list I send out every day or so. I also have a weekly column in the Marianas Variety. In addition to all of this I am also doing National Novel Writing Month this month and although I already have 3000 words, I feel like I am behind. The title of my Starcraft blog is " The Bamboo Spear. " I love writing about nerd-related things because I like to combine that aspect of my life, with my love fo

I have barely been on my blog this week and I apologize. I've been busy with a grant application that is due today and two articles due this weekend. I promise next week to return to this blog and give it the respect it deserves. I have also been distracted this week with my Tumblrs. I have my personal Tumblr, Sumahi going strong again. I also have a new Starcraft 2 Tumblr, dedicated to the team Startale. For those interested check them out with the links below: sumahi.tumblr.com startalefan.tumblr.com

I am applying later this month for a grant to go to South Korea and conduct research on Starcraft 2 and issues of race and ethnicity in this international esport. Starcraft 2 like Starcraft: Brood War is something played around the world, by people of every ethnicity, and as a result there become competitions and narratives that are nationalist in scope and also racial. For example, there is a strong discourse in the sports world, that those who are black, have a natural ability to perform better in sports. Similarly, in the world of Starcraft it is South Koreans who seem to have an uncanny ability to play the game at much higher levels than everyone else. I have always found it interesting what the political effects are of such narratives of innate dominance. In the case of African Americans, their physical prowess is something that was once used to justify their enslavement (since to so many Europeans it seemed that God had created them for slavery), but then later used to justify