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I have found my calling
On my way to City Hall, as I stared at Commonwealth from behind the train's windows, I had an epiphany of a sort. Instead of journalism, I should go into PR for a governmental agency. I'm eminently suitable for the job. You will soon agree. I mean look at all my attributes. Firstly, I possess an overpowering sexuality, you know the kind that makes girls giggle. If I was Spanish, I'd probably be a matador. The matador of PR, masterfully manipulating the bull by taunting it with the waves of my red cloth and the gyrations of my deadly hips. Except the press is not so much like a bull than a neutered chihuahua with little bells around its neck to let you know it's coming. And I'm not so much a matador as a little boy trying to convince the crap I'm feeding it is actually digestible. Secondly, I have the courage to fully adopt the maxim that truth is subjectivity, and by subjectivity I mean whatever my employers want. I am the postmodern man, strong enough to reject the chains of simplistic ethics and intelligent enough to justify it. Thirdly, for all those who know me, it is known that I possess obscurantist tendencies. My ability to answer a question fairly, accurately and to the point is only dwarfed by my utter inability to do so. Since there's no money in philosophy and even I'm not anal enough for theology, it seems my calling is PR. Finally, I possess a gift far greater than the ability to lie. No, anybody can lie, but few can survive the consequences. No world leader, for example, could survive re-election if it was ever found out he has blatantly misrepresented the truth! No, my talent is this: nobody believes me when I tell the truth. Try beating that. On the train, I asked Cisoux what she'd like to do if she had to work for the government, and not in journalism. In one of the museums she said. Or in social work, if not for the government. Ha, what a telling lack of ambition. Damned leftist! In PR, I can change the world, and make life better for everyone, by making life better for me.
Sideburns vs Death Robot
Apathy, in its own way, possesses a sort of inexplicable and terrible beauty. When Cisoux and I emerged from the City Hall escalators into the entrance of Raffles City Shopping Centre, we were greeted with the sight of one of Singapore's most high profile opposition leaders JB Jeyaretnam selling his newest book with an affable sidekick. Everyone in Singapore knows him, even if only as the guy who got sued so much that he can't afford to get a barber to trim his monstrous sideburns. He must be at least 2,000 years old or something. I think he's in a race to see whether he outlasts his nemesis Lee Kuan Yew, though I doubt it. I suspect that the Minister Mentor will be around long after even I am dead. I'm not even joking. I wouldn't be surprised if Lee has had cybernetic implants. I mean, he once said: "“And even from my sick bed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel that some thing is going wrong, I will get up." Anyway, so this most eminent of opposition leaders was standing there, trying to hawk his latest treatise, but nobody even turned around. I mean, imagine, erm, Howard Dean, selling cookies on a sidewalk. Not that Jeyaretnam looked very approachable, with his scraggly, judgmental scowl. With his nose he looked like a constipated hawk. "I wonder if he remembers us," Cisoux said. We had spoken to him when he came to our school for a speech. We were right in front of him now. If he recognised us he gave no sign. We didn't stop. We wanted waffles! Mmm, waffles. Also, press objectivity defined.
Breaking News
Person on Internet feels depressed, decides to blog about it. More at eight.
America: The New Saudi Arabia?
Republicans pass bill to stamp out "leftist totalitarianism" by "dictator professors" in the classrooms of Florida's universities Fun Quotes: While promoting the bill Tuesday, Baxley said a university education should be more than "one biased view by the professor, who as a dictator controls the classroom," as part of "a misuse of their platform to indoctrinate the next generation with their own views." ... "Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don't want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don't like it, there's the door'" Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue. I've been pretty pissed with some of my professors but this takes the cake. The next time a professor thinks I'm being stupid for thinking the earth is carried on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle in a cosmic ocean I'm going to sue. I just hope he won't shoot me. The NRA suggests that teachers should pack arms Maybe not Saudi Arabia, I don't think teachers there need fear getting shot (unless they teach evolution I suppose), but Afghanistan.
My Life In An Anecdote
Do not read unless you want to, you sick person. I nearly got killed masturbating recently. As usual I was standing in front of my computer having an energetic discussion with Lady Palm and her five beautiful daughters. My room is pretty small and there's my bed behind me, my fan and my chair to my right, and the wall to my left, so there's pretty much nowhere to go. So there I was, rubbing my own business, when an unanticipated jerk caused me to knock into the chair to my right into the fan, which caused it to spin into the wall, smash its cover, and cause such a ruckus that I almost decided to slow down. Anyway, I went over to right the fan and after affixing the cover I turned it on. It started vibrating terribly and I had to shut it down again. Upon inspection I discovered one of the three blades were missing. Fuck. I had no clue as to where the fan blade could be. With one hand on my hip and one scratching my scalp I scanned the room. It was nowhere to be found. Then I looked down. There on the floor right by my feet was the fan. It had flown within inches of my Jolly Roger. Any closer and it would have sliced off my penis and probably my right wrist with it. There, I pondered God and the sanctity of Life. Then I went to play Defence of the Ancients. I hope I have somehow contributed to the pool of useful information that is the Internet.
Why Scientific American is Awesome
from their editorial Okay, We Give Up There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong. In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of socalled evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence. Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details. Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions. Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either—so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day. Okay, We Give Up MATT COLLINS THE EDITORS editors@sciam.com COPYRIGHT 2005 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC.
Cliches R Us
"A deflection in football is always wicked," my tutor for my Meanings of English class told me today. "You almost never see the word deflection by itself in football writing." There is nothing quite as cliched as sports writing in journalism. In an industry that's all about the mass production of letters, that says a lot. Deflections are always wicked; goalkeepers never merely drop the ball, they spill it; a team that has played more than one game a week, are either jaded or not jaded; the midfield always has a tussle or a battle; a reaction save is always stunning or brilliant; if a team defeats a team that scored before they did, they did so by clawing their way back. How many times have you seen these phrases: slipped off the pace, supporters leaving the stands long before the final whistle, gifted an equaliser, Arsenal's passing carved the defence open, towering header, struggled to make an impression on the game... More than that. Explain the frequency this phrase occurs: "tapped home from close range". How many of us have seen strikers tap home from long range? (Did you notice that the title is a cliche too?)
This is an old story
I'm stressed. I'm stressed over everything. Everything is sweeping me forward and all I want to do is stay right here. I've got a final year project coming up and it's in the second draft and I'm halfway through and all I think is that there's not enough here, there's not enough here to be decent. And to make it decent I need to put in more effort. But then there are assignments here and there and I know I have to do those too. But I'm stressed. I don't want to work. I hate going up blind alleys and I hate not even trying. The academic road is coming to an end, and here I'm ending it on a whimper. You see the problem? I am out of my mind with stress and when I'm so burdened with fear all I want to do is look at naked women or just load up my Warcraft III and play for hours with my friends games of Defence of the Ancients. Or I want to play pretend. Now I am a Lvl Nine Descended Glitter Boy Pilot in a Tarantula Glitter Boy fighting against Coalition hordes in a post-apocalyptic universe. Or snuggling under my blankets against something soft and beautiful and just gape in amazement at its beauty. Or just sit for hours in the library with a magazine and read. Or just whine on table with a coffee and a nice cheesecake. And then wonder where all that time has gone and, fuck, I've got so much work to do! Fuck! Fuck, there's so little time left and I'm stressed and I don't want to do the work anymore, because I can't work when I'm stressed. I'm not even ambitious. I don't care for greatness. I blame my genes. Now my mom's one hardworking woman, but all she wants in the simple life. If she works hard it's for the sake of her children. I am the same. What use is this endless tread? When we are dead we are all the same. It's good just to be happy. But I am not happy. All I want to to stay exactly where I am. I don't want to go anywhere. That's all.
Try doing worse than this
The first snows were falling, white as a flock of bleached sheep. In his gaudy green cloak, Hreiddarsson was fluttering, like a leaf in a persistent breeze, home. Christmas had jumped him, unexpectedly, like the Jimmy Snuka finisher, and he was returning from the grocery store. It seemed like only three days ago it was the Winter Solstice. It was. He had to hurry. His wife was waiting for him. They ran a restaurant and the hired waiter had gone home for the holidays. He had to bring the turkey under his arm home quickly, or he wouldn't be in for a roasting. Luckily it had stopped struggling. Hreiddarsson had shown great pluck overcoming it, though it was the cold that eventually did it in. The hand attached to the arm that held the frozen turkey clutched a plastic bag filled with addled embryonic chickens and a few bottles of milk. In his other hand he was flipping a doughnut while whistling "Dancing Queen" in a key the rest of humanity did not know existed. Unbeknownst to him, he heading into a trap. Some fresh reindeer guano had been laid on the icy soil by a vindictive member of the species (it possessed an unusually ruddy proboscis). He slipped. It was terrible. All around him was carnage. The eggs had fallen out of the plastic bag and shattered. He hadn't suffered a shelling like that since 1918. He was working in a seafood restaurant then. The milk had spilt, and when he saw that, he cried bitterly. The turkey suffered minor abrasions and a pierced lung. But where was his precious doughnut? It too was sitting in the snow. He reached over for it, and took a bite. It was delicious. He loved frosted doughnuts.
I'm awake
Sometimes I feel like I know less now than I did before, that with each passing year a little bit of wisdom's honey seeps away, is stolen, is lost. What is left? A muted agony, a creeping decay. A hopeless battle, that inevitable loss of memory, like a vessel with an ever-widening crack that I try to keep filled with more and more experiences, for its own sake. Is this what it means to be alive? To be a bee for knowledge, buzzing about life, just to have something to forget?
Egads! Why were we not informed of this?
I have always known that bad typing will lead to the end of world. Typing error causes nuclear scare The Sudanese government had a nasty shock this week, when it read on a US Congress website that the Americans had conducted nuclear tests in the country.
Sheesh
Was flipping through Time today when I saw this factlet: 30% Proportion of Filipino couples unaware that babies result from having sex, according to a study by the Philippine government
Surely this can't be true!
The long moment before home
Nothing pins me back in this chair among a hundred other NTU students also hunched over soon-to-be-arthritic fingers more than the fear of public transport. I should be going home to water my plants but I can't move because I'm too comfortable here and I can't go anywhere, it's too cosy and it's cool, and the warm glimmer radiating from the monitor is a sufficient substitute for sunlight. But there's nothing to do here and I want to go home. I'm sick of school. Nobody should be allowed to work anywhere one's feet can't take him from his house.
Selamat Jalan
The maid left on a Garuda flight today and I can't say I really miss her. She has worked with us for five years, longer than I've lived in this house. I hardly ever spoke to her. If you discount all the times I said "Can you make tea please?" the number of words we exchanged in all those years wouldn't fill a single cassette tape. Still after so long, you become so used to a person, that even when they're gone, they still cast a long shadow from wherever they are now. I wish I could have spoken her language. She seemed like a nice person. It would have been good to know her. I was shocked at how much she was planning to lug with her back home to Yogyakarta, and she had to pay S$200 in overloading fees at the airport. It was stupid. Much of the weight was stuff her friends here had given her, mostly agricultural produce. Mandarin oranges, chocolates, coffee. Coffee! Buying coffee from SINGAPORE to take to JAVA! A whole month's salary to take crap back she could have bought for herself at a fraction of the price. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and a whole lot of dumbfuckery. She was bringing back two dolls for her daughter. One was a gift from my family, another was a Barbie she got. Again it confounded me. I wondered aloud, surely there are Barbies in Yogyakarta, and cheaper? "She wants Barbie from Singapore," she had answered. Of course, the problem is there isn't such a thing. They're all made in Taiwan. But I suppose I am missing some sort of point, the ah pek I am. The home is going to be a lot quieter now that it is one resident short. No more clanging of dishes in the kitchen, no more afternoon naps spoilt by one of her friends, lonely for a conversation, ringing up the house. As she has flown so too will the birds we keep. We are all too busy to look after dad's aviary from hell. Though we'll keep Farida the Parrot who has forgotten how to speak, or dance, or fly. The first thing I did when I got home was to go into the maid's room. I still felt like I was invading somebody's private space; that it wasn't really part of my house. It was a space smaller than even my own. Gone from the walls were her newspaper cut-outs of Indonesian celebrities and photos of her daughter. Her toiletries no longer stood on the the stool by her bed. Half of the half of the room that wasn't taken up by her bed was filled by a cupboard. I opened it and there was nothing left but the residual stench of mothballs. On the inside of one of the doors she had written the address of the house and the phone number. On a whim I pulled up the posters that lined the bottom of the cupboard. She had written her name, in large ballpoint-blue, block letters: KUSRIYATI Nearby were scribblings I only found barely legible, and entirely indecipherable, since it was in Bahasa Indonesia. It was, I think: kasihan diri mengapa nasib malang... And that's the only trace of evidence that this woman once lived with my family in that little room, where she ironed our clothes into neat piles and put them in all the wrong cupboards. Five years, and that's all she wrote.
Zai Jian!
Goodbye is a contraction of "God be with you", that is, essentially, salaam elaikum in English. (Which makes the phenomenon where Christians, in saying farewell to each other, replace the use of goodbye with God bless, quite redundant.) Etymology in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Sayonara!
This blog is fucked
I just realised I've got absolutely nothing left to say! Okay, maybe not nothing. Erm, I actually started getting upset while I was writing the anti-woman rant that's supposed to pass for a good commentary for my homework (A+ or bust!). I think I am insane. And here's Hit Me Baby One More Time for good measure. Oh baby, baby How was I supposed to know That something wasn't right here Oh baby, baby I shouldn't have let you go And now you're out of sight, yeah Show me how want it to be Tell me baby 'cause I need to know now, oh because Chorus: My loneliness is killing me I must confess I still believe When I'm not with you I lose my mind Give me a sign Hit me baby one more time Oh baby, baby The reason I breathe is you Boy you got me blinded Oh pretty baby There's nothing that I wouldn't do It's not the way I planned it Show me how you want it to be Tell me baby 'cause I need to know now, oh because Chorus: My loneliness is killing me I must confess I still believe When I'm not with you I lose my mind Give me a sign Hit me baby one more time Oh baby, baby how was I supposed to know Oh pretty baby, I shouldn't have let you go I must confess, that my loneliness is killing me now Don't you know I still believe That you will be here And give me a sign Hit me baby one more time Chorus: My loneliness is killing me I must confess I still believe When I'm not with you I lose my mind Give me a sign Hit me baby one more time I love you Travis!!!
Korean guy juggles ball for what seems like forever
This man is GOSU!
Tree
One of the trees outside my house is bugging me. Sometimes at the cleavage between dawn and what's left of dusk when I'm gasping for some cool night air, I sit on the balcony between a stack of broken chairs and a row of large, potted plants, and contemplate it. Quite unlike the others, equatorial and resplendant of canopy, it is so sparse of leaf that it looks positively Tim Burtone-sque - skeletal, a grim shadow in the lumination of the streetlamp it shelters. Strange that the next day when I am rushing to school I give it no notice. I wonder if it glows in the sun like any other tree? Does it even exist after night has melted away? Or maybe I just see better in the dark. Maybe.
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