Tuesday, November 28, 2006
a sense of humour
last week, i gatecrashed a party, what some people called a monkey show. it's what small monkeys do when they wanna join big monkeys, and it worked. finally got my interview.
also last week, this theage article was forwarded to me by dollar, my student-compatriot who's now earning big AUDs in the IT field. day by day, i unearthed more flak and entries bloghopping, backtracking to the original thestar and bernama article. this is serious. i'm not reading the papers enough!
(crosses on cookies an issue? should we redesign our roads to reduce crossroads, to better look like flowing quranic calligraphy? wait, must explain why our roads are already that loopy. oh dear, maths is a heretic practice! to the bookpiles!)
batu seremban, teh tarik: i can just see this in all the flavours of a bizarro panel. heck maybe i'd even draw it myself, if it just wasn't someone else's idea. that is with no doubt one of the more humourous, insightful, close-to-home comments ever uttered in parliament... and all of a sudden we're slamming them for not being serious?
it's funny, ok, hypocrites? we go on and on about how narrow our political bigots are, and once in an azure moon they make a joke, and the tables are turned. we are suddenly the serious ones, the bland, the inflexible, the uptight anal conservatives. we all like to shoot our mps, but don't shoot them with whatever's convenient just for its own sake. don't be like them.
they have a sense of humour, to which i say good for them. and they can be serious too, have u forgotten? months ago, they were already debating the predicament of praying to mecca, systematically marginalizing with incredible foresight, the religious rituals of their one indian space brethren - who as we all know did not make it. of course, it was the will of allah.
anyway. this theage michael backman has responded to the responses, or it could be just a pre-emptive move. and this is the same article, lambasted with true malay finesse. read the first comment. just watch how this fella swings his arguments straight into islam territory. he will rise far, mark my words, he will rise far in his biro agama, and then move into politics, and be promptly fired for the same reason pak lah fired that other fella for verbal diarrhea.
on a totally unrelated note, here's a wired article i got from lune a while back... which i've bookmarked and read back quite a few times. i think it's a jolt of a reminder to look at ourselves, and laugh. it's an absurd country, which is why i love it. we are one big monkey show.
also last week, this theage article was forwarded to me by dollar, my student-compatriot who's now earning big AUDs in the IT field. day by day, i unearthed more flak and entries bloghopping, backtracking to the original thestar and bernama article. this is serious. i'm not reading the papers enough!
(crosses on cookies an issue? should we redesign our roads to reduce crossroads, to better look like flowing quranic calligraphy? wait, must explain why our roads are already that loopy. oh dear, maths is a heretic practice! to the bookpiles!)
batu seremban, teh tarik: i can just see this in all the flavours of a bizarro panel. heck maybe i'd even draw it myself, if it just wasn't someone else's idea. that is with no doubt one of the more humourous, insightful, close-to-home comments ever uttered in parliament... and all of a sudden we're slamming them for not being serious?
it's funny, ok, hypocrites? we go on and on about how narrow our political bigots are, and once in an azure moon they make a joke, and the tables are turned. we are suddenly the serious ones, the bland, the inflexible, the uptight anal conservatives. we all like to shoot our mps, but don't shoot them with whatever's convenient just for its own sake. don't be like them.
they have a sense of humour, to which i say good for them. and they can be serious too, have u forgotten? months ago, they were already debating the predicament of praying to mecca, systematically marginalizing with incredible foresight, the religious rituals of their one indian space brethren - who as we all know did not make it. of course, it was the will of allah.
anyway. this theage michael backman has responded to the responses, or it could be just a pre-emptive move. and this is the same article, lambasted with true malay finesse. read the first comment. just watch how this fella swings his arguments straight into islam territory. he will rise far, mark my words, he will rise far in his biro agama, and then move into politics, and be promptly fired for the same reason pak lah fired that other fella for verbal diarrhea.
on a totally unrelated note, here's a wired article i got from lune a while back... which i've bookmarked and read back quite a few times. i think it's a jolt of a reminder to look at ourselves, and laugh. it's an absurd country, which is why i love it. we are one big monkey show.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
back with a vengeance
kamun's blog has moved. and that has given me a kick up the ass. sure, it doesn't make sense to be complacent just becoz other people are not blogging. that has nothing to do with me, right? ann spam too. promises, especially those to yourself, are made to be broken. reminds me of a festival somewhere where townsfolk smash plates (must be a good season for soliciting insurance). damn these 2 are my most active links now. new additions: travelune (lune in uk) and grace (grace, who shares my birthday). and damn... there's only 1 solitary guy left in my sidebar.
where was i? ohyea. there should be a fesitval for broken promises, to celebrate their shattering to smithereens. where they're crushed and split and splintered, or snapped cleanly in twos or threes. hurled against walls to disintegrate, crinkling, tinkling, into shrapnel and shards and fine glassdust. ripped and torn with rending whines, jagged edges lethal to the touch. crumpled and chopped and mightily cracked, from which will flower the fragile spider's web. a celebration of crazy-paving ephemera!
ok, enough destruction. i was chatting just earlier and reselfconfronted with my comicblog. not that one, that other one. the nonexistent one. it would be a really good folio piece, but for my inherent apathy. u know, i take notes of little quirks or ideas (and as we were taught in uni, in a little sketchbook), but falling prey to overtech, it's in a little notepad instead. notepad, as in .txt. when it gets to overflowing i put them into multiple .txts, waiting to turn them into probably little stories with mindblowing insight.
but hey, me's me. it's probably never gonna happen, so i might as well just write the ideas here. howbout that? mmm... maybe not, but anyway, here's a few thoughts from these few days. as my title suggests, i'm going overboard.
"when the bamboo flowers, famine, death and destruction will follow". this came from astro's november guide, but having no discovery channel, i had to resort to the web. bamboo dies when it flowers (in 30, 48, 60-year cycles, depending on species and regions), which is that much more tragic becoz it happens across whole regions. the dead flowers are an increase in rat food, which is an increase in rats, which raze crops and granaries and destroy the land, which turns up the thermostat for a long dry spell, which reallly fucks things up. "ecological havoc", and economic coma. interesting. next.
do parrots have accents? do girl parrots go for the guy parrots with sexy british accents, and the guys for the husky italian voice? if an english parrot talks to a engrand-berry-powderful parrot, will there be class discrimination? how do parrots talk to parrots anyway? do they simply imitate or really communicate? either way, can a parrot teach a foreign language to a human? we'd need one powerful parrot with mimicry worthy of russell peters. ok next.
two guys are in a car. traffic jam, same old same old. a pizza delivery bike stops next to them. passenger winds down the window, unzips the pizza bag and deftly nicks a box. they feast while the pizza boy enacts violent drama outside. this could end with something like "irresistible pizzas". that's a bloody good ad! orrrrr...
"the new paolini petrucci durian pizza, when u just can't resist the smell!"
where was i? ohyea. there should be a fesitval for broken promises, to celebrate their shattering to smithereens. where they're crushed and split and splintered, or snapped cleanly in twos or threes. hurled against walls to disintegrate, crinkling, tinkling, into shrapnel and shards and fine glassdust. ripped and torn with rending whines, jagged edges lethal to the touch. crumpled and chopped and mightily cracked, from which will flower the fragile spider's web. a celebration of crazy-paving ephemera!
ok, enough destruction. i was chatting just earlier and reselfconfronted with my comicblog. not that one, that other one. the nonexistent one. it would be a really good folio piece, but for my inherent apathy. u know, i take notes of little quirks or ideas (and as we were taught in uni, in a little sketchbook), but falling prey to overtech, it's in a little notepad instead. notepad, as in .txt. when it gets to overflowing i put them into multiple .txts, waiting to turn them into probably little stories with mindblowing insight.
but hey, me's me. it's probably never gonna happen, so i might as well just write the ideas here. howbout that? mmm... maybe not, but anyway, here's a few thoughts from these few days. as my title suggests, i'm going overboard.
"when the bamboo flowers, famine, death and destruction will follow". this came from astro's november guide, but having no discovery channel, i had to resort to the web. bamboo dies when it flowers (in 30, 48, 60-year cycles, depending on species and regions), which is that much more tragic becoz it happens across whole regions. the dead flowers are an increase in rat food, which is an increase in rats, which raze crops and granaries and destroy the land, which turns up the thermostat for a long dry spell, which reallly fucks things up. "ecological havoc", and economic coma. interesting. next.
do parrots have accents? do girl parrots go for the guy parrots with sexy british accents, and the guys for the husky italian voice? if an english parrot talks to a engrand-berry-powderful parrot, will there be class discrimination? how do parrots talk to parrots anyway? do they simply imitate or really communicate? either way, can a parrot teach a foreign language to a human? we'd need one powerful parrot with mimicry worthy of russell peters. ok next.
two guys are in a car. traffic jam, same old same old. a pizza delivery bike stops next to them. passenger winds down the window, unzips the pizza bag and deftly nicks a box. they feast while the pizza boy enacts violent drama outside. this could end with something like "irresistible pizzas". that's a bloody good ad! orrrrr...
"the new paolini petrucci durian pizza, when u just can't resist the smell!"
Thursday, November 02, 2006
the universe behind me
i was wandering in sydney in 2004 when i stumbled, literally, on an epiphany. in the catacombs of my hard disk sits this poem on the floor of circular quay. it became a doctrine i gradually lived and breathed. my 21st year became one big, long, sweetbitter-sad holiday.
sometimes u look back, and see that some things have really changed.
sometimes u look back, and see that some things do not really change.
and once in a while comes a time to close a past chapter of life, to begin writing a new one, to actively invoke Change. this 22nd year starts with some unusual, portentous gifts:
1 interview with a volcano
1 interview with a spider
1 miscued sms to the wrong person, rerouted
1 girl's phone number, voluntary
1 hour's chat with an old adman
2 hours' chat with a young adman
1 job offer in hand, gambling against
1 more interview with bigger prospects
this would be a good time to quote paulo coelho: "when u want something, all the universe conspires to helping u achieve it".
sometimes u look back, and see that some things have really changed.
sometimes u look back, and see that some things do not really change.
and once in a while comes a time to close a past chapter of life, to begin writing a new one, to actively invoke Change. this 22nd year starts with some unusual, portentous gifts:
1 interview with a volcano
1 interview with a spider
1 miscued sms to the wrong person, rerouted
1 girl's phone number, voluntary
1 hour's chat with an old adman
2 hours' chat with a young adman
1 job offer in hand, gambling against
1 more interview with bigger prospects
this would be a good time to quote paulo coelho: "when u want something, all the universe conspires to helping u achieve it".
