Sunday 28 December 2008

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing


I like conversations. Conversations are different from plain chattering. Good conversations are exchanges of shared or opposing (even better!) opinions on a parallel wavelength of intellect, emotional maturity and constructive mutuality.

I have a good conversation with Hao and Bryan on Christmas night. It was considered a breakthrough for us, finally bringing us out of our usual habitual reminiscing the good old days, sighing on lost fraternities and updating each other on our current job status. I think it had something to do with Hao not playing Cinderella and always had to leave at two three three ow hundred hours, instead Hao stayed back until one in the morning with us. Over cold fries, emptied cups with ice chips and our postures becoming one with the furniture, we brooded on confounding and yet weird topics like southeast asia history, alternative histories, amateur philosophy and religion.

Such conversations require the integrity of both common sense and inquisitiveness. Therefore it is rare, and highly enjoyable.

Good company is much sought after, especially in the holiday seasons. Even Jesus must have friends. But I can't stop wondering if the Apostles ever back talk against him? After all fraternity is not fraternity if it's just sermons without opposition.
 



Wednesday 3 December 2008

For The Record




Yesterday night I went to bed early.

In the middle of the night, I had the worst stomachache. So I got up and went to shit.

It took me a good half an hour and I thought about my life.

They are the same things actually.

Friday 21 November 2008

I'm On Warm Milk And Laxatives

Tonight the void is especially overwhelming. It feels that the world is too big, so much that it consumes us entirely. It might be the ending of the book. PKD's novels' ending often gnaw at one's mind. Do Android Dreams Of Electric Sheep is an excellent example. This book, which is endearingly titled Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said is no exception.

Sitting there in the dark, I have to blink to remind myself that I'm there. My chest is clinging to the folds of my vessels and spirits like anchor to the bottom of the ocean. Maybe it's my patient. A kindly old gentleman whom endured his gastric pain patiently as not to disturb the busy nursing staff, every word from him was a polite nod and smile as he could speak no further English than 'Yesh'. He was diagnosed with aggressive advanced cancer with poor prognosis today.

Maybe it's just me. Wanting attention again, kicking up a fuss. Like a baby who cries even after he got the candy. But somehow it's not just that. I'm too tired to care about myself tonight. I have to blink to remind myself that I exist. At all.

Maybe all I need is some sleep. I refuse because I don't believe in sleep. Why, she had asked. Because, I replied, I believe we only exist for as long as we are awake.

Life is too fleeting to remain nonexistent.

Thus the irony in existing to be play host to parasitic void. Bittersweet infection.

Next book, Kierkegaard.

When the world ends, all that remains are tapeworms, ticks, sand wasps, guilt and regrets.


Tuesday 18 November 2008

Democracy


When the world ends, all that remains is this post.

I don't get it. Why would the world best democratic countries believe in democracy politically, yet not spiritually?

How come we don't get to elect God?

They like to condemn our government for being authoritative. They say we are not totally free, like them.

What's wrong with authoritative government? Parenting is authoritative. Parents take over duties of governing our education, keeping us safe, put food on table, restrict bad company, forbid us to date when we are immature and give us curfews, because they want what's best for our interest. Nobody would dare to say parenting is fascism. Our government has been role model parents since the beginning. They protect us and chide us harshly when we stray, only because they have our best interest at heart.

You can never judge parenting. The bond between every child and parents vary. The dynamic between a country and its leaders vary. Don't judge us, because your democracy is not infallible.

Yours did produced Robespierre and Hitler.



Monday 17 November 2008

The Animals I Trapped, Has All Become My Pets.

When the world ends, all that remains is the room I never get around to clean.

Recently I started watching the telly again. It's strange, just when I thought local TV has nothing meaningful to offer other than mimicking HongKong and Korea's fanfare waste of large family drama with blood conflicts, deceits and finally poetic justice, redemption to round them up in a 'Ah man, why are we killing each other like this? Ah man, ain't blood thicker than water? Ah aw aw ha ha ha...' Bah. Then came along a small budget educational series called 'By My Side' or 不凡的爱. Think blood is thicker than water again? What about tainted blood?

Though educational and filled with repetitions of debunking Aids' myths, the story is nevertheless well woven. Instead of condemning the diseases and the victims with 'This is what you deserve for fucking around', it plunges well intended and kind characters into spiral torments of the disease's demises, showing that anyone could be susceptible. And he comes haggard, diseased and feared. Kind of makes one wonder if it's better not to know at all.

I have never seen a breakdown of a character and the complete destruction of a life in just a mere second. Usually one have to work into facilitating main characters into his downfall. Probably an episode or two. This only takes a second to the doctor's office.

The disease process of Aids is not that scary, say compared to cancers. It takes five to ten years to kill the immunity system and what with better medications these days to slow it's progress, one could still function in society.

However it is often the society that kills Aids' patients than the illness itself. No matter how advanced we think our civilization has become or how enlightened or progressive we are, the sole topic of Aids immediately turn us back into the Dark Ages. Witch hunting, outcasts, group discrimination, warmongering and fear take precedent to sensibility. We now know that how Aids could have spread, yet we continue to fear. Fear is alright, it pushes us to find solutions to cope and to survive. But irrational fear based on ignorance, selfishness and of most insecurity will kill us all one day. Cue The Crucible, the rise of Hitler, la Grande Peur and McCarthyism.

The affected family was immediately marked when the news leaked. Extreme communalism wiped out whatever logistic resources, friendship, welfare and employment opportunity they owned. The parents warned their children to flee away from their disease-free girl. The disease-free wife has to take up to three jobs to support the family and has to travel out of the vicinity to buy grocery. Short of stoning them, the social stigma weights crushingly onto them.

One mistake and that's it.

It is the ugliest disease because it punishes people for enjoying relations. It punishes people for unfaithfulness. It punishes people for practicing pre-marital sex. It punishes people for drug use. It is no more a medical illness, it's a moral indignation. It is pure judgment.

Aids kills is an understatement. It ruin, destroy, butcher, devastate and torture it's victims. Aids is a simple illness. It does two things. It deplete Helper T cells collapsing the immunity system and it is contagious. How could such simplicity be allowed to be blow up to magnitude?

I want to say it's the work of God. But I find it hard to explain why He would hurt his own children so. Maybe we had never been perceived so in the very first place.



Sunday 16 November 2008

Throw Down Your Umbilical Noose So I Can Climb Right Back



When the world ends, all that remains is your suicide note.

Sometimes we have talked about your death. I guess, you had to die. Fundamentally, you were always the Ouroboros. The extent you have devoured yourself forces you to choke on yourself, in spit, gunfire, overdoses and die repeating 'I love you, I love you.'

On a brighter note, at least you don't have to live to see High School Musical.

Bro, I tell you, it's real bad. The day that High School Musical 3 came out, rockers with balls and integrity became gods as they just went ahead and off themselves. And what remained are the rest of us pussies. I lived my life, closing my eyes and hasten my footsteps each time I crossed cinemas, record stores, reflecting ponds and young people.

Everyone are ready to dance. They snap their fingers and they are ready, always. Where were the few good men when such abomination was allowed to rise?

If only I was gutsy.


 

Saturday 15 November 2008

Take Me To The Place I Love, Take Me All The Way


When the world ends, all that remains are the words you wrote in my Mandarin textbook.

It's been two months since I last blog. I return to find out I have not change. Nothing change. Pee Wees still whining about the love they don't deserve. Little Ikes continue to rave about teenage angst, brittle tangerines of their ceramic lives. And I. I came back unchanged. Unevolved. I secretly beginning to conclude that we are all afraid of change. Fretting about switching a brand new career and start over. Worrying about marriages and having kids. Vacillating in leaving your abusive partner once and for all. Never turning back.

The reason why we are afraid of change is that we fear that even after change, everything still remains the same. A great leap forward into yesterday.

His dirty blond hair swirled a cloudy dance as he pulled back and forth from the mic. 'Dive! Dive! Dive! Dive in me!' His throat croaked to the thousands of Pee Wees and Little Ikes. His jugular arteries pulsating so hard to the twin beats of the snare and power chords that his fingers felt waves of needles and numbness. Waves of electronic orgasms. He strummed hard at his torn left-handed fender and pushed on the chorus which sounded deafeningly like 'Die! Die! Die! Die with me!'

We're all afraid that we will forever be the same.



Friday 14 November 2008

Zephyr, Liberty and All Their Aviator Fiends.


When the world ends, all that ever remains is the silence you gave when I asked for your forgiveness.

I used to sleep under the dinning table. I used to sleep under the study table. I used to sleep in closet. I was desperate then, I would do anything to sleep. Nowadays I would do anything not to sleep.

Sleeping is for the dead.


Love Will Kill Us All


When the world ends, all that ever remains is the faint scent of your hair conditioner.

If ever, if only I am able to articulate my mind finally, open my mind to the world, everything will pale.

But here I am, the perfect cage to hold in the sun of my mind.

The perfect idiot.

I have some time, I thought right square this seven pm. The record store's a stone throw away. I should just pop in and see how the world has changed in my absence. It has. The Cure, Kaiser Chief and Keane each released an album.

The perfect hermit.

I have this story on Cosmic R. Set in motion of now and years unborn of five hundreds years. It will be rich in history, karmic revolutions, physics, human triumphs, freakish characters, human decline and sentinel planets. A love story. It will always be a love story. There is nothing greater than a love story. Everything should be about a love story. A love story that I could never have. In Cosmic R, love though indestructible, will never be found.

What's the season of love if you can't love anyway?

I woke up at four in the morning and set my world to snooze. Woke up five minutes later and set it to snooze again. And again and again. Five O five. Five ten. Five fifteen. Again and again until the sun came up on six thirty five. How amazing is the tiny button called snooze? It gives you assurance of your liberty before you wake up to a world that will snatch it right away. Right away, Sire.

Terra in Cosmic R doesn't have two things; sun and liberty. Multiverses multiplied and vibrated like deranged molecules, characters are shitty two dimensional, they are ceramic dolls, motifs' a moot, stories overlaps and refuses to seam. Truth, beauty and meaningful murders will be lost in my abyss. I can only resort to angst writing and rhyme fuck with fuck. 

I listened to The Cure's

The perfect boy.

I sat in front of the computer hours later. My bedhead's to aside, my right hand possessed a will of it's own. It subscribed to a religion, the religion believed that with enough scratching of the head, eventually the scalp rots and gives way to the wisdom within. My right hand is devout and zealous. Sniff and scratch em'.

If only I could articulate my mind.

The perfect If.
 
 

Saturday 20 September 2008

May Be Taken With Or Without Food

The infancy of the effects of industrial revolution in England was polarized by most historians. That was a time where the capitalist parliament reformed land/tenant laws in countryside, forcing a huge influx of peasants into factories and mills. Indeed, the multiple tasking machinations and improved efficiency from such revolution had allowed the provision of middle class to reign Europe, but it had also revitalized slavery, breed horrendous working and living conditions for the British lower class. Children as young as four were expected to work with hazardous and inflammable machines.

In countries where Industrial Revolution was inflicted, there were plenty of workers living in squalor and pauperism. On the other hand, in countries untouched by the revolution, there was a similar widespread of such suffering, which produced beggars instead of underpaid workers. Now here's the kicker, they both have similar life expectancy.

What would you rather be? Beggars or miserable underpaid workers?


Saturday 13 September 2008

Girl Power




Why on earth is everyone so gosh good looking these days?









p.s: Snicker! Batman used 'dude.'



Friday 4 July 2008

Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins


http://www.henryjenkins.org
Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

You Are My Center While I Spin Away




It's practically raining disappointments. Thy monsoon of talking into the dark.

One of these days, eventually you have to give me what I want.

No?

Sunday 29 June 2008

The Cowboy And The Great Alien Invasion




There is not a single day I don't miss my secondary school friends.

I'm such a fag.

Awake In My Arms You Cry Unharmed


Once I learnt that dreams were merely succubus in nature, they cockteased you with possibilities of the other life you wished you had or with the ones you had and lost.

Only the dark materials of the underworld match such villainous seductions.

I hate to dream. It's waking up from robbery of existences. The best kinds.

If God had exiled from the Silver City, then He must have come to the dreamworld. The familiar touch of snatching away paradises as soon as they were given to you was uncanny.

The bully and the kid with lollipop. Mother of all bullies.

I couldn't remember most of them dreams. Just dull heartaches of not knowing what killed me. Some of which I could remember were the worst of all them dreams. They became the ones which haunted me from then on.

There was this one few years ago, Joyce was sitting beside me on a double decker bus. The temperature was sub zero, the windows misting and the imagery's all bruised. She pulled out a large blanket and covered us. You could never picture how heart wrenching it was when I woke up to find myself alone. Alone in the sunshine.

I hate to dream because I am powerless to live it. I loathe to be the passenger, the pillion. I started to figure out how not to dream again. How do you fight dream? They conquered me again and again, usually three to four times a month.

I dreamt that I was on a roller coaster adventure with Alfred and Ah Boon.

I dreamt that I was holding a wondrous conversation with Marcus.

The worst of all, the motherfucker of all bullies: I dreamt that I was in a park with Joyce, she turned around and asked me coldly, 'It's been so many years, how come you have never come and find me?'

I woke up in million pieces and in the back of my head I screamed to get back. So bad, I want to squeeze myself back into dreaming! I want to go back into the park, take her hands and stay with her there forever. I flopped myself back in the bed, away from sunshine, my head deep in covers, my eyes shut real tight. Let me go back. But it doesn't work that way. I'm just a passenger, in your one way trip, in your candy car of 'what ifs'.

I hate to dream. So bad that once I discovered that them dreams usually come at the REM cycle of sleep, I set alarm clocks to wake me up in intervals between a single night, so I could not lapse into REM dreams.

If I look tired to you and eyes shot, kindly pardon me, I had been up fighting myself.



Friday 27 June 2008

Damn My Education I Can't Find The Words To Say With All The Things Caught In My Mind


I looked at us: We walked around with loss expressions as if we had lost something.

What have we lost?

I fear, is the ability to remember what we have lose.






Tuesday 24 June 2008

Wednesday 18 June 2008

Tuesday 17 June 2008

What Do You Wanna Be In Your Next Life?


It's too late to choose in this lifetime now.

My only hope is reincarnation.

For the next one, I want to be a pot smoking hippie.

I'll fly like paper, get high like planes.