January 29, 2003

I wish I could properly engage in this discussion. Unfortunately I am sick, and finding it hard to focus. Also, it is 41 degrees.

January 24, 2003

I guess it's resisting the past "as you like it".

January 22, 2003

It's funny, Han, that you said you have the 'gall to reminisce.' I totally lack the guts to think back on most things. I just thought I'd say that briefly.

I am back in Australia now, I'll write on this within the next few hours. That's right: hours.

January 20, 2003

By the way, I publish incessantly these things on blogspot so you can respond to them in whatever way sees fit, I consider you both my peers. If that wasn't clear from the onset, I hope it is now.

Leaving for Malaysia in a couple of hours. I did alot this time, and I have the gall to reminisce right now. I beat down a raging affection, patched things up with my mom and dad, ate alot of Chinese food, discovered I was allergic to fish, eggs, dairy products, soya bean and peaches, developed and resolved a contact allergy where blisters start forming on my hands and feet for the third time and found out what Chinese I am. I consider that a good run even before the nights of complete drunken reverie and stupidness, I don't recall half of them, but I've been assured they were pleasant. I saw the movie "Hero" today, by Zhang Yimou, who is more known for his realistic films of China like Not One Less and Suzhou River. What motivated me to see the movie was seeing Iron Monkey, a movie directed by Yuen Wo Ping, choreographer of Matrix and Crouching Tiger, because it had a guy choreographing THAT movie called Donnie Yen, who is irrefutably, the shit. The Kung Fu is mixed (as with all good kung-fu flicks) with metaphysical dialogue and cream-on-your-pants kung-fu, known to some people as wire-fu because the wires are clearly holding up the characters. This is not your low budget Chinese flick. Go see it, and be moved like a shot to the head.

I am not on some heritage back-to-my-roots journey, I am simply on the warpath interest for kung-fu. It was not cathartic to view the movie, cathartic was seeing a play called "Stories for Amah" and feeling parts of the narrative were taken exactly out of my life, though I now also realise that catharsis did not give me closure, the play was too abstract and the resolution weak. The main character begins losing sanity as she sees the character she intensely cherishes health deteriorate in some pitiful, awful episodes and then the mourning is to emphasise the loss. There is no cycle, there is no return. She spirals into an oblivion of remorse.

I will not accept that. As doctrine, Han's head got huge this semester and I cannot allow that to happen again. I became morose with arrogance, and only hindsight let's me see these instances (that span months). New Years resolution, to doubt Thomas and to attain simplicity.

January 13, 2003

love a definition in several parts taken from Dictionary.com taken from a Mirriam-Websters supposedly lying around.

love: n.

  1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
  2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
    • Sexual passion.
    • Sexual intercourse.
    • A love affair.
  3. An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
  4. A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
  5. An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
  6. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
  7. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.
  8. Love Mythology. Eros or Cupid.
  9. often Love Christianity. Charity.
  10. Sports. A zero score in tennis.

Aside: How vague can the fucker be? I did not edit a single word and I'm not spitting on a dictionary because as simple as the thing is to feel it is a very different thing to describe. Or affirm its existence either directly or through implication. I mean sexual intercourse is... sex. tada! Intense emotional attachment is empathy. Bastard dictionary is taunting me again. Stop looking at me swaan!

10 ABRT, RETRY, FAIL?
20 FUCK THE SILENCE

January 08, 2003

I just finished writing an account of my trip to Wicklow, I have to nail a personal account before I edit. I don't think I can write a prolonged piece of writing, a _good_ piece of writing without planning to the fucker. My friend Ahmed says it perverts an idea, conditioning it to an audience, leavening the primal thought to society dilutes it's sincerity. If the skeleton of the essay is in front of you, you control the overall direction of your argument, I think rhetoric functions in such a way that you need to control the emotion in order to make it effective. It does affect sincerity, but sincerity is stubbing your toe. Out of the infinite possible reactions I pick two: "Ouch!" or "Motherfucker!". Ok, to fictionalise stubbing your toe would be alot more interesting, contextualising the event. For instance, Neil Armstrong stubbing his toe on the moon, "one small step for mank... Motherfucker!?". The suggestion of sincerity is more interesting than it's actual existence.

CEOs travel the fucking world twice over, they get free flights encounter exotic cultures, probably experience the better part of Arab culture (Harems, sinful elegance et al), sheer extravagance. They get paid through the eyes to travel. Their experience is singular. But what is the predominant literature to come out of CEOs and international businessmen, with so much time on their hands? Awaken the fucking giant within, A whack on the side of the head: how to improve your creativity, psycho-pictography: How to exploit the miracle of your mind. I am not making these titles up, they are downstairs in my mom's library of books. America's plea for sincere literature has spawned this vast appeal of sincerity that is known as daytime television where real people have real problems. Observe how the word real is used, now take away the adjective from the equation: people have problems. There, doesn't that subtract the excess, boil it down to it's basic line. It's poetic for everyone but the broadcasting companies. Self-help, the asinine production of a society that refuses to help itself.

Everytime I grace the yahoo search page today, my eyes glance at the breaking headlines and one of them, consistently, is "Anna Nicole Smith voted worst dressed personality". She must have the confidence of a shoestring, I mean aside from being a complete gold-digger imagine the kind of tolerance you'd have to build up towards the world being constantly assaulted with articles saying you are a brazen bitch out to snag bank. Imagine the kind of ambivalence you'd build to world media when the daily order of events turned from Ossama Bin Laden's latest alleged bombing target.... to the fact that you are a bitch. What a kick in the teeth. I mean, she does porno, not like doing porno seriously doesn't require, in large part, you to fool yourself.
I'm researching Nineveh, and ancient Babylon on the net in Dos Passos he brings together mythology and advertising, Lady Godiva advertises a dandruff-ridding shampoo. King C. Gilette is the portal in which broken men step into to mend their lives, become King C. Gilette, incidently they simply buy the shaving razor.
This looks like it's going to be alot of work, and I have no caffein, goddamn.

Nineveh is a city-state in ancient Assyria, like the ancient Babylon. The civilization has pre-spiritual constructions of mythology, like a fish named Bahamut lies beneath the hooves of a giant bull on top of which is a red ruby... Sounds hocky, I need to think, approach most things on the net as hocky, I mean the place I'm reading this from is an FAQ put together by an MIT student.

January 07, 2003

oooh. Adoption of the British idiom, my ass is impressed, don't flex that strain of thinking too hard. It irks me, my mom and I can't participate in silly consumerist fantasy such as Christmas. We have to buy things like Ferrero Rochers or binders (in my mom's case). I've watched heat several times in the past few weeks, there are some interesting things I noticed, the theme of the submerged city, where alot of the tone surrounds this suggestion, the blueness of the stock for example. Also, When Deniro fires right into the driver's screen it gives the impression of air bubbles, as if he were the silly diver at the bottom of the aquarium or the dream where he's drowning. It's worth seeing again... and again... hehe.

January 03, 2003

So do I, Vin.

January 02, 2003

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!