the non-blogging mood is continuing, plus i'm getting rather bored with my blog. and, i'm lazy. in any case, this entry consists of a bunch of vaguely blog-worthy items that i made a mental note of - i thought i should dispense with them before i go into a funk and they're lost to mankind forever. here they are, aggregated in one entry.



first up, the urinal games.

the problem : wet and unhygienic floors from individuals suffering either from plumbing problems or - i don't feel like expending enough effort to think of a politically correct euphemism for 'short penises' - short penises. or just from bad aim.

the solution : a pressure-sensitive pad in the urinal that, when impacted (i.e. pissed upon), will trigger a front display screen. enabling one to interact with the game. xbox 360, eat your heart out.

game titles for this platform are as yet unannounced. i, personally, am rooting for pacman. all in all, a pee-ce of creative genius.



came across this quite a while back so this isn't exactly breaking news. but, while on the theme of excrement, it was too good to miss out. if anyone wishes to buy me a birthday present, i've been lusting after these (to the extent that one can lust after representations, albeit cuddly ones, of human waste) for a while now.

pee&poo, a pair of adorable soft toys designed by a swede. the first run apparently disappeared from shelves faster than you could flush a bowl full of pee and poo into the sewers. and, apparently, pee&poo have developed a cult following. not difficult to understand why. a piece of toilet humour which we can all identify with. comes in a duo pack, so both solid and liquid excreta are catered for.



this one goes like this. steve jobs engages kerry packer (australian publishing and gaming tycoon) in a a game of high-stakes poker. jobs wins, and acquires a huge abandoned mineral mine in remote western australia.

the unholy marriage of too much land and too much money (and a one track mind) results in the world's first advertisement visible from space - a gigantic ipod the size of about eighty football pitches.

sounds rather implausible, but it does appear here on google local, and can be located on google earth. only question is - who is the target audience? last i checked, mp3s were against the martian constitution.



the final one - and this one really deserves an entry all to itself. but, oh well. a top sculptor (at least according to the sun), has created a statue of a rather pregnant (and rather naked) britney spears. who is kneeling (rather nakedly), on a bearskin rug.

explained said top sculptor, incomprehensibly,

"the image from behind of the kneeling pose is very strong, so i felt the front of the sculpture needed an equally powerful image which is where the bearskin rug comes in. not only is it a traditional symbol - the newborn baby on the bear-rug, but the dead skin represents the end of the circle of life."

quite. which still leaves several burning questions, such as : can you carve more naked statues of britney, please? what kind of strange tradition disseminates symbols of babies on dead bears? what has the end of the circle of life have to do with anything? and, are you mad? link here.

full article in the usual place.

not in a blogging mood so you'll have to make do with evidence that somewhere out there exists another misunderstood genius, whose brilliance is stifled by this ridiculous system people call 'education'.

now, isn't that a scary thought.

a rather bizarre sight at my workplace. or to be more accurate, one of the more bizarre sights at my workplace. this literally makes my hair stand on end everytime i see it.


talk about extreme car mods.


vaguely reminiscent of a smallpox-ridden, demented, mechanical rhino. just way less classy. i do apologise in the remote event that this is your car and you're reading this. but seriously dude, your car is... excruciating. and that's being kind.


and the kicker - not the round metal blisters (each and every one of which, by the way, rotates 360 degrees. i know, i tried. in disbelief.), not the six black shark fins lined up in lieu of a fender, not even what can only be the folded-up sheets of aluminium foil below the sides of the car. no, it's the elmo and zoe sunshade in the front passenger window. i mean, ???. are you arnie riding in a terminator-tank, or ernie trying to learn cross-stitch? it's enough to make you want to rip those shark fins off the back and force them down your throat, one by one, and slowly. with a plunger. a dirty plunger.

sorry, a tad uncharitable. but it's monday. i hate mondays.

by the way - feel free to click on the pictures for larger versions. if you don't believe me about the plunger.

thanks goes out to my colleague the pastor, who alerted me to this bit of news.

in chicago, one mr. jakub fik has brought demonstrations of contempt for cops to new levels. while most of us are content to flip cops off with an upraised finger, mr. fik showed chicago police what he really thought of them.

as with all carefully crafted plans, mr. fik lured the chicago police to the scene by smashing the windows of cars parked along the street. when police showed up, he broke into one of the houses in the block. this cunning and unexpected move left the police on the scene stupefied. they called for backup.

once he had garnered himself a sufficient audience (8 police officers), mr. fik charged out of the house with a handful of knives. these, he threw at the officers. oh, he was also naked. these knives were just a prelude to a more deadly projectile. having gotten the attention of the police by flinging sharp objects at them, his dramatic piece de resistance was to cut off his penis and fling it at them. for the record, he missed.

naked, bleeding, and with a roar of triumph (actually, the roar is unreported - but, again, literary license.), mr. fik disappeared inside. having run out of penises, he managed to unearth more knives, emerging once again with a "another handful".

a police officer braved the lethal hail to creep up on mr. fik and taser him. unfortunately, the officer's courage is not matched by his brainpower. officer dolan noted, in the understatement of the year, that mr. fik tried to resist arrest. another startling observation made by officer dolan, and, one can only imagine, said with departmental pride : "we took him out without any serious injury."

fik's penis was later reattached at northwestern memorial hospital. it is my sincerest regret that i am unable to bring you pictures of this incident.

what i will leave you with, however, is a picture of another severed penis - from the lorena bobbit incident.


another little fact you my find interesting, after bobbit's reattachment surgery, he had a short career as a pornstar. one of his films was entitled 'john wayne bobbit... uncut' in another movie, 'frankenpenis', he played a character made of spare parts. during intercourse, his penis, rather predictably, falls off. "oh no, not again", he moans. thanks to wikipedia for that bit of trivia.

full article, as usual, in comments.

another, brief, news update.

the bcc reports that in zimbabwe, a distraught businesswoman found a friend in the person of a (fake) traditional zimbabwe healer.

this fake healer offered, very kindly, to help her retrieve her stolen car. this recovery, could, however, only be undertaken with the help of mermaids. naturally, as mermaids are not indigenous to zimbabwe, money was required to import these mermaids. from the uk, no less. more money was required to put these mermaids up in a hotel. fair enough, one should play the good host. yet more money was required to buy a bull. for his testicles. one would have to presume that this was necessary because mermaids have none of their own. all in all, the search for her stolen car cost this businesswoman $30,000.

dissatisfied with her failure to find the car, the fake healer demanded yet more cash. this money was required to buy mobile phones. these phones were necessary in order to keep in contact with the mermaids (who had since moved out of the hotel??). which would then solve another personal problem that was afflicting this businesswoman. my best guess is that the problem was one of depression - a result of losing a car and $30,000.


the true puzzle is how a criminally stupid guileness individual like this "businesswoman" could possibly have earned the amount involved. not exactly overflowing with business acumen, i would argue. i mean, c'mon. plane tickets? we all know that mermaids swim.

in court, the nouveau riche fake healer denied that she was guilty of theft by false pretences. but magistrate sandra nhau was not so easily taken in, proving that lawyers are smarter than business people. in a demonstration of stunning percipience, she also made the observation that this fake healer was not a credible witness.


while on the topic - bet you didn't know that the starbucks logo portrays a mermaid. it's clearer in earlier versions of the logo. the bull testicles seem to be missing from the depiction though.

full article in comments.

qwirks of being in-house legal counsel in the organisation i work in. names, appointments, and certain details have been changed to protect identities of those involved. other than that, this email conversation is verbatim.

***
From: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Sent: Thursday, 10 November 2005 5:15 PM
To: Minnie Mouse (Head of Department)
Cc: Daisy Duck
Subject: **

Minnie Mouse,

I refer to your paper dated 07/11/05 regarding ** for the above mentioned subject.

2. In para. 7, you wrote that [we] agreed with [your] recommendation that the subject was negligent. However, this was not what Odin stated in his e-mail of 13/10/05. Para. 2 of his e-mail states: "The subject in this case landed on his feet, but using his toes, which is the 'wrong' technique. In my opinion, this is not so unreasonable or outrageous as to constitute negligence on his part."

3. I am sending the file back to you to confirm your recommendation.

Regards, Hermod

---
From: Daisy Duck
Sent: Thursday, 10 November 2005 5:37 PM
To: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL,
Cc: Minnie Mouse
Subject: **

But we have read it as : it is not unreasonable to deem him as negligent.
P clarify. Tks.

---
From: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Sent: Friday, 11 November 2005 9:43 AM
To: Daisy Duck
Cc: Minnie Mouse
Subject: **

Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck,

Odin advised that "this is not so unreasonable or outrageous as to constitute negligence …" What Odin means is that the using the wrong technique does not amount to negligence. I will be sending the file back to you.

Regards, Hermod

---
From: Daisy Duck
Sent: Friday, 11 November 2005 9:57 AM
To: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Cc: Minnie Mouse, Random Peon
Subject: **

Hermod,

Sorry to clarify.
've u confirmed with Odin? The sentence seems implying that it is reasonable to deem him as negligent. Why did he use "not so unreasonable".

---
From: Minnie Mouse
Sent: Friday, 11 November 2005 10:18 AM
To: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Cc: Random Peon, Daisy Duck
Subject: **

Hi Hermod,

If the sentence is stated " not so reasonable to constitute negligence", or "unreasonable to constitute negligence", it would mean he is deem as not negligence.

---
From: Daisy Duck
Sent: Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:07 AM
To: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Cc: Random Peon, Minnie Mouse
Subject: **

Hermod,
We have received the file today. But u have yet to reply.
Kindly revert soonest. Tks.

---
From: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Sent: Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:17 AM
To: Daisy Duck
Cc: Random Peon, Minnie Mouse
Subject: **

I have already said the same thing twice.

The meaning of Odin's statement that although subject used the wrong technique,
(1) the distinction between the wrong and right techniques is very fine, and therefore
(2) it was not unreasonable or outrageous for subject to decide to use the wrong technique, such that his decision can be said to be negligent. Therefore, he was NOT negligent in deciding to use the wrong technique.

I will not be addressing this issue again.

---
From: Daisy Duck
Sent: Tuesday, 15 November 2005 10:22 AM
To: Hermod, LEGAL COUNSEL
Cc: Random Peon, Minnie Mouse
Subject: **

Ok. We will process based on yr email below.
However ,I wish to state that the phrasing by Odin is somehow not correct as reflected by my overlord (Minnie Mouse).

Lesser warlord, f/u

these lizard/cockroach traps really do work. i had set out a trap to attempt to get rid of an uninvited houseguest, a lizard that my wife had nicknamed 'lizzie'.

after two days, my first task upon waking up in the morning was to comfort my wife, who had been wandering around the kitchen. according to her, she had thought to herself : "wouldn't it be funny if there was a lizard's tail sticking out of the trap."

she looked down and, lo and behold, there was a lizard's tail sticking out of the trap. and she was standing on it.


the tail is in the top right corner of the picture, for those of you who don't enjoy playing 'where's wally'.


apologies, not a great photo. i think my hands were trembling uncontrollably in the fear that she was playing dead, would free herself with a convulsive jerk, and leap upon me with fangs barred (lizzie, not my wife). poor lizzie, she never even made it to the bait in the centre. if you were stuck on a piece of sticky paper waiting to die, it would be nice if you could munch on bait in the meantime, to make the wait less tedious. a last supper, of sorts. i wonder if the bait is poisoned.

one of the drawbacks of marriage - you have to dispose of immobilized lizards. not something i particularly enjoy doing, for, although i am blessed with numerous and varied talents, i will admit freely that i am a coward. in the words of jack handy (whom i personally think is the most brilliant man to ever walk the face of this earth),

"if you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, mr. brave man, i guess i am a coward."

but then you breathe in deep and get perspective. and balance it with the benefits of marriage. like having someone to do the dirty dishes; the laundry and ironing. for free. then all of a sudden throwing lizards in the dustbin doesn't seem quite so bad.

i had a very educational lunch outing. before we headed to the car to return to the drudgery of work, we stopped by gnc at the behest of the great fairy. on the pretext of purchasing supplements.

a very young, fair salesgirl sallied forth to assist us, no doubt in accordance with her corporate directives. great fairy picks supplements at random off the shelves.

"what is zinc for?"

"it improves your sexual performance,"

melvyn answered. at this point, a conniving glint appeared in the great fairy's eye. turning to the young, fair, gnc salesgirl, and holding out the bottle of zinc pills suggestively in his hand, he posed a question as innocently as he could manage. affecting to appear as if he had never heard of zinc in his life.

"what is zinc good for?"

he oozed. the salesgirl turned a bright shade of red and looked around rather desperately. then decided to engage him in a conversation that is worthy of a C-grade move script.

"it helps you recover more quickly."

this is when i rather unhelpfully decided to spoil the moment by starting to laugh hopelessly. and loudly. great fairy turned round to stare at me with a look that, i would guess, was meant to speak volumes. except that i have yet to master the art of reading his looks.

"it also improves your sperm count,"

she volunteered, hastily, presumably in case he hadn't gotten the earlier double entendre. i think great fairy was thinking twice about continuing the pursuit in the presence of uncooperative colleagues. and i think she sensed him slipping away. her final, almost desperate offering :

"it's good for your prostrate."

obviously meaning to say 'prostate'. but equally evidently succumbing to... well, images of prostrate individuals?

great fairy still maintains he thought she meant recovery from illness, and that he genuinely wanted wanted to know what zinc was for, even though he had just received the answer from melvyn. full marks for the effort. but... - and i've heard a lot of bad pick-up lines in my time - "what is zinc good for?"

my wife and i went to a new japanese restaurant in marina square for lunch with my family yesterday. while waiting for the food to arrive, my mum was staring fixatedly at a group of waiters, who, in typical singapore-waiter fashion, were standing round in a cluster holding an animated discussion amongst themselves. and pointedly ignoring all the customers who were trying to get more green tea.

after some time, my mum made an observation, in a conversational tone. which, by her standards, is akin to a normal person speaking into a loudhailer. with the amplifier dailed up to the maximum. in a confined, and otherwise utterly silent room.

"don't all the waiters look like penguins?"

(they were all wearing a strange black and white shirt/trousers/apron combination, to be fair)

"not so loud!"

my sister exclaimed, mortified.

"but what's wrong with looking like a penguin? penguins are cute what."

bellowed my mum, very perplexed. and loudhailer assisted, again. i doubt, of course, the waiters were very amused.

then the look of perturbment on my sister's face gradually faded, replaced with something vaguely akin to a vapid grin. she proceeded to narrate the story of how she had a dream the previous night, where we were all penguins. penguins too, were my two cousins (twin baby boys, the loves of her life and the reasons for the slack-jawed look of contentment). she went on to outline, with relish, how my two cousins kept swimming away into the depths of the ocean. and how she had to keep swimming after them.

only my sister could tell such a story with such proprietary pride. or respond with such indignance (and fluency) when i observed that i didn't think she'd make a very good penguin. rounding off her tirade with the proclamation that she would make an infinitely better penguin than me. no arguments there.

unimpressed by our insights on life (and no doubt wondering what she had married into), my wife ran off to topshop to start spending her performance bonus in anticipation of actually receiving it.

"just for two minutes!"

she declared, already halfway out of her chair.

one final observation. mondays suck.

click on picture for larger version in case you're having trouble reading it.

that's one university where you don't want to be living on campus.

this one's more bizarre than amusing, but no less newsworthy. from the bbc once again.

i'm glad i'm not an american tax-payer. so. there are these 240 scientists, members, all, of a top-echelon organisation known as 'darpa', whose mission it is to maintain the technological superiority of the us army. these scientists are given us$2 billion. despite the budgetary constraints, these scientists, all 240 of them, working together, all 240 of them, as a team, all 240 of them, against all odds, manage to come up with an idea. if you are shameless enough to call it that.

their new-generation brainchild will, they claim, consolidate the military dominance of the united states despite the escalating arms race. while other countries evolve weapons of mass destruction, stockpile chemical and biological weapons, and develop and enhance their nuclear capability, darpa seeks an alternative path to ascendancy. as an added bonus, this path is also environmentally friendly.


2 billion us dollars and 240 scientists prove that money can't buy anything everything. what it can buy is the following thesis : insert a micro electronic mechanical system (mems. or, in short, a computer chip with a fancy name.) into pupa stage of metamorphing insect. process of metamorphosis will cause the insect to heal and grow around the chip. creating something somewhat akin to the six million dollar man. only this is a two billion dollar butterfly. insect with chip would then, theoretically, be able to be remotely controlled in order to do certain tasks.

interestingly enough, darpa has dabbled in an enterprise like this previously. they had tried to manipulate wasps. that experiment met with conditional success - the wasps were there, but occasionally the commands sent by these scientists were overridden in preference of certain other activities. such as feeding. and mating. and doing whatsoever they damned well pleased. oh, and although this isn't reported by the bbc, i suppose they eventually died (i refer to the wasps. unfortunately.), which i'm sure wasn't part of the script either.

in any case, this new plan proves that these scientists are not just stupid enough to beggar belief, but are consistently stupid, and are too stupid to learn from previous acts of stupidity not discouraged by failure. indeed, it is laudable that they persevere despite recognition from a former director that "when we fail, we fail big."

if, however, darpa succeeds, their new-generation secret weapon can be expected to flit "within five meters of a target". this target must be "located 100 meters away". these insects will be able to capture various kinds of sensitive and valuable intelligence. for example, the insect will be able to tell its operator how the target smells. this insect will also have to be accompanied by a receiving dish in order for the micro-signals it emits to be picked up. this dish will be several feet in diameter, and have to be fairly close by. probably close enough for the operator to smell the target himself.

entomology expert dr george mcgavin, of oxford university, has proven conclusively something we have always suspected - that the british are smarter than the americans. "not all whacky ideas are without value. some do produce the goods. my feeling is this will probably not produce the goods," he said, lugubriously, before he ran out of diplomatic replies to the journalist and called the idea "ludicrous".

full article in comments.

in other news, at the recent national peoples conference, china announced a 14 percent increase in military spending. in response to strong american criticism, china claims its military expansion is part of a transparent, and purely defensive, military policy. part of the increase in budget has been allocated to the purchase of 9 million butterfly nets...

it's been a very disturbing day already, on several accounts.

first off, my wife was unable to sleep for most of last night. she recounted her suffering to me in the morning, genuinely traumatised. she had suffered from a visitation of calamitous portent, of stygian foreboding. a nighmare bringing her to a place so dark and devoid of hope that she woke up in cold sweat, and was too distressed to go back to bed for the remainder of the night. what phantasmagoric evil was this that had crept into our place of refuge and rest, visting you with such daemonic tidings in the night, i enquired. i dreamt that i had missed the ferragamo sale, she replied, voice trembling, almost in tears.

thankfully, she still retained enough function to make me my morning drink. no harm done, then.

i personally think that the nightmare was caused by her having to think too much the previous night. over dinner with my in-laws, we were comparing the relative merits of two yong tau fu stalls. my mother-in-law pointed out that stall B was the more expensive of the two, as it sold yong tau fu at 7 pieces for $3.50, as opposed to stall A, which sold yong tau fu at 3 pieces for $1. she expounded on her theory by opining that 50 cents per piece of yong tau fu was too high a price to pay.

my wife wrinkled up her face in concentration (she is very cute when she does that). you could see the cogs whirring away. then her face cleared in enlightenment and she chastised her mother. it didn't cost 50 cents per piece of yong tau fu at stall B. it cost $1.50. she laid out her reasoning as follows : since it cost $2 for 6 pieces at stall A, and $3.50 for 7 pieces at stall B, one piece of yong tau fu from stall B cost $1.50. elementary mathematics. she proclaimed. triumphantly. looking to me for backing. i nodded sagaciously, for one does not win an argument with my wife. besides, how does one even begin to contest such flawless logic?

secondly, i was sitting in my cubicle holding an innocuous conversation with one of my colleagues (who has threatened me with a fate worse than death if i mention his/her/its name), when this other colleague walks by. first colleague asks second colleague (let's call him the great fairy) how his medical appointment yesterday was. great fairy states that he had gone for penis reduction surgery as he had received too many complaints about the size of his tool. great fairy enthuses that woffles had done a fantastic job, and that his penis was looking exceedingly pretty. great fairy then offers to show us his reconstituted penis.

we hurriedly move on to the topic of how much the great fairy's doctor charges. third colleague, melvyn, passes by, overhearing only the great fairy's answer to our question ($220/hr). he makes an rapid about turn and enquires most excitedly if we are discussing prices for social escorts.

and its not even lunch time.

i have made further improvements to my blog. many thanks again to austin, my colleague, who is somehow able to stare at the gibberish which is css and make sense of it. i have added a hit counter to the bottom of the page. i am proud to annouce that i first added the code at about 3pm today. just half an hour later, the stat counter stood at 11, no less. i kid you not. of course, 10 of those hits came as a result of my frenetically hitting the refresh button, first to decide upon an appropriate colour for the stat bar, and then to discern if the hit counter was, indeed, increasing as a result of my hitting the refresh button rather than via the visitations of random blog afficionados. the remaining hit was probably my wife, whom i had called to notify of the changes.

which is not to detract from the erstwhile burgeoning popularity of my blog.

i have also changed the colour of the links, to what i thought was a classy, pastel blue. reminiscent of pristine horizons and... other nice blue things. like the boxer shorts which my mum-in-law bought for me from fos in kl, and the water in toilet bowls after you put in a clorox blue automatic toilet bowl cleaner tablet with teflon surface protector in the cistern which is supposed to last for 2000 flushes but in reality starts fading after two dozen. a theraputic shade of blue, all in all, and suitable to combat the psychological aspects of computer-related RSI and carpal tunnel afflications of my readers who are unable to tear themselves away from my blog.

so i thought, till i asked another collegue of mine (melvyn, the sex-crazed pastor. see previous entry on sex dolls.) for his opinion. his prouncement : "nice. a suitably gay shade of purple." *cough*colour-blind cretin*cough*

overall i am pleased with the effort. for although i am blessed with numerous and varied talents, artistic creativity is not one of them. which brings me nicely to my story of the day.

this is a true account. i was one of those students that all art teachers hated. (to be fair, that statement would be more accurate without the proviso 'art'. but anyway.) i don't recall passing any art class in my entire (and otherwise distinguished - to some extent at least) academic career. i only ever recall embarking on two art projects that didn't turn out to be unmitigated disasters.

one was a black monster i constructed on drawing block in primary school. he had - it, rather, had red teeth (blood-stained, you see). and was otherwise, well, black. i remember this monster most distinctly because i had to go out to purchase several sets of magic markers. this is worthy of another story in itself. in brief, i was forbidden from using more sophisticated artistic implements to express my creativity as i had previously, and rather emphatically, demonstrated my ineptitude with both crayon and paint. and colouring a big, bloody(-toothed) monster black, takes up a lot of ink. more ink than a single magic marker contains. and each set of magic markers only contains one black one. part of a marketing ploy to decimate the life-long savings of artistically deficient children who, as a result of their cognitive inadequacies, are forced to draw in monochrome, no doubt. the conniving, magic marker making bast*rds.

also worth a mention by way of creating a backdrop to my real story is my inability to draw circles or curves of any sort. my aesthetic renderings are limited to straight lines. which is not quite as pathetic as it sounds. i able to (quite skillfully, to be sure,) join these lines together, whether seamlessly to form geometrical angles of varying degrees, or in intersectory patterns. in multiplicity. but, yes, i lack the ability to render arcs and festures and sweeps and whorls of all kinds. which explains why i never did very well in art. except for the black monster, which definitely embodied some curvature. come to think of it, i think my mum drew the outline of it in pencil, before i went to work with my black marker(s).

anyway. my second creative success was the by-product of pottery class in secondary school. while my classmates, not subject to such limitations as i, created cups and jugs, i tried something different. well, actually, initially i tried to create a square cup. i quickly found the enterprise too taxing. and so, to complement my square base, i fashioned a disparate collection of other, smaller, rectangles. struck by creative genius, i flattened these, and stuck them onto the perimeter of my square base at right angles. imagine an overturned table, albeit with multiple legs, of differing lengths and widths. i had a few oblongs of various sizes left over. these i stuck, perpendicularly, to the first lot of perpendiculars.

the end result, if you are hopelessly confused by now, was a - albeit more angular - version of this :


still under the influence of this unexpected outpouring of creativity, i named my piece by carving letters into the base : 'stonehenge'. my art teacher took one look and fell in love with it - i think he thought it a very bold and neo-modernist reinterpretation of the original. he went so far as to invite me to send it to the kilns for baking. a piece of my art, preserved for posterity in the art department. i was so overcome with emotion that on my way to the kilns, when i saw a little carving tool, i was unable to resist from improving upon my masterpiece.

i think this utensil had a name, but such details are beyond me. suffice to say you poked it in, turned it in a circle, and it would create a hole. overcome by enthusiasm, i proceeded to carve little holes in all the standing monoliths of stonehenge. and in the base. it was at this point that my art teacher visibly began to regret his offer to bake my artwork.

in any case, it matters little, someone's pot (a round one, undoubtedly,) fell onto my objet d'art in the midst of the kiln-ing process. shattering it into a million pieces. or, at least, so i was told by my art teacher afterwards. perhaps its structural integrity had been weakened by its being holed like swiss cheese. to be fair to my art teacher he did, very kindly, offer to allow me to spend my recesses over the next two weeks repairing it.

i think not.

and now you too, know why i am so proud of my blog. gay purple text and all.

another hilarious (to me, at least) story from the bbc.

it goes like this. an orca decides to leave his family of fellow orcas and take residence in a harbour on the pacific coast of canada. said orca is christened 'luna', by whoseever job it is to name random stray killer whales.

luna (a male, incidentally - who would have thought it that difficult to master gender-appropriate nomenclature) begins to feel lonely. since his family has since moved 300km further down the coast, giving up on their ungrateful kin, luna decides that the closest substitute to a fellow whale would be a boat. or a plane. unable to make up his mind, luna proceeds to play with both boats and float planes that visit him in his harbour. having himself, in general, a whale of a time.

being the nerds that they are, scientists conclude that play is no good and hazardous to safety. they opine to anyone that will listen (for e.g., the bbc) that playing with a 1.8 tonne killer whale could prove fatal to whale and human alike. demonstrating that they really should get out of their labs more often and into the real world. killer whales, dangerous? haven't they watched free willy? they then go on to further assert that luna is not really dangerous, just very lonely.

having fulfilled their occupational mandate by hopelessly confusing the rest of rational society, they decide to capture luna and forcibly reunite him with his pod in the name of humanity. this will, apparently, be less dangerous an endeavour than leaving luna alone to frolic in his harbour.

enter the aboriginal indians. luna, they argue, is not really an orca. luna is their chief. three years ago, while on his deathbed, their chief had promised to return as a whale. three days after his death, luna had appeared in the harbour and has not left since. moreover, their chief, while still alive, had an inexplicable fascination for both maritime and aviation transport... (not true, this last sentence. or at least undocumented by bbc correspondents.)


in order to protect their esteemed leader, these indians take to the harbour in their traditional canoes, and manage to lure luna more than 20km away from the trap set by the scientists. white men all, these scientists presumably are, and eager to perpetuate the pattern of racism set by their forefathers by enslaving and transporting a native canadian indian (whale). the very definition of second generation discrimination.

having foiled their dastardly plans, the native indians are able to bargain from a position of strength. they successfully negotiate for an allowance to spend a weekend praying with the whale, before the scientists try their luck again.

unimpressed by these prayers, luna seeks solace in a passing tug boat. unfortunately, he underestimates the strength of its propeller, and is sucked into it, expiring instantly and turning into whale mince.

end of story.

when you see this as a major motion picture, remember, you heard it here first. full articles in the comments section.

my wife is annoyed at me.

we had a conversation yesterday over a lunch of horlicks and milo dinosaurs, two plates of fried chicken nasi bryani and one egg roti prata. the previous night, we had watched munich, and neither of us had quite gotten the ending.

"i googled the ending of munich today, but i couldn't find anything. i've decided that eric bana is cute, though. don't you think so?"

"mm." (what do you want me to say about a guy with a surname like bana? at least i didn't go "eric bana... naaa.")

irritated look

and since we were on the celebrity theme, i decided to bring up an interesting fact i had discovered a couple of days ago.

"do you know i was born on the same day as jessica alba? if she had been born in singapore, we could have shared the same incubator. that would have been... hot."

very irritated look

five minutes later :

"can you stop thinking about jessica alba?"

three times, apparently, she had asked me to get the bill so we could leave. i honestly hadn't heard a word. took the words "jessica alba" to wake me from my reverie.

in the car on the way home, seeing how she was mildly cross, i offered the olive branch in the form of an observation about my toilet habits :

"i always feel like sh*tting after i eat curry or spicy food. i think i might have irritable bowel syndrome."

she obviously hadn't gotten over my relationship with jess, and felt it necessary to demonstrate her unhappiness.

"maybe you have racist bowel syndrome."

not much sympathy there.

fast forward to yesterday evening. we were waiting for our friends to arrive so we could play matchmaker. both are single, and we were introducing them to each other. my wife, probably as a result of some innate (and incomprehensible) female predilection, was fretting greatly that everything would go well. i, on the other hand, was rather content to throw them together and let nature take its course, for better or for worse.

anyhow, my wife then asked me what i thought we should do, what activity we could engage in that could create the most fertile - bad choice of word - salubrious atmosphere for whatever it was she was hoping would happen. a movie was one option, but did not have enough quality interaction, so it seemed, to be ideal.

blame it on my nobleness of spirit, but i am nothing if not willing to try to be helpful. and i have a propensity towards honesty that oftentimes goes unappreciated. i offered the first idea that came to my mind (which, may i add, i still think is rather ingenious) :

"skinny dipping?"

banishment to the study ensued. my banishment, incredibly enough. i am on the verge of reporting myself to the police as a victim of domestic abuse.

ultimately, it was decided that we would go for dessert. i had just voiced my opinion that i was full and would be content to pilfer bits of cake off everyone when my wife gave me a glare and, in a voice filled with surprising sweetness, asked me :

"why don't you order something?"

bewildered look

"er ok."

long pause

"what should i order?"

another glare

a most stressful weekend. can't wait to go back to work on monday.

another current affairs update for the weekend. from another british news source, that other renowned bastion of british journalistic excellence, and the uk's biggest selling newspaper, the sun :


we might complain about the draconian laws that prevent us from spitting in public, chewing gum, and urinating in lifts. our british counterparts, however, have it tougher. they get 500 pound fines for throwing rubbish in rubbish bins. click here.


in other news, elsewhere in europe, a german burglar escaped incarceration as a result of a medical condition - he is suffering from a priapism (i.e., a permanent erection). a very painful and dangerous affliction, apparently. a fortunate escape, then, for the hardened criminal. click here.

full articles in the comments section again.

this post is dedicated to melvyn, my colleague, who confronted me in the toilet a couple of days ago regarding my previous post entitled 'sex'. "a post on sex, and not a naked torso in sight? i'm so disappointed." he breathed, heavily. into my ear. this coming from a youth pastor. still no naked torsos my friend, i will not facilitate your descent into sin. at least not until i can find one worthy of a place on my blog. you shall have to settle for this, for now. to you, melvyn.

came across this on bbc news, and have very kindly summarised it for your reading pleasure.

mexicans, apparently, suffer from a widespread problem of male machismo. this male machismo is perpetuated in mexican society from the top down. president vicente fox has previously declared that females are washing machines on two legs. a fair observation, if anatomically inaccurate. (this last sentence was me, not the bbc). correspondents declare that machismo in the country runs deep, because mexican men not only occasionally have mistresses, but also have the temerity to set them up in second homes. (this, on the other hand, really was the bbc. you have to wonder about the quality - or reasoning capacity - of their correspondents.)

this male machismo manifests itself in the form of sexual harrassment in the workplace. the mexican government has come up with an innovative campaign to solve this unsatisfactory state of events. to this end, they have run a series of ads, which feature female secretaries and maids. in order to convey the message that females should not be viewed as sex objects, they have replaced the females in these ads with - wait for this - blow-up sex dolls. as a result of these ads, we may presume, mexican males in the workplace will gaze upon their female colleagues and cease to see real females. they will instead see inflatable latex sex dolls. this will act to alleviate the current problem.


quite brilliant, really.

full article in comments section, in the event it gets taken offline.

disclaimer : all hate mail from indignant mexicans, whether currently domiciled within or within the country of mexico, and regardless of sexual preference, shall be redirected to the bbc.

my humble blog has become embroiled in its first hint of controversy. i posted an entry last night, in which i undertook a dispassionate analysis of certain aspects of gay behaviour. on hindsight, it was a topic that was, no doubt, borne out of a trip to court to deal with an indecent conduct charge. well, to be fair the entry wasn't all that analytical. or dispassionate. but, minor details.

in any case, within literally seconds of my hitting the 'publish' button, i had gotten a comment from a very disgruntled (and in all likelihood, very gay) netizen going by the name of ian. it's so refreshing how the internet tanscends borders to bring people together. so anyway, my newly found cyber-buddy, ian, alleged that i had a gay friend (?) and that i sounded like i would enjoy being part of a gay orgy. he also accused me of being trendy. i still don't quite get this last one - i did make a genuine effort to discern how being trendy could possibly be a negative character trait. i even directed the word aloud at myself several times, in front of a mirror, incorporating sarcasm and other tonal and body language inflections that might not be accurately conveyed over the internet. "trendy." "trendy!" "trendy?" i still can't quite bring myself to be offended. and yet he did reiterate the fact that he found me trendy at least twice in maybe three sentences. once in capital letters too, a la TRENDY. most perplexing.

well, maybe i'm not doing ian's diatribe full justice. but then again, i don't suppose there's any real reason for me to. of course, i was careful to immediately delete his comment, and i will police all further comments today with great vigilance, so that only one side of the story ever comes to light. we in singapore do not embrace free speech.

ian may, however, apply for a police permit to dissent. the application must detail the proposed topic and content, and for such administrative purposes, i am the relevant police authority. upon such showing, i will allocate one, small, secluded corner of my blog to him and all like-minded agitators (linked with a black font on a black background). this will prove that i'm not afraid of what the world has to say.

after some reflection, however, i decided to remove the entry for the time being. i'll re-read it in a few days time and decide whether or not to repost it. while i personally think the entry was rather harmless - not particularly tasteful, maybe, but not exactly incendiary - i don't particularly want people to be genuinely offended. then again, how exactly i'm supposed to write a blog if i can't be my usual irreverant and crass self is beyond me. i mean, i would just as soon be disrespectful of heterosexuals as i would of homsexuals. i'm a very disrespectful person in general.

write about muslims, get the sedition act thrown at you and find yourself in jail. write about political figures, get the defamation act thrown at you and find yourself financially embarassed. write about work, get the official secrets act thrown at you and find yourself gone missing. write about gays, get accusations of homosexual-orgy-suitability thrown at you and find yourself trendy. write about your wife too much, you'll in all probability get yourself thrown into the corridor and find yourself homeless.

for now i'll blog about birthdays.

i was born on the same day as samuel morse and ulysses grant. instead, if i had been born exactly one day later, i could have shared a crib with jessica alba, and the two of us could share our birthday party with penelope cruz.

if my wife had been born a day later, she could have celebrated with elizabeth ii and catherine the great. she'll have to be content with sharing it with adolf hitler.

just had a rather random conversation with my wife in the car on the way to dinner at my in-laws. went something along the lines of :

"would you like to have four wives?"

"of course, but you'd be angry."

"no, i wouldn't mind."

"right."

silence

"you really wouldn't mind? why not?"

"because it would make you happy."

pause

"really?"

"really."

pause

"you're such a liar. if you were pinocchio, the windscreen would have been shattered to bits by now."

proud giggle

for a fleeting moment, she almost had me.

dinner was good, though.

after a long and arduous -

this reminds me of an incident way back in secondary school. i am blessed with numerous and varied talents. an understanding of chemistry, however, is not one of those talents.

i remember having to conduct an experiment in the chemistry lab. and i would at this point like to momentarily depart from my departure by pointing out that there is a serious flaw in calling the exercise an experiment when the victim (student) is told exactly what steps to take, is instructed that there is only one correct outcome, and is expected to be able to explain the entire scientific rationale behind everything that is to transpire.

anyhow. i further remember having to fill in a chemistry assignment relating to that experiment. this assignment, as chemistry assignments are wont to do, asked any number of befuddling and poorly drafted questions peppered with unintelligible symbols. exacerbating the difficulty i faced was the fact that, although i had spent the afternoon engaged in productive activity, i had done so in the true spirit of experimentation. read : mixing random chemicals together over the bunsen burner in genuine anticipation and sticking heated test tubes under cold running water so as to justify the chemistry department's presumably over-inflated budget. not as if they were doing any real work that needed spending on.

for some reason i cannot recall, i didn't have anyone's worksheet to copy answers off that particular day. a rare and unpleasant occurance. thus, i was left to fill in answers as best i could, improvising when unsure. unfortunately, i wasn't very sure of anything at all, any time at all. it all got rather frustrating, and so when this question popped up towards the end asking me to describe the processes involved in the so-called-experiment, i decided to pen a mini treatise. it went something along the lines of "this was a long and arduous process, that involved the application of substantial quantities of heat and agitation to a combination of different chemicals, each of a varying molecular composition..." that went on until i ran out of space.

i cannot emphasise enough my deeply-held conviction that, as a general principle, the duty of educators should be to reward students who give factually irreprochable responses that answer the question posed. my chemistry teacher, though, was thoroughly unprincipled. amongst other characteristics i shall not mention. i think i got 0 for that assignment.

but back to the topic.

- after a long and arduous process that i was intending to detail, but now lack the time to elaborate upon because of my lengthy and pointless digression (not to mention my even more pointless digression within the digression), i have finally decided on a template.

with the very kind help of a colleague, i've also managed to tweak it somewhat - minor changes like eradicating the capital letter from the template. i am pleased.

when i first told my wife that i had started a blog, her first response was : "we share?"

a very typical response, on hindsight, coming from a girl who firmly embraces the philosophy that what is mine is hers, and what is hers is also hers.

i looked up at her, and replied. "no." (though to be perfectly honest, i probably didn't bother looking up before responding. in fact, come to think of it, this might have been a telephone conversation. in which case looking up would have been really pointless. unless, of course, i was already looking up. in any case, i am allowed journalistic license to embellish the truth to make a better story, and so the said diversion of my line of sight shall remain on record.)

not because i cared either way whether she makes entries on this blog, mind you. more because the marital relationship has a funny way of making one appreciate brevity when holding discourses with one's wife. (i'm doing the third person thing again aren't i.) and "no" is one syllable as compared to "ok" which is two.

anyhow, over dinner tonight, i decided to revise my previous position, and with appropriate eye contact and sincerity in my voice, offered to add her as a contributor to this blog. something i have no idea how to do, but which i think can be done. going unspoken was my reasoning that since i was encountering teething problems with coming up with suitable content for entries, perhaps the addition of another poster would help. something along the lines of two incompetent bloggers being better than one.

she beamed at me and went "ok!" most happily. thinking this the end of the conversation (and all further conversation for the meal), i went back to my fries and pondering whether i could arrange a basketball game for that evening.

several minutes later, she looked at me with an earnest and slightly worried expression on her face. she had obviously given the issue much thought. "i'm not sure i'd be able to think of anything to blog about. what about i be your number one fan and reader instead?"

i do love you. and you'll always be my number one reader, if only because it would be quite hard to find a second person reading my blog. our blog?

on a separate note, i went on a shopping spree of sorts in marina square. bought a leather case to protect my precious creative zen vision:m :



and a work shirt from zara :


probably spent as much money as i have in the past two months combined. playing basketball on sunday afternoons is a far more economical alternative to shopping. a lot more fun too. but at least i have pictures to post.

it isn't the type of question that one thinks about very much. just one of life's little mysteries that goes unheeded until one is suddenly confronted by the need to think about it. that question is, what on earth is one supposed to blog about?

one realises, after going to the trouble of actually creating a blog, that the endeavour isn't quite as simple as one thought it would be.

the foremost challenge is to actually think of a topic to blog about. one quickly arrives at the conclusion that one's life isn't quite as interesting as one would suppose. one realises how easy it is to curl one's lip up at the offerings put up by other bloggers - dismissing them as badly written, self-absorbed narrations of mundane existences. drivel that, for some unfathomable reason, is hugely popular amongst the unenlightened masses. sheep. sheep with bad taste, at that.

then one sets up a blog and gets stuck. in a rut. a rut that is suffering from a severe dearth of inspiration and creativity. it's almost enough to make one feel apologetic about one's blog-snobbishness. almost, of course, except that most of the other blogs out there really are rank.

to exacerbate the problem of a lack of content, one also encounters stylistic difficulties. for example, one begins to wonder why one is refering to oneself in the third person. a quite retarded thing to do. now, if we had instead used the royal plural - now that would be understandable. appropriate, even.

thankfully, however, we live in a country in which a shortage of creativity is an endemic malaise. we can hence quite rightfully blame our national education system and government in general for our inadequacies. we are, of course, not blaming the latter - a constitutional law course will familiarise you both with the peculiarities of defamation law as it applies to the private citizen and political figures in this country.

which is all fine and well, except that it brings us back to the point that we have nothing of interest to share with our reading audience. which at this moment probably consists of our wife - and this is probably an appropriate juncture at which to switch away from the royal plural - my wife and my sister.

diary of my day : woke up, ate breakfast, ate lunch, took a 20 minute nap, played basketball, ate dinner, ate supper, write a blog entry while watching west brom nullify chelsea in the first half of their game. decadant, but not particularly edifying. and hardly worth elaborating on.

oh well. i'll get better at this blogging business. maybe i shall add some pictorial illustrations tomorrow. might spice up this blog somewhat.

if nothing else, at least this entry has a captivating title, no?

that is the question.
whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of incapacitating ennui,
or to pound fingers against a wall of inscribed keys,
and by pounding realise;
for though sleep perchance ends boredom,
insofar as we have shuffled off this mortal monotony,
blogging, on the other hand, is not particularly interesting.

at all. in fact, straining an already sleep-deprived brain in atttempt to come up with pseudo-Shakespearean rhyming couplets (which, eventually, fail to rhyme. or to take the form of couplets.) is an exercise which tiresomeness is surpassed only by its pointlessness.

i was just thinking how long it would take before this blogging idea would fall victim to tedium. took all of 10 minutes. but i shall persevere. for this is my first blog entry - the virgin entry, so to speak - and it shall be a post that i can be proud of. one that can rightfully form the foundational bastion of blogging excellence that shall elevate this blog into the dizzying stratospheres of online fame and fortune. one that i can look back to (after scrolling through archives and archives of digital text, post upon post overflowing with acerbic wit and insightful... insights) and admire, revelling in my own brilliance. and loquacious rigmarole.

actually i shall go and take a quick lunchtime nap instead. a power nap. i shall leave my second post, which i shall embark upon when i'm less tired, to be the landmark posting instead. the post that shall announce to the blogging community that i have arrived. perhaps it will even contain some substance.

can bastions be foundational?