had the privilege of listening to two rather brilliant insights in court today. here they are, copied down word for word and reproduced faithfully (i took notes. good court practice.) for your benefit :

first one, directed at the accused (by then, convicted) by the judge :

"you have only one life. one youth. once you pass the age of 35, 30 even, the process of aging sets in. you will never be vibrant again."

second one, directed at another accused (again, by that time, convicted) by the same judge. this was informed by the learned defense counsel (and i use that term in the broadest sense imaginable) pointing out in mitigation that the accused's girlfriend was pregnant, and that they were expecting a baby boy in october :

"i can assure you that, upon your release, life will be worse than ever before. i guarantee you this. this is because you will be a father. the only assurance you can have is, that upon your release, things will be worse. do you see the big picture?"

my two observations, in response.

1. the judge has an incredibly soporific voice

2. zoning out in court, as a result of said soporific voice, instead of tendering the relevant documents, is a practice to be avoided

have a good weekend.

i tuned in to a different radio station on my way home today, thinking that a deviation from the routine might be refreshing. it was. on air was some form of game show, where the audience could call in to repeat three numbers revealed earlier on the show. if that can be called a game. turns out perfect 10 doesn't have a monopoly on strange callers.

dj : "thank you for calling class 95. do you have the three numbers?"

caller : "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. i'm so sorry jean [danker]."

dj : "?"

caller : "i hung up on you just now. i called in and hung up because i was so nervous."

dj : "awwww. that's ok."

caller : "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. oh my god. i'm so nervous."

dj : "don't be, it's just us, and 4 million people listening in."

caller : "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god."

dj : "do you have the three numbers?"

caller : "yes."

long, long pause.

caller : "oh my god. oh my god i can't believe it. oh my god. i've forgotten the numbers. i'm so nervous. oh my god. oh my god."

long, long pause.

caller : "actually the reason i called. it is rather strange. but i wanted to invite the two of you to my girl's party."

that's when i turned off the engine.

remember my previous post, car-cinogenic? well, the disease has spread.

the subject, before :



the subject, after :





note the increased concentration of metallic pustules on the front, top, and back of the subject. note also the emergence of previously unseen black scabs on the subject's flanks, taking on the appearance of geometric bodies.

my colleague has a theory. it goes as follows : the owner of the car is currently undergoing a messy divorce. desperate to keep his assets out of the post-matrimonial maw, he is desperately defacing his car in an attempt to devalue it.

initially, i thought this hypothesis rather far-fetched. if anything, my guess would be that my colleague had the cause and effect all mixed up. i.e., rather than the divorce explaining the car, the better theory would be the car resulting in the divorce.

but my supposition suffers from a fatal flaw - it fails to explain what would possess someone to do a thing like that to his car. then i figured, if the owner of the car shows the same level of aesthetic appreciation in women as he does in car decorations - well, then, maybe it wouldn't be that surprising if he was experiencing relationship problems.

in any case, true or no, my brain needs to hang on to something in an attempt to rationalise what my eyes have seen. so all i can do is wish the poor man a expeditious and satisfactory conclusion to his post-marital proceedings, so that our carpark can return to a state of normalcy. bonne chance, owner of ugly car.

another public interest annoucement. it's free cone day at ben and jerry's. turn up at one of their outlets anytime before 7pm and get a free cone, one per person.

if you didn't see this post till too late - well, it's your own fault for not visiting my blog often enough.

earlier this morning, one of the aunties that works in my office came into my cubicle, carrying a stack of files. distracted by some other piece of inane advice that i was constructing, i assumed she had arrived to add to my (gargantuan) backlog of work.

inwardly, i cringed. outwardly, i articulated my learned opinion on the new issues in my most collected and professional manner - "nooooooooo." given that screams and curses seemed to be having no effect, i turned to face this nefarious harbinger of drudgery with a black stabilo liner 808 f ballpoint pen grapsed tightly in my clenched fist. this was an attempt to portray what i hoped was a demeanour sufficiently menacing to dissuade her from reaching my in-tray. i have been blessed with numerous and varied talents. stocism is not one of them.

turns out she was just bringing me old files that she had dispatched for me.

"you're not bringing me new work. i like you very much."

i told her.

about five minutes ago, this aunty sauntered up to my cubicle, asking me where my neighbour was. i told her. she made as if to leave. then she stepped back into the entrance of my cubicle, clasped her hands behind her back, swayed one hip to the side and told me :

"i like you too."

unnerving.

and more so, was an incident over lunch yesterday. i was rather tired, both mentally and physically, due to a combination of various unfortunate and unpleasant circumstances. such as having to wake up for work; having to drive to work; having to do work at work; etc. one of my colleagues (priapus, you may remember him) asked me :

"so you went for a wedding on sunday?"

he had read my blog entry about the wedding. now that i've had some time to think about it, this wasn't a very intelligent question on priapus' part, as he obviously knew the answer. but kudos to him for the effort.

"yes,"

was my reply. then came a pause, while i thought about how i could further elucidate on what, in isolation, was a rather unsociable reply. the pause grew longer, but my customary repartee had been enervated by the sapping qualities of the work i do. in the end, i am ashamed to say, the best i could come up with was :

"my friend got married."

not very bright. and on second thoughts, not something that makes for a very good story either.

but, this post was made for its own artistic merit. no such self-indulgence for these words of wisdom. no, i answer to a higher calling. this entry was to convey to you, gentle reader, a higher philosophy, an epistemological breakthrough.

much like one of aesop's fables, just far more sophisticated. to draw an analogy, it would be as if aesop's fables were potatoes. sufficient for plebian activities like slinging at politicians, but rather too unrefined for the true connoiseur. my story, on the other hand, is like a basket of french fries, perfectly crisp on the outside, moist on the inside, and smothered with cheese and chilli con carne. with mayo on the side. delectable.

the moral of the story, then, is that work sucks, as does the beginning of the work week. God grant us all strength.

i attended a friend's wedding today. upon his request, my wife and i took on the job of receptionists. this friend has previously told my sister that everytime he thinks of me, he becomes happy. which does not directly advance the intended storyline, but is a fact that is strange, and at the same time, slightly disturbing. in other words, a fact well-suited to inclusion on my blog.

i am blessed with numerous and varied talents. manning a reception table is not one of those talents, i have come to find out. especially not when i have my wife sitting next to me telling me to smile and look welcoming, telling a little boy waiting for his parents to pick him up after sunday school to ignore me when i tried to persuade him to sign the guest book, and glaring at me after i penned my own congratulations to the happy couple, wishing them a happy vesak day.

i also pointed out to several guests, very politely, that, in addition to the ang pow that they were giving the couple, it might be the well-mannered thing to do to give me a token of appreciation for letting them into the church. one guy actually took out his wallet and gave me ten bucks. my wife made me give it back. she takes all the fun out of life.

actually, come to think of it, i don't really have an intended storyline. the purpose of this entry was simply to relate a small, and now that i come to think of it, exceedingly mundane incident. but since i'm here, it went like this.

woman, with daughter in tow, comes up to table.

"would you like to sign the guestbook?"

my wife asks brightly. woman looks at her suspiciously. looks at me even more suspiciously. looks around frenetically.

"but we're the bride's friends."

she snaps in reply, and then stops, seething. in a rather expectant fashion.

"you can still sign the book."

i offer. woman glances around, then signs the guestbook. and stalks off.

mm. this has to be my worst blog entry ever. i swear it was more amusing when it happened. but i shall employ my quickness of mind to salvage the day by pretending that the true purpose of this post was to congratulate the newly-weds. naturally.

so, congratulations p, and congratulations g. we've all known this day was just a matter of time since we found out that g tolerates you reading books like 'the history of the toilet'. may the both of you have a blessed and joyous marriage.

a very happy birthday to my wife, who turns a youthful quarter-century old. how do i love thee? let me count the ways.

i love you for being the love of my life. i love you for being my best friend.

i love you for your sweet nature. i also love you for being so proud of your good nature.

i love you for making alphabet soup for me when i'm hungry at night. i also love you for thinking that a louse is a brown insect that lives on trees.

i love you for bringing me my medicines and water every night, and making me breakfast. i also love the way you bring me all your soda cans to open for you.

i love you for always being there for me, whenever, for whatever. i also love you for thinking that leaflets we receive, addressed to 'the resident' of our apartment unit are, very respectfully, addressed to 'the president' of our apartment unit.

i love you for finally figuring how to work the tv and sound system after half a year. i also love the way you beamed so proudly when i came home from basketball to find that you had turned on the tv and sound system, all by yourself, for the first time. even more, i love how enlightenment descended upon you because you needed to watch desperate housewives and i wasn't home to set it up for you.

i love you for playing command and conquer : generals and counterstrike with me over our lan network. i also love the way that a new gucci bag or pair of ferragamo shoes adorns your desktop as wallpaper everytime i look over at your computer.

i love you for poking me awake at night when you can't sleep and want a hug. i also love you for waking me up again by pushing my arm off, and kicking my leg away, after you decide that my appendages are too heavy and that you no longer want a hug.

i love you for waking up happy when you've had a good dream. i also love you for needing to walk around for a week with a bandaged toe, because you got so angry with me during a dream that you kicked out with all your might at my dream persona (while my back was turned, no less). only to find that, in real life, you were facing the wall.

i love you for tolerating my snoring in your ear. i also love you for snoring in my ear. (ok, this one isn't true.)

most of all, i love that you love me unconditionally, and that you won't care a whit when you find out that i didn't have time to buy a birthday present for you.

have a happy birthday. think of happy things, and happy places.




happy 25th, hon.

this is the next installment of my outpourings of what i would refer to as teenage angst. except that i'm about half a decade too old for that terminology to be accurate. whatever. life still sucks.

some people, so i've heard, develop various allergies later on in their lives. i'm pretty sure my body is acquiring a serious, potentially fatal, even, intolerance for idiocy. it's a condition not unlike lactose intolerance. just that idiots are far more prevalent in this country than dairy products.

i've been suffering from mind-bendingly excruciating bouts of gastric pain the past 4 days. the episodes have been getting progressively prolonged and intense each day. i'm also currently on some other medication, so i decided to call the doctor up to check if the medcine i'm taking could be the cause. the conversation was not, to put it mildly, a panacea for my ills.

me : "may i speak to the doctor, please."

nurse : "i need your case file first. name."

me : (start spelling) "*, *, n..."

nurse : "*, *, m?"

me : "no, 'n', not 'm'."

nurse : "*, *, m?"

me : "no, 'n' for 'netherlands'."

nurse : "aiyar don't start giving me all these country names. just spell it."

me : " ... *, *, n. 'n'. not 'm'."

nurse : "*, *, m?"

&*%^@&%!

later on in the conversation,

nurse : "doctor says stop the medicine for a few days and see if your gastric goes away."

me : "and if it does go away, what should i do then?"

nurse : "if the gastric goes away that means it's not the medicine fault lor. then you start the medicine again."

some people deserve to be flogged to death with soggy strands of linguine.

---

and speaking of idiots. i was standing along the corridor of wisma atria on sunday, holding my wife's hand and talking to my mum-in-law. we were waiting for my father-in-law, who was relieving his diarrhoeatic symptoms in the nearby gents. (who says more knowledge is a good thing?)

anyhow, this girl comes walking towards us. she is wearing a very low cut top, a fact which i do not notice at first. this is because i am not looking at her, given that fact that i'm carrying on a conversation with my mum-in-law. over this top is a jacket of some sort, or the fashion equivalent of which, for unfathomable reasons, girls seem to feel necessary to wear in our sweltering heat.

although the corridor is wide enough, she feels the need to saunter right down the middle of it, which brings her very close to me. in my peripheral vision, i can see she's looking at me. so as she passes by, i glance up, very briefly. at her face. she immediately affects to look away, and grabs the two lapels of her cardigan and pulling them across her front in a futile attempt to cover her cleavage. futile, i might add, not due to any exceptional endowment on her part, but rather because her cardigan was outmatched only by her top in skimpiness.

now, this left me rather flabbergasted. we all know that girls are highly irrational at the best of times. but this was full-fledged lunacy. why dress to flaunt your assets if you don't want guys to look? oh, and there's that other detail - i wasn't looking.

buy a t-shirt. invest in a proper jacket. walk on the other side of the corridor. run to the balcony and throw yourself off. please.

my wife offered an explanation, in a gleeful tone that was equally incomprehensible, might i add.

"she thinks you're a perv!"

i woke up this morning, and rolled over to give my wife a morning hug. she seemed rather cold.

"actually, i'm angry with you."

she notified me, sleepily. were this anyone else, i would have asked why. but, apart from shopping, the thing my wife needs the least encouragement to do is to talk. so i kept silent, waiting for her inevitable elaboration.

"i dreamt that we had a baby girl. and you asked me and the baby girl (notice how she gets ungrammatical when sleepy. also, when awake. but that's another story.) to take a cab home because you wanted to go to a nightclub."

she pouted. now, my initial reaction was to feel a little maligned. i mean, i'm hesistant to come right out and say that such a deed is uncharacteristic of my noble and gentlemanly nature for fear of sounding slightly immodest. but, hey, such a deed is uncharacterstic of my noble and gentlemanly character. plus, i've only never been to a nightclub in my life.

then i started mulling over the scenario (we were both half asleep, so things were moving abit slower than usual), and concluded that, upon more rigorous analysis, my (dream) actions seemed an eminently reasonable thing to do. i explained my reasoning to her :

"but you can't bring a baby girl to a nightclub."

she put up her nose and sniffed at me - though she was lying on her side, so when i say 'up' i don't exactly mean 'up', but more like 'sideways', if you take the floor as the base axis. if you can imagine. it's all rather complicated. maybe i'll get her to re-enact this later, when we're on talking terms again, and post some pictures. but the crux of this story is that she sniffed at me. problem is, she has a very sensitive nose. and sniffing at people tends to make it start running. thus, post-sniff, she decided that she needed tissue.

"i need tissue. do you have some on your side?"

i rolled over to check.

"oh no, i think i left the box at the nightclub."

she got (even more) annoyed with me at this stage :

"it's not funny, it's a real mean thing to do, not to send me home because you want to go to a nightclub."

"you're right. is it just as mean as abandoning your husband in the morning to go to a furla sale?"

i enquired.

she thought about this for a while, before rolling away from me and pronouncing,

"i'm sleepy."

a public interest annoucement. the furla sale is currently on. as evidenced by the callous abandonment of yours truly, discarded at home like a used and dirtied tissue, alone and uncared for on this as-of-yet-not-very-good friday. i suppose it could be worse, i could actually be at the sale.

girls, have at it. guys, run. and hide. and remember to bring your wallets with you.

i have come out of retirement to create a special blog entry as a celebration of the idiocy that i somehow find myself surrounded with. be warned that this shall be a very churlish entry, as i am currently unenamoured with people and life in general.

i drove halfway across singapore, parked leagues away in the nearest available parking lots, and suffered through security checks to get to a meeting this morning. en route, i was pondering the wording used by the chair-idiot in his email. according to him, we would be holding a 'working meeting'.

now, i am fairly new to the organisation i work in. and perhaps the phrase 'working meeting' is common beaureau-idiotic parlance. but, and perhaps i sound like the idiot here, what the hell is a 'working meeting'? after running several possibilities through my head, i settled on a definition of a working meeting as opposed to a spoilt meeting - a meeting where everything ran efficiently and efficaciously. never had one of those yet, i thought.

that foolish notion was soon dispelled, as the meeting never even materialised - no one turned up. to be fair, they all turned up somewhere else. just that nobody bothered to tell me.

on the way back to the office, i was listening to (anything-but-)perfect 10. in an attempt to get rid of tickets to some stupid event they were hosting, they held a quiz and were exhorting people to call in for the opportunity to answer stupid questions. it went like this, and i swear i'm not making this up :

idiot #1 dj : "what does cpf stand for?"

10 second pause

idiot #2 caller : "central provisional fund."

idiot #1 dj : "that's correct! next question, what continent is west of europe?"

20 second pause

idiot #2 caller : "pass."

and after the quiz was over,

idiot #1 dj : "the right answer for the continent west of europe is africa."

in their world, maybe. note that there were actually 2 djs, so the level of idiocy involved is actually doubled. i shall be charitable and add that about 5 minutes later, presumably after their brains had finished processing the information, one of them came back on air to deduct points from the caller. the reason being that she had gotten the cpf question only half-correct.

all that before i even got to work. the day didn't get better.

my birthday is coming up.


if you haven't yet bought me pee&poo, this set of his and hers keyholders would fit in perfectly with my living room decor.

other very lust-worthy items of note :


a perfect present for any female. too lazy to come up with a description of my own, so i shall shamelessly quote gizmodo.com in toto :

'Here's a new camera from HP that'll help you answer that age-old - but always tricky - question from your girlfriend: "Do these jeans make me look fat?" Instead of stepping onto a verbal landmine, take her picture with the 8.2MP Photosmart R927, one of several new digital cameras from HP that boasts a special "slimming feature." Before you show her the picture, hit the slimming effect in the Design Gallery in playback, and she'll look as much as 10 pounds thinner on the camera's 3-inch LCD.

"It's a pretty subtle change we've built into the camera," Karl Wardrop, HP's digital imaging product manager told the New York Post. "It's not dramatic. It slims the center of photos and slightly widens the outside to maintain perspective. It's like the (fun-house) mirror from the fair, but not as exaggerated."

While there are many ways to slim (or fatten) a person's physique in Photoshop and other image editing programs, HP is the first manufacturer to offer the effect in-camera. The R927 is available this month for $399.99. Boyfriends of the world can now breathe a sigh of relief.'

the xcute s50. this one i really want. incredibly slim, 6 megapixel camera, triband, 16.7 million colour screen, memory expandable - best of all, it can play .avi files. imagine watching 'lost' or 'justice league', and taking high resolution pictures of pretty, erm, dresses on your handphone while waiting for your wife in zara. or top shop. or bebe. or mango. or esprit. or anywhere where the letters s, a, l and e are visible. pity about the brand name though.

more updates later.

i am blessed with numerous and varied talents. still, at times, i am not the brightest of sparks. thankfully, these moments are few and far between, and my erstwhile brilliance more than makes up for these fleeting instances of mortality.


yesterday, after work, i went to pick up a clock which i had brought back to the shop for repair. now, i bought this clock sometime in last may. it has graced its mantel in my apartment for a grand total of approximately three months. the rest of the time, it has stubbornly refused to work, and been in the shop. each time i bring it back, the owner tells me he'll have it working in a week or two; each time, it takes him about two and a half months to get it ready for collection.

if this was any other country in the world other than singapore, i'd have demanded a new clock. unfortunately, this is singapore, where the most fundamental of consumer rights do not exist - indeed, this is singapore, where not only store owners, but also fellow consumers, look at you strangely when you begin to even think about saying something other than "how much do i owe you?" moreover, i seem to have this incurable habit of going off on a tangent rather than just getting to the point.

back to the story. i told the lady who handed me the clock,

"it better be fixed. if i have to come back one more time, i'll cry."

which, with the benefit of hindsight, is not, perhaps, the most menacing ultimatum i could have come up with.

"yes, we hope we won't have to see you again."

was her reply. straight out of better consumer service for dummies.

"yes. i hope never to see you again in my life."

i agreed, emphatically. said with as much sincerity as anything i've ever articulated in my life. which they seemed to find uproariously amusing, for some reason. then i turned to leave, and out of force of habit, offered the parting words,

"bye, see you soon."

rather lame. it was a very long day at work.

warning : the following is an office discourse carried out over email. it's long, and concentrated on what is not necessarily the most ennobling of topics. it also contains references to bits which are unique to males, so sensitive souls (i.e. members of my dysfunctional family), please skip this one. all headers have been removed, because editing them would take too much effort, and names have been changed. apart from that, this is verbatim.

a major drawback to working in an environment like the one i work in is that we are continually interrupted by stupid (and by stupid i mean stupid) requests for advice via telephone and email. these incessant distractions make it very difficult for us to engage in any truly constructive, intellectually-stimulating, professional discussions. still, cream does float to the top, however ocassionally.

quick introduction of the cast : initiator of this e-discussion is hermod from my previous entry, 'work hazards'. he is being re-casted as priapus, greek god of fertility, pursuant to his specific request -

priapus :

If you are blogging about me, you should portray me in a highly positive light. Choose a masculine and sexy name - certainly nothing related to fairies and such.
And you should also pay me for providing valuable information for your blog.

since the sight of priapus, in all his glory, might prove too much for the faint-hearted, you will have to click here to view a picture. not only is his new name sexy and exceedingly masculine, it also elevates him to the status of a (albeit, foreign) deity. priapus, you should pay me.

next participant is melvyn, or odin from 'work hazards'. his proposition in response to priapus' request :

Dick, being another name for the male organ, and a sex organ too, meets the requirements of "masculine" and "sexy". Therefore, may I suggest "Dickhead" ?

Prickhead would also do I suppose.

the third main participant is myself. i shall humbly refrain from my own apotheosis. the fourth colleague, who plays a supporting role, we can refer to as sleepy, after one of snow white's seven little companions.

priapus' original email ('the email') :

Does anyone of you think of getting a circumcision?

This is not a frivolous question.

I was reading some magazine in the library that states the advantages of getting cut.
(a) Better hygiene
(b) Better sex life
(c) Reduce pain due to tight foreskin and thus, leading to (b).

Apparently, there's different levels of getting cut, ranging from a low cut to a full cut.

this could get a little confusing, as there were two separate threads of conversation stemming from two separate replies to the email. i shall deal with them one at a time.

#1 - melvyn :

Now, this is a really weird question and immensely bloggable. (jr - over to you).

Well, I was nearly made to do one as a kid. But the policy then, as always, is that no one touches me there.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that doctors have recently reversed their opinion on the efficacy of circumcision. Apparently it confers little or no benefit and in fact, the foreskin serves to protect you from general infections (I think that means UTI, not VD).

One benefit I can think of in regard to circumcision is that you don't need to do it again (or at least you hope not to have to do it again, seeing how there might be very little foreskin left after the first snip) if you marry a Muslim lady. Plus, upon conversion, you can have up to 4 wives. Plus plus, if you convert and bomb the infidels to bits, you have up to 70 wives in Paradise. I'm sure at that time you will find looser foreskin immensely helpful.

#1 - myself :

>But the policy then, as always, is that no one touches me there.

I must say that your sex life cannot have been/be very stellar if you still embrace this policy.

#1 - melvyn :

Res Ipsa Loquitur - the facts speak for itself.

I've got Jed, which is more than what you can claim for yourself.

jed is his baby boy, an extremely cute and adorable specimen that obviously takes more after his mother than his father. of course, i haven't told melvyn that.

#1 - myself :

Three letters -

IVF.

#1 - melvyn :

Now that's defamation !

#1 - myself :

Merely pointing out a plausible factual matrix which could act as a rebuttal to your rather flimsy defence (pig-latin inclusive).

Reasonable doubt, my friend. What kind of colleague would I be if I didn't point a potentially fatal flaw in your case out to you?

end of thread #1, presumably as melvyn realised that he had been bettered by a superior in, well, everything. beginning of thread #2, which was bandied about concurrently with thread #1, also in reply to the email.


#2 - myself :

If you were a girl, I'd think you were hitting on us. Since we're all male, I'm just frightened.

But since you've asked for my opinion, I can reveal that I have two different pairs of sports shoes. One low cut, for jogging, and one pair of high cut shoes for basketball. The latter provides better stability and support as the sport requires vigorous movements, vertical and lateral. Our esteemed colleague, sleepy, has previously claimed that you can tell the size of a man's tool by looking at his shoe size. By reasonable extrapolation, I would postulate that there is a significant correlation between the foot and the tool. In which case, the moral of the story is that the selection of the cutting would have to be appropriate to the nature of the activities one engages in.

In short, the appropriate cut for you would hinge upon how exuberant and dynamic the manipulation of your tool typically is.

But before you take this monumental step, ask yourself honestly - do you really want a better sex life?

P.S. I have cc-ed this email to sleepy for a third party expert opinion.

#2 - sleepy :

Expert opinion? I'm 49 years old. I thank God that I still have a sex life.

#2 - priapus :

No good girl will ask you that sort of question. What sort of girls have you been hanging out with?

What's there to be frightened about - the article is there in our library! One man interviewed said that he felt a lot of pain during penetration and so went for the cut, and felt his sex life improve greatly after that. Although the recovery process (swelling, cannot pee for about 6 months, fragile stitching might burst etc) is a little troublesome.

#2 - myself :

Well, I can't help attracting all kinds. Of girls. And I would like to take this opportunity to point out that even fewer guys would ask a question like that.

And, since you're not yet married, may I suggest that your evident dissatisfaction with your sex life may be better rectified simply by changing partners. A far less dramatic undertaking than to chop bits off a very sensitive region.

#2 - melvyn :

Now, to find out about the debilitating effects of circumcision, you only need to turn to the book of Genesis in the Bible. Two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, decieved all the men in particular town / tribe into circumcising themselves so that the Chief's son could marry their sister (that Chief's son had raped her before this). And while the men were still in pain, and unable to bear arms, Simeon and Levi killed them all to avenge their sister's humiliation.

had a quite mind-numbing conversation in the car on the way home from lunch with my family. my mother decided to make her displeasure with my blog known to me :

"why do you always have to blog about sex?"

this came as rather of a surprise to me, as the closest i remember to blogging about sex was my entry entitled 'sex'. and that contained absolutely no references to sex whatsoever. which, as you might recall, was a source of great disappointment to a certain one of my colleagues, a man of the cloth (see post entitled, and i suppose i'm doing myself no favours here should my mother read this, 'sex dolls'.)

"i do not blog about sex."

i defended myself, stoutly. not that i see anything wrong with blogging about sex, indeed, i shall probably make a concerted effort to blog more about sex since i've found out that it annoys my mother. but i'm a very principled person, a champion of the downtrodden, (amongst my numerous and varied talents), and find it necessary to stand up for the victim of unjust and unsubstantiated accusations. in this case, myself.

"yes you do," chimed in my sister, "you had that article on mexicans, and the one on masturbation."

my eloquent rebuttal froze in my throat before it was even born, as i tried to first figure out how an entry about latin-american advertisements promoting gender equality could possibly be construed as pornographic. more so when the original article was taken from the bbc. a news source to which the application of the word 'sterile' would not go amiss. and surely the act of masturbation in showers, obviously by very lonely individuals, by definition precludes sex between two people? (perhaps this last argument is not necessarily accurate, but i shall leave that thought for now.)

"yes, yes! don't forget that one about the policeman!"

my mum whispered excitedly to my sis, overjoyed that she had found another mouthpiece.

"how on earth is a guy chopping off his penis and throwing it at a bunch of cops even remotely sexual?"

i asked. a fair question, if i say so myself.

"because it involves something which is used to distinguish between sexes."

explained either my mum or my sis (by this time their offerings had merged into a mass of indistinguishable gibberish, in my mind), confidently.

"so's a beard."

i pointed out, logically. an affinity with logic being yet another one of my numerous and varied talents.

"not true, not true, there are bearded women in circus acts!"

expelled my mum, tripping over her words in triumphant excitement. an observation which is as worrying as it is true.

"so you're saying i shouldn't blog about anything that is unique to either males or females?"

i enquired. by this time i was getting rather exasperated, but i finally gave up when my wife, who had been following the conversation rather sullenly (a result of not having been able to find anything to buy in zara), decided to chip in to answer my query. with a promulgation that left us all mired in silence for the rest of the (mercifully short) journey :

"yes! like jeans!"

spent a good part of the day hanging out at sicc with my wife and my dad. the experience was made rather more interesting by large, male (don't ask how i know) monkey. this monkey had obviously gotten bored of the neighbouring nature reserve, and had traipsed across the road, across the carpark, up the many flights of stairs, to go for a stroll by the poolside.

let's name this monkey chuffles, if for no other reason but because 'chuffles' comprises 8 letters, whereas 'the monkey' constitutes 9 - and a space - which makes it 10. i was most taken by chuffles, and even left the air-conditioned comfort of the gym to take a closer look, carrying a weight plate, which i had been holding before i saw him. (a singularly irrelevant detail, but indulge me.)

if you haven't seen a monkey up close before, they're remarkably human-like. chuffles was ambling around, poking his nose into every corner, standing up on two legs so he could peer through a window into an office. he even plonked himself down on a railing and watched some tv for a while. presumably, he didn't think much of our local programming, because he left his perch to stick his head into the nearest dustbin.

following that, he went up to a girl, chased her away from her gym bag, and opened it up and peered inside. before he himself was chased away by a golfer who picked up the nearest bench and ran at chuffles with it, yelling strange and undecipherable threats. after which he put the bench down and looked like he was about to suffer an aneurysm. we have fallen far from the standards set by our forefathers in shining armour.

there actually is a point to this story, believe it or not, which i am getting to now. i went back into the gym, marvelling at how human-like chuffles was. i made the following observation on inter-species similarities to my wife :

"we're actually quite alike. especially when it stands up on two legs. it looks like a little pygmy. just a really hairy one."

a look of troubled dismay flashed upon the features of my wife. seeing that she had no constructive contribution to my insight, i went back to doing crunches.

a few minutes later, she came up to me, with a beautific grin of relief etched across her face.

"you're talking about the monkey! i thought you were talking about me!"

"of course i'm talking about the monkey. isn't it unfair how it can leap so high so effortlessly?"

she pondered this for a bit, then beamed at me :

"i'm just glad i'm not a hairy pygmy."

we don't like chuffles so much now, for later on in the afternoon, he grabbed the plastic bag containing my dirty clothes and made a run for it. my wife had to chase after him and smack him with a car brochure before he would release it.

well ok, so maybe there isn't much point to the story after all. i'd like to see chuffles come up with a better entry, though.

i had a very disturbed sleep. i dreamt that it was monday, and that i had to get up or i'd be late for work. when i finally did wake up, i realised that it wasn't monday. it wasn't even sunday - it was saturday, the beginning of a glorious, glorious weekend. i was so happy i almost cried.

have a good weekend.