Take away the electrodes already!

And why am I so masochistic? What is it so alluringly fascinating about certain blogs that make me want to push the writer into a vat of exploding turkey that I have to go back AGAIN and AGAIN for my weekly entertainment? WHAT is this inbred morbidity which seems to have grown roots in a convenient corner of my brain-hole and occasionally overpowers all good sense? Whoever can answer this last question will probably get the vat. (Turkeys come only with customer satisfaction.)

HAVEN'T YOU HAD ENOUGH FUN, EVIL DEMON? AREN'T YOU KINDA DUE FOR A PROMOTION YET?

lo, an existential crisis

A good indication of a really insecure bastard. Last night I clocked a grand total of five hours brooding on the shit, two of which was employed in staring at an empty ceiling thinking stupidly about the theoretical associations between language and voice pitch.

It also occurs that I can erase history if I want to. (although I would advise you not to look too closely at the pencil-imprints.)

Why do teddy bears fight?

Rare good feelings

I haven't blogged about something really cheery for the longest time. For this I must partly blame my depressing personality and the post-exam hangover which seemed to have struck as some kind of early-life crisis as it has never had before. But MOST OF ALL I blame the haze. And now it's gone! The skies are clear and the sun is bright. My underwear is drying nicely in the comfortable heat and I can see all the way to the burning horizon from my bedroom window like I'm supposed to. There's nothing like proper air to breathe for making you feel good.

Which is more than I can say for the sm0kers out there. The moment the haze showed suggestions of subsiding they must have rallied together in their secret societies to come back out in force, for how else can they coordinate their bloody aggravating actions so well and carefully? Yesterday as I stood waiting for the traffic light to turn I stood behind FOUR of them merrily shaking their glowing butts at each other in mysterious hip-hop sign language and throwing their filthy grey nicotine all over the place. They had the glazed and greasy unwashed look of the cigarette-deprived. I'm sure their mothers must have locked them indoors and taken away their pocket money because -- frankly -- if I had seen that happening while the haze was still thick I would have called the gestapo. Then they would have been arrested for being a social menace in civic-minded Singapore and we shall never see them again. Faced with such situations I feel entirely justified in occasionally wishing that smokers would die faster and stop inflicting their green phlegm on everyone else.

My mum, on the other hand, has gone on healthy-eating spree and brought a glut of oranges home. When we talk about oranges in our home we are not talking about your little sunkist citrus. We are talking about mottled monstrosities like bowling balls. There are at least ten of them in the fridge now and it's taken me the best part of one day to eat the first one. 'But they were on sale!' my mum said. And that's oranges on top of the cherry apples, the half-papaya, the daily two bunches of bananas on the kitchen table, the last plum (getting squishy now) and the quarter-slice of watermelon someone unfailingly buys home every night.

Unfortunately no one has spotted that new 1-litre bar of Cadbury's milky that I just brought home, although I haven't touched it yet (I haven't been feeling so good for the past few days). Speaking of chocolate, Ngee Ann City has a shop that sells the most amazing chocolate roll. It was two bucks and worth every nanocent; one day I shall scoop up all the people that actually read this blog in one hand and abduct them to the place, where I shall force them to buy one and eat it on the spot before they're allowed to go home. Although there's no guarantee you'll go to heaven first.

I love cake. I'm sure you know that by now. MWE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE HEE.

Anyway I've been running high on good feeling and sending random crazed messages to unfortunate people. Hmm. Perhaps I should put an inventory here. So if you're one of them, you'll know you're not alone. =B




(in no particular order)
to Kelly: once upon a time there was a most delicious fish roll. He was most delicious.

to Karmen: It was in a fresh rain that blew no ill wind that I gloried to the spinning leaves and ribands of silken sweetness, billowing up my arms.

to Pong: butter your scones
bluebirds in spring.
serried flanks on sulpher fish (you can tell who my main victim is)

to Wynne: Twinkly feet and fairweather associates -- HULLO Wynne :D

to Mr Neo (my CT): salacious! <--( he wanted one word to describe my class.)

to Ruth (my old senior): shallots and pimple cream! <--(this was evilly a precursor to a supposed wish for luck for her studies for the big As, if you believe it)*

to my PW group members, who were late: Where are yooo my lovelies



I'll pick up where I left off if the good weather holds.
Bye bye.





*that's three 'for's in one sentence. I think I've surpassed myself.

Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen

Nun seh' ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen
Ihr sprühtet mir in manchem Augenblicke.
O Augen!
Gleichsam, um voll in einem Blicke
Zu drängen eure ganze Macht zusammen.
Doch ahnt' ich nicht, weil Nebel mich umschwammen,
Gewoben vom verblendenden Geschicke,
Daß sich der Strahl bereits zur Heimkehr schicke,
Dorthin, von wannen alle Strahlen stammen.
Ihr wolltet mir mit eurem Leuchten sagen:
Wir möchten nah dir bleiben gerne!
Doch ist uns das vom Schicksal abgeschlagen.
Sieh' uns nur an, denn bald sind wir dir ferne!
Was dir nur Augen sind in diesen Tagen:
In künft'gen Nächten sind es dir nur Sterne.



--Gustav Mahler

Short stories (w33n should be quite familiar with these things)

once upon a time there was a little girl who thought a banana looked uncommonly orange in morning shadow. So she went around telling everyone, who rolled their eyes and told her to do something useful for a change -- like discover a new species of moth, or something -- because bananas were yellow by definition. So the little girl shrugged and did something useful: she ate the banana.

Irrational anger management issues

I'm Pissed.

You can make resolutions any time of the year.

From now on I must be a penny-pinching student. My expenditure lately has been quite ridiculous, and my parents have put up with enough already. If I am to hunger after complete independence I might as well live it up, and I still have to save for my year-end book-buying spree.




Kinokuniya membership card -- $21
summary of epistemology in two books from Routledge -- $100 (with kino christmas discount)
Descartes' meditations and discourse on method -- $20 (with kino christmas discount)
$40 set aside for random books

'World of the Dark Crystal' by Brian Frond -- $50 (no discount, from Basheer books)



If I get a job for a week I might just make it.

more shit

From when we are old enough we learn to smile for a living


Forgive the grammatical errors down under there. I'm REALLY not good at Chinese. But I'm trying. It doesn't seem to show.



What shall I say this time? 'Dear mum, what you told father in the form of some kind of universally-accepted truth is what some people may easily choose to call "slander"?' 'Dear father, your propensity for poor analogies and overreaction is startling for someone who's survived office politics for two decades'?
How discourteous.


My parents send conflicting messages

My brothers are at least consistent

I must remember to be less honest

halfway done: a clip

And I thought this composition was going to be irretrievably screwed for sure.

Haven't done shadows or tinting yet; warm light not complete. Among other things.



whee.

the Sanctity of Parental Authority

I haven't blogged for a long time. Exams and apathy have done in my previous habits from mid-September.

Let this herald the beginning of a new slew of news about my empty little adolescent life.




My father should rue the day I decided to take KI.

He tried to force me to attempt to speaking chinese constantly, yesterday. He meant well. He didn't accomplish his purpose.

Shall I show you why?

Here's why.


C: Therefore you must speak more Chinese, so that you can be good in it.

P: You are not the whites! You will never be the whites! Why do you want to become the whites? <-- fallacies of strawman, ad hominem, red herring unless you consider the Principle of Charity
P: Do you know now that the world is looking at China? <-- fallacy of ad populum
P: You don't even try to speak Chinese! <-- that's not even a fallacy. That's a blatant lie. In fact the whole lecture was started by me trying to speak Chinese, very badly.
P: (other blatant lies.)
-- insert short tense demand: he forces me to tell him how many languages he speaks. I manage 'six'. He growls and claims 'seven'. <-- Fallacy of red herring. Though I don't doubt the truth value of his claim. --
P: One language is not enough! You must have at least two! <-- I concede the spirit of the point, although the premises for this are unjustified.


I can't remember the other premises. It was a short speech but intense, and I was growing angry, although I kept my mouth shut.

all throughout: fierce voice and parentally-justified didactism. <-- fallacy: ad bacculum, appeal to authority




I shouldn't be putting this on a blog, or rationalising an argument like this, but my POINT is that while I've always felt angry whenever my parents told me off, I finally know why. KI's done it. The records I just presented, in the form of the argument it took, was in standard form -- used in breaking down an argument into manageable bits that may be examined for individual logical validity. As with all rhetoric, it most of the speech was inductive, inductively strong as it may be, but uncogent. In fact the speaker relies more on personal authority and the silence of his audience than the merit of his statements to present -- force -- his point: this is only very broadly what makes me unhappy.


I wouldn't have minded if they had stuck to criticising objective behaviours or attitudes, but character assassination is all too often key to their persuasive shouting for me to really respect them although I understand and accomodate their points of view. What is important is that they refuse to respect or accomodate mine, particularly my father -- any attempt to reason with him or bring him to my perspective, especially when it involves his personal tendencies, will result in an accusation of either 'talking back' or childish ignorance. He dismisses my points out of hand and my opinions as pure idiosyncratic indulgence and NOT being able to say my piece when he's hurling lies onto my reputation is what gets me. And then there is the constant threat of violence -- oh yes -- he's threatened to break my neck against the wall before because I corrected his grammar. I love him because he's my father, but I've never liked him, and I shall be glad to leave his roof when I'm older. Occasionally I hate him with a passion I never feel against my mother. I don't think this is unreasonable.

I have to count my blessings for my brothers, though. They are very nice people, although I wish I knew them better. But I think I get the brunt of the parental backlash because my highly individual tendencies stand more contrary to the traditional Chinese ideal of a submissive female, and as the apple of my father's eye THIS in particular gets a lot of attention. Also I tend to want the truth. For someone who lives on rhetoric, this is not good news. I think I must have gotten the most cane stripes in Primary school among the three of us for being 'cheeky'. Sigh. Here's suppression of free speech for you.

Isn't it ironic? Here I am spewing rhetoric right and left. To placate me, you may call it an 'impassioned speech'.



If you don't want to read this, don't.