Who took the bom

I have the tune to Le Tigre’s Deceptacon stuck in my head.

Cityspeak

I turn on TV today and I discover that there is now a dedicated sci-fi channel. I discover that this dedicated sci-fi channel is going to be screening Firefly. Excuse me while I squeal like a girl.

I watched Serenity by chance on Star Movies so I know how the series ends. Now I need to find out how it begins. I’ve always wanted to watch it ever since I discovered that in the show, trade between cultures means that in the future everybody speaks this hodgepodge of English and Mandarin and characters occasionally swear at each other in pidgin Chinese.

It’s basically spaceships meets wild west. There were only 14 episodes made before they cancelled the series, and I gotta catch ‘em all.

New Yawk

One of the things I miss about New York is the amount of open space there. It was really…American. Especially in Manhatten, some of the pedestrian sidewalks are so big and spacious it is actually an option to drive on them reasonably fast, if you didn’t mind bits of pedestrians getting on your hubcaps and hitting the occasional potted tree. Perversely, there was more room the further you got into central Manhatten, considering how expensive property values there are. Apparently there was some law in the city statutes about how skyscrapers can only take up so much three-dimensional space for aesthetic reasons, and if you’re building next to a tall skyscraper your average height cannot exceed a certain amount, because it wouldn’t be pretty. Or something. That is how seriously people there take their Right to Open Space.

The upper-class residential district (where Woody Allen lives, and never comes out from) actually sits directly opposite Central Park. It’s like waking up every morning to this vast pastoral idyll, except with squirrels instead of cows and more bicyclists.

Profusion

It’s one of those words which is actually a little odd, if you think about it. It means the exact opposite of what its parts seem to imply.

I like language. I like synonyms in particular. Its like over the years, a mechanism was hard-coded into English to make communication more difficult. English used to be a language so relaxed, they let playwrights make shit up. These days you need to know what ‘ubiquitous’ and ‘portmanteau’ mean to be considered literate.

The Strokes

I love the guitar on this. I’d embed the vid but apparently it’s disabled.

Yishun, 7.45 pm

Sometimes, the only way I can make sense of things is to write them down. I have that line written very neatly in the notebook I always carry about, because it’s true. Words, crafted and set down, have a clarity that speech or thought can’t match up to, and I believe that. This isn’t to say that everything I write is true, but since this is a blog, I thought that that’s a distinction I should make up-front. The following is an exercise in writing, and should be read as such.

- Sam

” Very, very, occasionally, I get spells where I’m irrationally angry. If you’d happen to catch me a couple of hours before, or even after, I’d be perfectly alright. It probably wouldn’t even occur to me that there was anything for me to be angry about. I don’t just mean annoyance, I mean genuine anger at things far removed from me. I don’t often get angry if something immediate is imposed on me, like finding out a shop has sold something I expressly asked to be reserved for me, or having to wait an infinitely long time in a doctor’s queue, so the vitriol of the kind of anger I am talking about is a little bewildering, to me, sometimes. I understand that that’s a little odd, I do know that much.

So, what sort of things do I get angry at? This is a list, as far as I can remember.

I am angry that we are a generation saddled with an increasing confusion of choice, and that we are additionally insulted by the insinuation that this is a luxury. I am angry that we now have an unprecedented amount of responsibility for how we lead our lives and unprecedented access to conflicting information that tells us how to go about doing this.

I am angry that the things we buy and the music we listen to determines who we are for other people. I am angry that the wired environment we have been brought up in amplifies every individual decision a thousand times over and consequently reveals absolutely nothing about anybody. I am angry that Facebook exists because of what it implies about our identities, and tells millions of people around the world that the only kind of friendship is measured in volume, not quality.

I am angry that I am not the only one who feels this way. I am angry that there’s nobody else who does.

I am angry that half the writers I respect kill themselves, and the other half happen to loathe the world they live in. I am angry that tragedy is a necessary component of humour. I am angry that I am literate and consequently aware that so many great writers have come to the same depressing conclusions. I am angry that so many great bands have too.

I am angry that I have no ambition.

I am angry at the complacency of this nation-state. I am angry at people whose idea of success is becoming a neurosurgeon because, and only because, of the respect they hope to get. I am angry at the thoughtless optimism that ends up turning charity events into concerts. I am angry that some people believe the problems of this world can be solved by our politicians. I am angry that some people believe the problems of this world can be solved by ourselves. I’m angry at the contradiction that entails.

I am angry that I am young, and happen to have more intelligence than sense. I am angry at any insinuation that my anger is a phase, even though I recognise it to be. I am angry that I am just mature enough to see how immature I am most of the time.

I am angry that I have nobody to blame for these things beyond myself.”

Economical

Ernest Hemingway apparently once bet his friends $10 each that he could write a short story in six words. It went “For Sale: Baby shoes, Never Worn”. They paid up.

Wired magazine decided to ask lots of writers to have a go. I like these.

Weeping, Bush misheard Cheney’s deathbed advice.
- Gregory Maguire

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?
- Eileen Gunn

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time
- Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.
- Margaret Atwood

Corpse parts missing. Doctor buys yacht.
- Margaret Atwood

Leia: “Baby’s yours.” Luke: “Bad news…”
- Steven Meretzky

Dorothy: “Fuck it, I’ll stay here.”
- Steven Meretzky

I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss … ?
- Neil Gaiman

Kirby had never eaten toes before.
- Kevin Smith

The Good Ol’ Days

I miss Calvin and Hobbes. Life seemed…simpler back when there was a regular Calvin and Hobbes. Sure, I could read it again, but it’ll never be the same, because at the back of your mind you’ll always know that Calvin has no future. He ends. He’s not a living character anymore, and all those old comic strips are just memories, even if you’ve never seen them before.

I got the same feeling reading The Salmon of Doubt. It was the most depressing humour book I ever read next to Mostly Harmless, though I think Mostly Harmless classifies as ’sadism’ rather than ‘humour’.

Things from the Internet

Cat and Girl continue to be awesome. A lot of days, the comics are pretty hit-or-miss, and depend if your university days were spent in a cramped little shared room doing liberal arts. Today’s is great though. (The one titled ‘Model UN’)

It’s basically a run-on series of witty rejoinders mixed in with existentialism and self-deprecation.

I consider this comic to be the epitome of intelligent wit.

So I’m coaching again

Started debate coaching again. I didn’t realise how much I missed it. This is going to sound going to be egotistical, but it’s nice being right about everything for once.

There’re only a couple of things I’m good at. One of them is being able to sound correct about complex problems provided I’ve got enough information to bluff my way out and the person listening doesn’t know better. The other is literature, which I enjoy, though I think I write better prose than poetry. I get a lot of questions about whether I’m psyched about uni. I guess I am, but the problem is I can’t do both the things I’m good at at once. They’re not exactly complementary fields of study, and the way I see it, anything I pick means me giving up something else I’d like to do. No, I don’t want to do philosophy. Or be a lit teacher/professor.

On the flip side, I also get that it’s a little unfair that I am good at these things, considering I’ve never worked for either. The old saying about hard work isn’t true at all. Not that I’ve never worked for anything. I have seen some smart people fail at things because they didn’t try, but I have yet to see anybody become genuinely good at the things I am good at through hard work. It’s hard to explain. If I’m looking at an issue or a passage things just…occur to me. It’s kind of like how some people are naturally intuitive about fashion, or interior decorating. I just happen to be better at academia, which is slightly more marketable.

So I’m not really complaining, just saying, is all.