My friends used to stare at me when I laughed out loud while studying.
From the BBC: "The [American] president is only allowed to serve two terms in office. He spends most of his first term trying to get re-elected and most of his second being described as a lame duck. No wonder they give him the shiny plane and the armoured limos. There have to be some perks to this job."
Isn't that funny? It's not just me right?
And
Politicians sign new climate pact
Leading international politicians have reached a new agreement on tackling climate change, at a Washington summit.
It's always sort of difficult not to feel optimistic when you get such news. Of course it's a non-binding agreement blah blah blah, but as the constructivists would say 'Non-binding? Pfft. Who cares?'
(Between, yes, I'm one of those who watched that Captain Planet show when I was young, and can still remember the song.)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Amusement & Insecurity
After my last post, someone was concerned enough to refer me to a counsellor. While the thought and concern are very appreciated, I don't think I need a counsellor just yet. Give me some time. :P
Also, given that the post was about why the Marxist revolution never occured, and posited that counselling (or 'self-help' and therapy in general) was part of the reason, it was pretty amusing. A post claiming to be a 'radical critique' of (and hence resistance to) this 'hegemony' that is buttressed partially by modern counselling eliciited almost immediately an invitation to counselling...
Omg it's just too precious.
I also got a comment about that post being uber-cheem and impossible for normal people to understand.
My initial reaction: Are you trying to be sarcastic? Am I not normal? Why do you say I'm not normal? Do you think I'm trying to act cheem? I'm normal!
My 2nd train of thought: Why do I care what people think? What makes me think he thinks I act cheem? What makes me think he was being sarcastic? Is it because I'm so insecure that I feel the need to blend in with the rest? Do I need to feel accepted? Why am I acting like an angsty teenager? I thought I left all that behind! I'm an adult! All grown up! Why am I so insecure? Me? Insecure? Of course not!
My 3rd thought: I can't believe I'm being insecure about being insecure.
There you have it. The nutcase who is the author of this blog.
Also, given that the post was about why the Marxist revolution never occured, and posited that counselling (or 'self-help' and therapy in general) was part of the reason, it was pretty amusing. A post claiming to be a 'radical critique' of (and hence resistance to) this 'hegemony' that is buttressed partially by modern counselling eliciited almost immediately an invitation to counselling...
Omg it's just too precious.
I also got a comment about that post being uber-cheem and impossible for normal people to understand.
My initial reaction: Are you trying to be sarcastic? Am I not normal? Why do you say I'm not normal? Do you think I'm trying to act cheem? I'm normal!
My 2nd train of thought: Why do I care what people think? What makes me think he thinks I act cheem? What makes me think he was being sarcastic? Is it because I'm so insecure that I feel the need to blend in with the rest? Do I need to feel accepted? Why am I acting like an angsty teenager? I thought I left all that behind! I'm an adult! All grown up! Why am I so insecure? Me? Insecure? Of course not!
My 3rd thought: I can't believe I'm being insecure about being insecure.
There you have it. The nutcase who is the author of this blog.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Spectres of Marx
There's a voice in my head that won't stop. I wish it would go away because it disturbs me even while amusing. It doesn't allow me to feel any sense of achievement, and it screams when I try to find comfort in a group. It haunts me and forbids rest... like a spectre.
--------------------------------------------
Let us go back to a hypothetical fief in the dark Middle Ages and look at 2 scenarios.
Scenario A:
A peasant works in the fields every day without rest. He is impoverished, his wife is ailing, he has lost 4 children to disease already, and his last remaining child is starving. He is unhappy because really, there is no reason to be happy. He looks at the privileges enjoyed by his lord and feels that the world is unfair.
The peasant asks his lord, "Why is it that I have to work so long and hard and you don't? I am unhappy."
The lord kicks him away.
The peasant organizes a rebellion, and even though he and many others are killed, they lend impetus to a movement that, a long time later, results in a better life for people like him.
Scenario B:
A peasant works in the fields every day without rest. He is impoverished, his wife is ailing, he has lost 4 children to disease already, and his last remaining child is starving. He is unhappy because really, there is no reason to be happy. He looks at the privileges enjoyed by his lord and feels that the world is unfair.
The peasant asks his lord, "Why is it that I have to work so long and hard and you don't? I am unhappy."
The lord tells him, "I can sense that you're dissatisfied. I cannot change the system for you, but let me refer you to a counsellor."
The counsellor is a good one, who genuinely cares for the peasant, and empathizes with him.
At the end of the session, the peasant says to the counsellor, "Life is hard, but you have made me feel better simply because you have listened to me. I have thought calmly and rationally about what I can do about my problems, and because I know there's a listening ear for me, now I feel as if I have the strength to go on."
So the peasant returns to the fields, and life goes on.
--------------------------------------------
Let us go back to a hypothetical fief in the dark Middle Ages and look at 2 scenarios.
Scenario A:
A peasant works in the fields every day without rest. He is impoverished, his wife is ailing, he has lost 4 children to disease already, and his last remaining child is starving. He is unhappy because really, there is no reason to be happy. He looks at the privileges enjoyed by his lord and feels that the world is unfair.
The peasant asks his lord, "Why is it that I have to work so long and hard and you don't? I am unhappy."
The lord kicks him away.
The peasant organizes a rebellion, and even though he and many others are killed, they lend impetus to a movement that, a long time later, results in a better life for people like him.
Scenario B:
A peasant works in the fields every day without rest. He is impoverished, his wife is ailing, he has lost 4 children to disease already, and his last remaining child is starving. He is unhappy because really, there is no reason to be happy. He looks at the privileges enjoyed by his lord and feels that the world is unfair.
The peasant asks his lord, "Why is it that I have to work so long and hard and you don't? I am unhappy."
The lord tells him, "I can sense that you're dissatisfied. I cannot change the system for you, but let me refer you to a counsellor."
The counsellor is a good one, who genuinely cares for the peasant, and empathizes with him.
At the end of the session, the peasant says to the counsellor, "Life is hard, but you have made me feel better simply because you have listened to me. I have thought calmly and rationally about what I can do about my problems, and because I know there's a listening ear for me, now I feel as if I have the strength to go on."
So the peasant returns to the fields, and life goes on.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Poem for my sister
I was clearing some of my old stuff today (and there's a lot of that). Some day I shall type out some of the more embarrassing writing from my teenage years. Absolutely excruciating. I've been wondering all day whether to burn those old diaries. *shudder* At one point I dropped the offending diary and buried my face in my hands because... oh the agony! Such agony! How could I ever EVER have written something like that?
Haha.
I also discovered this poem I wrote for my youngest sis about 8-9yrs ago, and while it's no masterpiece (no false modesty here heh), it does remind me of how she was as a little kid lolz.
[Youngest sis] is a little maiden
Of about 5 or 6;
She's all the experience and certainty
That comes with age.
Mummy belongs to her, no doubt,
And Daddy does as well.
Jie jie's a slight nuisance,
But kor kor's mean as hell.
The only one who's a bit of fun
Is [2nd sis], but only when she's around.
The sun and the moon and the stars in the sky,
Doggy and bear-bear and charming lullabies
Belong to Her,
Our Queen of the World.
But she is young and pretty and dances too,
She prefers to be Princess, thank you.
Haha.
I also discovered this poem I wrote for my youngest sis about 8-9yrs ago, and while it's no masterpiece (no false modesty here heh), it does remind me of how she was as a little kid lolz.
[Youngest sis] is a little maiden
Of about 5 or 6;
She's all the experience and certainty
That comes with age.
Mummy belongs to her, no doubt,
And Daddy does as well.
Jie jie's a slight nuisance,
But kor kor's mean as hell.
The only one who's a bit of fun
Is [2nd sis], but only when she's around.
The sun and the moon and the stars in the sky,
Doggy and bear-bear and charming lullabies
Belong to Her,
Our Queen of the World.
But she is young and pretty and dances too,
She prefers to be Princess, thank you.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Not a screaming fangirl... really!
Mayday concert:
This was my first rock/pop concert. I kept wondering where the druggies and drunkards and strippers (or the drugged, drunk strippers) were. Is no one keeping the spirit of rock and roll alive?!?!?!
I never realised how good Mayday is. The lead singer went out of tune quite often actually, but I'm amazed that his voice lasted the whole concert. Talk about stamina. Also, he's cute and so earnest heh. The guitars & drums were good too! Though they still sound better on the record. What really impressed me was how sincere they sounded. No tongue-in-cheek glibness there. I believe they might actually believe what they're singing.
But I still say we should have shouted political slogans during the less noisy intervals. I wanted to shout "中国统一，反对台独!" (trans: One China policy, oppose Taiwanese independence) but my friend didn't want to shout with me. :(
The funny thing was, at one point in the concert, they had images of Che Guevara onscreen. And at another, they had images from what I think were paintings of the American Revolution. They even had Abraham Lincoln! Talk about strange bed-partners. Communists and Americans. But I suppose the idea was resisting oppression, fighting for ideals etc, which would kind of fit into their overall theme of leaving the earth - transcending the material, searching for utopia, idealism and so on. (According to my friend they're Beatles-inspired.)
Strangely enough, while they were singing about revolution, leaving the world behind, abandoning pragmatism for idealism, they also made sure to sell their concert tickets for a very exorbitant price. They also read out the list of sponsors, and prompted the audience to cheer loudly for the sponsors. I didn't know the concert was supposed to have a commercial break. :P
So revolutionism and idealism are constantly subverted, and turn into commercialism.
I doubt many members of the audience would go home and live the ideals in the Mayday songs they so fanatically sang/screamed to during the concert.
I did a lot of screaming and singing myself, if only because I was determined not to let my money go down the drain. So for me it was a conscious decision to 'suspend disbelief', as the literature/arty-farty types would say, and participate. Besides the desire to make the most of sunk costs though, I also noticed that there was a desire to participate for the sake of being part of entire performance. I wanted to sing along so that I could be part of the music-making myself. Yet this sense of participation was more or less false, largely because I couldn't even hear myself in all that ruckus.
But the sense of participation was important. It's a sense that what you do is important to the concert. Hence they make you scream for an encore, even though they've already planned to return to the stage. They make you do silly things like jump in time, and spell out LOVE with your arms. They tell you that it's your voice that's beautiful (which, trust me, is a bloody lie). All in all your screaming and singing is not particularly important to anyone except yourself.
The whole concert looked a lot like a cult gathering. Wild-eyed people were waving glowing phallic symbols (lightsticks) to the same throbbing beat, they were screaming the same songs, they robotically performed the same motions, they stomped their feet and swayed, and they fanatically adored Mayday. No wonder there're so many associations between rock music and satanic cults. The whole thing was like a mass hypnosis. Some people even raised their hands with both palms facing out, the way I've seen Christians do in church while they're singing.
Come to think of it, lightsticks are pretty much like candles aren't they? Why do you even need lightsticks at a concert? To show that you, the individual, are here? Because it makes you feel seen? And therefore contributes to the (false) sense of participation? In the dark, without a lightstick, no one would notice you. But even with the lightstick, who sees you, the individual?
In any case, people filed out quite matter-of-factly when the concert was finally over.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
- Shakespeare
This was my first rock/pop concert. I kept wondering where the druggies and drunkards and strippers (or the drugged, drunk strippers) were. Is no one keeping the spirit of rock and roll alive?!?!?!
I never realised how good Mayday is. The lead singer went out of tune quite often actually, but I'm amazed that his voice lasted the whole concert. Talk about stamina. Also, he's cute and so earnest heh. The guitars & drums were good too! Though they still sound better on the record. What really impressed me was how sincere they sounded. No tongue-in-cheek glibness there. I believe they might actually believe what they're singing.
But I still say we should have shouted political slogans during the less noisy intervals. I wanted to shout "中国统一，反对台独!" (trans: One China policy, oppose Taiwanese independence) but my friend didn't want to shout with me. :(
The funny thing was, at one point in the concert, they had images of Che Guevara onscreen. And at another, they had images from what I think were paintings of the American Revolution. They even had Abraham Lincoln! Talk about strange bed-partners. Communists and Americans. But I suppose the idea was resisting oppression, fighting for ideals etc, which would kind of fit into their overall theme of leaving the earth - transcending the material, searching for utopia, idealism and so on. (According to my friend they're Beatles-inspired.)
Strangely enough, while they were singing about revolution, leaving the world behind, abandoning pragmatism for idealism, they also made sure to sell their concert tickets for a very exorbitant price. They also read out the list of sponsors, and prompted the audience to cheer loudly for the sponsors. I didn't know the concert was supposed to have a commercial break. :P
So revolutionism and idealism are constantly subverted, and turn into commercialism.
I doubt many members of the audience would go home and live the ideals in the Mayday songs they so fanatically sang/screamed to during the concert.
I did a lot of screaming and singing myself, if only because I was determined not to let my money go down the drain. So for me it was a conscious decision to 'suspend disbelief', as the literature/arty-farty types would say, and participate. Besides the desire to make the most of sunk costs though, I also noticed that there was a desire to participate for the sake of being part of entire performance. I wanted to sing along so that I could be part of the music-making myself. Yet this sense of participation was more or less false, largely because I couldn't even hear myself in all that ruckus.
But the sense of participation was important. It's a sense that what you do is important to the concert. Hence they make you scream for an encore, even though they've already planned to return to the stage. They make you do silly things like jump in time, and spell out LOVE with your arms. They tell you that it's your voice that's beautiful (which, trust me, is a bloody lie). All in all your screaming and singing is not particularly important to anyone except yourself.
The whole concert looked a lot like a cult gathering. Wild-eyed people were waving glowing phallic symbols (lightsticks) to the same throbbing beat, they were screaming the same songs, they robotically performed the same motions, they stomped their feet and swayed, and they fanatically adored Mayday. No wonder there're so many associations between rock music and satanic cults. The whole thing was like a mass hypnosis. Some people even raised their hands with both palms facing out, the way I've seen Christians do in church while they're singing.
Come to think of it, lightsticks are pretty much like candles aren't they? Why do you even need lightsticks at a concert? To show that you, the individual, are here? Because it makes you feel seen? And therefore contributes to the (false) sense of participation? In the dark, without a lightstick, no one would notice you. But even with the lightstick, who sees you, the individual?
In any case, people filed out quite matter-of-factly when the concert was finally over.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
- Shakespeare
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Mayday Concert!
Just came back from the concert! *jumps around and screams*
More on the concert in the next post, too braindead to write my post-concert thoughts.
In the meantime, my favourite Mayday song:
生命有一种绝对
如果我 不曾走过这一遍
生命中 还有多少苦 和甜美
那风中的歌声 孤单哽咽的声音是谁
回忆中 那个少年 为何依然不停的追
想要征服的世界 始终都没有改变
那地上 无声蒸发 我的泪
黑暗中期待光线 生命有一种绝对
等待我 请等待我 直到約定融化成笑颜
那生命 绚烂烟火般上演
你和我 最后都要回归地平线
那留下的足跡 浪花沖走 回忆海岸线
靠近我 再拥抱我 请不要让我 的心冷却
等待我 请等待我 靠近我 再拥抱我
不要走 请不要走 直到約定融化成笑颜
直到我看見 生命的绝对
More on the concert in the next post, too braindead to write my post-concert thoughts.
In the meantime, my favourite Mayday song:
生命有一种绝对
如果我 不曾走过这一遍
生命中 还有多少苦 和甜美
那风中的歌声 孤单哽咽的声音是谁
回忆中 那个少年 为何依然不停的追
想要征服的世界 始终都没有改变
那地上 无声蒸发 我的泪
黑暗中期待光线 生命有一种绝对
等待我 请等待我 直到約定融化成笑颜
那生命 绚烂烟火般上演
你和我 最后都要回归地平线
那留下的足跡 浪花沖走 回忆海岸线
靠近我 再拥抱我 请不要让我 的心冷却
等待我 请等待我 靠近我 再拥抱我
不要走 请不要走 直到約定融化成笑颜
直到我看見 生命的绝对
Saturday, June 02, 2007
quotes
My friend has, of all things, asked me to find a quote to be engraved on her iPod. While brainstorming, I decided to look through my database of favourite quotes/poems.
Yeats
"Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet."
Favourite part from one of my favourite poems:
"How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face..."
Another extract from beloved Yeats:
"Nor law, nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
Tolkien & LOTR
"Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheating.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
"And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there along under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent.
There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.
Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old."
"In this sense, the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humilitating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires the viels of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much... Not reflection, no - true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man."
- Nietzsche
Misc.
"the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth... walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow"
-G.M. Trevelyan
"The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat;
Leaving her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
Farewell all joys; O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise."
- Orlando Gibbons
A particularly cruel and honest poem:
"People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies."
- Ogden Nash
Yeats
"Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet."
Favourite part from one of my favourite poems:
"How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face..."
Another extract from beloved Yeats:
"Nor law, nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
Tolkien & LOTR
"Out of doubt, out of dark to the day's rising
I came singing in the sun, sword unsheating.
To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking:
Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
"And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.
But Arwen went forth from the House, and the light of her eyes was quenched, and it seemed to her people that she had become cold and grey as nightfall in winter that comes without a star. Then she said farewell to Eldarion, and to her daughters, and to all whom she had loved; and she went out from the city of Minas Tirith and passed away to the land of Lórien, and dwelt there along under the fading trees until winter came. Galadriel had passed away and Celeborn also was gone, and the land was silent.
There at last when the mallorn-leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.
Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old."
On Hamlet
"The world has grown sad because a puppet was once melancholy."
- Oscar Wilde
"In this sense, the Dionysian man resembles Hamlet: both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or humilitating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint. Knowledge kills action; action requires the viels of illusion: that is the doctrine of Hamlet, not that cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects too much... Not reflection, no - true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action, both in Hamlet and in the Dionysian man."
- Nietzsche
Misc.
"the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth... walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone like ghosts at cockcrow"
-G.M. Trevelyan
"The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approached unlocked her silent throat;
Leaving her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more:
Farewell all joys; O death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise."
- Orlando Gibbons
A particularly cruel and honest poem:
"People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But the old men know when an old man dies."
- Ogden Nash
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)