Its official.
I just want to sit on the clouds and waste my days away.
Can't really fulfil the cloud part(afraid of heights) but definitely wasting my days away.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
OMG
I think I may be the last to know that if I were to write anything political at all on SINGAPORE POLITICS, I would have to REGISTER my blog and that I may not write anything that constitutes election advertising during the election period.
wow. gee.
Of course, no prizes for guessing if they would prosecute people who are pro-'a certain party'.
Not that they NEED any extra advertising of course with those wads of election funds.
Again, not like they NEED any advertising at all.
wow. gee.
Of course, no prizes for guessing if they would prosecute people who are pro-'a certain party'.
Not that they NEED any extra advertising of course with those wads of election funds.
Again, not like they NEED any advertising at all.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Batman
I watched 'The Dark Knight' and let me just say that it was an 'on-the-spot' decision. It is not because of the million and one reasons listed by my friends to convince me that it is a must-watch movie or how every review of this movie never fail to mention it is Heath's spectacular LAST performance as Joker, and much less because it is a superhero movie. I for one, if you were to discount my childhood naivete, do not like anything superhero. I do not know which of the two; acquiring super powers or the notion of some 'super' human saving the world sounds more absurd.Anyways, the point I am trying to make is that since I am dedicating my blog entry to a superhero movie, it must not have sucked too much.
Maybe I am thinking too much into things like how my boyfriend always says I do (and obviously he is not the only one) but I observed some pretty interesting things.
In my opinion, 9/11 brought about massive changes (to use a more ‘neutral’ word). For one, if words took part in popularity contests, the word ‘terrorists’ would probably come out tops in the post 9/11 era. Similarly, 1 and 9 would probably win the number popularity contest. Therefore it was no surprise that the word ‘terrorist’ came up in ‘The Dark Knight’ and there are no prizes for guessing who is the terrorist. Terrorism and the whole war against terror is pretty much Bush talk and I really want to pronounce all that bull. Any act of violence, 9/11 scale or not, cannot be de-politicised. In the media-centered world that we live in, 9/11 being a major media spectacle supplied the much needed political fuel for Bush to declare a war against Muslims. Of course, he sugar coated this so called just war using words like terrorism, safety and quoting the figures of innocent deaths in 9/11 and I guess it did help that everywhere in the world, all you see in the news,off-news were images of the hijacked plane crashing into the twin towers again and again. If one wants to really announce a war against terror, it would probably be the one against inequality. In a capitalistic world, the haves are constantly "terrorizing" the have-nots. One should look at figures tabulating the number of innocent deaths are there due to starvation in Africa, innocent deaths of people due to their inability to meet the barest of requirements for survival and that to me is true violence, violence way beyond the scale of 9/11.
The "heroes" of the show Harvey and Bruce, to me represented the US. Harvey plays this knight in shining armour of Gotham, full of promise to deliver the city from corrupt ruins but turns bad in the end listening to the evil joker. Gordon said," Joker has taken the best of us and turned him bad" (something like that) and to me it somehow sounds like the " The terrorist is the culprit for the rise in anti-US feelings". When Batman declared that he is going to be whatever Gotham needs, even if it means playing the bad guy, I cannot help but think that the US wants to portray themselves as the dark knight-telling people that even though the world no longer views them as the good guy, they are willing to play the bad guy for the "good" of the world.
The state of US relations with China, or to be more accurate, the state of US economic relations with China, or to be even more accurate, the state of US TRADE relations with China cannot be more explicit observable. In the movie, Bruce Wayne cautions Fox of Lau's company tremendous growth and in the end dissolved the partnership. Likewise, to me, the US seems to be cautioning the world of China's growth and portraying Lau as the baddie does seem to have a silent underlying equivalent meaning of China being the baddie. I cannot help but want to shout "sour grapes".
Another something I picked up from the movie: No one panics when everything goes according to plan but when just a small something goes wrong, the whole world goes topsy turvy. If one were to apply this to the order of the world, 9/11 would be that something that made the whole world go topsy-turvy. The world was supposed to be run smoothly with the US sitting comfortable at the altar but the jab from the planes threw them off the pedestal. First, there was slavery, then was cold war divde, now the US vs anti-US. Do we really need a system of oppression to have a 'peaceful' world?
******************************************************************************************************************
School has barely stared but procrastination has kicked into full swing.
Maybe I am thinking too much into things like how my boyfriend always says I do (and obviously he is not the only one) but I observed some pretty interesting things.
In my opinion, 9/11 brought about massive changes (to use a more ‘neutral’ word). For one, if words took part in popularity contests, the word ‘terrorists’ would probably come out tops in the post 9/11 era. Similarly, 1 and 9 would probably win the number popularity contest. Therefore it was no surprise that the word ‘terrorist’ came up in ‘The Dark Knight’ and there are no prizes for guessing who is the terrorist. Terrorism and the whole war against terror is pretty much Bush talk and I really want to pronounce all that bull. Any act of violence, 9/11 scale or not, cannot be de-politicised. In the media-centered world that we live in, 9/11 being a major media spectacle supplied the much needed political fuel for Bush to declare a war against Muslims. Of course, he sugar coated this so called just war using words like terrorism, safety and quoting the figures of innocent deaths in 9/11 and I guess it did help that everywhere in the world, all you see in the news,off-news were images of the hijacked plane crashing into the twin towers again and again. If one wants to really announce a war against terror, it would probably be the one against inequality. In a capitalistic world, the haves are constantly "terrorizing" the have-nots. One should look at figures tabulating the number of innocent deaths are there due to starvation in Africa, innocent deaths of people due to their inability to meet the barest of requirements for survival and that to me is true violence, violence way beyond the scale of 9/11.
The "heroes" of the show Harvey and Bruce, to me represented the US. Harvey plays this knight in shining armour of Gotham, full of promise to deliver the city from corrupt ruins but turns bad in the end listening to the evil joker. Gordon said," Joker has taken the best of us and turned him bad" (something like that) and to me it somehow sounds like the " The terrorist is the culprit for the rise in anti-US feelings". When Batman declared that he is going to be whatever Gotham needs, even if it means playing the bad guy, I cannot help but think that the US wants to portray themselves as the dark knight-telling people that even though the world no longer views them as the good guy, they are willing to play the bad guy for the "good" of the world.
The state of US relations with China, or to be more accurate, the state of US economic relations with China, or to be even more accurate, the state of US TRADE relations with China cannot be more explicit observable. In the movie, Bruce Wayne cautions Fox of Lau's company tremendous growth and in the end dissolved the partnership. Likewise, to me, the US seems to be cautioning the world of China's growth and portraying Lau as the baddie does seem to have a silent underlying equivalent meaning of China being the baddie. I cannot help but want to shout "sour grapes".
Another something I picked up from the movie: No one panics when everything goes according to plan but when just a small something goes wrong, the whole world goes topsy turvy. If one were to apply this to the order of the world, 9/11 would be that something that made the whole world go topsy-turvy. The world was supposed to be run smoothly with the US sitting comfortable at the altar but the jab from the planes threw them off the pedestal. First, there was slavery, then was cold war divde, now the US vs anti-US. Do we really need a system of oppression to have a 'peaceful' world?
******************************************************************************************************************
School has barely stared but procrastination has kicked into full swing.
Friday, June 6, 2008
A Not-so Anti-Capitalist Rant
I have not read Marx or Becker. Nevertheless, I find that I have been repeating this phrase to many people: “Capitalism is the root of all evil”. I vaguely remember Marx saying that but being the half-past six that I am, I cannot remember. I was trying to explain to my boyfriend (who probably wish I would just shut the hell up) the possibility of an overhaul of our moral systems if there was no such thing as private ownership. Robbery would not be wrong or rather the act of robbery probably does not exist because we do not own anything, so technically speaking; they are not taking away anything. Hold that thought and jump to the reactions.
My boyfriend wrinkles his nose and frowns very deeply at me and looks at me with a sickened expression as though I said something like ‘I am in love with my brother’, L proclaimed that it would be a chaotic and order-less world and WYang thought about it for awhile and said, interesting.
Speaking of order, well, it would be true that probably it would be chaotic because essentially capitalism keeps order in the oppression form. (Again, my own two unpolished cents worth) Social contracts which are probably the foundation of democracy (correct me if I am wrong) are based in capitalistic thought and thereby democracy has ‘oppression-istic’ roots which are no much more different from a monarchy or any other forms of governance. Maybe it is an unfair statement but I would, in my very opinionated view think that the oppression in democracy is very much hidden and not so blatantly displayed in visible forms like the others.
Communism (according to me) does not work in our world because we live in a capitalistic world. Of course it has its shortcoming like all other systems. I mean, sure, acknowledge all the benefits of democracy, democracy probably being the best of the worst systems or whatever, but we are able to say that because we experience the benefits of capitalism. The ability to type on my laptop or sit in a coffee joint debating, those are advantages of us being on the favourable side of the inequality that capitalism. To even speak about inequality or theorize capitalistic devils, we have to be on that side--the ‘upside’ of the see- saw of inequality.
Disclaimer: This is a “coffee-shop talk” argument. Pardon my lack of depth and any other wrong concepts I have. Would be grateful for corrections or guidance.
Well, I am probably not going to stop going to Starbucks or not lust after the pairs of Christian Louboutins and that just makes me feel like a bad, guilty person after being so oh-communism-sucks.BLAH.
My boyfriend wrinkles his nose and frowns very deeply at me and looks at me with a sickened expression as though I said something like ‘I am in love with my brother’, L proclaimed that it would be a chaotic and order-less world and WYang thought about it for awhile and said, interesting.
Speaking of order, well, it would be true that probably it would be chaotic because essentially capitalism keeps order in the oppression form. (Again, my own two unpolished cents worth) Social contracts which are probably the foundation of democracy (correct me if I am wrong) are based in capitalistic thought and thereby democracy has ‘oppression-istic’ roots which are no much more different from a monarchy or any other forms of governance. Maybe it is an unfair statement but I would, in my very opinionated view think that the oppression in democracy is very much hidden and not so blatantly displayed in visible forms like the others.
Communism (according to me) does not work in our world because we live in a capitalistic world. Of course it has its shortcoming like all other systems. I mean, sure, acknowledge all the benefits of democracy, democracy probably being the best of the worst systems or whatever, but we are able to say that because we experience the benefits of capitalism. The ability to type on my laptop or sit in a coffee joint debating, those are advantages of us being on the favourable side of the inequality that capitalism. To even speak about inequality or theorize capitalistic devils, we have to be on that side--the ‘upside’ of the see- saw of inequality.
Disclaimer: This is a “coffee-shop talk” argument. Pardon my lack of depth and any other wrong concepts I have. Would be grateful for corrections or guidance.
Well, I am probably not going to stop going to Starbucks or not lust after the pairs of Christian Louboutins and that just makes me feel like a bad, guilty person after being so oh-communism-sucks.BLAH.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Labels
Labels. They have more function that they get credit for. Like how we think we can choose to ignore the effects on the dictating they do in our lives and just claim it is just a label but it is not so. We do not choose the label. We are labeled. (Well, most of us.)The point is not about the label but who labels. The labeler decides the good or bad of that label. The powerful label the less.
I think I should read up on Labeling Theory by Howard Becker and probably Marx. This is like a 5 minute non-thinking post.
I think I should read up on Labeling Theory by Howard Becker and probably Marx. This is like a 5 minute non-thinking post.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Haruki Murakimi
This post is not really dedicated to him but he is definitely one of the authors that I love. I read most of his work and even though I do not know if I actually get half of what he wants to say, I still find it such a pleasure to be sucked into his stories. (Even though I have to admit I have a tendency to lose myself in any story). Kalfka By the Shore and Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World has got to be my favourite.
Currently reading this collection of short stories by him :
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and I want to share just these two short paragraphs by him.
Chapter The Ice Man
Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. As if they’re alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That’s the essence of ice, the role it plays.
Chapter Firefly
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. As we live, we breathe death into our lungs, like fine particles of dust.
Maybe I want our relationship to be like ice because then I’ll know it is going to me you forever sealed up and there is no talk of leaving or staying because we are frozen in our place. Where our love may not be that transparent and even fuzzy in the ways we show it but it is simple. And I am a simple girl hoping you are a simple boy.
Currently reading this collection of short stories by him :
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and I want to share just these two short paragraphs by him.
Chapter The Ice Man
Ice contains no future, just the past, sealed away. As if they’re alive, everything in the world is sealed up inside, clear and distinct. Ice can preserve all kinds of things that way- cleanly, clearly. That’s the essence of ice, the role it plays.
Chapter Firefly
Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. As we live, we breathe death into our lungs, like fine particles of dust.
Maybe I want our relationship to be like ice because then I’ll know it is going to me you forever sealed up and there is no talk of leaving or staying because we are frozen in our place. Where our love may not be that transparent and even fuzzy in the ways we show it but it is simple. And I am a simple girl hoping you are a simple boy.
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