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BLOGGER
Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.
MAIN THEMES
On identity i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes. On Christianity I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you. On dreams Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.
OTHER THEMES
On melancholy It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself. On memory and nostalgia It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting. On language I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word. On politics Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for? On society People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last. On growing old Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall. On philosophy I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man? On a daily basis One line quips, like this. CHAT
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Monday, July 30, 2007
 NO MAN'S LANDI can't find you in the bible. i can't find you in church. i can't find you in the clergy and i sure can't find you in the members. i can't find you in cell and i can't find you in leaders. you're not there in ministry. you're not there on the streets. i can't hear you in the loudest roar and i can't hear you in pindrop silence. you're not in the halls or corridors or meeting rooms. you're not here in my room. you're not there at my desk. you're not in my car, on the road or in carparks. you're not there in the daytime, though sometimes i think you're there at night. but you're not anywhere else. i searched for you online but you're not logged on. you're not on gtalk or youtube or blogger. you're not at the pantry and you're not there at lunch. you're not in the consistency of best friends, the adoration of a girlfriend, in the security of the old or the excitement of the new. you're not at the pictures, in dvds, on a notebook or in an itunes playlist. i thought light was where you were but i didn't see you. i thought darkness was where you worked, but i couldn't find you. you're not in poetry or prose or diagrams. you're not there in crowds. you're not here in solitude. where are you? at some worship concert? a prayer meeting? a bible study? at a barbecue? they told me you were omnipresent. you're can't be in theology, can you? or apologetics. what about the downtrodden? i didn't quite hear you among the addicts. maybe i missed you among the homeless. i know you're not on tv. or radio. or the papers. or magazines. you're not at the mall. or in food courts. you're not in fashion. i couldn't find you in band tees. or striped shirts. or anywhere else in my closet. you're not in my laundry. or hanging on the bathroom hooks. you're not in the mirror when i look into it. you're not there when it looks back. i am godless. i started searching too late and i've stopped searching too early. you're an exiled king. and i am no man's land. Labels: christianity, defeat Genusfrog [
10:22 am ]
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1 comments
 
Sunday, July 22, 2007
 ROMANCE IS CHICKENSHITBrodie: Holy shit, Brandi dumped you. Wait a second, aren’t you two supposed to go to Florida? TS: Yeah. Should’ve left this morning. Oh, it gets worse… I was gonna propose to her. Brodie: Where? TS: The Universal tour Brodie: Are you kidding? What part? TS: When Jaws pops out of the water. (silence) Brodie: That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. TS: Well too bad I’m not trying to marry you. - Mallrats. Romance – i know a few guys who have a pretty different concept of what it is compared to girls. quite unfortunately for them and me, though, romance happens to be one of those things whom girls have the monopoly on – not least of all in the genre of weddings. romance to me is a girl secretly going off to play arcade fire on full blast if i’m having a bad day. but what do i know, romance is supposed to be about three-tiered plastic cakes, meaningless pyramidal wine glass stackups, spooky candle lighting ceremonies, tons of lace and flowers and the one to never forget – the magical diamond that quantifies love. or have you never heard that love is a scientifically calculable entity, measured in no unit other than karats, plural. some girls will call that romance. i call that chickenshit. the more weddings i go to, the more convinced i am that weddings are planned by three parties: the two sets of in-laws and the bride. cos i know lots of guys who get married and i know exactly what kinda guys they are. they don’t dig pink ribbons. but i don’t know what is it about weddings but all these men, who normally display more than the standard dose of personality, trade all that in on their wedding day in exchange for a smile of supposed enjoyment when nothing about their wedding reflects their personality. christians like to ask men to rise up, boring, boring cliché. you know where men should rise up? at the wedding planner’s. i’d like to go to a wedding where half of what i see reflects the groom’s personality. sadly, i’ve never been to one. they’re all full of flowers and sentimental vagina music. one day, when i get married, i’d like to have a wedding that breaks all the conventions of what we think weddings are. not for the sake of being different or special but for the sake of honesty. why can’t people start their marriages with honest weddings? why do we try so hard to construct perfect weddings only to be let down when that mythical entrypoint cannot be recreated in the mundanities of daily living? why can’t we just be ourselves and throw wedding parties that look like us? if a guy likes 90s grunge and his girl has no preference, why should anyone have to hear even one note of the wedding march? do you see my point? it’s just an unending cycle of eating and vomiting the same culture till you no longer know what the constituents mean anymore, you just know they gotta be there. somewhere in this world, i know there’s a brand of romance that comes completely honest, a romance that reflects the unique identities of the romantics, and i know that when i see the face of this romance, it is something i will love. when i see that brand of romance, i will get married. Genusfrog [
12:19 pm ]
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2 comments
Friday, July 20, 2007
 GOODBYE NOBODIESGetting rid of people from your life is rarely a fun thing. heck, sometimes it can be a bloody messy job. but on rare occassions, getting rid of people can be fun. one such rare occassion is deleting obsolete entities from your phone. i've run out of space to add new contacts, so it turns out that there are just too many people in my phonebook whose identity i am unsure of, who have double entries or whom i will practically never ever call again. the following is a list of the strange and mysterious entities whom i'm axing from my phonebook. good luck folks. i'll never call you again. Astro mr saran Astro murali Astro telemarketing Catherine Connie Darren Deric Emma Fatul (accidentally deleted this guy. final cut expert. real friendly. will ask for his number again) Grace Hasriq Hotel Leewa Hot Chocolat Cafe Jackie (Schroff?) James Dean on location (that's ernest's old office) Jane Joyce Kevin K Tel Leen May Mr Poon Mr Wee Mystery M Hotel Nasrin Nick NTV HR Phoebe Chan (who da heck is this?? i've got both her landline and office number!!) Projet Khairul Projet Zul PTM Roy Salman Eastin Selvam (basist) Sgt Shahidan Starbucks Taipan Stella D&T Surinder SM FAM Telekom Directory The Star hq Tommy Video Victoria Station PJ Woon Zariff Zul TMnet Labels: friendship Genusfrog [
11:22 am ]
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Thursday, July 19, 2007
TO QUOTE: ON EQUIVALENCE"I'm convinced that Williams is the culinary equivalent of Arcade Fire." - Me Labels: quote Genusfrog [
8:26 pm ]
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
TO QUOTE: ON STABBING"True friends stab you in the front." - Oscar Wilde, A picture of Dorian Gray Labels: quote Genusfrog [
1:58 pm ]
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2 comments
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
TO QUOTE: ON MADONNA WEARING FUR"I wouldn't be surprised if she made that African boy she adopted into a coat and wore him for fifteen minutes, then threw it away." - Morrissey on Madonna's fondness for fur, Gigwise.com Labels: quote Genusfrog [
4:25 pm ]
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Friday, July 13, 2007
TO QUOTE: ON LOVE, CAPITALISM AND MARXISM"When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary." - Will O'Brien, Alternative Seminary, Philadelphia Labels: quote Genusfrog [
11:18 am ]
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Wednesday, July 11, 2007
 SOFTNESS IS OVERRATEDSoft toilet paper is overrated. I just bought a bag of toilet paper. for all intents and purposes, it looks like a cheapass economy brand, cos the packaging has really crappy design, it's not a major brand and the paper itself is greyish. It's called Soft. Cuties Soft, for precision sake. apparently, softness is a real selling point when it comes to these things. i remember this ad on tv in the eighties when this entire family went round the supermarket hugging toilet paper. but is softness really that big a deal when it comes to the proverbial wipe of your ass? personally, i can think of a few other criteria to rival that cushionny feeling. Alignment Take this for example. i can't stand it when the different plies of tissue don't line up properly, making it virtually impossible to know exactly how many squares of toilet paper you're tearing off. and when alignment between the plies goes, then both ends of your stretch of toilet paper is likely gonna be thin, and i hate how i feel confused by how i'm going to fold the tissue into one neat square after that. if any of the top brands can promise me properly aligned tissue squares, i'll be really impressed. Perforative faithfulness So they've got perforations on toilet paper to tell you where to tear. the assumption is that if you rip the tissue according to the perforations, it's gonna rip along the dotted line. not always so. i've seen many a toilet roll fail this perforation faithfulness test, where what begins as a mundane rip of toilet paper ends up as a catastrophic mess, with paper ripping vertically, diagonally, in thin strips along the edges and different plies going in different directions. i mean, for crying out loud, if they don't make toilet paper to rip according to the designated perforations, then they could at least have the decency to not deceive me about it by inserting said divisions. otherwise, a toilet roll that rips faithfully according to the squares is something to be esteemed. Absorption Some toilet paper just don't soak things up. take water for instance. i've ripped up squares of toilet paper to dry spilled drink over a table but the paper just seems to get soggy while the water content on the table doesn't seem to go down. this is annoying. of course, there are days when you don't need to pay that extra dollar for premium absorption. wiping a dead bug off your mirror, or wiping your ass on all occassions bar diarrhoea, for instance, calls for no apparent need for heavy duty sucking up of liquids. so if quality really is about doing all the neccessary and nothing more nor less, then i think maybe toilet paper needs to enter a heightened nicheing to cater for the variety of needs out there. Roll adhesion There are days when every last square counts. there are days when they count so bad, you really, really, really would pay over the odds just to have five, six, seven more squares to tie you off for the next thirty seconds. on days like these, it really matters that the last few squares fall off the middle core roll nicely, allowing you to use those precious two squares. heck no. i've seen too many toilet rolls go by where the last few squares are all stuck like glue to the middle core roll thingy. i hate that. it's so unnecessary. and i swear, i say this not out of frugality but out of the pure, honest desperation i've had before when faced with a finishing roll and one too few squares left. Penultimate deception Some brands of toilet paper are just out to trick you. as it sits there by the wall, it looks like there's at least three or four more shits left in it, but as soon as you pull, the damn thing just runs out. that sucks man. because sometimes, there isn't even enough left in there for the shit you got on hand (figuratively speaking). why do some toilet paper deceive you so bad just as you reach the end of a roll? i mean, i'd like to see a toilet roll accurately depict its impending demise. i've been caught out too many times with their last-minute lies. So as i've hoped to have made it abundantly apparent, being soft is not the be all and end all of toilet paper marketing. far from it. a mega ultra soft roll of tissue that fails all of the above tests ranks as a crap entry into the wonderful world of toilet commerce. Labels: stuff Genusfrog [
1:47 pm ]
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1 comments
Sunday, July 08, 2007
 DISSONANCEI'm not sure about your posse, but mine aren't perfect. we won't grace magazine covers, get sporting and cosmetic endorsements or have our faces blown up for the big screen (ok, some of them will - that would be my fault). still, the point is that we're not the kind of people who set society's benchmarks for desirebility. at some point, we've all had zits to match our fart jokes, bad haircuts, weight issues and pitching problems. which is apt, therefore, that there's a growing culture in at least this dengkil squad group of friends that we now sing our happy birthdays dissonant style. yeah, that's off-key, off-tune, off-timing happy birthday belted in public spaces, usually at full volume with - what should eventually grow into - no shame. or as adrian says, "it's too easy to sing happy birthday in tune. everybody knows how to do it". but ask your neighbourhood songbird to do a bad rendition of happy birthday and she probably won't know where to start. i like that - the celebration of dissonance. it's not a celebration of mediocrity, it's saying that at least once in a year, we're cool with the fact that we won't always hit most, if any, of life's high notes, and we celebrate instead the fun that we can have while hitting all those bum notes. i know when we sing happy birthday out of tune, we're not thinking too deep about it. we're just having fun making the birthday person feel embarassed. but now that i'm thinking about it, i think i like it a lot. Labels: friendship Genusfrog [
3:00 pm ]
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2 comments
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
 MULTIPLE CHOICEWhat should we eat for lunch? what should i wear tomorrow? in ocean of noise, win butler asked, "who here among us still believes in choice?" how much choice do we really have? are our lives closer at heart to multiple choice tests than writing freeform poetry? if you're at gunpoint, and someone tells you to do something, sure it's easy to say you didn't have much of a choice. but how much options are there for the rest of us who don't have pistols on our heads? i have free will. that's one thing. but doesn't our fundamental need for self-preservation render whatever concept of choice we have in life merely cosmetic? even if all i had to plug this self-preserving trend was to die, how much of an option can you say that is? i counted - one. i wish i could live a freeform poetry life. the kind of life whose paper by default has no lines, where the only predictable thing is inconsistent anarchy. but maybe i'm not ready to live that kind of life. maybe i wasn't created with the right infrastructure to handle an existence that has no guidance whatsoever, no models, no precedent, no narrowing down of possibilities. so what if i'm not entirely chuffed because every once in a while, all the possible options, including death, look like compromised solutions? maybe it's only because i'm an immature entity, unable to process the infinity that comes with a blank page. maybe that's why i'm still checking boxes. Labels: defeat, philosophy |