Time to bid Blogger farewell.
(See below. Incidentally, this is post #215 - note the significance, or lack thereof.)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Altered State
We've moved.
Need we say more?
Yes, actually. We are waiting for wordpress to come up with a fun importer. Then we shall be exonerate.
Update your links!
Need we say more?
Yes, actually. We are waiting for wordpress to come up with a fun importer. Then we shall be exonerate.
Update your links!
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Visions
Happy and belated New Year.
I have attempted the arcane business of blogging, but have never seemed to be able to publish anything of sufficient merit and impact these past few weeks. For this I am profoundly unapologetic, in full awareness that at times a blog, as fields of crops, requires an extensive period of lying fallow such that mysterious biological processes may reenergize the soil (by absorbing carcase of small insects, perhaps?) What I have just mentioned is probably nonsense. Blogs cannot lie fallow, or their owners will find that whatever sagging readership they have previously mantained will disappear like autumn leaves come the winter. But when one's ideas are similarly fallow, or if the tender of the crop is otherwise engaged in activities of another nature, then it is inevitable that such things must occur. Therefore I shall acquiscese to the odes of sloth.
Now, come the New Year, I find that once again I have the compulsion to blog. I am unable to imagine why. Several times I have contemplated moving to Wordpress; subject to the apathy of the co-blogger Nova, whom I approached concerning this rather pressing issue, who replied with a random syllable or nine. Doubtless Blogger's all pervasive AI censorship will quail at the mere mention of disloyalty; well, I say to thee, Blogger, if thou wishest to mantain thy devoted slaves, thou wouldst do better to improve thy blog templates.
The question of Blogs comes once again to the forefront of introspection. Why do we blog? Why don't we? Are blogs what they seem, exegeses of expositulary intent, ego-trips, or hopeful attempts to garner notoriety? And why do some blogs lie fallow, why does compulsion, that serpentine monster of caprice, rear and strike at the strangest moments? For you must have known times where you, perhaps, sunk in capitulation to some drudgery or another, are seized with a brilliant snippet of insight that you cannot bear to keep to yourself, but when you finally sit at your computers, fingers poised to deliver your grand expositions, you falter and say, "Mayhap, I, myself, art not of the Temper for the commission of my Thought upon the flimsy paper of the Web." For, myself I must admit that such has happened oftentime, and is partially responsible for the Fallowness of this Blog.
The Fallowness shall probably be a fixture of this Blog for a long time. Perhaps, as the paradox of leisure goes, I shall be compelled to blog more, but somehow I doubt this. But you can never tell when the Blog-muse falls on your shoulders and you have no choice, as the automaton hath, but to sit at your computer and type. I yearn for the days that I could post twice a day. Those days rest, but perhaps I can live them once more, someday. For indeed they are synonymous with the nostalgia-coloured lens of hindsight, that one never fully appreciates the present, but when it is the past. Truly, is nostalgia biased, or are we? Also, was that comment a product of bias? When we perceive the present, do we see with present-tinted cynicism?
In other news I have been reading the Book of the New Sun. It is said to be dense in several ways. It leaves you with an almost indescribable feeling of awe at the sheer imaginative scope and alieness of Severian's society; and yet a feeling of frustration at the inscrutability of the narrative. But then I have not finished, thus comments are reserved for when I do, in the not-so-distant future. I wish, however, that the science fiction tones and settings were more pronounced; versimilitude of the barbarity of this future only goes so far; suspension of disbelief, the fourth wall we keep banging our bodies against when reading a book, is sufficient if spice may be had for the sacrifice of such.
***
I have attempted the arcane business of blogging, but have never seemed to be able to publish anything of sufficient merit and impact these past few weeks. For this I am profoundly unapologetic, in full awareness that at times a blog, as fields of crops, requires an extensive period of lying fallow such that mysterious biological processes may reenergize the soil (by absorbing carcase of small insects, perhaps?) What I have just mentioned is probably nonsense. Blogs cannot lie fallow, or their owners will find that whatever sagging readership they have previously mantained will disappear like autumn leaves come the winter. But when one's ideas are similarly fallow, or if the tender of the crop is otherwise engaged in activities of another nature, then it is inevitable that such things must occur. Therefore I shall acquiscese to the odes of sloth.
Now, come the New Year, I find that once again I have the compulsion to blog. I am unable to imagine why. Several times I have contemplated moving to Wordpress; subject to the apathy of the co-blogger Nova, whom I approached concerning this rather pressing issue, who replied with a random syllable or nine. Doubtless Blogger's all pervasive AI censorship will quail at the mere mention of disloyalty; well, I say to thee, Blogger, if thou wishest to mantain thy devoted slaves, thou wouldst do better to improve thy blog templates.
The question of Blogs comes once again to the forefront of introspection. Why do we blog? Why don't we? Are blogs what they seem, exegeses of expositulary intent, ego-trips, or hopeful attempts to garner notoriety? And why do some blogs lie fallow, why does compulsion, that serpentine monster of caprice, rear and strike at the strangest moments? For you must have known times where you, perhaps, sunk in capitulation to some drudgery or another, are seized with a brilliant snippet of insight that you cannot bear to keep to yourself, but when you finally sit at your computers, fingers poised to deliver your grand expositions, you falter and say, "Mayhap, I, myself, art not of the Temper for the commission of my Thought upon the flimsy paper of the Web." For, myself I must admit that such has happened oftentime, and is partially responsible for the Fallowness of this Blog.
The Fallowness shall probably be a fixture of this Blog for a long time. Perhaps, as the paradox of leisure goes, I shall be compelled to blog more, but somehow I doubt this. But you can never tell when the Blog-muse falls on your shoulders and you have no choice, as the automaton hath, but to sit at your computer and type. I yearn for the days that I could post twice a day. Those days rest, but perhaps I can live them once more, someday. For indeed they are synonymous with the nostalgia-coloured lens of hindsight, that one never fully appreciates the present, but when it is the past. Truly, is nostalgia biased, or are we? Also, was that comment a product of bias? When we perceive the present, do we see with present-tinted cynicism?
In other news I have been reading the Book of the New Sun. It is said to be dense in several ways. It leaves you with an almost indescribable feeling of awe at the sheer imaginative scope and alieness of Severian's society; and yet a feeling of frustration at the inscrutability of the narrative. But then I have not finished, thus comments are reserved for when I do, in the not-so-distant future. I wish, however, that the science fiction tones and settings were more pronounced; versimilitude of the barbarity of this future only goes so far; suspension of disbelief, the fourth wall we keep banging our bodies against when reading a book, is sufficient if spice may be had for the sacrifice of such.
***
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Usual and Unusual
The last 24 hours have been unusual on several counts.
1. I appear to have temporarily ceased being a bum. I've finally produced the requisite 1,600 words for TOK, with thanks (and no thanks) to such eminent personalities as Nicholas Alchin and Noam Chomsky. Also, in an unprecedented act of early wakefulness, I'm typing this out at approximately 8:30 AM. This is, I suspect, due to divine intervention, seeing as nothing short of obligation (with consequences for not meeting) generally works.
2. The weather yesterday was very pleasant, at least by my standards. It was cool, moderately humid, and the sun hardly showed its face. Later in the afternoon, there was light rain accompanied with a scattering of thunder. Is good. I like. Especially because Delhi winters tend to be unbearably dry, and rain is rare.
3. The internet experienced its first prolonged outage since I came here. That, combined with the petulance of the electricity, might have severely infuriated me - were it not for the fact that my Macbook has appreciable battery life, and we presently possess a power backup. So there, state electricity board.
4. I started on my first decent read in a while. This is because I have been, variously, running around the city, going to other cities, meeting relatives, and engaging in other time-wasting but moderately useful activities. Like reading my TOK text for the first-ever time. As such, many thanks to Amartya Sen for a book with an irresistible title, The Argumentative Indian. (Interestingly, and irrelevantly, I came across an article in the newspaper today stating that the same Sen fainted for a few minutes in a restaurant on a visit to Dhaka, owing to exhaustion. He is still there, I believe, and in good health.)
At this point, I have decided to dispense with unusual. In other, more usual news, today welcomes another day of blessed bummery, bummation, or bumming, however you choose to corrupt the language or imply shades of meaning. Somewhat more interestingly, I seem to have forgotten the meaning of the terms "History IA" and "CAS records". Please enlighten.
- 9:01 AM, December 27th 2006
1. I appear to have temporarily ceased being a bum. I've finally produced the requisite 1,600 words for TOK, with thanks (and no thanks) to such eminent personalities as Nicholas Alchin and Noam Chomsky. Also, in an unprecedented act of early wakefulness, I'm typing this out at approximately 8:30 AM. This is, I suspect, due to divine intervention, seeing as nothing short of obligation (with consequences for not meeting) generally works.
2. The weather yesterday was very pleasant, at least by my standards. It was cool, moderately humid, and the sun hardly showed its face. Later in the afternoon, there was light rain accompanied with a scattering of thunder. Is good. I like. Especially because Delhi winters tend to be unbearably dry, and rain is rare.
3. The internet experienced its first prolonged outage since I came here. That, combined with the petulance of the electricity, might have severely infuriated me - were it not for the fact that my Macbook has appreciable battery life, and we presently possess a power backup. So there, state electricity board.
4. I started on my first decent read in a while. This is because I have been, variously, running around the city, going to other cities, meeting relatives, and engaging in other time-wasting but moderately useful activities. Like reading my TOK text for the first-ever time. As such, many thanks to Amartya Sen for a book with an irresistible title, The Argumentative Indian. (Interestingly, and irrelevantly, I came across an article in the newspaper today stating that the same Sen fainted for a few minutes in a restaurant on a visit to Dhaka, owing to exhaustion. He is still there, I believe, and in good health.)
At this point, I have decided to dispense with unusual. In other, more usual news, today welcomes another day of blessed bummery, bummation, or bumming, however you choose to corrupt the language or imply shades of meaning. Somewhat more interestingly, I seem to have forgotten the meaning of the terms "History IA" and "CAS records". Please enlighten.
- 9:01 AM, December 27th 2006
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Japan
is a very interesting place. I’ve been here for about five days, and am currently at Narita eating at the same café where collinear and I rushed to fill out our OM style and prop forms, which we were actually supposed to do a week before. Their menu has changed somewhat though; instead of beef stew and pizza like the last time, I’m currently having curry and naan. Which reminds me of our OM Karan jokes: Together we can make beautiful chapatti! Ask any omer for details.
Anyhow: quite frankly, I’ve always disliked the whole Wapanese, or pseudo-Japanese, culture that seems to have sprung out everywhere with a tv and access to Naruto. Seriously, nothing boils the blood quite like a bevy of 16 year old pimpled white teens/ah lians with yellow hair and ultra high boots doing a “Kawaiii neee!, or having a conversation with someone who adds the suffix “-San” to the end of your name about twenty times in a row in order to sound like a four year old Japanese boy. Thankfully, the real thing is far, far better.
I started the trip at Club Med Sapporo.
First, lets start with a quick check: do YOU know where Club Med Sapporo is?
Well yes, aside from being in Sapporo.
No?
Good, thought so.
Unfortunately though, for some unfathomable reason, even though it takes a 7 hour plane ride, two 2 hour train rides and THEN a 30 minute bus ride to get there, the place was SWARMING with Singaporeans. Not just any Singaporeans too; Acsians. They even outnumbered the Japanese! As a result, almost every conversation in the next three days began with “HEY YOU! Class of 7_ right?! Do you know [string of entirely random names]? My son’s from ACS too, is yours?” and so on. I can almost see US doing it thirty years down the road…the Class of 08, hah. Doesn’t quite sound the same.
The huge AC crowd did have its benefits though. I met a few people from our school, most notably Josh (not Hoe, the Indian one) from sec 3 GEP and OM. We spent many memorable moments falling down spectacularly from the steepest hills we could get our hands (or rather, feet) on, accosting the hill with our skiis and snowboards. Unfortunately, because the ski lifts weren’t open yet, we had to pound our own ski slope by packing the soft snow with our skiis, a task which left muscles we never knew existed burning. Consequently, I am now well prepared for a subsequent life as an ox or miscellaneous farm animal.
Club Med has always been a bucketful of fun because of three things:
1) Really interesting people
2) Very challenging activities you wont normally do
and
3) Terrific food.
I must say, Club Med Sapporo hits all three counts square on with a large sledgehammer, and if you ever want a holiday experience that doesn’t involve seeing Shinto Shrine after Shinto Shrine, I highly recommend it. For your sake though, don’t go during the Singaporean school holidays.
After Club Med, I went to Tokyo. Here I witnessed the full spectacle of Japanese fashion: everyone fell into three broad categories – Over-Fifty, Goth, and Hobo. I saw a man with more holes in his jeans than there was denim, wearing a cap with four different colours, and a shirt that had some badly mangled English idiom with “Sex!” written in purple all over it. I figured that the only way anyone could possibly outdo the Japanese tendency toward outrageous clothing is if they wore pajamas. Which, naturally, is what I did. I walked around Harajuku, the trendiest teeny-popper area, dressed in my OM green pajamas (with thermals underneath, naturally, because it was 2 degrees Celcius). It was fun, and several passerbys actually thought it was a good idea for an outfit. Hah.
There are several things about Japan that I admire, chief of which is their architecture. Tokyo doesn’t have the gigantomania of Dubai or Hongkong. It doesn’t have terribly tall buildings, and the famous Tokyo Tower is just a mundane radio broadcasting station. Yet, there’s something inexplicably quaint about the way a Japanese building looks, a something which a HDB block, for example, glaringly lacks. When you step into a Japanese room, it may not use the most expensive Italian marble, nor have huge neo-classical columns, but it looks and feels good. Using simple wood, concrete and neutral colors, they somehow manage to create an environment that is both comfortable and elegant at the same time. It’s rare that one sees this kind of understated beauty anywhere else.
Second of all, I love their obsession with perfection. The food tastes good again not because they cook it in any special way, but because they obsess over every last detail of the ingredients, from the fineness of the flour to the temperature at which they store the sashimi. The ski slopes were closed when I went because there was a tiny patch of grass visible at one section of the slope. Their contraptions, such as the toilet with more buttons than a stealth bomber, to quote The Sims, are almost comical in their huge range of functions.
Thirdly, the weather is amazing, although probably not through any effort by the Japanese unless someone really invented one of those Gundam climate control things. I swear, there’s something in the air that makes everyone look young. In Club Med, for example, I met a Japanese guy who could have passed for a seventeen year old back home, only to find out that he was twenty nine and married.
Last of all, I am amazed by their civic-mindedness, for lack of a better word. One of the most striking things I saw was when a Japanese man took a drink from the dispenser in an airline lounge where I was and spilled a few drops. He spent the next ten minutes searching for a napkin, meticulously wiping the table where the spill was, which by then had already evaporated for the most part, and then walking around to search for a recycling bin for the paper even though there was a trashbin right in front of him.
Naturally, there is probably a much darker side to all of this that a casual tourist such as myself will never see. A problem that is rather apparent, however, is the almost derogatory portrayal of women. You know there is something amiss when even the parking ticket dispenser has a cartoon teenage girl dressed in a sailor uniform and a very short skirt bowing to you repeatedly on the touchscreen.
Secondly, the way everyone seems to be excessively polite, women especially, seems to have led to the loss of significance of courtesy, with most people ignoring you when you say excuse me or please. They need an Un-Courteous Lion.
Finally, it seemed to me as if they placed undue importance on appearances; while roaming Harajuku in pajamas, I realized that there were only two kinds of shops: those that sold NOTHING but four floors of cosmetics, and those that sold four floors of Lolita and Gothic clothing. It was ridiculous. A sizeable percentage of the women I walked past along the street wore enough makeup to paint several houses, with outfits so extravagant they leave you wondering how much time was spent assembling them.
Nevertheless, I must say that I have had a good time. In fact, some things reminded me of events in Foundation, that fantastic book by my favourite author that our dear friend Collinear so graciously spoiled for me so many years ago. The double decker subway train with seats on top that required passes, for one. Also, I was reminded of a comment by a settler in some new colony in a distant part of Asimov’s galaxy, envying the culture and history of the Earthlings. Being in Japan made me wonder what it must be like to stem from, and be bound by, traditions and etiquette thousands of years old. It made me wonder what it would be like to grow up in a place which hundreds of generations of my forebears toiled to build, and in which everything has been done before. Maybe it explains why all the artsy Japanese films seem to reveal some kind of profound loneliness and frustration with life in general. Ah well; that’s yet another story, for yet another day.
The plane’s about to take off and the stewardess is saying something incomprehensible in Japanese that probably means she’s going to throw my preciousss BlackBook out of the window if I don’t go. Muchos homework awaits my return, and I currently face the prospect of spending my 17th birthday in a military facility in Sichuan, trying to explain the Theory of Conservation of Energy and geosynchronous orbit in traditional Chinese.
Exciting.
Anyhow: quite frankly, I’ve always disliked the whole Wapanese, or pseudo-Japanese, culture that seems to have sprung out everywhere with a tv and access to Naruto. Seriously, nothing boils the blood quite like a bevy of 16 year old pimpled white teens/ah lians with yellow hair and ultra high boots doing a “Kawaiii neee!, or having a conversation with someone who adds the suffix “-San” to the end of your name about twenty times in a row in order to sound like a four year old Japanese boy. Thankfully, the real thing is far, far better.
I started the trip at Club Med Sapporo.
First, lets start with a quick check: do YOU know where Club Med Sapporo is?
Well yes, aside from being in Sapporo.
No?
Good, thought so.
Unfortunately though, for some unfathomable reason, even though it takes a 7 hour plane ride, two 2 hour train rides and THEN a 30 minute bus ride to get there, the place was SWARMING with Singaporeans. Not just any Singaporeans too; Acsians. They even outnumbered the Japanese! As a result, almost every conversation in the next three days began with “HEY YOU! Class of 7_ right?! Do you know [string of entirely random names]? My son’s from ACS too, is yours?” and so on. I can almost see US doing it thirty years down the road…the Class of 08, hah. Doesn’t quite sound the same.
The huge AC crowd did have its benefits though. I met a few people from our school, most notably Josh (not Hoe, the Indian one) from sec 3 GEP and OM. We spent many memorable moments falling down spectacularly from the steepest hills we could get our hands (or rather, feet) on, accosting the hill with our skiis and snowboards. Unfortunately, because the ski lifts weren’t open yet, we had to pound our own ski slope by packing the soft snow with our skiis, a task which left muscles we never knew existed burning. Consequently, I am now well prepared for a subsequent life as an ox or miscellaneous farm animal.
Club Med has always been a bucketful of fun because of three things:
1) Really interesting people
2) Very challenging activities you wont normally do
and
3) Terrific food.
I must say, Club Med Sapporo hits all three counts square on with a large sledgehammer, and if you ever want a holiday experience that doesn’t involve seeing Shinto Shrine after Shinto Shrine, I highly recommend it. For your sake though, don’t go during the Singaporean school holidays.
After Club Med, I went to Tokyo. Here I witnessed the full spectacle of Japanese fashion: everyone fell into three broad categories – Over-Fifty, Goth, and Hobo. I saw a man with more holes in his jeans than there was denim, wearing a cap with four different colours, and a shirt that had some badly mangled English idiom with “Sex!” written in purple all over it. I figured that the only way anyone could possibly outdo the Japanese tendency toward outrageous clothing is if they wore pajamas. Which, naturally, is what I did. I walked around Harajuku, the trendiest teeny-popper area, dressed in my OM green pajamas (with thermals underneath, naturally, because it was 2 degrees Celcius). It was fun, and several passerbys actually thought it was a good idea for an outfit. Hah.
There are several things about Japan that I admire, chief of which is their architecture. Tokyo doesn’t have the gigantomania of Dubai or Hongkong. It doesn’t have terribly tall buildings, and the famous Tokyo Tower is just a mundane radio broadcasting station. Yet, there’s something inexplicably quaint about the way a Japanese building looks, a something which a HDB block, for example, glaringly lacks. When you step into a Japanese room, it may not use the most expensive Italian marble, nor have huge neo-classical columns, but it looks and feels good. Using simple wood, concrete and neutral colors, they somehow manage to create an environment that is both comfortable and elegant at the same time. It’s rare that one sees this kind of understated beauty anywhere else.
Second of all, I love their obsession with perfection. The food tastes good again not because they cook it in any special way, but because they obsess over every last detail of the ingredients, from the fineness of the flour to the temperature at which they store the sashimi. The ski slopes were closed when I went because there was a tiny patch of grass visible at one section of the slope. Their contraptions, such as the toilet with more buttons than a stealth bomber, to quote The Sims, are almost comical in their huge range of functions.
Thirdly, the weather is amazing, although probably not through any effort by the Japanese unless someone really invented one of those Gundam climate control things. I swear, there’s something in the air that makes everyone look young. In Club Med, for example, I met a Japanese guy who could have passed for a seventeen year old back home, only to find out that he was twenty nine and married.
Last of all, I am amazed by their civic-mindedness, for lack of a better word. One of the most striking things I saw was when a Japanese man took a drink from the dispenser in an airline lounge where I was and spilled a few drops. He spent the next ten minutes searching for a napkin, meticulously wiping the table where the spill was, which by then had already evaporated for the most part, and then walking around to search for a recycling bin for the paper even though there was a trashbin right in front of him.
Naturally, there is probably a much darker side to all of this that a casual tourist such as myself will never see. A problem that is rather apparent, however, is the almost derogatory portrayal of women. You know there is something amiss when even the parking ticket dispenser has a cartoon teenage girl dressed in a sailor uniform and a very short skirt bowing to you repeatedly on the touchscreen.
Secondly, the way everyone seems to be excessively polite, women especially, seems to have led to the loss of significance of courtesy, with most people ignoring you when you say excuse me or please. They need an Un-Courteous Lion.
Finally, it seemed to me as if they placed undue importance on appearances; while roaming Harajuku in pajamas, I realized that there were only two kinds of shops: those that sold NOTHING but four floors of cosmetics, and those that sold four floors of Lolita and Gothic clothing. It was ridiculous. A sizeable percentage of the women I walked past along the street wore enough makeup to paint several houses, with outfits so extravagant they leave you wondering how much time was spent assembling them.
Nevertheless, I must say that I have had a good time. In fact, some things reminded me of events in Foundation, that fantastic book by my favourite author that our dear friend Collinear so graciously spoiled for me so many years ago. The double decker subway train with seats on top that required passes, for one. Also, I was reminded of a comment by a settler in some new colony in a distant part of Asimov’s galaxy, envying the culture and history of the Earthlings. Being in Japan made me wonder what it must be like to stem from, and be bound by, traditions and etiquette thousands of years old. It made me wonder what it would be like to grow up in a place which hundreds of generations of my forebears toiled to build, and in which everything has been done before. Maybe it explains why all the artsy Japanese films seem to reveal some kind of profound loneliness and frustration with life in general. Ah well; that’s yet another story, for yet another day.
The plane’s about to take off and the stewardess is saying something incomprehensible in Japanese that probably means she’s going to throw my preciousss BlackBook out of the window if I don’t go. Muchos homework awaits my return, and I currently face the prospect of spending my 17th birthday in a military facility in Sichuan, trying to explain the Theory of Conservation of Energy and geosynchronous orbit in traditional Chinese.
Exciting.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
A Preponderance of Literature and Rants
I cannot for the life of me imagine why I read Pride and Prejudice. It is similar to reading Susanna Clarke after taking barbiturates, and without any magic whatsoever. (The reverse would have been much more appropriate, but I'm afraid sff has consumed my mind). The book is a whimsical exercise of extravagant manners and bursting with faint cries of approbation and frilly hats. Still, it is by no means an uninteresting book. Perhaps that is what makes it such an enduring classic.
Today I bought Peace and War, the Joe Haldeman omnibus consisting of all his Forever books (whatever). It is a most lovely book, with lovely red borders. I also borrowed The Book of the New Sun, after an abortive attempt at the NLB to scrounge for more Zelazny-related information. They, too, are most lovely books, and it pains me that I shall have to return them one day, especially as I am much convinced that I shall be liking these novels very much indeed, and I would be most miserable if they were not mine to reread whenever I wished. I have also The First Chronicles of Amber, which I purchased just before I came across a pristine copy of the Great Book of Amber in a second hand bookstore, an oversight for which I am greviously upset.
In an amazing stroke of fortune, I have come across three lovely bookstores at Vivocity and Orchard; PageOne, San, and Harris in Orchard MRT, and I expect I shall be patronizing them very often indeed.
***
V for Vendetta is an great movie in terms of plot and execution. The message was not as well-constructed as I expected. It is a rather formulaic tale about dystopia made spicy with the inclusion of the figure of V, whose introductory speech I have memorized. Still, I can't tell whether he is supposed to be a bomb-throwing anarchist or freedom fighter, and I am inclined to believe the latter, under the circumstances. V for Vendetta has lovely pacing and cinematography; the bombing of the Bailey sent shivers down my spine. The symbolism is rather shallow, especially the fetish on V and 5, but that's alright; it's a rather smart acknowledgement of historical events and a rambunctious character idiosyncrasy Moore and the directors after him could exploit for weirdness. In any case, a great, but not revolutionary, movie, for all the revolutionary claptrap it depicts, like blowing up Parliament - what barbaric splendor mixed up against terrible echoes of recent history, a heady but vaguely shocking dichotomy.
***
I must say I despise reviews that go, "This genre would be doomed if not for so-and-so, whose work has rescued the genre". It seems to me to be quite a dangerous, polemical, and unfairly critical statement that borders on exaggeration. Blase and jaded the professional reviewer may be, it is not up to his bibliomanic sensibilities to measure the worth of a book; if it is conventional yet well crafted and entertaining, and conveys its message arcoss effectively, then its a good book. No need to be groundbreaking or creative to make a work good. LOTR is by today's standards cliche; that does not make it unworthy of reading.
***
Saw EVIL FOR EVIL today in Kinokuniya, the middle book in the Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker. I'll have to wait until the trade paperback is published. Curse these publishers! And their large pricetags. And their big, bulky novels. Pah.
R Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought
Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora
Aaron Allston's Betrayal
Steven Erikson's Bonehunters
These are a few books that have been denied me by virtue of their hardbackedness or tradepaperbackish vibes. The Mass Market Paperback is an object of immense beauty. After all that has passed, it is beauty.
The first Golden Compass pictures have been released. Daniel Craig as Asriel. How...amazing of him.
***
Today I bought Peace and War, the Joe Haldeman omnibus consisting of all his Forever books (whatever). It is a most lovely book, with lovely red borders. I also borrowed The Book of the New Sun, after an abortive attempt at the NLB to scrounge for more Zelazny-related information. They, too, are most lovely books, and it pains me that I shall have to return them one day, especially as I am much convinced that I shall be liking these novels very much indeed, and I would be most miserable if they were not mine to reread whenever I wished. I have also The First Chronicles of Amber, which I purchased just before I came across a pristine copy of the Great Book of Amber in a second hand bookstore, an oversight for which I am greviously upset.
In an amazing stroke of fortune, I have come across three lovely bookstores at Vivocity and Orchard; PageOne, San, and Harris in Orchard MRT, and I expect I shall be patronizing them very often indeed.
***
V for Vendetta is an great movie in terms of plot and execution. The message was not as well-constructed as I expected. It is a rather formulaic tale about dystopia made spicy with the inclusion of the figure of V, whose introductory speech I have memorized. Still, I can't tell whether he is supposed to be a bomb-throwing anarchist or freedom fighter, and I am inclined to believe the latter, under the circumstances. V for Vendetta has lovely pacing and cinematography; the bombing of the Bailey sent shivers down my spine. The symbolism is rather shallow, especially the fetish on V and 5, but that's alright; it's a rather smart acknowledgement of historical events and a rambunctious character idiosyncrasy Moore and the directors after him could exploit for weirdness. In any case, a great, but not revolutionary, movie, for all the revolutionary claptrap it depicts, like blowing up Parliament - what barbaric splendor mixed up against terrible echoes of recent history, a heady but vaguely shocking dichotomy.
***
I must say I despise reviews that go, "This genre would be doomed if not for so-and-so, whose work has rescued the genre". It seems to me to be quite a dangerous, polemical, and unfairly critical statement that borders on exaggeration. Blase and jaded the professional reviewer may be, it is not up to his bibliomanic sensibilities to measure the worth of a book; if it is conventional yet well crafted and entertaining, and conveys its message arcoss effectively, then its a good book. No need to be groundbreaking or creative to make a work good. LOTR is by today's standards cliche; that does not make it unworthy of reading.
***
Saw EVIL FOR EVIL today in Kinokuniya, the middle book in the Engineer Trilogy by KJ Parker. I'll have to wait until the trade paperback is published. Curse these publishers! And their large pricetags. And their big, bulky novels. Pah.
R Scott Bakker's The Thousandfold Thought
Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora
Aaron Allston's Betrayal
Steven Erikson's Bonehunters
These are a few books that have been denied me by virtue of their hardbackedness or tradepaperbackish vibes. The Mass Market Paperback is an object of immense beauty. After all that has passed, it is beauty.
The first Golden Compass pictures have been released. Daniel Craig as Asriel. How...amazing of him.
***
Monday, November 27, 2006
Crimson Flame
Tell
The monster resembled a giant lizard. It stormed through the city, breathing flame and burning thousands. Its huge claws picked people off the street and threw them into its colossal jaws. Its muscular legs toppled smaller buildings as it continued its dreadful march through the crowded city center.
Show
The terrible fire lizard towered over the streets of the doomed city. Men and women scattered, screaming, before the great monster's inexorable approach. It opened its cavernous jaws and breathed forth an immense gout of blinding crimson flame. The dreadful conflagaration scorched the asphalt, gouging and crisping the hardened tarmac. One man, not fast enough, was caught in the terrible path of flame and burnt like a torch, screaming in purest agony. But worse was to come. The massive bulk of the creature bore down on the streets. Its claws flexed and clenched, grasping one woman like a vise. Her helpless screams did not avail her. The monster, ravenous, brought his prize catch up to his massive jaws and consumed the woman with a snap of those powerful muscles. Satiated, it roared a stentorian evocation of satisfaction, shaking the metropolis to the core; then it extended a huge, muscle strained leg and, with all its might, struck an old building with blinding speed. The structure collapsed in a damning crescendo of terrible noise of falling men. The dust cloud was infernal. Satisfied, the monster lumbered triumphantly on.
Purple
Only the Titans in their halcyon days could have availed the doomed city, its terrible fate having been foreordained by the tragic circumstance of inevitability. The scudding clouds dotting the empyrean above provided a stark counterpoint as the monstrous abomination ravaged the shaded avenues of the once splendid downtown. Hither did it approach on reptilian legs, its coming the dilatoriness of one who is aware of the inexorability of its terrible, absolute domination. The grand play of circumstance was thus begun, as the dread monster elected to release Hell itself in the form of a great, sweeping crimson cataclysm on the hapless populace, fleeing in blinded horror and panic. The molten heat of the consuming inferno scorched the veritable essence of the thirsting ground, sending up great bouts of smoke, black as the darkest shadow. The imitable torch caught an unfortunate soul in its fiery clutches, electing to consume him in a burst of ravenous flames. The mammoth beast was the instrument of blind desire. Its ravenous hunger now dominated its attention. Bending its considerable bulk, it thus reached down to clutch a woman in its vise-like grip. Slowly, the onrush of anticipation, unaffected by the woman's screams, bore down on it, and casually he tossed his impending snack into his jaws, a world of darkness and agony in the ribbed innards of the furnace of being. Roaring its saturnine satisfaction it reached out a leg and unleashed his murderous power onto the nearest structure. The hapless building held for a moment, then collapsed in a vast symphony of dust and death, the screams of those inside echoing the melody of Fate. Its aggression vented on a victim, it trod on, victorious but uncaring of the role that Fate had provided him.
Abstract
World of heat, sensation of restraint undeveloped, need and want blurred into unified symphony with the will - alien. Alienness. Assailed of speculative hunger and wanton devastation of artifical agony. Therefore the horrors, whence the crimson light of destruction. It burns and is satisfied. It its and is revenged. It unleashes strength in all its simplistic harmony, strength against cowardice, and turns, desiring to be sated to be hungered to be sated to be -
The monster resembled a giant lizard. It stormed through the city, breathing flame and burning thousands. Its huge claws picked people off the street and threw them into its colossal jaws. Its muscular legs toppled smaller buildings as it continued its dreadful march through the crowded city center.
Show
The terrible fire lizard towered over the streets of the doomed city. Men and women scattered, screaming, before the great monster's inexorable approach. It opened its cavernous jaws and breathed forth an immense gout of blinding crimson flame. The dreadful conflagaration scorched the asphalt, gouging and crisping the hardened tarmac. One man, not fast enough, was caught in the terrible path of flame and burnt like a torch, screaming in purest agony. But worse was to come. The massive bulk of the creature bore down on the streets. Its claws flexed and clenched, grasping one woman like a vise. Her helpless screams did not avail her. The monster, ravenous, brought his prize catch up to his massive jaws and consumed the woman with a snap of those powerful muscles. Satiated, it roared a stentorian evocation of satisfaction, shaking the metropolis to the core; then it extended a huge, muscle strained leg and, with all its might, struck an old building with blinding speed. The structure collapsed in a damning crescendo of terrible noise of falling men. The dust cloud was infernal. Satisfied, the monster lumbered triumphantly on.
Purple
Only the Titans in their halcyon days could have availed the doomed city, its terrible fate having been foreordained by the tragic circumstance of inevitability. The scudding clouds dotting the empyrean above provided a stark counterpoint as the monstrous abomination ravaged the shaded avenues of the once splendid downtown. Hither did it approach on reptilian legs, its coming the dilatoriness of one who is aware of the inexorability of its terrible, absolute domination. The grand play of circumstance was thus begun, as the dread monster elected to release Hell itself in the form of a great, sweeping crimson cataclysm on the hapless populace, fleeing in blinded horror and panic. The molten heat of the consuming inferno scorched the veritable essence of the thirsting ground, sending up great bouts of smoke, black as the darkest shadow. The imitable torch caught an unfortunate soul in its fiery clutches, electing to consume him in a burst of ravenous flames. The mammoth beast was the instrument of blind desire. Its ravenous hunger now dominated its attention. Bending its considerable bulk, it thus reached down to clutch a woman in its vise-like grip. Slowly, the onrush of anticipation, unaffected by the woman's screams, bore down on it, and casually he tossed his impending snack into his jaws, a world of darkness and agony in the ribbed innards of the furnace of being. Roaring its saturnine satisfaction it reached out a leg and unleashed his murderous power onto the nearest structure. The hapless building held for a moment, then collapsed in a vast symphony of dust and death, the screams of those inside echoing the melody of Fate. Its aggression vented on a victim, it trod on, victorious but uncaring of the role that Fate had provided him.
Abstract
World of heat, sensation of restraint undeveloped, need and want blurred into unified symphony with the will - alien. Alienness. Assailed of speculative hunger and wanton devastation of artifical agony. Therefore the horrors, whence the crimson light of destruction. It burns and is satisfied. It its and is revenged. It unleashes strength in all its simplistic harmony, strength against cowardice, and turns, desiring to be sated to be hungered to be sated to be -
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Technology
For most of the last two weeks, I’ve been coming every weekday to this place (which I shall not name) as late as possible in the morning and departing as early as I can possibly scramble off without looking overtly suspicious and/or feeling guilty in the evening. Much as I would like to name this place in order to provide a more complete description, fear of defamation lawsuits, irked supervisors, raving bureaucrats and/or divine wrath stays my hands, and so I shall content myself with simply alluding to it by way of description of its atmosphere and surrounding environs.
The building itself is nondescript; there’s only so much one can say about a dark brown and white block with a logo and some words stuck prominently near its top. The surroundings are not ideal; I might go as far as to say this is one of the most intellectually dead places in the country, but perhaps that would be going too far. The interior, however, is an unexpected maze of spacious offices, computer laboratories, conference rooms, toilets, pantries, and even a recreation centre complete with gym, dartboard, and home theatre system. All of which is eminently well concealed by an unassuming and generally featureless façade.
Several people, through the wonders of modern instant messaging technology, have expressed their outrage and utter shock that I am not pleased to be here. The basis for their proclamations of my insanity revolves around the technological bounties which surround me. I must admit that there is merit to these arguments – why would most sane persons complain when they work daily on a machine with a 3.4 Ghz Pentium D processor and a whopping 3.6 GB of RAM, not to mention a 17” LCD monitor. In fact, why would they complain when they only need to turn around to see (and use) a Philips Widescreen TV, and various gaming devices, including an Xbox 360 and some reasonably addictive games? Add that to the fact that I’m working almost completely unsupervised, can set my own lunch timings, don’t have to sign in or out when I come and go, and have access to limitless free drinks obtained from the pantry with no questions asked.
You would not be wrong in thinking this to be a very laissez-faire state of affairs; but you would be wrong to imagine that it can be enjoyed for four entire weeks. I have tolerated it for two weeks, but I don’t think I can for much longer. If I had truly constructive work to do, save from doing mindless tasks and scrutinizing incomprehensible lines of C++ code which make no more sense to me than Egyptian hieroglyphs might, it could be enjoyable. The fact that there is little to do of productive value has led me to use my time here for other purposes, including but not limited to reading George R. R. Martin, working on CAS paperwork, and reading History EE material. The bulk of my time, however, seems to disappear in the activities I would term ‘bumming’ – essentially, doing nothing productive, extending from digging up the treasures of the internet to appeasing the gods of instant messaging by making huge sacrifices of my time and typing effort to them.
The fact that this place is quiet, peaceful, and extremely well insulated from its surrounding environs with the ostensible aim of making it a more conducive place to think and do work hardly serves to improve my impressions of it, because I cannot doubt that there is something fundamentally wrong with bumming outside of the familiar, malleable environment of the home, in a place clearly geared by others for your own productivity. The other day, I didn’t even feel the slightest whisper from a thunderstorm raging outside. Like in the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library, peace and quiet can turn to oppression and wordless domination very easily here. A sense of the walls surrounding me and the ceiling and floor below me, combined with the constant rustle of air moving through air conditioning vents, makes this place feel like an extravagant prison, holding me in its grasp with silent words and invisible fingers.
In some ways, this is far worse than the LKC Library; there are easy exits from that place, and the might of
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