Q

Day 02

Day 02: Weird things you do when you’re alone

In public, i’m surprisingly sane when alone. I know this is hard to believe, given how loud and obnoxious i become when out with friends – but it’s true. If you happen to see me wandering around town i look incredibly calm and normal and (DARE I SAY IT).. cool.

So i guess under the public eye, the only abnormal thing about me is that i walk a hell lot. And i visit incredibly strange and obscure places on these walks. Whenever i can i get out and hike around. I’ll start out where civilization is (usually train stations), pick a blind direction and just.. walk. For hours on end. Or longer if i come across interesting places/shops. I also have this thing for dubious looking pathways and corridors; can never resist going down one just to check if there’s an opening to an alternate universe there. Everything is extra fun because my tendency to get lost brings me to completely unexpected places (but also making sure i’ll effectively NEVER find my way back there again if i wanted to.)

This is also why my knees are slightly screwed and i have the most hideous blisters and horse calves.

When alone, i’m still relatively quiet – but i dance around a shit lot. In my room i lose the ability to travel about by usual means. Getting to my closet involves a set of embarrassing shuffling, forward rolls across my bed, a failed attempt at a jump split, and some pretentious pirouettes. I’m highly kinaesthetic and can’t help expending unnecessary energy.

As for the weird things i do do.. they’re really just inane projects that no one else would bother with. I’m not sure how to generalize them so here are some examples:

– Charting out the best places to pinch on the human body and the different physical effects they yield. (Complete with a multi-colored diagram with legends and footnotes and all).
– Making perfume.. yeah. Because i’m obsessed with scents and it makes me happy. Ok?
– Laying out booby traps for my sister. These often fail.
– Playing games with insects. Having tea parties with them. Not really. But i do observe them and play God quite a fair bit.
– Hitler’s genealogy. I’m still incredibly proud of that one, i am.

I’m really a lot less weird than most would expect me to be when alone. I’m mostly quiet and calm, if not a little too prance-y. Other than that i’m just being an autistic kid with obscure interests.

July 9, 2012
Day 01

Because i want to write but have nothing to, about. So here’s my salvation/cheat sheet:

D01: 10 ways to win your heart

1. Bake me cookies. Because i’m a dessert whore and i’ll sell my soul for pastry any day.

2. Ditto for ice-cream.

3. Be intelligent. I’m a complete sucker for intelligent people, regardless of gender and age. I’m like a roach to the incredibly sexy flame of smarts and that was the worst metaphor anyone could possibly come up with. But yeah. I have incredible respect and admiration for people who’re quick witted. It’s not so much about being bookish or being able to spew verses from historical textbooks or figuring out the mechanisms behind the multiverse hypothesis (although that is pretty attractive) – it’s about that quality of spontaneous, effortless ingenuity that really, REALLY gets to me.

4. Make me laugh. Which is not difficult, because almost everything amuses me.

5. Be dorky/no pretentious plz.

6. Be brutally honest. (Also, brutal, because i’m slightly masochistic.) I think i’ve been reading too much Salinger, but approximately half the world’s made up of hypocrites, and the other half of blatant liars – including myself. Honest people bring me so much relief i’m almost always won over by them, no matter how callous they are.

7. Have something they’re interested in. Whatever it is – even a battery collection set. The more intense their interest and the more varied the more attractive a person is. To me, there’s nothing more gormless and repellent as someone without a single affection in their lives. I like it when people become obsessive about things. I think because it reveals how much they’re capable of feeling and that’s kinda hot.

8. Display forms of artistic talent that does not involve dance or theater.

9. To not need me. I’m attracted to independent people and have a strange, crippling complex that makes me flee once i sense needy/clingy. (Trying to work against that though. Trying.)

10. Be a good person and not recognize that. I don’t mean nice or gentlemanly or polite. But just. Yeah, a good person inside. People who don’t pride themselves over being good or aren’t even aware of it – but just are – it kills me. Immediate allegiance.

July 8, 2012
11:53 PM

Something weird happened yesterday night.

I’m still not sure how i managed to decrypt whatever it was i felt, especially in my half lucid stage, but i did. Let me try to explain it as coherently as i can.

So i’ve been sleeping indecently early recently. This is probably a manifestation of my reading Yoshimoto’s Asleep. YES i’ve discovered how easily affected my post-novel lifestyle is by concepts from books. Actually. I didn’t realize this until about five minutes ago.

After Nothomb’s Life of Hunger i starved in the morning and ate my weight in chocolate/desserts at night just to feel the stark contrast between hunger and decadence. I started drawing after Shadow Tag. And Asleep’s made me nap hours in the day, without compromising my obscene ~11pm bed time.

It’s disgusting, i know.

Anyhow. With my infantile sleep cycle comes a stranger quirk. I’d wake up exactly one hour after i sleep (and by exactly i mean by the minute), check my phone, sink back into slumber, then wake up at approximately 5am again, check my phone, sleep, then be up between the 7 – 9 range. Like Terako, sleep lies heavy when it comes. It’s like being submerged into a crop of Devil’s Snare [ref: Harry Potter], the more i try to stay awake the faster i shut down.

I think it was after the first wake when i was Alice in the rabbit hole free-falling back to sleep when this happened.

It was one of those pseudo-half lucid-dreams, but instead of going through something, i just felt something. Like if you were to break down a general dream into scenes, then pick out one scene and whatever i felt at that point, and then filter till you have a specific aspect of that emotion, and then magnify it and concentrate an entire dream with it. Something like that, that’s the best i can go with a semantic explanation. Also i was half lucid so ambiguity is inevitable.

All i remember is that it was pitch black. Not just visually, but.. everywhere and everything-ly. Just darkness. And i felt vulnerable and also scared/worried. But it wasn’t a generic fear. I think labeling it as fear is misleading. It’s an emotion you don’t have a name for – but is real and belongs to the past. Basically i was experiencing an intense emotion i am VERY sure i’d gone through, exactly as i had years ago. If that makes sense.

Yes we all feel anger, or fear, or happiness, at different points of our lives, over and over again and will continue to. But at that moment i understood that every thing we feel is intricately nuanced and varied and tied to that a specific moment. Which makes it near impossible to replicate the exact emotion you feel in another instance.

That’s why whatever happened to me was incredibly strange and disconcerting.

I felt exactly like who i was in the past (around lower secondary, i can’t be sure when exactly now), but cognitively i was in the present (which gave me the privilege of observation, yay). Back then i had nothing to worry about, really. Those were my best years so far. But all the same when you’re young and dumb and only beginning to understand emotions you can’t possibly see that. So, i was vulnerable – that was the predominant state, and afraid.. very afraid. I’m not sure of what. I was basically incapable of restraining my own fear nor did i make an effort to rationalize it.

That’s where it gets interesting.

Having to experience that one past emotion vividly was surreal, sure, but i think it happened so i could make the conclusion i did: That i’ve become so much braver. Or, if you’d like to see it in another way, impassive. And also in control.

I could afford to be vulnerable then, because as ignorant as i was, i must have known that nothing could truly hurt me in that environment and age. I allowed myself to fear without inhibition only because there really was nothing to fear – and thus that fear wouldn’t make me weaker against anything.

It’s pretty obvious that i’ve killed intensity of emotions off along the way, convinced they’re only a hindrance. I do feel, occasionally, anger, disappointment, sadness, but they’re so incredibly diluted i can’t even get myself to stay that way – numbness kicks in by reflex before it gets anywhere. The strongest of my negative emotions are second-hand; they’re on behalf of friends and loved ones. Indignation and anger and worry and fear and unhappiness – they take residence only if felt for another.

Inadvertently it’s also lessened my ability to be intensely and wholly happy. I still am most of the time that – and i’m grateful for being born an annoyingly happy gnat – but it’s a kind of happiness that comes with the knowledge that life will still dish me a lot of crap. I’m alright with that because this happens to everyone when they grow up/out.

It’s just that sometimes i’m not sure if i made the right choice in being so impassioned.

It started when i realized you can never lose if no one can get to you. So i don’t let anyone, or anything, get to me. Nothing upsets me nothing can knock me off balance. Nothing. I can deal with an inordinate amount of shittiness without it upsetting me any much. Even if it does, i bounce back so fast sometimes even i doubt its possibility. (If you want to give it a go – try expecting the worse. When you do, nothing fazes you whatever happens.) That’s the nice part of it, i guess. That i don’t get hurt.

Then again, getting hurt is part of life. Sometimes i miss that depth of emotion – although stupid and makes you vulnerable – because it makes you a little closer to living. I think that’s why there are people who love pathos in their lives, even if they don’t admit it.

July 7, 2012
Anti-skirt

For four years in my childhood, i did not wear a skirt.

I flat out refused to wear one. It an epic, all-consuming revolt i had with the rest of my family – which is rare because i’m generally obedient. It wasn’t a gradual nor planned thing. It took only a moment of startlingly clear child-ish revelation and i made up my mind. I still remember it in it’s entirety.

I was out with my family, wearing a skirt, holding a teletubby doll i went EVERYWHERE with. At that point i was already in my precocious stage – in fact, at the peak of it.

(For the back story: https://dopaminedaze.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/strange-starts-young/ This was when i joined PAP Kindergarten and became a pseudo-dictator within my clique. Life was – after the academically, socially, and psychologically rigorous stint in Rosyth – dull. Naturally i spent my time conjuring up conjectures and theories, between mundane playtime and sticker-pasting.)

..and we walked past a boy wearing jeans and it hit me (and by hit, i mean it was so overwhelming it felt like i was physically shoved by the idea). Why do girls have to wear skirts to be girls? I was very sure i was a girl, and that i liked boys, and i liked girly stuff and all that shit. Do i have to wear a skirt like a costume to indicate my gender identity to the rest of the world? No.

It started out as simple as that. Clear as a sparkling clear lake; I just wanted to try not wearing a skirt. I wasn’t particular about what the end-point would be, i just wanted to not wear them.

So i told my parents, i’m not gonna wear skirts anymore. Just like that. Even for school, i’d wear shorts under my skirt. I can imagine how disturbing it was for them, their child just straight out going loco and refusing an article of clothing for no apparent reason. They tried, trust me – ALL my relatives tried – talking me out of it. Didn’t work. It only made me more indignant.

Why? I’m not refusing to clean my room or eat my vegetables (although that i didn’t do either lulz) nor am i indulging in disgusting nose-picking habits. All i wanted was the autonomy to not wear what i didn’t. It pissed me off really, REALLY badly that they took it so personally.

It got to me even more when they started worrying about my sexuality. I think what i was truly pissed at (although at that age i didn’t have the vocabulary to crystallize this thought) was that people couldn’t accept living without arbitrary labels.

The statement i was trying to make wasn’t a feminist one or anything. I was just trying to say: screw labels.

The more unnecessarily worked up they are about my sudden boycott of skirts, the more determined i was to never don them again. I wanted to show them that i could be a girl without having to wear skirts.

But it didn’t work that way. Adults ran our lives, after all, and their preconceived notions of my apparent tomboy-ness and potential sapphic tendencies took over. They assumed i’d want to wear my hair short and that i didn’t like playing with Barbies and that i didn’t like pink and wasn’t interested in boys.

It didn’t bother me much that i had to live out what they think me to be, I could even live with their constant jibes and references to how boy-ish i was. All i felt, really, was a resigned kind of sympathy that adults took everything so damn seriously and properly – as if there were guidelines (No skirt means not girl).

So this went on for about four years. Throughout Kindergarten until primary two, i had cropped hair and wore primarily jeans and overalls. No one bothered to buy me pretty girl toys or tried to inculcate feminine traits/skills in me. I basically ran around as a wild androgynous pixie child, home-making perfumes and staging mini-deaths on our sitting room floor. Because i had no gender convention to follow – no one could figure whether to treat me as a boy or a girl.

I think this little androgynous child period gave me the chance to transcend many kid-things, so i guess i’m a lot freer than most.

In primary three i got bored of having to live with everyone’s tomboy expectations of me and just wore what the damn hell i wanted (including skirts). The fuss and fanfare over my ‘newly-re-established femininity’ was painful, but i brought it upon myself four years ago, so… no complaints lol.

And then i grew up to love skank clothing, negating all subversive abilities i had in the past. Oh well!

June 27, 2012
i love

olives, dogs, chocolate, babies, foxes, ice-cream, wolves, unicorns, bones, collarbones, wrist bones, hipbones, anklebones, fresh laundry, bruises, smell of paint, scabs, blisters, acne, gap between the front teeth, ramen, threes, yogurt, slim paperbacks, paper bags, stuffed toy animals, brown paper envelopes, symmetry, calluses, pretty girls, adorkable boys, wood furnishing, pink, awkward moments, lists, end of constipation, tin boxes, neatly organized colors.

tbc.

June 27, 2012
Froth

I’ve been itching to write, for various reasons. The primary one being that when i write – things fall into perspective, they start to make sense… which is what i need now; have been feeling eerily spacey recently.

At first i was hoping it would be catalyst for some prose/poetry but nup – creative constipation still insisting it’s stay (save me, CAP/CAP friends). So right now i’m taking the easy way out – and also cleverly avoiding having to explicitly explain my wonked-out mental state by mashing this together with a pseud0 book review.

Banana Yoshimoto’s Asleep.

Three micro stories into one mini novel. They aren’t even about anything much. Take moments out of someone’s life, as far away from anything momentous as possible. Allude to deaths at only it’s most casual and stunning. Magnify every present thought and movement to it’s very barest and most truthful. That’s basically what Yoshimoto does. It feels like i’m reading sentences off a blank wall.. there’s little chronology or sense. Which scares me slightly because that’s how i’ve been feeling recently.

It’s not that i’m not happy, or that i’m dreading anything. If anything, i’m excited. I’ll be in Uni! And with close friends i’ve already had for six/thirteen years. There’s almost nothing i can fear. But i’m naturally pretty resistant to change. Kundera says, in Unbearable Lightness, that happiness is the longing for repetition. Maybe this is why, after three years, i’m still stuck on the need to return to St. Nicks, where i felt the most alive and vivid and real.

Because now i don’t. It’s not anything bad i guess – in fact it’s probably my (very effective) defensive system at work. It’s like there’s an overload of changes – people, situations, culture, work, relationships, family – and all i need is some time off from re-adjusting.

So recently i’ve been feeling rather detached from reality (which in itself is such a trite term, i feel literary guilt using it). I find myself floating in thoughts – just letting them carry me – which is worryingly unlike my usual annoyingly obnoxious, clear and unnaturally controlled inner voice. I’ll find myself zoning out and getting distracted, or i’m there but i’m not really processing everything. Else, i’d be say or do things bypassing the megazoid filter i’ve built through the years. The thing is i’m not distracted by anything in particular. I just can’t focus.

Reading Asleep was so incredibly surreal i made myself stop to eat some solid carbs just so i wouldn’t fly away somewhere.

I know everyone has phases where they feel out of it. I’m just not used to not being in control. It seems like ages since i’ve been able to center everything, make sense of it all, and feel like every part of me is – in that very moment – alive. I think i can only be that whole with the St. Nick’s girls, especially the Mugs. And while i’m in the nehnehchickenwing mode without my appropriate anti-maudlin filters – i’ll just say it: with the Mugs around i’ll be safe because i know we already have a part of ourselves in each other, so i’d never get lost.

Now i shall drown myself for that little piece of schmaltz.

I didn’t find Asleep an especially good read, it was just congruent with my current state. It’s a book that sits on froth where everything looks safe and off-handed and casual, but being the sitter you know there’s something darker underneath right below. Something like that.

I’m unnaturally concerned with the over-usage of the starter ‘I feel’ in this entire post and have been consciously trying to rid of them.

Cannot cannot cannot i really need to get out of this weird cloud stage.

June 23, 2012
On beliefs.

So recently Singapore’s been swamped with evangelists from the church of God the Mother. I’m not sure what made them (or any other evangelical group) think that randomly assaulting someone on the streets, probably on their way to have lunch, is an effective measure in altering anyone’s entire BELIEF SYSTEM.

Guess what. It’s not. And you know what’s more? Preventing someone from achieving their perfectly reasonable desire to have lunch is an ALMOST SURE-FIRE WAY to have them think badly of you – and by extension your beliefs.

The main point is. I’ve had enough. I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF HARD CORE EVANGELISTS. STOP IT. STOP IT STOP IT, IT IS SO ILLOGICAL, PAINFUL AND ANNOYING. AND ALSO THE MOST OBVIOUSLY COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE WAY TO SPREAD YOUR BELIEFS.

I’ve had only the most scarring encounters with evangelists. In primary school, when a group of us were out doing a project, we were somehow hijacked by two Christian evangelists who proceeded to spend one and a half hours teaching us NOTHING substantial about God. All I remember was a grammatically and logically confusing lecture about lambs, seeds and that they were very happy to have our emails (to spam). The entire time was immensely awkward because they were clueless-ly insensitive to Buddhism (we had a devout vegetarian buddhist in that project group). Even Celine, a cradle Catholic, said she felt embarrassed to have her faith forced down on others that way. I have Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking at my door and being incredibly rude about everything it really gets to me like NOTHING ELSE.

I don’t know if i’m a hotbed of belief-shovers or what, but i’ve really had an extraordinary amount of people trying to get me to join their sect – this ranges from the religious to the anti-religious. I’m done with it all. Please just LEAVE ME BE.

Once and for the last time, i’m Christian. I believe in what i believe in and there are reasons why. My faith is a very personal one. I try to keep to the teachings – mostly to the ones about loving others and forgiveness and honestly it stops there. The only form of religious community i need are my friends. To other Christians – stop trying to tell me i’m doing it the wrong way because i will stab myself and sin and you will be the perpetrator. To atheists, i love it when challenged or asked things if you’re curious but if you just want to change my perceptions because my current one doesn’t please you – stop being a hypocrite and shove it.

That’s all i’m asking for. For people to LET ME BELIEVE WHAT I WANT TO AND LEAVE ME BE. I’m good by myself. I’m the BEST by myself. Having all sorts of other things come into play does nothing but confuse and complicate my simple ways to religious belief. But no people can’t let it go.

This was how it happened.

As always they ask you to fill out an innocuous survey, which is a benign sort of trickery. It’s still a trick. First mistake there. I politely told the first one i was busy (i was. eating)(HOW CAN YOU DISTURB SOMEONE WHO’S EATING). She went away. I sat on it for awhile and started to fume. In retrospect it might not have been very fair for the next evangeliser to be on the receiving end of years’ worth of frustration, but yeah. She made me fill up the survey and started to use the technique i’m all too familiar with. And loathe with a passion. She asked me if i read the bible and what my beliefs were: “So you think God is one person and a man right?” and she’d proceed to tell me i’m WRONG (SHFFUUSUKSKSLKGGHHL)(YOUR FACE IS WRONG).

I said yes i do read the bible yes i do believe there is only one God. “Ahh.. but you’re wrong.” And she told me that there’s another God who’s female, with a powerpoint slide on her iPad as a visual aid. THERE ARE TWO GODS. ONE MALE AND ONE FEMALE, she claims. IDRC.

I told her:

a) I don’t actually care if God is female or male. I don’t think about it neither do i believe He is either. He is everything.

b) She is manipulating semantics in the bible (VERY POORLY) to suit her own beliefs. You can’t take the bible literally because if you do, i can very well argue for you that God wants me to purchase a horse and run down every man who eats bread on Saturdays. I told her that what she identified was rhetoric, not God’s hidden clue that He is in fact female.

c) Believing in Christ is about being a better person. It’s about loving God and loving others. It is not about prowling the streets convincing others that God is female.

d) It is ignorant and simplistic to attempt to categorize God especially in mortally ways such as gender. Personally I don’t think we understand enough to explain him.

I asked her:

a) Does it even MATTER? What difference does it make if God is female? Will it make me a better person? Does it change the way I live?

b) So you think i’m wrong? I can have served God in many ways, been a good person all the time, done everything right, but because i don’t think of him in labels of gender, i am WRONG and deserve to go to HELL?

c) Why does it matter to you what I think. Do you truly love me and therefore want me to know the truth about things? How can you when you’ve just met me a second ago. Or is this just part of your need to fulfill your quota of religious responsibility.

Yes I said all that to her. I was hoping she’d be more intelligent so it wouldn’t feel like i’m bullying her or throwing out my pent up frustration at her but she failed terribly. All she did was roll her eyes exasperatedly and tsk-ed around in resignation and whined a bit about how it’s ‘her duty’ and she ‘just wants me to know more’.

I told her that’s incredibly selfish. Responsibility and duty is admirable where it’s due. Maybe you’re responsible for giving your friend a chance to discover faith especially if she needs it or is seeking it. Then yes if you have the knowledge and the ability to help her then it’s a duty.

Duty is not blind evangelizing. It is not a clip-board, an iPad, or spending hours on your foot in public stopping people. So sweet of you to do that and pretend that you’re saving the greater population. You know what, all you’re saving is your own pitiful need to assuage your conscience. At the end of the day you just want to feel good about your own faith and that you’ve done something to confirm your place in your church.

Do you truly think you’ve saved someone? Do you really think that jumping on passers-by on the streets will get your faith anywhere at all? I don’t think you do. You’re just going through the motions and that’s called false faith and it’s the worse kind of faith to have, worse than someone who sits at home and does nothing but blog about it. Because you think you’re doing something great but you’ve just inconvenienced someone and drawn the divide further. For your own need.

Ok i didn’t go that far of course i just asked her why is it fair for me to be inconvenienced at the sake of your need to fulfill your ‘duty’.

I could have gone on forever but there was work so i left her in a miserable mess.

Main point.

PEOPLE. STOP. SHOVING YOUR BELIEFS DOWN OTHER’S THROATS. I don’t care what your beliefs are. You can be Christian, Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu, Illuminati, or even an atheist. Stop needing others to think what you think.

I understand that as a friend you might want someone you love and care about to share your beliefs because you sincerely think they will benefit from it. That is fine. There is no harm in trying to SHARE. But you stop at that. Quit making it your life mission to have them believe what you believe. It’s plain senseless. Think about it.

These are the people that make things Not Okay:

1. The self-righteous religious. I hate it when people with a religion think themselves as higher than others. Just because you found a fitting label to your belief and is backed by a legitimate organization doesn’t make you any more superior than anyone else. Quit judging others by your religious standards because if the only useful skill you’ve acquired from your religion is judgement, you’re pretty bad at it.

Quit telling people they are sinners when they have done no wrong and simply don’t subscribe to your religion.

Maybe religion helps you pave a direct path into being a better person. This makes your life, as a religious person, easier. It DOES NOT MEAN that someone agnostic or atheist cannot achieve your level of goodness. In fact, between a non-religious person contrasted with a religious one both striving to do good, I’d say the non- becomes more admirable. Because he is getting there without being told to nor does he refer to guidelines – he is doing so from pure conscience and the desire to be good. Look.

2. Atheists who do exactly what they hate others do to them. Stop being so eager for others to change their beliefs to atheistic ones, because it is nauseatingly reminiscent of religious evangelists who hanker for your conversion. It’s okay to be upset over those who invade your belief-space. It’s okay to not give a shit about others who believe differently. It’s okay to be curious and challenge them. It’s NOT okay to see atheism as sign of superiority, speak condescendingly of/judge those who aren’t, and hard-sell atheism.

Atheists stop being so smug about being atheists. If there’s any reason i’d detest one it’s not because that they contradict my belief (no, seriously, i don’t care), but when they see atheism as some sort of cool subversive thing they have going. It’s just so much fun to mock religion, and think of myself as better, and to condemn anyone who has a religion. It’s so fun to be a rebellious asshole. Oh please it is so incredibly pre-teen. If you believe in something, stick to it, but please just shut up about it.

The same goes for both religious AND non-religious people. Stop being so damn smug about your beliefs because honestly no one cares. They just want to compare and feel good about themselves. Just focus on believing in it and everyone leave every bloody one alone. Thank you.

June 12, 2012
DIE ALREADY

YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IS A REAL THING.

NO I AM NOT KIDDING ALTHOUGH SLIGHTLY HIGH. I’m genuinely kind of frightened. With the rash of cannibalism and boys popping to life after being declared dead and then dying again.. It’s freakishly uncanny despite dubious news sources. I keep picturing myself having to activate a machine gun and travelling the world for a Twinkie. It’s depressing.

Also Cracked.com supports this possibility and I on the other hand have complete trust in all that Cracked claims:

http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html

I have a strange feeling they will strike full-force on Halloween, for the ironic humor. And my gut instincts are pretty strong, so…

OMWDHQEJ D WE ARE SO DEAD (BUT NOT VERY LOLPUN)

June 9, 2012
The Avengers: a brief review

The Avengers in one sentence: I liked it, but it wasn’t worth the hype.

But you know i can’t stop at one sentence. There were things i liked about it (mostly how good Chris Evan’s ass looked suited up), but i didn’t leave thinking: woah. Which i did for First Class just last year.

(I don’t have to disclaim about for spoilers do i.. it’s late enough.)

What The Avengers did right

– They remembered to include Maria Hill. AND THEY GOT ROBIN SPARKLES TO DO IT YAY.

– LOKI? Holy hell this is one place the hype was accurately placed. Even Steve Rogers agrees he grows on you. HE DOES. He’s adorable. I can’t hate him i just can’t. He’s like a bratty little brother run wild (technically he IS that).

– Pepper humor. My self-coined trope for one-liners that are gold peppered all over the place (in this case: every ten minutes). Typical Whedon, although he still does it better in his own space (i.e Firefly – dialogue humor heaven). But in The Avengers, like a typical fanboy marvelling tentatively with a new toy he can’t yet figure out how to play, he sticks in clever little bits of laughs almost as a desperate means to keep it together.. poor guy.

– THE ACTION SEQUENCES. My favorite must be Black Widow right at the beginning with the Russians. But then again i have the whole Bruce Lee kungfu complex it probably wasn’t that brilliant. NO, NO IT IS THAT BRILLIANT. And that little thing she did with Hawkeye when he almost attacked her oh god oh god.

– You can’t go wrong with Robert Downey/Tony Stark.

– Hello, Chris Evans’ ass… Hello, creepy me.

– And surprisingly, my personal favorite when it came to casting was Mark Ruffalo. He’s so damn endearing for some confusing latent reason, which i thought went really well for the whole Nice Guy when un-green thing, even though Bruce Banner is nothing like that in the series.

– THE HULK. He wasn’t this scary back in 08. SCARY AS HELL HERE. I love it.

– Did Joss Whedon stay as close to the plot as fanboys expected him too? From what i can see yes, although i’m not exactly an expert, but.. He DID hint at Tony Stark’s familiarity with Maria Hill and sort-of tension with the Black Widow (or maybe it’s just pre-conception on my part). Sharon Charter’s death was there, fair enough. Hawkeye asking Black Widow if she knew what it was like to have someone control his mind, her replying: “you know i do.” /reference. K so he did keep to his word, which i guess is a happy orgy party for fanboys in the know.

What The Avengers did wrong

– To be frank. The plot was absolute crap. I expected more. I mean it’s Whedon and all.. but then again maybe he works best in his underground fanboy obscurity. Maybe being cancelled and/or producing for netizens IS his style (holy balon- it’s TRUE. Out of all his TV, only the Buffy franchise didn’t get cut.)

– I guess he isn’t prepared for the silver screen just yet. Or maybe epics aren’t his thing. It’s a sweet little movie, in fact i can imagine it as a series! But as a movie it had balls time management. For instance, if he cut out that forty second redundant with Captain America and the police officer who wouldn’t take orders and later on repeated orders into his walkie, he could have spent it developing on characters..

– Which reminds me. They all have so much promise. Steve Rogers’ flashback in the beginning, the elusive past of the Black Widow, Bruce Banner being always angry – I WANT TO KNOW MORE. But nah. Someone just give this guy a TV series already.

– THE ANTAGONISTS ARE SUCH JOKES. Loki is adorable to the point of harmlessness. He was also punk’d by Tony Stark, bullied by Bruce Banner, tricked by the Black Widow, and mothered by Thor. HOW TO TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY. And his last line, whilst cute, made him seem really minuscule.

– The giant bugs were pretty epic, reminds me of Nausicaa, but they were just that.. bugs. Nuisances. Tedious to kill off but nothing really challenging. It was such a bore.

– Even the mastermind alien man was a joke besides being hilariously hideous. The little speech the alien made after the credits? It was really bad.. Is it a build-up to A2? Is it part of Whedon’s home video collection after a drunken college cosplay party?

– Some scenes border on amateur. The argument one, for instance. Seriously.. canon chaos? For a blockbuster? Like i said, he’s not yet ready for the big screen.

– Maria Hill packs a whole lot more kick than that. Simply having her there isn’t enough. It’s not Smulders fault though they just didn’t give her a chance to develop. I shall refrain from snarky Robin Sparkles/Scherbatsky references.

– Where is Doctor Strange. WHERE IS HE. This is my greatest gripe actually.

May 31, 2012
Eating words.

This is Day 2 of CAP, i miss all the crazy people and their insane love for writing/arts there. It got me thinking.

When it comes to writing, this is the only space kept constant.

By that i mean lengthy, indulgent ramblings. My writings otherwise have shrunk into (presently): nothing.

At first i thought it was distillation. I learnt about economy of words and it’s power at about fifteen, but instead of maintaining the pure-essence level of poetry i’ve come down to a straight zero. It’s very strange and disconcerting, actually.. that i haven’t written (besides a scrap of sapphic poetry) in near to a year. This may be the longest drought yet. My greatest fear is that – following my writing patterns through the years – this isn’t a drought. It’s really just me having ran out of words.

When i first started writing fiction, which was Primary 1, i was undaunted by plot length logic grammar. The main point wasn’t the final product, just the act of writing. So at that age i purchased single-line exercise books in bulk and filled them endlessly with half-novels. Most of the time i have many stories going at once. They were embarrassingly wild, ungrammatical, unoriginal, all-over-the-place pieces, but all the same i’m dead jealous of the myself back then.. because i could actually write without thinking about writing. At times Celine and I co-wrote novels.. they usually steer straight towards farce.

My last and also proudest attempt at novels is also the ONLY long fiction i’ve actually completed. I spent close to a year with it writing EVERY DAY (in place of homework lolz). It was first person, highly influenced by chicklit (but about ten times funnier) (no, seriously), and by God was it enjoyable. It felt so good i wanted to start a second one but it fizzled out within three pages. That was in Primary 5/6.

In secondary school i stopped writing as prodigiously (i mean quantity-wise la), because i learnt about quality control. 14 was the age of consciousness and every idea i had went through a self-issued checklist of shittery before i was allowed to act on them. That was also when i developed – like everyone else – the need to see the end in things. So i switched to prose, because that was the only way i could finish anything.

I found that i liked prose A LOT – especially after discovering descriptive in English class – which truthtobetoldlak i was superb at. On the other hand my plots were utter crap so switching to micro-prose was my way of giving up on long fiction than anything else. Boo, me. Anyway, i focused mainly on prose that centered around minimal plots or single events, compensating with my rigorous attempts at description.

(I’m fully convinced that my A1 English for Os was acquired from my incredibly vivid, one-page long, almost erotic description of the buffet spread aboard a cruise. Eh i’m not even kidding about this. The entire essay was three-half pages and was a shitty as hell story about a woman on a cruise enjoying a buffet, encountering a shipwreck accident, finding herself in a lifeboat, and spending the rest of the time hallucinating about food until she was rescued.. it ends with her eating biscuits. Yeah, the hell is wrong with me right? So yes, i think my food porn gave the examiner his best ever orgasm sitting by his lonely London fireplace with only a goblet of whiskey to bring him through the winter night. That’s how i got the grade.)

Anyway, besides self-consciousness, pretension and the frustrating focus on end results, 14 also brought along the want of experiment. So i tried my hand with scripts (naturally.. taking Drama and all), and found that i was sheer nonsense at it. Yes we do devising for every term assignment and exams and all but we NEVER. HAVE. SCRIPTS. It’s pure improvisation and then adjustments until we perfect it. The furthest i can go is a monologue and even with that i struggle. So i concede my lousiness and theatrical writing.

Then came poetry, because you know, it’s the new shit and all. There was a rash of opprobrious ones when i first started out and they stink of overkill and painful bathetic-ism. I now hide them they way boys hide their porn in multi-leveled folders on my PC and read them when i feel the occasional mix of sadism and the need for some good laughs.

Somewhere in upper Secondary i found the right way to write what i want to write.. and it was frankly quite magical. BUT it lasts only one collection long (enough for CAP portfolio + CAP mentorship portfolio). That was also where my words found exponential shrinkage. They were never really long to start with. My longest poem doesn’t fill up a page. My shortest is two lines. My personal favorite is 16 words. That was during CAP.

In the course of mentorship i was already losing my words. That i had to come up with a decent poem every few months that isn’t skimpy like a Baywatch bikini frightened me into nights of terror sleepless in bed in cold sweat. K not really, but it was pretty stressful – which i deal with poorly (stress, i mean). This came with the additional (and very, very scary) fear that people will actually. read. my. work. It’s okay when it’s just a panel of CAP staff.. but for it to be printed and like.. left in dusty library shelves.. yeah i was pretty much a wreck. It’s k because at last i did manage to churn them out accordingly; but i face them with a very confusing sense of pride with a strong cant towards embarrassment and disappointment.

After that came the As, and i only wrote one in that period of time. It wasn’t even for leisure. It was because i had something to say and it was the only way i could say it. I loved that one a lot. And then from there – nothing nada zilch. I can’t anymore it’s like writing constipation that’s been there for so long it’s solidified into a mess of toxic shit stones. When i try it just comes out pitiful – and when i try it’s not even that i want to write.. it’s more like i’m testing the waters to see if i still can.

Wow i hit middle-age fast.

May 29, 2012