Q

Something tells me I should read through my sister’s science paper more often, because she writes the darndest things.

Describe the life cycle of the butterfly.
It is very special.

Describe briefly how you would carry out this experiment?
I would use my brains and my hands to do it again and again.

You are a meteorologist working at a weather station. You have just received a satellite signal that the town would experience hurricane in two days. What would you do to warn the people of your town?
I would tell this bad news to the news stations so they can report it theirselves or let me report.

There was another question, where she labelled the penis as testes. When I told her the testes’ the round thing over there, she turned to me and said, “No, that’s the balls.”

Why are we tickled by another’s misfortune?

Why the compulsion to laugh when we see someone getting hurt, embarrassed or in total agony? Think about it. The simplest things, back when we were toddlers, Tom & Jerry made us giggle with the physical injuries inflicted on Tom. And then there was Mr Bean. We laugh because he is put into ridiculous situations that cast a kind of light over him to make him seem foolish, or intellectually less than average.

Clowns, stand-up comedians, Blonde jokes, practically the entire basis of laughter is built on another’s pain. Clowns hit each other over the heads with a bat, comedians poke fun at their own flaws, the most popular jokes are the ones offensive to a select group of people be it a certain race, blondes, the obese, or a famous political icon.

So, why is it that another’s misfortune can bring such great joy to us?

Is it because knowing someone’s having it worst makes everything feel better for us?

Has self-centredness became so cemented in our beings that the very root of our happiness derives from this integral need to please our individual ( and we don’t even notice it )?

What are we, when even the one thing that seems the most pure, most innocent, most sinless – laughter-, actually propagates a vile concept of selfishness and building on one’s grief?

Sometimes the world scares me.

It

I want to be an organ donor.

Because I cannot find one good reason NOT to be one. Seriously. If I’m for a burial, my body would rot ( picture eternal confinement in the sarcophagus, maggot infestion, and the ultimate mark of carnal subjugation – decomposition ). And the mere prospect of being but a pile of ashy relic as opposed to a fully functional body ( when alive ) completely desecrates the popular choice of cremation for me.

I would have no need for my body, at all, in death, so why not? Probably the only reason people are held back from it would be that the idea of having the body carved up seems like a macabre concept, and something about respecting the corpse and maintaining it’s similitude in death. But I say pooh to the form of useless item which is gonna be hidden away anyway, when there’s a life to save. Let your limbs live on, have your heart beat for twice its lifetime. Just how awesome would that be, let me ask you?

Since we’re on the topic of death, let’s explore its antonym; birth. I was just wondering about how sex and birth are such strong imageries. Probably the most beautiful you can get. Think about it. A human being is probably the most complex palpable object you can name on Earth. Love being the most complex intangible concept.

Love causes the fusion of two complete individuals to impregnate, to create another complex being ( scientifically being made out of the sperm and the egg, but let’s toss dianoetic notions aside and view this through symbolic means. ) which essentially is two lovers as one. I have no idea how to bring this across in words, but you get my drift.

Having a child is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it’s ironic how the physical aspect of it ( dilation of cervix / blood / mess / gore ) is so incredibly unsurreal. It’s the thing God has with equilibrium/irony of life again, I guess.

Death & Birth, the end & the beginning, the ham & the cheese. Oops, out of point. If emotions were blocks, guess where blocks would be fully stocked? Hospitals. The joy of new life and the despair losing one all in a single building. Amazing, isn’t it?

OH THE DRAMA!

Cranium

Once, in primary school, a relief teacher stood in for a math class.

She had the kind of hairstyle you’ll usually find sprouting from the crown poodle’s caricature, an expression of perpetual shock, and underarm flabs the consistency of Jell-O.

She was like a play up of any relief teacher stereotype, and the most distinctive feature of this character would be her method of keeping (?) silence in the class: Whenever we made too much noise, she would stand at the front of the class with one finger pressed on her lips, and the other poised in the air, as if she’s waiting to be struck by a runaway lightning.

And then she would wait. Wait for us to notice her ridiculous stance and shut our yap. Of course, that never happened. We spent the entire one hour bringing down the classroom, and she spent the entire hour standing there with a finger in the air.

Stoic, lithic, she practically transformed into a immobile slab of marble no one gave a flying flick about.

At the end of the lesson, I wondered if she was really stupid, or just really smart – and didn’t particularly felt the teaching us how to multiply x and y that day.

You know how everyone has their own comfort food or stress reliever? Yeah well, mine is reading Archie Comics. I don’t know how or when it started, but I came to realise this pattern: that whenever something’s bothering me, or if I just needed to get away for awhile, I automatically find solace in Archie Comics.

I’ve started on them since really really young, and I’ve got to know the City of Riverdale so well, I guess I can say it is a sort of alternate universe for me. Somewhere I go and spend time in with my old friends when I sort of feel the universe I’m in is getting a wee bit to difficult.

In Riverdale, there is a challenge everyday, but I guess what I love about the book is that no matter what, Archie and gang would never ever change, and whatever obstacle they come across, it would be solved by approximately ten pages later. That knowledge gives me a huge sense of security.

I don’t know how glad I am to have Archie Comics in my life. Seriously, I sound like a complete sad sob here, but ah well.

I don’t usually bring a book around and read them under my table, so I guess most people assume I don’t really read. That’s the impression I give, maybe. Well actually I suck at multi-tasking, so usually I avoid reading in class or around school, cause it’s so distracting. But if you see me alone in the public transport or at home, I would be reading most of the time. Besides using the computer or watching the telly.

Another reason being because once I start to read I cannot put the book down. I meant the last statement literally. Like, even if I am dying of thirst I would wash the cup and pour myself a drink while reading it. If I need to get something from the convenience store downstairs I would be reading the whole way. You know what I mean? So I can polish off the book quickly, instead of reading small bits here and there. I never believed in the “spread your reading over a period of time” policy.

I went to Rosyth Childcare, (Childcare, mind you! Nursery!) where they seriously emphasised alot on education. I bet my chinese was way better back in nursery than NOW. I mean honestly, they drill like crazy. I was one like what, three or four? And guess what the wrote in my report book? That I don’t read enough! Like WTH!? How much do you expect nursery school kids to be reading? So my mum (being the typical kiasu mother) bought a whole array of Poldy books, Ladybird books, etc etc.)

Which I flipped through and then tossed aside.

Okay well remember the time when Teletubbies were ALL the craze? I was one of those crazy teeny tot of a fan, wearing Teletubby teeshirts, owning a Teletubby dollhouse (I love it so freaking much!!! It rocked!) and fanatically watching every episode of Teletubbies ever made. In school we also (like every other kid of our generation) roleplayed Teletubbies. And I remember (you can also infer from the photos I had throughout kindergarten) that I ALWAYS carry my talking Lala doll around. EVERYWHERE. I mean EVERYWHERE. Like when I go out with my family. To weddings, to sleep. Everywhere.

Of course all of the above could not yet satisfy my insatiable appetite for everything Teletubbies, so I pestered my mum to buy the Teletubby picture books. I drank them in avidly. Book after book after book. And when I’ve finished off the entire collection of Teletubby books, I felt this inner hollowness. Like I just HAD to read somemore.

Aha. This is where the story (pun, hahaha!) proceeds. My mum (remember? typical kiasu mother) took this opportunity to flood me with books. Roald Dahl and (loads of) Enid Blyton. Beverly Cleary and later on Jacqueline Wilson. I practically grew up with all these names. Which kinda explains my eye degree now.

After that phase, the my reading rate dwindled, cause it is just THAT hard to actually find a good book suitable for our age. I mean, the plots for Roald Dahl and what not are just plain awesome, but Fiction of Young Adults (as they so nicely euphemise it to be) are just full of chick flick crap and crushes and blondes and whatnot.

It annoying how authors think that when we reach this age, all we want to read about is girls our age with family problems, crushes, insecurites with their bodies and bitchy friendships. Like, NO! Please, we would like some good read too. I mean, WTH. Just because hormones are messing with our brains at this phase jolly well DOES NOT mean we are all dumb zombies walking around aimlessly chanting, “sex, crush, backstab, mini-skirts… sex, crush, backstab, mini-skirts” okay!?

When you start to read books aimed at adults, besides the classics like Jodi Picoult and Amy Tan and whatnot, all the rest comes down to always this plot: a hot not-so-young woman with mid-life crisis and a mess of past romances starts work at some firm and this hot boss and her starts to develop a pure and true relationship. They start to have sex and get married. The end.

I mean like, what the hell.

I used to have this huge thing with cheese.

Everything I put in my mouth needs to have some form of cheese on it. And I don’t just mean sausages or fries or whatever. I MEAN EVERYTHING. Sugar crackers, roti prata, PORRIDGE (Yes, I mean it, put it in when it’s hot and it melts.), maggi noodles, any form of noodles, noodles with SOUP. EVERYTHING, basically. Except ice-cream or anything, I’m not that freaky.

Once I went out to get some baked beans. You know those canned ones? Yeah, well, here was a cheese flavoured one, so guess how excited I was! In fact, I was so psyched up I couldn’t stop thinking about it until dinnertime.

AND OH MY FREAK. It was the third most disgusting shit I’ve ever tasted! (First being Wasabi Ice Cream and second being some weird herbal ginger tea.) It’s all milky and cheesy and… beany! It like really really sucked. I still love cheese now, but I don’t mix them around crazily, JUST IN CASE I get that baked beans combi again. Gross shit.

The TV is a powerful, powerful thing.

There are so many things I can’t absorb in class, but if I just happen to sit infront of the telly and somebody starts reciting the colors of the rainbow – once, or twice – I can immediately pick it up. Or how to fold socks. How to make paper cranes.

I remember that by a very young age I’ve already subconsciously absorbed a series of useless things from TV. (Prepare for trouble, and make it double, to protect the world from devastation, to unite the world within our nation, to denounce the evils of truth and love, to extend our reach to the stars above! Jesse, James, Team Rocket, blasting off at the speed of light, surrender now or prepare to fight fight fight! Meow, that’s right)(Sugar, spice and everything nice, these were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girl, BUT professor Utonium accidentally added in an extra ingredient into the concoction: Chemical X! Thus the Powerpuff Girls were born, using their ultra super powers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and. forces. of. EVIL!) Not to mention alot alot of other crappy TV jingles.

But even I myself was amazed when one night while lying in bed, being bored and random, I just thought of the Sunraysia Prune Juice advertisement. You know the one about the old grandma telling the son about Sunraysia Prune Juice pits or something? And to my utmost surprise, I actually went on to recite the whole friggin thing fluently! Without even knowing I could! (or even what it actually meant) Like ZOMG. The TV is really a powerful, powerful weapon. If only it can make to memorise my mo4 xie3 as efficiently.

I haven’t done this for about three years, but let me try.

Granny? What happens to all the pits from all the prunes that go into Sunraysia Prune Juice?
Well, grandma’ll tell you, but you have to keep it a secret.
Okay, granny.
Each night, just before midnight, the Prune Pit Pracker magically appears in Sunraysia Pruneland and pits the pits, leaving behind a pile of plum prunes for Sunraysia to put in their prune juice.
But what about the pits?
The Prune Pit Pracker takes them away, because at his home he has a gigantic pile of pits, the Fable Prune Pit Peak.
So you’re saying, that the Prune Pit Pracker pracks the pits from the premium plum prune Sunraysia pit to produce the premium prune juice and peddles the pile of pits to the prune palace on Prune Pit Peak?
Precisely.
Sunraysia prune juice, is available from the following, caring supermarkets.

Something like that. Except I don’t know what a pracker is.

What was the origin of the word testes? It was from ancient Rome (or something like that). Apparently during official events where men had to bear testimony and be a witness, they hold their balls to show their seriousness. If you get what I mean. Like to show the importance and how much value was in their testimony. When they have to make a vow they hold each other’s testes to honor the event. Weird eh. Yeah anyway that’s how the word came about.