Saturday, May 29, 2004
Something Wicked(ly Enjoyable) This Way Comes
Blogging again. I am starting to think that people out there might actually be dreading the arrival of the regular (as in time-interval, not size) never-ending ramblings that characterise my entries, and I am, believe it or not, rather amused by that particular thought. No reason why, though. It almost seems as if I have a lot more to say during the holidays than during school-time, which is true, for several reasons. One being I have the luxury of time to sit at my computer for hours typing out a whopper of an entry. Another being the rather sad fact that when you do not exactly have friends surrounding you absorbing all the nonsense your slightly deranged mind keeps throwing up, all those disjointed pieces of thought start piling up in the corners of your mind, hampering the extent to which you can think clearly. Thus the blog becomes the perfect outlet for all those half-mad thoughts.
Today was a fruitful day, to say the least, in terms of the amount of things I managed to do. Got dragged by orionway to watch Shrek 2 for the second time, which I still feel was a rather mad thing to do, considering the ghastly ticket prices for weekends. Oh well, I have made worse financial decisions in my life before, and I did enjoy a second helping of the mad movie. After the movie we went down to the Pansing warehouse sale at Ang Mo Kio, where I bought three books for ten dollars, a wonderful bargain. They are Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan, and Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel. Another minuscule step towards the completion of my Wheel of Time collection, of which I have amassed five books out of ten from various sales like the NLB booksale and the second-hand book sale at one of the NUS fairs.
I also went down to Orchard to get tickets for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban next Sunday, which I will be watching with Jonathan Aow. I was supposed to get a set of character bookmarks since there is some kind of offer going on, but I received only three bookmarks, with Ron, Hermione and Sirius, but not Harry. Of course I found it a little weird, but at that point in time I thought perhaps each person was only entitled to three bookmarks. The more I thought, though, the stranger it seemed. Now I strongly suspect that I have been cheated by the ticketing staff. These things always happen to me.. =(
Ah yes, Harry Potter. The most anticipated movie event of the year, for me. It really ranks higher than LOTR on my list. The greatness of the novels and movies is something that is not shared by many people I know, and I find it beyond my capacity to imagine why that might be so. It is such an enjoyable experience! And it is so obviously not just for children. Thankfully I managed to get hold of someone who can appreciate the movie to watch it with me. I just cannot imagine doing otherwise. I do suppose I might end up watching the movie a second time with orionway, since he is also complaining that none of his friends can appreciate Harry Potter either.
Harry Potter! Can't wait..
-----------------------------------
I find Infinite Jest mentally taxing. Very much like reading a physiology textbook. The sheer complexity of characters and political scenarios and just about everything, combined with the plot structure that hits you with all these incoherent bits of information before stringing them together a lot later in the book, so you have to keep flipping around to re-read those nuggets that you have totally forgotten since they made no sense.
All the same, some parts of the book are really quite amusing. Take, for example, this chapter where the author describes the game of Eschaton, which is this world-domination game played by students in a tennis academy, with four tennis courts as the world map, and various tennis equipment as military installations and forces. The players role play as rulers of the various nations, and try to win the game by inflicting the greatest amount of damage on the installations of other nations while suffering as little damage as possible. The damage is done by lobbing tennis balls, which represent nuclear warheads, towards those installations.
The really amusing part comes when the student who adjudicates for every game of Eschaton (like a game-master) happens to be called Otis P. Lord. So this game-master determines the amount of damage each nuclear strike does to any installation, according to presiding virtual weather conditions and accuracy of the hit. Thus, the game-master is, as the students term it, the God of this make-believe world. So it turns out that Lord is God. And the author, at some point in the narrative, puts his name down as O. Lord.
Erm, I realise you might not find that to be too funny. But I was incredibly tickled by the cleverness of it all. It seems that I am easily tickled. But like most of the things in the novel, it really makes you wonder, Now why didn't anyone think of that? And you marvel at this amazing author for having thought of that and so many other things no one ever noticed since they are all so mundane, and filling a novel with these clever little references.
---------------------------------
I wonder how many of us actually think about picking the right bath towel. I mean, a bath towel is just a bath towel, you might say, but have you ever experienced that wonderful sense of satisfaction when you wipe yourself with a good bath towel and it removes all the moisture in one swipe? Personally I find it impossible to put up with weak unabsorbent towels that, even after several wipes, still leave behind this invisible film of moisture that makes you feel like you are covered in sweat. That is a monstrously repulsive feeling.
Why am I telling you all this? I really have no idea, except that I think it is really important to pick a good bath towel. I used to have this bath towel that was really lousy at absorbing water, such that after I towelled my hair the towel would be almost saturated, and I would have to spend five minutes more trying to get every bit of clinging moisture off my skin before I could wear my clothes. When my mother got another towel for me, I was really amazed by the difference. It is almost miraculous how this towel mops up water like silica. I love it so much I feel like taking more showers, heh.
---------------------------------
Just the other day, I had this strange dream, and the only part I can remember (which is the strange part, therefore I call it a strange dream. I wonder how you correctly describe a dream that you only remember a part of. If the other parts of the dream were not strange, would it not then be inaccurate to call it a strange dream?) is that for some reason (like things that happen in dreams need reasons to happen..) I was standing facing this really large road, something like an expressway in terms of width, and to either side of me stretched this line of, if I do not remember wrongly, medical students. All the students were starting to jaywalk across the road, and I followed. But it so happened that when I reached the middle of the road somehow everyone else had reached the other side, and suddenly all these vehicles started coming at me and frightening speeds. The strange thing was they were vehicles you hardly see in Singapore, like oil tankers and huge trailers carrying cars. I do not remember how the dream ended, only the fact that I was stuck somewhere in the middle of the road with everyone else waiting for me on the other side.
Strange.
--------------------------------
Nip/Tuck is like, to me, some form of perverted pleasure. I mean, all I look forward to are the surgery scenes where they cut cut cut. Oh, of course, the storyline could an interesting approach to medical ethics that the Department of COFM might want to look into. And they are terribly knotty problems, the ethical quandaries that are thrown up every episode. It makes you realise that any ethics lecture does not even begin to scrape the tiny ice crystals off the tip of this iceberg, nor tell you how freaking big the iceberg really is. Some of the questions make me go, Crap, if it were me I really would have no idea what to do. Which is why I try to ignore the ethics part, since if I were to really wonder what I would do in every situation, I would be unable to get a good night's rest and still not know what to do.
Indecision. If there is any one anything that my life has been filled with, more than anything else, that is probably it. I hear Librans are terribly indecisive people.
Oh well, anyway, no use worrying about things that are going to happen in the future, when we have enough to worry about now. Till next time, then.
Avaris / 5/29/2004 11:43:00 PM
0 consumed