Why I Quit My Philosophy Course

Q1: What is "the self"?

A: The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself… In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self. Søren Aaybe Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death

Wrong! Søren, you are driving me to despair. It's almost like you want me to be unhappy, as if that is what you consider to be the truth (YOUR truth) of existence. Your logic is like a best-selling self-help book that says, "The answer is not in any self-help book, and certainly not this one."

It requires an amazing leap of faith to understand whatever the fuck you are talking about. Lift your game, boyo. See me after class. I'll give you the fear, you bring the trembling.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have absolutely no idea what that passage is saying. Am I stupid?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have no idea (yes I do, I am lying to myself - it is because I am getting old) why I have taken up trying to read such impenetrable philosphy texts. (Not all, indeed not much, of Kierkegaard is quite as abstruse as this, thank whomever. But more is coming from Amazon!)

Is it a desire to understand why my life has been so non-descript and so non-productive? Is this a real or an imaginary problem? Is it merely the expected MLC?

*Have* I lived a proper life? Am I doing the right thing now? Am I thinking the right thoughts? Am I saying the correct words? Am I writing the funniest jokes? And if so, who have I stolen them from? What should I do next with my life? Buy big in the STI?

Questions keep arising (in my mind only, I haven't been blogging a lot of this lately) about the power I have (in the form of cash in the bank) and what I should do with it. Should I imitate Christ, (also currently reading Balzac's The Wrong Side Of Paris, purely coincidentally about a MLC guy who joins a secret religious charitable sect in the late 19th century) or should I get a massive ouija board tattooed on my back and impersonate Creepy instead? Should I get a boat and pretend I am Dick Headley cruising around the Caribe?

But then, Mr Kierkegaard (or Mr Balzac), if Christ was such a great guy (let's face it, he is the one being in the universe who is a synthesis of the aesthetical "present", the supra-moral "eternal" - q.f. Heideggers 'Being and Time', Neitzche's 'Beyond Good and Evil') then, rather than doing his healing and teaching on such an ad hoc basis, why didn't he educate some of those apostles as medical staff and teach them some of the basic rules of medicine/hygeine.

Getting those health care workers to wash their hands and showing them the simple trick of isolating the contagious would have been pretty easy lessons for the Lord of the Creation to pass on, and those pearls would have "saved" millions of lives over the millenia.

In fact, why didn't he set up some sort of free health care system, or a group of hospitals healing the lame (splints/crutches/bone-setting), raising the dead (CPR, the Heimlich maneouvre) and so forth, maybe even a pre-cursor to the Red Cross, spreading good deeds and simple life-saving first-aid across the Levant?

Hey. What about some schools for the young and curious, big guy? Great teacher, right!

Literacy and health, how hard can it be if you are of the same substance as the creator of the universe?

And why was there no structured organization in the early church for the efficient management and distribution of all those charitable goods from the rich who were bent on following him? Where was the distribution system that ensured that what was donated made it to the needy and desitute? Something like OxFam, or the World Food Program. Why did it have to wait for St Vincent De Paul to get this logistical piece of cake moving at all?

You'd think all that experience with distribution of the loaves and fishes would have given the apostles something like a workable blueprint...

I am sure I'd do better imitating Warren Buffett. Or Pavarotti - at least I look like him (with a bit of false hair here and there).

Or should I just go out and get laid? (This question is not part of the test.)

E@L

Lemon Poprocks Tart @ Iggys

Comment of the night:-

After ten courses (not counting the first sorbet and the seaweed poppadoms) time had flown, it was 11:30 already and out came these little lemon mouth bombs which we dropped into our mouths in one bite and as we sat there letting the lemon tartness do its thing and the crunchy tart-base melt away, a series of sounds starting exploding out by our cheeks, by our ears, our mastoids, all around our tongues, brittle cracks and pops of effervescence, it made you feel like your face was in a magical cartoon where tiny stars and minute rockets were whizzing around, a multi-coloured and metallic sensation, yet sweet, funny and just a little disconcerting when it kept going and going and going... And M says;


"I hope you fellas don't think that's we girls experience when we give you a BJ!"

E@L

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

see more pwn and owned pictures

What happens on the beach, STAYS on the beach... unless you txt your father accidentally to brag about it!

Failblog.org = so many fun ways fuck up!

E@L

Dead Snow

Self-amputation scene! Warning! Not suitable for children!

Horrible nasty Nazi mutant zombies, goreful scene but funny at the end...





Don't say you weren't warned.

E@L

For Smoot

Roast spuds.




This is pretty much how I did them. I sprinkled some flour over the spuds before bashing them around a bit (a la Nigella) - makes for more things to get crusty. I used duck fat.

E@L

Do You Keep Dripping? / War Is Hell

The vaudeville funny-man would have riposte to any positive answer to that question...

"Well, you better see a doctor then!" Boom boom! Ha ha!

The assumption is that he'd asked that question of a butcher, see... Groan

Dripping = lard. Because a butcher would keep, as in have on store, a supply of cooled, strained fat - the 'dripppings' of a roast, say.

But it might also mean, like, dribbles coming out of your urethra once the sensation of urination had passed, indicating for a man, a prostate problem.

I'm off the Cymbalta and so No, I don't keep dripping. Not anymore. However I am majorly grumpy I've noticed...

And No too would be the answer of all the butchers and culinary stores I've questioned this week in Singapore in my search for lard for the crispiest roast potatoes in the red dot.

I'd been to Cold Storage in Novena, Marketplace in Tanglin Mall, Jason's in Orchard Towers, Giant in Vivocity Harbourfront (all of which actually ARE Cold Storage), Jones The Grocer and Culina in Dempsey Hill.

According to the wisdom of crowds, viz-a-vix the ExaptSingapore Cooking/Food forum, the butcher at Holland Village keeps some aside. Well, expert expat, my weary feet went over that place twice, and there IS no dedicated butcher at Holland Village. There is a wet-market beast disectionist and a meat section in the Cold Storage, but neither of knew what the hell lard or duck fat was.

Anyway, I found some - some graisse de canard at the Swiss Butcherie in Greenmount. $16 for the last jar. Duck fat. I'd rather much cheaper and better beef fat... Supafry, which is all I wanted, just some boring old dripping like mum used to keep in that yellow porcelain jug in the fridge, you can buy anywhere in the suburban corner shops of Australia, where health messages have yet to penetrate, it's just a coupla bucks...

Sigh. These potatoes better be good tomorrow... Report to come.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other news - Israeli deaths due to friendly fire (6) currently exceeds the number of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets (4) in the past two weeks. There is a lesson in there, somewhere. And it's more than 4 and 6 just doesn't add it up as a UN school is blasted, killing forty or fifty people who were seeking refuge there...

Somebody famous said: Those who don't study history are condemned to repeat it. E@L says: Those who DO study history know that it's mainly the bad parts that are repeated.

E@L

Questions: Before I Go Any Further In Voicing My Contempt For Certain Aspects of Singapore's Management Team

Singapore's law against sedition starts off like this:


3. —(1) A seditious tendency is a tendency —
(a) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the Government;


By "the Government" do they mean the ruling political party which happens to be in power, that is to say, "in government", at any given time?

So that to excite disaffection against an opposition party's policy would NOT be seditious, until there come a time (praise the Lord!) when some group such as the Singapore Democratic Party is in power? And then it would become seditious?

And that praise for the current PAP's wise policies would become seditious if it was no longer in government?

And is the judiciary part of the Government?

~~~~~~~~~~

Because I want to link to Molly Meek's latest post - typically bimbotic! - and to the Wall St Journal's November 29th editorial "Singapore Strikes Again", about the Asian WSJ being sued for, for, for all sorts of things, like reporting.

And I want to ask the person who, on the WSJ forum, wrote this...

The Wall Street Journal is sued in Singapore for badmouthing the latter's political system again. We are annoyed by westerners constantly trying to impose its value on other cultures. The result can only be one thing: deepening hatred of the white people and periodic vengeful infliction of pain like the 9/11 attack and the search for American and English to butcher this month in Mumbai.
This is a classic example of arrogance of a culture that dominates others for one reason or the other at different stages of human history. This dominance of European culture will not last.
Cheung Yuk Ming
November 30, 2008

...why they think merely reporting on public domain facts warrants their implied (fairly overt it now sounds to me) threat of terrorism in reprisal and if so, will it perpetrated by themselves, or by the Singapore Government, or all Asians - that is to ask, who is "we"?

And also ask this Cheung Yuk Ming (Emperor Ming? He of the royal "we") which "westerners" values exactly do you/they/we consider are bringing about all this hatred?

The right to a fair trial before peers? (Too slow!)

Free speech? (Too loud!)

The right to peaceful protest? (Too trafic-jamming!)

The separation of powers? (Too surgical! One or more of the conjoined babies might die!)

~~~~~~~~~~

Wasn't it the alternative values of the Asian Tigers - "slave labor, cheap prostitutes and even cheaper politicians" (and their profiteering cronies - robbing their own banks, chopping down forests illegally or running drugs, etc...) - that brought about the previous economic crisis in 1998-2001 AND have helped keep the vast majority of Asia's poor in stone-age living conditions, cowering in fear (such as in Singapore-supported Myanmar) or living in silent desperation under corrupt and oppressive regimes?

~~~~~~~~~~~

The reason I ask this is that clause 3 of the act says:

(3) For the purpose of proving the commission of any offence under this Act, the intention of the person charged at the time he did or attempted to do or made any preparation to do or conspired with any person to do any act or uttered any seditious words or printed, published, sold, offered for sale, distributed, reproduced or imported any publication or did any other thing shall be deemed to be irrelevant if in fact such act had, or would, if done, have had, or such words, publication or thing had a seditious tendency.

... which E@L's learned legal brain translates as, "if you didn't intend to be seditious but what you said, did or wrote can be twisted by lawyers working for the PAP [oops, I mean Government, or do I?] to appear seditious, then it is seditious".

Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Changi Airport. Do not collect your Welcome To Singapore brochure.

~~~~~~~~~~

Ah, only seven days in the country and I'm going insane! And judging by his new banner, Skippy-san wants to live here? It's just amazing...

E@L

iMac Frustration Causes Singapore Man To Go Out For Beer.

My iMac.

Fuck. I shake my head. Really. It is for superficial people, designed by people who were only concerned about the appearance of its features, not their functions, not thinking through about what people would want them to do.

(I am talking about the default programs here, not those brought in by smart, cafe-latte drinking, socially concerned, Moleskine scribbling, third-party people.)

~~~~~~~~

OK, I have found a way to put Dashboard widgets onto the main screen so that my clock, calendar, iTunes control, local weather report, and address book are all there, all the time. (Well the trick works OK in one direction, not so much in the other.) Like the Google Desktop Sidebar, like the Microsoft Sidebar for Windows. I don't have to click or press a key - the large clock is always there, ticking away. How hard can be it be?

So I look at the large date ticker on the iCal widget, click on it. Out slides a monthly calendar with today's date highlighted. I click again and out slides a list of today's appointments, if any. What about tomorrow? Nope, it won't highlight any other date than today. I can't check whether my schedule is busy on any other days. So I need to open iCal itself. Can I do that from the iCal widget? No.

They never thought of that when then spent hours getting the shiny black surface looking just right. I have to go to my Dock thingummy and find iCal to open it! How useless is that iCal widget except as a piece of eye-candy? Fuckers!

The default iTunes widget. If iTunes is off, will it turn iTune on? No. I click on the invisible Info button and the widget does a cool flip around to show a "Select Playlist" function. Does it actually allow me to select my playlists? No. They don't exist according the iTunes widget. I have to start iTunes and find my playlists from the Dock and from iTunes itself. Can I *start* iTunes from the iTunes widget? Are you kidding, No-ho! Of course NOT! That might actually be useful! All the widget does is allow me to pause, change volume, repeat and shuffle and select next and previous in the current playlist. I have to have iTunes running first, at the same time, if I want to do anything like change who I want to listen to.

The bland grey Address Book widget needs me to type an initial letter before it does anything, which is to drop down the list of all my contacts. Are they arranged by the first letter I typed? No. The letter has to be somewhere in the person's file, is all. The last contact I selected used remains selected even if it doesn't have the letter in the name I typed, which is really confusing. Why? Like I said, because maybe that letter is somewhere in that person's address or their email. Type another letter and it narrows the field, but not in a way you'd expect. Typing "t o" brings up a blogger mate who is filled under "Spike" for example, because his email is "hongkieTOwn@###.com"... Weird. When you do have a contact selected, you can click through all other contacts. Well let's face it, the parent Address Book is a boring and dull application anyway.

The Clock widget. Why not iClock? You can set regional times, but you can't set an alarm from the widget. OK the default clock on Windows Sidebar is pretty lame as well, so I won't get into that aspect of it all. But I want a reminder/alarm function. I can only do it by going to iCal (manually of course) and setting up an appointment, not through the clock function! How shitty is that? WTF?

I have downloaded a third party calendar application from the dudes at iSlayer that works OK, but still doesn't have an alarm. There are quite a few REALLY neat one for Windows, but the list of clocks for iMac is pathetic. To get an alarm, I have to download another clock widget.

~~~~~~~~

Also my Mighty Mouse will not scroll unless the sidebar is at the bottom of a page. It will then only scroll up, but when the idnicator is at the top, it will not scroll down. I kid you not.

Tofo!

Fuck it, I'm going out for a beer...

E@L

(As I am typing this, the beast, like the id monster in Forbidden Planet, seems to sense I am writing about it, and the keyboard locks up for no reason...)

[Addendum - after five beers, three white wines and a Knob Creek and three episodes of Battlescar Tallactica, came home and re-checked this post. My, I had a big visit from the Typo Fairy there didn't I? That's because I composed that post in Google Docs, which like 99.99% of everything in this non-BG universe is a piece of shit. Most of the day I spent trying to link my OneNote files automatically to GoogleSites. Not gonna work. Think I'll need to get a pirate of MS Sharepoint somewhere. Fucking Windows.]

Pseudoscience Gets Me Riled - I Won't Apologize Again.

Ben Goldacre has just written a nice little piece on those who deny the HIV/AIDS connection, and my blood started to boil - in support of him, of course.

Why?

My feet still hurt, alright? After several years the pain has not gone away despite surgery, orthotics, deep-muscle massage and stretching exercise to relieve nerve impingement, despite prostate-strangling mind-numbing drugs (two months of the Cymbalta poison was all I could handle!) - well, they are better than they were thanks to the drugs - but they continue to give me trouble.

But, no, emphatically NO, I will not see a homeopath.

Homeopathy is dangerous. It kills people. "New(actually "old")age" medicine in general kills people. The arguments behind many popular pseudoscientific ideas have caused wars and incited otherwise preventable carnage. The oversimplifications and unprovable "logic" of anecdote have provided lunatic adherents with sufficient confusing verbiage to pollute the thinking of otherwise rational people. I hate it, hate them.

Enough, already.

I will not tolerate it. Homeopathy is up there with the HIV/AIDS refuters, with Holocaust deniers, with Mormons knocking on my door offering autographed 1st editions of Ayn Rand's ravings.

Go away!

I reserve the right to get angry and righteous (in the Pulp Fiction sense) if you mention it again, and I will not apologize...


E@L


(OK, it's just people in general that I hate. Pass me my Schopenhauer, I need a laugh.)

[Addendum: Actually, as homeopathy posits that the less you have of something the greater is its effect - a sort of new-age inverse square law - by having none of it, I should obtain infinite benefit!]

Yoghourt* Prices Trigger More Expat New Years Whinging

Milk glut? Farmers ploughing their dairy cows back into the soil as fertilizer? Milk run-offs polluting the drinking water in starving nations?

Not seeing it here in Singapore where my all-time favorite Victorian Jalna pot-set vanilla yoghourt still costs around SGD$9.60(AUD$9.42) for a 500g tub in the one or two supermarkets (Tanglin is one, natch) where you can find it here. The same tub on the virtual shelves of Safeway supermarket in Geelong is about $3.82($3.75).

Ah, the kick in the teeth we expats take on a daily basis just to get out taste buds around something like our home country quality. Supermarkets here perform merely a cheeky lip-service to the needs of the elite 'foreign talent' such as myself - witness the way Vegemite comes and goes from the shelves, the fact that there are only 217 types of flat-bread available, rather than the ASA mandatory 432. And don't we raise our eyebrows over the restricted range of Trail Mix or salad dressings? Just try to find a nice slice of ox-tongue when you need it most! Supercilious, indeed they are to our needs. An Aussie has to keep an ear out and an eye open for special gossip of the supply ship coming in as we spend our days wandering through Tanglin Mall looking for something 'Oriental' to send home to the family. It can really get up your nose.

~~~~~~~~~

And where have the soap and powders of my clean, non-sweaty dreams gone? I merely WANT Pears transparent soap, but I really NEED Dettol Daily Talcum Powder (SAFETY WARNING: do not use the Menthol version on scrotal regions!). With Dettol's perfect level of 9% zinc active-ingredient, I can rest (or be active) assured that I will not get great clumps of off-white clag adhering to my ball- and arse-hairs (as happens with 15% zinc powders) nor will an irritating anti-social rash develop in the crease of my lap-areas during the course of my 99% humidity day. Experienced expat men of the sweaty, groin-rash-prone variety know this, or they certainly learn it eventually the hard way.

Whispers in the post-golf shower room, mutterings in the club over snooker and gin-tonics - someone notices a certain gait, recognizes the wide-stanced symptom of a fellow traveller. Some high zinc concentrate powder (15%) in the acute phase, or even a some nappy-rash creme... A new brand of underwear is required - many swear by latex and recommend the pricey American ones, but M&S (when their freaking underpants ship comes in to dock) may have cheaper alternatives in stock. Some are happy with loose boxers, but I am not of that party. But once that red groin-crease of horror is under control, a 9% powder is required to maintain a rash-free, clag-free sexual recreation territory. In HK I found that Amiens, an American brand, in selected pharmacies, was perfect. Then after two months, knowing I needed it and being bastards, they refused to restock. Eventually I found Dettol (UK brand). Although it is an ESSENTIAL part of my life in the heady tropics, is also not available in most supermarkets or pharmacies in Singapore. Talcum powder, they think in these parts, is soft and gentle for babies' bums or lavender-scented to mask old grannies' incontinence.

No, I swear, talc is for REAL MEN! With real issues. But often I cannot get the zinc I need! I stock up when I can, but people look at you funny when you travel across the island to buy six shakers of talc...

I have some of those other brands of course, packed away in my toiletries cupboard. They were purchased in extremis and under suffrage, and they are rubbish, tripe, they make me puke, they are shite, useless, a failure in the provision of the service the proffer to deliver, etc,...

Ok ball-rash digression over, back to yoghourt.

~~~~~~~~

E@L, why, Falstaffian fellow, you tactfully ask, do you go for the Premium Creamy tub rather than the Low Fat? Other than the fact that one is rich, firm and luscious and the other is unavailable? Why do I not select from the the plethora of other yoghourt brands instead of hunting for my delicious Jalna (nurtured in the green valleys of the mighty Yarra)? Why do I not compromise and go for cheaper stuff like Marigold and,... and, yuck, whatever.

Dear reader, E@L replies, did you not read the bit above about "rich, firm and luscious"? Other yoghourts are like some form of liquid plastic by comparison; artificially thickened and festering with bad chemicals like,... like, yuck, whatever. I eschew them, they are too,... too, like, yuck, chewy.


Nutritional Comparison

Jalna Low Fat - "Energy": 441kj/100g, Fat/100g: 2.0g, Sugar/100g 14.2
Jalna Premium - "Energy": 520kj/100g, Fat/100g: 4.6g, Sugar/100g: 12.0

There you go, bugger all difference really. I only use two scoops (maybe 60g) in my mixed fruit and muesli breakfast. So I am saving in sugar (getting heaps of carbs from the fruit anyway) and increasing the calorific total by only about 30kj.

A little bit more fat, but that's what Lipitor is for, right?


E@L

(*Yes, I know there's an alternative (i.e. non-Australian) spelling, but I am an Australian, so get fucked.)

(Oops, just realised that my GMail timezone does not carry over to Blogger. Fixed, I hope.)

GMail On GoSlow?

Anyone else finding GMail is on a crawl and has been for several weeks? Is there an extended DoS going on? I deleted most of my large unnecessary (aka porn) files (thanks T!) so that's not it.

Other things are working fine - my Audible downloads are charging through at 250KB/s.

E@L

New Years Revolutions

One year turns around into another, yeah? So what? It's that I'm getting dizzy is what. Can we slow this turntable down to 33.3333333RPM, please?

200andfreaking9? What happened there? I was planning to big-time it for 1999 just the other, the other... I can't find a suitable descriptor for the time period I'm talking about here. The other awareness point... Last crisis... Shit, whenever.

It's a whizz, a spin, a flurry, a rush, a charge, all a bit too much, this continual progression of the NOW. This eternal transience. This everlasting ephemerality. And the tickers tick over to another digit in the 21C as we sip on champagne in a Jacuzzi in Bukit-Timah. And unlike Catch22's Dunbar, trying to get bored to make time last longer, the exquisite boredom of having too much interesting stuff to do which seems to take forever only makes my life spin even faster.

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Thought in a taxi (driver nodding his head continually: bob bob bob) - when religious people say that we atheists lack spirituality, I get the impression that they really mean that without god there would be no *romance* in their lives. They are afraid to live without love, everyman's touch of the metaphysical. Which is fair enough. As if god was the sole source of that. As if they were afraid or embarrassed (it's not tough) to accept that goodness, justice and love can have a HUMAN source, just as hate and stupidity do as well. As if people weren't enough.

So OK, sorry, back to the point - there's no real, like, SEXUAL romance in my life. Currently. But there is drama... And plenty and plenty of love. By Darwin, I am swamped by those that love me.

I'm doing OK. Keeping on, convinced of my contribution, satisfied that my weaknesses aren't all that bad in the greater scheme of things, pleased that my efforts are appreciated, surprised that my vices haven't killed me yet.

Just doing it all as an older man than I was.

E@L

Music Shuffle Thing AGAIN...

Do the shuffle thing with your music machine... yada yada, you know the story.


IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Need You Tonight: INXS (Like the taxi driver saying tonight, "You need girl?")

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Dollars And Cents: Radiohead

HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
My Heart Belongs To You: Hayley Westenra

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Tolerance Levels: Hilltop Hoods

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Hunter: Bjork

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Mornington Crescent: Belle and Sebastian

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR PARENTS?
Poison Arrow: ABC

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
After The Rain Has Fallen: Sting

WHAT IS 2+2?
Ulysses "With A Gentle Finger He He Felt Ever So Slowly The Hair Combed Back Above His Ears": James Joyce (audiobooks count, yeah?)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Angel Of Harlem: U2

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Suffragette City: David Bowie

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
A Space Boy Dream: Belle And Sebastian (Again? I haven't even heard this!)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
It's In Our Hands: Bjork

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Nothin': Robert Plant & Alison Kraus

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
You Shook Me All Night Long: AC-DC


(From the flatmate on Facebook)

Current number of songs, etc... on the iPod: a measly 4,652.

E@L

Burger? Go Grill'd...

We went out for a very nice hamburger in Melbourne last week, not so much because we are especially huge-meat eaters, but because one of my son's schoolmates did the distinctive thematic art work (unsigned and unacknowledged) on the website, on the menus and on the walls. They continue the cute naivete he has always had - I even recognized his style from some of the notes and sketches my son had in the house 12 or so years ago.

Grill'd.

It tries to be very trendy and emo (whatever that means) - and has had some mixed reviews but I certainly enjoyed my Bada Bing! Burger as it was spicy and not too meaty. I hate those huge burgers so thick that they taste like a they have been made with the bloodied sawdust from the butcher's floor...

The chips were good though some had been triple fried, or even more.

~~~~~~~~

Anyway - off for a martini.

E@L

Phew! Now I Can Rest Easy...

Nearly half of Americans believe that heaven is open for all good people, no matter WHAT their religion - even entrenched godless atheists like

E@L

Addendum: Oh hang on, they said GOOD people!...

Post Xmas

With the day finally finished, the mad, hectic 'organization' of it all over, guests gone, most of the dishes done, but the dining table(s) still arrayed with sparkling green, deep-red and silver bunting, still taunting with erect candles and their gothic veniform drippings, some forgotten half-empty bowls of gravy, cranberry sauce, sugar… E@L comes in from a few minutes in the back-yard and sits for a final drink. A softie, dry ginger. Jeff Buckley's arrangement of 'Halleluiah' is playing softly in the background.

The general run of the benevolent hereditary sarcasm that had peppered the day with shouts of laughter and with raised eyebrows, winks, smiles, smirks and guffaws, had ballooned everybody's mood.

Cries of "Nice one, Gordon" and protestations of "Now look here, Ramsay," only generate a "Get the fuck out of my fucking kitchen," response to the chattering ladies. The F-Word comes to the kitchen again.

If it isn't Gordon Ramsay, it's Nigella, or sometimes a mix of the two that the self-proclaimed sous-chef (under mum) of the day is channeling. That someone approaches the crowd around the cheese and pre-dinner drinks table and states, "Now I want you to know love you all, you are my special darlings, but if anyone touches the oven temperature again, they are fucking dead, OK?"

Yes, Gordon cooks Nigella's semolina-bruised roast potatoes in lard, and this year he is determined to get it right. Even if it means swearing in front of mum!

And the jokes and laughs continue. Luckily the one non-family guest is a comedian by trade and falls easily into the taunting and cross-table conversations.

Adrenalin and coffee, beer, champagne cocktails (just Moet and Cointreau), a Brown Bros Pinot Grigio, a Mt Edelstone Shiraz, a quick hit of bronchospasm inducing back-yard cricket - yowser, over the fence E@L, 6 and out!

And so E@L was firing on all cylinders. Who knows, who remembers where he went, whom he ran down on the way…?

And so here he records a hodge -podge of snippets - no apologies for mis-hearings, mis-quotations, grammatical and artistical corrections or even outright inventions - it's all for the blog hits!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Ignatius Loyola as a childhood hero? What, was Torquemada not an option?"

"Tribute!"
"Allusion!"
"Homage!"
"Rip-off!"
"Plagiarism!"

"Why are the heterosexual couples just living together and all the gays and lesbians trying to get married?"

"So, whatever happened to 'Nature Boy' across the road?"
" 'Nature Boy'?" - comedian b-f does a fairly good impersonation of The Toxic Avenger… (He'd already popped some plastic laurel leaves around his brow and set his face into a mask of divine acceptance and forgiveness for a fairly good Jesus Of The Sacred Heart… His next routine will be a Family Christmas Lunch for sure.)

"But aren’t you a pilot?"
"Haven’t you been paying attention for the last 20 years? What am I everybody?"
"Radio-ologistical, X-ray-sound, or something…?"
"But you're always talking about travelling, I thought you were a pilot."
"Yeah, so the only person in a plane is the pilot."
"Well, you could be a hostie!"

"I think there's too much sarcasm." Said seriously.
"I don’t think there's enough." Said with a straight face.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All happy Christmases are the same, and we love repeats of a good TV series, of a good movie, of a successful day, but an unhappy Christmas is very unusual round here. But they can happen, for some.

After all the personality peccadilloes have been dissected and the accusers in their turn accused and demolished - all in the good family fun of character assassination - with mixed emotions and bloated, churning stomachs, people start to head off home.

However a flatness descends after one or two words are spoken amongst the last ones standing (or sitting), not so much in accusation as in disappointment, about a certain character trait. True words, plainly spoken, in response an outrageously provocative taunt, but with no veneer of sarcasm to make them easily laugh-off-able, with a hint of bitterness and suppressed anger that just makes one wonder what happened to the pleasant ferocious sarcasm of just a few minutes ago. Ouch, E@L takes a hit - a cartoon in his Christmas present book: 'hey, kids, these are real arrows!' Revenge? Bitterness, was it?

Inter-family barbs can scratch and tear with their sarcasm, but to the thick-skinned it is all merely a series of tickles, however one special person still has the ability to injure... Not everyone heard it, no-one comments, it was part of a general multi-voice chorus, perhaps it wasn't meant to be taken so seriously after all.

But suddenly a rent in the balloon of mood has brought E@L out of his personal stratosphere… and when the air is out, it is out…

~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so E@L, who obviously can give it but can't take it, lies supine, flat on a bench in the dark and waits, facing up, letting his eyes adjust to the backyard at night. The sky is clear above and the moon not yet risen. A swathe of stars cuts across the canopy. Immensely far away. So fucking BIG. How BIG is this universe? How long would it take for him to go there, to see that little speck of twittering light up close, to have proof that it is actually a mind-numbingly immense roaring furnace, a relentless energy factory that has been churning up hydrogen and spitting out helium and all the low mass atoms for billions of years. But it is just a dot from here, a dot that can only be seen when someone bothers to find a dark yard at night and to look up. An immensely powerful thing, massive, for all intents eternal. If it came closer it would fry all our lives, swallow the entire planet, crush our solar system, no disaster movie would be big-enough, yet no-one knows or cares about this star. "Now" here is 900 years ago there. It has no impact on how we live today, on how we get our roast potatoes crisp.

Yes that giant star by Orion, it is Rigel, or Aldebaran? E@L always gets them mixed. He looks away, toward the Seven Sisters, but slightly off center, to see these soft muses more clearly.

How large it all is. And of course, how small is E@L in this broiling cold emptiness of the universe. What impact is anyone making on any of this? What could it possibly matter?

E@L comes inside, pulls out a dry ginger to washes down his medications - nerve growth, pain relief, arterial relaxation, inflammation suppression, cholesterol inhibition, anti-histamine - and sits at the incompletely cleared table.

His mother wanders past on her last trip to the toilet. She gives him a hug and kiss goodnight.

"Thank you darling, you did a marvellous job today."

"Yeah, but I was too loud. Why do I always shout and carry on when I get excited? I can say the nastiest things."

"Oh, don't be silly. You were terrific, it doesn't matter. Everybody loves you."

E@L sighs. All mums say that. (Well, they should.)

It is late, he is tired. The universe doesn’t sleep - matters of stellar matter that don’t matter need to keep on doing meaningless powerful things on a cosmic scale, they have no option but to continue what they started back at the dawn of time - but E@L must ponder deep trivialities and try to sleep…

~~~~~~~~~~

Have a fucking nice one everybody.

E@L

[Addendum - slept like a log...]

Wensleydale? Yes? Good, I'll have some Wensleydale! No, I'm MR Wensleydale!

My goodness gracious me, but life is a bundle of busy-ness these solisistic type days, isn't it shoppers?

No time to blog - too busy with the catching up and eating and drinking with people schtick... (Don't ask about the golf.)

BTW - next time you're in Melbourne, don't hesitate to spend a coupla hundred bucks here - the website is terrible, but the girls in the fromagerie are great fun and Jeeeeeezes the cheeses, they are just utterly... The runny epoisses, OMFG!

Don't forget to remind them that "de gustibus non est disputandum" and they'll know E@L did send you thither...

E@L

O minus 5hr 59 mins 5sec

Get ready for a worldwide YES! YES!! YES!!! It's Global Orgasm Day!

Mark Your Calendars
This year we’re synchronizing in the two-hour period around
the Solstice, which falls on Sunday December 21 at 12.04 p.m.
(four minutes after noon) Greenwich Mean Time. So in the U.K., Global-O time will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For those of us in Eastern Summer Tume in Australia, that'd be between 11pm and 1am. ("Wake up honey, it's time we had an orgasm!") For Singapore, 9pm till 11pm, much more reasonable!

Tell your friends to stock up on tissues and hand-cream and to find a good free porno site, it's the day that brings out the GEE! in G-spot!

Focus world orgone energy on peace, unity and underpantsing! All together now! Ooooh, YES!

(big tip to Batbitch)

E@L

What If... ?

Around the Christmas table in E@L Mother'sHQ, this question has never arisen. Lot's of thing don't arise around Chistmastime - the dead (that would be Easter), my cousins and his kids who are lying on the couch after eating way too much when a game of backyard cricket is proposed (see above re: raising of the dead), my sense of humour above the waistline - but some things DO arise. The question of what happened to the Harry Belafonte Christmas Tape for example. No amount of searching through the cupboard drawers and those spider-webbed cardboard boxes in the garage (you wonder where I got my hoarding of books thing?) can bring this cassette to light. Why? Has it been hidden? Has it been stolen?

It's one of the many mysteries of this special time of year.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ghost Cat is another. Mystery.

Why won't people drink my Christmas Cocktail (with freshly pureed peaches)! Mystery!

How to put more plastic cutting wire into the Wipper-Snipper. Mystery!!

Why, after I bought my mother a new outdoor setting with seating for 12 two Christmases ago and yet she has me repainting the old one (which falls apart under the threat - multiple joint failure - and must be reconstructed by DIY E@L and TBIL's WarStrength power drill)? Mystery!!! (The aching back is no mystery.)

E@L

Sleeping Around

I estimate that I've stayed in 40 or so different hotels for work trips in the last 18 months. Round it up, maybe more like 50 or even slightly more, as some of the trips may have involved moving from town to town, night by night. I sort of keep track, via expense reports and work schedules but sometimes the dealer-company pays directly so I don’t have any expense, therefore no record. Anyway, point being that sleeping around has put me in a bit over two new beds each month.

Unfortunately, due to the bad feet, foot operation, foot medication, mojo falling, etc… most if not all would have been just E@L in the bed. (It's been a baaaaaad year. I'd put my golf/sex ratio as positive, and I've not played much golf at all. Guess what my New Years Resolution is going to be: a lot more sex, because I can hardly play much less golf!) Whatever.

Last year, William Gibson on his blog showed a montage of photos from one of his book tours - Spook Country I believe (not a fan of this book - the persistent product placements [a parody maybe] put me off after page not many.) The blog, it was cool though, just lots of plain photographs of the beds he slept in on his tour, arranged symmetrically in a largish matrix. He was only in each town one night, so he quickly got a significant portfolio going there. So I thought I'd try it, even though I usually stayed 4-6 nights in the same hotel each trip and would not approach the size of Gibson's montage for a quite a while.

I started in earnest in July '07 but got pretty pissed with the tedious concept eventually, as I kept forgetting to take a picture just often enough to make it all seem a bit of a fizzler. Also, as my camera doesn't do a very wide-angle shot, I could not always stand directly at the end of the bed and get the nice symmetrical shots that Gibson could. Some have my briefcase is on the bed, which was what Gibson did, and some have my suitcase, and in some the beds are unmade. Whatever.

So tonight, on holidays in Geelong, getting ready to write my annual list of 10 New Things for 2008, I pulled all of the bed shots together: not so bad really. I've got, what, 15 - 16 beds, about a third of the possible number. There's a 4x4 matrix practically done, or however Blogger pulls them up. (There may be more bed pics in my iPhone, which I didn’t bring with me, as no 3G.) Checking through the pics I have on this laptop and in my camera, in preparation for uploading, I notice that four of the hotel-beds are from the one trip to Egypt and Libya! LOL! Whatever.

Everybody's gotta have a hobby. No crime in that. Mine is sleeping around.

E@L

p.s. GingerNuts, the freaking Ghost Cat, has returned from places metaphysical to my mother's house in order to piss yet again in my old bedroom and piss me off! I nearly choked on the ammonia fumes last night as I went in order to go to bed, I swear by all that is profane, you have no idea, I kid you not, spooky mystic weird! I have moved to my sister's old room.

A Job Well Done

My camera offers no solutions to this flood;
I offer images of only what floats past.
My feet are on the ground but it is mud.
The difference between loose and fast
Is obvious to some.

If I paint these mocking pictures (if I was a painter)
What more or less would you expect of me?
If a singer of political songs, must I sing them fainter?
The difference between blind and won't see
Is obvious to some.

So I write my words and string them in a poem
They take up space not on paper, but on screen
Because they no longer can find in print a home.
The difference between heard and seen
Is obvious to some.

Journalist I am not, no politician's mate.
The canary's job is to drop dead - it's a token
Of his contribution - it is more than fate.
But there are no answers when questions are left unspoken
Even that is obvious to some!

E@L



This pathetic poetical excursion was inspired by the mrbrown affair, something that still haunts the Singapore blogosphere, the way the reaction to Osip Mandelstam's poem tells us so much about Stalinist Russia. Link 1 Link 2 Link 3

Quotes from Hope Against Hope:

Was it just coincidence that none us ever broke the rules of Soviet etiquette? M. [Mandelstam] for example, didn't observe them at all. He had no self-control - he joked, shouted, hammered on closed doors, raged and fumed and never ceased to express astonishment at what was going on around us. P289

"Stalin doesn’t have to cut heads off," said M. "They fly off by themselves like dandelions." P301

Ouch, That Really Hertz! The "Benefits" Of #1 Club Gold

After surviving the blistering heat of Brisbane and the town's "interesting" streetlife on Saturday night (I only went out to get a small plate of sushi [another story] and nearly died [of embarrassment, at being an Australian]!), I went up to the Hertz counter to rent a car at the airport in chilly old Melbourne when I arrived last night. Before signing up for anything I checked the breakdown of costs. The Airport Commission's tax on renting from there would have added $240 to the total cost of rental, which was already $1200, so, what did I do? I took a $60 taxi ride to my son's place. What is this, a stupid face?

Sunny morning Monday, but still chily, I connect to Hertz.com to book from online; I'll take a car from downtown Melbourne, thanks, another $30 taxi ride (or $4 on the train - North Richmond station is right outside my son's flat). I choose an Aurion. The total cost for the 14 days is calculated at only $502. Woah, lucky I didn't take one at the airport, eh?



Then, when the automated form asks for my details, I realise that I haven't logged in as a #1 Club Gold customer to receive any and all those exceptional benefits and discounts that are continually on offer and make the $60USD annual membership such an essential expenditure for any smart world traveller. (end sarcasm)

Hey, let's do that. What's the worst that could happen?

THIS is the worst!



OUCH, mother of all toe-fuckers! The rental charge has jumped to $2226! J. Herman Christ, I could BUY myself a car for that! Outa nowhere, an extra $1700! Same car, same rental period! Evidence: the benefits of Hertz #1 Club Gold membership! Supremely NOT!

What the hell is going on? Three wildly different estimates for the same service.

a) I am never going to log-in again! b) I am never renting from the airport again. c) I am cancelling my Hertz membership.

It's cheaper just to book online with any old car rental company...

E@L

The Shock Doctrine, Praise The Lawd!

"It’s a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us. When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors." (emphasis mine)
- THE REV. A. R. BERNARD, pastor of New York’s largest evangelical congregation, on the economic downturn.

Sigh.

E@L

Coincidental Quote Of The Day

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
- Charles Baudelaire

I kid you not, it be a conspiracy. I put up a cynical Baudelaire quote, The Quotations Page (actual daily quotes will have changed by the time you click on the link, obviously) puts up a cynical Baudelaire quote. Sometimes I feel like I am running this universe by example.

E@L

Heartwarming Thought For The Day

The unique and supreme pleasure of making love lies in the certitude of doing evil.
- Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals

E@L

The Natural (not)

So there we all were, playing Tonk at Indy's place. It took us several hands before we got the hang of the "going down" strategy, but it certainly seemed to be the best way to play the game.

- Your deal, said Mercer, handing me the pack.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was a kid at school I was lucky. Talented, smart - lucky to be brilliantly talented and smart, I mean. Counting came easy. Finger-painting was a breeze. Reading was not so much difficult as boring (until my Grade 3 teacher took me aside and introduced me to Huysman's "A Rebours" and to the marvels of the 19thC French realism; Baudelaire, Flaubert, Wilde, Dr Seuss), and my writing and English composition skills were, let's face it, exceptional. Exceptionally messy hand-writing anyway - a left-hander with the mirror of a classic right-handed grip, I dragged oceans of fresh bright blue ink across those pages of exquisite prose composition with my shirt, my fingers, my palm... I reeked of squid ink.

"the skin-diver floated through this colourful animation of glory" - from a Grade 5 piece I still recollect getting called out to read aloud. However, I was unable to explain the meaning of the word 'animation' to the class. Like cartoons, I clumsily said. I FELT the meaning, I KNEW it, but could not say it, I was too embarrassed by the attention.

Overwheeningly* proud of my left-handedness, I never compromised with that dinzy, curled, over-handed grip of some fussy molly-dookers who want to actually read what they have written (or whose mothers had berated them for ink-stained cuffs and that deeply ingrained indigo in the ball of their hands which took scrubbing with carbolic soap to eradicate). Tidy? Moi? Who gives a fuck? I dipped my pen into the open inkpot in the hole at the top of the wooden desk and smeared my way into the nun's good books with my dimpled smile and my curly white hair and my gifted compositions if not my public-speaking.

Running - I was fastest in the class, not counting the girls who had hormonal thick-thighed advantages by Yr 6.

Swimming - I was that year's Captain of the School Team which had dominated the annual splash and drown inter-school competition for unbroken stretches of time.

Cricket - as No3 batsmen (and Captain) I nearly took off the umpire/teacher's head with a straight driven 6 (still my favorite - read "only" - stroke). I opened the bowling for Grade 4 when we played against the Protestant school as well. I was taken off after only for two overs, but I opened!

Football - I was 2nd Vice-Captain of the blue team, only because the Captain, John Dangerfield, was a slightly more nimble around the packs. And he could kick. And handball. And mark. The 1st Vice-Captain took my place on the bench for the second half of the match. Still wondering about that...

Popularity - I nudged out the said JD for the Class and School Captain (boy) because he was too quiet. I was loud, cheeky and funny.

And to top it off, I was dux of the primary-school - not counting Dorothy Sheedy, who was (is still, I believe) a girl.

Yep, I was a natural. Sport, academia. You name it. Academia, sport.

But then came secondary school, where someone decided we should play cards during lunch-time...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Your deal, said Mercer, handing me the pack.

I began to sweat.

I held the deck in my left hand and began to mix them up into groups with my right, what we card-players call shuffling, but misaligning them for some reason: this new deck was sort of sticky, or too smooth or something. I put the deck on the table, tried to cut it and do that spiffle trick where the corners of two half decks flip into each other. Four or five sections clumped together, sorta, hey, that's close enough. OK I did not reassemble the pack perfectly cleanly. It looked like I had dropped it and not bothered to align the cards to the long sides. Why did they do that? Whatever.

OK, it was THEN that I dropped it. No, sorry I only dropped half of the deck. But no damage done; after a minute or two we had all the cards back again, facing the same way this time.

Hey presto! - nothing up my sleeve except a laugh! I shuffled them again, clump, clump, just to be sure!

I dealt out the five cards to each player with a deft flick of the wrist and the cards flew straight, sorta, well, not exactly all over the place but not in the absolute direction of the person I was aiming them at either. Smugly, being able to arithmeticise my dealing so that everyone got the same (and correct) number of cards (unlike others & I was good at counting when I was young, did I mention that?), and with a minimalistic flourish (not sure if everyone saw it), I placed the rest of the pack near the centre of the table and turned over the top four, oops, one card, for the discard pile.

I looked up. Everyone was watching me with incredulous intensity.

- You are a total klutz, said Indy, slowly.

Mercer had just rolled his eyes. They seemed stuck. All white, it was weird. Lum, the fourth player (whoa actually knows the rules for Texas Hold 'Em, which we played later), was speechless.

- What? I asked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

- These are SUCH shit cards, said Mercer after a few turns.

As we picked up from the deck in the centre with each of our turns, the discard pile magically filled with cards in numerical and suit order. Amazing how my shuffling had managed to bring them all back together.

What are the chances of that happening, hey?

You wouldn't bet on it. Unless I was the dealer.

E@L


* someone actually used this word in a pizza parlor earlier that night! (cough Mercer cough), he of the four-card deal.

ToastBox Are ToFus!

The toefucking bastards at the ToastBox in Changi Terminal 3 - yes, you skinny bastard, stop looking at me type - tried their best to fuck up my Set 1 order: kaya toast, kopi and two runny eggs.

Truly this is the lowest of the low in Kopi/Kaya chains. Owned I believe by the Food Republic group, well whomever - they should know better.

- Set 1, please
- Set 1? The lady looks at me for a second. An ang moh, ordering a breakfast set!
- Set 1.
- Wan runny egg, soft bore?
- Yes, please.
- No, soft bore?
- Runny eggs, please.
- Wat u wan drink?
- Kopi.
- Kopi?
- Kopi.
- Hokay. Fort Wenny.

I pay with $50 and she gives me change from $10. She insists that I only gave her a ten. I check my wallet, maybe I did give her a ten, but I'm wary. I'm watching you, bitch! She passes me my eggs directly over the cashier section of the counter. The eggs come in a paper cup, like ice-cream, not on a plate where you can swish them around, dig the crisp, crumbly (more dehydrated than toasted) toast into the yolk…

I move down to the kopi section and see the kopi-man moistening the bottom of the paper cup with the rich dark brew. He fills it with water, stirs vigorously and then has the audacity to pass it to me.

- Kopi? I ask.
- Kopi, lite.
- No. I want kopi, normal kopi. Fill it up to here, just a splash of water. What's this piss you are giving me?

He makes another cup, condensed milk, a long pour of kopi, a splash of hot water, stir, stir, stir. I look ferociously at him. (Did I tell everyone that I'm off the Cymbalta: everything that was serenely amusing now pisses me off majorly. Thanks, thanks - no flowers please, I'm allergic to pleasant sentiment - but it's good to be back home.)

Kopi-man looks surly back at me and passes the paper cup kopi. I mumble under my breath something along the lines of "Make what the customer ordered, tofu, not what you think he might like because of his race."

I move down to pick up my limply soft, pre-prepared kaya toast. The butter has melted. Is it even butter? I pick up the paper boxlet. There is only ONE layer of toast!

What the fuck!

These tofus have to be exposed to the world for the crimes there are committing against the Supreme Singapore/Malay/Chinese Breakfast Tradition!

E@L

Rude Scrabble

No built-in spell-checker obviously with this game. We were all crying with laughter until we all passed out on the floor.

Please explain:

RBBR
DIX
OYBITE
PULLFUZE
VGOODWANQ
JESM
SHATAR(?)
EARSEOLE
HOTTEES
DICYDANK

OK, back to the packing.

E@L

Tonk

Having told perpetual ex-bloggerMercer that I was playing Texas Hold 'Em the other night (friends had bought a $10 set including betting chips in a Chinatown gift shop) he felt compelled to invite me over for a game of Tonk tonight.

I naturally assumed that this was some form of heavily ambiguous sexual merry-go-round that residents of the East Coast of Singapore hardly bother to fret about anymore, it is so rampant and they are so profligate... I wouldn't know: I live in Region 11, we can't afford sex because of the rent.

Instead, much to my relief and a little to my disappointment, it turns out that Tonk is the card game that Croaker, et al play to while away the long hours between trudging through mystical deserts and dispatching netherworld demons in Glen Cook's series of sword/sorcery war/fantasy novels about The Black Company, a bunch of mercenaries with good(ish) hearts who hardly ever kill anyone or thing that doesn't need it.

It seems a bunch of anorak wearing trainspotters with duodecimal dice at the Baltimore Science Fiction Society have such pathetic little lives that they have worked out the rules from clues in the books. (Actually it was just one clever dude called John Speno, but where's the fun in being honest?) So tonight, instead of packing my clothes and meds for Brisbane and points south, I'll be "Going Down" (now you see why I thought it was a sexual thing), or not, for the evening.

Texas Hold 'Em one night. Rude Scrabble the next. Tonk to follow.

Have I told you guys lately how my social life is gurgling around a fucking vortex of mid-life-crisis waiting-to-die philosophical trivialities?

~~~~~~~~~~

I had this really great neologism/pun in my head the other day. World shatteringly funny. Forgotten. Needed to tell you this, why?

E@L

Verbal UnTaboo

Fuck I have a massive headache.

It really hurts to look at the screen.

Or the keyboard.

Been drunking Guinness, sake, beer, gin/tonic, sherry (!), Black Russians...

Came home with Indy and his g-f and found that Izzy was still up.

Soo-oo-oo we played Rude Scrabble - "toefuckers" is a word, right?

(NTS delete this tomorrow morning...)

E@L

Verbal Taboo

Molly had been made an offer. She was a different girl now, changed since the days when she would not have let a heartbeat pass before saying 'Yes' to such an offer. Rumour has it she had said 'Yes' in the past.

She hesitated this time, called me. What should she do?

Previously, like many young people - hey, many people old and young would still like to be innocent (or not), cheeky and curious - she would answer quickly in the positive to any offer of excitement or challenge, anything that might provoke a bit of outrage and controversy, anything that would draw attention to herself. Then she would rationalize her decision at length, with quite sophisticated arguments, later on.

It's what we all do. We respond instantly with our limbic system (the anatomically lower, central, evolutionarily older parts of the brain) we rationalize cerebrally (with the more recently developed frontal cortex mainly) afterwards whatever the fuck we've just done. It's been proven, it's been written up.

Sure, Freudians, father never speaks to her, but as he has never spoken to anyone why should she feel special about that? I love to read psychoanalysis books and novels and case-studies, but they don’t convince me. The full talking cure doesn’t work as the words we 'choose' to describe a situation are generated so far post hoc, their tenuous links to those irrational motives are way too chaotic to be accurately derived. A meteorologist tries to isolate the guilty butterfly by analyzing a destructive hurricane.

The offer was financially attractive for a poor student, for anyone, it just required a couple of hours in a hotel. Any girl who liked to fuck would jump at it, right? Escorting. Just be an escort. Show them around. Then fuck them. If you never sleep alone, pick up guys left and right, if you like to fuck most days, what's the big deal about getting some cash for something you usually do for kicks? It's essentially the same as getting taken out for dinner and then fucking on a first date. Food and/or money. What's the big deal?

The word was 'escort'. It had a PG rating. Was family safe.

But she said it was the other words that slowed her down.

The other words for the same act, they drew her up to a certain line. That was the line between acceptable and unacceptable. Between SACRED, when everything was - to her rational mind - natural, her choice, her decision under her control (but haven’t I just argued that they are not?), and PROFANE when it was an arranged situation, when it really was a decision, not an impulse.

We had once drunkenly blathered on together over whether people should live life according to their natural impulses or to resist such initial impulses and basic urges and seek to CHOOSE by an attempt at some rational thought process what should be our actions. Surely being spontaneous was the easy way, was my argument.

She disagreed, said it was tough to thumb your nose at public condemnation for acting as you feel, as you know at a basic level was right. Doing what we are programmed to do...

But the first thing that comes to your head is not always the right thing, like revenge, and anger, like invading Iraq when Saudi Arabia is the problem. I loved to quote Katherine Hepburn in 'The African Queen' to her: "Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on this planet to rise above." Our strong reasoning power is not only what separates us from the lower apes, has made us so successful, so powerful in the world.

She loved to kid me for being a old man, with an old man's thinking. Why is it all about power? It's destructive, all this power, too.

I said I like trying to be scientific about things. I know I am not, but I try to be sensible.

Being sensible doesn’t make sense to her.

Yet it does for me. It is a goal to aspire to, like truth. That why I collect all these books, to get enough evidence to make a decision about the truth.

She washed hands of that question… Truth is something we can never find.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Words. Take some of the expressions we use for sexual congress:

Intercourse. Doing it. Vaginal-penile contact. Copulation. Making babies. Naughty weekend. Horizontal tango. Making love. Bonking. Shagging. Screwing. Fucking. (I resist the temptation to get too jokey here.)

They all describe the same act. They all are representative of that same act, of people either inserting or being inserted into, flesh and flesh, juices, muscles, sweat, grunting, pleasure. Basic stuff. The stuff that maintains the population. Sex. Fucking.

Why are some words acceptable to describe or name the copulative act and yet others taboo? Why do we draw a line somewhere along that list and say 'OK', 'Not OK'? Here be PG. Here be R-rated.

Molly doesn't hesitate to call someone a cunt, a fucker. She doesn’t hesitate to say out loud in a crowded restaurant, "I was fucking this guy on the couch the other night when my flatmate walked in…" Doesn't hesitate to talk about big Western cocks and small Asian tits in her public writings.

But when we discussed the power words of her conflicted decision, she spoke quietly.

Which words? Hooker. Call-girl. Prostitute.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me look at something I feel is related.

Why does one of my friends insist on me taking my shoes off when I come to his apartment, even though he knows I have bad feet that require support? (He gets me some indoor slippers.) I haven't been dancing in dogshit, I haven't been sloshing through sewers. His floor gets cleaned often enough, fuck knows his maid has nothing to do most of the day. What difference does it make? It's common thing in Asia of course, a sign of 'respect', not so much in Australia except maybe on a farm, and even then...

'Outside' is one area, where certain things are acceptable, where certain shoes are worn. 'Inside' is another world, where those shoes are not acceptable. Here sacred, there profane, same shoes. Literally 'clean' or 'unclean'. Even though the shoes may be genuinely clean in the bacteriological sense, they are 'unclean' in the moral, religious sense. The conditioned response to a broken taboo is a sense of revulsion, or disgust. In many religions breaking such a taboo requires a cleansing ritual of some type.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Was it merely words that stopped Molly from agreeing to the offer? Was she happy to be an escort, but wasn't that the same as being a hooker, a prostitute-for-a-day? Did those words make her feel unclean, whereas 'escort' didn't?

What essentially was the difference? she asked.

Control, I said. Control. A prostitute may be trafficked in illegally, coerced into it through drugs or criminals. No choice.

Or poverty, she said. That's why I would be doing it, because I am fucking broke.

But, you have the option of not doing it or not. A lot of the girls in Orchard Towers have no other option, if they are to break out of their poverty, but to hook. You are just looking for a short-term bit of cash. Shit you know I'd lend you money if you really needed it. But if you decide you want to do, then you can go ahead - I've been to OT a few times, I'm not in a position to criticize or moralize.

She thought for a moment. Thanks, but I'd ask the parental unit if I was really desperate for a loan.

Then ask them.

It's not the money. I'd like it, but I want to be outrageous. I've been so boring lately. I want to do something to stimulate my life a bit.

Is it just the words then, not the act? I asked.

Yes, perhaps. It's the concept of being labeled a prostitute, hooker, escort: whatever, it's the same thing. She had decided against it, to turn the offer down.

I wanted to call 'the arranger' - the word 'pimp' upset her as well- to say I'd be happy fuck some lady for that price. Any guy would. As for her, it's her decision for her to make.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am still uncertain about why she turned it down, I have been thinking about it for a while. I agree that the truth is something we may never find. A truth that is scientific must be dispensable, tossed out when a better truth comes along. Was it really just the words?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

To the old (younger) Molly, a decision made rationally was taboo. And here, she didn’t act irrationally. Uncharacteristically, she didn’t say 'Yes' the minute the question was asked. She stopped to think about it instead. She held off and rationalized.

Maybe that rationalization by this older (still young) Molly, the cerebration she used to explain a refutation of the limbic urge in this case, was just a convenient excuse. Those unpleasant, value-laden words were what she decided after the event that had caused her failure to take up the offer.

She wasn't spontaneous, and that wasn't the Molly she thought she knew, wasn't the image she had of herself.

So, to maintain integrity, she had to evoke a verbal, public taboo to explain why she broke her more personal, inner one.

She did a Katie Hepburn. She rose above nature, but would she admit that? Maybe.

Or, as she would say, 'Whatever.'

E@L

Report From O'Hare United Business Class Lounge - WTF with WiFi?

The lady with the exceptionally puffy eyelids finally relented and allowed me a card for 24hrs free WiFi access. "It should be free, but it ain't," she said as she handed me a Red Carpet Club password scratch-card.

Because I am flying Economy Class domestic (to connect at International Business on Singapore Airlines in Newark ), not International Business on United Airlines and am not a RED CARD CLUB Gold member, only a SIA/StarAlliance Gold member, the other people in the lounge are allowed to access the WiFi, but not me. I am a second class citizen (well, you knew that) all of a sudden. It provokes one of those petulant throat-choking reactions in me. I read the instruction twenty seven times, and despite realizing my ineligibility by these bloody stupid rules, still push the issue.

Rules were meant to be broken, right ?

What could possibly be the reason for this , does it costs them so much to give everybody free to use the WiFi? Is there a bandwidth issue?

That sympathetic lady with the puffy eyelids (I am talking PATHOLOGY here) though, what a nice person. Ugly though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beer must also be paid for. What sort of stupid lounge is this? Why not just sit in a bar downstairs? What's the point of having the SIA/Star Alliance Gold Card? You have to pay for the WiFi, pay for the beer… Muthfucka!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

A similar conundrum confused me at Heathrow once. I could use *THEIR* PCs to access the internet for free, but it would cost me money to use *MY* own laptop and the WiFi. WTF?

People just don’t have the right attitude to WiFi in my humble opinion.

Or beer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

In my only free time in Chicago, I went shopping for...

Books and CDs of course.

Grabbed some Buddy Guy that I only had on cassette (where ARE all my cassettes, BTW?), some Wes Montgomery and some Oscar Peterson at the Jazz Record Mart.

The second hand bookshop next was also good. Stuff I'd been meaning to buy at at some stage - some Banana Yashimoto, some Nelson Algren, that controversial book about Rasputin from a coupla years ago - and of course they look like I've owned them for a while...

This is important, right?

E@L

Steak City

Anyone heard of a fillet steak on the bone? I never had. I suppose it's the short side of a t-bone. Bloody lovely piece of dead cow.

Fletchers in Chicago. Recommended before it goes under, the place was almost empty.

Not partying too hard - I blame the weather and the meds and the jet-lag and the long days on my feet at the exhibition and my old age. Today was the last day,

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Certainly hope it goes down better than last night's tapas meal at Nacionale 27. We were drinking pomegranate mojitos or something all night and I ordered the BBQ pork as entree (main course). We stayed up drinking for a while, like I said, old, so off to bed round 1. Then about 4am a brute pain in my guts woke me up. Spasm and wind and ... etc...

Imagine living in Asia for 10 years and then getting food poisoning in Chicago.

Luckily it was just a once through issue, back on top already.

E@L

Report From Chicago

No problems with luggage. No problems with anything except my feet - I wore thick sock and these shoes are a bit small. Idiot, I haven't worn these shoes for ages and there must have been a reason for that, so why did I pack even them?

RSNA is a bit quiet. OK it's a LOT quiet.

And it's cold outside. Raining, not snowing. I'm too jet-laqgged to do much tonight - it's Sunday evening and happy-hour has started. Might sleep early and save myself for the next few nights.

Let's see if I can restrain myself if someone suggests hitting the bars. Willpower has always been a forte of mine... NOT!

E@L

Report From Newark Transit

I've done this flight a few time now. We come in to Newark Liberty with Manhattan Island on the left at twilight, all the tall buildings, the silhouettes, all the lights, the sunset sky, it's pretty amazing. Same tonight. Mostly.

As the plane approaches I can see across over the river to New Jersey (you know she thrills me with all her charms), over the train lines, over some large cloverleaf highway intersection, and then another highway, and we are just above the car park, almost on the runway when the plane kicks back.

Engine whine increases, a screaming almost for a second there and instantly we are climbing, an ascent sharp and unexpected, the ground that was running parallel to me angles away. I see planes at their gates just outside the window, dropping back from us now as we rise and begin to bank into a turn. Is this a joy-ride? What's going on?

Everyone is silent. We have aborted the landing, obviously. I can’t see anybody from inside these giant seats. It's like being in an office cubicle, down below the vision line, like being isolated in a pod. I wonder if everyone is calm, holding their breath. Praying, meditating. That Panadeine in my empty guts has caught fire. We rise back to the cloud line.

The captain comes on, says some only marginally reassuring words about ATC sending back up as there was still a plane on our runway. It wasn't a technical fault at least, not a wheel falling off, or a fire caused by a loose wire in the entertainment system.

(Speaking of that, while looking back from the toilet queue, I notice that the soft over-window down-lights at my pod are also not working.)

This sort of emergency, near miss, incident, whatever you call it, has never happened in the 1000 or so flights I've been on since I started my travelling life. And of course it happens an hour after I draft a blog about my plane crashing.

All together now - there's a little black spot on the sun today, synchronicity...

E@L

Report From 14,555km Out Of Singapore

Flying over Manitoba. It's 15 hours into the flight. I can’t open the shade to look out as the sun is blasting right at my window and would stream like an amazing movie effect across the other people who are trying to sleep or watch movies. The Flight-Info screen has this cool shot, one I've not seen before, demonstrating the flight path tracking over the North Pole on the edge of the globe, from Singapore right on the equator, to Newark half way up on the other side.

And then it doesn't. The screen goes blank for a few seconds, maybe 5 to 10. Then a little sign saying 'Digital Signal' comes up… Looks like the TV is losing the signal. Trust me to get a KrisWorld screen with a loose wire somewhere.

This has been happening all through my movies too -

1: Ghost Town (swearing edited out) - Sixth Sense meets Office meets Extras - theme: love conquers all.

2: Love Actually (tits and bums and swearing unedited) - just to hear Bill Nighey's classic line about drugs - theme: love conquers all.

3: In The Valley of Elah - (tits and bums and swearing unedited) - don’t start me on the American flag motif - Tommy Lee Jones doing his one-trick acting act again - themes: war is hell, these kids get fucked up in the head they ain't the men we used to be, we orn'tna be in that Eyeraq, paternal love can’t conquer squat.

4: Death Defying Acts - (no nudity, no swearing) Houdini had a mother complex and Catherine Zeta-Jones is the psychic fetish object - theme: love conquers a lot, but it can’t cure a ruptured appendix.

After watching Ricky Gervais in the first named movie do his usual whiney but lovable schtick as a misanthropic, depressed dentist, I had a crisis of conscience about complaining and so I decided to just hit a few buttons on the handle, or whack the screen lightly with my shoe-heel and eventually it would come back up...

I'm not sure if my actions actually had any effect, but hey...

~~~~~~~~~~~
NEWS FLASH -- Shorted out TV blamed for fire which engulfs SIA Airbus 340-500 as it lands in Newark. "Why didn't someone tell us the Entertainment System was faulty? We would have turned back immediately," says severely injured but still gorgeous stewardess Monica Flewinsky from her hospital bed in New Jersey. Only the crew survived. All the passengers died, she says, because their business class seats were so comfortable they didn’t want to leave the burning wreckage.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Oops, here's Stewardess Flewinsky now, to offer me another diet coke just as I am typing this, so, what the heck, I tell her about the problem with the screen. She waits for a minute or two - of course the screen behaves itself while she is watching! She offers to reset the system, but I say don't worry. She says she will tell the engineer. What a great guy I am! What a nice customer! Saved a plane (3/4) full of business travellers. The screen blanks again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wow, shit almighty! I nearly slept in yesterday morning and missed my midday flight to New York for the connection to Chicago! Ironically I was out with some friends till about 3 or so at Howl @ The Moon, the new pick-up joint for 50' Zombie Divorcees (i.e. single-again white females) in Singapore. Scary place for a guy used to seeing loads of darker hued, shorter, more trim-buttocked females as the predominant sexual life-form. I suppose it's good (and ironic like I said) to adjust my eyeballs for the broader arse of Western women as I'll be heading to the Chicago H@TM sometime this week most certainly, AND probably get home about the same o'clock (US Central Time) from there too.

So, yeah this Saturday morning, I woke at 9:45 (Singapore time). I hadn’t packed, was supposed to be at the airport in 25 minutes. Shit. Throw things into my medium sized hard-shelled bag (the one that Emirates lost last week). Whoops, this is not going to work: a) warmer clothes take up more space, b) I am too hung-over/still-pissed to fold my shirts properly, even FIND my shirts. So I went out to the storeroom and grabbed my old fold-up suit-bag from the top shelf, nearly falling off the ladder in the process.

Love that bag. It was a gift from the people at my old company when I left Australia to join their Hong Kong team. I used it for almost exclusively for the first few years, then went for a hard-shelled Samsonite one as I needed more space for gym and swimming gear (trying to lose weight back then too), plus The Mouse would fold all my shirts nicely, so it was no big deal. As the bag was handed to me at the farewell party in North Sydney (somewhere trendy, we never stinted in those heady days) one of the girls said, "You'll be an expert in travel accessories soon enough." Very prescient of her.

Fuck folding shirts this morning, as I said, no time. I put my grey suit in, three shirts (plus I'd wear one), my jocks, a jumper. All the other stuff was stuffed in the suit-free suitcase, meds, toiletries, extra shoes.

I called the taxi. Closed the suitcase and locked it. Then I unlocked and opened it. I searched in the drawers for my leather gloves, scarf and cap, threw them in. Locked the suitcase. Handkerchiefs, ties? Fuck. I put them in the other bag.

I slipped the briefcase over the handle of the suitcase and went to roll them into the lounge. I bent over to grab the suit-bag… and the handle broke off in my hand.

Clean snap. Plastic does NOT last forever.

The taxi is here.

There is no way to HOLD the suit-bag. It used to have a shoulder strap, where the fuck is that? There are no air-conditioners running in my house, btw. My hair has started to sweat. I found the shoulder strap in the first place I looked, thankfully, snap it on and head to the lift. I am projectile sweating by the time I get into the taxi. The stun level air-con in most taxis is not strong enough for me anymore, I didn't dry out on the ride to the airport. (This sweating is, I guess, caused by the Cymbalta. Or the humidity. Or pneumonia.)

At check-in the clerk has nowhere firm to affix the flight dockets for the suit-bag. She sticks them around the shoulder strap. It looks a little flimsy, what? Shit. I just know they are going to loose my suit-bag in transit. As I'm in business for this leg, I should have carried the suit-bag on and checked it in only at Newark.

Let's see if I am prescient, psychic, or merely whiney but loveable.

[NB: We have travelled nearly a thousand kilometers in the time it has taken to compose the first draft of this entry.]

E@L

Distaster. Disaster. Disaster Narrowly Averted

Bad things come in threes, people with attention deficit disorder often say before they move on...

~~~~~~~~~~

Firstly. With Mumbai under attack, Bombay Burning, two of my friends have had to cancel business trips at the last minute. Erectile pilosity of their napes, sensations of dissociation, unreality. Freaking scary, move that attack back one week and they would have been there, right amongst it. Matt particularly; he's had his share of disasters, thank you - he's a tsunami survivor.

~~~~~~~~~~

Secondly. My trip to Thailand in 10 days is also in doubt now as BOTH airports are shut down.

~~~~~~~~~~

And the third great story which was about to rock Singapore to its foundation was that the VOI was at a record low for a while there at E@LGHQ. A quick scan of two nearby Cold Storage facilities failed to uncover any of the yeasty delight. Bad. Why is the amount of Vegemite in my house exponentially proportional to the number of jars on the supermarket shelves?

Luckily Iz found some at that Expat food place under Orchard Towers. Where all the tastiest purchases are made.

E@L