Just a quick one tonight, owing to the lateness of the hour.
Remember today as the day Maznah Mohd Yusof was arrested over a 3 year old video, because some people got offended that a Muslim owned dogs.
I submitted the text of my petition to malaysiakini, malaysian insider, and the malay mail.
Will work on one in response to this latest outrage, and the calls for Guneswari Kelly to be charged for sedition by publishing photos of school children being forced to eat in a changing room to accommodate the sensitivities of Muslims during Ramadan.
Let me say this now. I will not rest until these laws are struck down.
In a sense, I am glad that all these are now coming to a head.
There is a lesson to be learnt from all this, even if it's not the one that Malaysia thinks it is.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Being drunk at the cinema
Is kinda exhilarating...
I write because I said I would and I will and I shall and I am and so it is.
Just watched Before Midnight...the conclusion to a 3 decade love affair...with a bottle of wine...and sushi...in a cinema.
Tis' the inexorable truth of alcoholic inebriation that one's vocabulary turns to misbegotten drivel.
How do writers write while under the influence.
I string one petty sentence from the next to next, hoping to make rhyme or reason, and likely achieving neither.
Yonder thus my housemate beats out a tune on the electronic piano in the shared hallway.
What the fuck is she playing at right now? I really don't care. Sounds Japanese animeish and whathefuckerish.
Sleep beckons like the tempting mistress that she is. "Come to me", she says, "And I will end your weariness in my soft embrace".
Sleep my child. The sandman awaits you.
Sleep my child. Time is against you.
Sleep my child. Dreariness consumes you.
Sleep my child, and let the sleep become you.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
I write because I said I would and I will and I shall and I am and so it is.
Just watched Before Midnight...the conclusion to a 3 decade love affair...with a bottle of wine...and sushi...in a cinema.
Tis' the inexorable truth of alcoholic inebriation that one's vocabulary turns to misbegotten drivel.
How do writers write while under the influence.
I string one petty sentence from the next to next, hoping to make rhyme or reason, and likely achieving neither.
Yonder thus my housemate beats out a tune on the electronic piano in the shared hallway.
What the fuck is she playing at right now? I really don't care. Sounds Japanese animeish and whathefuckerish.
Sleep beckons like the tempting mistress that she is. "Come to me", she says, "And I will end your weariness in my soft embrace".
Sleep my child. The sandman awaits you.
Sleep my child. Time is against you.
Sleep my child. Dreariness consumes you.
Sleep my child, and let the sleep become you.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
Monday, July 29, 2013
How the fuck did I allow myself to get so fat?
Hot damn fucking hell, nothing like a beer belly and a hideous slouch to motivate you to run like you've never run before. No matter that your legs are aching, your knees are giving way and your lungs are on fire....just...keep...running.
Today morning was interesting. After the not-entirely unexpected but still overwhelmingly uncontrollable episode of ennui that was Sunday Night, I woke up surprisingly early and refreshed. I suspect listening to "Hard to Concentrate" over the past few days had something to do with that, so I switched over to a crazy little thing called love.
As I was traipsing my way to the train headed to Chinatown, the same thought that has haunted me for the past couple of months now recurred, I am walking in the belly of the earth, surrounded by hundreds like me, who don't seem to realise, or don't act as if they do, that they are living the very life often portrayed in sci-fi Neo-Metropolis. You know the one where people are essentially living in underground post-apocalyptic hive colonies. Think Kowloon Walled City, but cleaner. I shuddered slightly at the implications.
Ahead, a lady with a short red skirt stands out like a flash of scarlet in a sea of grey. Funny how these things catch your eyes. She wasn't the only one sporting crimson, yet red was now all I saw. And those legs. Those long never-ending legs.
What could I do?
I followed her like the indescribably lustful male that I was. 2 steps behind, never missing a beat (although we did miss the train, but damn was it worth it).
The Japanese have a word for this: Bakku-shan. One look at her face was enough to break me out of my reverie. Cruel and mean-spirited no doubt, but a man's entitled to his own personal thoughts. I'll be damned if I censored myself.
Moving on to the next carriage so I wouldn't have to ruin my mental image of her legs in that skirt, I squeezed in with the morning crowd, and took the opportunity to stare at the faces around me. Soulless and tired, every single last one of them.
I think back to a conversation I had with a taxi driver the day before, on the fact that he couldn't stop renting the taxi, even for a day, and that meant that on Sundays, he made just enough to break even on his rental, then he would return home to spend time with his family.
Staring at the crowd that piled themselves into the subway carriage, I wonder what their stories were? Were they making something new, something more, or were they just trying to break even, because they couldn't stop paying the rent?
So I plugged back my earplugs and closed my eyes.
The show must go on.
Today morning was interesting. After the not-entirely unexpected but still overwhelmingly uncontrollable episode of ennui that was Sunday Night, I woke up surprisingly early and refreshed. I suspect listening to "Hard to Concentrate" over the past few days had something to do with that, so I switched over to a crazy little thing called love.
As I was traipsing my way to the train headed to Chinatown, the same thought that has haunted me for the past couple of months now recurred, I am walking in the belly of the earth, surrounded by hundreds like me, who don't seem to realise, or don't act as if they do, that they are living the very life often portrayed in sci-fi Neo-Metropolis. You know the one where people are essentially living in underground post-apocalyptic hive colonies. Think Kowloon Walled City, but cleaner. I shuddered slightly at the implications.
Ahead, a lady with a short red skirt stands out like a flash of scarlet in a sea of grey. Funny how these things catch your eyes. She wasn't the only one sporting crimson, yet red was now all I saw. And those legs. Those long never-ending legs.
What could I do?
I followed her like the indescribably lustful male that I was. 2 steps behind, never missing a beat (although we did miss the train, but damn was it worth it).
The Japanese have a word for this: Bakku-shan. One look at her face was enough to break me out of my reverie. Cruel and mean-spirited no doubt, but a man's entitled to his own personal thoughts. I'll be damned if I censored myself.
Moving on to the next carriage so I wouldn't have to ruin my mental image of her legs in that skirt, I squeezed in with the morning crowd, and took the opportunity to stare at the faces around me. Soulless and tired, every single last one of them.
I think back to a conversation I had with a taxi driver the day before, on the fact that he couldn't stop renting the taxi, even for a day, and that meant that on Sundays, he made just enough to break even on his rental, then he would return home to spend time with his family.
Staring at the crowd that piled themselves into the subway carriage, I wonder what their stories were? Were they making something new, something more, or were they just trying to break even, because they couldn't stop paying the rent?
So I plugged back my earplugs and closed my eyes.
The show must go on.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Is this how depression feels like?
Somedays you look through your list of friends on facebook and realise there is no one you actually want to talk to and you simultaneously have the need to share and nothing to share at all and you log onto omegle hoping to connect with a stranger and you realise everyone there is either a robot or a 20 year old male looking for sex only and you wonder does anonymity reduce everyone to base desires and does no one enjoy intellectual discourse for the sake of itself and eventually you wonder how you got here in the first place and you realise that there's no rhyme or reason to it, and you think further and reflect that in your wishful thinking you assumed that a new friend, a change of scenery will solve everything but the truth is that the only person who can solve this is yourself.
And maybe the sandman.
This concoction of self-pity, wishful thinking, and quite possibly mental illness can really fuck a man up, and to think we have the hubris of thinking that we would always be immune.
And you think back to how your family who have met so many others who have chosen the seduction of suicide, how they have implored you to speak up and share with them when you feel down, and you realise why people don't.
They think it's not that bad.
And maybe the sandman.
This concoction of self-pity, wishful thinking, and quite possibly mental illness can really fuck a man up, and to think we have the hubris of thinking that we would always be immune.
And you think back to how your family who have met so many others who have chosen the seduction of suicide, how they have implored you to speak up and share with them when you feel down, and you realise why people don't.
They think it's not that bad.
Silence is Death
Recent events in my country of birth, Malaysia, have convinced me that to remain silent is to invite the slow death of acceptance into our lives.
"Stay safe," they say, "and they won't come for you."
The investigation, arrest, and imprisonment of Melissa Gooi, Alvin Tan, and Vivian Lee confirm to a chilling certainty that this is a lie.
"Stay safe," they say, "and they won't come for you."
The investigation, arrest, and imprisonment of Melissa Gooi, Alvin Tan, and Vivian Lee confirm to a chilling certainty that this is a lie.
No one is safe, and it frustrates me to no end that no one seems to feel the same urgency in speaking out against this creeping insidious tide of silencing.
Then again, maybe they've already succeeded in shutting us up.
The day we hung them out to die, and kept quiet, we had already lost our right to speak.
I am 24 years old.
I am scared shitless about what will happen next.
But I will not be silenced.
Not like this.
Then again, maybe they've already succeeded in shutting us up.
The day we hung them out to die, and kept quiet, we had already lost our right to speak.
I am 24 years old.
I am scared shitless about what will happen next.
But I will not be silenced.
Not like this.
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