Saturday, July 30, 2005

opening night is over!

hahaha! it was, at least from my limited point of view, a success. nobody ran away screaming and no one was pelted with overripe fruit(see, a success!). anywa, some people think that it wasnt as good as Boot Polish, and i thnk i agree with them. However, the definition of good is relative. Boot Polish was funny like hell, but, unlike The Birds, it was as deep as a...as a... well as something not very deep. the costumes for this one were also much better and the set and props people worked just as hard as they did last year. the actors probably did double the work of last years actors, especially Ali(who pratically rewrote all the birds' lines and the songs) and Ashvin. all this in only twenty or so rehearsals.

Quite a feat indeed.



Wednesday, July 27, 2005

today we did a chem prac in school. We were supposed to perform the catalytic cracking of paraffin. We were the last class to do it. In the past week, the other five classes doing the experiment blew stuff up. There were at least three explosions among them. However, the good people of Enoch were determined to best them. we managed to make three boiling tubes turn into flamethrowers, and we plan to do more next week. We here at Enoch are many things, but most of all we're destructive, anarkey(i spell it however the (expletive) i want to spell it)-obsessed (expletive)s


***PLOT TWIST***

But ACS is weird in general. today i wandered into a meeting of the newly-created school newspaper(doh, last year habakkuk had that idea but we couldnt be bothered to get more than one issue out). These guys are really getting into it( then again, their all GEPs). most of them think of it as the ACS Tabloid. I begin to wonder why they had this idea now. perhaps they've been reading Acxis too much. a few even wanted to use that as the name( The French guys and Ken Tay are going to by pissed). fortunately, ACne seemed to be a more popular title.

When i asked to do an After-Lifestyle segment on the last page of the Lifestyle section, they just stared at me.

***PLOT TWIST***

Fortunately, drama is still taking up most of my time so i dont laze around comtemplating evovling into an energy-based entity. Not for long though, opening night is on fri! hahaha! i just hope it will be as good as last years though. Its quite funny but the humour is of the intellegent bristish variety instead of the lame Acsian stereotype variety. We do still have some ac humour. for instance, i play an evil hunchback who wants to be a christmas elf. Anyway, we're a full house for Fri but you can catch Sat's show. Im selling tickets for ten bucks only now, so quick buy from me! 416 enoch, gray level.

***PLOT TWIST***
Since i like to be random, ill just put in a little segment here on one of my fears(be awed by my openess). For some strange reason, im terrified of pronouncing people's names wrong, hence offending them. thats why i alway try no to say people's names if i dont have to.

i dont know where this fear originated. Perhaps its from my time in kindergarten( or whatever-the-(expletive) they call that place where they keep kids) where no one could pronounce my Christian name, much less my indian middle and surname. its very funny to find out what could have scarred you for life when you were a kid. for some its a evil-looking sock under the bed, others its an esspecially evil teacher/babysitter. for me it was having my name confused with a verb.



hahahaha.



Tuesday, July 26, 2005

This is the random MMORPG game that people are talking about. By 'talking' i mean, not talking but playing in the library in secret. and by people i mean GEPs. Or Geepers. it depends on your dialect.


the real reason for this post is so that i can learn how to post a link.

***PLOT TWIST***

another website of interest is this random downloading site Dale found it and is trying to use it to get issues of Onslaught story arc(or perhaps miniseries) in X-men comics.

***PLOT TWIST***

In the ending everyone dies.

***PLOT TWIST***

Actually they didnt, they just were transported to another reality.

***PLOT TWIST ***

Wait, i got nothing. sorry.

***PLOT TWIST***


hahahahaha

hoo boy...

just happened to see one of the scripts i wrote in sec 2. Man, i was lame back then. thankfully ive improved since then.

at least i think i did.



hahahaha.



Monday, July 25, 2005

hurrah! im becoming tech savvy. ive learned how to post pics, got a tagboard, and a counter. im so happy. hurrah. i was going to post something on groucho marx and perhaps karl marx too but i'll do it tommorow.

plus, i know i promised when i started this blog to post stories, but my inherent paranoia is stopping me from posting anything yet. i'll probably post something literary(at least, i hope) next month.


hahahahaha! uh... i mean lol!lol! lol!

damn,damn,damn,damn,damn. if this works, it means that im a idiot. ive been trying to figure out how to post pictures on since i started using it, a year ago! now i find out that all i have to do is just click a button a wait.

oh well. im too angry to do this post now ill come back later.
hahahaha.



Friday, July 22, 2005

ever notice how you seem to live on the edge of things? probably just all in my head but i notice that i always manage to be on the edge of stuff. mostly, its in my choice of books and comics but its also in my schooling and my CCAs. Plus, in the way i generally live. a weird character trait if i do say so myself.


**** PLOT TWIST****

one thing that really annoys me is television. esspecially american television. not that i disagree with it or anything, its just that so much of it revolves around people critising other people. of course, that's funny but sometimes it can be overkill. i mean who elects a president, proclaims him an idiot, mocks the way he speaks and his policies, then REELECTS him. Glorious. In s'pore you can say a lot of things about the gahmen(behind closed doors at least) but you cant say that they are stupid. Seriously, they're all friggin genius. Even their children are geniuses. i mean, people mock some of the lower levels of buerocracy but the top is solid,leh.


****PLOT TWIST****

I probably mentioned this before but i need to reiterate. SYDA is killing me. wrote the first draft of a script then found out that it has to be set to a theme that s'porean youth is interested in. ARGH.


****PLOT TWIST***


an interesting thing happened in drama today. i have finally perfected the art of the 'Plot Twist Maneuver'. it is a unique technique of random that allows the user to suddenly change the subject or make something funny. it invovles stating sometime mildy suprising and over-emphasizing it by waving one's hands around for at least twenty-thirty seconds(in drastic conditions, a minute may be required).


for instance...

"then i realized that you can't divide by zero... PLOT TWIST!(wave hands around)"
"At which point we ran out of seasoning....PLOT TWIST!(wave hands around)"
"then snape kills dumbledore.....PLOT TWIST!(wave hands around)"
"but he still probably isnt evil...PLOT TWIST(wave hands around)"








hahahahaha.



Wednesday, July 20, 2005

at this moment, we're all in the computer lab doing independent research for a Humanities project. Guess what everyone is really doing.


freedom is fun.



Saturday, July 16, 2005

ive been noticing the name of Lovecraft and Lovecraftian fiction for some time now. curious, i decided to find out more on this man. apparently, he was one of the most influencial writers in his genre of horror ficiton. a pity since this only happened after he died.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was also one of the greatest letterwriters of the century thanks to his copious coropondence with his friends and collegues.

however, i think that his Cthulthu Mythos is his crowning achievement. Lovecraft writings were based on his nightmares and they were indeed quite terrifying. The Mythos was about a patheon of extra-dimensional entities that predated humanity and were hinted of in myth. however, lovecraft himself did not come up with the term himself, the name was coined by his correspondent and fellow authour, August Derleth. Later, Derleth would publish Lovecraft's writings, after making a few changes to them to include his own Christian belief of dualism. Many say that this was un-lovecraftian since it underminded the simple chaos of the world lovecraft portrayed.

in any case, lovecraft was indeed a great writer. the power of his works were so deep that many people started to beleive that they were based on real myths. his necronomicon, a plot device he used in some of his works was so believably real that people bagan to think that it was a real book.

Since Lovecraft's time, many writers including Clive Barker ,H.R. Giger, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth,Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Alan Moore, and Brian Lumley, have written stories that seem to be set in his "universe".



Saturday, July 09, 2005

some time ago on another blog i made a quick posts on comics, esspecially the scene in singapor. now i find that most of what i said was wrong. here's a more updated edition.

Singapore is know for many things. chilli crab, the merlion, the esplanade, and a lot of political freedom(if you disagree go to BLT's blog. he's more controversial.). but its not know as a comic book place. at least not by anyone under twenty. in fact, i was quite suprised to find that, less that a generation ago, singaporeans, hell, asians in general were quite the comic book fans. People around my age dont have a clue who the hell the silver surfer is but people five years older dub things infinity gaunlet and (possibly) misquote the Watcher. weird, huh? maybe its because the real golden age of comics was in the 80s and 90s. personally i think that since publishers wanted to get new titles started for the new millenium to try and iron out the loopy and convoluted plots/characters, the comics book readership has been cut into two.

there's this new genre that was created solely for the internet. flash fiction its called, i believe. basically, its like short fiction only much shorter. as in 300-100 words or so. i read some flash fiction pieces, and let me tell you, they may not be shakespeare but their good. really good. some are unique and bizzare, though there are also a few duds but must of the ones i read are pretty good. a bit childish at some points buit still good.

maybe i should pick it up.



Friday, July 08, 2005

this is a truly random post.

just finished the oral segment of the MT Olevel paper. i cant tell you how much i hate snd language. i am completely useless at it. when i did the june paper(in june) i winged most of it. i think im going to fail. worst, i think i may deserve to fail.

however, i have hope. i trust in the Lord, he will deliver me from this evil. i will get a C6.



Wednesday, July 06, 2005

SYDA is a script writing competition... and its killing me. i cant seem to think of any fresh ideas that can be set on stage. plus, its due in conjuction with my portfolio(apparently) for CAP. need to take red bull and go on an all night writing marathon....

argh!

(which reminds me, i really ought to start posting stories.)



Tuesday, July 05, 2005

i realize that i must really apologize about my shameless reusing of posts. the only reason i did it is toa) pospone the writing of the stories that this blog is supposed to be aboutb) i didnt want them all to go to wastec) i really like looking at the 'posting' window and seeing a good number of posts

one of my favourite genres of stuff is science fiction. it's like fantasy but without the occultic bits. plus, if you read enough of it you can even pretend that you know real science. and of course, if your lucky it can inspire you to create something incredible. "Everything that can be invented has been invented," claimed Charles Duell in the US Patent Office in 1899. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home," insisted Ken Olson, the chairman of Digital Equipment in 1977. And, last but not least, "The cloning of mammals is biologically impossible," wrote James MacGrath and Davor Solter with finality in the December 1984 issue of Science, a scientific journal.Perhaps these learned gentlemen should have browsed through the science fiction novels of the 19th and 20th centuries. Jules Verne described incredible machines in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." Think nuclear submarine and French Concords. George Orwell predicted a society where Big Brother was always watching in our office and on our roads in "1984". Think videocams and ERP. H G Wells wrote of growing human body parts in a laboratory in "The Island of Dr Moreau". Think stem cell research and the recipe for cloning. Science fiction, both in novels and in cinema, has always displayed an uncanny ability to look into the future and ask the age-old question that has propelled mankind forward. What is the question you ask? Simply this - "Why not?"Atom bombs, micro chips, gene splicing, landing on the Moon and soon, Mars - these have all been prophesied by science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov and Gene Rodenberry. But have these prophecies merely been accidental? We still do not have humanoids though artificial intelligence is well on its way towards being perfected. We still wait patiently for extra-terrestials from galaxies faraway, believing that the truth is out there. Will we still be waiting one hundred years from now? And we cannot travel in time as Marty McFly did in "Back to the Future". Didn't Albert Einstein prove that time was like a flowing river into which we cannot step more than once? Yet, we continue to obsess about the possibilities because science fiction asks us again and again "Why not?"Science fiction is unique to all societies that have experienced rapid scientific and technological progress in a short space of time. The United States, Britain, Russia and yes, Japan have given birth to some of the greatest literature of this genre. Bruce Sterling, a reputable science fiction writer explains, "Science fiction is a fun house mirror for a society warped by raging technological advances." Often, science fiction seems surreal but that is its attraction. We read and daydream. We transcend the ordinary things of everyday life and believe that technology will lead us to nirvana.Of course, without the existence of hell, we cannot know heaven. So science fiction frightens us with stories of experiments gone wrong. We read of mutants and watch vivid movies about freaks. In every case, it is not the science that goes wrong but basic humans traits, such as greed and jealousy, that betray science. Remember how the Incredible Hulk was created as a result of his ambitious father's experiments. Fatherhood never appeared so demented. And, what about the devious computer in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: Space Odyssey". You would have to blame its human programmers. And, a recent movie, "28 Days" portrayed the military as far more dangerous than brain-eating genetically modified virus.Time has proven some works of science fiction rather worthless. Harry Harrison's novel, "Make Room! Make Room!" which was made into the movie "Solyent Green" depicted a world so over-populated that everyone only had 3 square metres of living space. Poor Harry! Little did he realize that birth control would soon become easily available. The famous H G Wells, every school boy's introduction to science fiction, has not stood up well to the test of time. There are no Martians - just subterranean water - on Mars. I guess the Martians won't be attacking after all! "The Time Machine" is just fodder for young imaginative minds. Many of us grew up reading and watching Dr Who. We probably have the fondest of memories of the dear old doctor and his travelling telephone booth. Unfortunately, his adventures don't bear much scientific scrutiny.However, I am reminded of two classic writers who have raised science fiction to exceptional heights. Aldous Huxley in "Brave New World" envisioned a society where "feelie multimedia", anti-depressives like "soma" and "test-tube babies" are commonplace. George Orwell frightened us with a picture of a dysfunctional utopia in "1984" . We may not converse in "Newspeak" but we do use politically-correct terms to fit in. We sing downloaded MTV songs, electronically synthesized for pop stars, who look good but can't get the pitch. We wait with bated breath for the Toto results to be published so we can retire before sixty. And what about those Internet cookies? Ever get the feeling that you're being watched? Well, why not?Science fiction appeals to the everyman in each of us. We train to be chemists, physicists and biologists. We are taught to begin with a hypothesis and devise experiments to prove that hypothesis. We apply mathematical theorems and do complicated literature searches. We purse BSc's, MSc's and PhD's. Dare I suggest that there is part in each of us that longs to be ordinary and unscientific? In music, we graduate from practising our scales and playing classical pieces for blasé examiners to listening to rock and heavy metal. We cannot imagine a life without one or the other. In a similar fashion, science fiction, in its diverse offbeat forms, with all its eccentricity and sleaziness, gives us the balance that we need to face a world where science leads and humanity follows. Science fiction helps us to make sense of all this rapid progress and gives us a reason to hold on to our nagging suspicions about progress. Ultimately, science fiction asks us to face the the future with the question, "Why not?"


References :Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky : "The Experts Speak"Bruce Sterling : " TIME 29 March 1999"

in recent times, the arts in singapore have rapuidly been degenerating. this is because every idiot on the street thinks he can write a insightful and deep book/play/poem by just sitting down and forcing it along.
personally, as a writer(or as many would agree, wronger) i feel that when writing, you should just follow your metaphorical heart, (or perhaps pacemaker)
but will anyone listen? oh, no. i mean, dont get me wrong here, if you just look at the ACS (I) writers mob, you would see that they agree. no one writes meaningful just because they want to win a friggin award (okay, some might, but that's just in desperate situations)
however, if you look at the writing people in certain schools, especially the writers who get there work accepted by the bosses, you see this recurring trend of deepness. its damn shallow if you ask me.
how the hell does anyone in sngapore know about the strive of war or gun violence. how many people do you know who actually tried to jump of a building or slit their wrists?( ive heard of people winning the commonwealth essay writing thing for writing how they come from broken and starving families while their actually millionaires in families closer than the families in old tv sitcoms. sorry, i cant think of a proper methpor. or spel prperly for the mmater.)
no one right?
and yet people still go around writing this stuff like they've experienced. its pathetic.
butmaybe i shouldnt be the one to judge. only thing i know is that my life ait a joke but i still write funny stuff like GG and in the Bob the Pirate circles cause i know that their people who have real screwed up lives and im not going to try and compete with them.
maybe i wrong. maybe the poeple with the good life are the only people with the time to write about the bad life.
maybe im just writing this cause im stoned on coke( coca-cola lah brother. kNOw Drugs)
anyway... damn i forgot what i was going to say. nevermind you probably get the gist.
hahahahaha

telepathy is impossible. why? because from and perhaps even before birth, everyone has a different view of the world. it may be because they seee different images or think different thoughts. in any case, any one human cannot possibly see what another is thinking since the methaphorical mental wiring and encoding in each person is different.
however, what would happen if a large group of people were made, from birth, to experience the exact same experiences. VR technology like that postulated by the creators of "The Matrix" might work in such a situation. let's assume that such technology exists and also, individual thoughts are not as important in forming our mental wiring. what would happen then?
in this situation, perhaps telepathy would be possible however, since everyone would be experiencing the same things and thinking the same thoughts, perhaps telepathy would be redundant.

Neil Gaiman is in Singapore! I went to his talk yesterday. apparently, he was brought in by the bristish council. he's also making a movie, Mirrormask, and his new book Anasi Boys is coming out soon. The biggest suprise was the number of people that were there. i knew that loads of people were coming but i suprised by the number of screaming teenagers. it was weird since i was expecting cool-looking thirty year olds and literature professors.

Gaiman is one of the greatest writers of our time. The Straits Times' 'Life' section called him a literary rock star. His comic book series, The Sandman is said to by the greatest comic of all time. He has written screenplays and a number of books, including the bestseller 'American Gods' and 'Coraline'. He has also worked with Terry Pratchett to produce the book Good Omens.

however, the Sandman seems to be his greatest achievement to date. i dug up my old ISO essay on it.

well, here it is....



Neil Gaiman's The Sandman is an extremely popular award-winning series of graphic novels of the fantasy genre which began in 1989. It consists of ten installments which explore a magical world filled with horror and beauty. The anthropomorphic personifications created by Gaiman are Dream, Destiny, Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair and Destruction. Each character is represented by its function and its sphere of responsibility. They are all equally well-known among young comic book readers. However, Dream, or Morpheus, is the best developed of the personifications, followed closely by Death.
In Preludes and Nocturnes, a group of wizards use their power to build a prison to trap Death, therefore ending death. However, they capture Dream instead. When Dream finally escapes, he sets out on a quest to find the tools of his office, which are his ruby, pouch and helm. The quest teaches Dream a lesson about depending on mere tools as well as taking him through the deep recesses of hell itself where he meets Death.
It is worth noting that Gaiman's personification of death is a woman, who has her own sad story to tell in Dream Country. She is vulnerable and eager to share her story. She possesses a sympathetic nature with a quiet determination to help the downtrodden. One day in every century, Death takes on mortal flesh to better comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like and to taste mortality: This is the price she must pay for dividing the living from the past and the future.
Dream was a hard-hearted follower of rules, with more enemies than friends but, he evolves into a more compassionate being in the course of the series. In The Doll's House, Dream has to choose between mercy and responsibility when given the much sought after keys to hell.
"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." - Dream (8)
In World's End, all the personifications are drawn together in a tavern where they share their unique tales of wonder. The reader learns valuable lessons about the nature and power of conversations and the sharing of dreams and personal life stories. A strong bond is almost naturally forged between the reader and each of the human-like personifications. This is reinforced in The Wake, which is the final installment of The Sandman, where the reader becomes the mourner at the wake of close friends.
The Sandman series is a marvellous collection of anthropomorphic personifications with their own distinctive characteristics and voices. The variousPersonifications are able to do what mortal men cannot do but, they seem to share the same motivations as people such as pride, jealousy, duty and power. The gods and monsters of Gaiman's universe are dependent on the faith of flesh and blood humans for their fortunes and so, they reflect the essence of mortality and humanity. It is by and large an internally consistent schema that incorporates mythology and religion. The post-modern perception of these personifications lies in the fact that Gaiman is consistently self-deprecating and has his characters mock themselves by referring to each other as mere anthropomorphic personifications.

i just watched the movies 'The Forgotten' and 'The Machurian Canidate' and i just realized that nothing in our lives can actually be proven to have happened. the only proof we truly have is our memory since without the original memory we cannot draw connections between actual physical evidence. therefore it stands to reason that memory is not based on the past but rather the past is based on memory. it seems farfetched, but bear with me. it the past was changed, then we would remember it differently. however, time travel is essentially impossible, or at least ridicoulously expensive. however, if the memory of the past was changed all that would be remembered was the version of the past that had been changed. this is propoganda in its purest form.
however, the change in the past would not be completely complete if the people making the changes were not affected. the change can only take place once everyone, and i mean everyone believes and remembers the changes and not even the vaguest recollections of any other past.
therefore, in this situation, there would be no evidence of any other past other that the one remembered, i.e. the one changed esspecialy if the memory cahnge was done in conjuction with a number of physical changes like the destruction of history books and antiques.

people want to be matyrs. people want to sacrifice themselves so badly that most of them dont even know it. i think this desire is a manipulation of some of the core beliefs in most religion. All major religions usually have an aspect of sacrifice in them. In Christianity, Jesus sacrificed himself for the rest of the world. This meant that we were all, technically, already saved, we only need to claim our salvation, by believing, nothing more. I'm not so sure about other religions but i think that they place a heavy emphasis on sacrifice too. it's something of terrible importance to belief. you cant belief if you wont sacrifice. That's why people are so willing to give up something that's important to them just because of their beliefs. but problems start to arise when people forgot how to tell whether one should sacrifice oneself or one.

As i may have stated before, people are idiots.

See, we're all paranoid bastards. We think, at least on an unconcious level, that good things cant always happen to us. no one honestly beliefs that life is good. people only belief that life is good NOW, but it will be bad SOON. Because of this, we begin to feel the need to sacrifice unimportant things. the worst part is, this cant even be called religion devotion, because most of the time, people sacrifice to everything other that God. People can work ridiculously long hours, scream and argue with one another, and spend the rest of the time stoning in front of the idiot box. Most people will never think of going into a church or maybe giving a little bit back to the community.

that's why i find masochists so weird. they inflict pain on themselves because they think its easier that letting pain happen naturally. But then, that's also why i find that people who find masochists weird are also weird since their logic makes a weird kind of sense.


so basically, what i trying to say is that people what to feel pain, at least on a emotional level. people want, at least, sometimes, to be somewhere alone to cry and whatever. people do this because they think that...

matyr= being close to God

that's not exactly true. its most like...

being close to God= being hated by Satan= spiritual attacks = troubles in the world which only sometimes = matyrdom.


that's how i think it goes. course, i dont really know much so i should say anything.
0




hahahahaha.



Friday, July 01, 2005

just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, 'Mister Ringgit' is an alias of an alias. it has nothing to do with any currency.

wow.

i just found the reason for this blog. it struck me suddenly, when i was feeding the pigeons in The Park, some random metaphor for a place in my head. i realized that the answer had been staring at me all along. i dont mean to say it was staring me in the face. in was actually behind me, hiding in a bush, another mind metaphor, which is to say obscure almost forgotten memory. the essences of my revelations can be described in too words.

"Creative Discipline"

i first heard of this some time ago, from a friend of a friend of a friend(at least two of these friends are the same person, and the other one is me). in any case, it is apparently what the ib students of a certain ib school in sg are supposed to possess.

after some reflection, i started to realize what this meant. it means( wel,at least to me it does) that creativity can give someone enough ideas to conquer the world, but discipline is what makes those ideas a reality. sounds corny i know, but that's the only way i know how to phrase it.

its like the title of this blog, 'Chaos Controlled'. it has too meanings. one, it means that i am controlled by chaos in my writings. however, it also means that by putting down the stories in writings, my mind has more control over them.

every word i type is a nail in their coffins, while at the same time, another step to their immortality.

therefore, my path of action is clear. i need only to write and write some more. what more can anyone ask for.

of course, along the way i might screw things up a bit. im not a accomplished writer, not even a novice. but maybe, one day.....





hahahahaha.