christmas is sneaking up this year. it only dawned upon me today that it's gonna be jc's birthday this thursday. no, not the guy from n'sync.



again the christmas spirit has eluded me. i can only remember one year when i was almost totally engulfed by it. humming and singing carols all the time and being a christmas nut. and that was when i was quite young, in primary school. other years the yuletide cheer came too soon and fizzled out too soon too. mostly it's just not there, like this year.



i wonder sometimes about the connotations of a 'white' christmas. but i don't think i get very far cos i don't feel much like spoiling the occasion by overanalysing it. its like listening to countless emo and poppunk bands. it's a pretty good experience as long as you dont spoil it by overthinking about the unoriginality and stuff like that. but anyway, can you blame these bands. reproducibilty is everywhere in this age. at least they make the originators more original.



i have recently relinquished my status as a pirate, and i'm stockpiling for another long semester in a room with little entertainment. i'm working against time here. so if anyone got suggestions of anything worth checking out on the aural front, feel free to let me know. think about the bleak prospects of my next semester and think about granting me some salvation.

"...'This is a sad day for Iraq. The people celebrating are uneducated and not the majority. You wait and see. It will become much worse.'...



...US soldiers are handing out book bags for Iraqi children. The problem is they have an American flag on them. Must colonialism be so blatant?



On the flip side, the children are tearing off the flags, and oftentimes either an Iraqi flag is being sown in its place, or a picture of Saddam Hussein..."



read the article here.

well, well, well.



saddam's been captured. hope they got the right 'saddam'.



gotta sympathise with the guy. after spending all that time growing out his hair and beard to prepare for christmas. looks like the kids aren't gonna have a santa this year. no wonder he was resigned to his fate. or so the papers claim.

well, i wasn't very inclined to, but w asked me to put something here about tonight's incident. so well i guess i will.



anyways, we were at borders, after having dinner at marche, after a saunter down orchard road. as usual, we went to the music section to peruse through cd after cd, going over little minute details like only how inane music bitches do. so it was very merry and the like, when at the "S" section, it happened.



w started to look a little perplexed, whilst i at the same moment, caught a whiff of something most unsoothing to the old sniffer. i was still looking at cds but this new nasal sensation was tugging at my shirtsleeves for my attention. so i delicately traced this foul bouquet and as i swiveled my head to the right, the sight and realisation dawned upon me like a morning's heavy dampness together with the full affront of a scent so foreign and vile that i could not help but cover my mouth, and laugh. the stifled laughter of a person who realises the gravity of the situation and also the merry mirth of one who realises that w has also experienced the same revelation.



i staggered away, turning back only to grab a cd that caught my attention. we clawed our way to a listening post nearby and still could not escape the vileness that permeated the air like an insidious waft that grabs you by the gonads. w tested the waters by walking around in a desperate search of pleasant air while i observed that the odour was localised to only the aisle we were in. soon we were a safe distance away and we observed this element of terror together.



it was some construction person, quite filthy, quite foreign. i can't make out his nationality. but it wasn't a pleasant smelling one.



most intriguing of all, he had a plastic bag tied over his head.



of course this led us to ponder for reasons why.



w could not come up with a satisfactory explanation as he was too sickened and excited at the nature of the smell that he had just encountered.



my theory was that the plastic bag was tied there to stop all the lice on his head from jumping off to attack nearby targets.



so we somehow pieced together that he probably hadn't washed his hair and kept that plastic bag tied to his head for a week to achieve such an aroma.



as we walked out of borders, w asked me what colour would that smell we encountered be, if it had a colour. at first i thought it would be greenish-yellow, but it wasn't all that pungent and putrid. it was a rather more greyish-brown colour.



later on i speculated that perhaps he got all his mates to give him a bukkake on his head a week before and tied the plastic bag on his head to keep it nice and festering.



w then reasoned that perhaps that all that spunk helps hair growth so the plastic bag keeps the nutrients in. i heartily offered to condition his hair for him. but he seemed quite antagonistic about it. and so i took his silence to be a declination. though the coy smile on his lips confused me for a while. i shall have to ask him about my offer again sometime. just to make sure.



actually on afterthought, now that the shock has worn off. there is a logical explanation for the plastic bag. he must have tied it to his head as it was raining earlier on in the evening. and being presumably involved in construction work, he must have been outdoors in the rain.



well, logic never made anything very humorous.



i prefer the bukakke explanation personally.

fuck. i knew it. it's happened.



the latest song to be bastardised by a beer ad is 'happy together' by the turtles. damn you heineken. i shake my small fists at you.



why why why?

i was at novena square today. went there to meet my mother. spent about an hour or so there cos well there wasn't much to do at home anyway.



as usual i headed to W. H. Smith to check out the reads, in particular a few books i've been feeling like getting. when i got there, i couldn't find a decent book anywhere in the place. i mean, well there were books, but they were those on sale kind well cos, they were all on sale. 5 bucks a pop. stuff like unpopular stephen king titles and shit like that. what happened to this bookstore? the rest of the store was filled with children's toys and paraphernalia, magazines, vcds, stationery and to my surprise, snack foods. something's gone very wrong with this place.



anyway after looking at the vcds, i headed downstairs to the ground floor thinking to while some time away wandering around in cold storage looking at the meats or something. but as i headed towards the supermarket, i suddenly caught the strains of a violin and i looked around. there was a string quartet playing in the middle of the mall. so i was drawn to this instead and parked myself against a pillar to dig some classical sounds. the sound was quite bad, you could hardly hear the viola (i hazard a guess) and the cello, so it was like a duet of two violins. and during the first piece, one of the violinist's bow kept hitting the mike positioned above him as he played. didn't think a string quartet would have percussion in it. the sound guy was pretty clueless to what was going on, reminding me of the eternal struggle between school PA goons and aspiring bands who perform at school events. but still it was quite cool and i just hung about listening to them pound out christmas tunes. right in front of them was a charles and keith shoe sale. and it's a pretty surreal sight to see four classical musicians in black serenading office ladies and aunties whilst they scramble over shoe after shoe. it was like a battle between arts and commerce. quite a few people were drawn to the quartet. but i think it's mostly out of the novelty of the event then for the music. some culture to fill up an otherwise mundane lunchtime hour. too bad none of the people drawn were from the sale.



it was quite interesting to hear conversations of the people watching around me too. one auntie said to another in mandarin, "ni de hai zi hai zai xue na ge flute mah?". the other laughed courteously and shook her head and said something in reply ending with, "...mei you shi jian ah!". you don't really need to guess why the kid ain't got time for something as frivolous and unmarketable as a musical instrument. well maybe i'm just being an arts cynic.



another auntie saw her friend and walked up to her with a big smile on her face and said, "this is my favourite song!". the quartet were playing something that was used for some commercial on tv (no it's not from a fucking beer ad. stop whistling.). her friend asked, "what's the name?". she replied, "i don't know! hahaha! i just know it's my favourite song!" after a while they sauntered off to the nearby body shop to find one of their husbands who was there presumably to pick them up (no, not in that way).



(i said stop thinking about the fucking beer ad song.)



at first no one clapped when they finished a piece. but gradually the audience warmed up to them and clapped after every piece they played, you could see the lead violinist, this hotshot looking specky guy with gelled up hair, very virtuoso-like, liked it a lot. though he made this quite valiant attempt at this tricky bit with lots of 16th notes, but he mucked it up something terrible. but at least he played on, and it was a really long bit too. if it were me, i would've just played something simpler but perhaps that would fuck the rest of the quartet's timing up. but it's not like i can play the violin in the first place. i can pluck it like a guitar, but i never tried it with a bow before.



anyway well, that was like the high point of the day. after they finished their performance, i went to check out the notice board to see if they would play again. seems that i somehow managed to stumble upon their only performance for the whole of the christmas season, which is a bit of a bummer. but hey there's a jazz band on for the 19th of Dec. maybe i'll check that out.

aye jason and the argonauts was good. and what's more, there's clash of the titans next wednesday. go ray harryhausen go.



hey all you limpbizkiteers, i feel kinda sorry for you guys. but i couldn't help shaking my head and laughing when i found out that fred and gang aren't coming down. but well it still is a bitch. i guess you guys took the highway.



why am i speaking as if there are actually that many people who read this site. or even limp bizkit fans who do?

well well guess i was mistaken. masters of the universe is being shown on sunday night.



well catch jason and the argonauts tomorrow then. no fear of clashing shows.

seriously, is anyone as excited as i am that limp bizkit are actually gonna be here to perform. god i wish i fucking had tickets to the show.



but wednesday isn't a total loss. why? cos channel i decided to lay us with another b-grader but this time it's a good one! well i know the critics all fucked it up but it's quite a cool show to watch still. it's he-man for crying out loud! this movie is the basis of one of my most vivid dreams. i still remember being pursued by skeletor and his goons while me, he-man and the gang were scuttling off somewhere to find a safe place to put courtney cox (of course back then i just knew her as the girl in the movie). then after doing that among some crates in some alley or something i got handed a laser blaster and i was ready for action. somehow i remember this pretty senseless bit where we ran into this office thing through large sliding doors and skeletor and goons were right behind us. and some fool (i think it was courtney) couldn't get the damn doors to slide shut properly. and i heroically saved the day by figuring out how to do it. how two large glass panels are supposed to stop a bunch of killers is quite beyond me. but it's the same sort of logic you find in b-grade movies and sometimes some a-grade ones too.



if you see the picture of the movie poster, you can see some poor sod actually called this movie "the star wars of the '80s". that guy's career as a reviewer died at that very moment. who's gonna listen to him now? if he were here right now he'd probably this show "the nypd blue of local tv". you gotta pity the guy. he's just the office joke now.



oh and if i'm not mistaken, channel 5 has jason and the argonauts on the line-up for tomorrow too. gotta watch this too.



ok you know what. i tried searching the tv listings for these two movies. and i can't find masters of the universe anywhere.



well at least there's still jason.