farewell, sanity

I have barely crawled to the two decade lifespan mark but I think it is time I hire a fantastically talented ghost writer to draft an anonymous autobiography of my life. It doesn't matter what you say, as long as it is highly humorous and Time gives it a five star review, and oh yeah, all credit must be mine.

No, I am just kidding. Because, trust me, spending everyday with nothing to do can actually cause degenerative effects on one's brain. I think between the time I quit my job and 5 seconds ago, my brain lost 3kg of weight. This is a simple calculation process that requires very little thinking (unless you are even contemplating enrolling yourself at a montessori and not because you find the teacher hotter than tobasco) and you don't even have to spend an exorbitant, shameful sum of money on a...what's it called again...graphic calculator, you say?

I say, "What's that, dude?" but of course, my words barely get airplay.

So. I have lost 3kg. I think and I hope. And since it is obvious that my stomach is still as round as ever, if not rounder, the weight must have excused itself from between my ears, just as a woman who finds out that after 18 years of marriage, her husband no longer has any hair and that she has closet lesbian fantasies of his fourth sister. And so she packs up her belongings and goes for a sex change and marries Elton John.

Well, I'm still hiring that ghostwriter. And your name better be Haruki Murakami. Or else.

"peter pumpkinhead"

I am now listening to the song, The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, wondering why anyone would title a song like that. Perhaps it is a massive metaphor (note the unintended but nonetheless quite cute use of alliteration there) describing an actual person's head that is rather big in nature owing to too munch binge drinking, or maybe it's an ode to all things Halloween. Or maybe someone was just drunk when he/she decided to write the song.

I have just put it on repeat.

Maybe if I keep listening to the peculiar noise I may just be able to forget that the world is bizarre and strange and that sometimes I really desperately want to escape it. In my opinion, there is nothing quite as bad as scorchingly hot weather and the want of carrot juice. I need carrot juice! With ice. Please, and thank you.

Long live global warming. I guess that's all I can say because if you are looking to make a wish that will actually come true- forget about all those years you wanted a new Polly Pocket playset or less pimples if any at all- it will have to be global warming. If you wish like this: "I wish for global warming!" while you pour pennies into a haunted well, hoping The Powers Above would heed your request (they will), it will most certainly come true. And then one day, 40 years later when you find that most of the population is dying from an epidemic roughly titled "skin cancer", you will feel like it's the best day of your life. Not because you are a sadist masochistic evil bastarde, but because you have reason to hope.

This is what happens when you listen to a song that goes, "hurray for Peter Pumpkinhead".

stop the paparazzi

If you are looking for juicy details on my otherwise non-juicy life, you have come to the right place. And, here it is:

I have come to terms with my ridiculous tan line and have even decided to name it Evening, the Border Between Night & Day.

alone again, naturally

  

"can we fix it?" "yes we can!"

  

gone carousel-ing

  

viva la hairdo

  

k-k-k-koala

  

mi amigos

  

slim shady

  

heart to heart

  

there's one in all of us

  

solitaire

Of late, I've been thrust into the wonderful deep well of nostalgia, rummaging through drawers of aged postcards and expired candy, gifts from friends, ungiven gifts, et al. And with all this I can confirm (chop, stamp, confirm ah) that I honestly miss school life. Perhaps this is a deadly virus I have caught from weeks of staying at home and keeping my mind thoroughly unoccupied.

The things are remember are vast and vague.

I remember people like Joel Kong, the large, oversized classmate who was The Chosen One: the bane of all our classroom existence in college, the designated disaster, the one who bore an uncannily resemblance to William Hung, which just about pronounces everything about Joel. Ah, Joel Kong, otherwise known as Kong, Kong King Kong and other aliases my mind just cannot conjur up before me. I wrote him loveletters and got 'reprimanded' by horrified teachers, I made him literally avoid me, all for humourless amusement. Everyday we would listen to the unending saga of him trying to get the number of the same girl he saw on the bus each morning. After an 'A' level paper, three of us piled into his car and demanded that he bang down a certain someone (it was close!). Mark, of course, helped himself to the horn.

And Operation: Black Dog, the escape from school. A whole class (not really) effort. Planned and mapped out by our very own Indiana Jones. Our plan was to throw our bags over the back gate and sneak out via the front gate, retrieve our bags and then make our way to gloriously celebrated victory in front of Kirsten's lovely X Box console. Of course, as all things go, our plan was thwarted.

Reminiscing now, it seems like it was just yesterday, as cliche as it sounds. They were 2 really interesting, great years of my life, as much as I hated (and still do hate) that school, that system, that principal, that fat teacher, that short teacher, that Sikh teacher. That Sikh teacher! Ah.

And now all I know is that this whole year I have not won a single round of Solitaire on my iPod, despite my insatiable loyalty to it. I don't know what meaneth this. Is it some cold-blooded attempt at making me commit suicide? Is it revenge? Is it some kind of foreboding potent that I am, alas, to remain a loser for the rest of my life? FYI: In secondary school, I was given the nickname Super Squared Loser Jac by my friends. That, for the unitiated is loser to the highest degree. But it was all in the spirit of fun...I hope.

There's nothing quite like remembering.


Shuming just text'd me this horror: "The queen was so close to me I could punch her face!"

wanted: a zookeeper

The astonishing phenomenon of animalmorphism. I have no idea what that means or if it even exists but these things, spasms taking comfortable place in my mind somewhere, happen.

Animalmorphism.
Since I have so generously invented a word, why not give it meaning? Here, as you can see, I am illustrating goddess-like tendencies. So, animalmorphism. Humans basically taking on animal-like characteristics. By humans I mean me, and by animals I mean my four cats.

I am an embarrassment to the human race, including those of you who believe we "evolve" from...uh...apes, and those of you who are waiting by Area 51 for your saviour/s to come rescue you via alien spaceship, and beam you up to paradise off earth, just about 83798 planets away.

Here's why:
Owing to the incredibly randy trait of a (stray) male cat when he is In The Mood For Love, some spraying takes place, here and there. As of two nights ago, my bag was guest-of-honour for the night. And of course, a little stench wasn't about to throw me off course; I had to use that bag.

And, when you have 2 long-haired cats of the colour white, and you put them with a pair of black shorts, you get, voila, pants a la fur. Duck is to orange what pants are to fur.

Roll about in the sand and...yeah, I pretty much make the passing grade to join the zoo, and not as a member of their very happily human staff but as a...ah, forget it.

started to die

I have officially used up every kilojoule of energy that has been kindly or not so kindly given to me. Now I resemble the first cousin of an empty pea pod discovered by archaelogists in the Himalayas. In other words, between now and the next 50cm that I walk, I am as good as fish food.

Morbidly, I associate this sentiment of close-to-death-ness with that phrase, "The moment you are born, you start to die." Well, I am born again every half second. This huge problem of sudden insomnia really is not helping. I am beginning to get paranoid about all those ghost tales I've heard in my life about staying awake in the middle of the night. And I have the most bizarre dreams (more bizarre than Tim Burton's creative appeal, which I do like, don't mistake me) ever. For example, last night I dreamt I stabbed someone I know/knew in the nape of her neck with a pair of scissors.

I am hereby, forever traumatised.

This "trauma" manifest into me listening to Bob Dylan doing a cover of Radiohead's Creep. As much as I admit that both Dylan and Radiohead are like, totally awesome, duuuude, we all know they are as different as chalk and cheese, as dogs and cats, as Paris and... Tammy. It's just so bizarre!

I cannot take it anymore.

from Your fountain
of wondrous, wonderful, wonder
of splendid, resplendent, splendour
lost in ethereal ecstasy
And lost in losing,
let go of Your hand
Is it in the making
That I should go back again?
And if I could go back
what are the words I should say?
And if I would (could) say them
Could (would) I again lose my way?
You're magnificent:
Like wine, like piecing back broken flowers,
like painting the sky,
like borrowing a slideshow of heaven,
like endless troves of glimmering gold,
like the face of Hepburn,
like a Death Cab song.
But the door to your palace is locked
And in my losing me
I lost the one key.

a swastika-ted story

There is something about staying home that refreshes, yet completely drains me. It is like a trade off: it seems to give me more time but it also takes it away so much faster. I’m now somehow embedded in world of just a lot of sleep, un-engaging my brain and letting it cry victim to the wonderful world of a television holocaust.

If Hitler were alive (he still is, in a lot of ways; people don’t know it but they pay tribute to him everyday) I would be the perfect opposite of his master race. I am not blonde, nor am I blue-eyed, and if I were either of the two I would look like a cross between an illegitimate lovechild and an alien experiment gone wonderfully wrong. I am a living epitome of whatever Hitler sought to erase.

And I happen to think that’s divine.

Depending on what one’s view of humanity is, I have either completely gained it, or completely let it slip out of my hands (which are, by the way, somehow getting very dry). In the span of a week, my passion for the underprivileged has multiplied beyond the limits of multiplication but since I am so unbelievably horrid at Math, I will not even try to explain.

It just takes a poor foreign worker to make my tear ducts want to apply for Union membership, screaming the old “overworked and underpaid” mantra. If only I had a lot of power, I would like to hit “backspace” on the keyboard of the world, and just delete all the misery and hardship.
If I had a lot of power, I’d probably also just hold frozen leftovers in the palm of my hand and have it ready to eat faster than you can say “Microwave!” But that, young children, is another imaginative journey for another imaginative day.

nine

I have to admit, there was nothing quite like dancing with them. 

I used to think being awake was the best thing that could happen to mankind. That is, of course, until I discovered that sleeping in was really the best thing that could happen to mankind (besides winning the lottery and losing 100 pounds).

The strange, peculiar mystery that surrounds sleep is how too little makes you sleepy and too much still makes you sleepy. It is hardly a balanced equation but a safe conclusion would be, in 3 simple non-complicated words: sleep is awesome. There is nothing quite like it. Of course, if you go to sleep and never wake up then that's a separate problem all together.

But there are problems that do arise. This comes in the deadly form of pet animals, namely the feline species, i.e cats. I have _________ [insert frighteningly high numerical digit] cats and this means my body is subject to the horrible, horrible torture known to the animal kingdom as highly sharp claws. Yes, sometimes I feel lonely enough to let one (or two, or three, or four) pesky animal sleep in my bed. The end result is me grumbling the rest of the day.

Other problems include insomniac newspaper deliverymen and dogs from hell who just cannot understand the simple logic of "Noise is evil = dogs please shut up". But I don't know why I'm complaining, I had a pretty good sleep.

This morning I had cornflakes and milk for breakfast. Note to all: I am lactose intolerant but addicted to all things dairy. Oh, Calcium, marry me.

death to the iconoclast

Just as a scientist discovers that the president is actually a wax figure programmed by the increasingly capable levers of nanotechology, I have discovered that there is actually such a phenomenon as burning the house down. This is done the natural way: build a house and let it melt. I swear on my ten toes that right now, too much of my skin has melted away, crumbled into a scandalous pile of ex-DNA and is being rudely stepped upon as we speak. All thanks to that damned sun and all your CFC.

You there holding an aerosol spray, shame on you.

I'm afraid I have turned into one of those (dare we say the word?) Singaporeans who pride themselves on their amazing abilities to complain about everything as if complaints give off life and energy. Just imagine if that were true, we could build our whole society for the next 400 millenia on nothing but our mouths that cannot stop emitting strange noises.

"Excuse me, this knife is not sharp enough. I was intending to kill my mother-in-law but I only had a $5 budget. But because of you I have to spend more money. Death be upon thee!"

"Hi, I don't mean to be so fussy (yeah right, shut your mouth then) but I think your child is really loud and I am implying you are the worst parent I've ever met, ASK IT TO SHUT UP!"

"Er, sorry but the air-con is not cold enough."

"DAMN YOU ARE YOU TRYING TO FREEZE ME TO DEATH."

That sounds like me.

All of the above.

I am...how should I put it...guilty as charged. But honestly, global warming is making my life a living hell. Hades is probably colder than this.