For everyone who is still on Basic Account right now:

You might want to take a look at this post over at lj_2008. LJ will be implementing advertisements on all Basic Accounts, and they are giving you a chance to give your feedback on how you want those ads to appear. The two most appealing options are viewing ads on the application pages (manage entries, update journal, etc.) and seeing ads on your journal only after you are logged out.

For those of you who use Firefox and other Mozilla browsers, you can download Adblock Plus.

Altenatively, paying for your LJ account by a two-month cycle is more manageable than paying for it yearly, so some of you with some disposable income might want to consider that.

or, How to Show the Guy who PWNS You at Debates that YOU ARE THE BOSS

I planned to write a commentary on certain issues of contention in the politics of language in this video. The video shows a debate between Opposition Party de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim and Information Minister Shabery Cheek on the subject of rising fuel prices. For many who watched the entire debate, Opposition Party de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim gave a better argument, and in their opinion, won.

I can't do that anymore because barely 24 hours after the debate was first broadcasted, the winner was arrested.

Currently Reading

The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears is a novel about an Ethiopian immigrant in America and his relationship with the people around him: his uncle, his African friends, and a white woman and her daughter that he begins to develop a bond with. The entire story is set in a neighbourhood in America populated by migrants.

This book reminds me of Reader's Digest articles back when Reader's Digest was worth subscribing to and wasn't taking quotes from Fark.com. It's brief, and also a very quick read (I'm almost at the end) but also very elegantly written. After years of studying reading has become almost like a duty and not a joy. This book reminded me of what I enjoy most about reading as a child: through the escapist activity of reading, one is able to learn things about the world -- its history, its people, and its places -- that will hopefully make me a better human being, and at the very least a knowledgeable one.

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Full Recording of Anwar Ibrahim's Debate

Here is a link to the full recording of political strongman Anwar Ibrahim versus current Information Minister Shabery.

I have just watched Anwar Ibrahim's opening statement. The man truly defines what it is to be a politician: a man whose best weapon is his words. His command of the Malay language is superb (I smiled when I heard him say 'omongan'); one of the reasons why my written Malay is still passable today is because I was tutored by a man who was a fan of Anwar Ibrahim.

That does not change the fact that, true to the nature of politicians, many people find him difficult to trust. I do too, and some of the reasons can be found in the way he has phrased certain ideas in his debate. I will give my comments on them later, in a post that I will probably ping to Project Petaling Street.

1. The more important issue



This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams

Last year, TY wanted something to snack on and decided to bite on some fruits. She offered me a plum to eat. I am now 26 years old, and that plum was -- after years of consuming plum-flavoured cordials and candies -- the first plum that I have ever eaten in my life.

It was good, but not cold. On Sunday my housemate and I went to the night market and bought some plums. She bought eight: two for each day. I opted for four. I now regret that decision because as of today I have consumed all of them (I made the terrible mistake of placing them in the refrigerator).

It is no secret that fruits of colder climes are -- well -- pathetic compared to fruits of the tropics. Import and export does not quite do justice to the best of what the tropics has to offer: I will never forget an anecdote I heard a long time ago of a group of Australian missionaries who had discovered, for the very first time, what fresh bananas taste like. Perhaps the same can be said of imported fruit here, but I have a hard time believing that apples and pears can ever taste all that great.

But I repent my hasty generalization of Northern fruits. No one can ever offer such a verdict after they have tasted plums as they were meant to be eaten in the chilling and intimidating North: cold. I am absolutely certain that all it takes to sway a half-hearted potential migrant to the North is a plum. My housemate firmly believes that plums, not apples, were the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.


2. Weddings
A number of my friends are getting married this year or the next. In some of the weddings I play quite a big role. It makes me think a lot. It makes me think about the never-ending issue about what I want to do with my life. I have a terrible fear of being made to conform to society -- nothing quite frightens me as being thought of as a respectable member of society -- and at the same time, a very strong desire to seek society's approval. Oh, the angst!

Nothing quite speaks of social approval and conformity -- that is what wedding ceremonies are, after all -- than shifting a partnership into marriage. We all know how binding, and how fragile, marriages are. Like a wish granted by a witch, marriages provide a person with what any human desires the most -- lifelong human companionship -- at such a great cost, that when the person finally decides that the marriage was a waste of his or her time, he or she would have realized that almost all of the best years of his or her life would have been gone.

Thesis:
Effort to create high. Final result low. Economic disparity.

Solution:
In future, I might remove myself from academia completely and become an independent scholar. I will then post my articles online, and send some shorter ones to academic journals that I might have access to. With the power of Internet Feeding I aim to disseminate my articles to as many people interested as possible.

The motivation:
Ego. What is more encouraging than a nicely-bound thesis that you know for certain will do nothing but gather dust?

Possible Problems:
Hello, am I insane?
Distraction! I will go shopping at the neighbourhood mall instead.

Ways to overcome problem:
Certain kinds of insanity should be embraced if one wants to do something a little different.
You only live once; some people validate their life by collecting attire, some people validate it by playing with starlight*.

* this is a nice way of putting some things that would just sound silly/arrogant otherwise

1. Disch
Via coffeeandink:

Writer Thomas Disch killed himself (on) July 4. Reportedly, he'd been suffering from health issues, depression, the death of his partner of thirty years, financial straits because of the cost of his partner's final illness, and a threatened eviction from his apartment (because the lease had been in his partner's name).

Here is the Salon tribute. Her response on her blog to his death is worth reading. I am going to select the bits that I found particularly striking, but if you have the time, read her entire entry (it is worth it):

Maybe Disch, famous for his biting and bitter wit, would have killed himself anyway, but he shouldn't have had to worry about eviction in the meantime. It is unjust. It is laughable, almost, in New York City, the city with the most tenant-favorable rent laws in the entire country; laughable, with the kind of laughter that hurts. Heterosexism: if Disch had been married to his partner, if Disch had been able to marry his partner, he would have automatically inherited all his property, including his lease. This is why marriage equality is so important (emphasis mine).

Apparently Disch had a Livejournal, but he seems to have deleted it. If he had kept it, the journal would have been (to use an Internet colloquialism) legendary; probably the largest tombstone in the collection of virtual tombstones that make up deceased_ljers. The removal might mean that the death he sought was even more extensive: the kind of ego-rubbing that comes from knowing that your absence will be peppered with messages on your now never-updated blog is bypassed.

A note: a lot of people on Livejournal end their lives by suicide. Their last entries are usually marked by comments of condolences, saying that they will be missed, usually left by LJ friends. What these virtual tombstones do not record is how FUCKED UP the people left behind will become. I have seen a suicide fucking up an entire family before (one of my lecturers whom I shall not name). Do not think that people will grieve a while and move on. They do not move on. A murder is a murder by any other name.

2. BERNAMA going to the dogs
By now you would have heard of BERNAMA's excuses for journalism, rich with the flavour of homophobia and talking heads who probably haven't updated their theories from the Seventies (am I being foolish by saying this out loud?). The first time I heard it was via Batu 9's blog entry here. The articles are all loosely translated from Malay (hence the ridiculous melodrama -- bahasa berbunga doesn't quite translate well into English), but even in the original language, the articles smack of shoddy reporting, and worse, salaciousness.

More than just the homophobia (homophobia exists in Malaysia? big news!) is the fact that this is BERNAMA reporting. What business has BERNAMA got to do with reporting gejala-gejala sosial? I had no idea when BERNAMA started turning into some kind of prime time documentary/talk show, but if this kind of writing is what passes off as 'serious' journalism in Malaysia, then journalism really is going to the dogs.

Woot. Mulut aku mulut bercabai. Entah bila aku 'kan binasa?

3. World Withot Pangs
There's a good to be derived out of every rot that happens, and so here is Pang Khee Teik's response to the BERNAMA article, posted on Patrick Teoh's blog.

There is no attacking of BERNAMA. It is not even mentioned. What is written is something that I felt was long overdue. It was a highly personal post, and to those who were deeply affected by his person (even if we were never that close to him -- yes, I'm talking about his involvement in [the now-defunct] Phases magazine), something that they would appreciate at a very different level from others.

-- and other ad thinigies, while you're at it.

Because most blogs I've seen on Project Petaling Street look like this:

( Image behind cut )
I've decided to install Adblock Plus.

Congratulations, you are ruining the Internet. The purpose of Adsense and their ilk to create advertising that isn't as irritating as the old image banner ads of the past. But if you clutter them that way, they lose their original purpose. That's why Web 1.0 burst, dimwits.

To Josh, in case you're reading this: gomen ne. It's not personal, it's just Internet.

'Kay, got to get to work now.

I finally settled on a layout! This one looks good on a small screen resolution, and still maintains the plant motif that I love!

Along the way I also found a lot of nice Livejournal layouts, so if I ever get bored, I can switch! If I get bored with this, I plan to use this generic (but still quite nice) layout from the Expressive options! Will it be possible for Six Apart to get rid of the Expressive/Mixit layouts from LJ after their advertising contracts are over? =/.

Good night!

PS. I wish Refried Paper was more flexible!

Short note for today: I changed my layout. The last one didn't look good on a CRTV monitor and a smaller screen resolution. Pity. This one doesn't have a nice green swirl, but it is very neat, and friendlier to smaller screen sizes.

PS. If you check my journal and see the whole site looking weird from time to time, it's because I'm experimenting with different layers and styles in practice for future layout making. Don't worry, I'll revert back to this layout at the end of my session.

After quixotic_sense wrote such a favourable review of the recent play AIR CON (indirectly, she implied that AIR CON was better than the works of Yasmin Ahmad, at least in one particular aspect) and after everyone I knew who watched it had extremely favourable reviews for it, I knew I had to watch it. This is my review of AIR CON which I posted on the Kakiseni event listing:

Fantastic. I grew up in same-sex school environments (all girls' school, then shifted to an all boys' school for Form Six), and although the situation never got as violent as it got in the play, the tension between the characters and the problems the characters face were very real. I found myself comparing the play not with other Malaysian plays I've read and watched, but with stuff by Eugene O'Neill.

AIR CON is the story of what happens in an all boys' school when a transvestite who wanders close to the area is found murdered. When a large hole is discovered in the fence of the school leading to the transvestite's place, the students fall under scrutiny of public eye. This leads to paranoia in the school concerning homoerotic attraction in the school, and the school organizes a corrective camp to 'heal' the boys from homosexual attraction and effeminate behaviour. Central to the story are four boys: Chep and Burn are the school's top prefects and will be sitting for their SPM examinations this year, and fifteen-year olds Asif and William, high achievers both, have just been elected as school prefects. The name of the play is derived from (among other things) the prefects' lounge, which is air-conditioned.

I made the comparison with Eugene O'Neill because Shanon Shah's script approached the underlying tensions that rumble beneath society's veneer in the same way that I've (read in) Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night*; the stories do not fall into abstraction and ideas but remains firmly grounded in the tension of the everyday. There is violence and cruelty in the play, some of which is very physical and obvious, but beyond that is the ever-present and very realistic atmosphere of violence and cruelty that exists even before things turn bloody. There are no heroes in this play: every single character in the play is guilty of terrible flaw or two, and yet everyone deserves our sympathy. When the ending arrives and the transvestite's murderer receives his comeuppance, one cannot help but feel conflicted emotions of both glee at the presence of poetic justice and a terrible sense of tragedy and loss.

My readers can probably name me other playwrights who might be better comparison, but for now, I'm happy to settle with this conclusion: yup, I'm comparing a Malaysian writer to a Nobel Prize winner, and saying that AIR CON is on par with that level. Feel free to disagree.

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* I know, very apples and oranges. But that's the only play by Eugene O'Neill that I've read entirely, and O'Neill is the only playwright I can really compare AIR CON with.