to be frank, I'm reluctant, to be prudent and reserved.

2009-12-16T23:01:00.001+08:00

There isn't a God. Proof #145,678: Ris Low has a blog.

2009-12-16T13:25:00.007+08:00

On the Road: Europe 2009 (or, ripping Jack Kerouac titles off since 2006)

Someone asked for pictures, so here they are-- twenty out of the 170 or so I have in my "best" folder. After sifting through four thousand pictures, I'm beginning to wonder why I don't have trigger finger (I could make a joke here and say "shutter finger", but that just strikes me as really, really annoying and dull. Hmm.). The trip to Europe was mostly road trips and Autogrills, but there were the obligatory tourist stops-- in Paris, Milan, Venice, all the squares and churches and shopping malls-- that I, surprising myself, actually enjoyed (save of course for the shopping).

[1]
The Louvre in Paris-- the glass pyramid under which, according to Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code (or, another piece of historical fiction that was written after very selective research), the Holy Grail of Catholicism is buried.

[2]
Taken while on the moving bus. If the view from vehicles in Singapore were half as good, I'd learn to drive as soon as I could, and then never do anything else.

[3]

[4]
The only passable diptych out of 4,000 photos. Had to be made tiny to fit into the space this lousy layout allows.

[5]
The intersection of two jet trails.

[6]

[7]
St. Peter's Square, outside the famous basilica.

[8]
Self-explainatory. McDonald's: ubiquity today, world domination tomorrow.

[9]
It's embarrassing (hooray for spellcheck) how many photos of streetlights I have. Every new town we arrived in, I would take the camera, aim upwards, and take several of the lamps against the sky. Birds in flight are a bonus. Often, I'd have photos of streetlights both lit and unlit-- it gets dark by 5 or so in winter, and around that time everyone generally tires of walking after having spent three hours doing so.

[10]

[11]

[12]
Near the statue of Michaelangelo's David (a green replica of the original one in white marble), there were several stalls stocked with everything a tourist could possibly want (as well as several other things that might not have been so sellable): fridge magnets shaped like Italian flags and famous landmarks, t-shirts and jackets (that the stall owners themselves actually wear, at the risk of looking like really patriotic citizens), ceramic replicas of Greek sculpture aped by the Romans, boxers (not the dog, and I kid you not).

[13]
Every photography book I've read has begun the introduction with the meaning of the word photography, which apparently means "drawing with light". I can understand the appeal of including such a poetic statement in a book-- still, originality much? Back to the point: whenever I get a streaky photo like this one (usually because it's dark and I forgot to adjust aperture and my hands are way too shaky), I remember that and sigh like the terrible poet I am.

[14]
There were wads of chewing gum stuck all over this thing. Sure, some of the spots were shells and remnants of some dead sea creature, but mostly gum. Not a favourite photograph of mine, though. It was too easy.

[15]

[16]

[17]
I have approximately 400 photos of snow-capped mountains/snow-covered fields. I am sick of looking through them. If you'd like to see all 400/ a selection, email me. Makes everything easier.

[19]
A seabird! Streetlight! Need I say more?

[20]
Outside the United Nations building in Geneva-- a giant chair with one broken leg.

ETA: So, I've just been over at Keneth's blog, developing an inferiority complex. I really, really hope Steve McCurry does not have a blog, and am refusing to google it and find out.

2009-12-15T10:40:00.001+08:00

I'm back; the epic posting will commence soon.

ETA: In other (very unfunny) news, this deserves a mighty *headdesk* and a post on FailBlog.

2009-11-26T22:26:00.001+08:00

Going away from the 29th of November to the 14th of December.

2009-11-26T10:04:00.000+08:00

2009-11-23T21:03:00.002+08:00

Is it wrong that I like so many of the Bulwark-Lytton Prize Winners' sentences? Any sentence that begins "The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm" has to be a winner, at least in the snark department. So the whole thing's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, but at some point it's just so bad it's good.

In other news: does anyone know exactly why Chess Titans in Vista only knows the Ruy Lopez opening? It's getting really old.

2009-11-22T22:42:00.002+08:00

SO PEOPLE I KNOW I NEVER USE CAPS BUT I JUST FOUND OUT THAT THE PERSON WHO WROTE "PARALLEL CONNECTIONS OVER SYMMETRIC SPACES", AKA THE AUTHOR OF THE EPIC SLASH FIC OF THE NUMB3RS FANDOM, LIVES IN SINGAPORE!

2009-11-15T19:23:00.010+08:00

So, since I have the time now, I can finally get the epic post-O levels post done. No, it's not going to be a 3,000-word rant. I've lost interest in these things-- I mean, I post a one-sentence comment, and I get a good 250 words of WTFEVERYBODYHATESYOUTOO; a longer post might just prompt more ungrammatical ("ashame", anyone?) and inane (prompt accusations of cyber bullying) essays. Instead, I will attempt to convince everyone to watch Numb3rs.

[Public Service Announcement: This post is extremely long and rambly and may be better to read here, where the font is larger and the blockquotes prettier.]

The premise of Numb3rs is simple: using math to solve crimes. Now, I know there are approximately 21,345 primetime shows already on air that take a crime-ridden city, a crime-solving team as on CSI and replace forensic investigator with an anthropologist/brilliant detective with OCD/published crime novelist/Nobel laureate/their pet dog* (*delete where applicable). While Numb3rs does initially appear to fit this archetype, with a mathematician becoming invincible crime-fighter, it is more than the typical primetime crime drama. Yes, there are the car chases and hostage situations and shootouts which seem to clutter TV with terrible and unecessary violence. Yes, there is the inevitable portrayal of a character with a hero complex, a character with issues, a character with near zero social skills. Yes, the statement that "this show is different" has been tossed around so many times it's virtually meaningless.

But-- and I'm sure you saw that one coming, after several sentences awash with anaphora-- but let me not flood you with preconceptions.

Numb3rs has Charlie Eppes, a professor of applied mathematics, and his brother Don, an FBI agent, solving crimes together-- Charlie brings the numbers and the intellectual gibberish, Don the manpower and the implied coolness of a federal law enforcement agency. There's an overview over at crack_van on LiveJournal that has a succinct description (plus snark where necessary) of the characters on the show.

Ten Reasons To Watch Numb3rs

The math.
The math is supposed to be secondary, a gimmick to sell a new crime series, some say, but it's my primary reason for watching. In a 40-minute episode, there are maybe 5 or 6 minutes-- and that's a kind estimate-- of real math, but it's almost always worth it. Part of the reason why I feel so strongly about Numb3rs, I think, is the way the math is made understandable, believable. There's even a site, Wolfram, that has the 'math behind Numb3rs' for each episode. It's even difficult to feel stupid when mind-boggling technical terms ("combinatorics", anyone?) are spoken, because everyone else on screen-- save the mathematician, Charlie-- has the same blank look. And then the math is explained using an analogy (in what is called an 'audience vision') that likens the theory to something in real life. One of my favourites involves the use of the Hanging Man Paradox rather than math, but I couldn't find it on Youtube, so here's the next best thing: the Monty Hall problem. While not an 'audience vision', it does give a good idea of how good David Krumholtz (who plays Charlie) is at making math sound interesting. The exploding gumball machine at right also has a neat explaination that is, however obliquely, linked to the refraction of light.

The 'B' storylines (aka the Eppes family dynamics)
While the show usually begins with the crime, or the "A" storyline, then segues into some scenes between Charlie Eppes and his brother Don and/or their father, the "B" storyline is just as--if not more-- engaging than the main story thread. According to Wikipedia (best line ever to segue into rambling, don't you think?) the show "focuses equally" on the relationship between the brothers and their father and their crime-solving adventures. This is erroneous. The Eppes family dynamics are, as far as I'm concerned, one of the primary reasons Numb3rs even made it past the Pilot (that, and the math. Math is all-powerful.).

The specialsauce in this particular equation is the utterly awesome (again, in the original meaning of the word) Eppes brothers'-- oh, let's just oversimplify things and call them, very neutrally, "issues". Charlie's precocity, and the resulting shift within the family to accomodate him, has created the dynamic on which the show basically rides. In short, there is tension. Charlie wants Don's approval the way little brothers do, and Don has to find some way to fit everything about family life-- his father and brother-- back into his own. There are some really lovely scenes with the brothers; one of my favourites is the spaghetti bending in season two. ("Did you know," Charlie begins, "that if you bend a piece of spaghetti it will always break into three or more pieces?" Fragmentation theory. Math stuff, he says by way of explaination.)
Charlie Eppes
Charlie may be the implied hero in the show, the genius mathematician who can put a spin on crime-solving, but he isn't any brooding Shakespearean protagonist. He's got the look of a wild-eyed professor-- a mad scientist, if you will-- and has the hair to prove it. He is also, very objectively, as cute as a basketful of brown-eyed Labrador Retriever puppies-- the formal word for which is 'adorkable'. Like I said, very objectively described. Other, alternately amusing and awesome (in the original meaning of the word, not to be confused with the slang for 'cool'), traits that he possesses are a) his inability to spell very, very simple words, b) his tendency to become testy when challenged, and c) his little-brother admiration for Don. a) Case in point: Charlie may be an honest-to-god genius and a real whiz at math, but he cannot spell. An eight-letter word for 'egotistical'? 'Conceited', Charlie says quite smugly, and to prove it to his father, who tells him it's a nine-letter word, he spells it: C-O-N-C-E-T-E-D. And it's actually the second time in the series his inaptitude for spelling is shown; he can't spell 'anomaly' either. b) His 'math fight' with a rival and fellow mathematician Marshall Penfield with can be construed either as UST or-- the interpretation that I prefer-- egocentricism, which should never be this funny, but is. c) There is another reason for the 'puppy' characterization. This is it.

Larry Fleinhardt
Anyone who has ever, ever used the word 'pecuniary' in speech, raise your internet hand. No? Well, there is one character in the show that I utterly love for a) his sesquipedalian musings, b) his impressive repertoire of facial expressions, c) his dress sense, d) the things he does with Charlie (not like that). a) his using of the word "defenestration" was, I think, the thing that first earned my absolute admiration. And then he has to continue with his illustrous vocabulary and all, using a word that has me applauding in sheer delight at least twice an episode. When coupled with perfect diction and gesticulating (aka Peter MacNicol's brillance), Larry's lines-- and Larry-- are the two things that I'm completely enamoured with (other than Charlie, and Charlie's many math t-shirts). b) and c) would take far too many screencaps to express, but take my word for it. d) Their experiments, that is, not what they are doing in numerous NC-17 fics. This experiment is one of many, but I chose it because it involved sledgehammers, a nail bed, and a Larry wielding said sledgehammer.

The humor
I absolutely cannot watch comedies (or anything, for that matter) with laugh tracks, because it annoys me to no end that the viewers are basically being told when to laugh: like, 'hey, this is funny, right here. It is now necessary to laugh.' It's like one of those placards that's held up to tell the audience what to do-- APPLAUD, LAUGH, BE SILENT. The humor in Numb3rs is nothing like that. There is the occasional clunker, of course, the unfortunate joke that falls flat, but for the most part, Numb3rs carries off the humor/drama balance very well, and even the supporting cast get good lines. In fact, IMO, they often get the best lines.

One of the lines that's become the show's staple is the one in which the FBI agents have to, very sheepishly, express their ignorance at whatever the hell Charlie's rambling on about. The number of ways this has been done is amazing in itself, because I haven't yet seen a repeat of the same line. Charlie goes on about matrices; Colby (a member of Don's team who finally found his brain in the third season, but has a very fine bone structure) deadpans, "Yeah, that's what I would have done, too." Another of what seems to have become a running joke on the show is Charlie's messing with others' food in order to explain a mathematical idea: he pours water in Megan's popcorn (around 0:35 or so in the video, linked), thereby ruining it completely in his demonstration of laser swath mapping. He smashes someone's bran muffin to demonstrate the creation of a debris field.

There really isn't a better way to explain this point, so I'm going to link a couple of videos: 1) Charlie driving (Fact: Charlie has a learner's permit, which was revoked. Spelling and driving may just be the two things that faze the otherwise completely able genius.) 2) The aforementioned Spelling with Charlie videos; 3) Larry and Colby Play in a Sand box

Then there's the drier, darker humor, the one-liners used to mark the transition from one scene to the next. Unlike Horatio Caine's very unfunny and often overly dramatic one-liners, Numb3rs' are usually in good taste, occasionally trite, but mostly well-written and executed. In one scene of Don!angst he, in attempting to illustrate the difficulties is work poses to relationships, deadpans, "You come home, and someone says, 'How was your day?' and you're like, 'Well, I saw a decapitated kid, how's yours?'"

David/Colby
Standard-issue weapons? Check. Kevlar? Check. Often (neglected but) necessary snark? Check. I mentioned above that the supporting cast gets the best lines, and, snarkwise, they certainly do.
Colby: [David asks Colby to climb up the trellis] Yeah. Colby, go down the elevator shaft. Colby, jump in the bay. Hey, Colby, climb the Sixth Street Bridge.
Now, Colby may not be the sharpest tool in the shed (not like that), but he's got enough snark to power a four-person household for a year. After he found his brain near the end of season 2, it just gets better. And David? While he's usually relegated to expositing, he isn't just Don's right-hand man. I could start swooning right about now, because I love David, but it would proceed to mar the entire effort with my bias. So, all you have to know is that Colby is okay, occasionally awesome, and that David is perennially awesome. Also that I really need a new word to abuse.

I suppose I should also admit that I am a slasher (rather lackadaisical, but still) where these two are concerned-- hence the introduction as David/Colby rather than David and Colby. Yes, that slash matters. No, it's not shorthand for 'or'.
The montages
I mean one particular montage, actually, to Nico Stai's "Maybe Maybe", in the last four minutes of "12:01".

The subject matter being juxtaposed is the foremost thing that catches the attention-- first, the basketball game (which, by the way, is Charlie and Larry's attempt to break CalSci's losing streak which is, oh, several decades unbroken?), then the execution of a mob boss, and the capture of his son for the murder for which he's being executed. It's all very casually stated here, and difficult to comprehend if all you're seeing is the 2-minute montage, but I love how it fits in with the whole episode, providing a solid, sad final note. It's difficult to feel sorry for the mob boss being executed: even though he didn't commit the crime that got him the death penalty, choosing to take the fall for his son, there is this knowledge that he's caused the deaths of so many other people. Is this justice, nonetheless?
The fanfiction
You knew this was coming. The fandom's small, so the volume of fic is admittedly much smaller. As in every fandom, however, there are several authors with impressive oeuvres.
In a matter of weeks, I've bookmarked 78 fics and read half. (If that doesn't say something about my time management, I don't know if anything ever can.) There's Reciprocity, which is probably the best AU ever written, in which Charlie is deft agent rather than inept mathematician, and contains possibly one of my favourite math metaphors: "d/dx(n)=n^-1: It’s not math. It’s reciprocity: inversion and upheaval, the world upside-down from what it seems to be. The derivation of normalcy upended." Another (shorter) fic, Belief, centers around Charlie's childhood (or lack thereof, considering he went to Princeton at 13), the La Brea tar pits, and basketball.

If I allow myself to go on this may turn into a history of all the fantastic Numb3rs fic ever written, with summaries, favorite lines and, uh--god forbid-- analyses (although it's quite difficult to launch into literary discussion about a fic titled, "The Llama Song, or A Discourse on Brothers in Seven Parts, plus Duck").
Fractals in broccoli (1:28 of this video)
Yes, I may just be running out of reasons. I'm disappointed you noticed. But this still counts as a reason on its own and not an extension of 1, the math. The ninth reason involves non sequiturs. Larry, the master of non sequiturs and Lengthy Poetic Musings that go nowhere, brings the gems to the table. Case in point: the many Physics Department competitions always seem to encompass an unbelievably large sphere of skill and/or silliness-- there was, I think, a food fight (involving using grapes as lethal projectiles), a paper airplane folding competition, and a poker tournament. The poker is the least surprising.

Because in Mac vs. PC, the Mac always wins

2009-11-14T21:44:00.003+08:00

Now that everything that's ever mattered for two years is finally over, I have absolutely no idea where to begin. To steal a line from Numb3rs, I'm cool until everything quiets down-- then it's like my head is a bad neighborhood to be in.

2009-10-25T22:37:00.003+08:00

Interesting Fact: If you google 'Low Kay Hwa' and the word 'sucks' together, you get very interesting results. The very first search result reads (and it's from his blog): 'hey, why in the world does my life sucks?' Down the page, one comes across glowing reviews of his books: "Seems like everyone feels that the books by Low Kay Hwa is really nice", "his novel simply rocks luh". One gem reads, "finish reading low kay hwa le... gone through english paper it sucks!! just pass by 1 mark!" Ah, the lovely readership of a prolific author.

2009-10-23T20:59:00.001+08:00

Just as I thought my life couldn't get any more miserable, there it was: an ad for Low Kay Hwa's books, 20% off, free delivery, on the top of my tagboard. Kill me now.

2009-09-26T22:56:00.002+08:00

I'm going to be nice and not post a very detailed criticism of one of the 'model compositions' given to us on Friday, and given previous billing by Mrs. T as "the essays actually worth printing". I'll say this, though: when you say 'literally', please mean 'literally'. Wrong usage: 'It was literally bad.' Gee, I didn't know something could be figuratively bad. Wrong usage: 'The dog was running around the lawn and panting like a sprinkler. Literally.' You have a very special pet, my friend.

I'm tempted to cite the actual example, for added snort-worthy fun, but in the interest of sensitive souls who cannot take the least bit of criticism, I will not. Instead, I will proceed to ridicule the rest of the composition until it becomes glaringly obvious whose it is.

In brief,

Exclamation Mark Count: 10. [..] adorable! horrendous year! complete disaster! Phew! beyond description! in love! most blissful woman on Earth! but two! grown up! Talk about hyperbole.

Butchery of Language Count: 10,000 -- advance billing for wonderful story ('this is a story of...') ; 'literally'; 'sticky end' to describe your mother's death ; in the next paragraph, equating mother's death with pimple breakout (ie "a complete disaster"); "looking at him speared my heart" for a description of love; "Prince Charming; "most blissful woman on Earth!!!!"; awful and trite last line.

2009-09-20T23:10:00.004+08:00

I have to say something about the "God didn't create evil" argument that seems to be gaining popularity again. The argument goes something like this, usually with two examples (darkness as the absence of light and cold as the absence of heat): God didn't create evil, he created goodness. Evil is the opposite of goodness; evil arose when men rejected God (or something to that effect, I think).

While I have nothing against that argument^[1], and might even admire the poetry of it^[2], it is utterly ridiculous to use something like that to advocate teaching religious ideas in school. Gee, I have a faintly logical-sounding idea about God, may I teach my students that Creationism is the gospel truth?

Religion should stay out of school. It's not as if there aren't enough problems there already.

[1] ETA: To clarify-- 'nothing against it' does not mean I agree. It means this argument is so completely invalid that one doesn't have to bother disproving it. While it sounds almost logical at first sight, it only truly convinces those who were already convinced. Therefore it's harmless, and I have 'nothing against it'.
[2] if I don't think too hard, that is

2009-09-20T22:23:00.003+08:00

A Detailed Study (and Criticism) Of the English Prelims (Paper 2)

Passages

1. Misplaced comma (line 8-9): "However, more recently, and with ever-growing force, women have decided [...]" Reading this sentence and excluding the (supposedly parenthetical) comma-enclosed phrases soon makes the flaw apparent. "However, more recently," reads fine, but when you try to split "more recently" and "and with ever-growing force", as the comma between them is supposed to do, the sentence goes haywire: "However, and with ever-growing force, women have decided[...]"

2. Missing comma (line 31-32) "although some companies outwardly agree [...] most have very few(,) if any, women in senior positions": "if any" is parenthetical--therefore, it should be enclosed in commas.

3. Unnecessary semicolon (line 55-56) "In the rural areas, African women find their major source of employment as farm labourers; and in the cities they are mainly employed as domestic workers." Since there is already an "and", the semicolon can and should be replaced by a comma. Alternatively, remove the "and".

4. Phony listing (line 59-60) "Very long working hours, unfair dismissal, very little or no annual leave are some of their major grievances." If you didn't blink really hard and look again after reading that sentence, you're probably half asleep. A better sentence with a hell of a lot more coherence would read, "Their major grievances include the long working hours, the possibility of unfair dismissal, and the lack of annual leave." While my sentence does not incorporate several aspects of the first ("long" rather than "very long"-- why waste a superlative?) it's a lot easier to read and comprehend. Revise as you see fit.

5. Stylistic quibble (line 65 of second passage): "Movements were slower, voices softer, minds dull." To make this sentence work better, I think, the last should be a comparative form as well: "duller" instead of "dull". Corrected: "Movements were slower, voices softer, minds duller." The cadence of the sentence is improved, but then it was a pretty decent sentence in the first place.

6. Wrong word: 'born' for 'borne': "An example of success born of pressure from women's movements is the change in divorce laws [...]" (line 15) and "[l]ess attention is paid to her needs born of all the other demands made of her on her family and home life, and especially the male chauvinism of society." (lines 48-50) Unless 'born' refers to literal birth, 'borne' is the correct form.

Note: I have to admit to some bias here: I was, and still am, completely enamored with the style of the prose in the second passage. I may have been a tad more forgiving when combing for errors. The author's use of hyphens is sometimes questionable, but I admire the overall effect, so I'm letting it go.

Questions

Q5a What does 'male chauvinism' suggest about the role of the man in the family?: This question is flawed-- it puts those who actually know the meaning of 'chauvinism' at a terrible disadvantage. The answer given goes something like this: "the man does not take responsibility for matters of the home and family and expects the woman to do so", apparently inferred from a statement in the passage which reads, "Less attention is paid to her needs born(e) of all the other demands made of her on her family and home life, and especially the male chauvinism of society," the one sentence in that paragraph in which the phrase "male chauvinism" is mentioned.

However, “male chauvinism" is ' a term describing the attitudes of men who believe that women are inferior and should not be given equal status with men' . Shouldn't the answer instead address the dominance of men over women in the family? Chauvinism is not about responsibility; it's about rights. Furthermore, the separation of the "demands made of her on her family and home life" and "chauvinism" by an "and especially" highlights how the two are different points. The "male chauvinism" in society is not an extension of the "demands [of] home life", it is a different and separate point entirely.

---

As of now, these are the only things I have taken issue with, since I haven't seen all the answers to most of the questions. I suspect I will have more very soon. And no, this is not about me being bitter for getting fourteen out of twenty-five. The mistakes are very real, and my marks do not change that. Still, I will be arguing a lot in the next English class, and probably for good reason.

2009-09-09T13:50:00.000+08:00

They trekked along the crescent sweep of beach, keeping to the firmer sand below the tidewrack. They stood, their clothes flapping softly. Glass floats covered with a gray crust. The bones of seabirds. At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore as far as the eye could see like an isocline of death. One vast salt sepulchre. Senseless. Senseless.

[...]

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

(The Road, Cormac McCarthy)

2009-08-08T14:43:00.001+08:00

For several hours, millions of users were catapulted back to the dark, informationless days of 2003, before such pertinent information as what Ashton Kutcher had for a snack became readily available, before it was possible for people to take a simple quiz to learn which "Twilight" characters or dog breed they were most like. ("Hackers take down Twitter, Facebook", NYT)

And the difference between a brilliant newspaper and one that's utter junk is this: wit. If only it was possible to subscribe to a print version of the NYT without having it cost an arm and a leg. The Straits Times is such garbage (and don't get me started on Urban): ads that run for three pages, inane articles about the National Day Parade, snark-worthy headlines (on one Sunday they actually had Lee Wei Ling's awful truism-stuffed column on the front page).

Facebook and Twitter can join the ST on that podium. I will never understand why people take so much pleasure in reading what other people had or breakfast, or why everyone absolutely needs to know you love Edward Cullen and would dip your head in a bucket of glitter just to look like him. The worst thing is that every second article has some sort of reference to the power of Facebook and/or Twitter. I wish the media would just get over themselves already.

2009-07-31T23:16:00.000+08:00

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea

[...]

If one [...]
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

2009-07-19T22:11:00.001+08:00

I would kill for a copy of Wind, Sand & Stars right now.

2009-07-18T21:52:00.002+08:00

On Friday, once again, I started arguing with Mrs. T over the placement of commas and/or hyphens. I shouldn't have-- besides, it didn't and wouldn't have make a difference -- but I couldn't stop myself. Somewhere inside my skull there's this fixture, like a switch, but with a lower threshold; one tiny punctuation mark out of place or a 'has' instead of 'have' and it snaps on (or off, completely pushing all that EQ education into a tiny crevice, because half the time I end up with really disgruntled faces-- jeez, it's your grammatical error, not mine). I have got to stop being a Grammar Nazi in English class; if we were given something other than the magnificently exciting editing of dangling modifiers I could probably do it.

Another thing: I can never, never stop an argument once I start one, no matter how inane or futile it gets (both on the other side and on mine). I've stockpiled this repository of acerbic comments so I can use them in arguments when I can't be bothered with the person, who is in all likelihood terribly obnoxious like I am. They're mostly in alphabetical order, but I haven't gotten to "lowlife" (noun) yet, so that's encouraging. To see an example of how pointless and stupid one of my arguments can get, you know where to go. (Do it quickly, before they get deleted.)

---
In other news, another little busted factoid has ruined one of the lines in Penumbra's The Cretan Paradox, my favourite fic before I got Parabiosis:

She made his office feel like a place, a pod for two seeds, her left brain and his right.

2009-07-14T21:25:00.000+08:00

Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandon'd Criticks too.
The Bookful Blockhead, ignorantly read,
With Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head,
With his own Tongue still edifies his Ears,
And always List'ning to Himself appears.
All Books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With him, most Authors steal their Works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
Name a new Play, and he's the Poet's Friend,
Nay show'd his Faults - but when wou'd Poets mend?
No Place so Sacred from such Fops is barr'd,
Nor is Paul's Church more safe than Paul's Church-yard:
Nay, fly to Altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.

2009-07-09T21:58:00.002+08:00

---

There's a chapter in The Prodigal Tongue, a book about "the future dispatches of English", that features Singlish as one of the many creoles (read: nonstandard English) the book attempts to dissect and construct puns around. It's curious to read in academic language what you already know so well, just in different words and in different terms. 'Off' is used as an imperative in Singlish, as in 'off the lights', the author writes, but I can never think of it in this way. An imperative. It is strange, how this variation on the language sounds completely foreign to me; I don't reject Singlish per se-- hell, I codeswitch on a regular basis-- but I can never speak it with ease.

Something about that makes me simultaneously triumphant and sad. Indeed-- How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. ^[1]

^[1] The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart, Jack Gilbert

2009-06-27T21:09:00.001+08:00

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going. I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

(The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)

2009-06-18T21:34:00.002+08:00

Books about drawing are one of my favourite things, one of my sybaritic allowances-- mostly because they never do me any good. And this, predictably, has done nothing about my bumbling maladroitness about the drawing pen. The writing pen, sure, I could scribble out a few things, could make them sound enough like poetry. Drawing-- I gave up on perspective drawing, ink drawing, scribble-men drawing. In truth I can neither draw nor color; everything goes over the coloring-book's lines, everything is too indistinct, hanging there nebulous but familiar, like a distant aunt you can't remember the face of, having, at the same time, a disturbing desire not to.

2009-06-12T21:48:00.003+08:00

A waitress who, bringing a plate of food to the table, says, "Who is serving the fish and chips?" I barely managed to restrain myself from going, "You."

2009-06-10T22:01:00.003+08:00

Up is an utterly brilliant film. Forget the totally ludicrous premise of 20,000 helium balloons attached to a house, transforming it into an unbelievable dirigible (and this was done with a Sears lawn chair once before)-- it's a Pixar movie, for God's sake, so it might be sensible to switch gears, like one does when reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Anthropomorphized animals, unbelievably spry septuagenarians, floating houses-- it all comes with the territory. And Up works with it-- hell, it isn't close to magical realism, it's outlandishly comic-- but it works.

With balloons-- hundreds! thousands of them!-- tethered to his house, Carl Fredricksen-- a crotchety, cantankerous old man, recently made a widower-- flies to Paradise Falls, a distant childhood dream shared by his late wife. To his chagrin, Russell-- a Wilderness Explorer with one badge to complete, 'assisting the elderly'-- ends up on board. To follow all this with a trite 'hilarity ensures' would detract from the sad seriousness that drifts along like cloud cover behind the film's comic front. Certainly it is mostly funny, but I can't bring myself to classify it under the 'action- adventure' tag. It's more than that.