I am, I be

Public Enemy Number 1

2007-08-27T20:47:00.000+08:00

After being irrelevant for two decades, Public Enemy is finally half-relevant again with the release of their kick-ass new album. Here's an equally kick-ass live performance on Jimmy Kimmel;

Club Douche

2007-08-14T22:53:00.000+08:00

I'm sorry Syar, Nadia; Pete Wentz is a member.

Miscellanea

2007-08-12T04:51:00.000+08:00

Ryan Seacrest is possibly asexual.
Nerdy chicks dig nerdy boys, only if they're either on TV or in a band.
As an addendum to the above, priding yourself in being a nerd or a geek is just another get-into-your-pants chicanery by my carnally-motivated kind. Here's how it works, if you see a boy who can't shut up about how geeky he is or if he can't stop from making general references (that everyone knows) to Transformers (or anything of this kind), he's probably trying to come off as the cool geek who will get into your pants.
Most times, guys of the rock persuassion utilise the above tactic. That explains why they wear Transformers t-shirts.
My Friendster profile says I'm a geek, yes. That's the only time I claimed to be one, so please refrain from using that against me. This post is meant to be taken at a facetious level anyway.
Shia Labeouf plays the same character in every movie ever since his first show, Even Stevens. But his being the character actor (and future Hollywood it-boy) that he is, each role is played with such disparate nuances that you won't even realise this. For example Kale is a 17-year-old smartass while Louis Stevens is a 13-year-old smartass.
Disturbia was alright, nothing special.
Jessica Alba's Tiger commercial sums up her acting range.
Fat American kids make good TV.
Midgets (this is the PC term, right?) also make good TV
Astro's channel 77 > E!
Matt Damon is a pretty cool guy.
Ben Affleck was never cool.
The Bourne Ultimatum needs to come out, fast.

How to get your hot neighbour to fall for you.

2007-08-12T04:46:00.000+08:00

1. Stalk her.

2. When in close proximity, attempt to smell her hair (strangely this fixation is a similarity you share with your neighbourhood psychopath).

3. Engange her in a conversation, tell her every idiosyncrasy of hers that is impossible for someone to know unless that person is a stalker.

4. Change your name to Shia Labeouf.

Thanks Disturbia! Now I know being creepy can also be construed as being charming!

Stardust's trailer

2007-03-24T17:25:00.000+08:00

STARDUST

Looks good, I like that they followed much of Charles Vess' illustrations for the look of the movie. Claire Danes looks wonderful as Yvaine and Robert De Niro in a fantasy movie is surely something to wonder about. I don't think anything in the trailer bothered me, although I have to say I don't remember that much swashbuckling in the book. It is an understandable addition for a film adaptation though.

Oh oh, did I spot Ricky Gervais there as well?

Perched on the threshold of oblivion

2007-02-15T23:51:00.000+08:00

My new favourite spoken word piece by Saul Williams:-

Coldcut feat. Saul Williams - Mr. Nichols

Please, Mr.Nichols, come back inside the window
I can´t promise you anything, but I trust there is far a greater reason to live
I know you´ve become disheartened and disillusioned by the current state of affairs
Your stocks have fallen, your investments have failed you
The man from whom you took orders has been ordered to jail by his and your subordinates
You question what is this world coming to
What is the profit margin when you're forced to pander to the marginalized
Where is the glory you dreamt of as a child
Dressed as a cowboy (your play-gun pointed at real targets)
Your mother holding her tongue as your father consoles you with the words
“It´s just boy´s stuff”
Well, you joined his fraternity
You grew into his old suits
You cried his beliefs
You embodied his dreams
and with them his oversights
How long did you think it would last?
It´s just a matter of time
The world is far from over
Your mother outlives your father
Your sister outlives your brother
And if you jump from this window today
She´ll also outlive you
Look at her
Sitting at her Midwestern home
Tuning on Oprah once again
Today she learns to meditate on this secondhand couch
Meanwhile, you stand outside this window, twelve stories above the ground
One story remaining untold

You contemplate the setting sun
I am aware of your disorientation
Dis-orient, turned away from the East
The shifting current seems to conspire against you
Mr Nichols, you've failed to see that you've always stood outside of this window,
perched on the threshold of oblivion
Countless man-made stories about the truth
For so long you´ve stood facing the setting sun
Mistaking the complementary unified duality of nature as being right or wrong
Good or Evil
God or Devil
Mr Nichols, instead of stepping from this ledge into the downfall of your up rise
Why not just turn around?
Lessen the intensity of your Western glare and face the rising sun
Note the energy swirling from it's center,
How it illumines us all
And only the birds fly first class
There is your inheritance
The warmth of a kiss
Invest your tongue into the mouth of mystery
Allow her breath to seep into your lungs
Surrender to her touch and guidance
There is no other way
Your dreams of dominance will only help you forsake yourself
While your family continues its search for understanding
And your daughters outlive your sons.

Note: I can't guarantee the accuracy of the words, I transcribed the lyrics myself.

So I finally saw Marie Antoinette

2007-02-05T18:36:00.000+08:00

It wasn't good, at all.

Lo & Behold

2007-01-21T16:30:00.000+08:00

ABSOLUTE SANDMAN!

Let the envying begin.

And here is where I recommend you new music.

2007-01-20T16:09:00.000+08:00

Give a listen to Epitaph's new signee (yes, the label's been on a Hip-Hop diet lately), Busdriver. If his stage name didn't convince you of his brilliance, just read the lyrics below and tell me it's not pure genius.

Mr. Mistakes and his sanded scalp

Wielding racy aphorisms I Billy club your color line
Refusing to join forces with your indie-stud wunderkind
I rather embrace what your city slum undermines
And encourage the idiom bump-and-grind
Sickly glum of unbuttoned minds
I prime my condemned shell to excrete a lithium honey wine for you frowning fucks
When trend arbitrators present my tortured lore adorned
Gags are soaked in chloroform
You get the same if you’re poor in form
With your flip full-tuck and triple-lutz into this icy brook
War is sworn on my forlorned psyche’s soot

I got people to disappoint, I got mistakes to make
How can you believe that I’m not a waste of space
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
But how can I speak your language when I don’t know my own
I got people to disappoint , I got mistakes to make
Your eroded innards are my favorite place
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
How can I speak your language, how can I speak your language

Too self-assured to ever treat her well
(Kiss the off-colored tree frog)
We turn into black Kebler elves opposite elephants on sea-saws
Android man-boy befriends the chic, mod tinker bell
Then runs away from home until my knees throb, sneakers smell
‘Til my every tirade activates Jihad sleeper-cells
‘Til flag wavers say, ‘please God we need your help’
Still
I’m precarious and flat-footedLike you’re arrogant at a gun show
I holler at your Marilyn Monroe
With declarative mumbo-jumbo my narrative unfolds
To a housed narcissism
Parented by a bum hole
I cling to pointless ventures and inveigh buoyant pest verve
I suck

I got people to disappoint , I got mistakes to make
How can you believe that I’m not a waste of space
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
But how can I speak your language when I don’t know my own
I got people to disappoint , I got mistakes to make
Your eroded innards are my favorite place
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
How can I speak your language, how can I speak your language

It’s unfitting but I stay all pensive and meek
In cities where girls dress Greek
And foods too expensive to eat
And niggas gangbang on Sesame street
I got too many requests to meet

I got people to disappoint , I got mistakes to make
How can you believe that I’m not a waste of space
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
But how can I speak your language when I don’t know my own
I got people to disappoint , I got mistakes to make
Your eroded innards are my favorite place
Oh I sorry to disappoint, I seldom save face
How can I speak your language, how can I speak your language

I know, it's Dadaistic. I like my language borderline nonsensical, like the crap end-of-the-world preaching street crazies spew.

Born on the 16th of January.

2007-01-16T22:28:00.000+08:00

I share the same birthdate as these famous people!

1948 - John Carpenter, American film director
My absolute favourite horror filmmaker. The Thing is a masterpiece, too bad he stooped to directing trashy budget flicks starring Bon fuckin' Jovi as a vampire hunter.

1959 - Sade, Nigerian-born singer
King of Sorrow, anyone? You have no soul if you've never heard of this song.

1970 - Garth Ennis, Irish comic book author
Preacher is the second best series published by Vertigo, Sandman being number one, of course.

1979 - Aaliyah, American singer
It's sad and all she passed away young but I don't like her music, at all. If anything, her death proved people would put any artist on a pedestal when they're dead regardless of the quality of their works.

1981- Nick Valensi, American guitarist (The Strokes)
Huzzah, another 80s revivalist band with the word 'the' as the first half of their name.

Oh, they're only mentioned here because I don't recognise the rest of the people on the list linked below, lol.

source: Wikipedia

Obligatory Birthday Post

2007-01-16T13:33:00.000+08:00

I am officially twenty.

When I was 17 I had a list of things I'd like to achieve by twenty, here's some of them;

1. Be entirely self-dependent when it comes to vehicle mobility.
2. Find the one.
3. Have an actual romantic relationship with the one.
4. Get an acne-free facial complexion.
5. Travel about more, whether domestic or international.
6. Get some experiences from a working environment.
7. Which would result in a semi-self-sustaining wallet. Which I would use to go to Hollywood in order to;
8. Assassinate Tom Cruise, and;
9. Bang Katie Holmes.
10. Get rid of untalented Eurasians off local television.
11. Execute my world-domination plan.

And here's the one goal I'd managed to fulfil; I drive to college... by my elder sister's car. That's technically a quasi-accomplishment I think. I don't give much of a hoot though, the other ten can wait another five years, I'm okay with where I am right now.

Happy 2oth birthday, Alif.

Dumber than your average household objects

2007-01-09T19:35:00.000+08:00

“I wanted this short white hair so I would look like this character, who I
pictured as someone who had maybe gone through chemotherapy… it helped me
channel that energy into the vocal performances.”
- Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance)

Wow, the haircut not only made him look like a male Kylie Minogue, it gave him uber-emphatising power too, he can magically relate to cancer patients! I could only imagine how brave it must be of him to go through the torture of cutting his hair and dying it white. This guy's a modern-day saint!

Dumbfuck.

I hope the others; Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco (there's an exclamation mark somewhere in their name, but I won't bother), AFI or whichever current rock band (comprising all white suburb kids) wont' get on their high horse by coming up with this sort of inane pretension. Wear ridiculous get-ups all you want but please don't release another concept album. It's probably gonna end up more insulting than Fall Out Boy's blackophobic new video.

Recent haul

2007-01-06T23:18:00.000+08:00

Vouchers and discount cards were in my hands, and their expiry date was fast approaching.

Some time later...

There's a gaping hole in my wallet now, thank you Kinokuniya and Borders. I almost prefer the days I spent my monies on pirated Playstation games, not that I don't play them anymore. Anyway, I don't want to stagnate this blog any longer, so here, have a look at what I'd purchased will ya?

From Hell by Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell -
If the 19th century had produced a comic book, it would probably look something like this. Naturally, it is a difficult read, both literally and figuratively. At near 600 pages, From Hell is a mammoth that comes complete with an appendix section detailing the artistic liberties and historical accuracies taken to create a coherent narrative and a thorough map of Victorian London. Nothing like the shitstained Johnny Depp vehicle, unsurprising really (nothing against everyone's favourite Oddball Actor). Oh, yes, that's Jack The Ripper on the cover, his identity was never meant to be a mystery in the book. I haven't finished reading it.

The Walking Dead Book 1 by Robert Kirkman et al. -
The best zombie movie is a comic book.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks -
The best zombie movie also comes fully in prose. Still finishing it.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess -
I was browsing MPH, gradually getting more and more bored, so I decided to buy the source material of the only Kubrick movie I ever saw (for shame!). Haven't read it.

Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff, Keith Giffen & Enrique Breccia -
"Lovecraftian" is one of those adjectives derived from a person's name I frequently use. Sometimes, right after I make a remark using such words ("Oops, Freudian slip,"), I feel a mite pretentious. To remedy this, I blind bought a pseudo-biography on the famost horror author told in graphic narrative. Now, you would think buying his actual works is the logical choice but reading From Hell, I realised archaic English, especially when written in its colloquail equivalent, is traumatizing to your understanding of the language. An early 20th century author's writing could only be more confounding! No, I haven't read it.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel -
Another blind-buy. It was number one on Time's 10 Best Books of The Year, that alone merits a purchase. Uh, yeah, I haven't read this either.

Fables Vol. 8: Wolves by Bill Willingham et al. -
Although the author's military background is starting to become too prevalent in his writings, this series keeps getting better and better. I read this.

And I still have six Kinokuniya vouchers worth 30 ringgit.

It's 2007

2007-01-02T17:03:00.000+08:00

And I will finally reach the big two-oh in less than 15 days. Good-bye teenhood.

Idiotic Idiosyncrasies, Anatomical Anomaly

2006-12-21T02:53:00.000+08:00

According to the rules…Each player of this game starts with the “6 weird things about you”. People who get tagged need to write a "blog" of their own 6 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “you are tagged” in their comments and tell them to read your blog. I was tagged by Syar.

This meme should be a breeze, I thought, all you have to do is write about stupid habits you have. Surprisingly, my mind came to numerous cul-de-sacs and had to make frequent detours to uncharted parts of my psyche in order for me to finish it. Even then, as you can see, it's extremely brief.

1. For some reason, I'm in love with more of the fantastical stuffs rather than stories grounded in reality. I don't know which is weirder, the fact that I'm saying this despite being a guy or that I'm only enamored by it as I get older. (I blame my sudden predilection for this genre on ,well, Fables, a comic series)

2. Again, despite being a guy, I suck at driving. Even sadder, the car I usually drive is an auto. Sometimes I feel like I have to live up to the stereotype and pluck up some guts to learn how to drive a stick. Doesn't look that hard, anyway.

3. According to virtually every single person of the opposite sex that I know of, I have lady fingers. Also, my hands lack the callouses regularly associated with my gender; I have soft skin on my palms (ironically the same can't be said about my face). I'm still not sure whether this is a compliment or an insult.

4. Albeit a child of the 90s (Batman: The Animated Series, Sega Genesis, Gameboy, Tamagotchi, Terminator 2, Pac & Biggie, Grunge, Saved by the Bell, Boy Meets World defined my era), I absolutely love cheesy 80s flicks. Rocky IV is the shitznit. I could never bring myself to listen to 80s music though.

5. I was never into music of any persuasion, at all, as a primary school student. Heck, the only cassette I remember purchasing as a kid was friggin' Raihan! I still can't believe nasyid was a fad back then.

6. I don't believe in the supernatural at all. Supposedly this is weird for us God-believing folks, don't ask me why. I don't think ghosts & curses come hand-in-hand with religion.

I tag everyone! Ok, maybe not since other than Syar, May Ching is the only one with a blog. The only ones with blogs whom frequent my page, that is.

Beautiful Disasters

2006-11-25T22:39:00.000+08:00

What you see here are pictures of mankind's desecration on the planet. These are saddening, but strangely enthralling at the same time. I love how Herzog-ish they are. The last shot is especially beautiful.

It's okay, I just need to type this out.

2006-11-24T21:41:00.000+08:00

There was a juncture in my life this year that I thought would be my coming of age, the turning point where boy grows into man. For the first time in many years, I felt giddy with excitement, even Japanese schoolgirls got nothing on me in this department. Synapses were shooting like crazy (I was suddenly oh-so-eloquent, on my mind that is) and that part of my grey matter which was running with dopamine overflow worked overtime. But (oh boy, how my life is filled to the brim with this word [not even remotely what I meant!]), it was nothing more than a false alarm.

"It's okay, I'm desensitised to disappointment," I thought, trying to dupe myself into believing my own lie.

"I can live, and forget," I thought, trying to convince myself that my feelings are as adaptable as the shell it inhabits.

"Mmm... double mushroom swiss," I thought, as I ate my lunch. (on an unrelated note: Burger King > McD)

"Zap-Zing-Zoom," that emotion hit again, "Crash!", like unwanted relatives visiting your house during TV time. Forgive the bad simile.

It's been months now, I still feel it and I have no one to blame for this except myself. I should have been more adroit to this human concept called socialisation, especially when it comes to deeper aspects of it (you know, the ones involving only two persons). Alas, I was a mere precocious boy pretending to be a full-fledge man. A fool and a fledgling still I was (forgive the Yoda-like syntax, and wordplay).

To the people around me, I function normally; no discernible trace of emotional residue on me at all, yes sir. That's because, being the pragmatic person that I am, I was ignoring it all while praying it would eventually corrode itself into nothingness. But - holy barnacles! - instead, it clinged itself deep within my psyche to fester there unhindered. So I ignored it even further, which I do pretty well, until it's time to sleep that is. I don't as much as slumber as lie in bed with my eyes closed these days, and even then, I never manage to get a slight repose. I toss and turn well into 3 in the morning in some cases.

It's really nothing though. I don't want pity, nor do I wish for sympathy. Neither is it reciprocation I'm after, not anymore. After all, I grew into acceptance as quickly as it was known to me. I just need to type this out, it is a blog after all, I should start treating it like a real diary.

Throughout this whole ramble and rant and whine and whinge, you're still clueless as to what's the point of this entry, you say? Well, I did grow up, just in a different direction, and like Kipling, I long for the road not taken - well, failed to gain entry actually in this case.

I wanted to update my blog...

2006-11-12T23:33:00.000+08:00

... but I have nothing to write about. To compensate this, I'm leaving a blank space for your enjoyment.

Thank you.

I have no will power.

2006-10-27T14:42:00.000+08:00

I've succumbed to the fad, forgive me anti-conformism Gods!

To the uninitiated, www.myheritage.com is a face recognition software which can run on any internet browser, so you don't have to actually download the programme. Try it, it's quite fun. Now if I only knew who this Nikita fella is...

Alif is cool incarnate.

2006-10-22T02:56:00.000+08:00

I had an epiphany last night; I write too much self-effacing crap on my blog, this will be amended now! With that in mind, I shall wax some braggadocio here instead of lax-induced emotional diarrhoea (hid under the veneer of levity). Here's why I rock the Kasbah and other ancient ruins that haven't been made into a pop-culture reference;

1. I'm smarter than the average 19-year-old male student. This is an established fact, please refer to number 4.

2. I'm also average-looking..... oh screw that I would probably be mistaken for a male model if it wasn't for my pizza visage (topped with pepperoni and anchovis, extra cheese during hot days). Taken men are licentious fuglies, this is a fact too (please provide a mugshot of yourself before asking for my number).

3. While not muscular, I'm neither fat nor thin. English girls would describe me as fit, hopefully not after doing their diurnal British tradition of binge-drinking.

4. I'm proud to say I've never felt tempted to smoke nor drink. Hence, proving my first claim.

5. I can spell (most of the time) and when writing, my synthax isn't cluttered with unnecessary abbreviations & acronyms, transliterations involving the replacement of letters with numerals or symbols, internet jargons and what not. Unless if I'm chatting, of course.

6. I love Disney, be it Pixar or their older animations. How many men can admit to that? Well, they would, if they want to get into your pants.

7. Aisyah Sinclair touched my hand earlier this year. This would quadruple my rockititude if it wasn't for the fact she looks 40. In the off chance she's reading this, just joking, please don't file for libel.

8. I have all of Quentin Tarantino's movies, meaning even the ones he only wrote or merely acted in.

9. I live a double-life. I'm really Batman...

10. ....and I can breathe in space.

In short, to quote Descartes if Sofia Coppola decided to pull a Marie Antoinette on him; I rock, therefore I am.

Selamat Hari Raya to all!

Freedom can't be given, only earned.

2006-10-13T05:17:00.000+08:00

I haven't written a single graphic novel review for a long time, which is weird considering my old posts were limited to just that. Having thought of this, I decided to cook up a review of a GN I bought last month that I feel needed more recognition than it's receiving;

PRIDE OF BAGHDAD by Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon

“The sky is falling!” – remarked a crow

Tales with animals given some form of human trait, whether through speech or anthropomorphization, are a staple in the literary world. Especially when it comes to political parables, somehow having mouse as stand-ins for Jews and cats as Hitler’s pawns is infinitely more effective and caustic at eliciting empathetic responses from readers. Why? There is this innate universal sympathy with animals that we all have – with all honesty try telling me your eyes weren’t the slightest bit teary when Bambi’s mother was shot. Perhaps by exploiting this compassion of ours, the cultural gap between two nations can be bridged with enough suspension of disbelief. The conflict beyond the comfort of our shores no longer seem alien and their people aren’t just ‘the other’ (the author’s own words) but creatures we’ve been indoctrinated to sympathize with through Aesop and Disney.

Inspired by true events, Pride of Baghdad is the story of life in the ruins of Baghdad after the first American bombing raid on Iraqi soil. Apparently some time in 2003, it was reported that a pride of lion (hence the title’s pun) escaped their captivity after it was bombarded by jet fighters. With freedom in their domesticated paws, the four lions traipsed the derelicts of war by unchained foot, liberation finally! But as the cliché goes; all good things come with a cost.

Not unlike its prose precursors, Vaughan bestowed the graphic novel’s dramatis personae with the power of speech and character. The alpha male of the pride, Zill, is nothing more than an overgrown Garfield whom antelopes have not feared for the longest time. Although accustomed to his tame environment, he still reminisces about seeing the horizon during his days in the wild. His mate, Noor lives in captivity since she was a cub but has since grown into an idealistic female yearning for release from the zoo even before the war. Ironically the oldest of them, Safa, is more at ease being fed by the keepers (man in lion-speak) even though she was captured at her prime. The reason for this is explained with frightening realism early in the story. Then we have Ali, the offspring of Zill and Noor, whose demeanour and appearance have more than in common with Simba from The Lion King, making his exposure to the world outside even more horrific.

When read with an intention to interpret it politically, every single one of the lions could represent differing voices of the Iraq War. So are the rest of its characters; one tortoise remembers how his family died in the oil spills of the first world war. A hulking bear is first depicted as an analogue of Saddam but then he accuses Zill of being a radical. And when Noor asked one of Saddam’s pet lions if they knew each other, he answered; “Not if you still have your claws... your teeth... You were never on his list.”

All of these could come off as heavy-handed but thankfully Vaughan made a conscious decision to leave the book’s political message entirely subjective to readers. Its Animal Farm’s influence is balanced by its Lion King-esque visual and cuteness (thanks to Ali), it can be entirely read as a great animal adventure in the veins of The Secrets of Nimh or The Incredible Journey, albeit being much darker.

Comics ultimately isn’t the same as novels (regardless of its graphic novel format, the two shouldn’t be piled together), the writer alone doesn’t make story. Thankfully Pride of Baghdad is a visual spectacle, often time nature’s beauty is juxtaposed with war’s atrocity. All drawn in amazing splash pages. The animals, while more realistic than Disney’s Lion King, could still express emotions competently and that’s saying a lot considering comics aren’t moving pictures. In a lesser artist’s hands, PoD wouldn’t be as emotionally rewarding, there is a necessity for the writer’s words and the illustrator’s drawings to coalesce or risk having the visual as mere puppets for the writer to speak with. Props to Niko Henrichon for materializing Vaughan’s script in print to perfection.

To reiterate, Pride of Baghdad can be enjoyed on multiple layers. It can be taken as a straight adventure of four lions seeking life outside the cage or you can delve deeper and read through all the subtext and parallels. Even more superficially, you can just look at the pretty pictures and still be satisfied with your purchase. That is how good the book is.

I’ve always been a fan of Brian K. Vaughan, his Y: The Last Man series is social commentary and great fun all roll into one. But he has always been the comics’ equivalent of Joss Whedon to me, someone who can write snappy dialogue with wit and a healthy dose of pop culture references into an absurd premise and somehow make it work. To an extent of his works looking like storyboards for an unreleased TV show at times. Alas, Pride of Baghdad completely shattered my presumption of him as a writer, Vaughan has proven he can weave a yarn that can only be told through this medium. Pride of Baghdad is a true graphic novel.

Side note -

I drove to college yesterday. Wow.

"Corrective lenses are something that I wear, so I can see the globe real clear."

2006-09-28T23:34:00.000+08:00

This might sound weird... but I love my glasses, I've been wearing them for so long that it's become a part of my body. You know how people with castrated limb are convinced the sensation is still there? I swear sometimes when I'm without my glasses (rarely), I can still feel it's phantom frame resting on my ears and the bridge of my nose, I'd even make an attempt to adjust it.

I wasn't always a bespectacled boy. I only started wearing glasses back in standard three, but even then I was in denial of my faulty vision. I remember sitting a good 15-inches away from the TV set, trying to convince myself my eyes were fine. I shouldn't have done that though, it probably contributed a lot to my eyesight's deterioration - but my parents mentioned how their lineage never had a history of myopia, my sister joked that maybe I was adopted and pop culture told me glasses are for the socially awkward (maybe there's some truth in this). All of this resulted in my wearing them irregularly during my primary school days, which, again, wasn't such a good idea.

A bunch of fantasies involving the birds and the bees and a rapid hormone influx later, I began to get used to having a permanent accessory on my face. By this time I probably can't function properly without them, as my vision deteriorated further. But that little impairment came with its own boon as a corollary; according to the infallibly trustworthy Wikipedia, it's only edited by every Urkel, Pointdexter and Izzard out there, us shortsighted folks are smarter than you 20/20-uns. We can also shoot concussion blast like Scott Summers and lull people into doing our biddings by staring at them. I think this is why hipsters wear thick emo glasses, they envy our powers!

On the real, I have a problem with anyone who wears spectacles as a fashion accessory - they are called corrective lenses, asshole, not fucking shades. There is no such thing as a geek chic save for attention whores with self-imposed quirkiness.

You see here;

This is a geek.

Whereas these assholes here;

Are just ugly men trying to get laid.

Yes, I already realised my post here has sidetracked to bitter vitriol.

A quick discourse with an impetuous guard.

2006-09-21T18:00:00.000+08:00

Starring two friends, a decrepit houseguard (DH) and myself!

DH: Mau pegi mana?

Friend #1: Hantar kawan balik.

Friend #2: Ya.

DH: Alamat apa?

Me: Sebelas, Cangkat Datuk Sulaiman 1.

DH: Rumah siapa?

*dumbfounded by the question, I was stunned into a momentary pause*

Me: Rumah saya lah!

*the guard, unsatisfied, peeked through the car's window to scrutinise my mug*

DH: Bodoh ah kau! (said while gesturing a go-ahead with his hand)

Me: Uhh......

I hope the fucking mutt is worth it.

2006-09-19T00:26:00.000+08:00

Gwahahahahahahahargh. (click to enlarge, duh)

I love this band

2006-09-16T22:04:00.000+08:00

They're called The Roots, in case if you don't know (which is blasphemous, but now you know =D).

Possibly their best live rendition of You Got Me -

Off from their latest album, Game Theory, the Radiohead-sampling track, Atonement -

A much older performance when they were more Jazz-influenced, it's from some French show or something -

Ridiculous and Illogical...

2006-09-16T17:46:00.000+08:00

....and yet we all subscribe to it, to the same mania that Alice and flag-waving Americans (or Quran-thumping terrorists) fell into.

Simple mathematics, the answer to the equation is as clear as the most placid of waters: seeking the unattainable is a futile endeavour, ergo if you were to undergo one of these fruitless expeditions, logic would calmly nudge your arm and ask you to abdicate it. You, in return, would reply with indignant eyes and hurl your fishing rod into the lake while blaming your boisterous fishing companion for scaring away your prey. But soon, you will concede to the obvious; it is not meant to be. And with that you'll be on with your life, at peace with the aforementioned epiphany.

No. That's not what most would do, as much as I want to be an automaton subjected to limited algorithm (disguised as pragmatism), I am simply a believer. A believer of vagaries, of fate and heart and anything of erratic nature, and I do know that belief will always be minsconstrued as naivete. Yet cling on to it I do, for God's hands (or perhaps The Basis of Science) made the Earth malleable, and so continued on the trait in whatever it is that had mushroomed from Her soil. It's hereditary, I think, especially to us Adam-kinds.

No. I am fooling myself. If I'm certain of this, then not everything can be molded. I am defeating the very purpose of my theory (halfbaked as it is!). But wouldn't assenting to this newer revelation means I am defeating another belief? That, that thing I was such an ardent advocater of! I've had arguments with licentious friends to protect its sanctity! I'd cogitated in deep thought in an attempt to philosophise it! What is this belief you asked, dear readers?

I'll let it remain vague for it is of utmost value to me, and the repercussions of revealing it isn't something I can handle. Good-bye.

(shit, that is on some emo crap. I'm fine, really. Don't worry, eye-liners are strictly off-limit to me =P)

Defragmenting my system

2006-09-14T06:20:00.000+08:00

I do not know how long it's going to take but I promise I'll learn how to forget.

Wish me luck =).

"Trifles light as air..."

2006-09-05T20:10:00.000+08:00

Uhm. I don't know why you are still threading this strand of webspace I'm occupying but hi anyway... and now that I have established all three of you are here, I'm obliged to provide you with a buncha trifling updates which have no bearing on your well-being nor anyone's. You will read it nonetheless, otherwise you wouldn't have been here in the first place. Get on with it then.

Hmm, where should I start......... aha, what I'd bought recently! Here's an expensive blindbuy I got from everyone's favourite mega-bookstore, Kino;

THE COMPLEAT MOONSHADOW

No, that's not a typo, I never knew there was such a word before too. Anyway, I did a wee bit of research, apparently Moonshadow is a forgotten gem from the mid-80s which had been compared to anything from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Hobbit to The Sandman. Now, I have no clue what those comparisons say about the book but namedropping a bunch of renowned works makes me feel literate and well-read. A bit of dry humour there for you to enjoy at my expense. Oh mackarel, I'm rambling nonsense here. Anyhow, the reason I put down 100+ ringgit for it was because of Ray Bradbury's quote on the cover; "beautiful, original, counting." To the uninitiated, he is a literary great whose greatest achievement was probably Fahrenheit 451 (which I have never read, I did watch the film adaptation though), so his opinion probably matters a lot. Plus, namedrop, man.

Oh, plot summary you say? Here's a copy and paste job: Journey from the farther reaches of outer space to the starry skies of the inner spirit as the young dreamer Moonshadow and his cynical alien companion Ira set forth on the unforgettable intergalactic odyssey.

Moving on, lets get to my emotional state. I've been feeling quite down lately. Have you ever felt like you're putting too much feelings into something that you know will never come to fruition? If the answer is yes, congratulations, you can empathize now.

Okay, now that I've got the boo-hoo kitty-fuck part out of the way, l should let you know that I'm also having Irritable Male Syndrome (IMS). That's the yet medically proven male equivalent of PMS. I am temperamental these days, although I hide my mood well enough I can still fluctuate from wisecracking Spider-man to brooding Batman in an instance. Uh oh, you just witnessed my geekdom at its lowest.... now git off me lawn you darn whippersnappers!

*throws broom*

Little Girl Giant

2006-08-15T09:16:00.000+08:00

A Jules Verne classic brought to life with hypnotic creepiness.

I'm still surprised the children there didn't scream for their lives.

The apostate that couldn't (come up with a better name)

2006-08-13T01:47:00.000+08:00

Thanks to Friendster's bulletin board, it has come to my attention that one Azlina Jelani had her birthname changed to Lina Joy. Yes, Lina Joy. This name of hers, it's not merely a bromidic appellation conferred from an act of tergiversation - it's an utterly vapid combination of a name familiar in every single part of the world (regardless of culture and belief) and a seemingly random English noun!

The arbitrariness of her new name seems like a case of a whitebred Sarong Party Girl trying too hard to come up with an English name. Imagine the creative process if you will; Hmm, why don't I take the diminutive of my first name which is common even in Chinese and Arabic names but nevermind that it sounds so fetch! Now all I need is to follow this with a word from my limited vocabulary that best describes me. Like happy. Lina Happy. Joy could work too. Most of my Ah Lian friends who are Buddhists but for some reason have English names (it's not even in their I.C) call themselves Joy!

Oh I know what you are thinking, "but Alif, the issue here is apostasy, she converted!" Well I couldn't care less, one convertee isn't going to threaten a well-established religion, neither would it affect anyone's faith. What is deserving of the typical Malay kneejerk reaction is her, pardon my ebonics, uncreative cracker-ass name. Defect to Scientology for all I care but at least give yourself a respectable name. Angelina Jolie, Evangeline Joyuna, Pilot Inspektor, whatever, but not Lina Joy for Judas' sake.

So please, do sign the petition, not because she was a Muslim but instead, to stop her from legally changing her name to the insipid Lina Joy. Thus saving her from making the biggest mistake of her life.

note: by doing this, you will also inadvertently help religious zealots get their way. Reader's discretion is adviced.

When economics are applied to anime

2006-08-10T20:52:00.000+08:00

An excerpt from Something Awful:

"Too often the long-term consequences of an action are ignored. These consequences can also be called negative externalities. This too can be applied to the consumption of anime.

Recall that the first law of anime is “Anime is gay”. Adam Smith later built on this theory and created the second law of anime which states, “You are gay if you watch anime”.

Usually the cost that anime fans place on the rest of the Internet does not exceed the benefit to the users. Basically we tolerate their shit. But occasionally anime fans get way too gay. Once again the invisible hand moves into action.

Web sites like Somehting Awful and CNN feature Pokemon face sitting bukake hentai as Awful Links of the Day. This shames people into watching less anime, closing down their guestbooks or blogs, and hopefully committing suicide. The gayness effect of anime is reduced to acceptable levels.

A public policy approach to reducing negative externalities is called Pigovian taxes. The government could fine each anime fan $50 for every 10 hentai tentacle rape images they upload to the Internet. This would give anime fans an economic incentive (recall that people respond to incentives) to cut back on how many Naruto music videos they upload to YouTube thus reducing pollution on the Internet."

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

Sympathy for Mr. Gibson (also, screw Israel)

2006-08-10T04:51:00.000+08:00

He was drunk.

Do you know what happens when your body consume too much alcohol? It causes your motor skills to go haywire and impairs your mental faculties. This is basic knowledge, a drunken Mel Gibson spewing inflammatory remarks was as much as a surprise as having your wife impregnated after unprotected sex - and given the world's current political climate, it was only expected for Jews to be the victim of his liquor-induced diatribe. I'm willing to bet the cops there have encountered numerous bigoted gibberish from drunks before this, but of course they weren't famous enough for the Anti-Defamation League to make a big fuss about.

Oh, for the record. Don't get me wrong, he said asinine stuffs but like I said, he was intoxicated with alcohol, what do you expect? An articulate condemnation of Israel's action?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The author most famously known for Sophie's World, Josten Gaardner wrote an op-ed regarding the Israel-Hezbollah conflict (read: I have no idea why the media would rather refer to it as Israel-Lebanon. The Lebanese government and citizens are just collateral damage to a country with obvious ulterior motives), criticising Israel's sheer usage of unabated force and questioning their motive for the invasion. He brought up religion to it, but much in the same manner as a rational person would denounce terrorism; religious extremism. Yes, extremism isn't just mutually inclusive to Islam. It's just that the military might that's bombing Lebanon hides under the veneer of a legitimate government and a pretend-cause. This, of course, led to him being accused of anti-semitism.

He was only speaking out against a government with dubious intent.

The term anti-semite is thrown around too many times without much thought put into it. Semantically speaking, I don't think it's even the correct term since semite doesn't exclusively refer to Jews, it also refers to any group of semitic-speaking people. Even the Qur'an is written in a form of semitic languages, classical Arabic. Hence, shouldn't only total disdain for the middle-east equates to anti-semitism? I guess Israel is really practicing self-loathing by invading Lebanon then.

"The only blood I care is Jew blood" - a line spoken by Steve, an Israeli assassin in Steven Spielberg's Munich. I thought this was really silly at the time I first watched the film but now, heh.

They should turn this into a reality show

2006-08-07T19:17:00.000+08:00

Football season is coming to an end, hallelujah!

2006-07-07T23:06:00.000+08:00

"Si in ius vocat, ito. Ni it, antestamino offside. Igitur em capito Ronaldinho." - friend A

"Cui testimonium defuerit, is tertiis foul diebus ob portum Zidane obvagulatum ito." - friend B

Being one of the two men on earth who's not interested in everyone's favourite past-time, I feel the need to use pantomime to communicate with my friends. I swear they've been speaking in glossolalia for the past 30 days!

I never understood the appeal of watching 24 men chasing after a ball on a field. The perpetual hugs and other physical male bonding feats (in a completely heterosexual way, as every fan can assure you) after a goal only serve to raise my right eyebrow even higher. Then there's also the matter of crazed fans causing riots and stuff when their favourite team lost. Funny. I saw this football ad claiming that in a world gone accustomed to human atrocities such as wars, natural disasters and what not, the field is the only place to find a peace of mind. I tell you what's an atrocity, a footballer's paycheck. Or any athlete of whichever popular sport for that matter. They're grossly overpaid I tell ya.

Eh, I'm starting to blather about my antipathy again. I'll just learn to speak in tongues for the next World Cup. Then I can ask my college mates to put wagers on big matches to give the impression that I give a shit.

Super-Fun-Meme-Time!

2006-06-21T12:14:00.000+08:00

So Syar tagged me.

10 Simple Pleasures

Having one of my cats curl on my lap.
Taking a long shower after a tiring day. This could take up to a near hour. No, really.
Fleeting moments of mutual happiness between family members.
Watching a RomCom flick that does not insult my intelligence. (In Good Company for example)
A good pasta meal. Preferably with cheese.
Enjoying a good story, regardless of the medium it is told in.
Drinking hot tea during rainy weathers.
Cartoon shows I still have a nostalgic attachment to.
Looking at beautiful art.
Cleansing my digestive system thoroughly (to put it politely =P).

I'm not really a negative person but surprisingly, I took quite some time to finish this. Maybe I'm not as content with life as I thought I was.....

Kidding! I'm not about to go on an emotional rant.

Aversions

2006-06-16T10:50:00.000+08:00

Here's the obligatory post which I'd listed down my dislikes, because I'm feeling uncreative (and patronising too);

1. People who choose to smoke in public toilets. The smorgasbord of smell that is urine and leftover poo stains is already bad enough.

2. Family sitcoms. How many sitcoms about dysfunctional families do we need? I'm tired of the Homer Simpson archetypes, geeky or mischievous brothers, angsty sisters and unorthodox mothers.

3. Students who find it necessary to give apropos remarks for every sentence their lecturer make. Be it witless jokes or repetitions of what the lecturer's just said (presumably to fake comprehension).

4. The term open-minded. More abused and overused than the word pretentious. Usually used to justify youthful stupidity such as consumption of alcohol, drugs, club culture (here's the self-righteous part) and adornment of symbols they don't understand (think ankh, pentagram or inverted cross).

5. Lecherous old men going after housewives or women young enough to be their daughters, they are usually conferred with the Dato' title. I think old age and opulence automatically turn you lustful.

6. Teenagers with delusions of thuggery. Particularly rich kids in suburban areas, most of them will claim that they belong in Hongsoon, Tiga Line or whichever nonexistent crime organisation.

7. Wondermilk. Not the establishment itself but the fact that it has turned into a congregational place for MySpace hipsters with limited photoshop skills.

8. Hitz.TV. This one is self-explanatory.

9. People who feel the need to ask one another about their virginity, as if abstinency is a deplorable act.

10. Hollywood remakes. I'm still waiting for the remake of Gore Verbinski's remake of Ringu. Perhaps I should remake this post sometime in the future too.

This Novelty Has Worn Out

2006-06-13T16:58:00.000+08:00

Today was fun, I danced without feeling stupid for my college project.

This part you are reading here? An attempt to elongate an ultra-filler post.

Absolute

2006-06-07T14:43:00.000+08:00

Come November, Vertigo will release the first volume of Absolute Sandman; collecting Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country into a single book. Clueless? Imagine graphic novel's equivalent to DVD's digitally remastered old films. Meaning it will be completely reproduced, from its colours to even letterings, and added with a bunch of extras (original scripts, annotation, sketches etc.) for good measure. This is great news seeing as how the first three arcs were products of the late 80s and early 90s, a time with obsolete printing technology. Not saying the original art is ugly, they're good for works of their time, but take a look at this panel-to-panel comparison;

Pretty enticing eh? Unfortunately the standard Absolute slipcase is priced at RM280+, even I can't afford that. I don't understand why the Powers-That-Be felt it's only necessary to award people who can fork out near three hundred ringgit with the recoloured version when they can just very well do the same with standard TPBs and hardbacks.

*sigh*

Now, I have to abstain myself from going to Kinokuniya for at least 5 months.

Apocalypse draws nigh!

2006-06-05T16:02:00.000+08:00

Recently I've seen people wearing these in broad daylight;

Now, I have minimum-familiarity with Star Trek as the next slightly geeky person but I'm still knowledgable enough to tell that the Borgs have landed on our shores.

Either that or people like looking like complete idiots. If you do own this, please do not wear the contraption 24/7, I beg you. Unless you are Donald Trump, I doubt you need to use it that often.

Aliens & Androids

2006-06-02T12:13:00.000+08:00

Science fiction (or speculative fiction as called by the geekier side of the fandom) is a genre that I hold in high-esteem, regardless of the medium it is told with. There's is just something about the human condition and exaggerated/post-apocalyptic hereafters that makes them coalesce together so well on screen, pictures of just texts. Specifically though, I'm a fan of the genre when it's on celluloid, since I'm a movie-buff and all. Out of all the philosophical babbles (The Matrix, Metropolis, Gattaca), alien invasions (WoTW, The Day The Earth Stood Still, *cough* Independence Day *cough*), horrific pseudo-science (The Fly, Reanimator, The Thing), government oppressions (1984, Fahrenheit, Brazil) and generally plain fun space operas (Star Wars, Serenity); there are only two films that matter most in my book, and both are directed by the same person -

Ridley Scott -- whose last good effort was a movie with a quite ordinary premise, Matchstick Men -- gave realism to the usually fantastical genre in an era where Star Wars moulded science fiction into another branch of fantasy. H.R Giger was given his start and cyberpunk finally found a visual reference to borrow from, all thanks to Ridley's two masterstrokes. If you haven't figured which films I'm referring to by now, I present to you...

ALIEN (1979)

Ah 1979. Just a few years ago the first installment of Star Wars was released (or rather, the fourth in the series). The film opened with an iconic shot of a gargantuan ship floating in void space. Now juxtapose this with the opening of Ridley Scott's Alien; the same aesthetic is used, giant ship against a lonely space backdrop. The score is mildly audible when compared to Star Wars' epic theme, and when the screen shifts into the interior of the ship, the discrepancy between the two is even more apparent. Here we have real people conversing with vernaculars that won't seem out-of-place in an oil rig. The crew of the spaceship isn't enamoured by the sheer romanticism of being in space, instead they just want to meet end's meet. The tonal shift is clear now, we are looking at a practical future, where industrialisation and capitalism spread their influence even to the far fringes of the galaxy. No intergalatic war, no innumerable anthropomorphic creatures, no Klingons and certainly no midichlorians to inspire a generation of cosplayers.

At its most basic form, Alien is a movie that shares a kinship with slasher flicks and creature-features. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, the shark from Jaws and a menagerie of other equally belligerent animals all belong in the same lexicon of inhuman movie villains as the Alien. Look at it in another way though, Alien is wholly original. It uses said genres' conventions and transport them into unfamiliar territory, then gave realism to it by having a cast of weary adults instead of copulating teenagers and replacing sci-fi adventurers with workers and scientists. Most important of all, the film paces itself well enough to build tension and scares.

To reiterate, unlike today's thrillers, the plot takes its time to build the suspense. It begins with the crew's discovery of an alien vessel marooned on a moon. Frozen and of indefinite age, it sent a signal to the moon-mining ship. Was it a distress call or a warning? The ambiguity is drowned by the crew's need to please their employers and get paid. And so they ventured into the unknown -- a ship smogged on the surface of its inside to conceal leathery eggs -- and brought a piece of the unknown into their ship. Everything up to this point and further on is treated with patience - the first time the alien is revealed, you would still feel like you're under the dark as much as the alien is. This is how the slasher genre is supposed to work, the killing isn't the pivotal part but it is the wait before the inevitable slashing that draws us. Hence a certain atmosphere is required in order for this to work; the environment, music, colour tone, dialogue, pacing, visuals all play a part.

This brings us to another significant aspect of sci-fi and horror films, the set & creature design; H.R. Giger reached legendary status overnight and gained an Oscar for his design work here. Melting the organic and the artificial, his design is ridden with sexual symbolisms. For instance, the Alien first resembled a phallic creature protruding out of a vaginal-looking wound (the now famous scene of John Hurt's demise). Then there's the alien ship's opening that, again, looks like a vagina and leads up to a tunnel that bears similarity with the birth canal. Dissimilar to other kindred movies, rationale is actually given to the look of the film. The sexual imageries in the production design adds up to the movie's theme and give greater weight to its otherwise latent subtext of human sexuality.
Even when Giger's design work refrains from making overt sexual connotations, it is still fascinating. The adult alien's long ovate head, spindly limbs and black metallic skin are made to camouflage it with the ship's metal pipes, grates, wires and what not. Again, conforming to the overall motif of meshing the organic and the artificial. This "bio-mechanoid" look has been copied numerous times by other sci-fi films, hence establishing Giger's style as de rigueur in the genre. Particularly when it deals with the corruption of technology.

The film's genius lies in its cast too. Sigourney Weaver is forever attached to this franchise for a reason, Ripley was the first female lead character that didn't conform to genre norms. She didn't care for romantic liaisons, no where did her existence come across as just a love interest for the male lead (in fact, there isn't a male lead). She is just another blue-collar worker among the rest of the crew, she is no more weaker, stronger or emotionally unstable as her coworkers ("How do we kill it." was her response when she saw what the alien can do). The now wrung-dry trend of having strong female leads facing off insurmountable odds can also be attributed to Ripley.
Ian Holm is deliciously cold as science officer Ash; an android so heartless that his own amoral behaviour might have contributed to his fascination with the alien. "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." as he puts it succinctly.
John Hurt's role as Kane might be small, but he still gave a memorable performance in the infamous chest-bursting scene. The rest of the cast, whose names escape me now (it's been a while since I last saw the movie), gave equally competent performances as workers who are just trying to get their job done. One interesting thing to note from the cast is that they were all older than most leads in today's films, logically they should be too. How many times have you endured young actors/actresses unrealistically casted as professionals of a particular expertise? Jessica Alba in the abominable Fantastic Four, anyone?

Alien has been hailed as one of the best sci-fi films of all time, its influence created new genre conventions that have been adapted by many - from the usage claustrophobic corridors to making blue-collar workers face great adversaries. But one thing is lost in translation when others try to imitate Alien, the intelligence. Most simply chose to mimic its thrills and forgo the thinking behind every visual, plot point, dialogue and what-have-you. The curiosity and logic of Alien only found its equal in John Carpenter's The Thing (which went one-upped Alien by having an all-male cast). Other than that (which came out in 1982), there aren't much latter-day movies that live up to the standards set by Alien, most film-makers now are content with disgusting us with gore and violence without putting purpose behind them. While there are other equally ambitious and serious sci-fi films after Alien's release, they're not of the same subgenre. In an era where slasher flicks only attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator (read: dumb teenagers), Alien is still in a league of its own for more than 25 years. And like wine, it only gets better with age.

Blade Runner (1982)

The first real cyberpunk film. If that word doesn't register with your glossary of fictions, allow me to explain;

Cyberpunk is an amalgamation of film noir and science-fiction. Combining both genres' conventions, it is usually set in a dystopian future where cities, while exhibiting technology beyond ours, still bear semblance to ours. Anachronism is prevalent in its setting, obsolete machines and trinkets from as far back as the 40s can be seen about. The protagonists are almost exclusively anti-heroes and femme fatales (much like noir; again, anachronism) and their foes are corrupt governments, conglomerates and depraved technology (body modification, genetic engineering, extreme surveillance). More recently in our information age, the internet made it into the genre as a staple as seen in The Matrix and Ghost in the Shell. This is nothing new though as it is the genre's cliche to examine the social effects of every single conceivable technology. "Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes." one Bruce Sterling once said.
To sum cyberpunk in one concise sentence; the antithesis of the 40s utopian vision of the future through an anarchic lense.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's look at the movie that has been dubbed as the best sci-fi film of all time by the world's top scientists (http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/1093456713264.html?from=storyrhs). Blade Runner is an adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's magnum opus, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The first of the many more adaptations of his books to come, coincidentally it's probably the best (followed closely by Minority Report). As in the ethos of Phillip K. Dick, it was also the first to bring forth the question of what it is like to be human, an unprecedented thematic shift in a time where people think of E.T when sci-fi is mentioned.

The film is set in a future where man coexist with replicants - manufactured beings created for the sole purpose of slave labour. According to the corporation that built them, replicants are "more human than human", forged to look like us but with greater physical capability. Ironically they are claimed to lack the same emotional capacity of man, empathy is totally foreign to a replicant. As such, a contraption (the Voight-Kampff machine) that can tell one's emotional response is used to determine one's humanity. When one member of a renegade replicant group killed a tester during his session, Deckard (Harrison Ford) is forced out of retirement for one last job as the eponymous Blade Runner - the name of bounty hunters whose job is to 'retire' (read:kill) replicants. His hunt for said renegade replicants had their and even his own humanity questioned.

It isn't easy to describe the themes in Blade Runner without writing a verbose review, there are just too many aspects to cover; from religious references to the morality of modernity. But if there's one important question explored by the film, it is the ambiguity of our humanity (as I have mentioned time and time again). Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and his ragtag group of renegades are replicants, said to lack empathy, yet they are shown to care for each other. Contrast this with the human characters in the background whose faces are obscured and impersonal. Then there's Tyrell, owner of Tyrell Corp. (which manufactures replicants), he is a God to the replicants but yet when Roy seeked absolution from him, he gave him none. The human characters seem even cruel, implanting the replicants with false memories and deciding their life-span. Even renowned critic, Roger Ebert (who wasn't blown away by the movie), felt moved by a scene in which Deckard coldly told Rachael (Sean Young) her memories are phony, who was oblivious of her artificiality. Particularly interesting is Deckard himself is ambiguous in nature. He is implied to be a replicant himself yet he lacks all of the strengths of being one. He is also emotionally cold, like how a replicant is supposed to be. This could just be a genre cliche of film noir or an attempt to contrast his apathy with Roy's passion for his kind. Whatever it is, this forces audience to reevaluate what it means to be human. Should we pity him if he was proven to be one or should we feel indifferent to his existence if he was proven to be a man? Our own humanity is subliminally questioned by coercing us to examine these two possibilities.

Perhaps, the biggest contribution by Blade Runner to the genre isn't the philosophical meanderings but it is the visual. Los Angeles' look of billion-dollar towers juxtaposed with third-world ground level, huge billboards and advertising blimps, neon lights, dirty surfaces, permanent smog and multi-ethnic population became a standard in other cyberpunk films. The economic inequality and corporatism presented in its visual might not be as prophetic as it is shown back in 1982 (since I live in 2006 and I'm only 19) but this has never stopped other films of its kind to borrow the look, they only need to bump 2019 to an even further future. Like the film noir of yore with its black and white 40s New York, Blade Runner gave its descendant, cyberpunk, a visual reference to draw upon. Heck, it even inspired films such as Batman Begins (!).

Blade Runner is the antecedent to a whole lot of modern science fictions in varying mediums; from anime (Ghost in the Shell), videogames (Snatcher), music (Cannibal Ox) to other films (Fifth Element). Its influence, as said, isn't limited to just the look of cyberpunk but the ethos as well. Some of the themes might come across as derivative (how many times does humanity have to be questioned? The Matrix, Terminator, Dark City etc.) now but one must remember Blade Runner is the pioneer, and its thematic complexity still resonates with intensity.

One important metaphor in the movie is the unicorn, an animal that isn't here in our world but yet exist, much like the replicants. As Roy Batty existentially said in his last few seconds of the four years he had spent;

"All those moments... will be lost... in time... like tears... in rain. Time... to die."

There you have it folks, two of the best sci-fi films of all time according to this author's opinion. What are you waiting for? Don't let my writing hamper your curiosity, your local pirates are only a few blocks away!

Apologue

2006-05-30T16:31:00.000+08:00

One of my many assignments for this semester involves writing a storybook, and without further adieu, here it is (not finalised yet though, haven't bothered to check my grammar);

The yet-to-be-titled Fable of Thinly-Veiled Self-Righteousness.

In a land of tales and lore,
Near a shore where quails do soar,
Lies a hamlet fair, and free from care
having but one secret shared -
The Shire by the Shore.

With the cock-a-doodle-do of morning, villagers would begin their daily task of fishing, farming, fuming (after a long day’s work), and go about to whichever trade fate bade them to. Children not of age would scurry and play by the beach and children of age would hurry to school for tutors need to teach. Life is as ordinary as one from such elusive era and rural region would deem normal.

Beyond the wall of banal bliss though, is a secret. A child cursed with scars crossing from one point of his face to another hundred points, a hunchback that towers his head and weathered clothes covering his being. He lives at the far border of the shire, nearer to the woods than the shore, in an abandoned cottage. Shunned by all, even the sun for he only dares to come out at nightfall. Adults would warn their young kin to not bother the goblin in the cottage (as he is officially known) or risk having their flesh wipe out clean!

Hairy Barry and Lyle Luke do not care, or rather aren’t aware of this creature. For them, after a brain-tiring day of lesson, life meant nothing else than to dance and prance to the cooling breeze of the beach.

On holidays, or Lazing Cycle as the children begun to call them, they are always on to something.
Sometimes, they would annoy Mr. Moustache’s pizzeria.
Other times, they could just go fishing using sticks and threads.
Mostly, they would pick to set sail on a pretend-yacht.
But on one such Lazing Cycle, they decided to go exploring every nook and cranny of the shire.
Even to its borders.

“Barry, look, a hut by the woods!” enthused Lyle Luke. “Let’s make like curious cats and look what’s inside.” he continued.

Barry, quiet as always, agreed to the suggestion by entering the cottage first. Lyle followed with careful steps.

“Hello…” murmured a gruff voice from the shadows. “I am The Goblin” the owner of the voice revealed his name and his full appearance as well.
“Uh... nice to meet you Mr. Goblin, I’m Hairy Barry and this is Lyle Luke.” answered Harry with no hint of fear. “Do you live here?” butted in Lyle.

And The Goblin told them his horrific history. Rapt in a mixture of pity and boredom, the children in return promised to take him out for a day of fun tomorrow. Another addition to the gang wouldn’t hurt, they thought.

As sworn by the boys, they went to the cottage the next day and forced The Goblin out into daylight. The Goblin never had a chance to even awe silently at the bright sight, the boys had brought him to their daily activities in a dash;

Fishing…
Pretend-sailing…
Free lunch at the pizzeria…
Irking the neighbour’s dog…

All under the watchful eye of villagers. They scoffed at The Goblin and worried about the boys’ safety as if they were watchmen. Fortunately, the boys hadn’t done anything earth-shattering.
Until they grew tired of it all toward the end of the day, that is.

The boys and The Goblin huddled in a circle for a meeting. The boys figured they could use The Goblin’s ugly mug for mischief. They planned to scare one Mrs. Townsend at dusk, in which she would do her routine feeding of Mr. Townsend’s livestock. Naturally, the goblin agreed, as he wanted to be in the in-crowd.

So as dusk reached, The Goblin alongside the boys, hid behind the hedge surrounding Mr. Townsend’s small barn.

“Boo!” screamed The Goblin, doing his best impression of what he was supposed to be.

As in the nature of cause-and-effect, Mrs. Townsend’s shriek shocked the horses sharing the same barn. The horses then hopped over their cage’s fence and trampled all over the chickens. The amount of noise made from such event could only alert a whole village, which it did.

Before anyone could arrive, they made it like boats during a storm and fled. But an angry mob had been formed and saw to their escape. Yells of finger-pointing can be heard from said mob;

“The Goblin’s a bad influence to our kids! The thing eats bugs for god’s sake,”
“Yessurrr, who’s to say he didn’t teach the boys to kill livestock!”
”And he’s ugly and non-human, we let him live and this is how he repay us?”

The boys and The Goblin at this time had managed to stay hidden, or so they thought. The mob found them, and put them on the spot. Strangely Hairy Barry and Lyle Luke were separated from The Goblin by their respective parents.

The Goblin knew he alone would suffer their wrath.

“Why did you do this to our kids and Mrs. Townsend? She could have died of shock along with the chickens.” questioned one villager with anger.

“I am a monster,” said The Goblin to a stunned crowd. “it is in my nature for her to be scared of me. I can’t change the way I am” added him, for he wasn’t very bright.

Before a maiming could start, the boys rushed to The Goblin’s help and promptly said;

“Oh gentlefolk of The Shire, please do not harm this boy, we were the one who planned the prank. Plus, he really can’t change his look, and we can’t change our manners, neither can any of you. For all of us are monsters in this story.” announced Lyle Luke, proud of his deep statement (in his own mind, anyway).
“Spots can be changed when they’re on our brain, not our skin. Lyle and I can quit the pranks, all of you can quit pointing fingers so quickly. But our Goblin friend here’s curse is how he was born, he can’t stop being a monster, unless a different nickname is given to him.” argued Barry.

The night’s air was silent for a moment. The villagers looked thoughtful and understanding of their plight. The boys went under the impression that they had put some sense into the mob.

They smiled.

The next morning, we find our heroes living in the cottage with The Goblin. “Oh well, at least we had fun,” said Hairy Barry. “I wonder how long this punishment is going to last.” asked Lyle.

“I was proven innocent, why do I still have to live in this place?” complained The Goblin, “At least we were right.”

“I suppose.”

And that assurance alone gave our story here a happy ending and a good moral to boot!

-the end-

If the story sounded familiar to you, it's probably because some plagiarisation may be involved. Or maybe it's just plain derivative and lazy.

Abominable

2006-05-27T15:58:00.000+08:00

I went to watch X-3: The Last Stand 2 days ago;

It was painfully mediocre. Well ,actually, it's still better than expected since it's a Brett Ratner film that didn't completely suck, but that's not saying much. Ratner saturated too many characters into a 100+ minute movie and didn't give most of them the screen-time needed for us to give two bits of shit for them. Angel for example was there just for fan-service, he served no purpose even though his origin was shown at the beginning of the movie. Also, I hated the pandering-to-fanboys stuffs; Wolverine and Colossus' fastball special, Rebecca Romijin's naked body lying on the floor and the addition of Juggernaut. With the exception of Mystique's naked body, all of them were sillier than Wolverine's yellow spandex from the comics. Shit - I could go on and on about the movie (the hammy dialogue, unfunny one-liners, lazy performances by some cast members) but that would only feed my need to get a plane ticket to Tinseltown just so that I can find Ratner and smash his fat fucking face onto a brick wall.

*sigh*

I love the first two iterations of X-Men, FOX should have just listened to Bryan Singer and delay the movie for another year so that he could return to direct it. Oh well, at least Superman wouldn't suck (as long as Singer knows that gay subtext does not belong in Superman's universe).

I also bought this on that day;

Steven is afraid. Afraid of ghost stories, afraid of growing up... just afraid. That is, until he meets the mysterious Showman and his Theatre of the Real. Steven takes a ticket and watches the show on a dare, but getting out of the performance will be harder than he ever imagined. And then Steven learns what it is to be truly afraid. Neil Gaiman, internationally acclaimed and bestselling writer of both prose fiction (Neverwhere, Stardust) and graphic novels (The Sandman, Signal to Noise) teams with veteran artist Michael Zulli (The Sandman, Creatures of the Night) to create this dark and brooding morality tale. The Last Temptation is the latest addition to Dark Horse's proud and growing library of Neil Gaiman hardcovers. Originally published as part of the short-lived Marvel Music line of the early '90s, Zulli's lush and beautiful duoshade artwork is now showcased in a new format for this stunning second edition.

But I'm too lazy to read it.

Arrhythmic

2006-05-24T12:33:00.000+08:00

Do you smell that? No, not the stupor-inducing aroma of your filthy body but that other pungent stench. Yes, my blog's been stagnating for some time now. Fret not, here's a quick update on what I've been up to these past few weeks;

I volunteered to join a dance troupe for my Media, Culture & Society project.

Big mistake. I had my first practice last Friday and -- Christ on a tricycle -- I completely failed to grasp any of the moves taught by our instructor. Here's to putting myself in a situation that will lead to borderline-faux pas (unless I succeeded at mustering some rhythm into my body, unlikely) again. In other news, Stardust is collecting, uh, mind the horrible pun, dust on my shelf; I have lost all interest in reading it thanks to college. The impending film will have to suffice. Oh well.....

*cogitates in deep thought*

Hmmm... women love that whole odd but disarmingly charming schtick, I've seen it worked in movies starring Luke/Owen Wilson, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Topher Grace and who-have-you's of that variety before. That bit of digression is uncalled for, let's get back to my playing the jester's card!

If American stereotypes were to be followed, my feet have the beat of a white man in a minstrel show. So why did I join? It's that annoying old adage most of us subscribe to when midlife crisis hits too early; the tendency to try something new. Something new being embarrassing activities, of course. There better be an unfolding of a love story in the course of the next few months or at least a Woody Allen-inspired sequence, in which I walk around from A to B while sharing my personal aversions with a father-figure confidant...
Ok, screw the latter.
But seriously, on a somewhat related tangent, the whole point of this post is that I live a boring life hence you're better off reading another person's blog. Unless if I decided to write another lengthy diatribe again, of course.

Aimless

2006-05-04T09:40:00.000+08:00

*in which I write about whatever crosses my mind at the time.

Boredom.

For the past few days (maybe even weeks, or a lifetime), I've been feeling like a less caustic understudy of a Bill Murray-starring flick that never got made. Somnambulant walks and blank stares encompass most of my days, I even go a step further and narrate my every action as if I were a PE pursuing a femme fatale in a black & white world. But of course I'm not even a quarter as cool as most noir protagonists, ergo my soliloquies are limited to "while taking a sip of the exorbitantly-priced bottle of mineral water, my eyes gravitated toward its effervescent nature. Carbonated H2O, god help us all" and "I stare at the wall as the paint dries, I recognised every single oversaturated spots. Like a fetus coming into familiarity with its mother's womb". As you can tell by now, as in the nature of all bored persons, I compensate my uneventful life with dry-humour that in all probability might not even be the least bit funny. Maybe I shouldn't have constricted myself to a restraint, maybe I should conform to a norm; revel & rebel a bit. Luckily, I'm not an idiot. I'll stick to my ennui thank you, at least I can pretend to be unique...

...pretentious.

A word abused and mostly overused by people who are more often than not, fit the word's definition. Which brings us to irony; a blatant occurrence or effect that is contrary to what is intended, it is so overt that those who lack any sort of observation skills feel the need to point them out. Pompousity; righteous indignation. Tautology; read my previous sentence. Syntax; ruined by SMS. Modernity; euphemism for debauchery. Word association; a cure for the bored. Reiterative; I am implying monotony again.

I need to go back home now. Laters.

Addendum

2006-04-27T13:17:00.000+08:00

Oh, according to my Intro to Radio Production lecturer, I have a naturally sexy voice.

edit: Also, domestic housework isn't my forte. I suck at folding clothes.

Alan Moore & Apprentice

2006-04-25T12:25:00.000+08:00

I just bought these;

Alan Moore: A Portrait of An Extraordinary Gentleman

A 350+-thick biography-cum-tribute of Alan Moore. The former is really a lie, it's actually 10 pages of mini-bio in the form of a comic strip, the rest are all articles and illustrations by renowned writers, scholars and cartoonists alike. Most of the text are really a bunch of gobbledygook sprinkled with pretension as its condiment - Neil Gaiman's tribute to his mentor is a barely intelligible poem, whilst others write about the metaphysics of Alan Moore's imagination and (least portentously) some just share what little anecdotes they have involving Moore. The eponymous writer would probably loathe all of these sycophantic aggrandisement of his works, he is not known for having an affinity for publicity. But orneriness comes mutually with old age, and so does the deification of snakes and dabbling in magic in Moore's case, plus his cantankerous attitude stemmed from a valid reason; Hollywood's bastardisation of his works & the shitty treatment he was given by numerous comics publication houses. (Mind you all of these facts I'm about to divulge is based solely on what's written in the book). Although he had a hand in the cultural shift of the late-80s and early-90s with his seminal opuses -- Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing -- he never got full ownership of them, instead DC utilised Watchmen to gain profit by producing schlocky figurines. Ironic since the graphic novel was marketed to an adult demographic and claimed to be a panacea that gave respectability to the medium (the superhero genre specifically). Watchmen's popularity also attracted Hollywood big shots in dire need of new idea, but saved for V for Vendetta none of his vision made in on celluloid accurately enough. Yes, From Hell & League of Extraordinary Gentlemen have about nil similarity to their original sources.
..okay, I'm blathering random facts I got from the book now, let me just list down why Alan Moore kicks ass (which is really me inundating my readers with trivial facts again);

if it wasn't for Moore, Neil Gaiman would've never gotten his start with the written word.
he created John Constantine. No, not that wooden plank Keanu Reeves, but the Sting lookalike with unkempt appearance and arcebic wit.
he denounced the early 90s trend of turning every single comic series into a dark & grim affair.
he is a near-omniscient being. His League of Extraordinary Gentlemen script had one whole page dedicated to describing the surface of Mars and its many moons so the book's artist won't make any mistake when illustrating it.
he is a practitioner of real magick (inclusion of the letter K to denote how real it is) who's got a Snake God living in his lavatory. Also, it helps that he look like Rasputin reincarnated.
I think he hates the Wachowski siblings as much as I do. Note my usage of the word sibling in lieu of brothers, one of them had a sex change surgery.
once he was late for a meeting some time in the 80s. When asked why, he said he went to an optomerist to check up his defective left eye. The good doctor suggested that he should wear a monocle, in which he replied succintly with "I think I would look weird wearing it".

Like I said, there's not much to say about the book so you have to forgive me for turning this entry into an Alan Moore-gushing chinwag.

Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess' Stardust (Being a Romance Within The Realms of Faerie)

In a Victorian-era tale of magic and romance, young Tristran Thorn falls in love with the town beauty and must go on an incredible coming-of-age journey in order to capture her heart. Living in the small countryside town of Wall, one night Tristran vows to his beloved to retrieve a fallen star that they witnessed crashing down from the heavens. Now to gain his love's hand, he must leave behind his home and embark on a journey that will define the meaning of true love. Told through breathtaking painted illustrations, this fairytale for adults is a true masterpiece in storytelling.

Hollywood is shooting an adaptation of this as I speak, figured I buy the book first before it's inevitable bastardisation. Anyway, on to the novel, I am an extremely slow reader - literature should be treated culinarily, I take my time to chew and digest textured words that create these fantastic worlds in order to fully savour the flavour. Okay, mind the horrible analogy and attempts at rhyme. About ten pages into the book, I purposely put it back on my bookshelf so that I can save it for another time when I'm not too preoccupied with college works. And that's as good as a compliment can get, I find it easier to better appreciate a book when the act of reading it is the only thing I can fit into my daily routine. If Stardust was a run-of-the-mill fantasy, I would have skimmed through it and not give a shit to reread it at all. Gaiman's almost-lyrical prose is a joy to read; it is as whimsical as it is self-consciously serious. I haven't got to the part where it borrowed heavily from the pantheon of fantasy writers like C.S Lewis, Tolkien and such, as reviews I'd read claimed, but I'm sure it is the execution that counts and so far, the hero's journey is an intriguing one, damn all of the tales told by The Bard.

p/s: if you're thinking of purchasing this - please, PLEASE, please, I implore you, nay, I command you to find Stardust in its original incarnation as an illustrated novel. Much of the magic is lost without Charles Vess' wonderful paintings, me thinks. I mean, just look at the one I uploaded!

Asinine

2006-04-19T17:45:00.000+08:00

Waiting for a good Malaysian sitcom with English as its lingua franca is similar to looking for cow manure in a reservoir saturated with liquified Elephant dung. The shit might be significantly smaller, but it is still digestive residue excreted from an animal's anus. Nevertheless, cool and hip TV channels still churn them out once in a while in a futile hope of finally hitting viewers' already Friends-narcotized nerves.

KL Lights is the latest product of this trend..... well heck, it's not really a fad since nobody gave a shit about any of TV2's English sitcoms nor Popiah Picture's numerous failed shows. Anyway, I am digressing. Point is, KL Lights continues the consecutively crappy line-up of English sitcoms. All of the typical aspect of a local English sitcom is there, but KL Lights took a step further. The bars of stupidity has been raised and orang utans, gorillas and a whole smorgasbod of feces-throwing great apes are swinging through it. KL Lights is really a subterfuge for Philistia's reemergence. It's idiocy incarnate.
I dub it...

An Apotheosis of Asininity (or better known as KL Lights diatribe)

1st Transgression - Amalgamation of colloquail American English & local jargons.

I swear no one, and I mean it, NO ONE, in this show talks like the average Malaysian. It is like watching an exaggerated Ally McBeal or Scrubs(without the humour nor wit) with its audio distilled through a Malaysian-jargon filter. The result is a strange mixture of pop-culture references that doesn't belong in a Malaysian context and the occassional alamaks, teh tarik, the -lah suffix, kantoi and what not thrown in for good measure. Let me further illustrate this with a satire of the show's dialogue;

"You look like David Hasselhof way past his prime, Travis" - Nadia
"Bollocks, yo. With Kit (points at his black car) by my side, I'm all macholah" - Travis
"Who in the sulfur below calls himself Travis in Malaysia? You look Malay." - Stranger
"Uh... roti canai, mamak, pisang goreng, menara berkembar Malaysia, Rosyam Nor. Haha! Look at how Malaysian I am, huzzah!" - Travis

Yes, Travis is a real character from the show. He's the token unintentionally intentional dumb character, think Phoebe (of Friends fame), only painfully unfunny. Just kidding, no one can oust Phoebe's uber-lameness.

2nd Transgression - Thoroughly out-of-context story premise

One episode had one of the main character's roommate as a pot-smoking stereotypical Jamaican. It also had hemp brownies, a scene in which everyone got high naturally ensued.
Another episode had a scene in which the protagonist heated frozen fried chicken in a microwave.
The last episode I can recall had Travis fantasizing about being a noir detective, complete with the genre cliche - femme fatale.

Noticed anything peculiar? Yes, it is as if the makers of the show got themselves The Official Handbook of America's Sitcom Cliches. I'm hard-pressed to believe any of these could happen in the context of our society - putting a friggin' refrigerated fried chicken into a microwave in particular.

3rd Transgression - Masking itself as a new genre

Apparently KL Lights is a dramedy in lieu of a mere sitcom. Never mind the fact that it has all of the genre's conventions sans the canned-laughter - dramedy it is and sitcom it is not. The rationale behind this is that KL Lights present real issues as opposed to just carefully-orchestrated-but-badly-delivered punchlines. You know, homosexuality, cohabitation & ingesting Marijuana cakes, like in generic teen-flicks and American sitcoms.

....uh

I don't think I need to add anything here

4th Transgression - Pompousity, in part because of the creators

Ahmad Izham Omar claimed that with KL Lights, demographics will totally be abolished; no more Chinese, Indian or Malay, just Malaysians. But that's his pigeonholing the term to exclusively refer to races, reading articles and press releases of the show proves to be au contraire. Incessant proclaimation of the show's urbane, hip and young traits only serves to further widen the Grand Canyon-gap of cultural lag between city and rural. Of course this is only a generalization of the highest order -- yes, higher than that stereotypical pot-smoking Jamaican -- since I know for a fact people from kampungs have Astro and probably spend their time watching The O.C. and Desperate Housewives. The only discernible difference is that rural folks don't pretend they can relate to Desperate Housewives whilst KL-lites try to emulate their fantasy globalized (really just euphemism for Westernized) Malaysia.
Condescending assholes.

There you have it folks. Instead of whingeing about how your ass got handed down by the cops for attending a crappy emocore gig, I basically just inspired all of you to go picketing outside of relevant establisments for a justified cause instead.
In conclusion, should KL Lights be personified, it will be immediately send to Afghanistan where it would get stoned to death by crazy fundamentalists. Then, the director of Spinning Gasing, Teck Tan will be next in line, in Kelantan instead though.

Affliction

2006-04-18T15:09:00.000+08:00

The internet is a cesspool of strange and esoteric fetishes, from a forum dedicated to self-fellatio to the sudden spurt of Chuck Norris worshippers (can't blame them though, Chuck Norris did create the universe after his collision with Vin Diesel exerted a force in the otherwise void space, this will soon be known as The Big Bang). I've been relatively unaffected by the internet's virulent sting, hell, I'm like Steve fucking Irwin dodging a rattlesnake's strike while wearing short pants that shouldn't really belong on a middleaged man's varicose vein-laden legs. But alas, I got tagged by a friend. Oh you would think this little game of blog tagging is benign, you could just say no to it, right? Four years of Friendster & Myspace has thought me no one can resist the temptation of a quiz. Adam probably considers himself lucky to be the genesis, he was only distracted by a measly Apple tree back then. If the internet preceded mankind, it would probably make it into whichever religious scriptures as another transgression to avoid - like socializing with the opposite sex.

It's called a meme, I think. Don't ask, I'm baffled by the terminology as well. Anyway, to paraphrase May Ching, ready yourself for my l33t taste in music!

How does the world see me?
Forest Whitiker - Brother Ali
Since I care more about whales than what people see me as.
(no, I'm not really a PETA member)

Will I have a happy life?
Happiness - dead prez
For every 50 shitty days, there is a single day that makes the wait worth it. Regardless of whether I maintain my bourgeois status or demoted to proletariat. To borrow a cliche, it's all in the mind.

What do people really think about me?
Kreep - Chino XL
The song is about a stalker. *grins suggestively*

Do people secretly lust about me?
Passing Me By - Pharcyde
It's the other way around really.

How can I make myself happy?
Etre Amoureux - Infectious Organisms
To be in love.

What should I do with my life?
Laugh/Love/Fuck - The Coup
"Laugh, love, fuck. And help the revolution come sooner". Live up to my kind's inherent nature plus leave a significant mark in the world.

Will I ever have children?
Retrospect for Life - Common
Before pro-choice and pro-life banters became all the rage. Common wrote a touching song about the regret of abortion without coming across as condescending to the other side of the argument.

What is some good advice for me?
Black Zombie - Nas
No, I'm not of negroid descendant, but the message is universal. Don't ever let the system assign you derogatory cognomen.
Tennessee - Arrested Development
"The answers I've been searching for were in front of me, the ultimate truth started to get blurry". The vocalist quoted God (The Almighty told him this apparently), this is like, friggin' 20th century revelation, man.

What do I think my current theme is?
Phantom - Mr. Lif
This has always been my anthem since I discovered Def Jux. Academic rejects. who are you? I phantom. Hell yeah.

What does everyone else think my current theme is?
Love Letters - The Perceptionists
"You don't even know I exist, but I want you to, that's why I'm writing you this". Because my friends know that I'm infatuated by this girl but I've never bothered to talk to her.

What song will play at my funeral?
None. You blasphemous fool.

What type of men/women do you like?
1987 - Saul Williams
The last line of the song's lyrics is a hint. *tee-hee*
Ok, that's mildly creepy.

What is my day going to be like?
Colossal Insight - Roots Manuva
Mundane, redundant, banal, bore, routinous, humdrum. Go get a thesaurus. Slight melancholia as well.

Why am I here?
Poems For Post-Modern Decay - Zion I
All of us are here to be good little consumers. Bow before the Ziggurat of metal & glass.

What will people remember me for?
The Anatomy of a School Shooting - Ill Bill
Nah, just kidding.
The F-Word - Cannibal Ox
Unrequited love, most likely.

What song will I get stuck in my head tomorrow?
Black Stacey - Saul Williams
It's already stuck for about 2 weeks now.

Are there people outside waiting to take me away?
The 4th Branch - Immortal Technique
Malaysia's equivalent of the FBI tapped my housephone.

What will this year be about?
If I Ruled The World -Nas
Accomplishing something, anything really.

Tag seven people after this:
To those I'd linked to my blog, consider yourself tagged.

And that is all folks!

The Adversary's Alpha

2006-04-13T19:41:00.000+08:00

prologue
Little Monsters

"As I walked upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh, how I wish he'd go away."
- Hugh Mearns

Between the Here-and-Now and the Hereafter...
Between the pen and the page...
There is Castrovalva, city of the twelve shires,
where wonders are as free as air and
impossibilities fall like spring rain.

On Sunday afternoons The Honourable Order of Tap-Dancing Philosophers would hoof in heated debate as to the nature of their world. Opinion deviated wildly. One school of thought proposed it was laid by a marvellous celestial chicken. Another, that it grew from seeds in a humus of belly-button fluff and furballs. A radical third contended it solely existed in the mind of a small child who'd simply thought them into being. But to Wavy Davy Dali and Tiny Tom Fish Head this meant little. So long as the sun shone and it snowed at Christmas they were happy.

During those endless, balmy summer days there was always something to do.
They could go Dinosaur spotting...
Watch the chimps race their clock-work cows.
Or sometimes earn pocket money by helping harvest babies from the family trees.
Best of all they would pack up their penknives, balls of string, sandwiches and bottles of pop and go exploring.
It was on one such expedition they met The Boy.
"Hello," said The Boy, "I'm a monster."

Tiny Tom wasn't convinced. "You can't be," he exlaimed. "Monsters are ugly and vile and live in The Land Under The Bed! You're just a boy."
"Ah yes," he grinned, "but you see I'm ugly and vile on the inside."
"What's it like," enquired Davy, "being a monster?"
"Oh, it's great fun" he replied, "if you're clever and quick you can do whatever you like! No-one can stop you!"
"Aren't monsters supposed to be bad?" asked Tiny Tom.
"There have to be monsters!" enthused The Boy, "people expect them. They're the other side of the coin, night after day, the dark face of a stone against the earth."
"It's like a see-saw," he trilled, "You need people on both ends to make it work. Only it's such a laugh being a monster, if everyone knew they'd all want to be one!"
"Could we be one?" chorused the friends. "Well..." mused The Boy, "perhaps, but it's a very responsible job, you must do everything I say."
"We will!" replied the eager pair and with that they raced off to start their work.

When they came to a village The Boy gave them each some things from his satchel. There were needles for a baby's porridge...
Acid for the morning milk...
... and razor blades for the greengrocers wares.
They had such fun. They blinded horses, boiled puppies and turned cats into fiery streaks. The air was filled with screams and screeches, yells and yowls. There was never such a din before in all the world. But an angry band knotted and grew. They found the boys and put them on the spot.
When they saw what they'd done, being a monster didn't seem fun anymore. The Boy was nowhere to be found.

When they tried explaining no-one believed them, calling them monsters and liars.
The frightened friends ran away as fast as they could. They couldn't go home as somehow even there everyone knew what they'd done. Hungry and scared, they hid in the deep woods around The Land Under The Bed where no-one would dare look for them.

Wavy Davy felt so hungry his stomach hurt. So Tiny Tom Fish Head plucked up his courage and went looking for food for his friend. But the things in the deep woods found him and he made a dinner for them all.
Wavy Davy Dali, starving and alone sat calling for his friend... and calling. He called so long he pined awau to nothing.

"I told you I was a monster" said The Boy.

D'End!

A verbatim of Kingdom of The Wicked's prologue. I just wish you all could see its illustrations. Oh well.

Acquired Art

2006-04-10T19:45:00.000+08:00

It's April and I found out Kinokuniya is giving discount for their previous Gem of the Month titles, I decided to splurge on two;

Kingdom of the Wicked

Forget J.K. Rowling. Forget Lemony Snicket. Forget Phillip Pullman. Christopher Grahame is the premier children's author of the twenty-first century. From a handful of homespun tales told to his own children at bedtime, Chris Grahame is a publishing phenomenon. With his work translated into everything from Aborigine to Zulu, he is the cornerstone of a multi-million dollar, franchise spewing empire. Is it any surprise then that under all this pressure something has to give? Unfortunately, it's Chris's mind. Stricken by mysterious headaches and blackouts that plagued his childhood, Chris once again finds himself walking the avenues and boulevards of Castrovalva - the fantasy realm he dreamt up as a boy, to while away his recuperation. But like Chris, Castrovalva has also changed. Deluged in mud, blood, and barbed wire, war has come to wonderland. Chris tries to tell himself it's all a bad dream. . .so why can't he wake up?

It's a blind buy but judging by the cover, it should prove to be a whimsically dark tale. Can't wait to read this one.
edit: I've just read the prologue, all I can say is I am completely blown away. It wasn't what I expected at all; written and drawn in a manner that's akin to a children's book, the prologue tells a story of two innocents, a single monster and the effect of their collision to the fableland. Very chilling.

Fables vol. 5: The Mean Seasons

Collecting issues 22 and 28-33 of the hit VERTIGO series, this trade paperback features two tales of Bigby's exploits during World War II as well as "The Year After," which follows the aftermath of the Adversary's attempt to conquer Fabletown — including the birth of Snow White and Bigby's children!

Bill Willingham's writing has been consistently solid since the first volume of Fables, this is probably the only serial graphic novel (read: long-form comic) that never fluctuated between mediocre and great. Next to Neil Gaiman's Sandman of course.

All of this for a mere RM80+, and Kingdom of the Wicked is hardback! Expect me to frequent the store again some time this month.

(in)Advertent Appearance

2006-04-07T17:41:00.000+08:00

"Hahahahaha" (guffawing in bad taste at something rather humourously morbid)

"Alif's emotional bank only has 6 presets" - friend A

"Five of them relate to sarcasm and the other is (name-of-a-girl-I-like)" - friend B

"I'm offended" (spoken in a nonchalant tone with a stoic expression)

Christ on a bike. I've just realized I might had been taken as the obligatory contrarian amongst my group of friends - you know the whole cool cynical jerk routine, the guy who sees everything as moot. Oh well, at least I don't laugh at inappopriate situations - save for this one - for street cred. You can find these too-cool-for-any-form-of-education-institute sods mostly at cinemas, joking & narrating how ridiculous a movie's premise for the whole duration of time they spent in the theatre. Buncha' assholes, I tell ya.

Yeah, this post serves no purpose.

A is A

2006-04-07T15:29:00.000+08:00

"Depressed and uninspired, who are you?"
"I, phantom"
- Mr. Lif's Phantom (from the album Emergency Ration)

No, I am not lying at the dark corner of the room in a fetal position while wallowing in self-pity, you twat. But yes, I am pretty much uninspired.

I, for reasons unbeknownst to even myself, refuse to establish my presence anywhere. I do not leave any mark or trace of myself at all. Apart from a class shot during Form 1, you can't find my mug even in my highschool's yearbooks, not even that small oval photo of yourself that your school's administration always manage to get a hold of (government schools, man.). The kind that intrudes an otherwise untinkered corner of a class picture. If I were to assassinate a political figure, related authorities probably won't find a single previous record of my existence. Out of spite, they would probably continue on antagonizing random devotees of whichever new subculture kids these days are into, oh to be young and fickle.

Oh wait...

Where was I, oh yes. In college, most chose to incessantly spew platitudes under the guise of humour - which they got from Dysfunctional Family Sitcom #243 - during classes. In which the lecturer would entertain them by either forcing a smirk or an equally unfunny rebuttal. On the other hand, I chose to sit and whisper disparaging remarks about them. Which is equally pathetic really. The effect of this is of course nobody knows who I am, just ask Mr. Warren. I'm not quite the Silent Bob actually, in the company of friends I can be quite boisterous and funny - well some of the time at least. It's just that I have trouble communicating with people I'm not familiar with without coming across as a total dork, especially if they are members of the opposite sex.

Heard of identity's equation? A is A, no matter which universe he is in, whether he is a socialite or a hermit, liberal or conservative, cliched dichotomy like this or choose to write originally. Alif sans the affection for trash culture (think comics and B-Movies; internet favourites but trash to the uninitiated) and geeky stuffs, is still intrisically Alif. He can jubilate over watching a bunch of soccer hooligans rioting because their favourite team lost or smoke because it's a social thing, like how everything is a social thing; wearing skimpy outfits of your favourite anime characters for example. He would still sit behind you, and not say a thing. Not out of choice, no, no.
Out of idiocy that he so loathes.

Jebus, that last part is such a tonal shift that it treads parody. Gosh.

Congratulations, you just read a bunch of bullshit I wrote without putting much thought. Here's a cookie and a glass of milk.

*for those not in the know, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_is_A

2006-04-03T19:55:00.000+08:00

A presentation by Troubaganger in association with the British Council

Wayang Kata
An evening of spoken word

Venue: La Bodega, Tengkat Tongshin
Time: 8:00 pm
Date: Wednesday, 5 April 2006
Admission: RM 5 at the door

Come join Francesca Beard, hailed by the London Metro as the “British Queen of Performance Poetry”, and local poets Bernice Chauly, Rahmat Haron, Sharanya Maniyannan, Fahmi Fadzil, Pang Khee Teik, Jasmine Low, Ruhayat X and Jerome Kugan, for a one night only performance that celebrates the written and spoken word.Next Wednesday night at La Bodega: poetry as you’ve never heard – or seen it—in KL.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/malaysia-arts-events-poetry-performed.htm

I didn't even know Malaysia's got its own spoken word subculture.
I'll be attending this.

Apophenia

2006-03-29T15:59:00.000+08:00

A.

1. MTV and Channel [V] cover videogames, complete with a hip disembodied-voice -- whose language is filled with pop-culture jargons; dope, for real, hot -- to narrate their shows' reviews or previews of games.

2. G4tv, after forcefully inserting its proverbial phallus to TechTV's proverbial anus, conceptualized trendy shows about technology. Such as a celebrity-oriented show in which they compete in playing videogames, and a talk-cum-help show in which the host blather nonsense such as;

"download illegally!"
"George W. Bush is the devil"
"Uwe Boll should be shot"
"Jack Thompson should be shot"
"X-box 360!" (Oh wait, this message is usually subliminally instilled into the audience)

Antiestablishmentarian attitude is prevalent in these shows. Nevermind the fact that without capitalism and crass commercialism, they won't even exist. Also, it's important to note that braindead female WWE-rejects who are completely clueless of current technology host some of these shows. Thank god for teleprompter.

Conclusion: Post-2004, geek culture has become cool. No longer will your girlfriend lambast you for playing a videogame, instead she will ask if you are playing Halo, even if it's clearly not a first person shooter.

B.

1. Having dissenting opinions that do not conform to that of your government's equate to being unpatriotic. This actually applies to every form of authority. Filing a complain against the police for misconduct isn't a good idea. Instead of justice being served, they (the cops) will claim that the following are standard procedure;

- nude ear squats
- the shaving of suspect's head
- verbal abuse from police personnels
- sexual harassment
- the recruitment of fecal matters of society to the force

2. It isn't advisable to condemn another country's government or leaders. Doing so is tantamount to hating said country itself. Particularly the United States. The rationale behind this logic is currently unknown.

" Feeling like the ones that sent me here are the psychotics,
but if I say that out loud -- I'm 'unpatriotic' " - The Perceptionists' "Memorial Day"

Conclusion: V was right.

C.

1. In an attempt to find some validity in Reality TV, hip generation-Yers championed Rockstar for being down-to-earth and -- for a lack of a better term -- realer. J.D Fortune became an icon to these nonconformist-sheeps (the oxymoron is intentional, yes). Meanwhile, they tout American Idol as a detrimental element in the music industry.

2. Young males of the '18-25' variety still see their affinity for Metal music as a defining trait to differentiate themselves from us mundanes. Although Metal is just another genre of music that record companies can keep pumping more and more to consumers to a point of redundancy; Metal fans still see it as an anomaly in the congruent world of music.

Conclusion: Nonconformity is improbable in our era's context

Overall inference:
The world is coming to an end, brace yourself.

Addendum: Ha! I only used parentheses once, woo-hoo.

An Apathetical Apprehension

2006-03-27T15:18:00.000+08:00

*in which I babble about how I dawdled my way through life

I'm in my college's computer lab.
Staring at the PC's monitor, doing seeminglessly nothing while the clickety-clack of other keyboards echo in the room. The sound crescendos to the point of obstructing my neurons from forming one single coherent syntax. Naturally, this led to a failure of my lower-motor functions, hence reducing my fingers' movement to erratic twitches - and I've never took any E in my life time. Typing requires ambidextrity, it's probably the only skill that doesn't limit you to train with only a single dominant hand. That trivial piece of information is completely irrelevant; I just wrote it in an endevour to not spend my college hours looking at a blank post box. I haven't got a thing to say, honestly.

Okay, enough with the hyperboles. My dazing away of time is nothing new, I was never Grandfather Clock's favourite. During my school days, I either procrastinated on my homeworks or chose not to do them at all. This carried on to tertiary-level education as well, sans the latter of course - but still I will only start writing my assignments approximately somewhere in the 48 hours before its due date. I am simply lazy, I make no qualms about it.

This indolence isn't restricted to doing work though, it extends to my dreams as well. My aspirations are probably finite, yet none have I accomplished. Adulthood used to be so far but now it's nigh, I can't be complacent with not doing nothing. Something, in the way of things, is obstructing me, I know not of what it is. It is an abstract, I think, not a condition that can identified by the Sigmund Freuds of today. I blame the Dreaming, it limps your avidity as it is mere phantasmogaria, unreal and not existing. Philip K. Dick can give his androids all the incorporeal sheeps in their sleep, take mine too.
I choose to not dream anymore.

I actually wrote that to imitate V's almost rhythmical speech pattern, gwahuauahuahuargh.

A for Arcane Aphorisms and Quotes (but that doesn't alliterate)

2006-03-22T00:13:00.000+08:00

*in which I basically paraphrase ideas presented in Alan Moore's magnum opus, Watchmen, to create a mess of a post.

"I think, therefore I am." - Descartes, French philosopher, mathematician & scientist. (Founder of Modern Philosophy and the One to be put at fault for conceiving one of the most overused phrase. Also to be blamed for pretentious movies involving teenagers with existential problems.)

"I'm never here, therefore I'm always there." - Many Styles, a freestyle MC (that's Hip-Hop jargon for rapper, not unfunny comedian A hosting award ceremony B.)

According to America (A for ad nauseam) -- through television and films -- I should have past the phase where I question my corporeal being and yet I've never even pondered on the topic. I'm 19, unsure of my future and have never dated, it's about time I discuss this I guess; why would a woman decide to conceive with a man to give birth to the uncertainty of a child? An explosion of dopamine and pheromone (with aid from not using prophylactic) I suppose, but what is the probability of that happening between the exact two persons that will create you in this over congested Earth? Human being is unique -- nevermind the fact that through modernity and capitalism we've been shaped to buy, listen, watch and read the same mass-produced things. We are still the only random in Science's constant world. Or in Science-talk (perhaps religion too), we are miracles. Oxygen can't spontenously become gold, but your mom could consummate with a man, and in all the millions of sperms vying for the single egg; you were conceived. And you too, will repeat this cycle and add to the mundanity of such miracle.

"Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly." - Dr. Manhattan (from Watchmen)

Leaders, no matter which political doctrine they subscribe to, are ultimately there to be opposed. It is our nature to reject subjugation, notably if they're small enough. After all, as a result of being duped by the archetype of phallic symbolisms, The Serpent, Adam & Eve defied God Himself for the taste of a mere apple. I'm not sure the meaning of the metaphor used here, don't ask. Anyway, if that's enough to have the temerity to denounce an omnipotent being -- a 30 sen hike in oil price is trivial enough of a reason to justify a coup detat. Chaos ensues in both order and disorder. The moment we were exiled to be kept by Gaia herself, He created science to put the world in auto-pilot. Then, aspired by His novelty, we created our own concepts in the science of social life (politics, religion, music; culture). Lo and behold; a thousand years of cognition later, we've formed enough segregations to last infite wars. Yes, we were condemned from the start.

"Anarchy is a world without governments. Chaos is a world without order."
"They were looking for God but found religion instead" - De La Soul's Held Down

Defrag your preconceived notions of how Rome looked like. It was the New York City of yore. Amidst the opulence, it was ridden with poor children, rodent-infested residence and graffiti denouncing authorities. The last is particularly interesting; I once found this graffiti mural at an undisclosed location in Kuala Lumpur. Actually, it wasn't as much as a mural as it was just a wall saturated with graffitis painted by different hands. But that is beside the point - what was interesting about it though, is the liberal use of sesquipedalians pertaining to anarchic (plus archaic) words. Under some political system, such will immediately result in being exiled, if the perpetrators were to be caught of course. When this civilization meets its inevitable crumble, our defiled cities will be uncovered by the next civilization and they will find graffiti-ridden edifices, much like how we found hieroglyphics belonging to past cultures. These inscriptions will impart them with knowledge of our decadence that led to collapse; the cycle continues again.

"Human cultures were originally homeostatic; they existed in a self-sustaining equilibirum, with no notions of time and progress, like we've got. Then the city-virus got in. No one's really sure where it came from or who brought it to us, but like all viral organisms, its one directive is to use up all available resources in producing copies of itself. More and more copies until there's no raw material left and the host body, overwhelmed can only die. The cities want us to become good builders, Eventually, we'll build rockets and carry the virus to other worlds. Cities have their own way of talking to you; catch sight of the reflection of a neon sign and it'll spell out a magic word that summons strange dreams. Have you ever seen the word "Ixat" glowing in the night? That's one of its holy names. Or make tape recordings of traffic noice and listen to them at night. You'll hear the voices of the city coming through, telling you things, showing you pictures. Sometimes they'll show you where they came from" - Mad Tom (from The Invisibles)

Honestly, I'm not quite sure what I've just wrote up there. I'm updating for updating's sake and I'm having writer's block. I don't know who reads my blog but who ever you might be, thank you for reading my inconsequential rambling. Or more accurately, balderdash under the guise of intelligence.

A for Annoying Adolescents / Allegories

2006-03-18T23:23:00.000+08:00

*in which I share you an anecdote pertaining stupid kids and modern parables in two different mediums

I love strolling around a bookshop in my own company, as long as other patrons are aware of basic etiquettes that keep us from making out with our sisters and being trigger-happy to people of different skin-tones. Coincidentally you can find both in abundance among America's redneck and trailer trash communities, but that's my being a bigot.

Anyway, that was what exactly I did yesterday. I went to KLCC solely on the intention of buying a book (which I will detail greatly later in today's entry) and browsing Kinokuniya's bookshelves (which lead to a blind buy). But an excursion to a Japanese outlet can only lead to one thing; annoying Japanese wannabes...
There I was near the comic section of the store when out of nowhere a bunch of male high school kids, still in their uniforms, paraded to the manga shelves. Now, I don't know how reliable my observation here - but when encountering high school boys in a mall, they are either of the following;
a) Rempits
b) Skinheads
c) Hip emo-kids
All are illiterate and visually-cum-audibly exasperating.
You would think meeting one of them is bad enough, right? Consider yourself fortunate. The group of high school kids I had the lamentable brush with are an amalgamation of rempits & Japanese-wannabes (the worst of high school stereotypes). Meaning, they were loud and inconsiderate to other customers.

I'm not exaggerating, I swear these kids were so loud, you would think they're exclaiming their inner monologues. Their speech pattern is even worse. Imagine colloquial rempit-Malay mixed with random Japanese phrases (which can be commonly heard in anime) and you'll have a rough picture of how these assholes sounded like. Really, who the fuck cares you memorized some Japanese words that in all likelihood aren't applicable to the context of your native tongue. Unless if they were some female cosplayers (which in all likelihood are either fat or ugly, in rare cases a combination of both) loitering around, you aren't impressing anyone. They were being imbecilic in manners too, think a phalanx formation of idiotic popular culture blocking a narrow passage way. No, that's not some half-baked metaphor, they literally became an albatross to other shoppers. They stood in front of bookshelves in large groups for a long period of time. Thank god I'm not interested in comics featuring bug-eyed and underaged kids going through teen angst in an ungodly amount of similar premises.

Okay, that's all the tirade I'm able to gush out for now. As promised, lets move on to the book that I bought plus a short commentary on a movie based on one of my favourite books I saw with a few friends yesterday;

BLACK HOLE by Charles Burns

Set in the 70s, Black Hole revolves around the lives of seemingly ordinary teenagers going through the trials and tribulation of being young (you know; sex, angst, weed). Amidst all of these teenage confusion is a mysterious sexually transmitted disease that mutates its carriers in the most grotesque of ways; having a second mouth above your chest that speaks when you are asleep for instance. It's easy to simplify Charles Burns' work here as a mere Aids parable or cautionary tale about free sex. But to borrow a cliche, it aspires to be more than that. Both the infected and not are portrayed equally decadent, the STD isn't the worse affliction that these kids got but instead; jealousy. Thanks to the disturbing and chilling illustrations, I swear the book almost put me off sex permanently. Highly recommended.

V FOR VENDETTA adapted from Alan Moore's and Dave Lloyd's graphic novel

Blatant political allusions. Hollywood-ized characters. Kung-fu moves in slow-mo.
And yet it still retained most of the book's themes. Recommended.
Of course the book is much much more better.

Yes, I'm lazy.

A for Allusion

2006-03-16T23:27:00.000+08:00

Being ever so subtle, my previous post was actually meant to be quasi-satirical; I did mean most of what I wrote but being midly self-effacing means having self-esteem that sits uncomfortably on the middleground. My confidence in my writing ability oscillates from pompousity that would make every 60-year-old nostalgic war veteran proud to Hollywood's stereotypical pale 16-year-old girl's insecurity (appears in every teen-flick as a minor character). But who the fuck cares, it's not like people read my blog -- let's move on to the real reason I'm updating today.

Quote of the Day

"For those of us who delight in such things, the twentieth century has, in it's unfolding, presented mankind with an array of behavioural paradoxes and moral conundrums hitherto unimagined and perhaps unimaginable. Science, traditional enemy of mysticism and religion, has taken on a growing understanding that the model of the universe suggested by quantum physics differs very little from the universe that Taoists and other mystics have existed in for centuries. Large numbers of young people, raised in rigidly structured and industrially oriented cultures, violently reject industrialism and seek instead some modified version of the agricultural lifestyle that their forebears debatedly enjoyed... Children starve while boots costing many thousand dollars leave their mark upon the surface of the moon. We have labored long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors." - Alan Moore's Watchmen

Yes, I am fully aware that I'm quoting an overly-long dialogue, shut up.

A for Alif, an introduction.

2006-03-15T23:33:00.000+08:00

*in which I post the inaugural entry to the blog's reconception and introduce myself as a sentient being instead of reviews-pumping automaton.

I am Alif. Nineteen-years old as of the time I wrote this. Still studying in a college saturated with SPM-rejects (it's a college, its namesake alone already carries that connotation), I'm not being a condescending prick here - mind you - as I am one myself. Yes, I am pretty much a nondescript generation-Yer. I suppose this is where I list numerous attributes, physical traits, idiosyncrasies and what not that I possess in order to differentiate myself from other teenagers.

Give me a second.

Hmm, this could lead to nowhere other than paragraphs after paragraphs of self-aggrandization brimmed-full of verbage. Oh, this is where the obligatory minor digression will occur -- I have this habit of adding unnecessary words to my prose, in vain hope that it will give it the illusion of length. Thus, making my writings nigh inaccessible, what not with syntax errors and tautologies making their presence known like estranged relatives visiting your house at the most random of times (and here is the ever perennial weak analogy)....
Ah, I can see which angle I'm going here; the self-deprecating hermit. Except I'm not a; a) goth, b) emo kid, c) eye-liners doning male and d) whichever types of anorexic whingeing little punk you can find in America's whitewashed suburbia, of course. Let's try this inauguration again, shall we?

I am Alif, I've been standing on this earth for approximately 19 years. I would love to describe myself as ordinary but my blog's namesake negates that claim. The iconoclast; by definition it is a person who attacks popular ideas or according to its more blasphemous definition, to subvert holistic icons. Nothing more than the good old James Dean-doctrine of teenagers & rebellion without a cause, yes? Not exactly. I am a perfectly well-brought up young man. I refuse to smoke, drink, involve myself in debauchery, slit my wrist in the futile hope of being deep & misunderstood (conforming to America's suburbia culture, basically) and trash random authority figures out of the vacuous need to defy for defying's sake. These are all the rites of passage that defines my generation, yet I never partook in any of it. If these are the ethos of my generation, then I am the rebel here.

The term isn't only applicable to only my moral-standing and behaviour, but I am a maverick in my list of interests as well. Instead of reading Dan Brown's hogwash, I am a fan of Alan Moore. Instead of conforming to the latest hip rock subgenre of the moment (think emo, shoegaze etc.), I dissent the need for rock-critics to stratify music into little neat subgroups -- I rather listen to Hip-Hop (no, Minstrel-T-V representation of rap does not count). Rather than going to a nightclub where the music demands you to "dip it low" (either your buttocks or IQ, take your pick), I prefer to watch DVDs at home. Before you ask, no, Donnie Darko doesn't belong anywhere near my favourite films list.

Oh, as you can tell by now, I lied, I am a condescending prick. I'm nicer in real life though, honest.
I am Alif. The distorted iconoclast.

Quote of the day

2006-03-11T16:41:00.000+08:00

"Jazz is a white term to define Black people. My music is Black classical music." - Nina Simone

Quote of the day

2006-03-11T01:05:00.000+08:00

"I almost didn't want to do this interview because people who aren't intelligent enough to know that comics are the greatest modern day artistic medium don't deserve to know who Alan Moore is." - Jonathan Ross, on BBC's Culture Show

This is the last Batman-related post, I swear.

2005-12-24T23:32:00.000+08:00

Batman Begins

“Why do we fall, Master Bruce?”
“So that we might learn to pick ourselves up”

Reiterates the ever loyal Alfred to Bruce Wayne, as his own late father had said to him earlier during his childhood. Perhaps a witty jab at the rather ignominious end to the Batman franchise 8 years prior to this latest and best iteration. Batman Begins is a total reboot of the Bats’ history on the silver screen, yet it is the most faithful to the comics. It is also the only superhero film to treat the audience with respect, there’s no overly heroic score and zero cameo from some pioneer of the character. To simply put it, you won’t see any winking from the film-makers to us.

Breaking the superhero tradition of grandiose opening credits, Batman Begins doesn’t waste it’s 141 minutes. The film moves on to the story right after WB’s and DC’s logos. Opening in Bhutanese prison, we see a disheveled Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) fighting for survival from the unwelcoming local prisoners, as part of his brutal training to understand the criminal mind. Only to be rescued by a mysterious man of European descend who only goes by the name of Ducard (Liam Neeson), this is of course done with an ulterior motive of recruiting Wayne to his group of al-Qaeda-esque ninja warriors, League of Shadows.

Appointing himself as Wayne’s mentor, Ducard imparts him with the knowledge of invisibility, martial arts and even the purpose to fight. We learn that these two aren’t that dissimilar to each other as Ducard reveals himself as a victim of tragic circumstances too. But things between the two didn’t go well when Wayne is instructed to kill a man, thus mayhem ensues. Escaping the trapping of the terrorist group, Wayne returns to a decaying Gotham and the becoming of the symbol known as Batman begins, after 40 minutes or so has past.

Every single bit of his transformation from a mortal man to an everlasting legend is explained here. We understand why he chose the bat as a symbol (a result of a childhood trauma), why he is so bend of destroying the criminal underworld (the guilt over his parents’ death) and even where he gets his gadgets, surely his ex-British Navy marine for a butler (Michael Caine) can’t create all that. Yes, some of these might have been shown or vaguely mentioned in previous Bat-flicks, but not with same amount of depth as Nolan’s.

Christian Bale is Batman, much like Christopher Reeves was the definitive Superman. None of his precursors to the mantle had played Bruce Wayne with such presence, emotion and intensity. Every single one of his personality is on display here, the playboy façade, the businessman, the normal Bruce Wayne and the Batman persona, which is debatable whether if that is his real self. Of course, one man can’t carry a whole movie, every single one of the cast plays their characters to perfection (sans Katie Holmes). Michael Caine brings a tenderness and fatherly demeanor to Alfred that the past Bat-flicks had ignored. His relationship with Bruce is deeper than just an exchange of wisecracks. An unrecognizable Gary Oldman beautifully underplays the largely underused Lieutenant Gordon (not yet a commissioner), none of his tendency to overact is visible. Morgan Freeman brings a charm to an otherwise bland Q-clone, Lucius Fox. His banter between Bruce is probably the wittiest of the film’s jokes.

While some of their screen time are minimal, all of the villains are superb. Tom Wilkinson is just a joy to watch as the Italian mob boss, Falcone, while Cillian Murphy’s pretty face tenfolds the creepiness of his character, Dr. Jonathan Crane (aka Scarecrow). Save the best for last, Liam Neeson masterfully plays not only another mentor role but also that of a villain. I suspect that if it wasn’t for him, much of Ducard’s dialogue would sound silly.

What would a Batman movie be without Gotham. Taking a u-turn from Tim Burton’s overly gothic design and the art-deco of Schumacher’s, Gotham in BB is as realistic as a fictional city could get. The city gives the impression of a metropolis built to it’s brink With every landmass occupied with buildings and roads, the city is a labyrinthian maze of a society at the apex of it’s destruction. To put it in a way, imagine a less modern version of Blade Runner’s futuristic Los Angeles. Gotham’s very own ghetto, The Narrows, alone is deserving of a nomination for best set design. The image of Batman gliding over it has to be the most iconic moment of him on celluloid.

The only nitpicks I have for this film are the fighting sequences. While most of the action scenes are entertaining (The Tumbler chase and Batman’s first appearance for instance), the fight scenes are just shot too closed for us to make out what is happening. But I don’t mind, the strength of BB lies in it’s characters and story. No lackluster fight scenes are going to affect my overall opinion on it.

In entirety, Batman Begins met all of my expectations. This is a not a mere comic-book movie, it is a real film which happens to feature a character that originated from the medium. It’s an intelligent dark-epic journey with subtle nuances that doesn’t patronize the audience’s IQ. **** (out of 4)

This will soon be mine (in a week's time)

2005-11-29T20:28:00.000+08:00

Art-flick darling, Darren Aronofsky's (of Pi & Requiem For A Dream fame) first foray into graphic novels/comics;

THE FOUNTAIN

He's also doing a film of the same title, check the trailer out;

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/thefountain/

I almost ejaculated watching the teaser. Mark my words, this will be the 2001: A Space Odyssey of our generation.

Aslan is a pompous metaphor for Jesus

2005-11-25T16:28:00.000+08:00

FABLES: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham, Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha & Craig Hamilton

Popular belief would likely imply that fables are kiddish/adolescent fantasies but in actuality have any of you really read the original sources for these stories? Take Alice in Wonderland for example, reading through it is extremely uncomfortable. The paedophiliac connotations and plain disturbing imageries are too much for even the so-called desensitized children of today to stomach. Some might go as far as to categorize it as horror revolving insanity instead of whimsical fantasy. Remember, this was written in the Victorian era. Walt Disney's predecessors were probably still in Ireland enjoying a pipe of fine weed and listening to the cacophony of noise from some men-in-skirts bagpipe parade or something back then. Point being is although I do appreciate Disney's classic cartoons, truth is most of them were adapted from perverse fairy tales and literature.

Bill Willingham's premise for his opus Fables is just that. Revert these fabled characters to their original ethos, create an amalgamation of all of their universes and transport them to modern time.

Coerced into exile from their homelands by what looks like a horde of Lord of the Rings rejects, these fairy tale characters found a new home right smack in the middle of New York City. Naming that part of the metropolis Fabletown (a moniker known only amongst them), - with the exception of their immortality - they live a relatively normal life. They even got a mini-government running in order to keep tabs on everyone and make their exile in NYC at least tolerable. With King Cole as the incompetent mayor whose decisions are all made by the town's true administrator, Snow White, ruling the community and brutally enforced by the one-man police crew, Bigby Wolf (the ubiquitous wolf in many tales, most famous for eating Red Riding Hood's grandma), all is fair and well in Fabletown. Until the Sherlock Holmes-esque murder mystery decides to crash in the shindig of course.

The town's esoteric nature is put into a limbo when Snow White's lesser known sister (actually I don't think anyone remembers her), Rose Red is found murdered in her apartment. The first book chronicles Bigby's and Snow White's investigation of the case while they simultaneously try to keep the inner politics of Fabletown intact and hinder the mundies' (a derogatory term the fables use to refer to us) attention to the murder.

Much of the charm of the book lies in Bill Willingham's brilliant modernization of these classic characters while still being true to how they're originally written as; Snow White is a bitter working woman with a bit of a feminist edge to her personality, her job consist of making decisions for the mayor and solving Beauty & The Beast's marital problems. Just don't ask her what happened during her stay with the seven dwarves. Bigby Wolf is repentant of his past, living in a claustrophobic and messy apartment, his choice of diet is consist of bacon instead of geriatric women. The Prince Charming in Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella is actually the same person, dumped by all three of his wives and stripped of wealth, the heartless lothario now uses his charm to dupe mundy dames for money and residency. Pinocchio - as an aftereffect of being blessed with a human body - remains as an adolescent for all of his thousand years of living. Pissed with not being able to go through puberty, he swore to kick "her azure ass" (referring to the blue fairy who granted him the wish). Jack of the Beanstalk giant killing fame is a conman.

If you're thinking that it isn't that hard to transport these fairy-tale characters to the present time, just get them to be involved in debauchery and use a couple of explicit words here and there. Not quite, Bill Willingham did use these elements but he kept it as minimal as he can. The real strenght in his writing is the dry wit and sardonic humour peppered all over the dialogue and of course, the sheer ingenuinity of combining all of these fantastic fables into one coherent universe. A lesser writer with limited knowledge of fairy-tales would most probably turn the premise into one big sleaze-fest with alotta blood, sex and unnecessary XXXtreme attitude; hence, stripping the fables from their whimsical nature.

The artwork drawn by Lan Medina and coloured by Steve Leialoha & Craig Hamilton is fitting of the book's context. While the characters and environment all look as realistic as a comic book can get, the colours used to saturate Lan Medina's black and white illustrations gave the artwork a sense of otherworldliness. At times, it's even reminiscent of the artstyle Disney used back in their days of yore. What's more striking are the covers painted by James Jean. Think of old story-book covers and you'll have a rough idea of what his paintings look like. I dare say the beautiful covers alone are worth the price of the book.

Legends in Exile is a nice short introduction to Bill Willingham's imagination where neither the 'happily ever after' mantra nor innocent and naive protagonists are guaranteed. They're more volumes up for grabs if you're already intrigued by the first book. For those who are beginning to grow an interest in graphic novels, Fables is a wonderful start. Often time funny, 100% intelligent, this is the making of a classic in the veins of Neil Gaiman's magnum opus, Sandman; go get this now!

p/s: If you're wondering what's with the title, there's a reference to C.S Lewis' book in Legends in Exile. I quote "Then the kingdom of the great lion fell, and again we did nothing, because we always found the old lion to be a bit too pompous and holier-than-thou for our tastes."

Because Batman is the only superhero I give a crap about

2005-11-22T21:55:00.000+08:00

BATMAN : Year One by Frank Miller & David Mazzuchelli

Written by the modern noir-god, Frank Miller, Year One is a thorough tonal shift from the pessimism of his first Batman book, The Dark Knight Returns. There's a sense of optimism and hopefulness exuding from the normaly brooding and despondent Bruce Wayne. Make no mistake though, the city is at it's apex of corruption during this period of time. Ergo, proving once and for all, Batman did make a difference to Gotham through the years, albeit debateable whether it's for the worse or better .

The book begins with the arrival of two of Gotham's favourite sons, Bruce Wayne & Lt. James Gordon. Their introduction is nicely paralleled, with Bruce's flight juxtaposed with Gordon's train ride, the book metaphorically emphasized on the class difference in Gotham. "I should have rode the train, and see the people." (or something to that effect) Bruce soliloquized, further supporting this claim. Although the two men are very different in their status quo, they share the same ideal of justice. Hence, planting the seed to their eventual collaboration.

Batman's first year is a clumsy one. Bruce Wayne's first attempt at fighting crime is primitive and not very pretty. Disguising himself as a rather nondescript civilian with a large scar on the cheek, he fought a pimp,a bunch of whores (Miller loves his hoes,doesn't he?) and got shot by a cop. He isn't much better when he first doned the Batsuit either, he nearly killed a thug due to his novity in the whole scaring-the-crap-out-of-criminals thing. Oh, you will also get to see Batman save a cat, disproving every Miller-naysayers who have been bitching about how he turned Batman into a psycho. Frank Miller does understand Bruce's psyche, his Batman here is a sharp contrast to the bitter geriatric man who's gone off-his-rockers in DKR. People need to understand that DKR isn't a revitalisation of the character, but a what-if scenario of how he will be in the future. But when reading both books back-to-back, you can see shades of his DKR personality in Year One, as if Miller planned the whole thing. Now that is what I called characterization.

Though Batman's first year is an interesting one, Miller's take on the soon-to-be commissioner Gordon is even more so. His relationship with the Batman really comes to fruitation here, in terms of how a law man of solid hold of order in society could come to justify the personal vendetta of a man dressed as a bat. Furthermore, Gordon isn't just a do-the-right-thing copper, Miller is known for loving his men flawed but inherently morale. He not only fought corruption from police and oldboys in suit, but his own mariatal corruption, that of adultery.

Offering no fewer than three origins, Miller even reworked Selina Kyle's beginning. This time as a whore (oh boy, another kung-fu fighting ninja-whore). Inspired by the Batman's antics, she decided to wear an S&M costume and steals shit from mob boss and stuff. Yawn. Yeah, as you can tell, I felt like her tale is just fillers so that Frank could fill his whore quotient. But there is at least one interesting character in her tale, an 11 year old fellow prostitute.

The art work by David Mazzuchelli evokes such a noir feeling, it could have easily work in Sin City. Although coloured, it only adds to the overall atmosphere. In fact, I didn't miss Frank's artwork at all when I read this for the first time.

Miller is dabbling in a thing considered sacrosanct by comic geeks, despite that, he manages to tweak history yet remain extremely faithful to the old and new take on Batman. If you haven't gotten into Batman before, this is a good start.

The half-assed speech I wrote for my Public Speaking assignment

2005-10-10T23:53:00.000+08:00

Of Sequential Art & Speech Bubbles

"Wars are never won, regardless of who might be the victor. The very act of war is itself a horrible defeat.” Hearing this quote, you might assume it’s either spoken by one famous person or written by a celebrated author. Could be from a film too, you thought. But alas, the quote is actually lifted from a comic book. Now I’m guessing this revelation’s just took half of the profundity you felt for the quote and I don’t blame you. The general populace aren’t aware of comics as an art-form, in fact most are content to pigeonhole it into their children’s toybox. As an aficionado of the medium, I feel that it is my obligation to inform you of comic books as serious literature and art in modern pop-culture.

What is a comic? Essentially, it is a sequence of images accompanied by text in speech bubbles or letter boxes to tell a narrative. It can be printed in a magazine format or strips in newspapers. The former is targeted to the teen/adult market whilst the latter is more towards children. Historically, it was conceptualise by American in the late 1800s, but whose invention it was is still not known. The idea itself though, has many precursors from past civilizations. For example, prehistoric painting in caves and ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphics are basically archaic forms of the medium, a visual narrative aid by symbols in this case. In terms of content, contrary to popular belief, a comic book isn’t exclusive to men-in-tights’ heroics and supervillain’s chicanery. Like any other literary mediums, it covers a wide range of genres, from science fiction to crime drama. So no, comic books don’t necessarily equate to superheroes. That is not to say tales of superheroes are shlocky literature, in fact a lot of important comics in history involve them (but more on that later). Another misconception of the medium is that it’s childish, that it is written by puerile adults to satiate their lost childhood, this can’t even be more further than the truth. Often time this is connoted to comic books dealing with superheroes while in actuality, Superman has long gone left the black and white moral absolutes of his past. Again, like any other medium, the demographic for comics are non-specific, as such different titles have different level of maturity. And there is nothing wrong with kiddie-oriented material in the first place. No one criticises J.K Rowling for focusing on a young audience. It’s the quality and seriousness of the writing that matters.

The fallacy isn’t without truth though, ironically it’s stemmed from comics’ maturation through out it’s centennial growth in modern history. As the name itself implies, the word is actually derived from comedy. As such, it is only natural for one to take the medium with levity, plus the art-form did start off as a visual satire during its initial years. For example, political parodies in comic form were common during the first and second World War, proving that it does tackle on serious matters albeit in an propagandizing manner. In the early 1900s, most novels were of the noir/crime and adventure/fantasy genres. Comics too weren’t spared of this trend, so it wasn’t always for the kids even back in its days of yore. In fact, the predecessor to pornography was comics! There weren’t any official regulations to the medium as it wasn’t as recognized back then. The comic strips in newspapers do feature anthropomorphic talking animals though, this trend continues in modern papers but intellectualized by world-wary writers such as Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes).
In the 1930s, came the advent of superheroes. This was during Depression Era for Americans, they needed a form of escapism to forget about their bleak life. Enter Superman, the first superhuman to grace our imagination. Days are saved and broads fall heads over heels in his wake, he is the alpha male that both adults and adolescents fantasize to be. Many imitations of Him ensued in the following years but only one survives and became his equal, a superhero whose reality is harsher and more accurate of the era. He lacks any real powers and fought mob bosses instead of aliens, he was born out of senseless deaths, he is called the Batman. Yes, Batman was an adult creation back during his early inceptions. But still, all of these are child’s play compared to Will Eisner’s The Spirit, an almost satirical narrative of the laymen’s everyday life featuring a somewhat superhero. Unfortunately, all of these came to an end when one Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist wrote a book blaming juvenilia on comic books during the 50s. This lead to the formation of the Comics Code, subsequently, all that was promised of the comic medium in the past decades are abolished just like that.

Thankfully, the 70s and 80s came to mark a new beginning for the medium. Like films, the decade lifted the draconian laws and comics were once again left to continue its evolution. While bimonthly serial comics strive, a particular format of the medium begins to take shape, the graphic novel. In laymen’s term, graphic novel is a stand-alone story told in a sequential-art form, most are originally released as a finite series of comics (no more than 4-8 volumes usually) before being collected into a single book. In other words, it’s really just a thick comic book. Certain graphic novels do amount to stand-alone novels published serially, like Charles Dicken used to do, but unlike the normal magazine format of the medium, it is still finite. Although there are graphic novels that feature well-known characters such as Batman, you do not need to have complete knowledge of their history beforehand. Plus, there are equal amount of completely original graphic novels out there. The format is a natural progression for the advancement of comics, not everyone can afford to collect every single issue of a particular series and the standard magazine format is shoddily made anyway. The graphic novel provides readers with a more lasting design that imitates novels; it reflected the maturity in comics symbolically and literally as significant literature needs sturdy material for it to be printed on. Most importantly, the format began the mainstream media’s recognition of comic books as a legitimate literary medium in the 80s. Titles such as V for Vendetta, Watchmen and Maus became critics darlings. Suddenly it is cool for you to read comics.

One of the reasons why a momentous jump in terms of maturity was taken place in the 80s is the decade’s new breed of comic books authors. The holy trinity of writers during the time were Frank Miller, Alan Moore and his protégé, Neil Gaiman. These three single-handedly woke the industry up with the potential of comic books. Let’s have an overview of them shall we;

Alan Moore, whose work I just mentioned (V for Vendetta, Watchmen), was one of the first comic book writer to win an award from a literary society, the Hugo Award, for his work Watchmen. His writings are brimmed with political intrigue, obscure references to literature, films and songs and flawed heroes. V for Vendetta for example, is a story set in an Orwellian future with a protagonist whose appearance not only resembles Guy Fawkes but he even go as far as to quote him and blow the Houses of Parliaments. Alan Moore’s other works include The Killing Joke, League of Extraordinary Gentleman & Hellblazer.

Neil Gaiman, an admirer and student of Alan Moore, has won many accolades for both his works in comics and novels. Perhaps unfairly, he is more prolific than his teacher in the industry as his magnum opus, The Sandman, is read by virtual everyone. Most literati would probably only mention Sandman if asked if they read comics. The title is perhaps one of the most abstract comic of it’s time. Imagine if concepts such as Death, Desire, Dream, Fate, Delirium and Destruction were to have physical manifestations of themselves and you’ll have a vague idea of what the comic is about. His other works include American Gods, Books of Magic and Black Orchid.

Lastly, Frank Miller on the other hand, is a master of reinvention. His critically-acclaimed works are mostly of the superhero genre, with his own twist of course. His work, The Dark Knight, is a violent & adult reinterpretation of Batman as a man in the middle of his 50s with a need to relive his vigilante days. Like Watchmen, it is too a reflection of the fear Americans had of a nuclear war during the last fear years of the Cold War. His other works include the now famous noir tales of Sin City, the Spartan Battle of Thermopylae in 300 & Ronin.

These are just little of what the medium has to offer that I can fit in within the 10 minute time frame I am allowed to speak. To end this, I would like to say comic books have gotten acknowledgment from differing media. Having adaptations through the silver screen to even novelizations, is a sure sign of reaching enough legitimacy to warrant ventures into other mediums. You can hear references to comics in some form or another in every single aspect of pop-culture, from lyrics in a song to the dialogue in a movie or TV show. Comics are a part of modern history, and once the old is no longer and the new is old, the next generation would look at it as just another art-form no different than the novels and paintings before it.

Grrr...angst

2005-09-30T23:36:00.000+08:00

Do check my other blog;

The Perennial Hate-Fueled Blog - http://anonymity.cjb.net

Be forwarned though, it is not for those who are easily offended :P.

My lecturer thought I plagiarised this for some odd reason

2005-09-30T23:23:00.000+08:00

THE PREACHER

The Kevin Smith quote on the cover of the graphic novel got it right, The Preacher is much more entertaining than watching a film. Written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Steve Dillon, The Preacher is part a spiritual journey of a faithless man of god and part Christianity (or religion in general) pastiche. Somehow, through the ingenious script, the dichotomous nature of the two gelled perfectly together.

In a nutshell, The Preacher tells the tale of Jesse Custer, a reverend from a nondescript Texan town, who after a certain accident with an ethereal entity, was blessed with the word of God. Through a series of events, he eventually found out God left heaven to meander alone on earth. Startled by the revelation, he made it his quest to find God although his faith is ebbing away. Accompanied by his ex-girlfriend, Tulip and a vampiric hard-drinking Irish man called Cassidy, stalked by an assassin sent by heaven by the moniker of Saint of Killers and chased by an organization simply called The Grail, an epic crusade of biblical proportion ensues.

What is a book without interesting characters? The Preacher has them in spades, but let’s just focus on the three aforementioned characters; Jesse Custer is the hero of the story. His personality is that of the archetypal male; morale, strong acumen, thinks feminism is a whole lot of crap but doesn’t hate women, you get the gist. Raised by his exorbitantly strict grandmother and her underlings in a reclusive town, he was forced into loving Jesus. Perhaps some members of our society could relate to this as the existence of ‘Sekolah Pondok’ - a religious hut-school secluded in rural areas - still prevails although their practice is questionable. But I digress, Jesse is a bit of a paradox, though he felt betrayed by his own God, he still proudly wears the collar. Probably out of fear that he is the one in the wrong and not the Almighty. Most atheists suffer from similar complex, they do not believe in the Lord yet when something horrible occurs, they put the blame on Him. His ex-girlfriend, Tulip, is the epitome of feminism; able, competent, independent and of course, emotional. She is constantly bitter with the fact that Jesse is overly protective of her although she can handle a gun better than him. To sum it all up, she is a representation of society’s modern women, always mistaking chivalry for condescension. The last half of the trio, Cassidy, is a maverick. He cares not for set rules and has no problem with killing people as long as they’re bad. His immortality has distanced him from manhood. Ironically he isn’t a bad person at all, Jesse considers him as a best friend (this might be because Jesse doesn’t have much to start with) and vice versa. Through out the volumes, his true personality starts to unfold and most likely you will like him less.

Garth Ennis’ script is laden with expletives, sick humor, ultra-violence that would shame Kubrick, blasphemous remarks and imagery, you get the idea. It would certainly put off a lot of people, even if you are only remotely pious. But one thing that differs him from the other Quentin Tarantino-wannabes is that he actually elevates the material into new heights by bringing emotional and philosophical resonance to the readers. His hard stance on organized religion for example, is merely a reflection of our society’s increasingly agnostic belief. Even in our country people are questioning Jawi, a religious group hell-bent on coercing citizens to conform to their beliefs. That is not to say the book extols atheism, I don’t know if it’s Garth Ennis’s intention or not but strangely I felt the book wasn’t condemning religion or promoting faithlessness but merely ridiculing those who belong in the extremes of both side. This is made apparent when he portrayed the so-called open-minded sect of our society as nothing more than depraved descendants of Sodom and Gomorrah in the third volume of the book. Also, he has no problem with lambasting popular culture and trend as evidenced in the sixth volume where he made fun of the MTV-shepherded youths of our generation and the goth subculture so popular amongst rich teenagers these days.

The most striking aspect of the book’s got to be it’s dialogue. As I implied before, it bears semblance to Quentin Tarantino’s works. In fact, I dare say he can only dream of equaling Garth Ennis’ brilliance. Since the dialogue is written in a colloquial manner, not all of them are grammatically correct but since the book isn’t meant to be comic-material for kids, this wouldn’t be a problem. Plus, I appreciate accuracy in accents and slang in literature. Profanities on the other hand might discourage certain people since you can find 3 of them for every 3 lines of dialogue. But in reality, it’s really how we talk in everyday life. No matter which nation you belong to, society is fast becoming desensitized to ‘bad words’ since we are regularly exposed to it by virtually everything, from films to videogames. Like I said, I take accuracy over sugarcoated material.

Enough of the words, let’s move on to the art. Steve Dillon’s design of each character is nothing short of amazing. You could tell what you are supposed to feel just by looking at the character’s facial expression. Unlike films or animations, most comics fail to accomplish this. The characters look as how they should, his art never wanders to the two absolutes of comic illustration, it’s neither realistic nor overly caricature-like. To put it simply, it stays in the middle. As I said before, the book is very violent, fortunately Steve Dillon depicts it in a slightly over-the-top fashion, it is still not for the faint of heart though. He isn’t a one trick pony though, not content to only making you squeamish, he manages to pull your heart strings and tickle your funny bones through images alone.

The Preacher is an accomplishment in sequential art. Blasphemous yet morally sound, characters speak explicitly yet they aren’t bad people, filled with violence yet it never glorified them. The book impart us with the knowledge that we should learn to discern the different shades of grey, the world isn’t limited to black and white absolutes. Our society in Malaysia too has become depraved and decadent over time, we revel in debauchery and mistook the act as being open-minded, we became overly religious to the point of hurting others and mistook it as what God intended. But through the thick and thin of modern life, a single point remain intact, the good guys are still out there.

He never hated HER

2005-09-26T23:28:00.000+08:00

COMMON - BE

This is the Common album I’ve been waiting for. A return to form for Lonnie Lynn, the album lacks all of the forced ‘experimentations’ of his last trapeze act (which he fell flat on the ground), Electric Circus. With the help of Hip-Hop’s newest uber-producer, Kanye West and his long time collaborator, Jay Dilla, Common has released 2005’s first great record.

The album opens with “Be”, which is basically just an intro under the guise of a track. Weirdly enough though, I thought this is one of the best track of the album. The opening instrumental is reminiscent of Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest, perhaps a throwback to Hip-Hop’s forgotten era (which is personally my favourite phase of the music). The moment Common’s vocal kicks in, you will instantly be reminded of why you fell in love with his candence in the first place. Lyrically, still more than competent, he describes the concept of the album’s title;

“The chosen one from the land of the frozen sun
When drunk nights get remembered more than sober ones
Walk like warriors, we were never told to run
Explored the world to return to where my soul begun
Never looking back or too far in front of me
The present is a gift and I just want to BE”

The second track of the album is a near magnum opus. The subject matter discussed in “The Corners” might as well been a horse’s carcass being beaten by a geriatric man with a rotting stick, but that doesn’t stop Common from reinvigorating Hip-Hop’s most popular mantra, the ghetto. Here, instead of making preachy sentiments about the lamentations of lower-income blacks, he made an anecdotal description of what he sees on the darker boroughs of Chicago.

“We write songs about wrong cause it's hard to see right
Look to the sky hoping it will bleed light
Reality's a bitch and I heard that she bites”

The only drawback of the track is Kanye West’s PDD Syndrome, the need to include his vocal to every single goddamn track he produced. I swear this could have been Common’s finest if it wasn’t for Kanye’s goat-esque whining excuse for a flow. Thankfully, the horridness of his voice is balanced by his dope beat. And yes, the instrumental is completely devoid of helium-fueled soul samples he is so famous for.

Skipping the abysmal collaboration with John Mayor (again, blame Kanye), “Go”. Common quickly restores your faith with yet another one of his oh-so-famous HER parable with the song “Faithful”, a sympathetic look to struggling black mothers in “Testify” and the obligatory amatory joint that is quite infectious for some reason, “Love Is…”. Unfortunately, Kanye West returns to plague the album with more of his vocal again in the next two tracks, “Chi-City” and “The Food”. Fortunately (I’m going in circles here), his appearance in the aforementioned tracks doesn’t dampen the quality at all. I even dig the fact they included the live version of the latter track instead of the studio edition.

In “Real People”, Common again manages to bring life to a banal topic. Kanye’s soul-affluent beat here is probably one of his best offering ever, in this writer’s humble opinion. “I'm the black pill in the Matrix, the saturated life” said he in the penultimate track, “They Say”. Proving you don’t need to make reference to arcane literature to come up with a meaningful line. The song gets off tangent a bit towards the end when the guest artist, Bilal, took over for almost a minute long, Kanye really needs to put a halt to his unnecessary need to feature every single one of his friends in his production. I want to listen to Common, not some soul singer’s crooning, asshole.

The album finally culminates with another spoken word from Common’s father, possibly exceeding his previous poems this time. The old poet speaks of his own interpretation of the album’s title, “Be”, while making a mockery out of his son in the process.

“Be” is Hip-Hop for fans in their early 30s and for those who are in need for an alternative to the crap MTV feeds us. Who would have thought an emcee whose first album was made out of puerile topics could grew up to be ‘Uncle Common’, one of the most matured and non-pretentious Hip-Hop artist of our time.

Blindly meandering into Wonderland

2005-09-21T17:56:00.000+08:00

ARKHAM ASYLUM

Arkham Asylum is a niche title. There's a fair share of distractors and admirers of the book. This is partly due to Dave McKean's unusual art style that doesn't conform to common comics standard and Grant Morrison's exorbitantly pyschological writing. Since as you can see, I've chosen the book as my latest entry, I belong in the latter category.

Arkham Asylum belongs more in the horror genre than the usual superhero fluff. The book is a journey into the minds of Batman's rogue gallery as well as his own psyche too. When the crazies in the institution took over control of the said place, they demanded for Batman or there will be killings. Their reasoning for wanting the Bat isn't for revenge, death or anything of that effect but instead, they believe he deserves to live in a cell next to them.

The Batman universe has got the best menagerie of villains ever. Every single one of them is portrayed at the highest order of insanity here. Particularly the Joker. His homosexuality is again implied in his dialogue with Batman, similar to DKR. The book delved even deeper into his psychology by having one of the asylum's psychiatrist described his condition (a sort of super-sanity, she said). Harvey Dent aka Two-Face is given the same treatment too, but here he found a slight redemption although his condition is worsen by the hospital. Not limited to Batman's famous villains, lesser-known villains are given presence too. Some are reimagined (Clayface is a man with a contagious skin disease instead of being made out of clay), some remained the same. Admittedly this does create a problem with readers since not everyone is familiar with the entirety of Batman's universe.

Paralleled to Batman's journey into the perversed Wonderland of his rogues is the story of Amadeus Arkham, founder of the asylum. His tale of madness is ridden with familiar images. From finding a Joker card, looking at two fishes forming a Pisces sign to encountering a vision of a Bat, which was the penultimate moment before he is forever lost in madness. All of these serve as a supernatural undertone to the Batman mythology, implying Batman is indeed responsible for the torrent of insane people to come.

A review of the book can't be finished without mentioning McKean's art. His is that of abstract painting, collaged photographs and conventional comic artwork. Almost as schizophrenic as the book he is illustrating for. Even the lettering is written in a manner that suits each personality. Joker's dialogue is written like he wrote it himself with his fingernails, Batman's is without speech bubbles and written in black and so on. Much of the criticism for the book depends on whether or not you could digest all of these.

This is probably a one-of-a-kind graphic novel, I doubt you will ever read anything quite like it. Reading it could almost convince you into believing Batman is as disturbed as the criminals he'd fought. Pretentious artsy-fartsies will love it to death, comic geeks adamant with sticking to the sequential art bible will loathe it. If you don't belong to neither group like me, the book's quality is still as divisive as Batman's sanity. Even with all of this considered, there's one thing we all can agree with, Arkham Asylum is worth the read.

The graphic novel that put the comic medium in the eyes of literati

2005-09-19T23:44:00.000+08:00

WATCHMEN

The Citizen Kane of comics. Besides Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen is the IT book that propels graphic novels to the mainstream audience's consciousness. Here, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons brought the superhero genre to uncharted territory (we are talking about 1985 here) by giving them human emotions instead of Clark Kent's black and white moral absolutes. No square-jaws and preachiness at all, call it a revisionist work if you will. It's a modern-day parable of men and women who happen to choose vigilantism as a career, by choice or coincidence.

Set in an alternate timeline where the US won the Vietnam war (thanks to a certain blue & naked mangod), Alan Moore created a convincing universe with 50 years worth of history. Vigilantes are apparently banned and considered a threat to national security in this universe, but there are those who operates either under the government themself or their own anarchic will. When one of them is killed and another coerced into exile, the remaining active superheroes and those forced into donning the cape for one last time end up working together again to discover a conspiracy, and the payoff to the labyrinthian plot is most satisfactory. But what's a plot without the chracters eh? Watchmen probably has the most robust list of protagonists; Rorschach, a sociopathic superhero with a disturbing childhood and an inclination to ultra-violence that will make Kubrick blush, his psychiatry session will haunt your dreams. Nite Owl, retired and having a bit of an impotency problem finds solace in reliving his heydays as a superhero. Ozymandias, the epitome of human grandeur who models himself after Alexander. Silk Spectre, a second generation hero unwillingly molded by her mother to be a superhero. Dr. Manhattan, the only superhero with actual power who is distanced by humanity as an aftereffect of his godhood. And these are just the main cast of characters.

Watchmen is the most intricately plotted graphic novel I ever read. It is designed to be read more than once, there's no way you could fully digest the book wholly by a single reading. Your first way through will probably end up with you in total amazement of the ending - best ending ever, in any literary medium,IMO - which will be followed by a smack in the head for not noticing the clues hidden in either the art or the book's numerous mock articles after subsequent readings.

The art and writing coelesced perfectly. Every frame is overlap with meaningful dialogues and often it will interconnect seemingly with other frames, sometimes of a totally different scene yet it is somehow connected through words. Symbols and allegories are littered in every single page. From pyramid shapes, clocks to the famous defaced smiley, all serves as visual references to the story. At times, even nondescript objects are given layered of symbolism just by the character's monologues. Watchmen is probably the most intellectually challenging comic out there, trying to piece together every single one of it's visual symbolisms,words and what have you is more satisfying than wasting your time on those crappy sudoku puzzles.

Typical of Alan Moore, Watchmen is ridden with political-intrigues, literary references and unrelentingly heavy themes on morality, pulling every single one of his guns. This is his magnum opus. It set a precedence for others in his field of work to live up to it's standard. Though admittedly, the book isn't that accessible - the first generation of superheroes are sometimes portrayed burlesquely which could confuse those not familiar with comic-lore, Watchmen is still the definitive book to convert naysayers into comic fans.

The blog where you can find my thoughts on miscellaneous things

2005-09-19T14:17:00.000+08:00

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Here's a list of things you won't find in my blog;

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More whining

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The graphic novel that put the comic medium in the eyes of literati

The blog where you can find my thoughts on miscellaneous things