I rushed home for my weekly session of Commanding Heights.

And what I got was just a dialogue session with Young Ming on the September 11th incident. Somehow with the impending war, with America ready to go to war in the name of justice, with more blood to be shed, the September 11th attack seemed so insignificant. They are trying to convince us that it is a retributive strike, that they are acting in the name of peace and justice. And blood is about to be repaid in blood, violence returned by violence. Somehow the exchange does not seemed right. Superficially it seems like a fair exchange, but more lives will be lost. To replace loss with loss, somehow just create more deficit than before.

When they said that they are fighting for the good of the world, I think I have a different definition of good. I felt cheated, so should the rest of the silent world.

 
Telling Stories
~ Tracy Chapman

There is fiction in the space between
The lines on your page of memories
Write it down but it doesn't mean
You're not just telling stories
There is fiction in the space between
You and me


There is fiction in the space between
You and reality
You will do and say anything
To make your everyday life
Seem less mundane
There is fiction in the space between
You and me


There's a science fiction in the space between
You and me
A fabrication of a grand scheme
Where I am the scary monster
I eat the city and as I leave the scene
In my spaceship I am laughing
In your remembrance of your bad dream
There's no one but you standing


Leave the pity and the blame
For the ones who do not speak
You write the words to get respect and compassion
And for posterity
You write the words and make believe
There is truth in the space between


There is fiction in the space between
You and everybody
Give us all what we need
Give us one more sad sordid story
But in the fiction of the space between
Sometimes a lie is the best thing
Sometimes a lie is the best thing

 
I sent out a few SMSes to some of friends, asking them about who is the person who has influenced them most in their lives and in what ways. I do not know how that thought came to be. But I recall wondering how different my life would be if I had not picked up philosophy through an introductory text on Nietzsche which I found just before my junior college days ended.

The love for knowledge was actually flamed to life by this rather strange GP teacher that I had during the first three months in junior college. He was Irish, had this huge beard which we wonder how much food bits actually nestled in and he had once, in a dramatic fit of passion, threw a chair out of the classroom.

There was a strange episode relating to this tutor of mine that happened years after I left college. I was waiting for bus 105 at this bus stop located between Toa Payoh and Bishan, slightly before Braddell. It was late and I was wondering if I had missed my last bus. There was but one other guy at the bus stop. As the wait continued, doubts set into both us about whether our buses would even arrive. And I cannot exactly remember how we started a conversation. It turned out that this Malay youth, about my age was on his way to sleep at the bus stop in the east, so as to be able to receive and distribute the papers when they arrive first thing in the morning.

And he knew my tutor. I suppose it is just another one of those strange encounters I get at night....

I found out that my tutor used to teach at Bartley Technical and all the students thought he used to be rugby player of sorts. I suppose that explains why he throws things around. Reflecting on the short three months that I spent under his tutelage, the most significant exercise he made us do was to ask the class to list the attributes of an educated person. The list was terribly long, it made an educated person seemed god-like.

And I was in despair, thinking that there is no chance of me ever been an educated person, not in this present life, anyway.

That brief session actually changed the course of my life, inspiring me to chase after an impossible dream.

My bus came.

And I guess that got me wondering, who or what actually changed my friends' lives, for better or for worse....

Newsflash

Letters From A Killer will be shown on Channel I on Tuesday at 10pm.

It is the worst show EVER made and I sat through it. The show is highly recommended for all those who want to feel my pain.

 
I was sending out my resume via email yesterday.

And I was about to hit the SEND till I remembered that my name on my yahoo account still is Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Bung, not to mention my signature message goes:

How to make your very own Powerpuff Girls:

Sugar.
Spice.
And Everything Nice.
With Chemical X.

Needless to say, I was not applying for the position of a sales executive in a toy manufacturing company. I refused to change it, it seemed like a betrayal of sorts just to make apologies for differences with social conventions. Nothing about me really changes without a reason. And most things remain unchanged. The nick Alvarny has not changed for the past 6 years or so, not since I started my online life.

What is in a name?

If a name is just a linguistic basket to hold all the other adjectives relevant to the referrent, then this basket here is rather spill-proof.

 
Human blood is always different. Never the same. I've seen it many times and it's always different. Just like people.

"This the room?"
"Must be. Just a minute."

This story has a lot of beginnings...

Victim is a caucasian female... 18-24 years... extreme struggle apparent... multiple stab wounds... wearing a wedding dress.

...from her perfect mouth... the mother-of-pearl handle of a straight razor.

....suppose the world makes no sense. No sense whatsoever. Say that all human life is idiotic, all human feeling, an Absurdity. Effect without a cause.

Say that to weep at the death of a child after the death of a million children -- centuries of mothers wailing, gone berserk, each father turning, his heart startled, mistaking a sound for his dead child's voice -- say that it is all a shameful humiliation, not to be put up with.

"So who's the acrobat?"
"Looks like her fiancee."

It's hard to be a policeman and keep God out of the picture.

We detectives have a dream. When we die we get to haul God up before a judge.

A detective imagines this God in our court pleading, "Guilty with an explanation, your honor."

Thus began The Crow: Vengeance.

P.S: Recently updated:
3/9/2002 entry.
4/9/2002 entry.

 
I was lying on my bed last night when I tipped my water bottle over. It resulted in me relocating most of my papers to other parts of my floor before I can wipe up the mess. Of course, that is until, while wiping, I tipped over my water bottle again. This time, the rescue operation included moving some of my papers to higher grounds and on top of each other.

At the end of the exercise, I went to sleep. All would have ended well, if I did not tip over the bottle a third time the next morning while I was leaving my desk to look for food, this time at a new corner of the room.

There are of course, several lessons to be learnt from this.

1. Do cap your water bottle after every drink.
2. A 1.5L bottle may be able to quench your thirst better, but it also spills better.
3. Given the height of the 1.5L bottle, it can technically throw water a lot further due to the moments generated.

It is almost back to the younger, clumsier days when I spill coke all over the place and tip water bottles over on my bed. As an Aquarian, I am not really good at containing water, as all can testify to. As such, I am considering drip or connecting a hose from my bathroom as a viable source of convenient water.

 
If there is anything that I know, it is that the past catches up on you, no matter how fast you run or how far, for you carry it with you, in the back of your mind, or at the bottom of your heart. It is impossible to change the past, and not easy to forget them. Things change, and we all have the ability to meld the present into the future which we desire. But our limitations remain glaringly obvious and eternal questions remain, for whatever we get, whatever we do, until they are solved, we remain unfulfilled.

I sulk for simple reasons. I sulk for the very same reasons that my friend sulked. Once in a while, it gets to me that I cannot find a reason for living this life, that we cannot find a justification for our actions, that the things that matters most to us, should not matter at all. Existentialism tries to solve these questions, by stating that we create our own meanings and we decide on our own life projects. Meanings should be personal and private, subscribing to the socially defined will only result in a semblance of life, devoid of authenticity.

Yet that is little in the way of consolation. It will only sound like a poor excuse from seeking the true teleological status behind our very own existence. And we sulk.

She asked me if a beautiful sunset over a the battlecries of a thousand soldiers in war would still be beautiful. I told that it would be beautiful even despite the carnage and the violence beneath. For beauty is still beauty, irregardless of how the world is, above the conflicts that rage beneath the blues skies, insensitive to the pain and suffering of mortals.

Perhaps only beauty, being so detached from the ways of the world itself, can allow us to forget Life.

"The sky is the same everywhere, always the same, always above the pain and the love, above joy and murder and loss and sacrifice."

~The Crow - Resurrection

 
Machiavelli in his Art of War changed the way Europe fought wars. He taught politics, psychology and deception. And injecting his pessimistic view of human nature into his ideal of a perfect commander, he blurred the line that separates friends from enemies.

"But he recognizes that at best a civil society and an army are complex mixtures of friends and foes, individuals and groups contending for different interests; they are certainly never totality of friends completely united in pursuing a common good. Within the group immediately supporting the political leader, the friendship of some is usually more apparent than real. The allegiance of the "friend" may be only temporary, ready to be transferred to someone else when advantage is to be gained. Even the most intimate of friends may, without warning, prove unfaithful in an hour of need, because the strongest self-discipline implanted by convention under certain circumstances is not enough to prevent the outburst of the self-seeking ego. Friendship, Machiavelli seems to imply, is not so much the precious union of hearts so dear to the classical theorists, as it is a tenuous, external bond of self-interest. By the very fact of their egoistic natures men are forever isolated and alone, whether they are friends or foes. With Machiavelli the classical distinction between friend and foe is blurred. Since every friend is a potential foe, there is considerably less reluctance to employ deception and violence in dealing with a fellow-citizen."

I laughed when I read the paragraph. He is brilliant, just absolutely brilliant. I have always equated the word Machiavellian with consequentialism. But I have never explored the idea in its extremes. The impications can be truly disturbing. Most governments I believed, practise deception, in both internal affairs and diplomacy. Our government has deceived the people more than once; if you look, you will see.

At least now we know why some people called him the son of the devil.

I have always found it strange when my friend told me that we should not trust anyone completely, even if they are your parents, so she trusts her teddy bears and her diary. And one will notice in the preceding posts, my emphasis on appearance, illusion and manipulation. I have chanted to friends that we are in the age of advertisements and marketing, where we sell ourselves off as a brand, as a product, as a label, and quality does not matter, for no one really bothers to check, till they bought the products.

But I wonder how does all these apply to some of us, some of us whom what we need cannot be found in others, whom what we want to know, few can provide , and we know little as to what else to do, but to trust our heart and the ones we love. Or maybe those of us who love the truth much and respect honesty equally so that much deception is unacceptable, or those of us who place comfort above all else, having little fear in our lives, always on our faces, wearing our irrepressible joys and pains with pride.

Fear is a futile attempt to prevent the million undesirable possibilities that can happen, but may not happen. It is also the same futile attempt to prevent the other ten million undesirable possibilities that you are unaware of. Fear is never rational and pain will only be delayed never prevented. Paranoia and suspicion may only postpone the hurt, only to let it return in redoubled fury.

Fear paralyzes, only courage can allow room for wisdom.