Automatic Sunshine for the Happy People

Konichiwa sizzling bubblegum atoms of the cyberworld,

It’s 21 weeks since we started floating in this abyss of an occupation, and suffice to say: We’re enjoying ourselves, terribly.

Today, I was reminded that this whole experience (i.e. being an urban planner) is very much like my ragger stint. I’m surrounded daily by a bunch of hardworking, piah like mad for everything, fully stressed out, constantly on the verge of breakdown, people. We strive to finish the work that’s placed before us before we get caught in another tsunami wave of wtfs that’s just about to break the shoreline, and we’re screaming like mad (in laughter _and_ collective pain) as we do so.

Everything’s in-process.

And it just so happens. I’m enjoying myself.
Because just like Rag, we’re all riding this manic rollercoaster to the end, baby.
Much more than Rag, we’re dealing with discourse and culture and resultant implications; and we’re working with differentiated, gradated, realities.
If anything else, this is my payback, mon salutation, to this island-state of mine.
At the end of it all, I’d have done some manner of _good_, in some small way, for Singapore today.

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In other news, it’s perturbing to see white house interviews taking place with a distinctly Singaporean backdrop behind. What’s up with that, mister cameraman (or woman)?

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21 weeks in. A year ago, I was 2 weeks into my thesis fieldwork.
Ah, Time. Sometimes I can just squeeze you like a pimple, and the memories simply start oozing their mucous-y ways out – a viscous collage of crude gooey goodness. Mmmmm. Yummy.

The Judicious Application of Headbutt Formulas is Woefully Painful

The Hopeful Monster dwells in the Great Sea of Possibilities and Silly Love, occasionally surfacing to inform unsuspecting passers-by on humanity’s need for Context, Physics, and Dessert Toppings (sometimes with the aid of visual puns). Kid Dexter was fishing for Conceptual Leverages against Embodied Westphalian Democracy when his boat had accidentally bumped into the head of Hopeful.

“WUZZAH?” exclaimed Kid.
“HNGH AARGH OH SHIT! FUCK FUCK FUCK!” cried Hopeful.
“Aye, if it not the Hopeful Monster that dwells in this Great Sea of Possibilities and Silly Love,” Kid vocalized, as he located the source of sprawling vulgarities.
“MAWO! WUH! You better fucking HOPE this BLOODY CUT heals PRONTO Kido, lest I remind you that your boat is constitutive of bloody breakable wood and metal; your body but mortal flesh and brittle, brittle bone. In any case, whilst this intrepid intimidation is one of self-aggrandized posturing, I shall also mellifluously supplicate this information with an out of place digression – almond shavings are a suitable topping for Raspberry Tiramisu.”
-_-

*This story entirely sponsored (and inspired) by your friendly neighbourhood Bowie quote.

Rogue Deities Entertain Us with Interesting Dramatic Weather Conditions

Hello awesome invisible peoples of the internetz. Just a quick utterance of our upcoming plans till the end of the year:

We’ll be working towards a design folio before the New Year binds us with the demons of whyhaven’tIdonnsityets. We’re also prepping for our year-end visit to the Land of Sheep, Kiwis and other Monstrously Cute Creatures – yup, we’ll be tagging with the parents to New Zealand in a month’s time. Whoopie us. Next up? Our long overdue trip to Tokyo, come 2010. Scheduling begins soon enough, but first: Learning to speak anything else besides Takashimaya, Honda, Toyota and Kawaii neh.

In other news, I’ve been quietly grooving to a samba beat the entire weekend.

Don’t get too wet for the week ahead babes – the weather’s been absolutely killer in terms of unpredictability. One minute you’re a steaming coffee pot; the next, you’re a drenched hamburger in a washing machine.

The Jedi Master’s Working Strategy to Divorce Procedures

Gregory was channelling his spirit animal (the Great Philadelphia Cheese-Steak Sandwich) when he found out (by complete accident) that he was a proletariat Jedi knight. It was at this point that Gregory’s girlfriend, Jenny, walked in and saw her fiancée levitating a piece of jelly donut in the middle of the living room – an impressive look of determined ferocity hung across his face.

“My god,” said Jenny, “do you realize what this means?” The couple had spent the last ten minutes fooling around with The Force.
“That we’re gonna be so FUCKING RICH!” cried Gregory as he thought about the million ways he could (potentially) usurp the bourgeoisie classes of the world.
“Certainly not,” guffawed Jenny. “What would we do without Capitalism at the helm of things?”
“So then, what do you suggest?” extemporised Gregory, now crestfallen and dejected. Socialist class revolution was always the thorny issue in their relationship.
“Well…I was thinking of redoing the furniture arrangements for this season. With your newfound powers, we won’t be needing to call your cousins over to help, ya know. Plus, now we can sooo finally do the re-roofing before winter sets in. Yippee ki-yay baby.”

That night, the hometown Minnesota police blotter recorded a fatal death-by-lightsaber, and that one Gregory M. Lightskipper had officially turned his allegiance to the Dark Side.
Sometimes, a Jedi can only take so much bullshit from one woman.

We walk home alone, long after the music stops playing

At the genetics factory last night:

Lisa had kissed the ghost of her former lover whilst on the late shift.

Sally had dreamt a silent dream of dancing with her father again, on board a ship made entirely of glass and paper.

Sherman had successfully spliced the cells of two animals, producing a compound that was briefly alive for 2 seconds.

Jeffrey had received spam from a Japanese female porn starlet.

Lucas had composed a war ballad about a sleeveless receptionist sent to battle the warmongering Vikings of 1066.

This morning:

The late shift clocked out, and they all went home deeply quiet, lost in their own thoughts and stories.

1 Sentence Stories #3

#3 – The Permanence of Little Fleeting Things

Today, 5-year-old Jerome will lose his red balloon to the Westerly winds – he will learn about the nature of transience; tomorrow, the balloon will vaporize its pressured contents to the stratosphere, dance downwards across cloud currents and rain, and land safely back on Jerome’s front porch – the boy will learn about the gift of hope.

Your Probiotic Culture is Too Wild for My Inner Anthropologist

There’s something about this studio rendition of “Big Mama” by the boys of Left Lane Cruiser that makes me wanna get jiggy wit it in my bedroom and off the walls.

It’s raw, it’s hilarious, and it’s highly dance-a-ble.
Oh yes sir, you betcha hats off, you’re listening to the blues, buddy.

Pimp City (Plate 1)

I hate this pimp city of mine.
It treats me like a whore citizen.
(I do not trust its spoken ideologies)

This pimp city –
imports foreign brides to fill its coffers;
imports foreign whores to satisfy its needs;
imports foreign harlots to call its own.

It builds great asylums for everyone;
Its opiate for the masses is the demagogy of capitalism;
Its hypodermic remedy is the bewitching prism of narcissism;
It is a constructed heaven of self-surveillance and inward lament.

This pimp city –
it denies me the pleasure of being;
Exalted.

The Silhouette of your Unrequited Governmental Love makes me Feel Briefly Bad about Myself

for a conversional discourse on the End of State-Truth, press one

At the obscure edge of reason, I’ve always had a nagging suspicion for this city-state of mine. It’s that itchy feeling that says: there’s a logical flaw in reality, somewhere. Possibly, nearby.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Everything that’s wrong about Singapore (to me) is encapsulated by TVMobile.

Ah, TVMobile – the bane of my commuter existence. When you’re there, I feel like smashing my fist into your screens and pulling the speakers out from their electrical bus sockets and setting the entire bus on fire (once everyone’s been safely evacuated, of course). When you’re not, I’m in a perpetual state of bliss for half an hour.

And yet.
In a cosmic-sense of veracity, you’re still around. And probably always will be. If I did an island-wide street poll of SBS commuters, I betcha a good 90%+++ would agree that you’re a general nuisance to our lives. Your programming sucks – two thirds of the time you’re playing annoying adverts with lousy sales pitches and blaring back-jingles; the rest of the time you’re serving up re-runs of badly scripted Channel 8 serials and canned-laughter-filled “Just for Laugh Gags” segments.

When I’m not grappling with your awful content (which really, are discriminatory towards non-Mandarin speakers and people with a tasteful sense of humour), I _have_ to deal with your static-prone-ass-of-a-reception-cabling-that-makes-the-shitty-programmes-shittier-because-everything-freeze-jams-for-a-few-seconds-and-the-farking-sound-keeps-repeating-even-when-your-screen-goes-blank.

And yet.
You’re still here. In my face. Every. Single. Bloody. Day. Why is that? If everyone agrees that you’re a piece of shit technology that really shouldn’t be part of the commuting experience; if everyone wants you to go away and leave us the hell alone – why, art, thou, still, here?

In any working, democratic, developed country/city, you would’ve been fixed. You’d either have been dissembled and sent to the waste dumps, or your reception technology + quality of programming would’ve been upgraded. You could have ended up being like the Miami Bus Transit, with a way bigger screen, and a GPS-linked map telling us where the hell the bus is, and where we’re all going.

You could have been useful.

Instead.
You remain the self-reflecting mirror-artefact of all that is wrong with Singapore society. Where a politically autocratic system has set in place a systemic discourse of “I should really mind my own business”. Sure we start petitions and write letters to the ST forum. We bitch about everything in our kopi tiams and taxi cabs.

But in the end, nothing really changes. We’ll go back to our cannot make it, increasingly stressful jobs; we’ll return to our safe, normal, increasingly expensive HDB flats; and we’ll continue to journey our ways around with you, dear TVMobile. Because nothing says Uniquely Singapore better than paradigm-enslaved worker drones who don’t give a damn about changing the system.

Is there hope for the future? Perhaps. I suggest we start by smashing our televisions.

Pantry Affirmations to Savoury Confectionary Battles

The Cupcake Executioners were butchering the Biscuit Brigade when General Toasty finally rode in on his vanilla seahorse Ascalon (to the flanks!) and brought with him the 23rd Chocolate Cookie Cavalry; it was at this opportune moment that the pancake shelling begun. It rained maple syrup that day; as the assorted confectionaries fought mightily in the hot sticky liquorice highlands and jam-filled rivers. In their marshmallow dugouts and nougat cake trenches, the wounded bled a deliciously bloody trail of raspberry sauce and lemon-lime cream – their dying recipes forever kept secret in the Great Scone Scourge of 1814. General Toasty himself, barely surviving the battle, was said to have indignantly declared the battle as “the Maddest Tea Party of our century”.