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.

They’ll hunt you for skin; They’ll kill you for blubber

Tonight, I sat next to a banana at a bus stop.
Curved and yellow, it sat there unblinking. Contemplating the future, (I can only guess).
As it laid next to me unstripped and perishable,
I found myself thinking about all the unseen fears that we, as a species, have created for our fruit + vegetable kingdoms.
The banana, amongst them.
That beneath it’s unpeeled skin laid the untold mysteries about the true nature of yellow things, the soft sweet illusions of unbridled white flesh, and the whole entire exhaustive range of sexually-charged (and lustful) associations;
And surely, that other thing which comes to the wandering mind – the origin Tree of the boomerang fruit.

Are there any straight bananas out there tonight? (I wonder).
Sitting alone on isolated park benches and old, abandoned bus stops.
Ones who bend against the rules, the structural conditions of a reality-that-is-not-possible.
Ones who contemplate the world with all its oddities, and peel a little back to expose their life scent of interrupting fantasies and chance, accidental encounters.
The revolutionary bananas, the bananas with fortitude and strong character and a sense of self.
The straights.

Perhaps.

But my bus arrives.
And time drifts back to normalcy, and I shake my head.
Bananas are bent. We all know that.
I flag the bus down, take out my EZ link pass,
And I wave a quiet goodbye to my banana companion, (who’s waiting for the midnight express).

Just because there’s a mole to whack, doesn’t mean can anyhow whack

“Nowhere does it say that the blacks would be differently treated.”

Clearly, someone wasn’t informed about the three-fifths compromise.

Oopsy.

P.S.: I had a choice between “Oopsy” or “OooooooooOooooooorhhhhh”.
Personally, I felt that the former was more polite. and somewhat cuter. Hence.

Perfect is Ideal

Let’s talk about perfection. I’m a perfectionist at heart. The paradox of all perfectionists is that we vehemently know, full bloody well, that “perfection” is impossible. Which is precisely why we try to negate the negatives, to grind down the imperfections…and end up with something, quite possibly, nearly “perfect”. Which isn’t too bad.

The brutal description of the perfectionist is the anal-ist. I don’t mind being called that. Being anal retentive is the hallmark of being careful, cautious, and a general bastard to everybody else. From my stories, to my songs, to my digital designs – perfection, or rather, the pursuit of it, remains an agonizing component of the process.

Which explains why: I’m still editing my honours thesis. In fact, the “Special Cut” version is scheduled to roll out next weekend. It’ll be the first copy of my thesis that I’ll be intrinsically kinda satisfied with. I’ve tweaked a few more sentences, I’ve removed a few grammatical/spelling errors. It’ll be binded. And served.
But it isn’t the end.
You see, perfectionists are completely aware, that “perfection” is im-possible. Ergo, in the giant squid killing process that is c r e a t i o n, the so-called “ends” are only enthusiastic hiccups in the throaty phlegm of “hey…let’s do one better”.
So.
The “Director’s Cut” version of the thesis is set to come out this winter. That one is the one with the drastic cutting of paragraphs and insertion of multiple endnotes (of unused field data and the like), and a special “researcher commentary” chapter at the end. It’ll exist only just because it needs to. An artefact of something larger than itself, another story written among the shadow of possibilities that is the forever algorithm of the nearly “perfect”. And that my friends, is why some people have a tendency to go “Aiyah Carrick, why you so lik dat?”

Like that means like that lor. Sometimes, satisfaction is derived from the journey itself.
That, is the moral of the story.

Teardrops on the Fire, Fearless on My Breath

the giant robot elephant trampled
through the crowds and splattered
everyone that was in its way
it carried on trampling towards
its destiny and destination as its
huge metallic feet thumped and
bumped and left destruction behind
its exploding waves of manic fury and rage
a campaign of death and determination

when it finally stopped its revolt
the jackhammer surgeons and electrical engineers
found that all that had happened was
a crushing case of inconsequential chaos

-

And half the world away, people are dying in a revolution.

“Why do we call em civil servants?” and other Obscene Displays of Affection

Why do we call em civil servants? Aren’t servants already civil, by definition? Are there uncivil civil servants? Then, there’s no real need for the “civil” is there? unless it’s for emphasis.

Why “servants”? Servants to who? exactly? To the state? To society? Are civil servants civilian? Or are they un-civilian – are they state apparatuses, rogue agents, or secret personnel of a planned robot revolution? Definitely not the last one. At least I’m sure of that.

What do civil servants actually do? Clearly, they serve. What do they serve? Not food, surely? They serve bureaucracy-on-a stick, as either an entrée or a buffet spread. Perhaps. Maybe. Whatever it is, we know how they serve. They serve civil-ly. They don’t serve un-civil-ly. That’ll be problematic. For everyone. At least. I’m sure of that. Yup.

-

Okay. So. I’ve been way too busy these days to bother with blogging. Not that you lot mind. You guys who care and understand and empathize with all the oddities of our wickedly twisted reality. Life gets busy, we’ve all been there before. The big news of late, if you don’t already know, is that I’m officially registered to be an employee of the state. Hence all that philosophical mambo jumbo in the preceding paragraphs.

“Gee Carrick, what’re you gonna be? Tell us Tell us~” comes the inevitable question of the internetz masses.
Welp.
You’re looking at the beginnings of an “urban planner” baby.
Hurrah.

Don’t ask for job specifics, because I haven’t started work yet. That’ll be in a week. I’m hoping what they’ll do is put me in a lab with a workstation together with the entire SimCity collection + expansion sets, and say “Thou shalt play em games, and write weekly reports on your progress! Good luck~ Don’t fuck up (or we’ll fire your ass ina no-time)! P.S.: Ignore the Invading Aliens.”

In retrospect, I guess all those days spent playing with simulation games were well worth the effort huh.

In any case, I’ll be over at da URA offices for the better part of the next 3 years, so if you’re in the locale, you know who to holler at for impromptu lunch meetings. The first 5 lucky callers will get a lifetime supply of email spam, an open letter regarding the psychotic weather patterns of Singapore, and a ziplock of poignant happy-sad memories. And if it so happens that I’d pack an apple for lunch that day, I may even throw it forcefully in your general direction. Don’t forget to catch, champs!

Your Acceleration Makes My Heart Race

It’s not too often that I get proud over this island state of ours, but this, I have to say, invokes a quiet sense of pride and general kickassness for my imagined community:

It’s a Strange

“A Black Man Runs. And a Nation is Behind Him.”

It’s a strange thing – that the people who proclaim themselves as “idealists” often say it with a tinge of embarrassment and regret. Apologetic Idealists. And the critics harp on it. They call us the dreamers, the make-believers, and the festoons of fantasies that go nowhere. They shake their heads and walk away. The facts! The reality! We must face it! We cannot dream! We cannot hope! You’re an Idealist! Shame on your impracticalities and imaginations! We cannot follow false prophets!

Alas we forget. That the most remembered of peoples in our history books, the most inspiring of martyrs, and the most stirring of words and deeds acted upon – they’ve sprung forth from the deep vicissitudes of people who have hoped, who have dreamed. What’s wrong with being an idealist? John Lennon, Muhammad Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr.. You say they’ve all been killed. What good does that serve? To hope, to dream, to love. I say they’re dead. And that is true. But sooner or later, we shall meet the same fate as these men and women as well. No. What matters is not that they have died. What matters is what they have died for. It is their ideas. Their ideas, their faith in humankind, their hope for the better, that will outlive us, that will outstrip us – beyond a time when our bitter ashes have been washed away by firelight and by misting seas. Their words and deeds will outlast any barrage of cannon fodder, any tarnish of napalm bombardment, any misinformed critique of “the dreamers”. No. Their dreams will inspire us forever. To hope. For that is the greatest gift a man may receive.

What’s wrong with being an idealist? Nothing. Idealists have helped change this gross, ugly, and godless world for the greater amount of time that we as a species have come to occupy it. Idealists have shaped our ideas on how to live for the better, and hope against the worst of realities. Idealists, have stuck it to the Man. In defiance of all that is wrongful, oppressive, and just plain lacklustre bullshit, idealists have stood firmly on their ground, waved their crayoned protest flags, sung their chorus of songs, and lifted an unwavering middle finger to all-that-is-fucked-up.

In today’s world of poverty, of hunger, of endless war and eternal suffering, it’s easy to let go. It’s easy to say, “Let’s deal with reality, man”. Cynicism is bred, its seeds of resentment pollinate our hearts, and we question all that is good and promised. You know what, you’re right. It’s hard. It’s as hard as shit, to climb that mountain of hope, of dreams. To see the better side of things. It ain’t easy. I ain’t gonna lie to you. It’s not just flowers and singing shalala. No. But idealists are born to fight. We fight. We fight, we charge uphill, we boldly strive on. We preach our words, we spread our thoughts, and we tell you “Because if you give up on hope, then, there’s nothing else to fight for”. Many times, we lose the battle. Our backs are broken, our spirits are daunted. But you know what? Even if we’ve been smashed to smithereens? Even if we’ve been hung, buried, and left out to dry? We get up again.

And sometimes, that makes all the difference.

Attractive Decisions for Sad People

I imagine a group of ST newsroom people gathering over a collage of photos, scattered randomly over a table. Meticulously, they study each portrait, and one after the other, the rejected photos fall off the sides. Finally, after several hours, two pictures remain, of which a vote is called (as the rules of general democracy rightly dictate):

“All those in favour of Ms Lee by herself, in a prayer-like remorseful pose and a face which may be mildly construed as ‘constipated’?”
Around the room, a few hands come up, with silent echoes of “Aye”. A single thump of foot against ground.

“And. All those in favour of Ms Lee in the aforementioned position, this time with an added emphasis of melancholic sorrowfulness, together with Vivian in a forlorn expression of It-Wasn’t-Me, and some chubby fella who looks like he’s thinking ‘Mmm. Is that chee cheong fan I smell?’ – what say you?”
It is a tidal wave of hands that arises from the far corners of the newsroom, and accumulates to the thumpings of feet against ground. And so, a decision is made, and a voice booms from across the room: “TO THE PRESSES! TO THE PRESSES!”

#

Hey. The only reason why some people still get to keep their job is that the ruling party is worried about setting precedences and exemplars of people-doing-the-right-thing. We donce want Opposition people going: “Well, she was fired for screwing up her job, shouldn’t we be firing You as well?”

The Verbatim of the Masses is Stashed Under the Bed

What is it about collective denial that turns me off? Perhaps it’s the consistent head-shaking and impassive skepticism to everything-else-ness that makes me all silent and quiet on the facial front (whilst contemplating imaginary scenarios involving mass nuclear destruction and the collective end of humanity in my head).

When I was young, in primary school, I remember remarking about the veritable sizes of Procompsognathus, the little chicken-sized Triassic dinosaur that I had a personal affection for. Not that it mattered to my friends. Remember that this was a few years before Jurassic Park came along, “properly” educating the lot of us about the genealogies of dinosaurs in typified Hollywood form.

No.

The responses I got from saying “Actually ah, there’s a particularly small dinosaur that’s as small as a chicken” ranged from “Talk cock lah” to “Who you trying to bluff”, from some of my closest peers. The remarks were so harsh in nature that even I had begun to doubt my own facts on the matter (despite multiple recheckings of Mr. Encyclopedia himself).

More recently, the same scenario played out over a minuscule set of desserts at a local al fresco joint.

“Some species of house lizards are known to grow to the size of my palm”.

The subsequent wheezing and water-choking from (once more) some of my closest peers brought to mind rather gaudy flashbacks of my lizard-affirmation days from an earlier time. This time, I gave up on arguing. I guess I’ve learned that sometimes, reality isn’t meant to be bent for some people. That anything that upsets the natural order of things has a tendency for collective backlash – and I’m too old to be involved in that kinda shit.

Besides. We’ve got google.

On my part, I suppose my own “vow of silence” response was a positive confirmation of the Asch experiments. I think that when you first hear about them, the first thing you say to yourself is “I’m not going to fall for that”. Which was aptly, my initial reaction. No one wants to be part of the herd. But in truth, what Solomon Asch presented wasn’t a simple hypothesis on human conformity, but a suggestion for human indifference.

That’s one plausible reason why atrocities like the Holocaust, Dafur, and Iraq will always be with us. On one hand, you’ve got a bunch of enlightened individuals who feel that some of these things aren’t tangibly linked to us enough. On the other, you’ve got people going “Talk cock lah” and “Who you trying to bluff” (with the first group of people throwing their arms up in the air and going “What the Shit?”). Collectively, these elements, once shaken and stirred properly, result in the rather pulverizing cocktail mix of BTW, We R All Fuck-ed.

Not that it matters.

Really.

We’re all walking fossils anyway.

P.S: With reference to lizards: I know that dinosaurs aren’t exactly lizards. But for the sake of one man’s ongoing narrative rant > quit nitpicking will you?