Today when I went to school eklectique was telling about her dream.

eklectique: And I dreamt the paper said, 'How many window panes are there in this school?' so cheronl and I got up and looked! We counted all the window panes but when we got back the invigilator was like, 'What are you doing?' and wanted to give us a 'T', only we kept begging her until she was like, okay, just sit down and do the paper.

Well, they didn't make us count the window panes.

( cheerful description of maths within )

Live by request!



"Hi, David Bowie!"
"Hi, George!"
"Could you play Ashes to Ashes for me?"
"Ohhh, I'd love to! George?"
"What?" (music starts)
"Oh, never mind. I'll call you later."

Original!



PIERROT COSTUME, oh man.

I feel restless and angry and dirty tonight:

Myth

Long afterward, Oedipus, old and blinded, walked the
roads. He smelled a familiar smell. It was
the Sphinx. Oedipus said, "I want to ask one question.
Why didn't I recognize my mother?" "You gave the
wrong answer," said the Sphinx. "But that was what
made everything possible," said Oedipus. "No," she said.
"When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man. You didn't say anything about woman."
"When you say Man," said Oedipus, "you include women
too. Everyone knows that." She said, "That's what
you think."

Muriel Rukeyser

Words are never just words.

Yesterday was another low point. I always get this way every month and think, oh no, this is it, there's genuinely something wrong with me, and the next day I get up and feel the start of cramp and think, oh, it's just that. Pain should not be this reassuring, to whoever has the power to decide such things. I am just saying.

Today I like these things:

01. O Sister, Where Art Thou?

In the early forties, eight inmates of the Goree prison unit formed one of the first all-female country and western acts in the country, capturing the hearts of millions of radio listeners. Then they nearly all vanished forever.

( Read more... )

They're making a movie of this, with Jennifer Aniston in. I hope you don't fuck it up, Jennifer Aniston. What are you doing today? Wa-hey!

02. 300 Love Letters

So I'm telling this boy, one of the boys that lots of these love letters are to, about this project. "I'm writing three hundred love letters and sending them to strangers. The letters are going to be glued to the outside of the envelopes, so that the mailman, and presumably whoever the recipient lives with, will be able to see and read them. The letters aren't to the strangers, they're to people I know." The boy looks at me. We're walking around, after work, deserted streets. He says, "I don't understand. Why are you doing this?", and I answer vaguely, talking about crossing space and the kind of intimacy that I believe is lacking from our society. And I'm left thinking: Is this project complicated or simple, idiotic or interesting?

( Read more... )

03. Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.

04. Star

Hammering piano (that fucking manic piano) and air-siren vocals. I could do with the money, you know that I--! I'm so wiped out with things as they are, you know that!

I don't think I get megaton_souffle

Things:

1. withoutart's eighteenth. Happy Birthday, Eeyore!

2. I'm sorry, it's now officially true: The Island Creamery and associated subsidies now fulfills all given dietary requirements. Burgers and ice cream! Now all that's missing is the Fifties-style diner with the bopping waitress and a stray barman singing about his blue-eyed baby.

3. Market structures.

4. Today we laughed so much I don't even remember what we laughed about but it owned.

5. David Bowie: the Complete Guide owns!

6. Am listening in on the Korean drama my mum is watching next door... I can't believe I actually watched it yesterday.

7. Today I made a list of all the Straits Times journalists I couldn't stand, but couldn't remember the name of the one I found the most offensive... possibly this is for the best.

8. I've heard of On the Road described as both a) a sexist, vacuous pile of antelope droppings and b) one of the most brilliant works of the Beat generation, and have not myself read a single word of it. Is it either? Can it be both?! Should I bother reading it at all?

9. I enjoyed this poem very much. It popped up on one of the JCs' lit prelims:

(from Mother any Distance)

My father thought it bloody queer,
the day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear
half hidden by a mop of hair. 'You've lost your head.
If that's how easily you're led
you should've had it through your nose instead.'

( And even then I hadn't had the nerve to numb... )

Simon Armitage

PIXEL DEATH

I (or, my ipod has) have it, and it's spreading. Is there any way to stop this?

In the immortal words of like one hundred million Internet help-requesters, pls help!!!

I live in Georgia and I dont see no tanks

1. Mr. Burge liked Mr. Pip! I'm very glad. He called it a "wonderful little book", which from anyone else might sound vaguely condescending but as it transpires, he really was impressed by the way it managed to "squeeze so many ideas into such a thin volume" (although when I read it, I didn't find it all that remarkable... perhaps he is too used to Victorian verbosity). I like it a lot, though. He said it would make us very confused about Great Expectations (ahaha, oops) and so not to read it until after the A levels.

But the point is, you should read it. The ending still makes me shake (and if that cryptic endorsement isn't enough for you, well... read the first sentence again).

2. His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms

I was very amused by this passage today and eklectique and I spent the next hour alternately making cat- and vomit-noises at each other. "Miao! eurgh! miao! eurgh!" You could interpret this as a sign of our respective juvenilities, or our comic genius. (Growing up's for lo-sers!)

3. Computer woes really suck. Ergh!

4. Once again, graduation doesn't exactly feel like graduation... I think school didn't so much end as it was slowly phased out: the last day of school, the passing up of our IS/H3s, last prelim paper, the A levels... these are all tiny milestones. It's good, in a way. And after this our education in Singapore will (hopefully) have come to an end.

5. Pretty much. Although the review is factually wrong; the Thin White Duke persona came after this album, not before.

6. I have been neglecting every subject except for KI lately, okay back to work. I WILL NOT SCREW UP MY LIFE.

There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.

From my previous entry:

Put out the torches!
Hide the moon!
Hide the stars!

is from Velvet Goldmine, although possibly they could have been using a quotation from some other place. They stole from Nietzsche and Oscar Wilde! And the seventies, obviously.

"Now, Peter!"

is from Peter Pan.

The two quotations are not related.

Put out the torches!
Hide the moon!
Hide the stars!

"Now, Peter!"

Oh god can't stop listening to David Bowie /o\

It's like a disease /o\

Essentially, I am withoutart only with less Korean and more glitter.

Starman is my favourite.

And according to this dude, Life on Mars is the best song of all time!

Well, it is a nice song.

Give me your hands because you're wonderful



!

Last Monday I was in Kinokuniya reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas when a woman in her fifties asked me for help. She said, "You like books, right?" and I said, yeah. So she asked me to help her find local literature "with a family theme" and I darted over to the information section and asked them for the local literature shelf, and then I led her over, saw that most of it was poetry and said, "Are you interested in poetry, or prose?"

"Stories," she said, "with a family theme", I think she was starting to regret her foray already (the selection they did have looked very unpromising for her needs) but was determined to persevere, so I picked out Christine Suchen Lim's The Lies That Build A Marriage (pro: contains word "marriage", con: contains word "lies") and presented it to her.

"They don't have any Goh Sin Tub," I observed, "But if you go to other bookstores you can keep an eye out for him."

"Okay," she said, "I really want those books with a family theme."

I tried searching for more books for her but they only really stocked Christine Suchen Lim's book so I gave it to her and went back to reading. I hope she manages to find more books that she wants, haha. So this is the second time someone's approached me in a bookstore and gone, "Recommend me a book"? Which is p cool, I won't deny. Self-aggrandising as it sounds, I like helping people, especially when it's at things like these where I am slightly less than useless! Perhaps I should consider a career in retail on the strength of these two incidents alone, only I suspect my job in Borders/Kinokuniya/Times would involve considerably more stocking and rearranging books than actual telling customers what they should read, sooo.

( Read more... )

Life on Mars is still easily one of the best TV shows I've ever watched.

I gasped at how many names there were.

Fuck you, Hollywood.

Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child.

I'm pretty sure this makes you a fucking scumbag.

I watched Velvet Goldmine yesterday.

.
.
.

Gosh, David Bowie had some really weird costumes going on, didn't he?? But his music owns, it owns

Also reading You Shall Know Our Velocity for the second time made me so annoyed with, like ALL THE CHARACTERS all of a sudden. Stfu, everyone!! This is so distressing, this is so distressing.

I don't know why everyone can someone just tell me, just tell me

I seem to be repeating things a lot recently

other things that own include this:



Listen to the song first before watching the video, because the music video doesn't actually match up with the way the song goes in my head??? That happens a lot though and mostly the song just owns

yeah

p.s. Waris Dirie is not dead -- person who told me that you have been SADLY MISINFORMED (Y)

Poll #1463377 so that guy
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 2

Laurence Olivier

Wuthering Heights is such a disturbing book, everyone. It is so disturbing. Kate Bush does not show the full extent of its disturbingness. It is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read.

... SOMEONE TALK TO ME ABOUT IT PLEASE.

1. Watching Kin Dza Dza now!

'Minuma verishvilli' is my favourite insult of the moment. I don't even know what it means, it wasn't even subtitled so possibly it isn't even Russian. I don't know, man. MINUMA VERISHVILLI.

Seriously, you all should check it out. Low budget cult Soviet sci-fi, need I say more??

2. Yesterday we watched: The Science of Sleep (which is not a documentary), The Mummy 3 (appropriately terrible) and half an episode of Growing Up. (Man I miss that show.) A good time was had by all.

3. And the Central library is closed for F1, WHAT IS THIS. Tourism over education, o icwudt.