the demons that lurk beneath

More and more people have been telling me about their fascination/irritation with blogs that describe in fastidious detail every aspect of their life, inclusive of mouth ulcers, what they ate in the morning, etc, and I've always wondered why such blogs elicit such strong reactions in people.

To put it nicely, I could attribute it to the attraction of what Don Delilo calls 'the shock of people's lives' (Lit S stuff is still lurking in cobwebby corners of my mind). However, I figured its just that some people like the voyeurism involved in reading those blogs, others hate being made to feel like a voyeur.

And it's either one or the other. There are no in betweens, or at least no one I've found that has been left unaffected after reading these 'today at 8 a.m.' posts.

(I tried that in my last post and it's not working wonders- to readership or tags-or maybe it's just too forced to be believable or my life is probably just too uninteresting and lacking in graphic detail of any sort so I give up.)

today at 8 a.m.

Was unsuspectingly flipping through Life! today and when I reached the last page I saw the publicity ad for Singapore Lyric Opera's "Street Scenes" concert and was wondering why it sounded so familiar until I realised that the score has been lying untouched on my stand, in its resplendent glory of undecipherable squiggles. No motivation to practice, no motivation to do anything except rot in the rain.

More photos posted on my Flickr page. Exhibitionist huh?

vacuumed

Today I tried to order the beef stroganoff pasta from West Mall's Delifrance, and when it finally arrived it was steaming (and all the other things food does to show you that it's cooked), but the beef was raw-looking and untearable.

"It's cooked, but it's just frozen.." came the reply from the manager, who didn't even attempt to make any form of compensation save to offer food of lower value than the pasta.

In other words, I don't think I'll ever go there again. However, upon reaching home, I realised that this incident was extremely bloggable, basically because I feel I identify emotionally with the uncooked beef. Everything else is passing me by, too many steaming emotions are being thrown around by various people at various people, and sometimes I do take part in the attempt to manifest emotions at appropriate times so that people will still know that I'm alive, but other than that, I'm about as frozen as the piece of beef.

I am getting more and more cow-identified everyday. Blame it on the year of birth then.

440-442

On a happier note, amazon.com shipped Buffy Season 6 and 7 DVDs in 11 days which is great! Which gives me a reason to stay at home instead of tramping around the touristy spots (ie zoo, birdpark, night safari) as i have been doing for the past two months. It isn't that bad, but after a while, it all looks and smells the same.

Bittorrent sucks now; it's impossible to download anything at a decent speed so I'm back to using Acquisition.

Was finally home on a Thursday night to catch Lost episode 1x07 and it was too happy and optimistic to be nice. What happened to the angst, the despair, the fear you could smell (not just from seeing them get dirty and mud-ed)? A reforming drug addict recalling the good old days when he used to go to confession, seeing himself as a moth who finally regained his 'freedom' from the hold of his drug habit? Sounds similar to one of those Chinese short stories we had to read in the good old River Valley days. (You do know I'm being sarcastic don't you?)

Alright I suppose I'm being a little harsh but maybe I just don't believe in happy endings anymore. Not in this world at least.

(Are you already going, "And it took you this long to arrive at this conclusion?")

Starting on a happy note doesn't mean ending on a happy note. See, I tricked you again.

ambiguous

Borrowed Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Year One from the Esplanade Library and ploughed through three discs worth of episodes before I realised that I had to stop before it completed my transformation into an asexual being. With every episode dealing with a sex crime of all different permutations you can possibly think of, its really difficult not to be disillusioned or whatever you call it, with the world and probably men in particular.

I'm not an aspiring angel, in all senses of the word. You are allowed to say that I'm just immature and haven't fully outgrown the "Eeks! guys?!" mentality of adolescent girls. Well maybe at that age they already go "ooh! guys..." complete with doe-eyed fawning gazes and all. (see I'm talking to myself again.)

Well I guess I shouldn't blame my asexuality entirely on Law and Order. I suppose it's a well meaning show, if not to entertain, at least to inform us of what heinous acts people are capable of committing so as to scare us into coming back early and locking the door properly. Not to mention we have our own fair share of sex crimes in this sunny island.

External (male) threats aside, who's to say we can be kept safe from ourselves?

[I know it's stuff like this that sparks off numerous speculations about my sexuality but is it really that difficult to see why I feel this way about guys?]

I shall stop before I implicate myself any further.

mundane

Having so many days of not doing anything (days, not nights) is starting to get worrying simply because for a brief moment there I realised that this is possibly how I'm going to spend the rest of my life with an arts degree. Although this probably about the only time I'm ever going to get to practice my cello 4 hrs in an day. (Hah this isn't called hardworking it's called last minute practice before tomorrow's lesson after not practicing since last week's lesson!)

Just finished playing for the NUS Centennial Dinner on Saturday, which was, mildly put, interesting. It helped that no one was listening to that atonal symphony because most of them were busily eating their prawns and taking pictures and the like, and it was even funnier how the strings and the winds/brasses/percussion were on two islands separated such that the only connection between them and us was a tv screen with the conductor.

While sitting idly on stage waiting for our turn to perform, the principal cellist turned back and asked me something that went like this.

"You know skirts, when they're too thin, there's a second layer underneath? What is it called?"

Me: "um.....lining" *why the weird question suddenly?!!*

She: *smiling* "ok..."

Then she talks across the violas to the second violin (female),"Your clothes, one piece? two piece?"

2nd violin: "Two piece"

She: " Ah. *points to 2nd violin's skirt* Underneath? Lining....*said with a knowing look*"

The concertmaster (male) overhears and said, "I want to see!"

The viola leader likes the sound of this and says, "I want to feel!"

That's what happens when we're watch people eat prawns and gain no satisfaction out of playing a whole symphony without a melody. Nah. Actually, why am I making excuses for them? They're just horny.

icicle

With reference to the previous post, the spying session didn't do anything. We just imploded. It's one thing to know what implosion is, it's another to witness the whole degeneration of relationships. Estrangement, meltdown, resignation, there isn't a name to nicely summarise the essence of it and sometimes you wonder what's the point of words when they don't say anything at all.

An implosion often occurs after an explosion of smiles.