[[Unhappy Cats Manifest the Real]]

Hahahahahahahah!

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 02:41:23 GMT

Best. APEC. Costume. EVAH.

Battleground God

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 18:55:21 GMT

Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

The damage in this instance: 1 direct hit, and 1 biting of the bullet. Not too bad, methinks..

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:34:53 GMT

The dog days of summer are easy, use-no-brain days, complete with lazy, hypnotic songs:

Madreblu -- Certamente.

Boy, does The Sopranos have good music. Oh, did I mention that I zipped through Season 1 in two evenings?

Because I'm restless at work....

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:49:37 GMT

.... and because making Benjamin even more complicated is absolutely fun-making.

_{What does Art and Poetry do with ugliness? Or; why did Literature survive the Holocaust?

hmm.}

Actually I have no godamned answer. Reading J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello does make one wonder though: is art necessarily pleasurable? Or is it necessarily jarring to the senses and one's sensibility?

30 second movie review: The Break Up

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 16:48:02 GMT

Despite being a staunch member of Team Aniston....

Aaaargh. Aaaaargh. Stop. Shouting. Now. Aaaaaargh.

Leon Trotsky: “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.”

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 22:14:07 GMT

Lazy, pleasurable Sunday afternoon, probably the closest thing to paradise in my shoebox of an apartment. Accessorised with:

- 75 deg / 25-ish C breeze;

- copious amounts of Harvey Wallbanger; (no, not Jordan's Harvey... unfortch.)

- The bestest bestest bestest bestest studio album in my universe; (All caveats apply to this statement.)

- Indoor gardening. Yes, I'm a budding horticulturalist this summer. Heh heh heh.

L-R: Severely ravaged Thai basil, "Red Robin" tomato, Thai hot chilli, Chocolate mint. Not in pict: Thai Basil Junior, Sage, Coral Berry.

Excuse me while I go wipe the beer and chips off my computer desk.

Sun, 21 May 2006 23:56:08 GMT

These folks won this year's Eurovision, the grand dame of cheesy music-fests that also gave the world Abba. (Which, before I get fired at, is pretty classy for its class.)

Now, the Great Noodley Master knows that I am quite very partial to death and industrial metal, but this... what the hell is that? This is nowhere near Cradle of Filth. Or for that matter even Slipknot...

And did someone say Hard Rock Hallelujah?!?! *headdesk*

Watch it at Youtube, since for some reason I can't embed it. Just as well...

off the well-worn film track weekend

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:19:29 GMT

200 pages of reading to do. In traditional Chinese no less. One final paper proposal to dream up. One response paper to gab through. And what did I do this weekend? I watched two films for fun. And what a journey it was.

--

Tsai Ming-liang, The River 河流

Tsai's (in)famous rep had gotten way ahead of much his work in my consciousness; a superlative rating ("... the most f*cking f*cked up piece", a third-hand account) and media furore last year in Taiwan over The Wayward Cloud made me feel almost naughty about picking up The River at the local library. (Aside: Walker Library rocks, in addition to the entire Mpls Pub Lib system.)

So. Some people say that Tsai's films say nothing. Some people say his rampant use of long shots is a pain. Some people walk out of the theatre because his film style tells nothing. But in this film at least, "nothing" in the vein of sense deadening was perhaps precisely the point: what name emotional disconnect, when father and son encounter each other anonymously in a gay sauna and fail to recognise each other amidst intimate caresses? Desire, it seems, both winds and unbounds -- the most profane exchange was also the most tender, with the protagonist being returned to an infant stage visually.

The film did nothing to shock and awe all 120 minutes I was watching it, yet today the mind keeps returning to it, re-piecing scenes and events, making sense of things all over again. I haven't quite figured out everything yet, but man, is this interesting.

--

Hou Hsiao-hsien, Millenium Mambo 千禧曼波

[Brain no longer functioning. But man, great film. Haunting techno soundtrack. Who knew?]

I have a new love

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:54:32 GMT

"Dating back to 18th-century England, the custom of blending pale and dark beers has kept the "Black and Tan" a favorite of experienced beer drinkers for centuries. Our famous recipe combines a robust English Porter with a fine Continetal Pilsner, preserving the character of each, while creating the classic taste of the legendary "Black and Tan." In true American style, we bring you the best of both as they meet in Mississippi Mud."

Who cares. Gulp.

I'll rather do SIN-TPE-LAX in this case, thank you

Sun, 26 Mar 2006 23:19:16 GMT

"New Super Plane One Step Closer to Take-off"

March 26, 2006 — Airbus successfully evacuated 853 people acting as passengers from its super-jumbo A-380, the biggest passenger plane ever built. The test was a critical milestone in the process of certifying the plane as safe to begin commercial service.

Airbus declared it a "great success" even though one man broke a leg and 32 others suffered minor injuries sliding down evacuation chutes.

Uh, I suppose the word "relatively" doesn't have a good equivalent en francais??!!?!?!

Read the full article here.

"I..... am....your... FATHER!"

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 17:42:32 GMT

Am I the only one who thinks numero uno on the left looks like Darth Vader?

and i was wondering why people don't call me.

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 04:47:02 GMT

Well-meaning host: [Dinner plans blah blah] ....I should also add -- we have cats and will probably make lasagne, if that's OK . . . (checking to make sure no one is cat or dairy intolerant)

Me (and my itchy email fingers): If the cat's not in the lasagna, I'll do well, thank you. :)

when spring is clearly broken...

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 01:40:52 GMT

Thursday night.

Red wine at $5.50/litre: steal.

~~Last day of classes before spring break.~~Over.

3 pound chicken for nutritious herbal soup.

Said cheap red wine, 2x 1.5litre bottles. Macam coke.

Walter Benjamin: The Task of the Translator.

Bring on the drinks, I say.

-

How not to write an academic job application

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 03:58:18 GMT

I have quite an urge to send JA Richardson this - except that he's probably already seen this.

Excerpt from the job app of Manfred Mickleson, 18th-century literature scholar:

"The argument of my dissertation, informed by current thinking in feminist theory, queer theory, cultural materialism, eco-criticism, and postcolonial studies, centers on the paradoxes of representation involving masculine authority and feminine desire in eighteenth-century pirate literature, and especially on sentimentalism as a response to the en(gender)ing of the patriarchal body -- which I see as epistemologically equivalent to the "body politic" in eighteenth-century political discourse -- in the figure of the (male) sailor in British oceanic commerce during the first age of imperial expansion. I argue that it is the absence of women from shipboard life that permits Defoe, in his History of the Pirates, to depict seagoing commerce in terms of a normative homosociality -- the all-male society of the quarterdeck and lower decks in both naval and commercial shipping -- such that piracy then embodies the eruption of a transgressive (and, implicitly, anti-imperialistic) sexuality demanding representation in altered or displaced terms in the "literature of the shore," including such genres as the periodical essay, the mock-heroic poem, and the sentimental novel. It is in the sentimental novel, I argue, that this displacement achieves autonomous status as itself a normative discourse, with a representation of emotions in terms of a "feminine" sensitivity operating to compensate for the violated fantasy of all-male sufficiency represented by the boarding or "penetration" of an East India galley or naval three-decker by a depredatory piracy."

WOOT!

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:47:07 GMT

My conference proposal on Happy Together and Ashes of Time has been accepted for a grad conference at USC!!! *bounce maniacally around the room*

What this means, of course, is that I'm pretty much grounded for spring break reading reading reading writing deleting reading reading write delete rush write finish tear hair out choosing clothes. But.. whee! Southern Californian sun for me and LA sightseeing, whooooooot! Certainly *this* makes the lonnnnnng MN winter slightly more bearable...

random funny, or desperate times call for desperate measures

Fri, 24 Feb 2006 03:06:45 GMT

Random funny from Harold Bloom:

"One... annoying [development]... has been the destruction--the lunatic destruction of literary studies, at least from my perspective, and its replacement by what is called cultural studies in all of the universities and colleges in the English-speaking world, and everyone knows what that phenomenon is.

"I mean, the -- the now-weary phrase `political correctness' remains a perfectly good descriptive phrase for what has gone on and is, alas, still going on almost everywhere and which dominates, I would say, rather more than three-fifths of the tenured faculties in the English-speaking world, who really do represent a treason of the intellectuals, I think, a betrayal of the clerks."

Yep, people. Cultural studies and all that pomo / po-struct crap is destroying the ~~fabric of our nation~~ solidarity of the brotherhood. For more literary insanity (your mental well-being NOT guaranteed), go forth like a brave trooper.

ok babes....

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:53:20 GMT

... been drowning in way too much work -- read, write, process... bah. my nostrils are probably caked in book dust by now or something.

if you're itching for something to *do* on the Intar-webs, give this a try. RL and non-RL friends welcome.

Verily self-proud am I....

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 03:34:32 GMT

Before:

After:

and yes, those are moosie slippers my uncle got for me in Seattle. heehee.

Just one for the day...

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:35:22 GMT

... while I recuperate for Spring term, which unfortunately starts this coming Tuesday. Said recuperation involves drawn-out cooking sessions, catching up on South Park and Crossing Jordan episodes, doing some preliminary reading for the term, and yes, a small side project reading 长恨歌 or Song of Everlasting Regret.

Yes you read me right. 长恨歌 as in The Book That Came Before The Sammi Cheng movie. As in the 300,000 word monstrosity written by She-Who-Drones-On-and-On-About-Nothing Wang Anyi. I'm merely a third through, and already I have a better title for the book: Cheong Hei Gor. Yep. 长气 is also what I *really* need to finish this bitch of a book before I get to the movie.

Verily I hate Wang Anyi.

this just makes me go...

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 21:36:25 GMT

....

Foreign film barred from Oscars

and guess which foreign film is this, my friends? Our very own Eric Khoo's Be With Me.

and the reason for barring?

Academy spokesman Teni Melidonian said Be With Me was disqualified because "English isn't a foreign language".

ok people, 1, 2, 3.... WTF??!!?!?!!?

because i am procrastinating again.

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:15:53 GMT

Oh Great Cthulhu!

I have been an extremely busy devotee this year.

In November, I defiled the grave of that traitor, Lovecraft (90 points). In July, I prepared an ocean voyage to R'lyeh (200 points). In December, I sacrificed mollymeek to Cthulhu (500 points). In February, I rammed a ship into you (sorry Cthulhu!) (-1000 points). When the stars were right, I visited my relatives in Innsmouth (100 points). In January, I exposed freakinlizard to soul-rending horrors (250 points).

In short, I have been very good (140 points) and deserve to be eaten first.

Your humble and obedient servant,
mottledquailegg

Submit your own plea to Cthulhu!

only possible in california..

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:45:34 GMT

...

for a variety of reasons. and yes, the weather amongst them. The thought of doing the same in either Walter or Wilson just makes all my extremities turn black. The thought of doing this in Central Library back in NUS? priceless. (i'd need serious help with the bail.)

http://s16.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0QGU448IB644Y1MOXOJ5Q9FZ3V

OR:

http://rapidshare.de/files/9398925/Finals_Streaking_-_UC_Berkeley_Dec_2005.MOV.html

be warned -- very warned -- by the file titles. :)

less heinous than most, and definitely more cathartic.

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 21:20:46 GMT

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
che' la diritta via era smarrita."

Geeks
Circle I Limbo

~~Onanists~~ Narcissists
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

Rabid Theory-ists
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Rabid Anti Theory-ists
Circle IV Rolling Weights

Harold Bloom
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Positivists
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Militant Vegans
Circle VII Burning Sands

Condoleeza Rice
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Brangelina
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

this thing is prescient. yes i like brussel sprouts.

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:51:32 GMT

pilfered shamelessly off smoochesncream and freakinlizard. i was also alerted that the latter ~~was~~ is (oops) an entire race all by herself. wow.

Dear Santa...

Dear Santa,

This year I've been busy!

Last month I pushed phramok in the mud (-17 points). In October I pulled smoochesncream's hair (-5 points). Last Tuesday I ate my brussel sprouts (1 points). Last Thursday I committed genocide... Sorry about that, freakinlizard (-5000 points). In April I caught a purse-snatcher who stole rainestormyr's purse (30 points).

Overall, I've been naughty (-4991 points). For Christmas I deserve a moldy sandwich!

Sincerely,
mottledquailegg

help help help...

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 06:00:24 GMT

I NEED a proper, academic word to replace ~~"kiss-ass"~~ "kick-ass" (what the hell was I thinking off?!!?) in The Paper That Will Finally Finish Me Off. Thesaurus.com is *not* being helpful today. :(

as in:

"... the high number of kick-ass female characters in this film..."

anyone who provides me one will of course, get my eternal gratitude. :)