crazy clients
there are some clients who won’t leave you alone. they need to give input, lots and lots of it. sometimes, they may even override your good judgement, which makes you wonder why they gave the job to you in the first place.
Signal vs. Noise has a nice little post about a high-end government snoop’s horrible attempt to change the words of a speechwriter who wrote:
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared fro their journey, and waved good-bye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
What happened after:
A deluge of mail and calls followed. But does it surprise you to learn that during the attenuated review process, someone from the National Security Council suggested that that the end be changed — quoting, of all things, a then-popular AT&T commercial — to “reach out and touch someone?” Noonan described this as “the worst edit I received in all my time at the White House.”
It’s kind of funny cos even here in Singapore, some of the worst stories about interfering clients always involve know-it-all, smart-ass goverment folks. And they have such horrid tastes – to even think of using the words of a commercial at a time of great tragedy.
reduce
faithful readers might remember my slogan for 2007:
reduce. give. write.
i took a big step today towards reducing.
went to the hdb office near my home to make a lump sum payment for my flat and reschedule my mortgage loan (increasing my monthly payment by 2.5 times).
i reduced my 24.5 years of outstanding loan to 6.5 and reduced interest paid by nearly 40,000.
what a fantastic day.
i don’t know how i’m going to do it but i like to reduce the 6.5 years of outstanding loan to 3.
that will be my next little project. meanwhile, there will be a lot of saving to do.
diary of a mad old man by junichiro tanizaki
(18) – …I’m already completely impotent. Even so, I can enjoy sexual stimulation in all kinds of distorted, indirect ways.
(25) – Assuming that these and all the other points of beauty are equal, I would be more susceptible to the woman with bad character.
(68) – I dare say it was when I crammed her toes into my mouth that my blood pressure reached its height.
(117) – …even though I am sentimental and given to tears – as virtuous as that may sound – my true nature is perverse and cold-hearted in the extreme.
(137) – Who made Tokyo into such a miserable, chaotic city?
(144) – After all, I have no religious beliefs, any sort of faith will do for me; my only conceivable divinity is Satsuko.
the key by junichiro tanizaki
(9) – … in spite of her weak heart and rather frail health she is abnormally vigorous in bed.
(13) – As usual, my husband seemed to have reached an ecstatic climax; as usual, I was left unsatisfied.
(15) – My husband can’t seem to understand that mine is a pale, secret flame, not one that flares up brilliantly.
(19) – It’s my nature to cling forever to the old customs, to want to perform the act blindly, in silence, buried beneath thick quilts in a dark, secluded bedroom.
(27) – However, my real reason was a desire to see Ikuko’s naked body in that white radiance. That had been my fantasy ever since I had first heard of fluorescent lighting.
(31) – I was no longer my usual spineless, timid self, but a man powerful enough to subdue her lustfulness.
(59) – I suppose that as a dutiful wife I ought to let him enjoy himself.
(71) – In the midst of writing, I have savoured the thought of the pleasures which are to follow.
(94) – Somehow I have the notion that, no matter what happens, as long as I don’t engage in what my husband likes to call ‘orthodox’ sexual intercourse, I haven’t really been unfaithful. And so I’ve remained faithful to him, in that sense, but I stop at anything that isn’t covered by that strict definition. I’d prefer not to be specific, though.
(106) – Unlike most women, Ikuko welcomes repeated lovemaking – and can keep it up day after day.
(107) – Now at last I have been bewitched into an animal that lives by night, an animal good only for mating.
(116) – It’s true that I detest that man from the bottom of my heart; yet when I think how infatuated he is with me, I have an urge to drive him into paroxysms of desire. I’m a person who can keep love and lust completely separate.
(139) – At eleven, footsteps in the garden…
(150) – Driven by sexual hunger, I could do nothing less.
(151) – …I secretly enjoyed being jealous. Such feelings have always given me an erotic stimulus; in a sense, they’re both necessary and pleasurable to me.
Sean O’Hagan
Compiling a mix tape is also, of course, a labour of love, an act of dogged devotion. You can see why Nick Hornby used the mix tape in High Fidelity as a signifier of love and devotion. If my memory serves, his male protagonist, a romantic loser, wins his long-suffering girlfriend back by compiling her a tape of songs by romantic losers about romantic losers. On some Freudian level, the compilation tape says more about the compiler than the object of his or her devotion.
Grey’s Anatomy S3E13
Sometimes the expected simply pales in comparison to the unexpected. You got to wonder why we cling to our expectations, because the expected is just what keeps us steady. Standing. Still, the expected’s just the beginning, the unexpected is what changes our lives.
never once onsen
i have been asked several times whether i went to the onsen (hot spring) during my visits to japan.
the short answer is no and the long answer is rather humiliating.
as a treat to my faithful readers, i shall tell you about one of the most embarrassing days of my life. a day when i was scarred forever, robbed of my innocent childhood, and damm it- damaged for life.
first of all, i blame my parents.
it was they who allowed me to join the Boy Scouts at 9 years old. it was they who signed the consent form for camping. it was they who exposed me to the shame of public baths.
i was rather apprehensive about my first public bath, but not overtly so. the kids around me were more concerned about the cold water than anyone else, which was good.
so i stripped and i soaped.
it wasn’t long before i heard laughter throughout the bathroom. a evil boy was pointing at my lower half.
most of us were wearing underwear so they weren’t laughing at my little monster. rather, they were laughing at the ferocious beast that covered my bottom.
you see, my evil parents bought me underwear with animal prints while everybody else’s bought plain vanilla white. and it wasn’t cutesy animals. i had a swordfish on the first day and a tiger for the second day. both realistically illustrated, both very fierce, although no one was terrified except me – the wearer and bearer of crests on my ass.
and yes, i had to endure great public humiliation for 2 days. 9 year old boys can be very evil.
so never again public baths. never again animal prints. never again Boy “laughing at my ass” Scouts (A Scout makes friends, establishes and maintain harmonious relations -yeah, right!).
and so never once onsen.
GST hike
the prime minister, on the GST hike:
“Can we do 1 per cent now, and 1 per cent later? The answer is yes. But is it better to take your medicine sooner or stretch it out? I prefer to take my medicine early,”
on the other hand, i prefer to change the doctor.
scottish mate
the member of parliament, irene ng, is getting married. like her, i find the idea of a 62 year old Scottish mate most appealing, especially if she comes with castles and terriers attached.
perhaps when the honorable ms. ng steps down from Singles Connect, she might think of poor lonely men like me and set up a Scottish Connect.
instant messaging
[10:54] a young non-profit worker: how do you keep this up… faint…
[10:55] me: how come so many girls ask me “how do you keep this up?”
conclude
after suffering a negative reaction to a cocksure philosopher-reader to the Straits Times, i have suggested strongly to myself to remove the word “conclude” from my repertoire of words.
i shall try my best to have a renewable, revisable and repentable mind.
water dish
before i leave the house, i’ll put a water dish for milou even though he won’t drink it. i leave it just in case i don’t make it back. at least it will help him survive a little longer.
not being morbid or anything.
that’s the way life is.
Se A Vida É
within minutes of writing the previous post, i knew i had to turn to music for a bit of relief and perhaps salvation.
in data disc 618200, i found plenty of music, but none more precious than Se A Vida É.
it opens with a couple of oohs and ahhs and then Neil Tennant so calmly and soothingly invites us to:
Come outside and see a brand new day
The troubles in your mind will blow away
It’s easy to believe they’re here to stay
But you won’t find them standing in your way
but it’s really the solid percussion that makes you believe. makes you wanna grab your friends, bang open windows and doors and go outside to feel the morning sun. makes you wanna be not you, at least the very next morning.
So don’t search in the stars for signs of love
Look around your life, you’ll find enough
(i’m looking)
and for gloomy friends, this is for you (and me):
Why do you want to sit alone in gothic gloom
Surrounded by the ghosts of love that haunt your room?
Somewhere there’s a different door to open wide
You gotta throw those skeletons out of your closet and come outside
they said the pet shop boys wrote this song to cheer a depressed friend. they’re probably right.
a perfect song. i can’t believe i missed this all these years. this goes really way up in my charts, along those sad and nasty love songs.
that’s the way life is.
sick
“baby, baby, it’s a wild world”
i am sick. which means i can’t read, write and make love (albeit in imaginary, imaginative ways).
all i do nowadays is watch television, feed my dog and get my body to work.
a strange new year this is. i wish yours was more glorious, and less imaginary.
by Takase river
even the trash, accumulated over the New Year, has a sense of order and beauty. noticed the discarded iMac box?
pg. 114
That’s what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another.
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