yjblog

Part of* my iPod playlist at the end of every month.

(Yes, I edit these and backdate them, I really can’t remember to update this exactly at the end of every month. Do I look like I have nothing to do nowadays? Uh, don’t answer.)

- Away from the Sun, 3 Doors Down
- Caring is Creepy, The Shins
- Don’t Panic, Coldplay
- Ersatz, Fischerspooner
- Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, Beck
- First Week, Graham Colton Band
- In the Waiting Line, Zero Seven
- Lebanese Blonde, Thievery Corporation
- Let Go, Frou Frou
- Light and Day, Polyphonic Spree
- Love will Come Through, Travis
- Memory, Sugarcult
- Mr Blue Sky, ELO
- New Slang, The Shins
- Only One, Yellowcard
- Orange Sky, Alexi Murdoch
- Ordinary, Train
- Run, Snow Patrol
- Such Great Heights, Iron Wine
- Such Great Heights, The Postal Service
- Vindicated, Dashboard Confessional
- Worn Me Down, Rachael Yamagata
- You’ve Got Maelstrom, Blockhead

* Blah blah yadda yadda.

Just a year ago, I was in San Diego with Yidong and Logan (tee hee) at Comic-Con International, soaking in the distinctly fanboyish excitement of my very first major comics convention (Oakland a couple of years prior was comparatively minuscule).

Browsing through this year’s Eisner Award nominees, I came across some interesting stuff. But first, a crappy photo I took from last year’s Eisner Awards…

Best Short Story: I love Gaiman’s work and all, but I haven’t read anything quite as amazing as Derek Kirk Kim’s Same Difference. Maybe it’s the drawings of the Bay Area or that the story starts out in a pho restaurant bringing back the deluge of college-year memories. Read the Time review of the book, or see for yourself at lowbright.com.

Best Serialised Story: I wish I’d read Greg Rucka’s work (or, for that matter, the only thing not written by Brian Michael Bendis nor Rucka). But I thought both stories were well-deserving of the nomination (the final Alias arc, and the Daredevil one where he beats the living shit out of everyone who pissed him off).

Best Continuing Series: I like 100 Bullets and all, but any story that makes me re-read every single collection up to the latest story each time I buy a new graphic novel has some serious overplotting issues. Though that’s really not a bad thing.

Best Limited Series: Very surprisingly impressed by Arrowsmith (Kurt Busiek, Carlos Pacheco) and Superman: Red Son (Mark Millar, Dave Johnson/Andrew Robinson) this year.

Best Graphic Album - New: Oooh Blankets. And Persepolis. And others I’ve yet to be able to afford. Yay.

Best Graphic Album - Reprint: To the bastard(s) who bought Palomar before I could get it on discount at Kino — you bastards!!

Best Penciller/Inker or Team: Holy shit, Tan Eng Huat? The dude’s from Malaysia, so major representation props for Southeast Asian comics. Love his style, though really not as much as, say, John Cassaday’s.

Enough comics geekness for today, I think. Goodnight.

So at NDP, I usually sit above the grandstand at the 55ft area with the dinky little vidcam (wetting its pants in fear at being beaten up by the huge-ass Mediacorp vidcam twenty times its size), peacefully recording/reading/being bored. Sometimes I watch the performance rehearsals I’ve seen maybe ten times before, occasionally I deafen myself with the full volume on my iPod so as to avoid listening to the choreographers yell “Everyone needs to be put in their part, ok? That boy over there! Run faster!” and generally give themselves very high blood pressure.

One time, though, during the Boon Lay sequence Wings to Soar (yes, again with the complainies about that piece), the choreographer’s about to pop a significant number of blood vessels trying to get the kids not to “swing their arms” while walking, and of course some kid decides to be all cool and contemptuous (bravo, little dude) and swings his arms like an epileptic runner.

To which the choreographer yells into the microphone “THAT BOY OVER THERE! DON’T TRY TO BE FUNNY!”

At that point, I began to realise exactly how much that statement pisses me off. I also had to fight the urge to throw something really heavy — say, the aforementioned twenty-ton Mediacorp camera — at the choreographer standing below. “Don’t try to be funny?” Kids all over Singapore have been told exactly that for years and years — NSFs too, but nevermind that for now — and what does it accomplish? Exactly what it was meant to: mindless subservience at the cost of creativity and individuality.

I’m certain I’m not the only person who’s noticed how humourless Singaporeans tend to be. Maybe I’m generalising, no matter. But I think that years and years of “don’t try to be funny” (not just the sentence, the inherent attitude behind it manifested in other forms) have made an incredibly boring people, whose most celebrated technology firm calls itself “Creative” and then proceeds to sell the most blatant iPod ripoff one can produce without being sued.

Is this what our country really is? Who are these adults that try to quash any creative expression that doesn’t suit their needs, and at the same time demands creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship from its young? And the part that scares me the most: as a teacher/civil servant in general, am I doomed to eventually become one of these humourless adult singaporeans?

Maybe I just really, really don’t like that segment of the show, eh.

OMFG NEW IPODS

It’ll probably be all over the Apple web site by tomorrow, but… wow, I want to get a 40G one for US$399. Shit.

I am such a drooling fanboy for Steve Jobs’ genius.

Also, I can’t stop listening to the previously mentioned “Such Great Heights” by The Postal Service. Electronica-indie-pop is probably the best way to describe it. I might even buy their album for non-crappy versions of the other songs (”Sleeping In and “Nothing Better” especially).

I have a particular colleague whose blog, amusing grammatical nonsensicality aside, consists of a lot of “sianzz i hate NDP sigh hehe sianzz… lol i hate SIS… Y mi sianZ.” Which gets pretty annoying to read (though he doesn’t do that whole alternate upper- and lower-case letter tHiNgIe, that pisses me off ultimately), but I bear with it for the hilarious grammar.

Uh, anyway, today got NDP NE Show. sigh sianzz i hate ndp, etc.

Actually it was great. As horrendously cynical as I can be about NDP and the nationalist propaganda they feed us during the show (the oh-so-dramatic-sounding “peace has been our bosom friend for too long” (see note 1) Wings To Soar (note 2) bit takes the cake), but today there was a stadium full of happy 11-year old kids obviously having a great time watching the show. And there’s really not much cynicism you can generate out of hearing laughing excited kids enjoying themselves.

Anyway, the Garden State trailer gives and gives. The latest album/artiste I’ve tried because I watched the movie’s internet trailer is Give Up, by The Postal Service. The song from the soundtrack is “Such Great Heights” which I can’t get enough of. The rest of the album’s looking good too, yay — it’s a very listenable electronic pop beat, like a lighter Fischerspooner but with hauntingly poetic lyrics.

Meef, so tired though.

Note 1: I was thinking I could do a better voice-over, until I remembered that line and realised I’d degenerate into giggling fits whenever I said it, so I guess not.

Note 2: Am I not supposed to talk about this before the actual day? Well, ha!

Again with the links:

MediaCorp to restrict use of hostage footage in news coverage [channelnewsasia.com]

Great. Singaporean media subversion. I’m not a fan of watching beheadings or anything, but… doing this because they do not “want to help extremists further their cause?” I mean, sure, the Philippines giving in to the terrorists’ hostage demands sets a nasty example for other potential kidnappers, but it did also (presumably) save the life of one man through popular pressure.

Then again, that’s two separate issues, the second of which is much less clear-cut. The censorship, however, reeks of political agenda… but what doesn’t here?

On duty today. Highlight of the day was reading two years’ worth of Hitman, that ultraviolent DC series by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. The military references actually make a bit more sense now then before, no surprises there. Still some of the best stuff I’ve read in ages. Also no surprise there. Where the hell are my other issues?!

Thank you, Senator McCain, for making sense of all this partisan nonsense.

McCain: Same-sex Marriage Ban is Un-Republican [cnn.com]

Everytime I read an article relating to the issue, I get riled by Bush’s defence of the amendment (of the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriages): that “it is necessary to defend the institution of marriage from ‘activist judges.’” How about defending the institution of innocent lives from praetorian oil-mongers?

There goes a rather blissful week-long break (last Tuesday to today, discounting Saturday spent at the National Stadium).

What have I accomplished in this time?
- Eaten a lot of chocolate. Oops.
- Met up with some of those skolah-types I’d lost touch with for a couple of months. From what they say, the civil service sounds nasty as all hell. Can’t wait. Also drank again for the first time in… a year? When did I become so dry?
- Rediscovered my distaste for driving in Singapore. What happened to wanting to get in my car for a peaceful drive around the area to work off some stress? Nowadays the thought of driving is enough to stress me out to want to, umm, go for a peaceful drive to work off some stress. Quandary alert.
- Sent Powerbook for repair, again. Thank goodness for 3-year AppleCare Protection Plan and the damned cool-looking hard drive enclosure now with all my data backed up in a 160GB drive (nevermind goodness, thanks Steve for that).

Albums I’m listening to:

	Details, Frou Frou: Can’t get enough of that song, “Let Go,” from the Garden State soundtrack. Which is probably my next most anticipated movie of the year after Spider-Man 2 (and maybe right before Harold & Kumar, but man, they’ll never release a stoner flick here).
	The Hour of Bewilderbeast, Badly Drawn Boy From the dude who did the oh-so-pretty About A Boy soundtrack. Maybe it’s just the feelings and the company at the time, but I’d never enjoyed a soundtrack to a Hugh Grant movie more.
	Seed, Afro Celts On Mal’s recommendation. Apparently mixes “Irish music, dance floor grooves, West African percussion, and the kora” (Amazon.com). Dictionary.com defines kora as “Water cock. A large gallinule (Gallicrex cristatus) native of Australia, India, and the East Indies. In the breeding season the male is black and has a fleshy red caruncle, or horn, on the top of its head.” I guess whether music comes from chickens isn’t important when the stuff is so listenable.

While editing this my dad’s Compaq laptop decided to do the exact same crashy-mash thing as the PowerBook I’d just sent in, except with the more familiar blue screen of death instead of “You need to reboot your computer” in four languages. Maybe it’s me.