You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2005.
gorsh, it’s been a while hasn’t it? haven’t been blogging much because there hasn’t been much that i want to say. nothing concrete, anyways… so yeah. it’s time for one of those point-form posts where nothing really links together, i suppose.
1) Bleach is really an excellent anime, despite my prior cynicism. i think the art direction is really good, and the seiyuu are fantastic… :P i might be utterly biased, (not-to-mention, really out of touch with manga), but i feel that kubo-sensei just takes the typical shounen manga configuration and stereo-types and just sort of subverts em all with really kooky humour. i just love the whole concept of shinigamis and the 13 captains… they’re all so lovable, and i love how kubo uses all these little situations and conversations to reveal so, so much about their relationship. :D and i’m so torn between ichiruki and renjiruki… ;____; why, why kubo?! the torment!
2) i feel so old now trying to manoever my way round manga communities. :P looking at all the bleach and naruto sites that run like well-oiled, download-providing machines… i mean… i sound like what’s-an-image-tag-Jason, but O___O how… incredible. what happened to the good old days where people just focussed on putting information and images on a site? now there’s scanlations (raw, translated, irc, bittorrent, or direct download), episodes immediately after they air (raw or subtitled, bittorrented or direct downloaded), OSTs, radio shows (Bleach B Station rocks!)… *_____*
3)i miss my manga! scanlations are fantastic, and they update you on the latest plot developments as they happen (no more moping for about 2-3 months for the next tankouban to pop out)… but nothing beats holding a tankouban and curling up on the lazy jane for a good read. and i have so much to buy in singapore! the FMA series, Bleach, and everything i’ve missed since i’ve left… -wail- and i’m missing the 20% kino sale now! arrrrgh!
4) been having really hectic weeks… what with rushing readings, and rushing essays, then raining visiting… ;__; now things have sorta quietened down a bit, but paradise lost is so hard to wade through. it’s exciting, and lovely, but so… long. aiiie. and next weekend i’ll be down in london, hopefully to catch The Mousetrap, and a play at the Globe theatre, and a musical (ewan mcgregor is starring in guys and dolls on west end!) oh, and tori amos in concert on saturday night. XD
5) eric langley liked my 11pm-6am rush-job of an essay. go me! then downside: “how can you give me an essay like that and not expect me to call you to speak up more in class?” ARGH. public speaking=bane of my life. and now i feel like the next essay i churn out is to be absolutely brilliant. unfortunately, my originality (or whatever semblence of it i kindasortamaybe possessed) has decided to desert me now. arrrgh. i’d like to do something on the duchess of malfi and tis pity she’s a whore (which is one of my favouritest things ever, the silly melodramatic thing that it is, :P) but i need me a thesis. rawwwwr. D:
6) erk. i seriously need a lot of practice in anatomy and perspectives. :( long way to go, i have. be artist, i never shall.
7) not so bad, the new star wars movie is. hayden christensen, a terrible actor is. and er, for some reason, the way the actors deliver lines about younglings cracks me up. i think i may be sick and perverse. but it’s just so terrfically melodramatic.
8) back to Paradise Lost, i go.
as a non-rufus related aside: lately i’ve been reading a lot of high profile singaporean bloggers’ blogs… and it’s mildly disturbing that somehow now blogging has become this huge exhibition (the big strip tease, if you will) for the peanut-crunching crowds. i mean… i won’t deny that part of why i blog stems from mildly exhibitionist tendencies… (if not why not get a private lj or something?) but to post all sorts of rabble-rousing inflammatory things on your blog to get the attention and hits, or to register your site for all sorts of popularity rankings… is just… disturbing. to me, at least. and thanks to xiaxue and co. people are now treating blogging as some quick if-you-can’t-be-famous-be-infamous strategy… and it’s just such a turn off. >__<
am back from rufus wainwright’s concert! and it was fantabulous! i’ll just do a brief recap of his playlist:
1) Crumb by Crum
2) Peach Trees
3) Hometown Waltz
4) Vibrate
5) Grey Gardens
6) The Art Teacher
7) This Love Affair
8) The One You Love
9) Gay Messiah
10) Want
11) Beautiful Child
12) Memphis Skyline
13) Hallelujah
14) Across the Universe
15) Beauty Mark
16) Little Sister
17) Dinner at Eight
18) Waiting for a Dream
19) Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk
20) 14th Street
Encore:
21) Old Whore’s Diet
22) O What a World
23) I Don’t Know What It Is
Second Encore:
24) Pretty Things
25) California
Interesting point: when typing song no 12, instead of hallelujah, i actually typed out ‘jeff buckley’. strange but true. the subconscious is a powerful thing, no?
Interesting point 2: according jiamin, we spent less than a pound per song. though i’d say rufus’s encore would make the ticket price worth its weight in gold.
so the show is opened by this one woman act called joan is a policewoman… her name really is joan, i think. and she got the policewoman bit from a television show. she’s got a really charming voice, with so many variations. sometimes she sounds like a softer, martha wainwright redux, sometimes a rich bluesy jazz voice… with tori-esque lyrics. :) and she’s got this charming droll speaking voice… opening the show with, “hi i’m joan, what’s yours” in a mock flirtatious manner. joan later doubles as a back-up singer for rufus, and i suppose that’s how her martha wainwright redux voice helps to project the ghost of missing martha onto the stage. :P
then of course rufus turns up and he’s absolutely brilliant! i wished i’d brought a camera… but he looked absolutely charming in this purple shirt with white stripes, and pinstriped black pants, with shiny black leather shoes, and socks striped blue and black. :D and to top it all of, he has a shiny little diamond brooch on his right side. he admitted he was napping earlier, which shows, cos his hair was completely dishevelled, and his eyes bleary and drugged up. in a cute way, of course. his nose was unnaturally red though. strange.
and his banter was really… well, charming, i suppose would be the way to describe it. lazy, drawling, deadpan. he first started by complaining about the terrible yorkshire puddings in yorkshire, then after the one you love, befor ehe launched into gay messiah, he was like, “I think…” -dramatic pause- “Henry the VIII, if he saw… Tony Blair, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Prince of Wales… attend the Pope’s funeral, he’d be mighty pissed.” (i think mighty pissed is my own phrasing, can’t remember exactly what he said, but the gist is there…) then rufus went on to talk about how at the pope’s funeral and reelection, nothing is said about major issues like AIDS in africa… etc etc… so he launched into [quote] the protest part of this show [/quote]
then the next time he bantered was after across the universe (pity he didn’t share about the relation between him and jeff buckley… whom memphis skyline was about, and whose cover of leonard cohen’s hallelujah was in turn covered by rufus), where he talked about his family… “father, mommy, and sissy” and did the three songs about each member… beauty mark about his mom, little sister (self-explanatory), and dinner at eight, which he spoke up for his father and reiterated that despite everything, loudon wainwright was a great father and [rufus] loved him. awwww.
and then after the first encore, rufus and co. came back to do old whore’s diet, which was my favourite song on want 2 after i first heard it, btw. and in old whore’s diet there’s this bit where the music starts escalating and there’s accelerando, then rufus and his band start to strip. no kidding. and the male band member’s basically strip into g-trings, with the exception of the keyboardist who chose to keep a singlet on. oh, and the guitarist who went all pirates on us and put on a bandana, a wig, an eyepatch, and attached a parrot to the bridge og his guitar. XD and the female backup singers strip into knickers. and rufus, sweet, dear, rufus, strips into this shiny g-string, and changes into red pumps (a la dorothy) and fairy wings (complete with glitter), adorned with a sash that says “Miss York”, a tiara, and a fairy wand. and he sings old whore’s diet… in a deliciously campy manner. awwwww.
and then at the climax of the song, the lights go mad and keep flashing, so the effect is that you’re seeing everything on stage in this wild orgy of still black and white snapshots, or half naked bodies gyrating and convulsing on stage. it’s a gorgeous, hilarious, campy ryot.
and then the lights go out at the end of the song, and when the lights come on, rufus no longer has wings. instad he and his band have witch hats and capes. and they sing the song “O What a World”, and rufus does it in such a cloying manner, and there’s this line in the song about straight men, and rufus goes in an aside, “especially those i’ve slept with!” and then at the end of the song… they all twirl in the capes and melt into a puddle.
and this is the ultimate coup de theatre, is it not? all the wizard of oz imagery just culminating in a ridiculous metaphor so nebulous it annihilates itself in its signification! (yes lit is bad for you.)
and it’s just such. delightful. fun.
then rufus and the other’s put on bathrobes… and rufus goes, “this is our one flew over the cuckoo’s nest attire. -sees that the drummer didn’t tie up his robe, points to him- and there’s one that hasn’t crossed over completely yet.”
and…. they just sing and do the second encore… and it. was. wonderful!
and i got to meet rufus! at the stage door… and get his autograph. and talk to him! though that’s another matter entirely… and i’ll blog more about it tomorrow.
and happy yet hollowed simultaneously. maybe tomorrow it will be all clear.
pushing angst temporarily aside, or rather, using angst as a fuel for creative output… i present to you conceptual sketches to the coma story (what a funny way to refer to it) that i may never properly draw… but for now… i would like to try and put it in sequential art. try, being the operative word. anyways, presenting grace (no relation whatsoever to the grace i know. ;)
and grace and jude in a sketchy movie postery shot. >___<
suggestions for a title anyone? (i woke up and one of us was crying)?
perhaps the older we grow the more insular we become… no one is obliged to socialise with you anymore, after all. i know i’ve talked to cui about this before; how the first day of work will always be mortifying because you don’t know anyone and no one is obliged to be your friend. and as we get to university, and more scattered across various classes and commitments, the less we see of each other, and i suppose the less of our lives we can share. no more class table gossip, no more quiet breaks at odd times where everyone just lazes around and is silent and happy and content, no more joint recess breaks where the class is legally obliged to sit together at the risk of extreme ostracization.
yet now… even when there are chances to get together, to talk with friends of yore, or friends you don’t meet anymore… there are times i just want to fold myself up and say ‘no more of this’ and curl up alone and just sleep because haunting msn is just too draining sometimes. or i find the sanctuary of my room increasingly comforting. no one can hurt me here after all, not you with your brusqueness and lack of interest, not you with your implicit judgements, not you with your condescension, or you… who above all should understand.
i am tired of socialising. i am tired of feelings and sensitivity. i am tired of baggage. i am tired of swallowing up ailin until she doesn’t exist any more than in your minds.
i just watched A Very Long Engagement which is another movie by jean-pierre jeunet, the same guy who did amelie. and wow. i wasn’t expecting it to be this good, after reading all the reviews, and was pretty sceptical about audrey tautou’s quirkiness working in a war movie– but it turned out really well. quirky and sweet and touching and horrific all at once.
and i have to say that i’m completely in love with marion cotillard now. she’s the girl who acted as Sophie in Jeux d’Enfants (or love me if you dare, as it was translated), and i never really thought she was all that attractive… but she pulled off the femme fatale role of a homicidal corsican prostitute (called tina lambardi to top it off), and she looked damned good doing it. she totally roxors my soxors.
sigh. marion cotillard, ludivine sagnier, emmanuelle beart. these damned sexy french women.
dear kakashi-sensei,
hi, will you marry me?
kthx.
love,
me xoxo
p.s. no, naruto will not be allowed at the wedding.
-grin- though i do not think that anyone will really follow what i say (heh) do check this out and listen to kelvin and vote for him. :) the force is strong in this one. get your friends in on the act too. ;)
and anyway, i’m glad we had that whole conversation. you’re still a very special friend and i do care a lot for you and hope you know that. :)
in other news, 1) scott savol (aka fat fuck or FaFu for short) has finally, finally been put out of his misery. huzzah!
2) into 40th episode of naruto. and sakura still bugs me. -___- and we need more kakashi! though i have seen outbursts of gaara love on two separate friend’s blogs… i find myself still unmoved by the blood-thirsty angst bunny. oy vey.
quiz-o-mania! for the religiously-confused!
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You scored as Buddhism. Your beliefs most closely resemble those of Buddhism. Do more research on Buddhism and possibly consider becoming Buddhist, if you are not already.
In Buddhism, there are Four Noble Truths: (1) Life is suffering. (2) All suffering is caused by ignorance of the nature of reality and the craving, attachment, and grasping that result from such ignorance. (3) Suffering can be ended by overcoming ignorance and attachment. (4) The path to the suppression of suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path, which consists of right views, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right-mindedness, and right contemplation. These eight are usually divided into three categories that base the Buddhist faith: morality, wisdom, and samadhi, or concentration. In Buddhism, there is no hierarchy, nor caste system; the Buddha taught that one’s spiritual worth is not based on birth.
Which religion is the right one for you? (new version) |
| Your Birthdate: April 16 |
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Your birth on the 16th day of the month gives a sense of loneliness and generally the desire to work alone.
You are relatively inflexible, and insist on your being independent. You need a good deal of time to rest and to meditate. You are introspective and a little stubborn. Because of this, it may not be easy for you to maintain permanent relationships, but you probably will as you are very much into home and family. This birth day inclines to interests in the technical, the scientific, and to the religious or the unknown realm of spiritual explorations. The date gives you a tendency to seek unusual approaches and makes your style seem a little different and unique to those around you. Your intuition is aided by the day of your birth, but most of your actions are bedded in logic, responsibility, and the rational approach. You may be emotional, but have a hard time expressing these emotions. Because of this, there may be some difficulty in giving or receiving affection. |
hahahahha. if i had gotten these results just about a month back, i would have thought, no! this is so. untrue. but now… especially since yesterday, i’ve come to realise that i have the emotional capacity of a… teapot. i keep brewing all this huge emotions inside, but ultimately what comes out is only a teeny er, trickle.
let’s see… true, true, true, sigh true, BIGsigh true, er… lit is technical? and er… the eternal soul is somewhat important to me i guess. even if not for heaven, but for myself.
ahem… then er, yeah! i am pretty unique, yes i am a bizarre blend of heart and brain, and i never realised this till now but yeah. i have BIG problems expressing emotion. O_O and sigh. it does translate into being unable to be visibly loving in a relationship. >___<
