_Wednesday, August 24, 2005*

i'm B.U.S.Y. beeeezeeeee.

Music-box Ballerina
Hannah E., Ypsilanti, MI

She stands inside her music box,
She dances for all to see,
But the one thing they don't notice -
She's longing to be free.

Thin and gentle, delicate and small,
Her perfection makes them sigh,
She shows them all a smile so bright,
But inside she wants to cry.

Trapped in her box, nowhere to go.
She hasn’t got a choice,
All she longs for is to get out,
But her pain hasn't got a voice.

Her arms are growing weary -
From holding the perfect pose,
Her body's getting tired -
From standing on her toes.

Inside herself she's screaming,
To make them stop the show,
She's tired from performing -
But they can never know.

She stands inside her music box,
She performs for all to see,
A break is all she's asking for,
But wait ... that dancer's ... me.

Colour Blind
John Croot

If you shoud reminise,
Think back to the good old days
When we were kids
Laughter rang out through out the day
Changing your moods from sad to gay

Time has changed my greatest dream
To play again on meadows green
Pretending im happy when im so blue
Is something that id rather not do

Now all of my thoughts have gone colour blind
Children are coloured the darkest green
Laughter is shut off with in me now
Age has made me so colour blind

*- amanda scribbled at 8/24/2005 10:55:00 PM

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_Sunday, August 21, 2005*

pointless. so why bother?

mmm, i initially wanted to base my post on something that hit(figuratively, not literal. >.<) me real hard when i was reading the STs today. but yeah oh well, hardly anyone reads what i type and i've got 3 more sets of amaths prelims to start on. rarrr.

i've lost all hope of studying at home. tata. expo's gonna be my second home from now on... eh, not really. it already was my second home since sec2. those were the fond memories... ahhh well. to whoever who reads this, PLEASE don't INVADE my second home after this. it's MINE... all mineee. hmph.

those stupid lovebirds that my dad just bought are driving my ears nuts. they're a lot stupider than my african grey, which at least knows when to shut up... but those lovebirds... ARGH. they get on my nerves and start pecking on them. especially that yellow one, always the initiator.(ken- this is one bird i don't mind you biting it's head off. BE MY GUEST. maybe you'll be so full that i don't have to bake those brownies (x ) and the only time they ever seem to shut up is late at night... HOW TO STUDY???? they're even louder than the music i'm playing on my ipod and the screaming of my bros... even from behind closed doors and windows off my room at the top floor with them outside my house! they've got powerhouses as lungs... definitely not tiny lil balloons for their size. the noise they make is so shrill and sharp that it simply annoys the crap outta you. (just what on earth was my dad thinking when he bought them? i really wanna know... -.-)

oh yes... as i was typing... ST had this special saturday section on the starving continent. and yeah, i read the whole thing. (i read the papers everyday, whether i'm dead tired or not. i'll mentally die without my daily dose.) the extreme starvation and malnutrition status of Africa was just being placed under a microscope, and the reults were devastatingly ominous. my heart really goes out to all the people there suffering... it really doesn't make sense. not at all... not at all. it got me questioning myself quite a fair bit, but i shan't type it all here. it's a tad too long and a tad too late/early. anyway, it made me feel really guilty cos all this while i've never really thought that much about africa. surely there were the geog case studies in those marian chong textbooks in the chapter under population, but other than memorising those facts... it never really seemed so real. it just seemed like numbers and figures scattered here and there. there simply wasn't any emotion or feeling attached to it. it was just a bland overall summation of facts and figures. it was just...
dead.

they also mentioned about the live aid/ live8 concerts that have been around for 20 years and counting. they only managed to raise a total of S$28mil this year though it was such an international event. just a few pages later in the same segment, headlines in the sports news blasted in caps that chelsea finally got the player they've been bidding for... for a whopping S$78mil. now now, it doesn't seem quite right does it? for the name of entertainment's sake, SEVENTYEIGHTBLOODYMILLIONDOLLARS. forked out by just ONE billionaire who can afford to buy players with his millions and billions of green papers. why, we all can count one, two and three can we? it's ok if you don't know how to. you just need to know the number ONE. it's that simple. all it takes is ONE.(weed, i hope you're not reading this. no offence to chelsea and their players meant.) the cost, according to UN, for buying ONE child in africa ONE food package, is US$80. the ratio seems weird doesn't it? priorities seem very wrong too... can you imagine... if you had the ability to save the lives 780 thousand++ and more just by signing your name ONCE on a sheet of paper, would you do so? i bet it wouldn't hurt much too. there's definitely more from where those green papers came from. the numbers seem so wrong when juxtaposed... too wrong, so wrong that it left me scratching my head. hrm. if only a few of these people actually gave a lil to help, the continent... the whole continent, wouldn't be starving. if only just ONE person stepped up... millions of people would have stand a better chance in surviving past their infant years.

wow what a dream that would be... an entire continent, saved from the treachery of poverty and the torment of starvation. but rich people, are often stingy. so... it'll still remain just ONE dream... that's all it'll ever be.

A dream.

*- amanda scribbled at 8/21/2005 12:44:00 AM

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_Tuesday, August 16, 2005*

i knew it was too good to be true. -.-

ever had that experience that everything was going so well that it felt WEIRD? you know what... it's usually the calm before the storm. i don't get it. why does everything always seem to be going on fine and then a few minutes, hours, or days later, EVERYTHING... not just SOMETHING or SOME THINGS, play hard to get and screw you upside down? it SUCKS when it happens ok. Bleargh. it's just utterly disgustingly irritating.

first, msn signs me out every freaking few minutes. then, my mac(which everyone thought was virtually uncrashable)CRASHES. (note to all - do NOT suan me about this. i'll get even more pissed than i already am.) thirdly, the oddly testLESS week suddenly turned into a TA(timed assignment: c*dar teachers' supposedly 'nicer' sounding version of common tests) galore in just a single day... actually not, in just a matter of milliseconds. and you know what? they only tell you about the testSsSsS less than a single day in advance.

AHHHHHH!!!! this is the shittiest year in ce*ar. sometimes i wonder why i don't choose the easier way... throwing in the towel. i quote sandra's nick: 'feck the world.' school just sucks now. it's just a bloody waste of time... travelling time, sleeping time, revision time, lesson time, tuition time... MY TIME. the only reason that i'm even turning up for school is for the stupid attendence and to save my mom from wasting her time to write and come up with stupid reasons why i'm not present in school, though i know she'd gladly oblige spending a few minutes scribbling on some fulscap paper than waking up at 6am to send me to school and back on some days... oh to save paper too. too many trees getting burnt.

auds and ah ma think i'm crazy. am i crazy? i'm not sure... it seems inevitable. why should i even care about getting good results? why bother? for a smoother path to some high flying, high paying, not to mention high stress level that comes with the package? HA! all the fuss for some stupid cocked up paper chase. i'm pathetic. maybe, maybe, eff it la... i'm just crazy.

after 9.6years in this stupid rat race, it's just hard to step down.

i don't feel like coming online anymore. bye.

*- amanda scribbled at 8/16/2005 06:05:00 PM

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_Friday, August 12, 2005*

how i wish i could shut out everything and sleep my life away...

ah well, but i can't can i?

haha. the same question keeps going around. are you gonna retake? should i? should i??
hrm...

i hate amaths. doing amaths papers makes me feel like such an idiot. i'm so tempted to drop it. it's just frigging pissing me off so much that i just feel like scribbling all over my paper. ARGH. why can't i like amaths the way i love emaths? !#@#$%^&@ auds and ah ma can testify on how pretty my amaths papers are. lovely white paint everywhere.

i don't like CCHS(main). their papers give me headaches. and i don't like headaches.

prelims are less than 2 weeks away. wish me luck cos i'm gonna need it.

i feel very random today.

AND CAN YOU JUST SHUT UP?! IT'S NOT THAT HARD TO SEE THAT I HAVE NO INTENTION OF ANSWERING YOU AT ALL. SO PLEASE SAVE YOUR BREATH AND KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. ARGH.

i shall go back to feeling like a complete doofus now. thank you so much for your kind attention.

*- amanda scribbled at 8/12/2005 07:04:00 PM

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_Monday, August 08, 2005*

He works wonder especially through 'SHORT' and 'DIMINUTIVE' people!

F.O.P (Festival Of Praise) rocks! despite the hours of queuing and SOMEONE snatching my papers away and the nice lil tan i got, it was all worth the effort. so many people were there! bralala, auds, yunrui, reubs, wuyuan, yada yada yada. it's so good to see so many accepting Christ, on both friday and yest. =)

the message was super funny and powerful too. it shows that God does His work in many ways that we can't comprehend, we just have to have complete faith in Him, and then pray that it will all work out in the end. to quote Steve Jobs(CREATOR OF APPLE- haha! kenneth lui, see! i know who the founder of apple is k!) from a speech he gave in Stanford University on their Grad Night: "Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust in something(in every case, meaning trust in God) - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever - because believing that the dots will connect down to the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference."

THAT was part of one of the most inspiring speeches that i've ever read. so back to my point, God's will will be done according to his plan, so sometimes we don't know what on earth we're doing cos we're too shortsighted and myopic to look at the whole picture.

'don't talk, don't argue, JUST PRAY.'

i can't wait for the next FOP. (P.S. BAY! lend me those delirious? albums!! i already returned your book 'The Child Called It.' )

*- amanda scribbled at 8/08/2005 10:11:00 AM

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_Sunday, August 07, 2005*

The Doom Generation

anybody has any suggestions on keeping cats away? like hang garlic, have a wooden stake around, and buying a doggy?

haha! entirely copied and pasted from this really interesting article that managed to catch my attention. read only for entertainment's purpose. but it's got something in it that catches my eye... how it seems so real...


In honor of 'The Island,' we look at Hollywood’s history of exploring our bleak future.
By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

We have met the enemy and it is us.

In "War of the Worlds," humanity's enemies came from out there. But, more often, in Hollywood's history of the future, the most insidious threats come from right here on the planet Earth. I'm not just talking about the cinema of mutually assured destruction and post-apocalyptic life, but films that explore a future devastated by pollution, overpopulation, genetic tampering, biological warfare and technology run amok. And why not? Movies are poor prognosticators of things to come but excellent barometers of the contemporary zeitgeist. At their best, they are mirrors of the concerns debated in our own times, distorted, exaggerated and pushed to (at times) apocalyptic extremes.

We've seen it in recently "The Day After Tomorrow," a survival thriller that spins global-warming fears into an apocalyptic disaster of weather gone wild. Now comes "The Island," a thriller about a future where human clones are kept for spare parts for the rich and powerful. The film is popcorn action, but the foundation springs from the contemporary anxieties and ethical dilemmas surrounding the strides made in cloning. It's not as if these films hold any answers, but just bringing up the questions is enough to connect to the social conversation.


Our Polluted Planet


"Blade Runner" (1982)
More than 20 years later, and the future still has never looked so grim: Ridley Scott's visionary reworking of Philip K. Dick's novel is a film noir set in the perpetual night (smog has blotted out the skies) of a continent-wide slum of urban sprawl. The only escape from this urban blight is the promise of the off-world frontier advertised on floating billboards. Harrison Ford is the loner detective hunting down escaped "replicants" (slave clones with genetically stamped short shelf lives) in the polyglot cultural stew of the rain-slicked streets. Much of Dick's original story is discarded; however the densely realized, impoverished street-level culture, built on the bones of the past that Scott creates around his futuristic detective story, says far more about his fears of the future than the script does.

For further research, see:
"Silent Running" (1972) -- The premise stretches credulity to say the least -- the future Earth is so polluted and land so valuable that forests are sustained as floating ecological zoos in space (just what is Earth doing for oxygen?) -- but it makes for a nice ecological metaphor.


The Late, Great, Overpopulated Earth


"Soylent Green" (1973)
Charlton Heston is a blithely corrupt blue-collar cop in the overpopulated New York of 2022, where the rich wall themselves off from the increasingly desperate population, pollution chokes the planet, food riots are commonplace, and personal space is a luxury. In this paved-over environment -- crammed with slum apartments and teeming crowds one spark away from anarchy -- suicide has become big business. Heston's murder conspiracy revolves around a secret about the synthetic food that gives the film its title and inspires the film's classic, climactic line: "Soylent Green is …" Don't worry; I won't spoil it for you.

For further research, see:
"Logan's Run" (1976) -- In the future, life is beautiful … but you only have 30 years to enjoy it. Old age is but a myth in a society that puts an early expiration date on life.


Life After the Apocalypse


"Things to Come" (1936)
H.G. Wells adapted his own novel "The Shape of Things to Come" for his one and only screenplay. The film is clunky and stilted, but it says a lot about its own time. Made in the long shadow of World War I and amid the rise of fascism in Europe, it pits science and enlightenment against the forces of war in a struggle for mankind's destiny. More memorable than Wells' ambitious, archly serious philosophizing are the fantastic futuristic designs by director William Cameron Menzies: On one hand, there's the glass and chrome and sparkling white surfaces of sleek art deco in our idealized (if sterile) utopia. But Menzies sets it against the brutal barbarism of the bombed-out rubble that awaits us if we don't change our self-destructive ways. After Hiroshima, science was never quite so pure.

For further research, see:
"A Boy and His Dog" (1975) -- Survival trumps romance in this feral look at the mercenary post-apocalyptic future and the impotent re-creation of "the good old days."


Better Living Through Genetic Engineering


"Parts: The Clonus Horror" (1979)
Twenty-six years before Michael Bay spliced Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson in the mega-budget "The Island," Robert S. Fiveson covered the same philosophical territory in this savvy little paranoid thriller. A cadre of Olympic-caliber athletes raised in an isolated compound discover they are actually clones of the rich and powerful, bred into a state of blissful ignorance and ultimately harvested for their organs. Even more insidious than the portrait of genetic science as a breeding ground for spare parts is the unsettling atmosphere of willing oppression: The human clones, bred to be stupid, blindly obedient and unquestioning of authority, become a sickly satirical parody of the free world. It's more topical today, in the age of stem-cell research and the national dialogue of the moral repercussions of cloning, than it was when it was made.

For further research, see:
"Gattaca" (1997) -- In a world where genetic recipes provide the destinies of every newborn, ordinary guy Ethan Hawke proves that there is no gene for the human spirit as he passes for one of the genetic elite.


Designer Diseases


"12 Monkeys" (1995)
Leave it to Terry Gilliam to direct the first-ever Hollywood blockbuster based on a low-budget experimental short film (Chris Marker's "La Jetee"). In the future, mankind lives in underground bunkers to escape a plague cooked up in a lab and unleashed upon humanity. A rattled Bruce Willis is the troubled traveler sent back from the ravaged future to uncover the mysterious warning of "the Army of the 12 Monkeys" and track the disease back to the source ... if only he can escape the psych ward. Gilliam fills the millennial disaster movie with mind games, time-travel conundrums and dense, delirious imagery that creates a mad poetry.

For further research, see:
"28 Days Later" -- One bite from a monkey infected with "Rage" and Great Britain is awash in a zombie plague.


Machines Rule the Earth


"The Matrix" (1999)
The dictum "Know thyself" is taken to the level of computer code in the Wachowski brothers' digital dystopia of man vs. machine, a battle taken to its primal and metaphysical extremes simultaneously. Humanity lives in a virtual-reality dream while its bodies are enslaved to a computer hard-wired to the planet and dedicated to its own self preservation. The Wachowskis borrow from comic books, Hong Kong action films, cyber-punk fiction and every American science-fiction conspiracy and tech-noir thriller of the past two decades for this stylish, kinetically dynamic cyber-thriller. The philosophy and rules of engagement blur in the frenzy of bullets and kung fu, while the sheer kinetic energy drives the film beyond logic.

For further research, see:
"Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970) -- The father of all digital dystopia films: a super-computer that makes HAL 9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey" look like a laptop with attitude enslaves the human race. For its own protection, of course.


Opiates of the Masses


"Death Race 2000" (1975)
In the year 2000 hit-and-run is not a felony; it's the national pastime in this hilariously nasty sci-fi satire. David Carradine (under a black cape and leather helmet) is Death Race Champion Frankenstein, defending his title on a cross-country race to run over as many pedestrians as possible, while revolutionaries try to sabotage the race and overthrow the despotic president who sponsors the savage sport. Shot on the cheap by director Paul Bartel for producer Roger Corman, this ragged production overcomes budgetary restraint with blackhearted humor, inspired moments of B-movie spectacle, and tongue-in-cheek swipes at the media and circus of extreme sports. Thoughtful it ain't, but it's far more fun than the pretentious polemic "Rollerball" of the same year.

For further research, see:
"Fahrenheit 451" (1966) -- Literature is outlawed, firemen burn books to prevent the populace from thinking, and Big Brother is a TV that never shuts off.


Wild in the Streets


"Escape From New York" (1981)
The premise is irresistible: Manhattan has been walled off and turned into the world's biggest high-security prison, and Liberty Island is the guard station. Into these mean streets walks a hissing, eye-patched Kurt Russell (playing a low-budget Clint Eastwood) to free the American president (Donald Pleasance) from the clutches of Isaac Hayes. It's pure B movie all the way, but under the dark, garbage-strewn streets and behind the colorful personalities is a sardonic crack about the state of modern urban America and the fears of increasing crime and poverty.

For further research, see:
"Robocop" (1987) -- Paul Verhoeven's corporate Frankenstein tale connects the dots between crime, corruption and capitalism in the modern business world.


Big Brother is Watching


"Brazil" (1985)
Terry Gilliam's dark, dense, ingenious science-fiction fantasy is like "1984" rewritten by Monty Python: an absurdist nightmare of Kafka-esque dimensions where victims of institutional torture are billed for their own interrogations. Into this maze of bureaucratic incompetence and faceless authority wanders wide-eyed, love-struck everyman Jonathan Pryce, an accidental rebel who discovers that any cog in the machine is replaceable. Rule is not by iron fist, but by simple distraction and meaningless tangles of red tape, which is enough to drive anyone to escape. Revolution is one response to such oppression and indifferent tyranny. Madness is another.

For further research, see:
"Starship Troopers" (1997) -- Paul Verhoeven turns Robert Heinlein's intergalactic platoon story into a weird war movie with an undercurrent of fascism: the control of propaganda and the blind obedience of driven, patriotic soldiers are the costs of victory.


Yuppie is a Conspiracy From Outer Space


"They Live" (1988)
In the near future, a laconic, out-of-work loner (ex-wrestler Roddy Piper) wanders into Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles upon a secret: There are aliens among us, and they've rigged the economy to keep us down! John Carpenter's bizarre satire of consumerism, Reaganomics and alien conspiracies only pretends to be an invasion film; the entrepreneurs from outer space are merely a black-humored, "Twilight Zone"-inflected metaphor in Carpenter's jaundiced look at the American Dream in the modern world. The real aliens are much closer to home. This radical rebuke of a social policy that stacks the deck in favor of the haves over the have-nots is the strangest mix of political satire, social commentary and knock-down, drag-out action ever to hit the screens.

For further research, see:
Nope, there's nothing out there like this.

Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for the Internet Movie Database and is a regular contributor to Amazing Stories, Asian Cult Cinema, Greencine.com, and StaticMultimedia.com. His reviews and essays are featured in the recently released "Scarecrow Movie Guide."

*- amanda scribbled at 8/07/2005 12:06:00 AM

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