In Continuum.

Torture Movies

We all have our own definitions of movies that are torturous. The term 'torture' comes from the same root word as distortion, or twisting. In modern definition, it means anything that causes us to have physical or mental sufferings one way or another. With that said, there are a multitude of things that can create the same effects on us, both physically and mentally as mentioned before. The sound of nails being scratched over a chalkboard for example, the sound of pigs being slaughtered in the slaughterhouse, or even the thought of injection at the local clinic. As long as it makes you feel uncomfortable, it is torturous. That is also the case for movies as well, a medium that we are familiar and have been accustomed to. The medium has been in existence since the early 1900s, and has been in existence and flourished over the century. From those silent movies to movies with written dialogues on black screens, to those black and white movies and slowly to the colored ones we see today. Films have come a long way since its beginning, and so has the genre of movies over the years. The truth is though, there has yet to be a new genre of film ever since the genre of Mockumentary was created by director Rob Reiner in the mid-eighties - a kind of documentary that contains fictional facts, and are often comedic in nature.

But a new kind of movie has been in existence, hidden amongst the banner of other genres that we have yet to discover. Innocently, we take in this genre of film without knowing its lasting effects on us. The side effects may not be immediate, but every time we watch these movies, they have their effects on our lives one way or another. The films I am talking about are these so-called "Torture Films", a genre of movie that has risen in popularity over the years. Of course, the term "torture" in this context can be greatly subjective. Seeing a film about the holocaust may be a torture to some, but to others it may just be a very accurate documentary of historical events. To my father, 'torture' movies can be movies with a lot of talking, the kind of movie that induces him to fall asleep on the couch. That is my father for you, the kind of person who prefers movies with plots based upon anything that happened after 1990. He judges the quality of the movie by the hairstyle of the characters, the type of cars they are driving. He cannot stand period dramas, nor can he take a movie without explosions. He loves those, and anything on HBO with those qualities are good enough for him. Anything else - becomes torturous.

We are speaking of 'torture' in the conventional sense, the kind of torture we read in history textbooks, when some prisoners are brought into underground dungeons for torture. It is the kind of torture that involves hooks and knives, a lot of needles and a lot of blood. These are not the kind of things we'd like to see in real life, but the ability to suspend reality in films allows us to watch these torturing scenes played out on a giant movie screen in the comfort of our seats. Humans have this sick inner desire to drown themselves in blood, to laugh hysterically in the sight of blood. But of course, with the act of torture being condemned these days in our social norms, it is always a little queer to be the odd one out, to be the one that enjoys the sight of blood and to relish in the presence of it. Those who likes the sight of blood and death will be automatically labeled as perverts in our society, psychopaths who have the potential to become homicidal in the future. Our social and cultural norms do not have room for such a barbaric act in real life anymore, but the same cannot be said about the reality that exists in the movies. Just as long as there is a rating plastered to the film on movie posters, anything goes.

In the past, executions of prisoners were done in the public. To the executioners, their intentions were to warn the public in one way or another. Very much like the Chinese saying that goes," To warn the monkey, kill the chicken". The same can be said about humans, whereby other humans who have done wrong in the court of law are put before the public eye as an example to all. To tell others that if you commit the same crimes, you will end up on the stake and burnt alive as well. From the audience point of view, they could have very well avoided such a social event in town. They could have stayed at home, minded their own businesses instead of going to the town square to watch those executions. But you start to wonder why people cared so much about executions in the past, why people liked to see somebody else get tortured or get burned alive. My theory is that humans are naturally attracted to something they do not see on a day to day basis. If a guy has warts growing all over his body, we might be disgusted by the thought, but at the same time inclined to see him with our own eyes. If we are told that there is a human head found in the drain somewhere in our neighborhood, we'd be inclined to see it with our own eyes. After all, we don't see a man with warts all over his body everyday, nor do we see decapitated bodies very often. The same can be said about executions in the past, or those torturing sessions that the people of the past loved to watch. It was their form of entertainment, the biggest television back in those days. They loved the sight of guts being dug out and blood gushing out of those wounds. Humans love the unusual, especially those unusual things that happen to fellow humans.

But of course, in today's context, such acts are condemned everywhere - save in some selected countries around the world. People are still being stoned to death publicly in some Middle East countries, people are still being whipped in public because they stole an apple from the local market. But still, in general, such acts have been condemned by all to be inhumane, to be morally wrong. Today, when you commit a crime somewhere, you will be brought to jail and whipped a dozen times over until the skin on your buttocks split and the raw flesh exposed. Everything done behind thick walls of the prisoner, under the supervision of only a few people in the crime and punishment systems. At least in Singapore, being whipped is still a tradition in law enforcement, and not to mention the fact that the country executes its criminals on death roll by hanging them. Such things are still happening even in a civilized country like Singapore, but everything behind thick walls and closed doors of course. You are not going to see such a graphic display of violence on Orchard Road anytime soon, for example. So without the exposure of such acts, the people become accustomed to the fact that torturing is bad, that torturing is something that we should not enjoy, that we should shun away from. But of course, you can only oppress so much instinct at a time. We still love the sight of blood gushing out of open wounds, and that was exactly the reason why "Faces of Death" was being produced and made into documentary films in 1978 for the very first time.

In order to curb this urge inside all of us as humans, the urge to watch something out of the social norms, we look to the movies, where everything is possible with make-up and special effects. It is possible to watch someone shoot someone else in the head, or see one guy pierce another with a sword without much disgust or guilt. To us, as long as we know that they are just pretending and that no humans - or animals - were hurt in the process of making the film, then everything becomes A-OK. Of course, gun fighting and sword slashing are just some of the elements that make a film good, and they are essential in depicting the stories. I don't suppose it is possible to depict the holocaust during World War Two without showing dead bodies of Jewish prisoners, or is it possible to depict William Wallace's heroisms in giving freedom to Scotland without showing what the British army did to the Scots. Such violence are sometimes necessary to the plot, and some of it are actually historically correct - especially in the case of The Passion of the Christ. Of course, some atheists out there may argue that the torturing of Jesus Christ never actually happened, and the account was greatly exaggerated over the years. After all, no living human can endure such great amount of torture and still be able to carry the cross up onto the hill and then be nailed to a cross - and still live for a few hours before eventually dying. Then again, I don't suppose Jesus Christ was ever - in any one time - and ordinary human being.

Filmmakers these days are exploiting this urge inside us humans. They have found out yet another way to earn a hefty load of money, and that is to provide movies with a lot of torturing scenes that will attract people from all over the world. Such a trend is not something new to the world of cinema, but it has been especially so in recent years. Saw was probably the very first movie in recent years to provide this form of entertainment to the general public, a movie that involved two men being trapped in an abandoned toilet and chained to rusted pipes. The only way out would be to saw through their legs with rusty saws provided. Of course, other victims also have to go through traps being carefully calibrated by the antagonist of the story, going through a maze of razor-sharp wires and to step over pieces of broken glass - naked. Humans love to watch others being tortured somehow, and we love to watch it in some perverse way. The film 8mm starring Nicholas Cage was a prime example as to what humans would consider to be 'entertaining'. The famous line from the movie paved the route to understanding this mentality very well - "I'm trying to understand!" The truth is, we all are Nicholas. We all are. After all, you start to wonder why the hell would someone pay for a video that involves young women being killed. Sometimes, traditional porn that involves nudity and sexual intercourse just aren't enough anymore.

Just take a look at the current movie trailers being flashed out at Apple.com/trailers. Twenty movie trailers are being shown on each page at any one time until new ones replace the old ones. From that page alone, two movies are about pure human torturing. The first movie - Funny Games - is a remake of a German movie made in 1997, about a family being tortured by two teenagers both physically and mentally in their weekend retreat. Another film is Untraceable, about a murderer that posted the video of a man being chained up in an empty room on the internet, with a device being wired to a counter that traces how many hits on the website there are from all over the world. The faster people from all over the world visits the website, the faster the man dies from the poison being injected into his bloodstream. It just sounds awfully like another sequel of Saw, something from the cutting room floor of the original Saw makers, and are now being made into films one by one. Another psychopath trying to play a game with innocent protagonists, another inspiration for potential psychopaths in our society to do the same to real people. That is not to mention the other movies we have seen in recent years, putting torturing scenes into the cinemas for the general viewing of the public.

Movies like Captivity, Vacancy, the horrendous Saw sequels, and not to mention Hostel. Everything screams of torturing these days, and the only way for this movie to make more money than the other would be to have a more unique torturing method, a method to create a slower death with more blood drained out of the human body at the same time. And the audience flocks into the theaters to catch these fake deaths, and everybody feels better because their urge to see death has been satisfied for two hours in the cinema. The movie studios earn an awful lot of money, and everybody is happy at the end of the day. But one starts to wonder if it really is necessary to have this genre called "Torture", if it is not going to have a lasting effect on our society. I am all for originality, and I am a fan of the original Saw to be honest. But when other movies are exploiting this genre and taking it to a level that is below our humane levels, you start to wonder if it is all necessary - especially when these bad counterfeits are so appalling in nature that they are not even worth the time for you to download them illegally over the internet. They are just - even in cinematic terms - that bad.

So yeah, I am still trying to understand this trend of ours, as humans. Why do we love to watch things like that in the cinema, when they are exactly the kind of things that we wouldn't want to watch in real life. Of course, you can always argue that it is fake, that none of those things actually happen in real life. But what if they do happen in real life one day, who are we to blame? People enjoyed those movies, people watched those movies in the theaters, the movie studios make even more of those movies as a result to make even more money, and thus provoking the society to accept that torturing is a social norm. We are slowly being conditioned to think that torturing in movies are normal, that it is just another movie genre that we enjoy. But the truth is, we really don't need these movies in our theaters, especially these movies with all gore and no plot. Whoever that has "Hostel" in their top ten movies of all time should be given a tight slap across the face and forced to watch the Godfather trilogy over twenty times. Our society is sick in this way, but of course nobody is going to do anything about it. Money is king, and torturing movies are making a lot of people - kings.

Say

Take out of your wasted honor
Every little best frustration
Take out all your so called problems
Better put them in quotations

Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you’d be better off instead
If you could only

Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You better know that in the end its better to say to much
Than to never to say what you need to say again

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open

Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say
Say what you need to say

Holiday Charity Revue



Okay, this is not happening in Singapore, but I am excited about it anyway. This is the first annual holiday charity revue, organized by John Mayer and Co.. The concert will be held live on the 8th of December - not in Singapore - in Los Angeles. But here's why I am so excited about it. The concert will feature his special acoustic set where he will be playing his older songs, a set that involves a reunion of his Trio band, as well as a third set that includes his own band on stage. But of course, why so excited when I am not even going to be able to go to the concert?

That's because the concert will be filmed, and subsequently produced on DVD. It's about time this musical genius has another concert DVD after Any Given Thursday. It's about time we get to watch his videos on television rather than our laptops! The following is an extract from his blog, check it out:

"MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2007
DVD SHOOT

The upcoming show at the Nokia Theatre on December 8th will be shot for an upcoming concert DVD. And that DVD will be released, I promise. The great Danny Clinch will be directing...I have to get back to practicing now. It's gonna be a long night and I gotta be lean and mean.

Looking forward to taking the stage again... Three times.

JM

P.S. - Does anyone out there have a decent version of "In Your Atmosphere"? I don't remember exactly how it goes and I want to attempt it.

Send it to jmmyspace@mac.com

Thanks

POSTED BY JOHN MAYER AT 02:08 PM FROM NEW YORK, NY"

Thank you, John. Thank you.

Lady Vengeance

This is the second time Deuel has done this to me. The first time it happened, it was somewhere in the middle of September, and even his neighbor's dogs were reluctant to unleash their fury on me. That was because on September afternoons, everything is just a degree or two higher than usual. There I was standing outside the gates of his house, subliming to the excruciating heat of the late autumn morning. His family was out at a church service of some kind, and they apparently forgot all about the bunch of friends who were supposed to visit his house for our weekly study sessions. I was stuck outside his house to count dog barks in the neighborhood, and I did single-handedly stir up quite an uproar in the canine community because I was a stranger sitting outside Deuel's gates like an idiot most of the time. There was nothing I could have done at that time, so I waited outside his house for the family to come home. They returned after about twenty minutes, and I was allowed into the house finally. Just when you think such things won't happen again, it happened again about half an hour ago.

As planned, we were supposed to meet at Deuel's place at noon and after his gym session in town with Jonno. Kania and Sherry were supposed to join us as well, but they were still in school when I arrived. So I got off the cab, paid the driver and he drove off without even turning back - though he could have done so to save me from the predicament that was looming above my head. I pressed on the doorbell outside his house, and the familiar voice of his maid answered the intercom. Here's the conversation that ensued.

Lady Vengeance," Who is this."
Me," Hi, I'm Deuel's friend?"
Lady Vengeance," Deuel is not in!"
Me," Oh, OK..."
Lady Vengeance," You call him!"
[Lady Vengeance hangs up]

To say that I was shell shocked would be an understatement of some kind. After all, being shell shocked would mean that you have survived a certain traumatic experience, to have avoided the bomb exploding in your face during the war, and live to tell about it. I don't think I am shell shocked, because I think I am the direct victim of Lady Vengeance's ferocity, her ugly attitude towards myself and myself only. She has this thing against me, something which I am not so sure of. I don't think anybody in this world has as much unknown hatred for me as her, because I haven't spoken to her for more than five lines in my entire life. To despise a person with so little words being exchanged is beyond me. Anyway, so there I was standing outside his gates, bewildered that the maid just left me out in the sun like that, left me standing there like a complete idiot like the other time when the family was out for the church service. So I called Deuel, and he in turn scolded his maid for putting me outside. A few seconds later, the gates opened and I was allowed into the house. She was there at the front door as I came through, and she cursed under her breath at something which I did not catch. Of course, I did not put too much attention to her, because I couldn't care less about her any longer.

I came into the familiar living room and went upstairs where we would usually study as a group. Nobody was there yet, and only his maid and his mother were on that floor when I arrived. His mother was on the phone talking to a lady called Cynthia or something like that, and the strange thing was how his mother was talking to her with the loudspeakers of the phone turned on, while pressing the phone to her ears. I wonder if that is going to cause any permanent damage to her hearing, but at the same time I wanted to say 'Hi' to the lady of the house. So I waited for the conversation on the phone to end while his maid busied herself around the workspace. However, as I stood there like an idiot, it was clear that the phone conversation wasn't going to end anytime soon. His mother started talking really loudly on the phone, saying something about going somewhere in a hurry, and that she didn't have time to talk. Hanging up the phone, she cursed - for the first time in front of me - and slammed the phone down on the table. In between her fury, she managed to squeeze in a hasty greeting to me, which I answered with a smile on my face. Lady Vengeance on the other, stood in the corner with the same fire burning in her eyes for no apparent reason at all.

The situation was awkward, terribly uncomfortable at that. I mean, his mother was screaming into the receiver about running out of time, the top of head blowing through the roof. Then there was Lady Vengeance, pulling up the curtains and setting up the tables as if I just ordered the quartering of her entire family, or raped her daughter or something like that. She was pulling the curtains so hard that she could have tore down the whole window, and there I was waiting like a fool. I needed a hole to bury myself, I needed a room to lock myself in the whole day. So I helped myself into the guest room and pretty much locked myself inside until Lady Vengeance came and knocked on my door. I opened it and asked her what it was that she wanted, and here's what took place in the doorway of the guest room.

Lady Vengeance," OI! DON'T EAT HERE!"
Me," Erm, what?"
Lady Vengeance," DON'T EAT HERE!"
Me," I don't have food."
Lady Vengeance," YOU ALWAYS EAT HERE!"
Me," No, I don't."

But what I really wanted to say was.

Me," I don't always eat here, because you don't provide anything for the lot of us. Not once have you served us any food, or any drinks, or even tree barks from your fancy garden. We live worse than some North Korean children starving their intestines out. You treat us like some prisoners of war, or some stray dogs in a third world country, or even Jewish workers in Auschwitz. I try to be a good person, and I try to be a good guest. I try to put up a smile every single time we come to your house, and you are the one who always shows up at the front door with that fat ugly face of yours just because you don't like me for some unknown reasons. I take a cab to your house every weekend, and every one of those cab rides costs money. If those money were actually saved up for something else, I could have bought your whole family over to my house, that is where I stand in the society and this is where you stand.

You don't treat me like some insolent teenager just because you are older, and have worked in the same house for over ten years. Age is just a number, and everything is only relative. If you are going to show me your fucked up attitude, you are not speaking much about both your maturity and your intelligence. I could have said the above paragraph a million times to you because of how you have treated me and some of my friends, but I haven't because I try to be nice, I try to be good to people. I'm not like you, and you should have the basic decency to keep your opinions to yourself, or blog it if you know how to type at all. It's pathetic how you have been here for more than ten years and you can barely speak anything that I can understand. If a person is hated by her dogs, it speaks a lot about that person's character and personality. I have seen dogs shunning away from dog shit and rotten food, and that also means that you have a rotten attitude and shit for brains. Don't come and judge who I am and who I am not, because I am not judging you as the maid of the house. But you are forcing me to make these assumptions about you, and that is just too bad on your part. If you are not happy about it, swim your way back to your hometown because you won't even be getting the cheapest sampan from the Wong family once they hear what I have to say about your rotten attitude. By the way, your home-made bread SUCKED - big time. I won't even eat it UPSTAIRS even if you SERVE it to me. Those are the kind of bread they serve in HELL. So fuck you, you pathetic maid. And to hell with your disgusting bread."

So that's that, that would have been my speech to Lady Vengeance, if she were to accuse me of spilling food all over the guest room the next time around. I mean, I like Deuel, and I do think that his house is a great place to study. The guest rooms are nice, the giant entertainment system is nice, his mother is nice - when she is not pissed off. Lady Vengeance is the only reason why I would want to stay away from that place for the rest of my life. It is either she goes, or I leave the house forever, no questions asked. The next time she throws me one of her tantrums, I am going to retaliate like no one in the house ever did before. Pick on someone who actually has the ability to fight back, and not just Deuel's grandfather. He is old, give him a break. If you want to confront me, don't curse in a language I don't understand. Learn your language before you start judging me, mindless prick.

P.S. You smell like rotten socks and dog saliva.

Midnight Traffic

Oh I can hear you breathing
You’re picking up my scent
You’re trying to hunt me down
In the hope that I’ll give in

The roads at night are like rivers after a drought. No more water to speak of in the river channels, just the remainder of the river's glory before the dreadful drought arrived. The running water left behind deep marks in the banks and potholes in the riverbed, and those were the only hints left behind by the raging waters. The dry season arrived swiftly after, taking away the glory of the river that once was, leaving behind just that tiny thread of water streaming down the middle of the channel. At the peak hours of everyday when the commuters are either getting to work or going home from there, the roads remind me of rivers after a massive rainstorm. The cars pack the roads from shoulder to shoulder and fender to fender, all trying to get to somewhere, all trying to make reach their destinations in time. But when the night comes - when the drought arrives - you don't see cars on the roads anymore. No more blaring horns from every angle, no more windows being winded down and middle fingers being pointed at other inconsiderate drivers. At night on the road, everything is peaceful and serene.

You won't find the river carving deep into the riverbed at night, not at that hour anyway. Just a hint of what was, a few cars speeding in opposite directions on the two-way street, waiting patiently at the traffic light despite the empty crossings. The blinking pedestrian light, like a stubborn firefly looking for a mate, or a secret code passed between battleships in a storm. The only sign of life on the roads at night comes from the traffic lights, directing invisible cars and imaginary pedestrians, reminding them to remember the traffic rules and regulations. In the distance, an ear-piercing screech rings through the calm night air. The sound of tires being scratched over the tarmac road. Someone, somewhere, tried to beat the red light but thought against it at the very last minute. Breaking through the silence of the night, like the sound of white chalk being scraped over a blackboard during an examination. Nobody cares too much for an accident in the middle of the night, nobody cares if your car has just slammed into a lamp post because you were trying to beat the red light. Because at night, the river wears thin to the fury of the drought, and only one type of car survives the night's overwhelming loneliness.

But I know these tracks
Better than I know you ever could
You’re breathing down my neck
But it will only make me win

Nobody wanted this
Not after all these years

At this hour, the only cars on the roads are cabs. A phrase my friend told me while he was over at my place a week or two ago near midnight, as I asked if he needs me to call a cab for him on the phone. He was optimistic about getting a cab in front of my house at that hour, though getting a cab in front of the guard house at my place is as good as trying to find a Mercedes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But still, cabs do come by every once in a while, and that friend of mine was right about the cabs. On the roads at night, the only vehicles on the roads are indeed cabs, the king of the roads in the wee-hours. They probably have their own rules in the night, which company dominates which section of the island, where each territory begins and which territory ends. After all, I do suppose it is rather difficult to have all the different companies to dominate the same stretch of road, especially when the number of customers at night are few and far in between. This is probably the only way to prevent a fight in between those cab drivers, which may cause them to earn a fine and a hospital bill at the very same time. Cab drivers, I wonder if her father is on the roads right now, at this hour. Driving through the empty streets, avoiding invisible lines marked out at th edge of every heartland. Oh, yes. That's right, he works in a different shift, he toils in a different world. Like her daughter, who lives in another world from my own.

Three O'clock in the morning, nothing much ever happens at this hour of the night. At least from my bedroom window, that is how it seems like from here. Just a lot of cabs, trying to find customers on the lonely streets, lonely people trying to get to lonely places at lonely hours. Everything about this time of the night makes me feel like shit, something about the number three, it just makes everything darker and sadder for some reason. It must be the silence around the house, or the emptiness on the roads. I wonder how it is possible for Sherry to take those midnight jogs and not feel like breaking down in the middle of the pavement. Perhaps that is why I have yet to step out of my house at this hour for a long time, afraid to let those cab drivers see my emotions on public display. The last time I took a walk at this hour, I walked a little too far and dragged the pieces of myself home from there. I wonder where people find the courage to go onto the roads at night, it's just too sad a time to be alone anywhere.

Still the darkness draws us deeper
In just like a trap
But now I’ve got you here
I’ll never lead you back

On my table, I had a strange analogy worked out in my head, after thinking about what my friend said by the window concerning the cabs. The truth is, I think cabs on the road at night are like these unwanted and unnecessary emotions that are eating us from the inside out. At this hour - like cabs - the only emotions left on the road to our minds are these unwanted thoughts of the past, these residue of emotions left from the day's brain work. Haven't we all asked ourselves the same unanswerable question of why we are having these thoughts at this hour, of all hours. We've all asked that question in the same period of time at night, when everybody in the house is sleeping, and you hear only the sound of your heart beating against your chest and the occasional car passing by the road in front of your house. We've all had experiences like that, and it is safe to say that none of us really have answers to that at all. These emotions rule the night like the cabs rule the road, and they have the power to set the course of your journey into the unknown. Like the cab, you can go to anywhere with your unwanted emotions bouncing everywhere in your mind, and that is a scary thought if you think about it. To allow your emotions to take you wherever it leads you, who knows when you might be trapped somewhere and never to return?

At this hour, you only wish for the morning to come a little sooner. You wish for the rain to come in the desert, you wish for the river to regain its past vitality. So that the cabs wouldn't be so lonely anymore, accompanied by other cars on their way to different places around the island. The day gives me a reason to think about other things in my life, an excuse to have different feelings and emotions to fill in the gaps. Because in the day, we have so much to do and so many other things to think of, a million different ways to distract yourself. That is something in absence at night, something which we all need but can never get. It is that constant distraction in the day, the only way our mind can run away from those wild emotions that we all harbor in our hearts. At night we become helpless victims to ourselves, like a cat stranded in the middle of the road and waiting for a truck to run over its body. It's so hard to sit through these hours, especially in this time of the month, at this time of the year.

For the garden’s end
Is where wilderness begins
You dug a hole for me
That I’ll bury you in

Christmas is a month away, and I hate it. I liked it for a year, but I hated the other nineteen Christmas that I have had. I don't suppose that I am going to like this upcoming one either, because it is just too happy - too jolly - for my taste. It brings back too many memories, those unwanted memories that I mentioned earlier. Every single day that passes in November and December, is a year from what we were doing happily together, in the past. That thought alone kills me, and that is not to mention the thousand other thoughts that stream into my mind like a bad midnight rerun on television. If only there is a way to bury these thoughts in a garden, a garden in the middle of a nuclear bomb test site. In that way, everything would be incinerated, wiped away from the face of the earth. It is so silly of me, so damn stubborn to be speaking of the same things. I have been doing the same things over the past eight months, and still I cannot stop talking about it every once in a while on my blog. It's just difficult I guess, especially when three in the morning comes everyday, and the cabs on the roads are always going to be the lords of the night.

A car crashes in the night, someone falls asleep at the wheel and runs his car into a brick wall. Paramedics arrive, some curious drivers stop by the side of the road to watch the mess. The driver is being carried off into the ambulance, and the siren wails in the night although there aren't any cars on the road to block their route anyway. It's standard procedure, it is the rules. At night, this is what happens to people who falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into brick walls. We come and we carry away the body, while some other departments would take care of the rest. The wreckage is cleared, the blood stain on the road is washed away by water from a hose. The debris being swept away by road cleaners, and everything goes back to normal when the day comes.

And if you raise the dead now
I might lead you back
And if you cut your hair
I might leave a map

Isn't that what happens during the midnight traffic in my head as well? You are the driver of this emotion, and sometimes you get lost within that emotions and your car crashes into a brick wall. You get tossed out of the car, your body is broken by the side of the road. You are still alive though, but the pain in every inch of your broken body is excruciating. You feel like dying, but then you think about all the people that you are going to miss if you give in right now, the next pair of arms you are going to dive into on a comfortable Sunday morning. You try to hold on, and you wait for the paramedics to come. You find ways to deal with the pain, even if it hurts so bad at night that you just want to bury your face in the sheets and cry. You deal with it, because that's why life teaches every one of us to do. You deal with the emotional wreckage in your head, and life goes on in the morning when you wake up. You don't dwell on the same problems anymore, you move on. The peak hours are still going to come in the morning, and people are still going to have to drive to work or to school. The world does not revolve around you, and it is not going to stop just because you are feeling like shit. She is not going to look back, because you are feeling miserable. So pick yourself up, move on from where you are. Move on.

It is interesting what a single phrase a person said can evoke so much thoughts. But I guess, these random and useless thoughts are just some of the ways I distract myself from those unnecessary midnight traffic in my head. Now, all I have to do is to survive the period of time between the publication of this entry, and the moment that I fall asleep when I leave everything to my dreams. Just survive that short period of time and I will survive the night as well. That shall be the battle plan for every night, every night until...the inevitable. It is going to happen, it is going to happen for sure. Even at this hour, some cab is going to stop for you no matter where you are, and no matter where you are going. But with those long stretches of empty road, your destination just seems so terribly far away.

Nobody wanted this
Not after all these years
Nobody noticed you
But now they’re on to you

You say you’ll have the last laugh

But the winters coming
And the snow will cover tracks
And I’ll be watching
Because I’m hunting you

And nobody’s buying it
Not after all these years
But somebody’s noticed you
And now I’m on to you

Blue Caravan

Blue, blue caravan
Winding down to the valley of lights
My true love is a man
Who would hold me for ten thousand nights

In the wild, wild wailing wind
He's a house in the soft yellow moon
So blue, blue caravan
Won't you carry me down to him, soon?

Blue, blue caravan
Wont you drive away all of these tears?
My true love is a man
That I haven't seen in years

He said,"Go where you have to
For I belong to you until my dying day,"
So like a fool, blue caravan, I believed him
And I walked away

Oh, my blue, blue caravan
Oh, the highway is my great wall
My true love is man
Who never existed at all

Oh, he was a beautiful fiction
I invented to keep out the cold
And now my blue, blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old

Oh, my blue, blue caravan
I can feel my heart growing old...

Christmas Wishes

Christmas is about a month away, and I hate Christmas. But it is a good excuse to satisfy my materialistic needs, a period of time to buy everything for no reason whatsoever. Three years ago, I got myself a guitar that costs in the vicinity of $1700, but I actually had a reason to buy it back then - a motivation to survive the weekly torture in the army just to play that beautiful instrument at home. This year, I'm not sure if I have a reason to ask for any gifts, perhaps this time I may dish out the "But it's Christmas!" card. My family is not the kind that celebrates Christmas, but I am the only one that dislikes it with a passion. But a gift or two won't bite, and here's what I want for my Christmas. Of course, for the really wealthy friends that I have, you are welcomed to make me happy too. Let the love for me spread, this Christmas time.

Music, On Hindsight

I fear for my generation, I really do. I fear that when the next generation of humans - or the generation after that - look back upon my generation, they are going to wonder what kind of drugs we were taking when we indulged ourselves in the kind of music we listen today on our radio. The worst part is that all of us are completely sane, and most music lovers are not drug addicts at the same time, like the Hippie culture back in the late sixties. Most of my generations today are perfectly fine human beings, without an ounce of drugs running through their veins. The truth is, the people who truly made music, were also the drug addicts of the past. Every living legend today took drugs one way or another in the past, because it helped them to think clearly by not thinking clearly at all. I know on the surface, that sentence did not make any sense at all. But maybe that's why it makes a lot of sense, especially in our world today, which emphasizes more on sex appeal rather than anything else. Of course, the basic principles still apply - you must be free of drugs, and a virgin. With these basic criteria met, you don't really need talents to make it big, anymore.

I was watching a video the other day which featured John Mayer doing a random gig at an underground pub called Fat Black Pussy Cat with Cheryl Pepsii Riley - who is an amazing singer by the way, and he opened the set by saying something about how 2007 is coming to an end, and this year in music has taught us that you don't have to have a lot of talents to make it big in the industry. You just have to suck in an unique way, and everybody is going to love you anyway. In contrast, the people standing on that stage were the same people that spent their whole lives working on music that is not going to gain a lot of public appeal in relative to the kind of music they play on the radio, but they are still making the music anyway. It may be a sort of blind passion, or a fool's love for something, but that is how music should be in the world of artistic expression anyway. He asked for applauses from the audience, and the people exploded into a deafening round of applause that made my speakers spit out funny noises. But I guess, more than the money, that is what these musicians are working for - the applauses at the end of each night.

A couple of days ago, I was just surfing through the limited channels in my living room when I came across the MTV Chinese channel. Before that actually happened, I was still a guy that had a little bit of hope for music, simply because of what I have been listening to these days. Even in the context of the Chinese music industry, I have recently heard some Indie material coming out from my hometown, and before that fateful afternoon when I turned to that channel, I was still proud to call myself a Taiwanese. But after viewing what seemed like a three minute long musical Hell, I have concluded that I am ashamed to be a Taiwanese in that respect. There he was, in his cowboy gears and bursting into a diner, singing his latest single from his latest album. The supposed king of Chinese music was making a fool out of himself with the worst song I have heard in a very long time.

I've never actually liked this guy, disliking him for his lack of originality and style. After all, this man is the same person that recycles his chord progressions on the piano like one would recycle an empty milk bottle. Every one of his songs sound the same, and everything is so predictable that you might actually find more excitement in an office space. But still, his music is still fine if you ignore the technical aspects of it. They are fine to the ears, but definitely not something that is going to be remembered by myself in the years to come. Then of course, he dug himself a new hole and jumped into it with his new single, which happens to be the most hideous thing to hit my eardrums as of late. Even the noise coming from the construction site downstairs and the renovation works on the sixteenth floor will be numbed through time, but I don't imagine myself to be numbed by this song anytime soon. Though strictly speaking, it really isn't a song to begin with.

Throughout his musical career, this native Taiwanese has never ever tried to reinvent himself. That is to say, his songs usually follow a very distinct pattern throughout every album, using the very same equations and formulas as before because they worked. It is possible to have a greatest hits album compiled, and you wouldn't have noticed the difference in his style because they are all pretty much the same. I remember my friend from the army giving me his live concert CD to listen to, and I noticed just how repetitive and boring his music really is. Almost every slow song began with the piano, and half of those songs began with the same chord while the other began with a different chord. So the progressions were the same throughout every song, and I was able to predict the next note before actually hearing them, because they sounded completely the same to me. But of course, you cannot blame a man for staying on the safer side, not daring to take the jump out into the unknown. If one is comfortable here, you cannot tell him to move elsewhere, because it just wouldn't make sense. Reinvention really is a choice on the musician's part, and it is up to him or her whether or not he wants to change his musical directions throughout his career. If your fans are going to love you for who you are, there really isn't a need to change your route. After all, not everybody can be like Radiohead and their fanatical followers.

This guy supposedly started the whole R&B revolution in Chinese music, though to call his material R&B would be quite an insult to the genre itself. After all, R&B stands for "Rhythms and Blues", and I don't suppose you can find a trace of "Blues" in his bullshit. His music - at least his latest single - should be classified under "Retarded & Brainless", because that's what it really is to me. If you are going to be eternally boring to me, that's fine. I mean, if you are going to be rolling about in the same puddle of mud for the rest of your career, that's really your problem. You still have your blind fans following you like you are some kind of deity, though you really no more than an average guy with an average look and an average talent. I did enjoy the material from his first two albums. In fact, some of the first songs I learned on the guitar were his songs, but that soon took the wrongest turn and plunged down to the deepest pits when I realized that this man cannot be bothered to produce good music. He is probably the most pretentious singer in existence. At least those retarded boy bands know that they are retarded, he thinks that the world loves him - but obviously not. After all, a fool who knows his limitations, isn't really a fool.


As if his career in music isn't pretentious enough, he attempted acting for a period of time. His first film role was in a Japanese anime adaptation about illegal underground car racing, pretty much like The Fast and the Furious series, really. He was supposed to be the hero of the story, the underdog who drives the fastest and gets the girl at the very end. I saw that movie in camp when somebody brought the DVD, and I must say that a piece of wood would have done a better job in acting than him. Every single time he appeared on screen, it just felt so incredibly boring and dead, that I would have found more excitement in counting the number of corners in the room where I was in. It was his first film role, and anybody should be forgiven for the first try. So he was forgiven for that movie, and I dearly hoped that he wouldn't make a fool out of himself by appearing in another movie. But of course, his ego was bigger than his brain - much bigger.


Appearing for the second time in Zhang Yi Mou's The Curse of the Golden Flower, his second big screen appearance turned out to be a bigger flop than the movie itself. Despite the Chillywood - my term for the Chinese movie industry - A-list actor and actress helming the movie, it was inevitable that the movie failed on every possible aspects. I have watched the movie, and I am thus qualified to review the movie, and I must say that it was probably one of the most boring movies I have seen in some time. Everybody who has watched the movie locally loved the fact that he was in the movie. But all his blind fans didn't realize that next to the true actors and actresses, he just looked like a guy that was trying way too hard. He didn't have much emotions to speak of, though he did improve from his wooden performance in the race car movie as mentioned before. Still, I don't suppose improving from a piece of wood to a pile of hardened clay says a lot about somebody's acting skills blossoming. He was still pretty dead on screen, and I remember James Berardinelli - one of my more trusted movie reviewer out there - dissing his acting skills on his blog. Of course, his ego grew even bigger and attempted to direct a movie only recently. I haven't watched that, which is why I shall not comment on his directing skills. But after that attempt, he came back to what he does best - pretend to be a good musician.

I remember Sara telling me that his new song might not be my cup of tea, but I am probably going to find the lyrics incredibly funny. The truth is, I don't even care about the lyrics to this retarded song anymore. That cowboy outfit is one thing, the hideous melody is another. If this is his attempt to reinvent himself, he might do better in being a male prostitute. The song makes no sense, and bastardizes the country music genre from the States. It was his attempt of breaking new grounds, but the result turned him into some idiotic man with a fedora, dancing around a food diner as if he is the coolest thing that has ever happened to mankind. Maybe not the best in terms of music, but definitely the most ridiculous. Like I said, it is the most horrible song I have heard in a long time, but his fans are still going to go crazy about his songs. That's the way the general public are these days anyway. Without the influence of drugs, they are still equally stupid.

I wonder why the truly good talents in the Chinese music industry are not being recognized for their works. A friend of mine is an avid fan of Cheer Chen, a female singer-songwriter from Taiwan who recently came down to Singapore for a concert. My friend is the kind of guy that loves metal, but for some reason he does have a soft spot for Cheer Chen's music. So I checked out some of her songs over at Youtube, and was pleasantly surprised at how good her music is. Other than her, there are other bands and artists in Asia who are equally good, or better than the mainstream music in so many ways. Corinne May is probably the best local singer I have heard in a while, and even she isn't nearly as famous as a lot of other local acts. I mean, the local music scene is saturated with teenagers rocking away on their guitars, turning up the distortion knobs on their amplifies and singing songs about teenage angst and love loss - the whole mediocre and cliche package. My friend introduced me to a singer called Vienna Teng a while ago, and I rediscovered her just this afternoon with the track "Blue Caravan". Astounding material, just simply beautiful. So my question is, why are these truly good musicians not making it big while the pretentious people like Jay Chou, are?

For the future generations, our offspring and their offspring, please do not judge our music as a representation of who we are as a generation. There are people now who are making good music, and people who also appreciates good music. We are still alive, and we are still loving every second of our underground venture. Not all of us are blind and deaf to the mainstream music, because some of us are still sane and objective enough to say "No" to bad music. So the next time you look back on hindsight at the history of music, do yourself a favor and skip this period of music in the mainstream. This period of time is definitely not worth your time at all. Representing all the lost teenagers of my generation, I apologize for the sorry state of music that we are experiencing now. Sorry.

Worst song, coupled with the most retarded video, with the silliest musician.

Ill

It is a bad time to fall sick, but I guess I have fallen victim to the virus that has been floating around my social circle as of late. Just yesterday, Cheryl stumbled into the lecture hall just before our Literature Review presentation, looking like a strayed member of the army of the dead. Her face was so pale that she could have stood in front of a white board and disappeared. It didn't help that she was having a terribly high fever at the same time, which meant that she couldn't even click the mouse for the rest of the group. So her group had to work without her, pretty much like the Xinchee situation in my group. Apparently, Xinchee had some kind of knee reconstruction surgery a few days ago, something about transferring the right hamstring to the left leg, to act as the ligament. It's a complicated surgery that has granted him six weeks of holidays at home, but at the same time the doctor forgot that when you rid the left leg completely of hair due to surgical reasons, you should also shave the other leg just because we look more normal that way. In a way, Xinchee remained at home while we presented not because of the pain in his knees, but really because his legs look weird in comparison with one another - one carefully shaved and the other, a black forest.

So you see, everybody is falling victim to some kind of injury or virus, and it is indeed a bad time to be this way. The examinations are around the corner, and the last thing I want to be distracting myself would be any kind of flu bag affecting my system. Battling stress would be stressful enough, and to take pills in between those dreadful battles would be much worse. But I guess in a way, this is going to help me get through things a lot easier because I can't talk right now, which also means that I won't be talking to anybody any time soon, which in turn means that I won't be engaging myself in any mindless conversations or other forms of distractions. That is not to say that I do not enjoy mindless conversations, but I guess the finals are just infinitely more important at this point. Besides, there is always the wonders of the Internet, where one can speak without speaking, how amazing is that. To injured and ill people like me, this is a god-sent technology.

Despite the bad throat though, I still found time to have fun yesterday after school, since it was - technically speaking - the last day of the semester. We still have the last hurdle to lift, but at least right now we can all focus on the books, rather than the assignments and the projects, the papers and the presentations. It is just going to be the books from now until the end, and I can't wait to wear my victory bandana into the examination venue, literally. I guess this semester has taken its toll on everybody, taking five modules for the very first time. It has been quite grueling, and it feels almost like a really long and dreadful outfield, only with less physical activities and more brain work. So when the last week came rolling about around the corner on Monday, there was an unexplainable happiness lurking around the faces of everybody, a kind of exhilaration none of us can fully explain. Like those last minutes left to the outfield just before it is officially announced, we are just glad that it was coming to an end I suppose. Studying by itself is not that bad an experience, and it is only so when coupled with endless assignments and projects. Now that we are having a one week study break, I say bring on the textbooks and bring on the notes.

Our way of celebrating the end of the school term was to head down to City Hall for a great feast at a cafe, which I believe is called Miss Charity's Cafe, though I cannot recall the full name. This is probably the most colorful restaurant I have ever been to, with their pink, yellow and green tables and their equally colorful chairs and decorations. The food were pretty top notch as well, and affordable to be honest. My wieners - as in sausages - tasted great, and that should be my new year resolution of some sort for next year, pretty much like the Tiramisu one I had for this year. The sickness did not prevent me from having fun with the rest of the gang, just diving into the thicks of the celebration mood. I wasn't intending on letting anything get in the way of my celebrations, not even the sight of Raffles Hotel right next to the restaurant that brought back certain undesirable memories, especially for the fact that it is close to that time of the year all over again. That is probably why I hate Christmas, why I hate it all over again. I liked it for one year out of my twenty-one years of life, but I guess we are back in square one again.

As of this morning, I have completely lost my voice. Picking up the phone a few minutes after noon, my mother called from the office to see if I have woke up. The voice that came out of my mouth when I picked up the phone was something out of this world. It was probably a mix between Yoda, Jar Jar Bings, a random goblin from The Lord of the Rings, and definite a hint of the guy that does all the voice-overs from movie trailers. My mother held the receiver away from her ears for some time, and wondered if she dialed the wrong number. I tried to adjust my voice, but it only made it worse. So we ended the conversation early, and here I am wondering if my voice is ever going to come back. But here, at least I still have my voice on my blog, nothing here has changed I am sure.

This is probably going to be a short entry, because today is going to be meant for my casual reading. It is a beautiful day, and I already started it late. The medicine last night knocked me out cold, and I do wish to get something productive done before the weekend is here. So I am signing out now, going to have my lunch and kick start the last week of the semester without truly falling victim to this illness, though I might have already have fallen into its trap. I need to clear my head, stop taking those accursed Strepsils and get right down and dirty. And it begins - now.

Ghost Orchid




Any activity that promises exhilaration, boasts also the possibility of addiction. Being new to the world of online shopping, there is a very real possibility that I might become addicted to the idea of buying things off the Internet with a few clicks of the mouse. The idea of buying something without the need of taking anything out of your wallet is definitely welcoming, though technically speaking they are really one and the same. One involves you physically taking the cash out of your wallet, and the other requires only for a few confirmation numbers and someone else will do the transaction for you. The invisibility of this transaction makes it possible for the users of websites like Amazon.com and eBay, to think that everything is free. Turning into a button-happy person is probably the last thing I want to be, but the fact that I just received the very first item I got off the Internet last Saturday could become my first step to the point of no return.

One of my favorite movies - Adaptation - arrived at my doorsteps on Saturday, and the second viewing only made the love for this film so much sweeter. Despite knowing almost every line in the movie, it is still so easy for one to be lost in the story, to wander in this confusing world of Charlie Kaufman, especially his take on the book that he desperately tried to adapt in the film called "The Orchid Thief". The book is an actual book written by a journalist from the New Yorker - Susan Orleans - who followed John Laroche, a convicted American orchid poacher who was caught trying to steal a very rare species of orchid from the Fakahatchee Strand State Preserve with his group of Seminoles. This special orchid grows only in its natural habitat, and almost impossible anywhere else. This is an endangered form of orchids, usually sold in the flower market at an extremely high price. Aside from the specialized growing conditions, it also needs to be bred within its own genetic pool, which is also another reason why this orchid is so elusive, so difficult to find - almost like a ghost. The ghost orchid, or technically known as Polyrrhiza lindenii, is as beautiful as an orchid gets.

They say everyman goes blind in his heart
And they say everybody steals somebody's heart away
And I got nothing more to say about it
Nothing more than you would me

My mother has a thing for plants, but flowers in particular. If it is possible for her to disappear in this not-so-big house, she'd most probably be found on her knees at the balcony, pushing the blade of a spade into the wet soils around her plants. She loves her plants, and has a love affair with every one of them when my father is not around. There is something serene about being in the balcony, and my mother knows it better than anybody else in the family. Living in the middle of the country has its drawbacks, because are hardly able to get a little garden for your own enjoyment. There is always those landed properties you can purchase at a much higher price, but in relative to those seamless fields that my mother and her siblings used to run through barefooted, it is hardly comparable. So nineteen floors up and on the edge of the balcony, my mother has her rows of plants in a dozen different varieties. Nothing too fancy, and nothing to really boast about. But some of those plants have stayed with the family for the longest time, and it'd be strange to see any of them wither in the days to come.

As a child, I used to sit next to my mother as she tended to the dying trees. I helped to carry the flower pots out of the ditch most of the time, and she'd be the plant doctor of the house, the one that did all the surgeries on the plants. She'd pull the whole plant out from the pot, and then examine the bottom of the roots to check for any possible bugs that might have infested themselves in the stem itself. I don't suppose she has read any books on gardening, but it seems like she has acquired the skill to take care of those plants herself after years of experience. On the other hand, I was the person who was infinitely more interested in the insects that crawled about the pile of soil on the newspaper, the one that poked them around with the tip of my index finger. My insect observations came to an end one day when my mother came home after a shopping at a local orchard with pots of flowers. I remember her giving a call from her cellphone, asking me to go downstairs to help her out with some of the pots she bought. I recall the smell that erupted out of the backseat of the car, the way the aroma attacked my nostrils and set forth a dozen different images in my mind.

Send me your flowers, of your December
Send me your dreams, of your candy wine
I got just one thing I cant give you
Just one more thing of mine

Amongst the flowers my mother bought, there was an orchid that stood out from all the rest. It was white in the middle, the colors carefully blended outwards into a subtle shade of violet. It stood proud against the other flowers and the wind, undaunted by the midnight rains and the equatorial sun. I was mesmerized by a plant for the very first time, and I think it was my first time conversing with the plants at the balcony. John Laroche is right by saying that the relationship between the flower and the insect that pollinates it reveals to us the meaning of life at times, the fact that the only barometer in life is your heart. It is that mindless obedience to nature I guess, the way a bee would be attracted only to a certain kind of flower, the way they have no clue what they are designed for, but just doing what they were told to do instinctively. I suppose there is a certain beauty in that, the simplicity of the relationship between the flower and the insect is astounding to behold.

I've never seen a ghost orchid before, in fact I am not even very good at naming flowers. My knowledge of flowers go as far as the ones that I have and the ones I had in my home, or even the ones I've heard from songs and movies. We are not speaking of technical names here, but just the names of flowers themselves are enough to confuse the living daylight out of me. To me orchids are orchids, but then the truth tells me that there are orchids and there are orchids. After watching the film though, there is a strange attraction to the ghost orchid mentioned in the movie, how it singlehandedly turned the lives of a journalist, a orchid poacher, and a writer upside down. The nickname "Ghost Orchid" was given to the flower not only because of the blending of its stem into the background that gives us an illusion that it is floating in midair, but also the strange unexplainable passion of flower lovers and non-lovers alike. After all, orchids do have the same root word in Latin as the word "testicles", and the fact that an orchid looks like a woman's clitoris can evoke certain emotions and urges. Whatever the reason may be, you have to admit this one thing: The Ghost Orchid is terribly beautiful, so beautiful that it is almost a crime.

They say everyman goes blind in his heart
They say everybody steals somebody's heart away
And I've been wondering why you let me down
And I been taking it all for granted

There is something about the symmetry of that flower that is so perfect, and the words that are crowding into my mind right now as I am looking at the picture for the umpteenth time. I mean, just look at the beauty of it. The arms of the orchid looks almost like arms reaching out, slender and elegant. It looks almost like a princess being trapped in a tower somehow, reaching out for help, waiting for somebody to find her. But it is so rare and so hard to find, that people might have already forgotten about her existence, might have thought that she died over the years - that she turned into a ghost.

Sometimes, it is hard to accept the fact that this plant is an epiphyte, and also about how the most suitable habitat for this beauty is in the deeps of a swamp. It is inconceivable how a plant like that has to depend on another to survive, when a beauty like this should be able to stand on its own, independent of all others. It should have the right to have its own stem, its own roots, or whatever parts of a plant should have. To think that this orchid grows only in the swarm is almost impossible to imagine, considering the fact that I have personally swam through a dozen of those in my army life, you start to wonder if it is possible for anything to survive in those murky waters that gave off the most repugnant smell.

Yes, I just dedicated a whole entry to a single flower, and I don't suppose I am going to get a lot of applause on it. After all, not a lot of people are going to be interested in flowers as much as I am, at least in this particular specimen. This is a sure sign of me running out of topics to blog about, especially when I am blogging faster than my life allows. Even if that is really the case, I don't suppose there is any harm with having a post dedicated to the ghost orchid. I don't think I have the same amount of passion for orchids like John Laroche, or even his passion for fishes, turtles and mirrors. I am probably not the kind of person who likes to delve too deep into a certain subject, but would rather admire a certain beauty from afar, with an innocence that is almost child-like. That is how I view the ghost orchid, and everything else in life - really. The barometer of the heart, indeed.

John Laroche," Point is, what's so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There's a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they're designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live - how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can't let anything get in your way."

All Along the Watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Toothless Preacher

There were four of us on the crowded bus that evening, just the four of us minding our own businesses, making our way towards town after the games at Settler's. Pao sat next to me in the very last row on the bus, while Naz and MJ sat on the same row just in front of us, on either side of the aisle from each other. It must have been an unconscious force that drove me to where I was sitting that evening, some imaginary power that drew me to that very seat. I mean, there were so many seats available on the bus when we first got on, and I am still unsure why I chose that seat out of the many that were empty. I could have chosen the seat where MJ sat, or perhaps the one Pao occupied right next to me. I should have known from the look in his eyes, that I should have avoided any possible encounters with him. It may sound a little mean to say that I wished that my friends were in that same awkward position as myself, to have hoped that somebody else was in that place rather than me. But whatever happened, happened. I walked onto the bus that evening looking for a seat, and there he was shifting his bag away, offering me the space next to his. The greatest mistake that Friday evening, something I should have known. I should have known.

There was a slight glitter in his eyes when I approached, like the eyes of a hunter waiting for his prey to fall into his trap. Taking refuge in the corner of the bus, he waited for his prey to board the bus, looking desperately from a seat. He must have been waiting there for ever when I came along, putting his torn up bag on the seat next to him as a diversion. Anybody that comes onto a crowded bus looking for a seat is going to stare at his bag, hoping that he'd move the bag onto his laps and offer that seat to him. So there I was, staring at his worn out and tattered bag, wondering if he was going to give in to me unspoken plea. He must have heard it with his giant ears that resembled that of a chimpanzee, because he turned around and immediately shifted his bag away. I thanked him for so doing, and that must have been his cue to go in for the kill. Thanking a person is not only the polite thing to do, but it may also imply a sense of fragility, to show someone that you are a nice person - and of course, nice people are easily pushed around at times.

I sat down next to the man and checked him out with the corner of my eyes to avoid any eye contact. From the brief greetings we had a sort while ago when he gave me his seat, I could tell that he was probably not the kind of person you want to spend a second more looking at. He was in one of those worn out polo t-shirt that has been worn and washed too many times. It had holes near his collar, and the ends of his shirt were torn and tattered, like a flag stuck in the middle of a battlefield. His white shorts reached just a little above his knotted knee, an untidy collection of old and loose skin into an unsightly knot of flesh. His unkempt hair hinted the possibilities of black widow spiders living in them, waiting for head lice to infest the thick undergrowth as a constant source of free food. Beneath those hair was his head, which was probably the worst part about his whole body. It wasn't really because of how bad he looked, but how creepy it was to turn to him only to see him staring back at me with a broken smile. By a broken smile, I meant literally that. With his broken front teeth and the darkness of his mouth reaching down to an unimaginable abyss, I wanted to stab my eyes with my thumbs.

But I remained in where I was, unmoved by the toothless man who was grinning at me without control. I started to revise all the things that did from the moment I got onto the bus, to the moments that led up to the broken smile of his. I must have done something within that short negligible span of time that caused him to seem so friendly towards me in an infinitely eerie way. He stared at me some more, as if he had something to tell me but hadn't the courage to do so. It was the kind of smile that a little girl would have if she has a secret you do not know about, but his brand of smile was probably what a pedophile would show that little girl with the secret, to be honest. It was creepy as hell, and I figured in my head that he was either a homosexual, or a really desperate homosexual. Either way, I didn't want to remain in the same seat for too long. I needed to get out of the bus quick, rush down to the nearest shop with a baseball bat to blow my brain out. That was the only way I could have gotten the image of his face out of my head. But we were not even a quarter of the way to town yet, and my mind was racing at a thousand miles per hour. That was of course, until I found out that he wasn't a homosexual - though that gave way to little relief. He was a religious maniac, which is worse.

With his broken English, he asked if I am a Christian or not. That sentence alone had a combination of English, Chinese and Hokkien, as if my discomfort with his appearance wasn't bad enough. I have a thing about articulation and language, and those were the things that this man lacked completely. He had no coherence in his speech, no sign of having ever stepped into a school to study any language before, and her certainly wasn't making his point clear and precise. He was trying to tell me something after his initial question, but all I was looking out for was my opportunity to shoot back at him. But he was completely sincere, which made him even more creepy than before. He then told me about this church gathering that was coming up last Sunday, and he pleaded me to go with him.

OK, so there I was trying to turn my head away from the odor that was pouring out of his mouth like a thousand dead rats and a river polluted by human waste. The poisonous fume filled my mind then, unable to give a proper rejection other than a stern "No" in the face of this toothless preacher. But apparently - like most men - he did not understand the meaning of "No", and kept asking me to go with him. He offered to take me there to his church, but I was too appalled by the situation to tell him that that was th exact reason why I didn't want to go to his church. His mouth was wide opened, and he started asking me if I am from NYP. I wonder which part of my face had the letters NYP written on, or did any part of my body hinted that I was from that polytechnic. He merely assumed me to be from the same school, and hoped that by being in the same school as me in the past might gain my approval of his religion. I told him where I am from, and he then started telling me about how he was from NYP, and how he used to be this gangster that everybody hated. With his looks and the way he talked, the only threatening thing about this ex-gangster was his bad odor and inarticulate words. He was the epitome of horror, just sitting there next to me at the back of the bus. If there are emergency alarms in front of every seat of the bus to alert the driver, I would have pressed it so, so hard.

He tried to convince me that going to church turned him into a real man. "Look at me!", he said as he positioned himself towards my direction. "Can I not?", I said only in my head, turning my head away to Naz and mouthing "Help me!" in the process. If going to church turns somebody into you, then I'd rather remain where I am right now, praying to a flaming guitar in the sky and in my own prayers that come in the form of song lyrics. After probably saying the word "No" twenty times, he was still determined to get me to his church. He started telling me how his church has two levels - one for English speaking people on the first floor, and the other for Chinese or Hokkien speakers. He told me that he'd take me to the second floor, and I wonder which part of his polluted mind thought that I'd be interested in hearing a full sermon in Hokkien, when I can hardly interested in hearing it in a language that I do understand. Besides, taking me to either floors wouldn't be much of a use, since that man's language belonged to a floor entirely different from this world that I know. It was a cross between everything, and he might have been able to communicate with stray dogs if he tried hard enough, who knows.

The bus number 7 took forever to reach the town, but it sure did as the journey lasted. As the stop drew nearer and nearer, I counted down the seconds to the moment I would spring up from the seat and then leave the maniac behind to prey on some other poor victims. Three more seconds, two more seconds, one more second, and I was standing up and leaving the back of the bus. I was still traumatized, still in fear of him grabbing my arm just as I was able to alight from the bus to give me his last shot. I do appreciate his evangelist efforts, but I do also appreciate others to appreciate the religion that I have - Music. I don't need a toothless preacher to tell me what to believe in this world, and what not to believe.

Even if it comes right down to it, I do not think that that man had any rights to tell me what to do. He just looked like a lost and deceived man to me, and man that took a stroll on the edge of sanity and was taken in by a Christian church. It must have been a very nice act on their part, but I'm sure they did not expect this man to terrorize the public with his preachings on how the religion changed his life. If the church sent him out as an advertisement of sorts, they are either being incredibly stupid in their marketing plans, or they have a church full of blind priests who failed to see just how bad a walking billboard they have elected.

Single Serving Friend

It was probably fifteen minutes to four in the morning when a friend of mine made an observation about me, something which no one has ever told me about before. We were speaking of music and movies, and the topic inevitably shifted to the type of music or movies that might have gave us teary eyes. I was rather open about the songs that have given me a run for my Kleenex, and the movies that I so desperately tried to hold back those tears, but failed in the end. I remember listening to Nessun Dorma for the first time and catching that hint of sadness in the lyrics, despite not speaking a single word of Italian. The other song was the theme from Schindler's List, but that was really because of the imageries that got stuck in my head after watching the movie. The piles of dead bodies, that awful stench that I could almost smell with my nostrils, the sound of a dozen naked women screaming in the gas chambers. Everything came flooding back into my mind when the first note of the violin was being played, and I remember just breaking down in from of the computer, paralyzed by emotions. Those were the two songs I told her about, and I am sure I am missing out on a song or two.

But anyway, she then commented on how open I am with my feelings, especially considering the fact that it was just my second conversation with her over the internet. I bet it was due to the hour of the night, there is something about talking at four in the morning that makes anybody a little more honest about their feelings. But whatever the reason was, I started thinking about her words even after the conversation window was closed. I struck me that being this open and frank about my feelings towards a certain person or thing may not be the greatest thing in the world. It might be enjoyable to a certain level for someone to sit by the beach and talk to me, I do admit that I make a good talker and a listener in any conversation. But in the context of a social circle, I wonder if having full disclosure is really something I should celebrate about. After all, you are opening up doors to let people in, and other doors may be opened in the process. When the corridors to your heart become crowded with people you have let in, it becomes difficult to shut those doors afterwards. How did can one penetrate into your heart before you start to feel the hurt? It is hard to quantify how far, but at the same time I'm not sure if I want to know anymore.

I remember watching Sicko from Michael Moore a few weeks ago for my research paper, and he interviewed a telephone operator for a HMO in the United States. People call in to ask about whether or not they are qualified for insurance, and a whole lot of other questions regarding the healthcare system. There is a list of pre-existing condition that will bar you from getting your deserved health insurance, and the list is actually thirty-seven pages long in total. Any one of those pre-existing condition is going to prevent you from getting an insurance, and it also means that you'd have to fork out every cent the next time you visit a local hospital, uninsured. The telephone operator told Michael Moore about this old couple that called in once about applying for health insurance, and they were told to fax their application forms into her office for her to check their eligibility. Thinking that they were sure to get their insurance, they celebrated over the phone before the operator could tell them that they were definitely going to be rejected in couple of weeks' time.

They had conditions that did not make them eligible for any health coverage, but she didn't have the heart to tell the old couple that they will definitely be rejected in the near future. So she turned herself into this cold-hearted phone operator, taking emotions out of the equations whenever somebody calls in to inquire her about health insurance. I guess it just makes things easier for her, to take emotions away from her job. Because life as a phone operator, it is always better not to be involved in certain things, to detach yourself from reality when you are at work. It's just easier for anybody to get through the day at the office like robots, to not feel the boredom eating away your sanity, the sound of the fax machines and the shredding machine breaking your last nerve, setting off synapses in your head and forcing you to strangle the closest human being available. It is always easier to be cold sometimes, to be a robot. It's just easier to build a wall around you, not allowing others to penetrate too deeply into your life. Because the further they dig, they deeper they hurt you inevitably.

I guess it is a form of self defense to do such things, and I guess I am living by the life of a phone operator as well. People call in to ask a certain question, and as service staff of a major company, you just have to be nice to the callers, answer each and every one of their questions with a smile on your face, even if they are not going to see it from their side of the line. You try to be their friend for as long as the phone call lasts, attending to every need and every request. The phone call ends with those courteous 'Thank Yous' and 'Goodbyes', then life goes back to normal as you attend to the next caller. That goes on and on for a phone operator, everything is on repeat in the office cubicle for him or her. That is also how I interact with people I guess, at least what I am hoping to be as a person. Always being there for somebody who needs me, to always be concerned about somebody's dire situation. I reveal a little about myself, sometimes a little more than usual, but never too much or too deep. Because a phone call only lasts that long, you never know what may turn its back to you and then sucker punch you in the guts one day. It may happen for sure, and I am just gearing myself up for it.

This reminds me of the scene from Fight Club, when the narrator explains to the audience about his concept of a 'Single Serving Friend'. The main character played by Edward Norton, works for a famous car company, and travels around the country to take pictures of car crashes, to judge whether or not the drivers can claim any forms of insurance. Due to his frequent flights around the country, he has come to a conclusion that every passenger that sits next to him is - like the meals being served to him - a single serving friend. The sealed orange juice, the baked bun with a single square of butter, the set of utensils, the sugar and cream for your coffee. Everything the stewardess serves you is for just one person, and it can only be used once before your plan touches down on the runway. The passenger next to you is no different from the utensils you use to feed on the steak. He sits next to you for as long as the flight lasts, and you guys might converse about where you guys came from, what you guys were doing there, what you guys do for a living, etcetera etcetera. The plane touches down, the tires squeaks against the runway and you are back home. Both of you pick up your luggages, shake hands, and you are gone from his life, vice versa.

You won't go too deep into your life with him, and neither is he going to tell you too much about his life. Because you guys don't know each other that well, and everything remains on a very superficial level. When you speak to a stranger, everything becomes censored and a little distorted from the truth, but who cares anyway? It's not like anybody really treats a flight on the plane as a way to socialize with strangers, so it wouldn't matter if you lied about schooling in Stanford, or has just divorced from your wife who ran away with a Hollywood actor. Life is really like a flight from one country to another, and the people we meet in life are really very single serving in nature, at least for the most of them. They come while you are in a certain stage of your life, then they move on in their directions and you move on in yours. Some may be traveling in parallel lines, but you guys are inevitably going to be in completely different directions altogether. So it wouldn't be very wise to invest emotions on people who are potentially going to leave you, given enough time on their hands.

And as for me, I have no idea if I am telling too much, or still keeping people away from my limits. It is hard to tell how much is too much, because I am not the kind of person who likes to censor my thoughts or emotions at all. As you might have already noticed from the length of my blog posts, I am obviously not the kind of person that holds anything back at all. But at the same time, I do believe that the more someone knows of you, the more he or she is capable of hurting you, consciously or unconsciously. Somehow, that person is going to hurt your you feelings after you get closer to him or her, because only the people that matters to you can hurt you like nothing else in this world. Especially after the last tragic relationship, something inside me tells me that I should control what I tell people, remind myself to live life like the phone operator every now and then. To put my feet into the pool but don't dive, to dip my hands into the sands by don't sink. Because the pool might drown you and the sands may suffocate you, and nobody is going to be around at the end of the day to save you, but yourself. It may be a shame for others to know how defensive I may be in terms of making friends, but I guess all of us have been hurt one way or another in our lives to know, that deeper penetration only brings about pain and suffering.

I still enjoy long and insightful conversations with people of course, the ones that lasts till four thirty in the morning. But at the same time, there is always that fear of being hurt, that phobia of being stabbed in the heart over and over. Though not everybody is the same as somebody, I still feel helpless to my own defense mechanisms. They kick start without my control, and who knows how far away I am going to distance myself from my friends one day? The walls may get too thick for anybody to enter one day - who knows? - it may even be too thick for me to get out as well.

The Office

The Office is a great show, no questions asked. You don't need to have had experiences in the office to know that this is a great show. The Office is probably one of those really unique comedies out there that doesn't try to be funny in any way. You can compare it with any other comedies out there on television, and it is still going to stand out as being drastically different, even if you are not going to appreciate some of the jokes they tell in the show. Because in truth, The Office is probably what comedies should be like, the kind that never tries to be funny, but genuinely so. That is probably why countries like France, Canada and Germany also has their own versions of The Office in their country, because it is that good. I never got the chance to watch the original version from the United Kingdom, but the American version is certainly hard to beat, I bet.

I remember watching a video clip of Friends a while ago, and the person very cleverly edited out the laughter of the audience without editing out the words of the actors. Something very strange happened as I watched the video, because they weren't funny anymore. There is something about the laughter of the audience that invokes us to laugh as well, when the jokes really aren't that funny in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I love Friends, and I aspire to be like Chandler. But I couldn't deny that the little scene between Chandler and Ross just wasn't half as funny as when I saw it for the first time with the laughter of the audience in the background. Every joke just sort of fell flat, and I started wondering about the infectious qualities of laughter. This is probably a form of attribution, as we have learned in Communications and Psychology. If it seems normal to laugh, then you are subconsciously moved to laugh as well. I'm not saying that Friends is not a funny sitcom, but I'm just saying that a lot of its humor is attributed to the amount of laughter they artificially produced.

The Office is not like that, though. You are not going to find a single second of clip whereby there are audience laughing in the background. The Office doesn't have a live audience, but it was filmed in an actual office outside of a studio. No laughter of the audience, no one react to your jokes, and you are just putting absolute trust in your script, hoping that it is going to make people laugh when the episode is aired on television. I mean, if you are going to show it in front of a live audience, it is always possible to change the script and re-shoot an episode if the jokes are not funny. In the case of The Office, you don't have that kind of luxury, you don't have the option of trial and error at all. The Office films an episode, puts it out there and then hopes that people are going to enjoy the episodes, with their fingers crossed. The truth is, The Office works on so many levels that Friends never really achieved. More than humor, it spoke the truth about life in the office, and so much more.

The Office is a different form of comedy altogether, something which I have never seen before. You don't see comedies being filmed this way, because nobody has ever thought of it before. To film it like a documentary, with the cast being fully aware of the camera's presence - how brilliant. The humor is subtle and raw, and I can't say that The Office provides the kind of humor that you'd expect from a television series. I mean, we are usually expecting the full twenty minutes to be filled with laughter every fifteen seconds or so, but The Office doesn't have that. It takes its time to tell a joke, and sometimes they could be far away from each other. THe script allows the story to breathe, and whenever the screenwriters decide to drop the bomb on the audience, they are usually so subtle, they become effective. I guess it is rather hard to give justice to the kind of humor The Office offers, but suffice to say that I do appreciate the show, even if it doesn't make me laugh out loud every fifteen seconds or so. Because The Office isn't a TV show that is funny, but rather a funny story that happens to be a TV show.

I remember speaking to Kenzie - whom I have lost contact with - months ago about The Office, which she is a giant fan of. She reminds me of Pam now, sitting at the table and accepting calls from all over the world at her desk. She used to tell me the pranks she used to pull on her colleague, and how he used to do the same with her. She'd fill his office cubicle with those styrofoam balls you use to pack fragile items with, and he'd hide under her car at the end of the day and then grab her ankles. It reminded me of the pranks Jim would pull on Dwight, only Dwight never actually fought back to Jim's genius. Still, I think that is part of the charm the show provides. Despite the outrageous characters and the ridiculous storyline at times, there is still that sense of realism to it all, something in everything that you can relate yourself to. Even in the context of a school, I still find resemblances to the reality created in the office space of Dunder Mifflin, maybe that is why I am strangely attracted to the show. Of course, I do hope that I am never going to get a boss like Michael Scott. He tries his best, but in his own warped and twisted way. Though, a colleague like Pam would be rather welcomed. Jenna Fischer is so cute, despite being thirty-three this year.

I was thinking about the possibilities to film our own version of The Office in school, the possibility of using one of our school projects to film something like that. After all, we did a bunch of videos last semester for our music project, and they were even completed with sound effects, music and a movie trailer. This time around, I am not sure how feasible the idea is going to be, but Jonno always has his camera on standby I am sure. At the end of the day, he only needs to bring his camera to school, and the cast of The Office to assemble somewhere to reenact our favorite scenes. The Office is probably popular amongst five person I know in school: Jonno, Naz, Pao, Efei and myself. I'm sure I am missing out on somebody else, but hell. I still want our own version of The Office filmed, and I already came up with the cast list along with Naz and Jonno last night. For those who knows about the Office, believe me when I say this. We have the perfect people to replicate the cast of the office. Here's the list.

Michael - Azhar

Azhar feels like Michael Scott, because he is capable of doing incredibly idiotic things, and say the most outrageous things like the regional manager of the paper company. Azhar has that screw loose in his head that fits Michael Scott's shoes very well. Though he might be a little too muscular for the role, but I completely see him marching into the office in the morning, saying strange things to his colleagues and then caressing their chests - like he always does in school, at least to me.

Pam - Kania

Kania is Pam, simply because Kania can carry a joke without flinching. She is going to be Jim's accomplice, and no other girl can play a trick on Dwight as well as her. Of course, Kania might need to grow a longer hair, make them curly, and then tie them up at the back. But either way, it'd be nice to see Kania as Pam, because she just has that funny-factor going on for her that makes her fit into the role so perfectly.

Jim - Myself

I, am Jim. I prefer to be in a stranger role, but I guess Jim would do well for me. Jim has that dry sense of humor that is so natural, though a little different from my nature. But Kania is Pam, and I am probably the only person she'd be willing to play lovers with. OK, Pam isn't actually with Jim in the show, but they are partners at the office pretty much most of the time. Besides, I do enjoy pulling tricks on people every once in a while, especially after you guys find out who we have chosen for Dwight. The. Perfect. Casting.

Dwight - Albert

Albert is Dwight, because Albert IS Dwight. I know, you can totally picture it in your head right now, because that is how he is. Competitive, always on the edge, and perhaps a little strange on his mannerisms at times. Nonetheless, I think Albert is the perfect Dwight, though not exactly half as stupid. Albert has the smarts, but I am not sure if he is willing to play Dwight, the same Dwight that sinks into a panick attack before a speech, and also the Dwight who dressed up like a Sith Lord for Halloween. Albert is the perfect Dwight, nobody else can beat that. Ever.

Kevin - Xinchee, and Stanley - Efei

Xinchee is Kevin, because Kevin always has that expressionless face that changes into that strange smile of his. Xinchee has that smile he can pull off, and you can always imagine him standing next to you in every form of conflict. Of course, he is also going to be the kind that'd advice you to stay out of trouble, very much like Kevin in the Boys and Girls episode. Efei is Stanley, because Stanley is also known as Stanley the Manly. Stanley is the cool black man in the office, and the kind who never gives a shit about Michael's crazy mannerisms. Besides, Stanley loves basketball in his own unique ways, very much like Efei. I think Efei can pull off his coolness without even trying. Absolutely perfect.

Kelly - Sherry, Meredith - Fang Xun, Phyllis - Juliana, Oscar - Joel, Angela - April and Creed - Sean

Most of the side cast members in the show have very subtle things about them. They don't exactly have a lot of lines to speak most of the time, but they are still incredibly funny when they need to be. They all have certain qualities that allow the audience to fall in love with them, and here's the rundown of the supporting cast. Kelly is Sherry for obvious reasons, because they are both Indian - or, in Sherry's case, Sri Lankan. I'm not sure why I picked Fang Xun and Juliana to be Meredith and Phyllis respectively, but there is something about them that fits their shoes rather well. Both of them speak, talk, and act almost exactly the same as the two characters from the show, at least that is what I feel. Oscar is Joel, because both of them has a specific way of working, and they have their own set of principles they work on, unmoved even by their boss. Once in a while they might be forced to change plans, but Oscar pretty much remains with himself, like Joel - I feel. Angela is April, because Angela is rather straight forward and uptight most of the time, the peacekeeper of the office and trying to keep everything in check. Like her, April always has a way to tell people that this is the right thing to do according to her logic, though she never tried to force anything down the throat of anybody. Both of them has their authoritative qualities, despite trying any harder than being themselves at all. Sean is Creed for obvious reasons, because Creed is the office old creep, and Sean is probably the oldest twenty-one year old I have ever met.

Toby - Jonno

Toby is Jonno, because Toby never smiles or never cries. He doesn't have any emotions regarding anything in the office, whatsoever. He stands in the corner and disses Michael with his cold hard facts, the ones that come out from his cold hard lips. Toby is from human resources, and he gives you the numbers and the statistics whether you like it or not. That is Jonno, because he is always the guy telling you the reality of things, telling you to stop dreaming and come back down to earth. He keeps the sanity in check at times, though he may also drive you to the edge of your sanity most of the time.

Ryan - Deuel

Deuel is the perfect Ryan, simply because Ryan sort of gets pushed around a lot. It's not that Deuel - or Ryan - doesn't have his own views on things. But because of his boss, Ryan doesn't have much of a choice but to suck things in most of the time. Not to forget Michael's infatuation with Ryan in every episode, and I can totally imagine Michael staring through his office windows at Ryan at his desk, or rather, Azhar doing the same to Deuel.

Daryl - Naz, and Shen as the second warehouse black man.

Last but not least, Naz and Shen can be the black guys in the warehouse downstairs, because you can totally see them disregarding the commands of the boss, and then closing up on him just to make their points known. It doesn't matter to them if you are their boss or not. If you are going to drive a fork lift and then topple a row of cupboards in the warehouse, either of them are going to scream at you and go," DAMN IT MICHAEL!". They are the perfect warehouse crew, no questions asked.

So, that is a little run down on the Office crew - UB version - that I have come up with. I can totally picture the opening of the show, with our names flashing across the screen instead of the usual people. Then of course, at the end of the opening there'd be The Campus, written across the screen. It'd be fun to film something as lame and pointless as this, but I guess there are interesting things you can find in the most lame and pointless things. Just look at Dwight, pretty much everything he does is lame and pointless, but we love the dork of the office, anyway.