The Early Years (2002-2005)

I’m quite particularly about how my files are organised, and I don’t like how iTunes takes liberties to organise it by artist-album. Isn’t that kind of against the singles spirit of MP3? You just end up with a lot of directories with just one file in them. So I’m loathe to let iTunes consolidate all my MP3 files, and I like how Winamp scans for new MP3 files within your music folders. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I was glad to discover the iTunes Library Updater, which updates all the files within your iTunes playlist to match the files you actually have on your computer. (Also very useful when I physically copied half my MP3 directories onto my external hard drive.)

Okay, so I have a slight obsession with handedness ever since I had to learn to be left-handed for a few months after an army accident left my right hand broken (still use my chopsticks and mouse left-handed), but this article noting that most wild chimps are left-handed caught my eye:

Newsweek has an article on how graphic novels have become mainstream. Should’ve appeared much, much earlier, in my opinion - Persepolis and Jimmy Corrigan have been major novels for a while already.

Roger Ebert’s review of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo gets funny once it moves out of reviewing the film (probably too execrable to even make decent wisecracks about, but that’s just my guess) and starts talking about the contretemps between Rob Schneider and the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Goldstein, who had called the original Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo “a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic”.

Okay, I gave in and bought a Flickr Pro account - not that I needed the bandwidth, but my organising obsession meant I wanted to create lots of neatly-ordered sets for random photos from my past - slices of Singapore and America, travel pictures and so on.

I’m also quite into my Sony Ericsson K750i phone - the autofocus camera is really great to use, the tactile response of the keypad is superior to my previous phone, and while I never thought I’d find a use for Bluetooth, it really does make things easier. So here’s a shot taken with the phone, the fake plastic trees of Changi Airport. A bit grainy, unfortunately - should have used the flash I think.

While cleaning out my house, I came across a set of photos I took back in 1990 or 1991 around the City Hall area. Boy, a lot changes in 15 years: this is the junction of Coleman Street and Victoria Street, featuring a whole set of old shophouses that today is occupied by the Plaza Parkroyal hotel.

I should say this about last week’s National Day Parade: I was involved in the parade three years back, in 2002, in a fun job - I was attached to Mediacorp for part of my National Service, and helped do comms. So it was nice to see the credits for the parade roll and some familiar names roll by - a big hi to Omar Palil.

“Why more women aren’t geeks” was an intriguing headline, which I thought would lead to some sort of sociological discussion of what part gender roles played in the stereotype of “geekhood”, but it turned out to be more ordinary than that: it was a reference to a study on what caused more women to go into computer science. Apparently compulsory math and science education at the high school level helps fight the common perceptions of what jobs men and women “should” do.

A Paradoxical Mind linked to a story from the Daily Telegraph headlined “Bigamist’s secret life fell apart the day his three wives came to visit”. Now, I don’t know what the Telegraph’s style guide says (Lord knows I don’t read that paper), but clearly if you have three wives, you are not a bigamist. You are a polygamist. (And slightly mad, one might add.)

The main reason I prefer riding the MRT/subway to driving, sitting in a taxi, or taking the bus, is that it is only on the train that I can read, my propensity for motion sickness being what it is. I’m also an inveterate peeker - I like seeing what others on the train are flipping through. So, last week, I spotted -

Stumbled upon the Smoking Tongue, a blog dedicated to reviewing hot sauces. I have fond memories of trying out various ass-kicking hot sauces (in fact, I’m pretty sure one of them had that as its name: Ass Kicking Hot Sauce, complete with a picture of an ornery donkey in mid-kick). - and enough good hot sauce would add a nice fillip to otherwise bland dining-hall food.

The nonquantum blog Schrodinger’s Cat is Dead lists words to use more often, including “quiddity” and “propinquity”, two of my favourites. I used to have one of these lists back in JC/high school, just words that tripped trippingly off the tongue. My own current list of words that I should employ more often seems to have lots of in- words: incarnadine; inchoate; iniquity.

Language Log discusses the way grammar and semantics/meaning get personified with distinct genders: Someone should investigate the ways in which the grammar/semantics distiction is personified. Grammar is often cast as a fussy schoolteacher (a schoolmarm, in particular: Miss Fidditch) or some other kind of authority figure, a legislator or judge or priest (almost surely male). But grammar can also be seen as empty form, which on its own produces mere chatter without substance - a female stereotype. Meaning, in contrast, is configured either as substantial and significant (so: agentive and male) or as “natural”, even earthy (so: passive and female).

Arranging my books, I’ve come to realise how often great, arresting images have compelled me to buy art books or to just stop and ponder. Which is both ordinary, because I do love art, and strange, because paradoxically, I don’t think of myself as a person who thinks visually: if I met you and turned around, I doubt I would be able to say what you were wearing. So here’s to the work of artists that have intrigued me, including Nan Goldin. (Image from Postmedia.net - shows very well the level of intimacy that Goldin can achieve.)

It’s a lazy National Day, with the country hitting middle age at 40. Funny in a way that my parents are older than my country. Anyway, since today’s a lazy little Tuesday and I’m spending it organising my new rooms, I thought I’d put up a picture of the world’s other cutest dog, the family dog Rerun, enjoying the new house.

A set list for Friday’s gig is up. Very conventional stuff - haven’t done hip-hop in a while, so I thought I’d stick to what I know. But as the fingers got warmed up it all came back to me; much fun.

Apparently while an L.A. strip club could put “Live Nude Nude Nudes” as its sign, its new sign “Vaginas R Us” drew lots of complaints. Not quite Eve Ensler’s new play, I guess. And “nude nude nudes” seems a bit tautological. What, you mean, as opposed to clothed nudes?

Just got off ICQ with PJ Thum - boy he’s clearly exhausted. And small wonder: my congratulations to him becoming the first Singaporean to swim solo across the English Channel, doing it in 12 hours 24 minutes. A great physical feat.

So according to the Hollywood Reporter, they’re making a film version of On the Road, the classic Jack Kerouac novel, directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries). I guess, thinking about it, the Motorcycle Diaries does parallel On the Road in that it tells the story through the eyes of someone in thrall to a much more charismatic real-life character - Che in the former, Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady in the latter - and that’s not always easy to convey in film. But despite liking that film, I remain skeptical of anyone’s ability to adapt On the Road. On the Road was one of those books that made me want to go see America: the book for me felt alive with sheer manic energy, reckless and on the brink, sort of the literary equivalent of amphetamines. And that last paragraph - thinking of Dean Moriarty - always gets to me.