Rhinoceros, small metal objects, and Class Enemy

Three (worthy & interesting, IMHO) upcoming plays that I'd like to watch (and probably will):

Rhinoceros


Thought provoking, it should be, more than anything else. Original text by Eugène Ionesco. 'Rhinoceros' explores the absurd huh?

What is

(hide)

oh, just in case you were wondering, or somehow curious: I definitely didn't mean absurd as in nonsensical. I meant absurd, in the context of Camus and Sartre, i.e. the questioning of our conventional values and purpose. MORE INFO HERE

, a thick and heavy notion in a hilarious manner (according to reviews/commentaries).

Small Metal Objects

(click to watch the video preview)


As in the above, I think this is an attempt to bring background nuances to the foreground, where the 'overlooked details' are brought to center-stage.

Class Enemy




I find Bosnian movies/plays to be coarsely (hence, real) emotive - it is most likely just my subjective feel towards that language, i.e. the accent, pronunciation, etc... (since I can't understand the words).

Theatre-goers? Anyone? -
more details [here]

Cosmic concepts

"Every textbook on the planet Earth says that the universe is made up of atoms, and some subatomic particles. Well, all those textbooks, are wrong!"

- Michio Kaku (Author of Parallel Worlds) [00:03:01]

Truly intriguing. Please buy about 45 minutes of time to watch this:

Channel: History Channel
Programme: The Universe

Synopsis:
Scientists have no idea what it is, but Dark Matter and Dark Energy make up 96% of the Universe. Dark Matter is everywhere. It passes through everything we know on earth at billions of particles every second, yet no one has ever gotten a direct detection of this mysterious dark substance. An even more bewildering force is Dark Energy, which is rapidly pushing apart our Universe. Discovered only ten years ago, scientists are struggling to comprehend its unusual characteristics and answer the ultimate question; what is the fate of our Universe? Using cutting-edge computer graphics watch as the universe is brought down to earth.

well... what say you after watching this?

I am just contented with now, but worried that in aeons from now, students will have so much more things to learn - hopefully they can cope. I think, being responsible, is being aware that each discovery you make means an hour less of sleep for others in the future.

One last breath - the paper flies.

I have just consumed the 4th last piece of foolscap.

Sigh, I thought I had just started with a new pad of foolscap paper only so recently. We would think it is almost sad, even pitiful, that it lived its life completely the reverse of a photo album.

It doesn’t collect treasured memories. And it doesn’t get more valuable, more beautiful each day.

Pages, torn from this pad, are mercilessly scratched and defaced, then tossed to that green, orange, blue, or this colourless file. Colour coded, they are the respective recycling bins – one for biology, one for chemistry, one for mathematics, and one for literature. Miscellaneous fragments are simply littered around those bins. Don’t you see it now? What horror. The infiltration of consumerism and company.

I noticed the 3 pieces of paper left, and the sadistic lightening of my mood. While it is an affirmation of how much work I have done (I rarely doodle, anyway), it also reflects the foolishness all this while. I mentioned earlier that it doesn’t collect treasured memories. Yes, perhaps it doesn’t collect treasured memories, but, as it becomes barer, it takes on more wholly the form of a mirror. Past memories glare into you. You must certainly have remembered that moment of frantic copying, or that time-shift – the dubious 15 minutes interval between the two lines of words. Those fifteen minutes: The wonderful experience of manipulating space-time, travelling back from dreamworld in what felt like only a blink.

Yes that foolscap truly grates me. It is a puzzling object that I can’t comfortably grapple with – I will never, in my sanity, tear it apart. But I had never liked associating with the foolscap either.

2 pieces left actually, I had thought 3 – a friend must have consumed one just now.

2 units of time left, before that pad of foolscap expires. We can almost hear them, clinging on tenaciously to the adhesive spine, “…till death do us apart”. About time, I’ve about 2 pages of work to do now.

Exeunt.

PM cautions against witch-hunt

PM cautions against witch-hunt






I personally think, while Mas Selamat himself may pose as a threat, the Government's response & reaction potentially poses as an even greater threat. Witch-hunt? Yes - and consequently the hysteria, as presented in The Crucible:


Context (before the video):
Tituba, the black woman, was caught dancing and chanting with a group of young girls around a fire in the woods. It was truly just a childish game, but Tituba was accused for associating with the Devil/ involvement in witchcraft.

In the video:
We see Tituba denying the accusations, but to no effect. Being tortured and under pressure, she gives a false confession, and then accuses 2 other women to show that she is sincere. The accusations, as observed, were simply accepted - there is no need for evidence at all (after all, you can't disprove witchcraft). Upon seeing how easy it is to accuse others, the group of girls (the crowd at the stairs) followed Tituba and deliberately and falsely confessed.

After:
What then followed (not in the video above), was the uncontrollable accusations, whereby the accused had no choice but to confess too, and they, in turn, accused more people as a form of vengeance. This spiraled out of control, thus, the hysteria.

Finger-pointing is a terrible and destructive sport. As PM Lee mentioned, DPM Wong Kan Seng didn't explicitly choose to disregard safety measures, neither did he "suggest that we didn't need so much fencing". It is not fair to impose on him the responsibility to account for every variable and the infinite possibilities of what may happen. Therefore, if there should be anything to be feared, it would be mindless and baseless accusations. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) perfects it: "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."


I am convinced that this is, A timely caution. An affirmation of our wise leaders.

my chocolate waffle

Something funny happened to me today. I didn’t go high on drugs but,

With earphones plugged, things around me begin to appear distanced. A particular encounter amplified that distancing. A sense of detachment, perhaps, that I've become a spectator, unrelated to the happenings around me. It would be easier for you to understand, if I relate it to watching a play or a movie - things just happen, and you simply observe, and at most think about them. I was queuing up at a bread shop to get this chocolate waffle (the green coloured ones, you know… you can either have it plain, or have kaya, peanut butter… etc spread on it). I waited patiently, or rather detachedly, for my waffle to be made. And I was watching two people behind the cashier talking. Judging from their apparels, they were workers at that shop. They were talking rather animatedly, one of them flailing arms and bumping up and down on tip-toes. Of course, I couldn't hear what they were saying. Their dramatic conversation, so convincingly alive yet, having not heard a word, totally incomprehensible, struck me, as if, that I was really simply a spectator and they were consequently mere actors/players. Like watching television with the ‘mute’ button pressed. I watched as the scene before me unravels.

Now that you get the hang of it, at least vaguely, I would want to explain it more precisely. Watching a movie, seeing things simply happening, was not exactly/precisely what I felt then. Because in watching a movie, there is still a physical barrier (i.e. the screen) separating us from that world behind it; In what I had just experienced just now, that ‘barrier’ was non-existent. I thought that it would perhaps be more apt to say, it felt that I was in a/ using a 'Pensieve'. If you know Harry Potter, you would probably instantly get what I mean – the experience in a Pensieve. Basically it allows us to experience something fully, short of really being there. To slap on a wiki for those who have not read Harry Potter, a Pensieve "allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the memories stored within, much like a magical form of real world virtual reality".

Not that I’m in someone else’s memory…but for that moment, I felt like I was a spectator of my own memory, and passively letting things around me unravel, waiting to see what happens next.

Earphones unplugged, a nod, plus a ‘thank you’, things then dissolved to their normal state. I’m now actively being there. That ‘detached’ moment was lost and I felt painfully normal again – I wish I could get back to that passive observer state, experiencing my played-back ‘self’ in auto-pilot mode.

You must have experienced something similar before, no? What do you think?

The 'No Underpass' Dilemma

- weekendTODAY (3-4 May 2008)


Glen Yang is right.

I think rigidly inscribed guidelines (i.e. the law) shouldn't and couldn't be definitively used to assess human behavior, which is something that is still much of a mystery to us today.

What's this ? what's this ?
Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!
Not she, nor doth she tempt ; but it is I,
That lying by the violet in the sun,
Do, as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season.

- Angelo, in Measure for Measure (II,ii,162)

Different context, similar dilemma.

It is a universally accepted truth that the 'aggrievator' should be blamed.

But when the aggrieved is also the 'aggrievator', and vice versa...
the straight, plain, universal truth, being twisted and folded, then becomes a tangled palaver.

How are we now to judge and divide the blame?

So who do you think is more at fault?