the smell of life

when i was 9 our science teacher asked us..."do smells have weight?"

i shouted "well milady, apparently you have not experienced my fart, which carries with it the full force of a runaway train. tell me if that doesnt have weight." well i didnt really say that. wish i did. instead i was perplexed into deep stupor. i still remember her condescending smirk laced with a couple of those smug chin lifts and corner-of-the-eye lookdowns. ya la ya la u smart la. atas bitch.

and the truth eluded me for years--because the answer could not exist. the question was...inherently flawed. suppose if we were to ask ourselves, 'do smelly things have weight?', the answer would be obvious. yes, even supermodels' gym clothes weigh something, even if the ladies themselves dont.

and then any uneducated simpleton would challenge "yes smelly clothes have weight but does the smell of smelly clothes weigh anything?" tersely put, ammonia (or hydrogen sulphide--the stuff of which legendary farts are made--i know my farts ok) molecules DO have weight. realise then that we had just started swirling down a different drainpipe because this answer is still not compatible with the original question.

"yes smelly clothes have weight and the ammonia molecules that make it smelly have weight but does the smell of smelliness of smelly clothes weigh anything?"

SHUT UP! SHUT UP! DIE! SHUT!!!

at this point i hear a click in my head (no, not aneurysm bursting). can i apply this question to our other senses? do images have weight? do tastes have weight? do sounds have weight? then i ask the fifth and the last and realise how terribad the question really is--do tactile feelings have weight? eureka. of course they dont. things we experience have weight. the experiences themselves weigh nothing.ss

so why is it that i believe that my memories are worth more to me than anything material? why does failure and regret feel so heavy? why is it that i believe i would never trade my experiences, including and especially all the bad ones, for tons of money, good looks and a restart on life with a blank, wiped slate? if im lucky i'll have an answer in 12 years.

the glass

water in a glass. air in a glass. weve all heard of the pessimist and the optimist. just two--perhaps too simple and elegant? :)

and said in a way to inspire optimism in the many who have chanced upon this nugget of wisdom, by making the pessimist sound ridiculous. ahh..but whatever was so bad about the ability to anticipate the worst, save for the possibility that it might eventually be all one ever could see? willful blindness: an extreme scenario; and i could say the same for unguided optimists.

but now im just getting hung up on another false dichotomy, because we really are a world of many and while

the optimist might say "your glass is half full",
the pessimist would say "your glass is half empty" and
the enviromentalist would say "is your glass recyclable?" while
the philosopher would say "your glass of water is tecnhically not really there", followed by
the communist, who would say "your glass is actually our glass". but
the polemicist says "there is no issue with the glass. it has always been about the cup". to which
Lara Croft would say "my cups are Double D". not forgetting
Ris Low, who would say "your glass is half boomz and half shingz" and
the engineer who would readily inform that "your glass needs ╥*r²*(H-x) more water". next,
the jaded man who says "fuck your glass" and
the feminist who says "your glass is a phallic contruct. i refuse to answer this question" as
the buddhist says "in my past life, i was a glass of water". so
the singapore govt would say "we shall take our shit and our piss and treat it and pour it into your glass" right before
Chase says "dun care what water... your glass A-list anot?" and quickly after,
the Marxist would shout "your glass is the symbol of oppression on the water which is the working class" and
the fascist, "your glass is half of whatever I tell you it is" and then of course what we imagine
Jesus would say: "your glass overfloweth."

amen.

folly in the black and white

which came first, the chicken or the egg? isnt it funny that nobody asks "which came first...egg or the chicken?". maybe that's really not important. what is is that creationists answer: the chicken and that evolutionists say: the egg (the first chicken on earth hatched from an egg that wasnt laid by a chicken).

us silly humans... always looking for a way to categorise the world into discrete packets of understanding. people tend to forget the great continuity of our universe and its infinitely many shades of grey between the black and the white. we cant possibly classify every known object and/or concept into its own category--that's a paradox; neither can we take everything and draw a line to split them in twain. but that's what's been happening with civilisation lately, or maybe its a just a late observation.

bad questions have since the beginning been the basis for endless debate filled with poison and ill logic, where each struggling side finds refuge only in demonising those of the other. people find beauty in simplicity and accord grand worship to its apparent elegance. whats underneath is but terrible ugliness in the unnecessary reduction in the terms of all such discussion. should the death penalty be abolished? should gays be allowed to marry? creationism or evolution? is terrorism ever justified? euthanasia? does singapore need freedom of expression? questions like this with the ability to plague the fabric of society have also always carried the option of the reconciliating answer, such as, for one of them, the postulation that Adam and Eve were really...just monkeys that gave birth to better and better looking descendants.

trivial attempt at conflict resolution? or could it just have been a trivial conflict to begin with?

one born from the simplicity of human mentality. primitive thinking--that everything must be one or the other, reduced to the great binary theory of everything, that social and economic freedom must mean anarchy and that social and economic restriction must mean facism, that you must be against me because you are not with me, that you are my enemy because you are not my friend, that you hate me because you dont agree with me, that i must be cursed because i am not blessed, that i am ugly because nobody told me i am beautiful, that i am a failure because i have not succeeded.

but even a coin with two sides shall one day land on its edge, every battle, a possibility to result in stalemate. and every rainbow be seen to have more than seven colours and every question worth asking be receptive to more than two answers, and every fool, know the ability in him to open his own eyes to the greyscale in a world so caught up with the folly of black and white .

i love

i love...

• i love how clouds look like paintings in the sky. i love how they come in so many shapes and colours. i love strong clouds and i love the nebulous ones too.
• i love the sun after a long rain. it doesnt burn; it just brightens everything. and the breeze...
• i love wet roads.
• i love sunday mornings when the streets are so quiet. when the air is cold. when even the birds are still sleeping.
• i love it when i wake up and look at the time and then realise i dont care what time it is because i remember it is saturday.
• i love rolling on my left side and going back to sleep.
• i love drinking cold water when im thirsty.
• i love drinking cold water even when im not thirsty.
• i love sitting on my lower back.
• i love it when i slog through the night and crash into bed face-down and wake up the next morning in the same position.
• i really love it when i roll to my left side and go back to sleep then.
• i love hot and crispy hashbrowns. they are crunchy and oily and they taste so good.
• i love it when i just finished a run and my throat is closing and my lungs are burning and my legs are almost frozen tight and sweat is dripping off the tips of my fingers but i know theyre all good things.
• i love mushroom soup.
• i love subway tuna with extra onions. and i love the onion bb after because it reminds me throughout the rest of the day of how good the sandwich was.
• i love it when the bus is coming and people rush and run and shove and i keep walking and still make it because the bus doors cant really fit them all at the same time anyway. why hurry?
  
• i love it when a pretty girl gets on the train or bus or walks into a room and im instead looking at all the guys who turn their heads or stare with the corner of their eyes or plain ogle with mouths agape.
• i love it when i get on the train and there are so many empty seats for me to choose from. it just makes me really really happy.
• i love the smell of new leather. i love the smell of petrol. i love nostalgic smells.
• i love nostalgia.
• i love nostrils.
• i love it when my friends laugh.
• i love my mother.
• i love to walk in the dark alone and think about things. things that matter and things that never. it helps if its in the park and its too cold even for the mosquitoes.
  
• i love wet grass.
• i love chicken. if all the world's meat disappeared overnight id pray that chicken didnt because it tastes so good. hmmm...herbal chicken soup :)
• i love it when i can see my abs in the mirror
  
• i love it when i wake up in the morning and all i really need to do for the rest of the day is to pee.
• i love that i enjoy thinking about things that few people care about.
• i love knowing so many things that most people will never know in their lifetimes.
• i love how i know i could never complete this list.

i love.

on losing the war

The 2009 Pishin bombing occurred on October 18, 2009, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a meeting in the southeastern Iranian town of Pishin in Sistan and Baluchestan Province. The attack killed 42 people including several notable Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC, or Revolutionary Guards) commanders.

four years later and and the world is ...is it the same? from renaissance times: monarchal assasination, then anarchy, then racism, then politics, now religion. four years ago i would have thought terrorism really only sprung up after 9/11, if not merely because of increased media attention and thus my own ignorance then because of Afghanistan and then later because of Iraq.

today im not so sure; man has been killing each other since day one--only the reasons changed.

and the costs of the righteous or so it would appear, greatly outweigh the ease of which the minions of the super organism weve come to know as the Islamist assemblage are ready to end themselves in the fight against the coalition of the willing. how could it possibly end well for us?