R.A.P. (Rants with Ants in Pants) 4 - Television is a trash bag is a black hole

Here is a cliche. Television is bad for the mind.

I feel the television screen is the mouth of a spirit or intellect vacuum cleaner and it will suck my mental capacities and vitality into a dusty and dark paper trash bag that will ultimately become trash itself, destined to be the resting grounds of spiders and insects that cannot be identified by the layman.

Come to think of it, the ultimate trash bag must be like the black hole of all garbage. It is probably not perfectly analogous, but if the ultimate trash bag contains trash and is trash in itself... Assume the ultimate trash bag is firstly filled with all the shit in the world (which is basically the entire world) and becomes trash itself. Then, the ultimate trash bag must be able to contain itself, as it is the ultimate. So, the trash bag gets turned inside out in attempt to contain itself, such that what used to be the outside is now on the inside, but the inside which is reversed onto the outside still contains the whole world, but it will turn itself outside in again to contain itself... with infinite repeats it will create infinite gravitational pull and be a black hole.

If you have followed the argument thus far, you must be either respectably bored or admirably committed to the truth of things and you should give yourself a pat on your back for putting your rationality and patience at the risk of my blasting fuzzy logic.

Hell, be generous with yourself, give yourself a big hug!

As a congratulatory bonus from me to you, as a word of concern, I hope you would not try too hard to make sense of the above attempt at analogy, for even I, as the proposer, am too nauseated by the convoluted lack of point to seriously edit it to improve the sensibility.

Despite of the apparent abstruseness, I should, out of courteous decency, which I have, today, feign an effort to reconcile the analogy for a semblance of closure. So, well, the conclusion that can be made here is that the black hole is like an ultimate trash bag... and the television is the vacuum cleaner for the paper trash bag that sucks up mental capacities, and therefore, television is pretty much a complicated trash bag that makes people stupid.

Ho. Now, what do I mean by that? Is that a jibe at the media? Is that a jibe at our present society? Come to think of it, I do not know the physics of black holes very well at all.

Please join me in irony's amusement! In my determined senselessness, you may have arrived at some sensible conclusions for yourself. In my determined senselessness, I, too, arrived at some sensible conclusions for myself. Ho ho! The irony tickles a part of me that I hope to tuck away before it gets sucked away by tomorrow's afternoon television!

(sneak)

(Untitled)

That morning, as part her daily routine, she reached into her cupboard for her gingko biloba supplement. Instead, she only found an eye staring back at her. All the otherwise reasonably anticipated contents of the cupboard were gone.

There was an eye in her cupboard.

"Maybe it's hypoglycemia. This is delusional. I must be in a dream." She didn't have lunch or dinner yesterday, maybe she was fainting from hunger - hypoglycemia. "This is delusional. There is an eye in my cupboard." It blinked.

If she blinked back, it might try to communicate somemore. That might help make sense of this. So she blinked, in hopes, as well, that the eye would disappear. If so, she must go get herself a kitkat. The eye was still there. She closed the cupboard and opened it again. The eye was still there.

She peered to check if it came with a mouth piece. It did not. It was by itself and merely looked at her.

By then, it was quite apparent to her that she would not find her gingko biloba in the cupboard today, so she closed the cupboard and went off to get herself a kitkat anyway.

"Maybe such things are drawn to bottles of gingko biloba supplements, like how... mushrooms are drawn to growing on damp wood," she wondered. "Had the other things in the cupboard drawn the eye?" She ran them through mentally and made a shopping list as well.

She thought that maybe it was a practical joke. Before leaving for work, she went back to the cupboard with a pair of chopsticks. She opened the cupboard and the eye was still there. She poised her chopsticks in a pseudo-i-am-going-to-attack-the-eye-with-a-kungfu-stance stance.

She had never learnt kungfu.

(Untitled)

"How many nights has it been since I have forgotten to look for the moon?" The dog star asked the pup. "I have always enjoyed her company but I've been so busy, I think... I don't remember what with, but it's been a long time since I've even thought about looking for her... Why is this so? What have we been doing?"

"You have been chasing sheep and I have been chasing you," replied the pup, "I have always been with you and I thought of nothing else. If you wish, let us go look for the moon right now."

"No. I am tired tonight. I am the dog star and I have to lead the pack. I have to chase the sheep. The moon will understand."


(sneak)

Iced Honey Latte

I came out of the house today because I knew if I had stayed at home, time would fly as I sit in front of the TV. I suppose this is a good Sunday. I went here and there, now I’m at a fancy café drinking a $6.90 cup of coffee. That’s just a little less than a beer. I suppose it is also for the rental of the table and chair, and designer serviettes, and coasters...and the iced lemon water served in tea light holders. They make me drink out of this. Or rather, they let me, and I actually do.

Spinning ceiling fans and a pretty waitress with a pony tail delivers my iced honey latte with whipped cream. It is bloody sweet. I hear noise of the traffic and of the coffee crowd.

Bugis is one of my favourite places in Singapore. To spend my afternoon here writing, is one of my favourite past times. Here, I am invisible. I walk around alone like I’m in a bubble, and I see things, and they become forgotten secrets. I tuck them in the back rooms of my head. I refuse to tame my hair and instead, I let my hair fly all over my face to make me more inconspicuous. An act of rebellion.

Frankly, I know nobody cares.

The weather today cannot decide to be cloudy or sunny. Perhaps, it is like how I cannot make up my mind to stir in the whipped cream or not. My coffee is not cold enough. It is humid and warm. It is the third coffee for me today. It will probably make my heart beat harder. Maybe if I can concentrate hard enough, I will feel the emptiness in my heart as it pumps the blood around my body. Bloody blood. Apathetic, poisonous, blood red blood.

Red is the opposite of black. According to me, red is the opposite of black. There is some irrefutable degree of truth in this as one of my friends independently arrived at the same realisation as well. Red is the opposite of black. If you can understand that, then you would surely have the capacity to agree a little, and then it is true enough for you too. Red is the opposite of black. If you can understand that, here is the story of the greyscale girl.

........

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there lived a greyscale girl. I would tell you her name if I knew, but I do not. So , if you know and you could tell me, please do so that I may stop wondering.

It happened and began with her eyes. They were initially brown when she was littler. As she grew older, they darkened in colour and gradually changed to black. She didn’t notice them at first, and when she finally did, she got them checked against an old photo by eye doctors. They couldn't tell what's going wrong and encouraged attribution to puberty related hormonal changes. Since she could see fine, she didn’t bother to do much with it. That is considering the relativity of “seeing fine”.

So, she began to have eye bags, which she also thought was normal. Lack of sleep and watching incessant television that continually to disinterest her, but sustained her attention… it wasn’t abnormal either, to have eye bags, so they didn’t bother her to do much except for blaming hormonal change.

It was all for the better and not as if, if she had known the truth, she could have done anything about it at all. The issue is that our girl was bored.

Bored with every molecule, every atom of being. Nothing moved her. Sure, some things can kind of get her attention, or even sort of interest her, except that she would know at the back of her head and heart, or perhaps, hardly at the back of any parts of her body at all, that she was truly and utterly bored.

Death bored her, and sadness bored her, and she felt nothing. Increasingly and thoroughly nothing.

The greyness of her eyes and her eye bags started to spread across her face. She hid the patches of grey with make up. Who would want to look like a freak? People’s unwanted attention would bore her and worse, she’d have to respond to it in order not to be rude. Then, her neck turned grey. By the time she realised that joy and humour bored her, it was when her breasts were grey.

In between, she'd worry and the grey would almost stop spreading or appear to stop. With the passing of time, she would return to boredom, and the grey would grow again. Just about when injustice bored her, her arms and hands turned grey. Her lower torso turned grey when food lost taste. Next were her thighs, in between them, and then her knees. She knew, by then, she would feel ultimately bare and turn totally greyscale. Soon, she was bored by it. Finally, her feet turned grey.

Still, she saw a world of colour and she appreciated that. At least, she could see the blue skies and movies and TV in technicolour. At least she could see which part of her skin was not evenly made up by her liquid foundation. Her appreciation might have sustained the perception.

Also, she remained curious about her red blood shot eyes and that might have helped too. Her blood remained red, and she’d cut herself once in a while to check in case of doubt between the red bloody menses she’d get almost every month. Perhaps she really wanted to keep the colour in her vision or she might have really wanted whatever that she would lose when her blood cease to be red. Maybe she was worried that if her blood lost its colour, she would not see red. She had been apathetic about everything, and maybe she thought she ought to feel some concern. If she had lived, maybe her blood might change colour to yellow, or green, and that would have been interesting. Sadly, before anything else could have happened earlier, she eventually died and her heart remained unbroken. That is the most tragic of all.

........

I wonder if any of her family members knew, or if they were worried, or how the story of her got out at all. Did she have any friends? Maybe she knew my friend and that's secretly how he concluded that red is the opposite of black? How did she look like when she blushed?

Today, I saw a skinny black cat jumping across a drain, and pink periwinkles waiting for rain. I saw people, lots and lots of people, scurrying around, in cars, and in shoes, or high heeled slippers, pretending to be cute or cool.

My hair sticks to my face, and I wipe away my perspiration with the inside of my t-shirt collar. There are two mosquito bites on my feet. My left hand rests on the sheet of paper as I write on quite lifelessly. My sweet iced honey latte gets warmer as I write. A breeze confuses the ceiling fan above me. The traffic continues to sound, and I hope for different vehicles to be going around this time. I hear the church bells chime for the second time today. Maybe somebody is getting married, entering a new phase of life? Can you understand?

I bet the greyscale girl liked the smell of jasmine flowers. Then again, perhaps, she did not. Just that if she did we might have something to talk about or maybe recognise something else to mutually understand.

I call the pretty waitress over for me to foot bill. The coffee costs $7.50 including taxes and her company. The trees are green and I feel like shitting. That’s my response to everything nowadays, a feeling like shitting. It's a complicated passive aggressive laxative response. I steal the coaster, because it’s so fancy. I drink some more water from the tea light holder because I have nothing better to do.

There is nothing left in the glass of my iced honey latte but leftover delight.

........

(2007. For Don Wong.)

Steller's Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus pelagicus)

"World's Largest Eagle
The Steller's Sea Eagle weighs about 9 kg (20 pounds) and has a wingspan of about 2.4 m (8 feet). It is the largest eagle in the world. Its nest on top of tall trees is a huge structure 2.4 m (8 feet) across and 3.6 m (12 feet) deep. One to three eggs are laid. Incubation is 45 days. It takes 6 to 8 years for the bird to mature.

Habitat: Rocky sea coasts, inland rives with trees.
Diet: Seals, arctic foxes, salmon and geese.
Status: Endangered."

(sneak)

The bear with the biscuit face

A long, long time ago, before she was burnt and cooked and ate up by the siblings whom we came to know as Hansel and Gretel, the witch, like all witches, was once a little girl. Over the years, she came to be known by several names, of which one of the most recent to have reached us, is Frau. This is a story of how a witch might become a witch.

Frau was a little girl born to a street prostitute and one of her many passing clients. The conception was cursed upon by her mother ever since it was realised too late for abortion, as that meant the threatening of her livelihood - few would be keen to consort with a woman with a impregnated belly. It was said that by the time Frau was born in the streets, other ladies of the night had to tear her away from the screaming clutches of her mother who had grown so hungry and angry that she wanted to strangle and eat the new born child.

Frau was left at the orphanage, and was later adopted by an otherwise childless baker and his wife to help with the household chores. The baker was not a very honest man, and his wife was a mediocre gossipy woman. They did not make a very attractive couple and Frau did not make a very joyous addition to the family. Perhaps her temperament did not make her particularly endearing or perhaps she never knew any how to better behave. She spent her days working for her foster parents and her evenings running around in the streets. There is nothing despicable about the way she was brought up but that was how she grew up.

Some said it was when she was twelve years old, and others said that it was when she was fifteen, that Frau had to undergo an abortion. She had been reluctant, but she was young, and had no money to feed herself, let alone to bring up a baby. Perhaps it was not the common practice then, for the abortionist to offer to dispose of the twelve or fifteen weeks old foetus. It might have been Frau who had asked for or stole the carcass of the new born, but in the darkness of the night, she cradled the dead foetus in a blood stained rag and brought it to the woods to bury or burn.

Perhaps it is at moments of desperation when the vulnerable soul cracks open at the seams. Upon reaching the forest, Frau sat at the foot of a large tree and hugged the carcass of her dead baby and wailed and laughed and cried. This might have went on for days or nights, and only the dead baby knew how long it was that the woods and the spirits of the trees and the world tried its mother's resilience. A fire was set and a fire was burnt, the insanity and the magic swirled with the smoke and pried themselves into her injured womb, where they nestled and bloomed and grew. At the end of the ordeal, all that was left was a pile of bones scattered on top of a pile of ash. As she emerged from the frenzy with the little skull resting in the palm of her hands, she must have felt the magic descend.

A group of figures surrounded her. They could have been dark in their demeanour or it could also have been Frau's imagination, still being in her trance state or stupour. The figures were almost faceless and looked like they had something in common, but at the same time, one could be sure that they had nothing common. Nothing was exchanged, the night was still. Not even the the rustling of the trampled leaves on the ground could be heard. One by one, they approached and poked Frau as if in inspection, after which, they took their leave, one by one. Finally, a figure took a pause and revealed a pale porcelain ape-like face with green piercing eyes, and for lack of better alternate explanation, possessed Frau. Mechanically, Frau then slowly spread her legs and took the little skull remaining in her hand and pushed it back up her torn vagina. If there was any moment that it could be supposed, then it would have been at that moment when Frau became a witch. Her bosom swelled and her uterus stopped hurting and she was consumed by an overwhelming sense of confidence and insatiable hunger.

She went back to her foster parents and killed the baker's wife and ate her. She then had sex with the baker himself before killing him the next day for dinner. She baked for a while and slept with a few other men before killing them and eating them.

One day, Frau went back to the woods and menstruated blood over the ashen grave of her child. With some magic, the dead foetus was conjured back to life and it took the form of a large full grown black grizzly bear; however, it was by no measure an ordinary bear as instead of matching fearsome jaws, two eyes and a cute button nose typical of bears, Frau's child bore a face that was a big biscuit. It could not roar, it could not cry, and it could not be sure if it had eyes. With the big black built of a wild grizzly bear and a big light-brown biscuit for a face, it shocked and scared the mother to the realisation of fear.

The bear was about to attack the suddenly frail and catatonic witch, but suddenly turned and ran away into the night. It was never to be seen again.

How traumatising must have it all been for Frau? One can only hope to never feel nearly enough despair to even begin to imagine. The story of Frau is what we can sometimes be tempted to hastily conclude as a story of a victim, whereas others may choose to see her as a victor, of her circumstances. However, there are no chances of victim or victor here, what happened merely happened, but one conclusion may always have room for adjustments.

(sneak)

The dragon in the sky

There are those who do not know better who would laugh at this, no doubt, today, I saw a dragon in the sky that was made of clouds. It was floating by.

I did not have a camera with me, so I did not take a photo. It is no excuse, I could have done better, I know. I had money with me I could have bought something, if not, I could have, perhaps, at least, borrow. Whatever is the reason, or excuse, I did not take a photo.

So, I have to try to describe to you in words and appeal to your imagination. Sometimes imagination is more exciting than dwelling in mere recollection.

The dragon began like the pattern made when one stirs in cream into the soup pot, and analogous to the soup is the blue sky. The clouds were spinning like in a swirl. Then a representation of a dragon head emerged out of nowhere, but it didn't have antlers, nor did it include a distinctive long neck. All that was represented, was the right profile of the dragon head, with its aged eyes that looked rather wise and rather stubborn at the same time. As it was floating by, there were split moments where it resembled the profile of a teenage mutant ninja turtle except without the eye mask. As it was floating by, it grew older.

Bicycle

You may not remember when this picture was taken but it was taken nevertheless.

You were drinking coffee.
I was entertaining myself with the camera.

May I always think of you when I look at this picture of a bicycle and the shadow it cast against the ground.

Office Romance

There was a girl who worked in an office for a long time. She had stopped schooling when she was 12 years old, and started work in the same office ever since.

The business of the company that she worked for was in selling polyethene plastic products. It was a family-owned, medium-sized company that rejoiced in hiring employees who are willing to work, and willing to stay with the company for as long as possible. It would be even better if they are willing to work cheaply. She was one of those who fulfilled the above criteria.

Her primary job scope involved faxing things, shredding things and making copies of things. She was also responsible for maintaining the office cleanliness as it was true to the style of family-owned, medium-sized businesses that employees should not be left to idle. Although she was fairly dull, she was bright enough to feel bored with her job. Yet, on the other hand, she also knew enough to count her blessings for having found a job in a cushy office environment, despite her lack of academic qualifications, and she worked quite hard.

This gave rise to her formidable sense of earnestness which forbade anyone from enjoy talking to her. Her solitude helped breed an impressive array of odd habits and tendencies.

For example, when she was 13, she tied a string to a fluorescent light bulb in the ceiling and flew it as a kite. A colleague walked into the stationery store room (where she was based) and saw her lying on the floor tugging a piece of string in her hand. Her attempt to explain that she was flying a fluorescent light bulb kite did not explain much. Her other hand was shielding her eyes from the glare.

When she was 14 years old, she began to talk to the office equipments. When she was 15, she decided that they were friends and started to share her most intimate details with them. She even made fluorescent light bulb kites for them.

When she was 16, she decided that her best friend was the photocopying machine and she developed a crush on the paper delivery boy, who was 18.

When she was 17, they had sex on top of the photocopying machine and she thought of it as a threesome, although she did not know it as such a term, of course. The paper delivery boy did not know that the machines were her friends.

With her sexual awakening, the act of opening the machine covers to load paper became erotic to her. When the machines jammed up, it was because they were feeling wanton and horny and wanted somebody to pleasure them by troubleshooting.

When she was 18, she found herself intensely jealous when one day, she had sex with the boy and he came into the direction of the fax machine. She refused to interact with the machine for 1 week. It would have been longer, if not for not being able to refuse orders to fax something.

***

Her story cautions against the possible repercussions of working in an office too much. We should never underestimate the power of the merciless gods of boredom.

I do not know of what happened to the girl ultimately, or when she turned 19 years old. I do hope that wherever and however old she is, she is keeping well, and living happily ever after. If you do come to know of what happened to her, I hope you did not hear it from a piece of office equipment, or that you did, depending on your preference.

Star Light

On the way, she talks to him quietly, so that it will not disturb him from ignoring her. She wonders briefly to herself on what he was thinking about. They say men are always thinking of other women...

Before she gets off, she says goodnight and asks him to call later tonight, "to tell me you got home safe, okay?"

As she stands alone, she looks up to find a star to wish upon the wish she wished tonight.