i believe

I believe in infinity, and the vastness of the universe; there is a force out there that governs us, but that it does not deserve the name "God" (in both senses of the word "deserve").

I believe that God does not exist, and if he does, he is not an old man in the sky keeping score.

I do not believe in the existance of a hell below us, but if a hell really did exist, it would exist on earth, in the mind of any man who might have the misfortune to inflict hell unto himself.

I believe in the miracle of science and it's ability to produce facts, but that these facts need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

I believe in the sanctity of marriage, but I also believe in the right to divorce on the grounds of unhappiness.

I believe in the right to abortion, that every unfortunate couple has the right to a reset button.

I believe that no man can love Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and Shakespeare's works the same way, that if such a man exists he must be a vacuum, an empty shell devoid of opinion.

I believe that to truly love the human race, one must be willing to hate most of it; that if one loves all humans equally, even the worst of mankind, then he must truly hate the human race, for he has no expectations of us.

I believe that Disney's works were better in the past, that their 2D works were the best and they should stick to that.

I believe that sex is too easy for women to get and too hard for men to get.

I believe that all religion is detrimental to the progress of the world, and to be truly secular is the only way forward.

I believe in Obama, and that "Yes, [he] can".

I believe that public education drains children of their creative capacities, but that it is better than the alternative.

I believe that drugs are a poison in this world, but that the real poison already existed in the people who take drugs; the weakness of will in the face of temptation.

I believe that sweets did taste better when I was young, but if you eat chocolates at 2 am in the morning, they taste every bit as good as your first chocolate.

I believe in the death penalty, that it saves more lives than it takes.

I believe that capital punishment is the way to go, provided one can trust one's justice system.

I believe that overpaying ministers in a country is a form of corruption in and of itself.

I believe that equality of men is impossible, that all humans were born unequal.

I believe that equality of the sexes will never happen, as long as men remain men and women remain women.

It's been so long since I posted anything. Been wondering if I should start again.

snape killed d--!

Never watch a Harry Potter movie on the opening weekend, unless you want to book 10 days in advance.

I just wasted half a Saturday looking for tickets to watch probably what I would consider one of the worst movies this year. No, not because the dialogue sucked, or anything like that, but really, being a semi-purist kind of guy, I hate it when movie adaptations are not faithful to the book. I am, of course, talking about Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

**spoilers**

Really, if you want to add scenes, make sure they're useful. And if you wanna cut scenes, make sure they're useless. I'm not gonna rant on about everything they did wrong, but suffice to say,

1. The Burrow on fire scene was not needed
2. They should not have cut the ending fight between the death eaters and the teachers and students at Hogwarts
3. They should not have changed the scene where Dumbledore died because Harry looked like a useless coward in that scene
4. They should have up played the importance of the Half Blood Prince in the movie, because, you know, it IS called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
5. The climax of the revelation that Snape was in fact the Half Blood Prince was lackluster, and really, just very lame
6. Holding your wands up at the sky like you're waving candles and shit is corny, not touching
7. More explanation needed - noone would ever have guessed that the locket was Slytherin's

Ok, I could go on, but lets see what was good about this. The dialogue for one thing was heavily edited, and unlike previous Harry Potter shows they did not rip chunks directly from Rowling's book, which makes the dialogue less heavy and easier to understand. Also people who have not read the book would be able to follow much easier.

Harry was no longer emo kid as was seen in the book, something which was good, because noone liked emo Harry. Harry was no longer an asshole to all his friends, though what the hell. He didn't need to be portrayed as some player now. The scene near the start of the movie was unnecessary and lame.

Draco Malfoy should stop wearing suits and actaully wear the school robes. In fact they all should start wearing the school robes. They're like wearing homeclothes and shit most of the time.

Almost forgot I was supposed to be doing the good parts about the movie. The movie was more accessible than its predecessors for people who have not read the book, and was good in the sense that it was easy to understand and got the main point across. But. It felt as though the movie was aimed at primary school kids, and at times, was more of a campy romance flick than a Harry Potter movie. Which sucked totally.

Ok to sum things up. If you haven't watched it, don't.

And no, Dumbledore, even YOU cannot apparate in Hogwarts.

it's a bird eat bird world

In the canteen in school, there are recepticals for people to put their empty plates in. These recepticals are actually just these huge metal containers with plastic bins inside them. In the past the metal containers would always have their lids closed (this is what was the apparent norm when my sister was still in school). But now, we leave the metal containers open. I assume it's because we're lazy bastards.

Anyway all this would be all good and all if the tale ended here and nothing else of note-worthy interest happened. But this being a blog post, it cannot end here, because then there wouldn't be a point in my posting this.

So. The other thing about the canteen is that it is overpopulated with birds. The birds are perpetually there, feeding on various scraps of food and shit left by the students (and teachers). This is disgusting on quite a few levels, the most obvious of course being that the plates themselves can't have been all that well washed because there are like a few thousand plates to wash everyday. So it is reasonable to assume that we are eating bird saliva when we eat our food at the canteen.

On a more disturbing level, the birds eat out from every plate from every stall. Including the chicken rice store. Now that is disturbing. While it has reallly nothing much to do with us, but the fact that the birds are eating fucking chicken meat is seriously freaking disgusting. I don't know about you but I personally find it more disturbing than the bird saliva thing.

This elevated birds into my list-of-disgusting-animals list.

Fuck. Birds.

for a more perfect union

Haven't posted in long time. This blog was originally meant to key down thoughts that I had, but recently it's degenerated into some cesspool... or maybe it always has been like this.

Ok, at the risk of sounding totally anti-feminist, I'm gonna post my thoughts on what I think equality of the sexes should entail. I know I've posted before on why I think that I didn't think the equality of the sexes was a very possible thing, and I also highlighted by disgust at these so called "feminists" who talk about equality of the sexes but what they're really pushing for is for a more female inclined society. It's really something to see like teenage female Singaporeans push for longer NS years. But then again, it's not their 2 years, is it?

But I digress. To the main point.

In his March 18th speech "A More Perfect Union", then president elect Barrack Obama talked about the racial divide, affirmative action, and how the Whites and the Blacks are both unhappy with how things are turning out, the Blacks because of the past, the Whites because of the present. One of his better speeches, or at least one of the speeches I remember better.

And in many ways, I think we can draw parallels to the racial divide in America and this neo-feminist thing going on here. I mean, here's how things are going down, now isn't it? -

1. Females in the past have been oppressed
2. Females now demand equal treatment
3. Because of the past oppresion, many people see fit to treat females better, and hence some form of 'affirmative action' starts
4. Men are pissed off because of this so-called 'affirmative action', because it was not their fault in the first place that the females were oppressed in the first place
5. This is further fueled by other problems, like females pushing for more than what many would consider equal

Point 5 might seem to be un-objective (in the general, non-KI use of the word), but I have some examples to illustrate this.

If you demand equality, you cannot keep expecting to be shielded by the same laws that have 'protected' the rights of women in the past. For example, one of the recent reviews in the newspaper was about how men ought to be able to recieve alimony from a divorce. But under the Women's Rights Charter, while women have the right to recieve alimony, men do not have this right.

This struck me as completely and utterly ridiculous. Now in a society that claims to be more equal than ever, is it necessary for us to have such laws in place, especially if we are trying to work towards a more gender equal world? Wouldn't such laws be just detrimental to the progress of this goal?

In that same capacity, isn't the fact that women are more often than not granted custody of their children unfair as well? So maybe they have that certain "maternal" quality needed, so maybe they would be percieved to be able to look after their children better. How is it so that if a man is able to care better for his children, maybe because of better financial status, that the woman gets custody instead, and she will get financial support from her divorced husband to look after their children, when he could have taken in the children and looked after them himself?

And all this "affirmative action", like giving away a job or a university slot to a female instead of a male candidate simply to fill up the gender quota, it's really not helping things at all. I'm not belittling the achievements of women in power, or saying that all women need the leg boost to get up there, but what I'm saying is that a sizable amount of women, enough anyway that it is noticable, are up there because it is only "fair" society would give them a place there.

And if women feel undignified that they have been mistreated for so long, that their fore-mothers were oppressed by the patriachal constructs that society thrives on, then wouldn't the present day male feel it unfair to be blamed for such oppresion? While the women do not explicitly say it is their fault, it is implied, and when women speak of their oppresion, they speak as if it is happening to them now, and speak as if the males of today's society are oppresors and misogynists.

I therefore find it ridiculous when women speak of oppresion, while no doubt a very real and disturbing problem in the past, they should let up and relax about it now, because while the world is not yet equal (yes, I'll grant them that), we're working towards it. And how else but in baby steps? To employ that old cliche: "Rome was not built in a day."

Another thing. I also find it ridiculous that feminists protest about porn and how it depicts women in subserviant and demeaning roles. Yes, so the women are depicted in a very unflattering way, and yes, they are often put into subservient roles and it is often perhaps humiliating. But bear in mind that when these female porn stars go on screen, they do it willingly, they are not forced at gunpoint, nor are they crack whores. If indeed they are forced to act in some porno, it is a crime, and indeed this belongs to the greater and completely unrelated specturm of crime and blackmail, and this argument will not be considered here simply for its invalidity.

As I was saying, the women in porno flicks act in them by their own free will. And when some feminist protests about this line of work, they are denying fellow females the right to work in their choice of proffession, and this I find the most ridiciulous of all, that someone who is pushing for the equality of the sexes should deny their own sex the right and freedom to work, and denying their freedom of choice and expression. It is therefore contrary to their ultimate purpose, and contradictory to their cause. Put it simply: feminists shouldn't over concern themselves with porn and just let it be.

The equality of the sexes is something that I believe might happen one day, despite all the restrictions that society and biology has imposed on us all. While perhaps we can never achieve the state of being completely equal - I still do not think such a state exists, actually - I believe that we can work towards this ideal, an approximation to this ideal, if you will.

i am too old, you cannot defeat me

I was just stoning doing nothing much, when like this super old memory of mine suddenly resurfaced.

My family was visiting my grandmother's house. So it's just an ordinary visit and shite, 'nuff said about that. But then as we were sitting around this table in the living room, my father accidentally drops something on the floor. Now the floor in my grandmother's hosue is like covered by this brownish carpet. So naturally its not so easy to find.

Now my father is like growing older. Not like he's like senior citizen or anything yet, but he's not getting any younger, let's put it this way. Anyway his eyesight is not really very good now, so he can't really see the shiz. So after his ten minutes of futile search I help out and find it pretty soon. So then my grandmother comments something in hokkien to my parents, which meant something like good eyesight.

Now at this moment, my parents exchange glances and burst out laughing. And then they explained to me like how my grandmotehr (she's my father's mother) used to comment on how my father's eyesight, hearing and brain was like super good to my mother. Much in the fashion of how she commented my eyesight was good.

And then I thought about how now his eyesight and everything was getting worse and everything; it was quite sad really. I thought about how he was in his youth, and it made me sad. Not to say I'm not proud of my father, really. My grandmother was always praising him because he was like one of the smartest in the family. He didn't come from a very well to do family, so there were few opportunities. He made the best of them, suffice to say.

He was like from RI and shiz, and he was the first in the family to actually graduate. So like no small feat there. So for my grandmother to be always praising him in front of my mother, I think she was truly proud to have a son like him. Much less can be said of my mother and her pride for me.

But now looking back at that incident. When my parents exchanged glances and started laughing. I didn't notice it then. But I believe that laughter had a bitter flavour to it. And it makes me sad to think so.

why eating healthy is bad for you

If I ever write a book, that would be the title.

Anyway, I have this aunt who eats healthy shit like all the time. Seriously, she just has to eat healthy stuff. So whenever we have family gatherings, the food has to be this healthy shit. And I'll give it to you straight: healthy food does not taste good.

Ok, so anyway, my mother has recently taken to cooking more "healthy" food, something I gathered she picked up from spending too much time with the afore mentioned aunt. Not good. Seriously, healthy food taste like shit. Can't stand the taste of it. Not to mention healthy food is expensive like crap.

Which brings me to my main point, really: eating healthy is bad for you.

Why?

1. Healthy food is expensive. All healthy stuff like brown rice and shit cost more than their more unhealthy counterparts.

2. Healthy food taste bad. I'm not alone in this: my mother tried cooking brown rice for the family once and I barely got past the first spoonful. The rest of my family got in at least 2 before they gave up too.

3. Because you eat healthier, you probably live longer, unless of course this is not true, but for the sake of this argument, we shall assume yes, eating healthier does make you live longer.

4. Since you live longer, you have to spend a longer life eating healthy food, which as I stated in point 2, tastes like shit. This effectively means that you suffer longer.

5. Now you would have lived eating only shitty food, never having enjoyed one of life's greatests delights: good food.

This in essence is like Pascal's wager. Except in the future it shall be known as Nicholas' (or maybe Tang's) wager. Since you do not know for sure that eating healthily is good for health (sounds fallacious, I know), because even the best studies are inconclusive, you should just eat unhealthily, because this way even if you do die earlier, you at least enjoyed what little life you lived.

Yes, in the future when I get more material and when I sound more professional and when I have more credentials I'll publish a paper titled such. Till then: do the right thing.

prac

A silver stained soul
The constant beat of bass
Memories of a hated song

Faces now 2 years younger
Yet a hundred years wearier
Working for an unachievable result

Spirit broken, trying harder