neverforeverdotnet

<i>Beware of people who do not like the circus. They are undoubtedly too efficient and too sure of themselves - ruthless. To understand the circus, even if you’re not particularly attracted to it, experiment with sitting near the circle. Choose a small circus, preferably nothing too splendid, rather somewhat impoverished. Avoid Madison Square Garden, Barnum, and the other big concerns. With them, it’s harder to grasp what makes the circus so moving - its mixture of misery and reverie.

For usually these places have something sordid about them - which is both intrinsic and necessary. The sawdust on the track, the smell of animal dung, the dust from old marquees, the whiff of sweat below the tent canvas. It must also be a closed space: the circular ring, the canvas heaven, the guardrails. The circus encloses a space proper to itself, a world not to be confused witht he rest of the universe. You can define the circus rather as you can the human world itself.

In this circumscribed sphere, a bubble of dreams is constructed. In a very elementary, or even stupid or vulgar fashion, sequins and paste and all that glitters. Heavy fake jewellery. False luxury, false chic, a factitious facility and a forced gaiety against a background of grinding sadness. This is what makes the circus so moving, an exemplary model of the human: doggedly constucting laughable dreams out of the filth and the muck. Every evening at 8.30, with a Sunday matinee at 3 o’clock.

you should head towards the circus tent. Queue for a bit, and pay too much for the discomfort, the staleness and bad smells. For the uncomfortable seat. You will easily surmount these drawbacks, and by watching the lightness of the acrobats and the skill of the conjurors will feel you have escaped the crushing sense of failure. You’ll even start to dream of a humanity full of crystal balls, lit by spotlights, smiling into the brass band, happy amid the candyfloss. The performers on stage will come to seem almost beautiful, courageous, worthy, full of virtues, capable of grand exploits, larger than life, their bodies shining like those of gods, so supple they are, and light, and swift and aerial. For a while float within this glittering bubble.

And then, crucially and most moving of all, something goes wrong. A juggler drops a ball, a trapeze misses, one of the animals remains obstinately motionless. You notice the beautiful contortionist has a hole in her tights. Brusquely, you see something pitiful, and pride brought down to earth. Some terrestrial dream, smudged as it always is, and always more or less wounded. A shattering failure. An image of human doggedness. You should go back to the circus time and again.</i>

Gary :: Nov.28.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

<i>
Zero.

i snapped my eyes open, and they roamed, taking in the surroundings.

The backlight of my stopwatch lit green with a beep as it started counting time in finite intervals. the universe as i knew it didn’t exist up until the moment i set the timepiece going. everything around me - from the lady in the opposite seat, to the train i was in, to the station i just left, to myself - had just popped into existence 10 seconds ago. from nothing, into something. just like that. i felt strangely new. a heightened sense of awareness. at the back of my mind a little voice kept reminding me that the world had always been, but i was conciously fighting that voice, trying to make myself fully believe i was brand new.

3 minutes.

i was getting bored. couldn’t shut the voice up, but it was getting softer. the more i looked around, the more thought i gave to the whole situation, the more i sunk into character.

5 minutes.

pretty comfortable by now. the voice was no more than the tiniest comforting whisper. i soaked up my surroundings. everything seemed unreal. i gazed at the buildings through the windows, drifting past like animated pictures in a frame. they seemed devoid of life, props in an elegant, elaborate set. i glanced around the cabin, looking through new eyes at people. people who’d never always been. they seemed so… unaware. detached from the fact that everything was going to end in a mere 15 minutes.

12 minutes.

started feeling sleepy, though something made me unable to doze. might have been the apprehension of losing those valuable minutes of existence. train roared into another station, people got on, people got off. life going on, without a true beginning, though with a certain end. 8 minutes later, in fact. spotted a prudential ad for investing in one’s future. the irony was unbearable.

15 minutes.

everything started to fade away. noises muffled, motion blurred, sped up, much like forwarding through the boring bits in a 20 minute film. i cautiously tried to recall where i’d been before i came into existence. i could not. tried to picture the faces of people i knew, places i’d been to, read parts of my mind which contained facts, figures and memories irrelevant to the experiment. blank.

17 minutes 34 seconds.

mind still a blank. the universe would fade out of existence in 2 minutes and 26 seconds. i looked around. everyone still unconcerned.

17 minutes 36 seconds.

i freaked.

17 minutes 37 seconds.

sheer terror subsided, soothed by the nagging whisper in the backroom of conciousness that this was all pretend. still, apprehension.

18 minutes 30 seconds.

1 and a half minutes left. surprisingly calm. i sat back and stared through the window, marvelling at the intricacies of the facade that some higher being, in all its omnipotence, chose to create.

19 minutes and 47 seconds.

any time now…

19 minutes and 52 seconds.

i held my breath, and closed my eyes, trying to imagine what it’d be like to just pop out of existence. would conciousness remain? floating in a bodyless limbo? or would i simply drop off into long eternal rest? would the cycle repeat in a few million years, this…. 20 minutes of existence? how then, would one measure a few million years if time didn’t exist? WOULD it exist? with no one to measure it, how long would one second be?

20 minutes and 2 seconds.

lost memories flooded back, loosed from an intangible dam. suddenly i could recall where i’d been and what i’d done hours ago. people i used to know but who didn’t exist for 20 minutes suddenly existed again. overwhelming sense of familiarity, deja vu.

The world was real again, but i felt no relief.

maybe, just maybe, a part of me was dissapointed nothing happened.

20 minutes and 3 seconds.

i snapped my eyes open, and they roamed, taking in the surroundings.
</i>
<HR>

the above is no fancy work of fiction. i just bought this wonderful little book from mph which cost me $26. it contains loads of philosophical experiments which are, well, more than just a good read. “Make the world last 20 minutes” happened to be the first experiment i thought i’d try, just for the fun of it. it was terrifying. you might want to give it a shot. before you do, though, a word of warning. don’t bother starting with a smirk on your face. don’t do it to prove anything. do it because you want to. don’t feel stupid, or you might give up halfway. BELIEVE in the story you tell yourself, and you’ll be surprised at the things you discover.

Update: I spent 45 minutes typing this entry. Amazing.

Gary :: Nov.26.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

Because You Loved Me - Celine Dion
Blue Eyes Blue - Eric Clapton
By The Time This Night Is Over - Kenny G and Peabo Bryson
Can’t Fight The Moonlight - LeAnn Rimes
Could I Have This Kiss Forever - Whitney Houston and Enrique Iglesias
Don’t turn Around - Ace of Base
From the Heart - Another Level
Have You Ever - Brandy
How Do I Live - LeAnn Rimes / Trisha Yearwood
I Could Not Ask For More - Sara Evans
I Don’t Want to Live Without Your Love - Chicago
I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing - Aerosmith
I Turn To You - Christina Aguilera
I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth) - Meatloaf
I’ll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me - Expose
Love Will Lead You Back - Taylor Dayne
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now - Starship
Reach - Gloria Estefan
Saving Forever For You - Shanice Wilson
Spanish Guitar - Toni Braxton
There You’ll Be - Faith Hill
Unbreak My Heart - Toni Braxton
When I See You Smile - Bad English

They were all written by one and the same person. Diane Warren.
This list isn’t even complete. I extracted it from her list of hits, leaving out the slightly lesser known tunes.

Mmm…. a little trivia for a boring night.

Gary :: Nov.26.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

How do I
Get through one night without you?
If I had to live without you
What kind of life would that be?

Gary :: Nov.26.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

just came back from the kelong. haven’t fished for a looong time. and i mean long. years i think. very tired. shall go rest now… type more some other day.

Gary :: Nov.24.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

Met Jiayi for the first time.

Gary :: Nov.19.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

We’re on a bullet and we’re headed straight into God
Even He’d like to end it too
We take a pill, get a face, buy our ticket,
and we hope that heaven’s true
I saw a cop beat a priest on the tv,
and they know they killed our heroes too

We sing the death song kids, ’cause we’ve got no future,
and we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you…

Let’s sing the death song kids.

We light a candle on an earth we made into hell,
and pretend that we’re in heaven
Each time we do we get the blind man’s ticket,
and we know that nothing’s true
I saw priest kill a cop on the tv,
and i know now they’re our heroes too

We sing the death song kids, ’cause we’ve got no future,
and we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you…

We sing the death song kids
We sing the death song kids
We sing the death song kids
We sing the death song kids

We’ll write our prayers on a little bomb,
kiss it on the face and send it to God

We sing the death song kids, ’cause we’ve got no future,
and we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you…

We were the world, now we’ve got no future,
and we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you…

We were the world, we’ve got no future,
and we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you,
we wanna be just like you…

Let’s sing the death song kids. =)

Gary :: Nov.17.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts, Music :: Comments Off

have been on the lookout for a good PDA. i’m having trouble synchronising my stuff between postits on my desktop (real and virtual), an appointment calender mounted on the side of my cupboard, another copy in my JCRC file, and a little notebook in my bag.

Thinking of getting the Palm Tungsten T but my concience keeps yelling at me. sigh… A good alternative would be the Palm m515, which is slightly cheaper, has none of the bells and whistles that the Tungsten T boasts, and which, most importantly, i find attractive. considered the m505, but i keep hearing people complain about muddy screen colour, so am kinda apprehensive.

ARGH… why can’t i just strike the big sweep or something?

“I’m not a slave to a god that don’t exist
I’m not a slave to a world that doesn’t give a shit.
The death of one is a tragedy
The death of a million is just a statistic.
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Gary :: Nov.17.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

My humble little laptop can handle Unreal Tournament 2003 with all the bells and whistles like coronas, foliage, trilinear filtering and dynamic lighting enabled, all textures and details set to “highest” at 800 x 600 in 32 bit colour. I tried running a botmatch with the maximum of 16 bots on a killer map like inferno and antalus. <i>slightly</i> bumpy but otherwise playable.

WHOOOO…. very pretty.

Gary :: Nov.12.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »

junk breeds. it’s proven, or at least i’m convinced. what started out as a messy room ended up as an organised messy room. all that despite us throwing away a whole mountain of stuff. some of the strange things we turned up during the upheaval:

08 x cartons of an unmarked foodstuff. in tins. 24 per carton. legend had it that the tins contained curried chicken. expiry date: apr 03. thrown away.

01 x squarish unmarked cardboard box containing sampler sachets of feminine hygiene power. (absorbs moisture and odours, or so the packaging claimed) don’t ask. i didn’t. and i still don’t want to know.

1000 odd surfingbananas.com lanyards.

800+ sachets of owl brand 3 in 1 coffee mix and matching quantities of owl brand 3 in 1 cereal mix.

several varieties of pvc handbags of <i>very</i> bad taste.

a bag of costume jewellery of equally bad taste.

01 x container of chinese new year goodies. loveletters, to be exact. unopened and expired. thrown away.

a bunch of letters. unopened. some were 2 years old.

01 x carton of sanitary napkins. (again, don’t ask.)

about 100 bars of Camay soap, in black packaging. scares the hell out of me as a consumer. you ever seen soap wrapped in black?? no sir not i.

assorted plaques, trophies etc. some thrown away, others now on display.

an archive of paperwork dating back to when i was in primary six. preserved as a joke for posterity.

assorted banners and flags. faded egos of generations past. thrown away.

various boards adorned with the signatures of graduating residents. no one knew any of them by now, so thrown away.

01 x ornate chinese chess set inclusive of carrying case and sculpted pieces.

some textbooks and a tutorial book.

someone’s SAF 100A.

piles and piles of loose paper, invoices, faxes, receipts etc.

01 dick lee cd, 01 x pirated fifa 97 cd, 01 x Essential Installer (containing nothing but device drivers) and 04 x seniors’ night commemorative cd roms.

a scanner was found buried in the mess somewhere.

2 monitors, 2 printers and 2 musical keyboards.

01 x cute doll which supposedly giggles when you invoke it by pressing a button on its paw. batteries were flat. i staked a claim. now on my shelf.

3 or 4 sports bottles. regret not taking any.

01 x unopened lucozade in the fridge. disappeared halfway through the day.

01 x kids rubber ball. junked.

a bag full of those little plastic clips used to seal the openings of balloons. strange, considering we didn’t find any balloons.

a container of multicoloured straws.

an entire library of photos from days long past. also retained for posterity’s sake.

mysterious blue box mounted to the wall and secured by a padlock. the old folks, they say it’s a server. no one really knew. then again up till yesterday it’d been buried behind a wall of junk. so no one really noticed.

30 chinese paper lanterns.

a picture in a frame. no one knew really what it was about.

the room now looks a lot cleaner, thank god, and the strange signature smell is also gone. in 3 months, though, the junk will breed again. just wait and see.

NB: the list is so short primarily because of my bad memory.

Gary :: Nov.12.2002 :: Old Deadjournal posts :: No Comments »