"A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing." - Joey Adams

***

Some may be wondering at the meaning of what He Who Must Not Be Named said I warned him about, namely, the paragraph of badly organised, barely flowing and most importantly hardly intelligible thoughts that I lavished upon him in a prior organisation. Why he did that, apart from a desire to get back at me for the perceived offence of analysing in public his not-so-pithy quote about attaining ultimate happiness the way which well-nigh everyone in the world would, except for him and other adherents of the uniquely warped and ultimately self-destructive "all or nothing" philosophy, I do not know.

At any rate, such was an excerpt from my hurried scribbled notes on "Thoughts on honesty in blogging" that I shared with him, which his partial disclosure of has impelled me to publish in full, and in full, coherent sentences:


One reason for the popularity of some blogs is their refreshing honesty. The internet offers the promise of anonymity, yet honesty in blogging leads, especially with a sizeable readership, to 2 threats to this erstwhile anonymity: the exposure of the blogger's inner self, and the exposure of the blogger's Real Life identity. Real and Online Life can then collide, often with unpleasant consequences. (There is also the case where one grows to write for an audience, but this issue is beyond the scope of this rant, and will not be dealt with forthwith, if at all.)

Some manage to ameliorate either or both of these problems, yet this cannot occur without a corresponding decrease in the quality of their writing, and its becoming less compelling, due to the inevitable omission of certain details. Once in a while you might feel like sharing private thoughts or details with the world, either for catharsis or for the exhibitionistic thrill, but doing so repeatedly will inexorably catch up with you.

I have never been all that public a person, so the problem of blog privacy does not affect me that much, since even if hadn't gotten 952 hits yesterday, due to the cumulative effect of divers plugs by various kind people, and even if at least one of my family members did not regularly visit for unspecified reasons, the content published here would not be so different from what you see today. Further, I have few qualms than most about causing offence or insult if necessary, as I try to retain my intellectual honesty even with people I know and refrain from self-censorship.

Of course, this candour has frequently landed me in hot soup, most famously on the occasion when I was threatened with court martial. Thus, general rules I now follow are to criticise institutions rather than people, to assume that anyone and everyone is going to read what is written here and to anonymise people other than yourself as much as possible.

So the question might be asked: how self-conscious is Agagooga, and how much has Balderdash been affected by its popularity? A comparison of today's content with the 2001 archives might be instructive. Apart from a much less polished writing style, much more frivolity and the presence of many erstwhile contributors *vague glare*, the differences are not immediately obvious. But then there's a reason why this place was christened "Balderdash". The archives dating from my time as a Slave Soldier (Dec 2001 - June 2004) are more angsty, personal and disjointed, but then I had few qualms about treating blogging as a form of catharsis and attempting to purge my nightmares from my soul.

Slavery aside, the thoughts I pen (or keyboard, rather) are usually either public enough for private consumption, in which case I don't mind placing them here, or so private that I would not even want friends to read it, in which case I would not place them here, even if this blog got the traffic that Gabriel's Homepage does (~25 hits a day). Little falls in between.

***

The March 2002 archives have been restored. 4 months down, 9 months to go.

Some gems:

"There were 3 charged personnel who came for the Staff Parade during Guard Duty. One of them was charged for the sin of, lets wait for it, EATING CUP NOODLES. Gasp. The morning after field camp, they were supposed to consume field rations, but he had cup noodles and was charged for that."

"There was some talk of supernatural stuff during the first night, when our [uber nice] OC talked to us... As would be expected, much of the talk was about sex. I'm wondering if it's too explicit to publish here. Also, there's the matter of privacy :) Ah, this is a family blog, so I'll just let most of it lie in my notebook." [Ed: I'm not sure if I still have the notebook.]

"They were very evil. It's their last chance to torture us before they hand us over to the tender ministrations of the Regimental Sergeant Major and then we pass out. They had a turnout at about 11, after a suspiciously early lights off at 9:15. We rode away in the store tonner to scenes of torture that would not be out of place in a medieval prison. Pushups, crunches, alternate leg thrusts and the lot. It was much worse than the first field camp. Emmanual was lazy to join the Attn B / excused personnel in our doing of "sai gang", so he, with an official excuse, was punished along with everyone."

***

The following will likely be lost on those who are not plagued with forwarded emails and/or motivational platitudes:


People are like teabags - you should use them only once, then they become useless and you should throw them away.


A daughter complained to her father about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved a new one arose.

Her father, a chef, took her to the kitchen. He filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to a boil. In one he placed carrots, in the second he placed eggs, and the last he placed ground coffee beans. He let them sit and boil, without saying a word.

The daughter sucked her teeth and impatiently waited, wondering what he was doing. After about twenty minutes he turned off the burners. He fished the carrots out and placed them in a bowl. He pulled the eggs out and placed them a bowl. Then he ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her he asked: "Darling, what do you see?"

"Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied.

He brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft.

He then asked her to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell she observed the hard-boiled egg.

Finally, he asked her to sip the coffee.

She smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. She humbly asked: "What does it mean Father?"

He explained that each of them had faced the same adversity, boiling water, but each reacted differently.

The carrot went in raw, bitter, hard, and uncooked. But after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became delicious, sweet and nutritious.

The egg had also been inedible. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior. But after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became cooked, and the yolk could be separated from the white too, delighting health-conscious folk everywhere.

The ground coffee beans were unique however. After they were in the boiling water, their essence had been absorbed by the water and they were now tasteless and useless.

"Which are you," he asked his daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean? "

How about you? Are you the carrot that starts out useless, but with pain and adversity do you soft and become delicious and edible?

Are you the egg, which also starts off useless? Were you a runny spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a divorce, or a layoff have you become bouncy and tasty? Your shell looks the same, but does it now conceal a delicious and tender interior?

Or are you like the coffee bean? The bean starts out ripe and flavourful, but is changed by the hot water, the thing that is bringing the pain, till it reaches its nadir when the water reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit. When the water gets the hottest, the bean loses whatever flavour it had left and becomes fit only to throw away; its essence has been absorbed by the hot water, totally draining and destroying it, leaving it a shell of its former self. If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get destroyed and become useless.

How do you handle adversity? Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?

***

Someone: got an A [for his essay]
thank God
(what's he going to say now)

Me: what's he going to say about what?

Someone: thank God. but you didn't say anything. ok, don't say anything.

Me: yes don't say anything :)
you don't want me to say anything, nosiree.

(Also see: Christianity and its Discontents, Section 14 - Self-justifying nature of faith)

***

Someone: did u know that apparnetly singnet regulates the amt of bandwidth u get.. haha
like if u use p2p they direct all the traffic to u
so ur download speed slows down or something
so unethical leh

check put p-cube
they are using that
for starhub and singnet
unethical leh, since they actually promised us a certain amt of bandiwdth and never state what we have to use it for

Chee says he only needs to throttle P2P during the peak usage hours. During peak hours, P2P traffic is generally throttled to one-fifth normal speed. "We want to maintain 512 Kbps all the way to the desktop." (Controlling the Network in a DMCA World)

i say, BOLLOCKS

i was wondering how come my bittorrent downloads suddenly so slow
1000s of seeds
then still downloading at 3kbps
last time was 50+

***

The top overseas destination for Singaporean investment in 2002 was the Virgin Islands, with $18,581 million invested in stock there. This is followed closely by Bermuda at number 3, with $13,586 million. Hmm.

***

My mother strangely threw away the old toilet bowl scrubs, so where there used to be one in each toilet, there was now only one in the whole house. The logic behind this (as with much else she does, including the recent renovations) was beyond me and my sister, so I went to buy 2 more toilet scrubs.

I have long given up in the fight against my yeast infection. Nothing I try works - not even specialist products Selsun, Apple Cider Vinegar or Cetrimide wash. My sister, naturally, blames this intractability on our "insulin resistance", but then she is less bothered by the problem than I am. Luckily, it tends to be more acute than chronic, being manageable unless I am suffering from an attack - maybe Slavery was to blame for the preponderance of outbreaks I had then. Perhaps the next time I go to the doctor I shall enquire if oral antibiotics can be used, as for the more well known types of yeast infection.

***

For my lens analysis essay draft, I looked at the case of Agnes, a transsexual, through a commentary by John Heritage on a study by Harold Garfinkel - through the eyes of Wesley Collins in Power Rangers Time Force.

"More importantly, as Power Rangers they exist outside the pre-existing institutional realities of class, a state best illustrated when they 'morph', gaining superhuman powers and thus placing themselves outside the existing class structure."

I hope I don't get slaughtered.

Meanwhile Tim compared a vodka bottle to a phallic object and got an A for his last essay. We love close reading.


We were given a feedback form on our writing module to fill out. Besides the gripes about close reading which have been published many times here, I also mused that surely one very important skill in writing is to be clear, and that the texts we get are hardly paragons of clarity, and that even if one is cognizant with the vocabulary they use, to get at what they are saying requires many readings and much thinking - surely this is not what we are aiming for in our writing?

I'd actually scribbled some down points about the writing module, but did not have the text file with me on Friday, so I suppose I shall have to submit them during the currently ongoing module feedback exercise.