"It is fun to be in the same decade with you." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a letter to Winston Churchill

***

Gramsci writes about hegemony as a continuous struggle for consensus. Popular culture (television programmes, advertisements, films, magazines, fashion, parades, etc) is one particular site of such ideological struggles.

Please choose one specific example from popular culture in Singapore and show how ideological struggles play out there.

Hegemonic and counter-hegemonic struggles

To maintain its power, the state uses a mixutre of coercion and hegemony. Hegemony is a dynamic process, with the dominant party struggling to impose its mindset on the subordinate party and get it to internalize and accept it, (thus giving longevity to the hegemony) producing consensus. At the same time, the dominated resist by engendering counter-hegemonic currents to subvert and protest the ideology that is being imposed on them.

I shall consider one example of the former (P65 MPs Hip-hopping at Chingay 2007) and one of the latter (NDP @ Simei).

1)

In an attempt to connect with the younger, post-Independence generation, the PAP has recruited and branded 12 Members of Parliament born after 1965 as "P65" MPs. Besides giving them a blog to connect with the Internet generation and marketing them to the public via the mass media, it also secured a spot for them in 2007's Chingay Chinese New Year Parade to perform a hiphop dance number; in the first place Chingay is an instrument of hegemony, organised as part of Chinese New Year festivities to placate the Chinese community after traditional firecrackers were banned in the 1970s.

Hip-hop is an art form originating in the 1970s and as such is younger than both the PAP (founded in 1954) and the P65 MPs. By associating the P65 MPs with hip-hop, the PAP is giving them the impression of funk, freshness and vibrance, part of which will presumably reflect on the rest of the Party and by extention the State. This is in contradistinction to its existing image of technocratic efficiency, whiter-than-whiteness and the starched collars of junzi (Confucian gentlemen). Interestingly, whereas Gramsci characterised hegemony as getting the proletariat to internalize bourgeois values and accept them as their own, in this case the dominant group is instead attempting to appropriate the values of the dominated group for itself.

The engaging of the public through pop culture and a popular parade is different from the usual top-down approach of diktat and of urging citizens to tighten their belts and do what's best for the country, disseminated through bureaucratic and political channels. Instead, citizens are engaged with through the medium of popular culture, broadening the scope of hegemony and its methods of capturing citizens' hearts, minds and souls.

Having P65 MPs dance hip-hop during Chingay (a parade which features a selection of groups form many sectors of society, from undergraduates to religious associations to grassroots organisations to civil society organisations to foreign talent) brings the message that "we are you" - the relationship between dominant and submissive parties is blurred and hegemony is internalized by the people.

Watching the actual performance, one finds that during the performance the P65 MPs are surrounded and outnumbered by youths who might be half their age, lending them the aura of youth. Most or all of these dancers are from NUS, which might serve to blunt the manufacture of consent by associating the P65 MPs only with one segment of society - English-educated undergraduates.

The MPs' dance moves are comparatively tame for hiphop, and the performance is short at less than 2 minutes. Although there is an attempt at manufacturing consensus, it is incomplete

2)

The National Day Parade (NDP) is a yearly celebration held to commemorate the Nation's independence in 1965. Besides involving government figures there is also a strong military presence in it, recalling Nazi and Communist military parades. During it, participants, spectators and TV viewers are urged to come together as one, forgetting their differences, in an orgy of nation-building.

NDP @ Simei is filmed in a toilet, with actors improvising props from all manner of everyday materials. Umbrellas serve as swords and rifles, motorcycle helmets and a first aid box substitute for military headgear and a dumpster replaces the jeep that the President rides around the track in. Instead of military uniform, the actors are topless (a symbol of informality and/or barbarity instead of civilization). The use of profane objects to substitute for sacred ones violates the sanctity of the ritual, and with the ritual removed from its familiar context, its ludicrousness is apparent.

The actors march in an exaggerated fashion that mocks conventional Singaporean military marching, and in the background a mobile phone plays a ringtone of the National Anthem (official guidelines indicate that the Anthem is to be played respectfully, so its satiric use is a form of resistance). The 'President' in military attire underscores the links the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and State have and waves to a non-existent crowd, which parallels how dignitaries at parades wave to everyone and no one at the same time.

At one point, one actor exchanges some indistinct words with the President, and when the latter assents he gets on the floor and does pushups, only to be told to "Recover, recover". It can thus be inferred that the actor was asking the President for permission to carry on. During NDP the Parade Commander asks the President for permission to "carry on" the parade, but here this has been conflated with permission to "carry on", which in a SAF context means to do pushups as a form of punishment.

Being males, some of the actors would have been through or would eventually have to participate in the NDP as part of their military service. Even if they have not/will never participate(d) in NDP, they would have been bombarded with it every year, on TV, through newspapers, banners and more. By parodying the hegemonic tool, they use its forms and vocabulary but subvert them and show their non-acceptance of hegemony - they have not internalized these values as their own.


Primary sources:

1) P65 MPs:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3ldVddy00Ks
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NJ1jTYCWWzs&mode=related&search=
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FvNa2UUEc_A

2) NDP @ Simei
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4_lW52LADOI

"There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

***

This likely explains half of alleged sexual harassment:


A well-stacked young advertising secretary wore tight knit dresses that showed off her figure, especially when she walked. Her young, aggressive boss motioned her into his office one afternoon and closed the door.

Pointing to her tightly covered derriere, he asked, "Is that for sale?"

"Of course not!" she snapped angrily, blushing furiously.

Unchanged, he replied quietly, "Then, I suggest you quit advertising it."

[Addendum: This would also be an appropriate reply to women who complain when their plunging necklines are appreciated]


u r wt u wr:

- 'If you're happy and you know it, buy me a drink'
- 'I like the boys in the band'
- 'Nice guys finish last'
- 'I love medical students'
- 'Flesh queen'
- 'What tan lines?'
- 'womaniser' ('wo' was in white, and the rest in yellow)
- 'Looking for the best one?'
- 'I fear for myself after 10 years' (I hope she still is wearing this in 10 years)

Bazaar:
- 'I only speak two languages. English and Body.' (I think this stall was from the woman who asked me not to copy her silly slogans the last time, since I also saw the 'God made dirt... Girls should flirt' top. What I did this time was to memorise this and walk out of sight before writing it down, hurr hurr.)

My sources inform me that SMU girls don't wear "u r wt u wr" tops. I am not surprised. They are also not sighted in Medicine (M2s at least - an M5 said 'sometimes') and Law. I am not surprised either.

I suspect the reason people wear leggings is because they're scared of being upskirted. And the reason they dress like Superman is because they're scared of being downbloused. [Someone: 'They don't think so practically.']

"Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address." - Lane Olinghouse

***

I wish I could go back to Year 1. Life was so simple back then.
What would I give to go back and solve simultaneous equations again!

I wish I could go back to Year 1. Back then you know what's going on.
You sit in the Deck, and think, "Oh my God! I have 4 long hours to kill!"

How do I go back to Year 1! I don't know all this shit anymore!


Every academic year, I see a groaning animatronic bear somewhere along the walkway from the Library to AS1. This year, I decided to check it out. It turned out to be a campaign to raise awareness about bile bears. ('A bile bear or battery bear is the term used for Asiatic black bears kept in captivity in Vietnam and China so that bile may be extracted from them for sale as a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).')

In the past, people used to hunt bears in the wild, kill them and extract their bile. Then they realised they could do better by keeping them in cages and tapping them for their bile in open-stomach surgery from time to time. The campaign urged us to help end this practice.

But then, as I observed to someone, if they cracked down on bear farms, they'd go back to hunting them in the wild, which would be even worse for the bears.


Most of the people on the bus to the Bukit Timah Campus I was on got off at the bottom of the hill and walked to the bus stop. We're all cheapskate bastards.

"Internet riches : the simple money-making secrets of online millionaires" - Wth. Why is this in the library?!

I find that the harder I study, the worse I do. Gah.

Instead of anal attendance policies, a better idea would be what one of my instructors did in a previous semester: he wrote an email asking the student if he was alright since he'd missed a few lessons.

I was at an exam where the instructor told some people who handed in 2 exam booklets: 'You wrote too much'. Writing too much for an exam can be seen as a negative externality: fellow students get stressed (and pulled down the bell curve, ceteris paribus) and the person marking the paper gets pissed off because he has to read so much. One suggestion I had was to draw boxes to put answers in and proclaim that nothing outside them would be read. Unfortunately this only works for short-answer questions.

A: "Kelly and Smith evaluated the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2004. Of the over 4,000 characters in these films, 75% overall were male, 83% of characters in crowds were male, 83% of narrators were male, and 72% of speaking characters were male. In addition, there was little change from 1990 to 2004.This gross underrepresentation of women or girls in films with family-friendly content reflects a missed opportunity to present a broad spectrum of girls and women in roles that are nonsexualized."

http://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualizationrep.pdf


Me: Wow. Gotta love the research they did.

Are there comparative statistics on the number of male and female actresses available to act in films?

I must note possible selection bias though. These are top-grossing G-rated films. Perhaps they did well because they played to popular notions and stereotypes (eg About 75% of characters being men). And what about PG films and 'worse'?


A: You're missing the point. The point is that if it's always men speaking, doing, being, even just hanging out incidentally in a crowd, then from a young age women don't see identities available to them as women except as ornamental objects of romantic attention. Or if they do desire other identities or more multidimensional identities, they find it portrayed as deeply atypical or in conflict with being a woman -- why should amounting to anything other than a toy have to be the province of men only? I can assure you there are many young girls who experience that feelings and even some who at a young age understand it enough to articulate it almost the same way (almost as far back as I can remember I have voiced in some form the complaint that "Everyman" characters are in many instances of mass produced culture invariably, well, men).


B: What Andy Ho means is summarised thus:

1. Gay men are weak and effeminate.
2. But they patronise gay porn, which glorifies the hyper-masculine male.
3. Therefore, gay porn adds to their marginalisation, since the hyper-masculine is the antithesis of the gay male.
4. Therefore, gay men should not support gay porn, by supporting the censorship of it.

This would all be very tralala (2, 3 and 4 are similar to many feminist critiques of porn) but for the fact that 1 is wrong.

Point 2 is also confused, although not necessarily. Porn is not like art. When I go and watch Macbeth or whatever, I can say that I am 'supporting' it and certainly I am adding to the propagation of it/its message in society (or at least if I regularly watch Macbeth or Shakespearean plays or whatever). But when someone consumes porn, he does not think 'I am watching this movie because I agree with its message'. The thought process is more like 'I am watching this movie because it will help me get off' -- i.e. there is something in it which represents for me, sexual titillation.


Me: For that matter, G-rated films are not like art. When I go and watch the Lion King, I am not thinking 'I am watching this movie to be sexist and reinforce the oppression of women in our society through the perpetuation of unhealthy stereotypes'. I am thinking more like 'I want to see dancing animals and singing lions'.

In fact, your argument could be used to rebut feminist spiel about how pornography brutalises women, glorifies violence blah blah.

But then this is where the multiplicity of meanings comes in. You can always find something to say. For example, if you highlight the top performing minority students in Singapore, you can be making it more obvious that the rest aren't succeeding and that this is racist and discriminatory. And if you don't highlight any good minority students, you are ignoring the minorities, not providing positive role models to them to counter negative stereotypes, reinforcing their sense of inferiority and eo ipso are being racist and discriminatory.

I love meaning mining! You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

"The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him." - Russell Baker

***

Quotes:

[Me: Why don't Indians eat pork? It's impure right...] We [Hindus] believe if you eat pork, you have to be reborn 100 times. I've had it 5 times... It was worth it.

There's only one road you can go down if you take this path. [Me: What?] Destruction... The feminist lecturers: If you're pro-feminist they love you... Feminism is damn biased. It's the only discipline in academia which is allowed to be so biased. [Me: Have you seen race studies?]

[Me: What do you learn in 'Understanding Irony'?] That you cannot understand irony.

One very typical university exam question is: 'Was Marx a Marxist?'

Chinese New Year: 'Why are you such a loser'. If we can overcome that... Post-industrialist... We all hear of CEOs who become schoolteachers... They look for more meaningful things to do. We see this in lawyers too. They become restaurant owners.

People makes ants meet (make ends)

[On 'exploitation'] The reason why the US dumps tons and tons of wheat in the sea is so the price won't go down so they [the farmers] won't be exploited.

[On trade unions sustaining integral hegemony] You're a member of a trade union. They tell you: 'Hey, every year we give you a calendar and an umbrella'.

Some people say: 'Oh there's no politics in Singapore. It's so easy'... There's a struggle for consent... There are ruptures... Singapore is closer to the integral hegemony model.

[On modern Marxists] They mention revolutionary potential, but they don't mean it anymore.

I'm going to show you a clip from a film called Chicken Rice War. it's a terrible film... [Student: It has a clip with necrophilia right.] Chicken Rice War doesn't have necrophilia. It's a commercial film. That would be hard to relate to our topic for today.

[Me on a Geylang research trip: Did you meet any street walkers?] A lot. [Me: all PRC?] A lot of nations. It's like the UN.

After period 1, the world comes to an end. Is that clear?... Although it is simple, this model can give us a lot of insights. Sometimes they can be misleading... Any questions? [Me: What year is this model from?] Frenkel and Razin. 1984. Long time ago... Well, the world hasn't come to an end yet.

He has to repay his borrowing. There's no free lunch... Only then can he die happily.

Like Singapore, we're always investing our money abroad. Whether we can get our money back, we don't know.

What should B1 be? Today I'm in a good mood so I'll give you the answer.

If you anticipate an unfavourable shock in the future, you will improve your current account now. That's why the government always says: 'The future looks bleak. Let's tighten our belts now.'

How do you determine the autarky interest rate? *Silence* I asked this question last semester. Most students got it right. Very disappointing.

You can't discuss in my tutorial. There're too many arrogant people.

My Great Refusal of Marxism

"We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic." - David Russell

***

The Great Refusal of Marxism
Addendum: Perhaps this is better titled "My Great Refusal of Marxism"

Marxism is presumptuous, contradictory, romanticised, ironic, simplistic and demeans the value of humanity. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a lot like religion, since Marxism itself is like a religion.

It is presumptuous because it claims people are suffering from false consciousness, yet it seeks to impose its form of consciousness on them, and then claims this is the true consciousness.

All systems and ideologies are riddled with contradictions except for Marxism; if you benefit from another ideology, you will support it because of vested interests. If you don't, your support must come from false consciousness, or you must be deluded or coopted in some way (now I understand why they sent Soviet dissidents for electroshock therapy, it was because they were insane in being unable to appreciate the truth of Communism). As we know, ad hominem attacks are to be avoided - you evaluate ideologies on their merits, or lack thereof, and not because of your social position. And this strange assumption of its own infallibility cannot be justified.

Marxism is also contradictory. It posits that human nature is good and that we would be able to live happily in a Socialist/Communist Utopia. It also says that history is a history of class struggle which will never end untill everyone is in the same class. But then if human nature is good, why would the Bourgeoisie oppress the Proletariat? And if it's not good why would suffering not cease when Socialist/Communist Utopia is reached?

National ties are false yet somehow we must believe in a worldwide fellowship of workers.

It is romanticised, with dodgy theories about the halcyon past, our Gattungswesen, ('species being') and alienation. This is divorced from historicity, reality and human nature.

Marx said that factory workers are unhappy because they have no connection with the product of their work, and so are alienated from themselves, their work and each other. They cannot apply their humanity to engage in creative work (creative in the sense of palpably creating something).

This is bullshit. Does anyone imagine that fishermen and farmers are very happy (deceptive and disingenuous motivational stories aside)? Do they not want to work in factories? Even in the case of artisans, the only potters and craftsmen who sit happily in their workshops making everything themselves and eschewing the benefits of specialization are those paid to show tourists what the imagined handicrafts industry is like (the Granny of Chinese lore who ground the iron rod into a needle probably let her grandchildren starve due to her stupidity). Why does rural-urban migration exist? This is what happens when you sit in the British Library and write rubbish, instead of working on a farm from dusk to dawn for peanuts.

Supposedly we are working more and more, yet in many ways we are working less and less (eg Household conveniences, more efficient modes of transport). Do office workers really work more and harder than the farmers, fishermen and artisans of old?

It accuses capitalism of over-production, yet the reality is that wants become needs, and anyway wants unlimited: people never have enough. As such you can't have 'overproduction'.

It is simplistic because, besides the many problems outlined above, it also naively divides people into Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The Bourgeoisie are always exploiters, and the Proletariat are always the exploited. People are essentialised into one of these categories.

Marxism throws out accusations of 'exploitation' willy-nilly, and somehow everything follows. Yet the assumption of 'exploitation' is never questioned; it flows from a simplistic understanding of economic theory. 'Exploitation' occurs through the appropriation of 'surplus value', but 'value' is a theoretical concept which cannot actually be measured. Just as both producers and consumers enjoy producer and consumer surplus respectively, so do workers enjoy economic rent, and anyway profit, interest and rent do need to be paid (if any Marxist disagrees, just ask to borrow $10,000 from him for 10 years and repay the real value of his money to him at the end; if any Marxist student disagrees, just ask her to organise dozens of hall activities without giving her ECA points). There is also no concept of employers being exploited - exploitation need not be one way, especially with trade unions (but then, these are also claimed by some to be instruments of exploitation, so).

It is ironic because it claims that Capitalism creates an illusory enemy so it can repress and control the Proletariat, the better to exploit them. Yet this enemy is never mentioned. As for itself, Capitalism is Marxism's illusory enemy.

Marxism demeans the value of humanity by second-guessing the choices that informed adults make, and calls them exploitation; whereas right wingers believe we can never blame anyone else for our choices, left wingers believe we are never to blame for our choices. The abrogation of personal responsibility and the denial of the significance of individual choices is insulting in the extreme.

Marxist paradise is like Heaven - neither will ever come because the religion is false. Instead you stay in hell - it is better for everyone to be poor than for some to be rich and others reasonably endowed. Not only is this beggaring they neighbor, it is also cutting off your nose to spite your face.

NB: Although a few Neo-Marxist elements are addressed above, critiquing Neo-Marxist arguments requires more nuanced and involved analysis than I am prepared to go into at this stage.

Political theories in one line:

Liberalism - Freedom is good
Communitarianism - Do what society (the state) says
Marxism - The rich are oppressing the poor
Feminism - Men are evil
Post-modernism - What is truth?

I was going to do Critical Theory too, but although it's broadly Neo-Marxist and has roots in that area (especially through Marcuse, Adorno and Habermas), after reflection and consideration I agree that it's more methodology than ideology, and anyway Marxism, Feminism and Post-Modernism fall under it.

ISPs/Content Publishers and Freedom of Digital Speech by Harish Pillay

"While the Technet was being contemplated in the 1991/92 time frame, because of the familiarity with the Internet, the author was invited by the Singapore Computer Society to give a talk to it's members about this new fangled thing called the "Internet"...

Minutes before starting, one of the organizers of the event came up to me and told me that there was someone from the NUS who would like to chat with me. What transpired then is somewhat anecdotal to the kind of thinking that prevailed in officialdom. I was told in no uncertain terms by the NUS person that he had wanted my talk to be canceled and that what I was going to talk about was "dangerous". What an amazing
encounter that was. I laughed it off and said that perhaps he should try to stop me...

The Hangman and Mickey Mouse
Perhaps the most telling challenge to the Singapore authorities is the now oft quoted Wired magazine story by William Gibson. This September 1993 article, while not disallowed in Singapore, was mirrored at the heart of the NCB on a machine that was serving out web pages to those who could access it. This was a bold and all together brave attempt by the person doing this hosting, a person who has a pedigree that goes all the way up the ruling party.

Just Checking
The period 1993-1995 was exciting for Internet users in Singapore chiefly because they were transitioning from a restricted, albeit privileged access Technet to a commercially sold Internet access via Singnet and Pacific Internet. The appearance of the "graphical" Internet ala WWW, meant that the inevitable will surface, that of images of naked humans.

That this was expected to happen was not lost on the powers that be, and, in what can only be deemed to be a fiasco, the head of the Technet unit took upon himself to check the files of Technet subscribers. Although the check claimed to have been limited to discover if there were files that had the file name extension .gif, of the 80,000 or so .gif files, five were deemed to be objectionable. What was done after that determination is not exactly clear, but it was sufficient to send the user base into a spin."


Free Speech and Defamation by Tey Tsun Hang

"In Jeyaretnam Joshua Benjamin v Lee Kuan Yew, the Court of Appeal made it clear that the right to free speech was subject, inter alia, to the common law of defamation as modified by the Defamation Act, showing an eagerness in upholding the statute. Instead of carrying out a proper balancing exercise and setting out its reasoning and analysis, the Court of Appeal jumped to the conclusion:

An absolute or unrestricted right of free speech would result in persons recklessly maligning others with impunity and the exercise of such a right would do the public more harm than good. Every person has a right to reputation and that right ought to be protected by law. Accordingly, a balance has to be maintained between the right of free speech on the one hand, and the right to protection of reputation on the other. The law of defamation protects such right to reputation, and, as we have shown, it was undoubtedly intended by the framers of our Constitution that the right of free speech should be subject to such law.

The Singapore judiciary has thus progressively hardened its position in dismissing the arguments that defamation actions could constitute unlawful interference with the fundamental right of free speech under Article 14 of the Constitution. In these judgments, the Singapore courts showed much eagerness in dismissing such arguments, whilst at the same time failed to set out any analysis or rationale in doing so.

Such failure on the part of the Singapore judiciary to carry out a proper balancing exercise between free speech and the protection of reputation, is most glaring when the defamation regime in Singapore is placed in its proper context – it remains one of the very few areas of law where the defendant has the burden of proving his innocence"


More papers:

*"Regulating Minority Issues on the Internet: The Uses and the Price of Indulgence" by Alex Au and Russell Heng
*"Blogging: Getting Round the Regulators" by Benjamin Ho
*"One Country, Two Media Systems? Singapore's Unsustainable Dichotomy" by Cherian George
*"Race & Religion on the Net: Dangers of Using Legislation as a Curb" by Cyril Chua
*"2006 Singapore General Election: When Laws and the Architecture of the Internet Collide" by Tang Hang Wu

Freedom Of Digital Speech Symposium, Institute of Policy Studies

I just noticed that Will, the Black Overdrive Ranger, is black.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

My mother's not around today, so I can happily deep fry.

She claims that using the microwave dirties the kitchen, so I might as well get the most bang for my buck since no matter what I do, tomorrow she'll complain the house is very dirty.

On the menu (not all for consumption today):

- Bratwurst with bratkartoffeln
- Macaroni/fusilli with home-made tomato sauce (from last week) and minced pork
- Chicken Cordon Bleu
- Fries


My potato peeler is so powerful it managed to chip my nail.


7pm: The pasta and the fries were a trivial case - I've made them so many times I can do it with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back (the first batch of fries were a bit brown but I shall justify that by saying that they were for my father, who likes chao tah food, and the subsequent batch was perfect).

Bratwurst - Although Giant has lousy quality food (the chicken is thawed from frozen chicken so you can't refreeze it, the honey baked ham does not list honey in the ingredients list and there's even a gallery of 'Malaysian Delights' in the IMM branch), it also sells fresh sausages so I grilled (pan fried) fresh bratwurst. Water must've seeped out from them because they caused my oil to spurt merrily. To my horror, I found out after grilling them (for about 2-3 mins on each of the four 'sides') that you're supposed to simmer them in almost-boiling water before grilling, or they may be raw inside and burnt outside after grilling, so I cut them all into half just to check if they were cooked (they were). I think this is the first time I've had fresh bratwurst - the meat defnitely has more character to it, but I also like the smoother texture of pre-cooked bratwurst - if I wanted to feel the grain of the meat I'd have a pork chop, not a sausage.


The sausages are tiny. I shall have 3 per serving next time, instead of 2.

Bratkartoffeln - I was supposed to cook the potatoes beforehand and cool them before frying so they wouldn't disintegrate. I neglected to cover the container and they oxidised. Next time I should cut the potatoes into smaller pieces, or even flatter slices (instead of the current wedge-like pieces) so they'll crsip better. But actually it doesn't really matter since I'll only eat it on Monday, and my brother in law will have it sometime during the week.


Chicken Cordon Bleu - Unfortunately I forgot to make sure there were toothpicks, so I had to bake this. I couldn't be bothered to put herbs. I should next time. The Mild Australian Cheddar didn't melt and ooze over the ham as was the plan, unfortunately; I cut strips from a thick slice of it and broke the strips into a few pieces before putting them on top of the ham. Maybe I should try using shredded cheese next time. At least it was better than the first time I made Cordon Bleu since I used Japanese Breadcrumbs instead of improvising my own (though the breadcrumbs mostly remained white instead of browning, but then even when you deep fry they turn light brown at most).


someone: u cooked all that food and udidnt invite anybody?

Oops. It didn't occur to me. Maybe I should invite people next time, then they can do the cleaning up!

"People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering From a Mental Illness." - Heather Armstrong

***

Someone: i thought it was SCGS because my friends ex-gf was classmates with the girl and we were talking about it in barker in 1999

i don't know WHO
but it was like july/august of 99

i know she was sent to emergency room

yeah
try to search for this girl called *** who plays badminton team in scgs as a sec 3 or 4 girl
i'm sure sec 3 in 99 and sec 4 in 200

she was classmates if i'm not wrong

i remember this clearly cos one fine day in chinese class my friend who was dating *** the scgs girl just said this to me screaming it out loud and we were like.. "fuck what?"

it was CHINESE class
i can remember that for sure

I am SO sure
definitely july/august time frame
because Orals were approaching
and so were prac exams?
and mock prac?

[so she did it during the exam] and it broke and you know the rest

This conflicts with another source. Hmm.

HWMNBN: i'm wondering if tehrere have been mor ethan one girl with test tube sbroken off

if you think about it, logically, it can't just have happened to one perso

the retort stand one is more likely to be a one-off

so it becomes less and less of an urban legend and more of a karmic reflection of the female condition - ie. an ouroboros cycle where the same mistakes repeat themselves (like menstruation hahahahaa)

okay i think there's an object set of seconday school girls who masturbate with test tubes (i have this sneaking suspicion its more prevalent than we think)
a small minority of those actually have it broken off. and of this an even tinier minority get found out


Someone else: u heard about the guy who stabbed himself thru the hand with a pipette right ;)

now that one, i can verify's true
sure there wasn't any self-pleasure involved though

during chem prac in j1
he was doing titration and broke the pipette in half. drove it right thru his hand
in the palm, out the side of the hand

5 hours wait in the emergency room. no jabs
apparently cos he wasnt screaming or fainting from the pain
they decide whether you need a jab on the basis of how much noise u make

Me: hahahahahahah
moral of the story: make more noise

Someone else: seriously

oh yeah
that was me btw
straight from the source

i deserve maximum mileage out of such a traumatic experience


HWMNBN: now interesting psychoanlaysis would be what *** said about you - "for a person who goes out of his way to taunt and denigrate female behaviour (she made a distinction between taunting and denigrating female behaviour, which is not feminine, and taunting and denigrating individual females' behaviour - ie. bitchy backstabbing, which is)

he certainly disports a lot of female attributes. is it a conscious parody, unconscious mimicry, or some kind of shamanism? ie. put on the monster's skin to gain the monster's power."


Someone: no wonder all his and his son's body guards all so dashing
they have the NUS girls swooning

the girls just gush
wah that cute guy is coming
kindda thing

they even chat him up

girls find it very "man" i guess


Someone else: i went to RK hse just now....2.30 am

the "myth" is dispelled
there r no such indians around there
and ....the waiter could speak CHINESE!!

Me: are they v popular now
after advertising

Someone else: quite crowded

Me: for all you know it was an advertising campaign by RK house

Someone else: i think so too
good job

but seriously, thumbs up for the prata

A disturbing testimony I received in the Cash Harvest Cult review comments box:

I was browsing through the blogspot on a random & bang, I hit your blog. I'm impressed by your analytical knowledge. This article has indeed opened my eyes. I'm actually an ex-member from CHC. The link which you had put up taught me alot more about satan's signs. It brought me back to one of CHC's service where the whole congregation was told to make the "Devil's Sign" (resembled the one shown in your link) when Sun Ho was up the stage singing. But this round, it involved 2 different signs. I wonder if you have more information about it. I'm pretty curious. [Right Hand: Open Palm face out. Left Hand: "Devil's Sign"] Thank God, I'm out of CHC. It's a pretty weird feeling being there. Somehow, I felt I wasn't myself. Somehow, felt being "brainwashed". When it comes to offering time, there was always a power to push me to dump in all my $$$ to the point that I had to starve myself for the next few weeks to a month. At church, everyone seems to love you so much, but when you bump into them somewhere in the streets, they treat you like a total strangers. I even had frightening encounters where I was sexually harrassed by the male members. Several times being pushed down on bed by 2 different "brothers". One succeded by popping sleeping pills into me. When I woke up, I can't remembered anything except seeing myself naked. At the point, I was still attending their church. I can't explain why. It's only until I left them, then did I realised the shame that I was being "rape". But it had been so long, I don't see on how I could make a police report. Since I've left CHC, I''ve "recuperated" pretty well...Life's back to normal...Continue to provide those informative writeup. Thanks!!!


Unfortunately there was no return address.

"For reasons that I have already discussed one cannot know that the sun will rise tomorrow. Yet at the same time, most people in the world would be happy to bet a large sum of money on the proposition that it will rise tomorrow. So most of us are happy to base our behavior on the supposition that the sun will rise tomorrow. True, there are a handful of fruitcases who would argue that the sun is not going to rise tomorrow - for the End of The World is Nigh - but they are in a minority. One cannot say that these fruitcases are wrong - at least not until tomorrow, by which time it may be too late! - and certainly one cannot prove that they are wrong. Nor indeed can one use the fact that most of the people in the world think they are wrong as a basis for arguing that they are wrong.

This reminds me of a conversation that I had with an eminent economics at a distinguished English university a year or so ago after I had given a seminar there. We were discussing the goodies and the baddies in the faculty there - the goodies being the eminent economist's small band of neoclassical colleagues, and the baddies being the dreaded M*rx*sts. The baddies are a great force for reaction in the faculty, and the eminent economist was complaining how he found them a permanent millstone round his neck. I remarked something to the effect: 'Why doesn't the fact that you and your band are doing lots of good work and getting it published in good journals, while the M*rx*sts are doing nothing of any value at all and publishing at best in second-rate journals, not help in the political process of decision-making in your University? Surely everyone knows that they have to take you seriously and dismiss the claims of the lefties because it is you that brings in all the Brownie Points for Economics at this University?'

The eminent economist replied that the M*rx*sts did not accept that the fact that they published in 'second-rate' journals while the eminent economist's band published in Econometrica and the Review of Economic Studies was any kind of evidence that they were bad and the neoclassicists good. On the contrary, this was just evidence of a counter-revolutionary plot against the true scientific research that the M*rx*sts were doing. Meanwhile, the rest of the faculty, who were sitting round politely listening to this debate, being good middle-class intellectuals, declared the M*rx*sts the winners on the grounds that the eminent economist had not proved his point. Which was indeed true (even if morally disastrous).

So what is the moral of this little story? If you insist on logical proofs of propositions you end up with an economics department with a lower research ranking? Possibly. And if you insist on some logically defensible definition of rationality you waste lots of time in seminars rather than doing serious work...

Whether you like it or not, economists are better than most other people (statisticians and chancellors of the exchequer alike) at predicting (and perhaps, by implication, explaining) economic behaviour."

--- Rationality is as Rationality Does, John D. Hey

I gave Wee Shu Min a USP brochure-card. Haha!

Damn, now that particular market niche has been filled!


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Instructor: I'd like you to view the video recordings of 2 of these forums and comment on any of the speaker's presentations in the light of Fukuyama's thesis and/or any of the theoretical perspectives that we've encountered so far in the module.


Me: An alternative perspective

The Workers Party does not deserve its name, for by buying into the political process of democracy, it is betraying the workers it purports to represent. If it thinks it can improve the lot of the proletariat by getting into government and enacting socialist policies, it is suffering from false consciousness and perpetuating capitalist hegemony. Alternatively, since they buy into the philosophy of democracy they are part of the ruling class, since the dominant ideas of every age are the ideas of the ruling class.

True freedom for the proletariat will only come when the Revolution occurs, private property is nationalised and economic inequality within Singapore is destroyed. The contradictions of capitalist democracy - of claiming to give everyone an equal voice and yet systematically disenfranchising the proletariat by exploiting them for the profit of the bourgeoisie - will eventually destroy it. We must link up with our compatriots in the Malayan Communist Party and seek to subvert the governments of the peninsula.

Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!


A: Yo man..

Wow... i think the comments that you have made were put rather bluntly and forcefully ya? "The Workers Party does not deserve its name".. Hmm... I am trying to see the link between democracy and the words "worker's party". I think this is a rather rash assumption to think that having a name "worker's party" automatically forces them to be against democratic ideologies? So should the brand "mango" be selling only mangoes?

"it is betraying the workers it purports to represent". I don't think that we should generalize by assuming that all in the working class want a revolution. In fact, many of my friends are very satisfied to just be in the working and not earn their million by 25. But I think that individuals in the worker's party would be doing their name justice simply by highlighting issues of class and propose change before it gets out of hand, it should not be aiming for a revolution.

Do you really want a revolution, to be led by a party who is not ready to take over total leadership, and do you really want to be studying in university to get a S$900 monthly salary. Let's be realistic in our comments... No offence k?


B: Chin Peng, wake up, you're having a nightmare again!

;)

Event Title: NUS MENSA Admission Test

Description: Take the NUS MENSA Test today and enjoy many of our special priviledges open to only MENSA members. Furthermore, being a member of MENSA means that you are in the top 2% of the population. Think of how that will look on your resume! As a MENSA member, you open the doors to infinite opportunities. Join us now!!


!@#$

someone once said that in other countries people joined MENSA to meet other weird people but here they just want bragging rights.

Singapore's a really sad place.


Comment: "I have attended Mensa events in several countries and only in Singapore do people actually go around boasting about their IQ. That's why I eventually left. I couldn't stand being with that sort of people.

(The other countries were all non-Asian countries; possibly this kind of behaviour is a uniquely Asian thing...)"

"I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs." - Samuel Goldwyn

***

Someone: i think u should listen to the song "some guys have all the luck" by rod stewart
to know why [I see so many upskirts]

haha
but in all honesty, i don't know why
girls can't sit properly with me around
maybe they think i am one of their jie mei

but of coz, i do tell them to sit properly when i see it lahz

but of coz u can be some cynical RI bastards, like my brother and his friends
and think that i want to prevent it from being a positive externality for the guys


Someone else: why do gals in arts simply like to wear ultra short shorts to tutorials
its extremely distracting

Me: hahahahaha
don't look

or do econs modules :P


Someone: i'm only drinking to ward of multiple sclerosis
off*

hell, u just correct my english and dont tell me abt it


Someone else: i heard before
i heard it when i was studying in chinese high

Me: someone in the thread said urban legend cos it's an old story
someone else hints she knows the girl it happened to
someone else else says it supposedly happened to someone in her year

Someone else: yep
so issittru?E

Me: dunno

Someone else: oh well
i thought u would know

maybe on ur blog
u should put a notice
seeking eye witnesses

or u can search factiva
RGS and test tube

Me: hahahahahha
ok on I do that

Someone else: i tryin galos
don't have
nothing of such

hey
i can't find anyone who verifies this
coz all the rgs girls i know are younger than me
it happened during my time

Me: raffles girls school AND (test tube OR boiling tube OR retort stand)
no results


Me: marxism is complete bullshit
OMG

I wonder what these psychos are smoking

MFTTW: weed. self-declared marxists tend to be hemp-wearing potheads.
haha.

Me: marx is 1/2 deluded
gramsci is 1/4 deluded
adorno and marcuse are 3/4 on the way to the looney bin

MFTTW: i think only the greeks [Plato and Aristotle] got it right
cos every other theorist after them just screws up

of course the greeks were also banging little boys so god knows what THEY were smoking