Sometimes you think you’ve seen

Sometimes you think you’ve seen it all and no novelty websites can really amuse you any more. And then you find the Red Meat Construction Set.

I came up with a few, but don’t rate them highly at all, especially next to the utterly twisted brilliance other people have come up with. I think I have a new goal in life, though.

[Note: A good understanding of the Red Meat universe is necessary for full appreciation of the above links. It also helps if you’re a sick bastard.]

Arranging Shelf Music To Suit Head Music

And now the CDs. Brilliantly handy shelf inserts from IKEA have been installed and a provisional arrangement is in place, although it’ll have to be tweaked again when my boxes finally arrive from England with the rest of the CDs.

The Arrangement of CDs is a difficult matter. I could go on and say it isn’t just one of your holiday games, but then I’d have to apologize to T.S. Eliot, and I am adamant that I owe that man NOTHING after struggling through The Waste Land. But where was I? Ah yes, I was being a total nerd. Onwards.

The thing is, the most obvious way to arrange CDs is alphabetically, but that seems to assume the arrangement’s meant to facilitate the locating of a CD I already know I want to listen to, and how often does that happen? Sometimes I don’t realize how much I wanted to listen to a CD until I’m two thirds of the way through. I want an arrangement scheme to detect the music in the back of my head and tell me what it is.

To this end, some sort of genre-based classification seems more suitable (insert obligatory “of course I know you can’t just force music so rigidly into genres and anyone who insists on this needs a laxative pronto, but it’s just convenient, okay?” disclaimer), but that can entail fairly tough decisions. Do I put Elliott Smith under indie pop or singer/songwriters? Should I separate UK hip-hop and US hip-hop? Does The Cure belong with “sound-of-the-80s” or post-punk? Do I even really, I mean really know what the hell post-punk actually is?

While doing this, I’ve been listening to CDs I haven’t heard in a long time, hoping to whittle out deadwood to sell in order to finance future purchases. Some of it’s fairly obvious, like the shiny circle of turd that is the Manic Street Preachers’ This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and Beth Orton, who I once liked but now find rather dull, but the search through the less obvious candidates has turned up some fairly pleasant discoveries. Unconditionally Guaranteed 2 (an Uncut compilation) has Prettiest Thing (The Creatures) and My Morphine (Gillian Welch), which I can’t believe I didn’t notice when I first got the album in ’99. Your Sweet Voice, from Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend is the sort of saccharine I hate from most other people except Matthew Sweet, who somehow gets away with it. Unfortunately, as much as I tried to like REM’s Up, it still blows. Sorry, guys.

Old Friends

Boxes and dust have been the order of the day, or rather, the order of the early morning hours between midnight and six, which is when I do the most of anything useful.

My family moved house while I was in London, and I’ve been going through the boxes from the old house bit by bit. I’m doing books first, deciding which ones actually get to live on shelves in the new room, and which ones get consigned to a box high up in a cupboard. It’s not always easy. Dealing with stuff at home is always immensely more complicated than in England, because here I have to make decisions about the accumulated sentimental junk of twenty years rather than four.

Childhood books are an issue. Some books get Shelf Status with little or no agonizing involved: the Narnian Chronicles, which I really must reread now adulthood informs me that Aslan’s meant to represent more than just a really noble lion; the Borribles books, certainly the darkest and bloodiest children’s books I’ve ever read, but also the most gripping and imaginative by far. But what about the Roald Dahls? Do I concede that I only reread them once every couple of years, and box them up, or do I grant them a precious place just because we go waaaaay back? And if I let the Roald Dahls onto the Shelves, how can I then deny space to the Dick King-Smiths, the Joan Aikens, the Enid Blytons, the E. Nesbits, the Colin Danns, the Judy Blumes, the Nancy Drews? How can I, with a clear conscience, banish I Am David and Malgudi Days and The Secret Garden and My Side Of The Mountain and White Fang and Grimble to the Box of the Unloved and Abandoned?

Faced with difficult decisions like these the other night, I dealt with the situation like an adult. I piled the books back in the boxes, found my old collection of Asterix comics, and read them till 6 AM, at which point my mother woke up for work, saw the light under my door, came in horrified, and nagged me into bed.

Post-Masters Bliss

And today it all ended. I wrote my last sentence in my last Masters exam, hoped fervently it would actually be my last Masters exam (last week’s exam was very, very bad. I might fail), freaked out with Gwen a bit about the toughness of the paper and scooted off feeling like I had wings on my heels.

Made a beeline for Gramophone. I haven’t bought a CD in way too long. Found DJ Spooky’s Under The Influence in the used section for S$7.99, and snapped it up goggle-eyed. Was delightfully distracted in Tang’s for the next few hours (note to non-Singaporeans: this is not the orange kryptonite you drank when you were a kid, it’s a department store), and bought shoes and a top. Would have bought a second pair of shoes except for the fact that they made farting noises when I was trying to walk in them.

Met Luke and Yuping for dinner and extended chat. Walked home from the bus-stop by the spooky route because I was feeling inVEENcible. Came to my room and put on the DJ Spooky, which is a daaaaamn fine mix album, great tunes, great flow, great mixing, or admittedly it might just be because I’m feeling great.

You know how you hear a song again when you haven’t heard it in a while and you suddenly wonder how on earth you went all that time without listening to it? Saul Williams’ Twice The First Time is on this album. I’m turning it up, Saul is off on his “and I be riding on the wings of eternity like HYAH! HYAH! Sh-clack-clack, GET ME THE FUCK OFF THIS TRACK!” trip, and now the beat kicks in, now I’m remembering how even Alec (not exactly a fan of what he calls my “hippety-hoppety music”), bought Xen Cuts almost on the strength of this track alone, now I’m hearing Saul say “Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain-top have you heard hip-hop,” and I’m thinking, Benny? Let’s climb Mount Kinabalu and bring some Rakim.

Junior Senior Whatever

What the hell does it matter that Junior is straight and Senior is gay, and why does it seem impossible to read anything ever written about the band without this fact mentioned? Is it meant to be special in some way that a gay person and a straight person are friends, and work together? For all I care, Junior could be the president of Hitler Youth and Senior could be a one-legged homosexual Jewish gypsy, and this still wouldn’t be enough to compensate for the fact that their music is shit.

Filler

Despite having to study an entire Master’s course worth of intellectual property law, mostly from scratch, in five days, I am trying to keep calm. Grooving to mixes from Manitoba and Akufen on The Breezeblock. Splitting my sides at Rent-A-Negro (and revisiting Black People Love Us just to read the stupid people on the letters page who take it all seriously again). Marvelling at this unbearable furriness of being (link found at meish.org). Marking favourite Margaret Atwood poems with paper clips in my book to see if I can find some of them for you online – More and More was all I could find.

I’m gagging for Thursday to come and the exams to finally end, so I can write properly again instead of all this linking, gosh durn it. I’ve never really found blogs that just link you elsewhere particularly interesting, and am rather frustrated that lately this seems to have become one. But any actual writing I might have done would have been brimming over with I-miss-London angst of the “There’s an ad on TV that features London. I miss London. I’m reading the newspapers about the blackout in London. I miss London. I’m watching BBC World and the newsreader has an English accent. I miss hearing the English accent. Whine whine whine!” variety anyway, so count yourselves lucky. When the exams are over I promise to seek a replacement life.

Two Memories

Yesterday, trying to wake myself up, I put on Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. In the first few seconds London is asked to make some noise for Public Enemy, and I remembered making lots of noise for Public Enemy, a few months ago, in London.

Last night, trying to get myself off to sleep. I put on Sigur Ros’s (), and lay there in the dark listening, remembering sitting entranced as that same opening track started their gig in London, that sparse beauty in the bass clef, that earnest weary voice singing words that mean nothing and everything at the same time.

Senorita Sucker

Senorita is a perfect example of how production and marketing can compensate for just about anything these days. Take mediocre song, imbue with mild catchiness by way of Neptunes beats, stir in some sultry honeys in clingy dresses gyrating to a song which isn’t particularly danceable in the first place, finally and most importantly add Justin Timberlake, and suckers like me will still be rooted to the screen every time it’s on.

Get Thee Behind Me, Internet

Shit. I was meant to be making notes on the legal ramifications of IT outsourcing. Instead, I was:

Reading

Caring For Your Introvert:
‘Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially “on,” we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn’t antisocial. It isn’t a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: “I’m okay, you’re okay – in small doses.” ‘ (Jonathan Rauch)

Who responds to MAKE YOUR PENIS HUGE spam

Finding beautiful

Monsoon: Black and white photographs across South East Asia, water-themed.

Laughing at

The 3rd Annual Nigerian Email Conference:
‘Debate: Attend a lively debate between Lady Mariam Abacha and Mr. Godwin Oyathelem.
Topic: “The effectiveness of using all UPPERCASE characters.” ‘

Eric Conveys An Emotion

Strangely fascinated by

The dullest blog in the world:
‘As I was sitting down I became aware that the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold. This being the case I made no adjustments to the temperature control on the central heating.’

Bikini picture airbrushing: Featuring amazing expanding and retracting breasts.

Listening to

Whole Wheat Radio: The site design isn’t great, but the music is class.

If I hadn’t lived in a hall without Internet access in my final year of university, it would have been goodbye degree for sure.

Yesterday Was Dramatic – Today Is OK

Handy coincidence. I was sitting here trying to think of a way to start this entry, and was looking through my CDs to choose one to play, and hey presto.

So anyway, this entry will be all about how I had a tough exam yesterday, and then had to leave straight after it to go to uni to do a simulated arbitration which I had done zero preparation for and could therefore have really sucked at, and how the day could have gone really badly, but it didn’t at all, and I’m happy. If all that sounds boring to you, that’s probably because it is. Go read The Onion if you’d rather. Otherwise, read on.

—

Waking up was agony. I used to have to stay up the whole night before most of my O’level prelims, given that I only tended to start studying the entire year’s work at 3 or 4 that afternoon. In the first year of uni, I remember a delirious conversation around 5 am with Esther the morning of the property law exam, trying to work out what the fuck the case Re Vandervell was all about. Those days seem to be gone. Yesterday, I’d stayed up cramming till 4, and woke up at 9 feeling like I’d been hit by a bus.

Sitting jittery outside the exam room hoping that the questions really really wouldn’t require a sound understanding of hedging or forward markets (i.e. the introductory chapter I didn’t understand) or, actually, international trade law at all (i.e. the entire course), that familiar old internal refrain of “In all fairness, Michelle, you don’t really deserve to pass this exam anyway, given this sort of preparation” was seeming as pertinent as ever.

But then the lovely old retiree who’s been invigilating these exams handed me the question paper and oh joy, oh providence, there were questions I could do, although forgetting all my cases couldn’t have helped, and I think I might just have gotten away with this.

I left jubilant, grabbed a coffee, and got on the bus to uni. Prepared doggedly for the arbitration over the next hour or so, fuelled only by a char siew pau and fear of humiliation, and managed to deliver a credible performance despite being mentally dead and feeling somewhat intimidated by the formidable abilities of everyone else. After class, the professor took us all for a drink. I swigged a strangely headless Guinness, got to know my rather personable and engaging coursemates a little better, and generally had a grand time.

—

Today, in contrast, has been sedate. Woke up in time for lunch. For dessert my mum whipped out a gargantuan tub of chin chow (grass jelly, it’s much nicer than it sounds), and I gorged myself happily. Lazed on the couch. The Discovery travel channel was featuring the World’s Top Ten Seductive Beach Resorts, all of which looked samey and artificial. After a while I got tired of seeing gooey-eyed couples embracing in the sunset, mostly because of my current geographic inability to do the same.

Channel surfing revealed a Hallmark movie featuring an inordinate number of grizzled old men in flat caps and tweed gathered on a rugged beach for a horse and buggy race. It was immediately obvious to me where this movie was set even before anyone opened their mouth and sounded lilting, and the appearance of the prosthetic-eared leprechauns confirmed my suspicions. So anyway this touching love story unfolded between an American, who of course had gone to Ireland to find his roots, and a sassy Irish woman, and there was, like, this PARALLEL love story between a fairy and a leprechaun, and obviously the uniting factor between both love stories was that they come from DIFFERENT WORLDS, and there are all these OBSTACLES to their love, but of course their love TRIUMPHS over all, because doesn’t it always, and at some point I fell asleep.