good enough is now better than great

shame on you, ipod users!

shame on those of you who only (or mostly) download music!

shame, shame, shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaameeeee! *eerie tone with wiggling fingers*

you think you're a music lover with wide tastes (because you download lots and lots of music)?

shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!

"In February, a music professor at Stanford, Jonathan Berger, revealed that he has found evidence that younger listeners have come to prefer lo-fi versions of rock songs to hi-fi ones. For six years, Berger played different versions of the same rock songs to his students and asked them to say which ones they liked best. Each year, more students said that they liked what they heard from MP3s better than what came from CDs. To a new generation of iPod listeners, rock music is supposed to sound lo-fi. Good enough is now better than great."

congratulations! you have successfully cheapened the quality of music - the effort spent by your 'heroes' to master their instruments! to figure out exactly what elements to put into each song! exactly how each part should sound! the love and care and heart and soul poured into each record! and!

and so on!

yeah, i still buy original music cds. yeah, i'm still using my close-to-a-decade-old discman.

and yeah, i have some songs on my computer, but this is certainly not my main medium of listening pleasure.

anyway, shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame! (you get many many A's)

-end of finger wiggling-

i'm here...

wtf?

i'm in shock.

i was randomly surfing wikipedia instead of studying when i came across an article which stunned me with its second line...

Issei Sagawa (佐川一政 Sagawa Issei?, born June 11, 1949) is a Japanese man who in 1981 murdered and cannibalized a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt. After his release, he has become a minor celebrity in Japan and has made a living through the public interest on his crime.

that brief overview doesn't tell you that he also fucked her corpse, and that he received barely any punishment for his sick repulsive crime (you can read more on wiki or this crime library).

and i don't know about you, but i find it even more disturbing that he's not just free, but also making a living off of it!

i did a bit of googling and found a post someone else had written about him. when visiting a friend, the person came across a self-authored manga by this sagawa issei:

"I knew of Sagawa, but wasn't aware of the details of his heinous act. I flipped through the childlike drawings. It was an account of his life, with the centerpiece being the two day-long orgy of mutilation, cannibalism and sexual deviance following the execution-murder of Dutch Sorbonne student Renée Hartevelt. The images depicted Sagawa cooking and eating body parts, using them for masturbation and sleeping with her corpse. A top seller, it's available at Amazon Japan and all of the country's major bookshops. I asked the author if the deeds in the pictures actually happened. He said they did. Then, the bombshell.

"I know him. He's a friend of mine." In shock I listened as he went on to describe Sagawa's activities as a restaurant reviewer, actor, author and his annually held barbecue."

yes, people are paying a cannibal to write restaurant reviews and host barbecues.

i really don't understand japan now.


the cover of the abovementioned bestselling manga




if you think these pictures are sick, you haven't seen the pictures of the actual body...

what is wrong with the people or government or whatever else of their country? people say that japan is sick for its famed deviant sex practices and stuff like that, but that's just a small minority (i hope. well, at least it's not doing anyone else any harm!). this is the japanese public accepting a necrophiliac cannibal! sure, the legal system has loopholes here and there... but how the fuck do you let someone get away with this shit?

sigh.

ok back to final finals.

i'm here...

guilty pleasure (yours, not mine)

i recently (finally) finished reading my first (and only, oh please, let it be my only) book by that author of the twilight series. if you understand how sentences work (as she apparently doesn't), you'll notice that referring to her as the author of the twilight series means that i read one of her non-twilight pieces.

mannn, where do i begin?

i guess we can place some blame on her family. they can't even spell names correctly!

stephenie meyer?

what, you're too good to have A's in your name? spelling it stephanie is below you? so is john mayer a pariah?

mannn, even the people who set up her page on wikipedia don't like her, apparently.

not that the article is biased or anything... just that they uploaded a really bloody fugly picture of her?


be afraid of the witchpire!

the picture shocked me, so i had to google to check whether it was a fair reflection of her appearance...

and she's actually not that dreadful lah!


much better, right? not so for that pattinson dude though. euw much?

talking about wikipedia, even the wiki page of her work is retarded. seriously. take a look at the content box...



it divides characters into major and minor ones. ok.

but doesn't it strike you as weird if i tell you that they listed 9 "main" characters... followed by only 2 "minor" ones?

so much for balance.

but looking at the content box above saddens me even further. you'll notice 'potential sequels' and 'film adaptation'.

haiyooo enough laaa!

'cos all jokes aside, her writing really is terribly awful (the plain variety of awful just doesn't cut it for her). i won't go into too many details 'cos i really don't want to cringe through the many lines in that book again, but i really like this reviewer's summary: "When it's good, the novel works well, and will appeal to fans of the author's hugely bestselling Twilight series, but it is little more than a half-decent doorstep-sized chunk of light entertainment."

it's supposed to be a sci-fi/romance novel... but it does neither part very well. the sci-fi is shit (seriously, her grasp of ecosystems is shit, as seen by her attempts of describing those pathetic alien planets, which sound as if they were plucked out of some child's drawings). and the romance, uhm, a love-trianglesquare? wow, you really are a trailblazer, aren't you stephen?

ok, so the idea and the premise of the story are pretty decent, i'll give her that. but her writing?

enough about her lah.

but more about books.

so i went to some mph book sale in kelana jaya last month... and it was just meh. walked around for an hour (or more) but didn't get a single book.

then drove to borders and spent rm200 there instead (and found out that paying with my maybank atm card gives me a 10% discount! and spending that amount also gave me a rm10 voucher! yay borders!).

(yay!)

but back to the mph book sale,

even if it's big... i don't think it can serve as a sofa? =/



dick couches aside, i actually learnt something from reading the cover of a random book! pro-tip, people!


how to survive your marriage - by hundreds of happy couples who did!

and the answer was so conveniently printed at the side of the book!



wait. there's a typo there.



still not grammatically sound, but that's ok! i get the message!

i'm here!

abschiedsbrief (farewell letter)

re: this post

this is an open letter that the german national team wrote to robert enke after his funeral. some of the translations came from english articles, which i edited a little bit, and inserted into the full letter below, the rest of which i tried to translate to the best of my ability (with, uhm, assistance from google translate).

(original letter in german: zeit.de)


"Dear Robert, it's not easy to put the football boots on this evening, to go out on to the turf, to spend 90 minutes doing what you loved so much. Your death for us is still omnipresent. It has made us all speechless, stunned, helpless. We were stunned when we got the unbearable news. We were not able to put our grief into words. We were not able to play football a few days later. We could not simply go about business as usual. We all needed to realise this moment of calm in order to realise what has happened - to properly understand. Perhaps we never will.

We have long sat together and thought of you. We have been silent together, cried together and searched for answers together, but in fact found only more questions - agonising questions of 'Why could we not help you? Why did you not want to talk to us about your problems? Why is it that, in our competitive society, it is not possible to express fears over such illnesses?'

It is for all of us a painful thought that you felt so alone and in need, even when you were with us. That you must so often have had the feeling that you could lose so much more than just a football game. That for you there was so much more at stake than for any other of us. Your death is so bleak. But we will do everything we can to carry on in your memory, to play good football, to be successful. And we will do our best to ensure that stigma and prejudice have no place in football.

You will be missed. On the way to the stadium, in the dressing room, in the penalty area. You will be missed, because you were an outstanding goalkeeper. But to a much greater degree, because you were a remarkable person. We play today for Germany, we play for the fans. But we play, above all, for you. For a good friend, whose death has brought us all a little bit closer together.

We are a team. And you will always be a part of this team.

Your national team"

kebetulan (aka rights... right?)

video clip. watch lah.



eh really.

watch before reading on. 'cos content of post will most probably spoil the clip.

it's not a long clip.

and if you're on digi broadband like i am, you won't have to wait for it to stream at all. click and watch!

(bonus: the voice in the background is lisa hannigan's!)

ok, done?

ok.

calm now.

trying not to get angry.

left right center manusia kurang ajar states and countries are voting against gay marriage.

if you think that the systems involved are democracies, and that people have a right to choose... wake the fuck up. seriously.

i'm not even going to touch the religious side of things.


i'll let mrs betty bowers give some brief examples instead (kinda offensive, but learn how to take a joke lah, ok?)

who do these people think they are?

i could break down how research shows that there are biological predispositions for homosexuality. i could cite the APA's recent move in adopting a resolution rejecting reorientation or conversion therapy and link that to the fact that it is not a disease, and that it cannot be reversed. i could quote my textbook on a simple argument against homosexuality being learned (as opposed to biological)... so why don't i:

“Who would willingly choose a lifestyle characterized by job discrimination, homophobic violence, a high risk of AIDS, and wholesale rejection by friends, family and society?”

i could provide an entire discussion based on those points, but that really isn't the point. the point is that people are voting against something that they really have no right to stop.

do you really want to use the argument that you're trying to uphold the values of your religion?

ok let's forget for one moment that organized religion (not the religion itself, mind you) is flawed.

who are you to say that everybody around you needs to adopt similar values?

ok let's for a moment stick to your concept of marriage. you think homosexual marriages will ruin the sanctity of marriage. ok. sure. so are you also actively campaigning against divorce? are you trying your best to make divorce illegal too?

oh you pathetic hypocrite.

seriously. if you're not lending your voice against divorce, you're not fighting for your supposed family values and sancity of marriage. you're just being a hateful piece of shit. oh you're racist too? why am i not surprised.

first of all, what is the impact of gay marriage on your marriage? if you're happily heterosexually married, why would it matter whether gay marriage is legalized?



but again, that's all beside the point.

this is not a moral or religious issue.

the simple fact is that marriage is a basic human right.

a basic human right, that comes with practical legal rights. there are so many rights that only married people get to enjoy, and that homosexuals will apparently never get.

you can marry a random stranger of the opposite sex that you don't even have to like (so much for the sanctity of marriage) and instantly obtain those rights, but a loving homosexual couple that has been together for two or three decades will never get that right just because some dimwits were given the right to vote.

we're talking about health benefits, pensions, legal inheritance, end-of-life decisions, extension of copyrights, compensation benefits, immigration benefits, tax deductions, insurance, family-only-services (club membership, residency in certain places, etc), prenuptial agreements, and the list goes on!

damn it, people! even if you refuse to accept the evidence about homosexuality, who are you to deny someone access to these basic rights? all that matters is that you believe in fairness and equal rights by the law.



i don't need to mention that i'm straight, right?

(really!)

i'm here.

meine stadt

never thought i'd say it. but i'm ashamed of my department.

well, not my department in general. just a tiny lil part.

which is part of a bigger part, but that part matters less. a lil less. anyhow, i'm not going to make any personal attacks.

as annoying as i may find individuals with inflated self-concepts.

and even though they have caused me shame.

seriously. wtf is this...



maybe it's just me, but shouldn't announcements (official posters, no less) aimed at the public (no matter how ugly) AT LEASTTT contain proper grammar? image, people! image!

wait, i got that wrong. it's not the poster that's flawed here... it's the title of the event that's causing this brainsore! which is even worse than having just one embarrassing marketing tool!

this is almost as bad as the infamous business plan based on a grammatical error!

people! "a" is an indefinite article! the world is not an indefinite object! it's like you're talking about a very general object and a quality that it has!

an umbrella is for shade.

a cat is an animal.

a world is a masquerade?

are you sure?

if you really wish to tie your theme to the shakespeare quote below it... the is the way to go!

the world's a masquerade!

alternatively, removing both a's kinda works too. although it's kinda dumb.

world's masquerade.

see, that means 'dunia punya masquerade,' which works, but as mentioned, is kinda dumb.

the only consolation here is that the poster doesn't state the name of our department. so outsiders are less likely to know that the students representing us screwed up so badly. or so i hope.

oh and isn't that last year's venue? how exciting. thank god i'm (probably) not going.

i'm here!

october and november

i'm back!

and regular posting should resume soon. i've got ideas for short stories that i may never write, and i've already forgotten a number of other posts that i wanted to put together but didn't have the time. anyhow, i'll probably find stuff to blurb about every now and then as usual anyway.

but first up: to continue posting my list of movies, as promised. october was pretty busy, and november was a bee, but combined they give us a decent list to cover.

a perfect getaway (cinema) very nicely put together, if a lil bit predictable. bonus: beautifully shot hawaiian scenery.
(2009; steve zahn, timothy olyphant, milla jovovich)

forgetting sarah marshall (dvd) all i can say is that jason segel has (after this and i love you, man) earned my undying love - he didnt just star in this one, he wrote the script too! (although there may be more jason segel in the film than you've ever wanted to see)
(2008; jason segel, kristen bell)

deception (dvd) two fantastic actors. story with potential. how did they fuck up so badly? (the alternate ending works so much better. i guess thats what you get when the suits make the decisions)
(2008; hugh jackman, ewan mcgregor)

inglourious basterds (cinema) i would watch this movie again just for christoph waltz's performance. he was that damn good.
(2009; brad pitt, diane kruger, christoph waltz, damien rice's domestic partner)

the secret (lecture) they've actually got some valid psychological constructs at work in their pseudo-scientific idea, but they're presenting it all wrong. so bad. so so bad.
(2006; dmockumentary)

the time traveler's wife (cinema) felt like the success of the movie depends on you crying at the end (and eric bana is only pretty, not particularly engaging *yawn*). would've worked better if they had allowed themselves to develop the story (and characters) more (it's only 107mins long), or made a mini-series instead.
(2009; eric bana, rachel mcadams)

the joy luck club (lecture) i'll never see watermelons the same way again. apart from the character involved there, the rest of the film worked really well.
(1993; ming-na, rosalind chao, lauren tom, france nguyen)

fat girl (dvd) the dvd cover lied! but that's ok, i'm glad the story wasn't about that... *shudder*
(2001; anais reboux, roxane mequida)

once (dvd) neo-musical. two characters. no names. beauty in simplicity.
(2006; glen hansard, marketa irglova)

2012 (cinema) one of the better disaster movies, i guess?
(2009; john cusack, amanda peet, violated housewife from crash)
kinda sorta spoiler: instead of building just a number of super exclusive arks - faced with total destruction - why couldn't they have started building them by the thousands the minute they found out to save wayyy more people? money wasn't going to matter anymore anyway. hello, logic?



final paper on the 15th. the december list promises more!

i'm here!

a memory

i was 12 or 13 when i used to catch weekly highlights of the bundesliga on tv (back when they actually showed such highlights on free tv, back when i actually watched tv, too much of it probably).

germany has always had quite a number of really talented goalkeepers, but i remember being really really impressed by this particular 21-year-old who played for borussia monchengladbach back then.

now, this was 10 years ago, a time when the legendary oliver kahn was still around, with the erratic jens lehmann and the forgotten timo hildebrand filling the backup spots on the national team.

still, i clearly remember telling myself back then (yeah, i talk to myself 'cos i have no social life) that he would almost certainly represent germany some time down the line. he was the undisputed national under 21 goalkeeper at that time, and things were looking bright (although hildebrand was younger than him).

anyway, time passed, and i forgot about this great sportsman. in reality, his career had taken him out of germany, where he had a mixed bag of experiences, some of which took him out of the spotlight.

but following the retirement of jens lehmann from the national team at the end of euro 2008, i was once again reacquainted with the mention of his name. he filled the position, and 13-year-old konrad's wish of seeing him as germany's number one had come true in spectacular fashion.

it seems that while i had forgotten about him during his stints abroad, he had made his way back to germany to play for hannover in 2004, and his performances here were so impressive that he was voted best goalkeeper in the league, a great honour when you consider all the other great german goalkeepers, including a lil someone known as oliver kahn who was still around at that time.

his teammates selected him as team captain and he continued doing well. mind you, hannover isn't a top club. they've finished in the top 10 only twice in the last decade, and they finished last season (08/09) in 11th spot - and still he managed to pick up the best bundesliga goalkeeper award (uhhuh, 08/09)!

if fit, it was almost guaranteed that he would be the man between the sticks for germany at next year's world cup.

about 4 days ago, he threw himself in front of an express train travelling at 160kph.

depression is a serious illness. it is not something that one can just 'shake off'. it is not 'all in the mind'. it's a complex issue resulting from both internal and external factors (including unfortunate biological predispositions).

"man up," they say, when a sportsman quits due to internal issues. "you've already got everything," they think, just because the sportsman has money and fame.

and as seen with robert enke, no amount of success as a high profile footballer nor great promise for the future seemed to matter in the end. sebastian deisler probably knows what it feels like. but if you haven't felt it or dealt with it, you probably don't.

people around him saw him as calm, intelligent and an all-round great guy. and that's not just talk, he really had heart.

"Robert Enke is a man who loves animals and is actively committed to their protection. He has saved a number of dogs, and his home resembles a small zoo. He has eight dogs (Balu, Santo, Oscar, Vincent, Branca, Hexe, Leao und Pincho), two cats (Pancho und Chispa), and a horse (Dickens) living in the Enke family home."



nobody in the game around him suspected that he had a problem although he had been battling it for years. as obviously (and tragically) damaging as it can be, depression is apparently not that easy to spot.

a decade since first noticing this outstanding sportsman, it saddens me to report his loss to an illness belittled by society.


as i remember him from 10 years ago


as you would've seen him in goal for germany at the world cup next year

would've. could've. should've.

i'm here.