A Spade is a spade is a spade

It’s a little funny what you could do with political correctness. People are questioning how the male gender has become the “default” sex for most things. The word “woman” itself implies that it’s a modification of the word “man”. Then we speak of “mankind” rather than “womankind” Or we shorten it to “man”. Why do we have “history” rather than “herstory”? Why do the kids take the surname of the father rather than the mother since paternity is always disputed more than maternity?

I think that these things are just conventions, we shouldn’t set too much store by them. Of course you might say "you're a guy, these conventions favour you!" Not always true. If you are Chinese, Korean or Japanese, you always write your name surname first. And when you're with westerners, they can't figure things out so quickly so sometimes you got to write your name backwards for them. I'm perfectly happy with it, even though sometimes it's also a case of preventing your good name from being mangled in their incompetent hands.

And black people, I think it's OK to call them black. It used to be a term or pride, and much better than the derogatory n word, or d!@kie. (Even though negro is just French for black.) Now they call them African-Americans. Which might still be OK except that most of them have never been to Africa before. Why not just admit that the main reason why race has any meaning is that somebody's skin is darker than the other?

When I was doing religious studies, somebody put the dates of Buddha’s life to be around 500 BCE. What’s that? Well it has become politically incorrect to say BC which is “before christ”. And AD “anno domini” is even worse, “in the year of our lord”. So in order for things to become less western centric, you should call it “before common era” / “common era”. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Our year 0 is centred around the life of Jesus Christ, that’s what we think the year of his birth is. That’s the original meaning of “2007” which means JC was born 2007 years ago, so it is what it is. Call a spade a spade. If you change it to “common era” or whatever that crap is, you’re still taking his birth as a point of reference anyway but you’re just obscuring that. Of course it is not very meaningful to say “Qin dynasty was 200 years before the birth of Christ”, because these 2 events have very little impact on each other. But it is a point of reference, and you are using the Gregorian calendar after all, so you might as well use the traditional names.

That’s why I’m also suspicious of how some bosses ask their subordinates to call them by their first names. To be sure there are some of them who truly want things to be more egalitarian but I’m sure that a few of them just want the semblance rather than the actual substance of things being more egalitarian. Like I want to lord over you but I don’t want it to be too obvious that I’m lording over you.

I don’t know, I’ve always been a believer that you shouldn’t invent new names for things that have perfectly good old names.

Julius Caesar

This is Julius Caesar on masturbating at bed time:

I saw, I came, I conked out

Mas Selamat Kastari

Let's dispel a few myths about Mas Selamat Kastari. People think he will be caught. I don't think it will be easy, or possible, I don't think he will be caught before he links up with JI again. It is possible to escape from Singapore. There is jungle. Why they put the Whitley detention centre so close to the jungle escapes me, but in Singapore, if you're not close to a jungle, then you are close to the coast, and you can still escape to another island.

I don't know why they say he is still in Singapore. They only made this public 4 hours after he escaped. This is really stupid. If you were to make this public immediately, it would have been much easier to catch him, everybody would have been able to look out for him. I'm sure it takes less than 2 hours to escape from this small island.

Saying that he is still in Singapore does serve one purpose. When you are in the government long enough you will realise that times of adversity will unite the people, as it did in the SARS case. Never mind that you yourself were the cause of that adversity.

Mas Selamat may or may not join back to JI and return to terrorism. It is possible either way.

His escape will not make a big difference to terrorism. JI's the way that it has always been. If it needs more talented people it can always find them. One more or one less doesn't make a difference.

What is not a myth is if I do find myself face to face with him I will try to beat the shit out of him before the police stop me.

I am very annoyed. But not as annoyed as the air defence units in the country who will have to work harder because he is on the loose.

Cherian George raised the interesting question of why the media has failed to report on the inquiries into the security lapse. That's the last thing the Straits Times would want to write about. Who in the press would want to criticise Internal Security since most of them work for them anyway? And some have also criticised the nomination of an insider to be a member of the so-called independent inquiry into the case.

This just in: LKY has criticised the handling of the case and blamed "complacency". Well and good. But it is interesting that the first time that the media reports about the culpability it is still LKY who opens his mouth. Doesn't the prime minister of the country have anything to say? Do LHL and GCT wait for him to take the lead? nobody wants to say anything risky unless it's LKY saying it?

George Clinton

If you need any convincing to go to next Monday's George Clinton concert, I present here some of his pearls of wisdom. Another article on P funk to follow.

The world is a toll-free toilet
Our mouth's neurological assholes
And psychologically speaking
We're in a state of mental diarrhea
Talking shit a mile a minute
Or in a state of constipated notions
Can't think of nothin' but shit
And in this world of
Stinky futures, shitty memories and
Constipated 19 now-nows
Emerges from the hiney of your head
The doo doo chasers,
The Promentalshitbackwashpsychosisenemasquad
The prune juice of the mind
The doo doo chasers
Friends of roto-rooter
Bringing you music to get your shit together by
The band in the tidy bowl of your brain
(What was that long word again-Promental...?)

A musical bowel movement
Designed to rid you of moral diarrhea
Social bullshit
Crazy do-loops
Mental poots

They call us the unflushables
One swipe a clean wipe
(Go flush it, fellas)

And what causes all of this shit?
What is the source of food for thought?
Ego-munchies
Images doggie bags
Me burger with I sauce on it
Me burger with I sauce on it
A myself sandwich
A personal burger
Hamburger
And a glass of constricted cola
Out to lunch with lunch meat
The fear of being eaten by the sandwich
The Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis-----
The doo doo chasers
Friends of roto-rooter
Music to clean your shit by

Low calorie logic
Muscle brain
Skinny brain

Count the calories of your thoughts
Funk, Confucius says
Like Chinese laxatives
Sweet and sour bowel movements
And in this world of stinky memories
Shitty futures
19 now nows-constipated-like
The prune juice of the mind
The band in the tidy bowl of your brain
Bringing you music to clean your shit by

Funk, the P-Preparation
The mental musical bowel movement
Groovalax
One swipe a clean wipe
And with no extra charge
A psychological trend
A neurological enema
Holy Shit
(let me try one-crap)
Corpolite
Prehistoric doo doo
Helping you get your shit together

Backstage at a Funkadelic rehearsal
We bring you the doo doo chasers
(Which one is George Clinton?)
Out to lunch with lunch meat, once again
The fear of being eaten by a sandwich
Lunchville
Where lunch is a nice time of day
At least twice a week

Fried Ice Cream is a reality

(Which one is George Clinton?)

Fried Ice Cream is a reality
Guess who's coming to lunch
I'm not gonna pay for this lunch, man!

Fried Ice Cream is a reality!
Fried Ice Cream is a reality!
Fried Ice Cream is a reality!

Today in Parliament

Now George Clinton is bringing his funky bunch to town next week. They are still promoting the tickets. I think they are having problems selling them. You want to pay $60 to watch a 60 year old man prance around in his diapers? (nb: this is not a mere rhetorical question. This being a P Funk George Clinton concert, there will be a guy prancing around in his diapers.) Am I going to fork out $60 for that lunacy?

But then again I reflected: there are only a handful of people whose live concerts I would attend. Sonny Rollins. Sonic Youth (They were in Singapore, performing in the Harbour Pavillion, 1 week before I was drafted. Since then the Harbour Pavillion has been torn down, and Vivocity erected in its place.) Bob Dylan. (He turned up at my super ulu out of the place uni 1 day, so why could I do?). Sonic Youth was great, the others were OK, but over the hill. Bob Dylan was good for his age.

Now anybody who knows rap music knows that the 3 most sampled artists are James Brown, Sly Stone and P Funk. So when P Funk (OK, it's just George Clinton and a few newbies - no Bernie Worrell, no Bootsy Collins) traipse into town, what should we expect?

I don't expect many Singaporeans to know P Funk, which is why I'm surprised he decided to come to Singapore. Aren't a lot of R+B fans, and definitely very few people from that disco era. But it's going to be like that David Bowie concert 25 years ago when a legend comes to perform, and nobody turns up, but people have fun anyway.

This is P Funk, they are legendary. Anybody who compiles a list of the top 100 greatest artists of pop music will include them.

There are a few musicians I want to be. One is Thelonious Monk. Another is Andrew Hill. (Both are dead unfortunately). I wouldn't mind being Captain Beefheart or Zappa, making crazy music that would piss off a lot of people. I would definitely love to be George Clinton, strung out and freaky with all that crazy music and crazy costumes, being a good role model for Prince to follow in your footsteps.

There are the crazy characters, like Sir Nose D'voidOfFunk (the straight nerd who doesn't understand black music, doesn't swim and doesn't do cocaine hence the nose reference), Uncle Jam, Dr Funkenstein, the Mothership.

I heard them first on Prince's "Graffiti Bridge". "We can Funk" was cool but probably a step down from their great heights. I fished out their masterpiece (wait for it) "Funkentelechy vs the Placebo Syndrome" from the discount bin. (Told you Singaporeans can't appreciate good stuff.) 1 minute into "Endangered Species" I was hooked, I hadn't heard anything that funky in my life. (By then I had already been acquainted with Sly Stone and Stevie so that is saying something.) Just before I left for the States I renamed the ICQ account on the Singapore computer "Mothership Connection" as a tribute to them (and my family too of course.)

Remember: you can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish.

Disneywar

I’m reading “Disneywar” by James Stewart. Of course in accordance with trying to buy myself new bookshelf space, it is one of the thickest books I have, on really thick paper, it’s a 600 page book thicker than some 900 page books I have. (There will be people who will naturally ask: why not buy a new bookshelf. That is the last thing I want. I have enough books at home as it is.) And it reads very easily. I don’t know why I bought it even though I had read a biography of Michael Eisner before but I’m really keen to finish it and sell it off so as to free up space.

It’s very entertaining, though. You read about all the crazy things that take place in Disney:

How Eisner and his number 2, Frank Wells, formed a great partnership which brought a lot of success to Disney in the early years.
How Eisner refused to promote his number 3 to the number 2 position after the number 2 died in a helicopter accident, and refused to pay him his bonus. Eventually the number 3 filed a suit and got more than his bonus. Later on, the number 3, Jeffrey Katzenberg left to form Dreamworks SKG with Spielberg and Geffen.
How Eisner roped in his then best friend, Michael Ovitz to be his number 2. Ovitz was then the most successful agent in Hollywood. Later on, he couldn’t manage the inevitable power struggles with the other people who felt themselves more entitled to the number 2 position, and basically was a lame duck for most of his 1.5 years at the company. He had to leave, his career was ruined, even though he received a $140 million severance paycheck.
Eisner had roped in Ovitz on impulse because Ovitz stayed at his side when he was going through heart surgery. Eisner had just lost his number 2 and number 3, and his wife wanted him to install a number 2 so that he didn’t have to manage everything himself. But after Ovitz’s firing, he didn’t appoint a president for a few more years.
How his playing his subordinates against each other ruined the unity of the company.
How, in order to “cut costs”, his subordinates felt compelled to sell away the domestic and foreign rights to the “Sixth Sense”, which was one of the biggest grossing films of all time.
How, because of the politics around the company, they fired the executive who wanted to make “Survivor” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”. They managed to hang on to the latter, but they lost “Survivor”.
How they fired the executives who championed “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives”.
How, because Eisner and Steve Jobs couldn’t get along, Eisner actually wanted to sell off Pixar.
How Roy Disney was always called Walt Disney’s “idiot nephew”, when he was the one who brought in Eisner in the first place. Later on, Eisner wanted to get rid of Roy Disney by invoking the mandatory retirement requirement for directors. Roy Disney managed to initiate a shareholder revolt in which 45% of the shareholders withheld their support of the CEO. This was the record highest percentage for a CEO of a major company.

Great entertaining reads.

Cotillard

It's a great thing that Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for Brest - sorry - Best Actress. I first saw her in "Love Me if you Dare". My second thought was that she was a great actress and was the emotional soul of the film. (My first thought, naturally, was to find a nice place to violently frisk her.) So I liked the movie even though it was a little sappy at parts, and the characters were basically selfish assholes.

I would want to watch "La Vie en Rose" (incidentally "Love Me if you Dare" featured the song). She is a great actress with good emotional range. Very spontaneous, which is to say, she doesn't even have to act a lot. No longer as pretty as she was in "Love Me If You Dare", doesn't speak English well. My opinion is that all ze French people, if zey sbeak English, should sbeak wis ze French eksaunt like Arsene Venger, and not un Amerikan one. But zat ees a small gripe.

A bigger gripe is that they are making a movie called "Nine", I found this out when reading an interview of Cotillard. While ordinarily having a movie named after your blog is something to rejoice at, it appears to be a remake of "8 ½". THE "8 ½", one of the most amazing films ever made. God knows what they're thinking. I don't give a shit if Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard are going to be in it. This is one of those things that shouldn't ever be touched.

What would Fellini think if he knew his masterpiece was going to be molested? It is not only a great film, it is the index page to all his other works. It is the work of a director, at the height of his powers, who nevertheless knows that it is the end of the first and greatest phase of his film career. Who ever says "Asa Nisi Masa" in this day and age? How are they going to shoot the scene where Claudina tells Fellini "You don't know how to love" three times?

Who's the motherfucker with this amount of hubris? It is none other than Rob Marshall, the guy behind "Chicago" (great visuals, no soul) and "Memoirs of a Geisha" (great visuals, no soul). You can expect "Nine" to be more of the same. I would have wanted a sensible guy to do a remake but then again if you were a sensible guy you would not want to touch this project with a 10 foot pole.

(Edit: I've since learnt that Nine was a broadway show before Rob Marshall touched it. Well and good, but even if Nine was half good, I wouldn't want Rob Marshall to touch it.)