cookie-cutter comments

call it an internal evolution.

meeting two friends from across the straits of johor was a night to remember: it’s been a hell of a long time since i had a smile on my face when driving back home. our discussions are secret, of course, but i assure you, Subterranean Rats were discussed, as was the spectre of invasion of one’s privacy after death.

a word or two on that. luthien’s talked about it over here and here. we discussed this that Saturday night, and i agree completely with what she said:

sometimes, i wonder how smart these Tomorrow.sg editors are. some of them are simply too egotistical for their own good. a memoriam in the form of a book for her family to read - wasn’t this against her wishes? fighting a losing battle in the hospital, S had more things to worry about than her blog. she didn’t have time to inform her friends of her condition, much less log on to the Internet to shut down her site. maybe she wanted to, maybe she didn’t. we will never know.

the reason for going ahead with the printing, despite some protests, was a lame “we have spoken to her family and at this moment, we intent (should be intend) to fulfill our promises to them”. first mistake, you let the cat out of the bag. second mistake, you make a promise without thinking of the consequences. and the third mistake, you’re going to print that book. which is the worse evil here: to break a promise to her family or to print her diary (that she mentioned before was unknown to the family)? keep in mind that her family members are still alive, so you can still negotiate with them, but she, on the other hand, is dead.

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What I dislike most is when bloggers get authoritarian with their posts. No matter, they have their own good reasons, I suppose, especially when you consider the larger contexts in which they operate. Jeff Ooi’s recent post about the use of technology over here(post1) sounds like an apologia of his previous post about bare-naked Chinese women in lockups, which you can find here (post2). In any case, it is a poorly thought-out defense, if at all. He notes that readers have not made the connection between the use of technology and empowering citizens to bring the government to task in his post about said naked lady.

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I can’t say I’m impressed with the hottestblogger deal, but hey, those girls are cute. I can’t deny that, and I can’t deny the fact that I wouldn’t have found such ravishing beauties on the internet if it wasn’t for his site. So, yes: I’ve patronized Kahsoon’s blog. Let’s get this particular hypocrisy out of the way first.

Then consider the fact that Kahsoon’s gone all out to sue Wingz, after having legal action threatened against his posting of lilacwine’s photos himself, and then consider the ensuing fireworks. Kahsoon’s been a pest for quite some time now, pinging PPS with abandon.

(I noticed just now how I’ve been using the phrase “with abandon” quite a bit lately. Some freudian, psychobabble thing or am I that limited? Ooh.. incriminating questions.)

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They hate each other and we popcorn-consuming, bedazzled bystanders are, get this, the shitnitz. My dear friends and non-friends, please allow me this moment to regress momentarily to my childhood: “Boo-fucking-hoo, people”. Exchanging barbs: not so bizarre, but between friends, it’s just enough material to get the blood going, ya know what I’m saying? Why pay Astro to watch some lame-assed television show about cute blondes saving the world from vampires, eh, when you have your own set of vampires here in “blog-o-blah-land”! It’s fun for the family, people, and we should watch with rapt attention!

Not only are innocent bystanders given the shaft, it appears we should write long, boring socio-political commentary for it, since quite a bit of ire is reserved for such worthies, eh? Wah, where should start? Let’s see:

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We have had a rare treat over the past few days. We’ve been able to sit back and watch mobs tear apart Dawn Yang for having gone under the knife. I’ve recently wondered if these inquisitive assholes have a right to know everything about her. For all those who’d love to mourn Princess Diana publicly, well, let’s just remember she got killed while speeding away from papparazi. Maybe celebrities deserve papparazi because, after all, people think they deserve to know.

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The best thing about Firefox are the many extensions available, and “Stumble’s” one of them. If you don’t know this already, you should check out this webby called “World History”. It’s chock full of articles summarizing important events.

An example is this write up on Hitler’s ascent to power over here , and backed with sources (check out the books section at the bottom). The administrator has some interesting opinions also included, mostly about history and stuff. An article he wrote has quite a bit of bearing on a broad range of issues:
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I’m at a loss for words.

I’ve spent a whole 15 minutes thinking of what I should write, and what I shouldn’t. That bothered me the most: thinking about what I shouldn’t write. The past 4 months have been crazy for many reasons: controversy, breaching the barrier between RL and life online, mob rule, and petty crusades.

Now add the spectre of pretension to that list.

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I got this article from Salon.com off Mrs. Bakar’s post here. It really is a picture of misery being shovelled promise after promise only to be disappointed. I’ve always wondered what getting a rejection slip felt like, but never had the requisite wherewithal (some say “courage”) to actually get down to arranging stuff so I can then send messy jumbles of words off to publishers.

I had a group of friends, myself included, who wanted to get something ‘out there’ and published because we all had aspirations. One wanted to make lots of money (”I will be the next Tom fucking Clancy lah! I’ll dream up missiles that fly like seagulls!”). Another was more immersed in genre fiction, coming up with short stories of that ‘romantic fantasy’ strain. What to do, she was one girl, we were three guys, so we were always putting off reading her stuff.

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“Higher criticism”?

MENJ’s appeal to the historical-critical method is a red herring. He wasn’t applying ‘higher criticism’, he was applying his own version of some form of ‘meta-something’ criticism which has lost its footing. “Higher criticism” has closer relations to hermeneutics than polemics, dear sir, and I can’t see how in any way it falls under the ambit of discussion. At all.

And I see you’ve now deleted your offending post, since I can’t find it anywhere on your blog.

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It’s like devolution. Opinions have an interesting way of degenerating into so much idle chatter on the airwaves. For those unaware, bloggers in Singapore have been brought on charges and sentenced. An overview can be read here. The most interesting comment would not be easy to pick out:
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Mr Edrei over at kamigoroshi.net has an interesting post on the current state of blogging in Malaysia. Change is an issue, and the kind of change is starting to become clearer with each passing month.

I feel that it’s become an issue of labels. If you want to have a ‘mackzul/jeffooi’ blog, you must satisfy certain requirements. If you wanna be a ‘boingboing’ type blog, you apparently need to satisfy certain requirements. This wasn’t how it was like about 4-5 years ago, as far as I remember.

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Just a personal observation: I found it somewhat gratifying that LKS eats and sleeps like the rest of us; more, that he has a new found addiction, if his recent post is anything to go by:

I had never gone without a wink in previous parliamentary debates whether on the budget or other major issues. Blogging is the reason, for it really eats into one’s time.

Oh god, it’d be so easy to get cynical with that statement above: my itch tells me LKS is trying to portray a more humane side to his public profile, but really, the situation above is just the sort of thing I guess bloggers face everyday.
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A quick reply to LKS’s recent post on the efficacy of online polls, here. My comment is reproduced here and I will be checking back for other comments on LKS’s post to update this post should it be required, just to keep the conversation going.

A short note on online-polls. I had said something about this earlier, here. I really do think that polling is a small concern, but an important one nonetheless depending on the uses to which the said poll may be put to. Garnering opinions is a tricky business, and there are so many ways to cast information in a negative or favourable light, depending on your party political affiliation, or even depending on your beliefs: it’s always a matter of interpretation, and the “opinion on the ground” such as it is, can become a political tool.
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Sourcing for info on the internet’s one thing, and knowing the limits of what you have is quite the other. The mistake, I think, is to take opinions that arise out of a particular sub-culture and then collate that information for use, no matter how fundamentally flawed it is. I think it’ll be interesting to dissect a reply from Politics101 which comments on Mack Zulkifli’s post here. The above are useful for background.

From Politics101:

“It would be gullible for anyone to believe Kit was planning to use the results of the poll in its raw form and present it to parliament ala MPs” APs-style. Unless one knows for certain, one can only speculate on the form it would be used.”

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Oh, man, the conclusions drawn are priceless: if you should not say X, the right to say X, Y and Z should be denied to you. Did you get that part? I’m referring to the NST article “Up to no good” over here. Basically if you “peddle racial and religious prejudice”, said peddler should be denied the right to free speech. I’m not even paraphrasing, it’s all there:

Indeed, there is a strong case not to extend the right of free speech to those who peddle racial and religious hatred.

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