Review: The Notebook

Hi people I don't think anyone is here anymore. But seriously this is the most romantic film every conceived? I just finished it and am quite honestly appalled at the premise and morals that this monstrosity stood for. Here are my thoughts. Obviously there will be spoilers, but this movie is so bad I don't think I would even call this spoiling. I don't think I'm a martyr but I think I would be at least salvaging it a bit.

This movie is recycled bullshit
So as we begin with every story, inconceivably dashing boy meets impossibly hot girl. They flirt and they get together. But as with all stories there will be a conflict. Conveniently, we rehash the eternal theme of feuding family, as first invented by Mr. Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, if not literally than in ideals. Here we find a hint of originality: instead of the Montagut and Capsicum families being both really rich and feuding over some old unsettled score about where their grandfather chose to shit upon, the hot girl in The Notebook is richer than God himself and Ryan Gosling is poor as shit. Which is quite surprising really, because with his charm and good looks he would have easily earned some measure of respect and subsequently, wealth. Or he can be an actor, which I guess he is. Yet instead he chooses to be a manly ass lumberjack. Maybe he is Wolverine, nobody knows. Or he can choose to marry rich, which I guess he set out for in this movie and the only plot point that made sense. If that were his true purpose then boy did he commit to it. By the way, I have to say that I forgot the name of Juliet's family. I initially thought it was Capricorn, but I know that's a horoscope. Googling for the real name makes me accurate, which isn't the point of my writings. So I settled on Capsicum, because the fruit/vegetable(who cares?) is supple, glaringly colorful, but yet it tastes like a spicy bitch, very much what Juliet is about ultimately.

Where was I?

Yes. Boy meets girl. Summer fling. What seemed to be promised ecstasy meets the conflict of disapproving parents. What do you expect them to do now? Resolve it like civil people right? Noo. Rachel McAdams decides to be a prissy little bitch to everyone within viewing distance, including Ryan Gosling himself. Which reminds of the scene where she shoves and slaps him unceremoniously against his rather stylish pick-up truck. And he responds by slapping himself furiously. It's like if two countries wage war and the other goes okay and nukes itself. Hilarious. So, rather than solving the conflict right there and then, they have to drag shit out for a decade or so, raising several glaring points of moral failures in the process.

The girl is a whore
She goes out of town to college, meets new sweetheart, is engaged to marry. New dude is rich, charming, and is exactly who her parents want her to marry. And to top it all off, he is as handsome as James Marsden. Heck, he is James Marsden. Simple enough. But she chooses to go back to the hometown on a whim and sees Ryan Gosling, all handsome and shit again. In the glory of the downpour and the increased pheromones of a countryside boat ride, says she, "It wasn't over for me!". Says he, "It wasn't over. It still isn't over." They relinquish lost love and fuck like rabbits. WOW TRUE LOVE 4EVA. No fuck you. That is infidelity. You don't go out on a limb and have sex with your first love just because you are horny, especially not when you are engaged to marry. I'm not on a misogynistic witchhunt, because I'm moving on with my next point.

The guy is a manwhore
He serves in WW2, and most probably saw fellow men lost. Yet when he comes back in his lovelorn state he decides to have sex regularly with this war widow, treating her no more than a sperm receptacle. So when his bottom bitch that is Rachel McAdams decides to come back, he allows the two ladies meet. War widow proceeds to weep and note that this is true love she now seeks to achieve. Well thanks for nothing, Ryan Gosling. And seriously I cannot fathom how much dumber can that widow get. If he had more swagger he could have convinced her that he was Buddha Jesus and Megatron all in one.

Headless and tailless
In the wisdom of our Hokkien forefathers and their philosophy of pragmatism, this film fails on several notes and would have been burned at a stake for its lack of head and tail. The final scene depicts the couple, old as shit but not quite old enough to die. She has been suffering from Alzheimer's but his recounting of their story somehow magically heals her bitchy brain and allows her to remember once again. If true love were this potent doctors should have sex all the time and harvest administer-able doses of love instead of finding cures for HIV and cancer. So she remembers their bullshit story again, and in the final act of completely ill-conceived storyboarding they die together. The end.

Which begets the question. What is the meaning of it all? I would feel sympathy for their relationship if not for their complete douchebaggery and lack of moral code. I would feel happy that they died together if I ignored how glaringly mismatched they are. Given that the entire basis of their relationship was their hotness and the hormones that kept them from controlling the urge to rip out their clothes every waking minute, how did they handle the despair that followed when they turned old and not as hot? In this aspect I guess the Alzheimer's helped with the delusion. I think my point is that I am mostly angry that this poor series of emotional manipulations is considered one of the greatest romances ever told. I'm not saying that the Holocaust is better, but at least people knew they were being murdered rather than being led on foolishly like how this stupid movie does.

This shit sucks. I rather watch paint dry. Or waste my time writing a rant about it. Oh hey I just did.

Why some TV shows make it

For illustration purposes.

Why is Barney Stinson so popular? Why do people religiously follow the romantic conquests of Ted Mosby and bask in the bliss that surrounds Marshall and Lily, week after week when every sane person knows that the eponymous Mother will never be revealed in the foreseeable future? Just like how people lost interest when they broke out in Prison Break, or when the plot started to feel strained when villains took centrestage in Heroes, viewership for HIMYM should have been lost long ago, since nothing in the show has any real impact on how the asshole Ted meets the kids' mom. Also noteworthy is how Ted's kids never say anything and always fidget in the same way in their cutscenes. Don't be surprised when at the end of it all 50 year old Ted Mosby comes out and says "FOOLED YA NEVER GOT MARRIED!" before proceeding to disconnect the two robots sitting on that couch. In fact, I'm pretty sure they are robots, they sat there for about 6 years already without having the need to take a shit.

Back to the main discussion. These ardent followers of the series, often go as far as to incorporate lingo picked up from the episodes into everyday conversation. Exhibit A. "Did you see that? That was LEGEND-wait for it-". No fuck you, it wasn't legendary. Neither was it awesome, statistically speaking.

Brings me to my main thesis. People watch HIMYM because it projects an ethereal image of what they wish their friendships and relationships were. Who are you trying to kid? Your conversations aren't as quick-witted and humorous. Even if they were, they probably happened online, or worse, with yourself. Also, your friends and yourself aren't nearly as hot as the actors with impeccable complexion and boob to ass ratios. Not that it is a problem. Just that it is one of the reasons why people watch the show. I know it is for me.

In essence, shows such as this are the Disney of television. It is an escapist's dream, promising 22 minutes of quick relief  from the terrible drone that is your sad life. However, Disney does have a channel on television that screens re-runs of Mr Bean, to the best of my knowledge. That snippet of information has no relevance whatsoever.

With that, I conclude my critical analysis of plaguing social trends that threaten to corrupt our cores. Join us next week as our special agents continue to answer life's bigger questions. The monikers 'wayne' and 'RJ' brought up in the preceding post are in fact code names and bear no resemblance to anybody who ever lived.

hello this is soley!

(hello good morning how'd you do? what makes your rising sun so new? i could use a fresh beginning too, all of something something new.)

today at work, i realised most people dont understand that temp staff do not know anything at all about how the whole machine functions, and when you ask me for help i will just take a minute to act like im doing something knowledgable while you're watching and then take a long drawn out melodramatic sigh to show you that ive-tried-yet-resigned-myself-to-the-sad-fate-that-this-problem-is-WAYYYY-too-complicated, and must hence ask the higher up boss lady to come fix it. which she does, by plugging in the plug into the plughole. embarassing moment right there.

also, it is quite sad that people at work call me boy-boy / ah-boy. like wtf dude im an adult now! and i pretty much tower over you how the hell am i an ah boy. makes me feel like a 5 year old again. not that i wouldnt mind being 5 again, avoid the whole nonsensical adult life nonsense thing that i have to undergo.

5 is a good number, i always liked it when doing math, cause very easy to manipulate. like 5x8=40! like i did that really fast, i got the answer before i wrote it. im smart.


RJ says (10:01 PM):
penis
wayne says (10:01 PM):
PENIUS
genius penis

My Hero

All too often this simple weblog has kept consistent with its aim of dissolving and trying to answer Man's greater mysteries. That being said, it is forgiveable for the author to discuss some of the topics that strike closer to home. This can not be necessarily construed as narcissism, unlike the narcoleptic who deals narcotics under the narcissus plant.

I would continue to refer to myself in third-person as 'the author', but my lack of commitment hinders its success. Just take it as my attempt to level with the audience and not appear pretentious. But now, you are trapped in a conundrum. How do you know I am not pretending to be unpretentious? You don't.

As mentioned, I will talk about something that strikes close to home. I live near the airport and the plane I was on struck the tarmac upon landing, so I deem it appropriate for me to discuss the concept of flying.

Humans aren't meant to fly. The ear popping sensations are actually slaps from a higher being telling us that we have breached the boundaries of the human playing area and crashed into the angels' casino. See there? I circumvented offending any existing religions by creating a quasi-religion where angels are allowed to gamble. I also achieve this by making references to religious figures as vaguely as possible. For example if I say I'm going to draw the prophet, tensions will rise only up till the point where they look at my drawing and realise that I drew the Spartan prophets on the mountains from 300.

Turbulence sucks too. Not to be confused with turbans, although turbans do cause turbulence in some cases. This phenomena is best exemplified by the following historical video from India.

Without going into further details, my hero is Superman.

Peace out, assholes.

The case for prom

My prom date

In the midst of post exam activities, I can't help but find the whole prom hoo-ha the most frivolous of activities for anyone of this frivolous age to partake in. And that speaks volume, because my post exam activities are as facetious as frivolity gets. Sometimes nothing goes on my mind for hours. For example, I left off the last sentence five hours ago and now it's 1 AM.

In our mindless pursuits to capture moments in time of our Sunday bests on a Monday with equally or more attractive members of the opposite sex, we often fail to recognise the equally or more subtractive effects on our wallets. As enticing as the stimulation of the economy sounds, I don't give a shit because there is little trickle-down effect. Always the rich people trickling the poor's money and the poor getting trickled. And call me a cheapskate if you want, because we live in a democratic country and that comment does not constitute slander. But my feelings will be hurt, and I will probably talk to you less in future. More importantly, screw you; it's not your money you're spending.

Then I have to justify the spending and the formality to my mother. So I tell her it's for prom. Then she asks me why am I dressing up for a simple fare of seafood. So I said ma, prom not prawn; it's short for promenade. Then she asks me why am I wearing a suit for a fruit. So I said no ma that's a pomegranate.

Okay i ran out of juice.

Nah, not really.

WTF? THIS POST SUCKS!

Mindblown

From here:

The way your family trees severely collapses when you look back a reasonable (<50) number of generations. I hope this explanation is clear:

You have two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on. In general, if you look n generations back, there are 2^(n+2) people who are your (n-great)-grandparents.

Let's generously say a generation is 30 years. If you look back 40 generations, to around the year 800 C.E., you have 2^42 (40-great)-grandparents. That's well over four trillion people, more people than were alive in 800 C.E. by several orders of magnitude. More people than have ever been alive.

The reason this is possible: If you looked at a list of your 2^42 40-great-grandparents, you'd see duplicates. In fact, each name would show up around 10,000 times, possibly even more. So your (mom's mom's dad's mom's ... dad) is the same as your (dad's mom's dad's dad's ... dad), and in fact your can trace your ancestry to that guy in about 10,000 different ways.

 I have nothing funny to add. Sorry.

I know I should be studying,

But lately I have been occupied by very random thoughts.

Eating seedless fruits one day, I found the whole process of evolution counterintuitive. Darwin would probably flip in his grave. You see, the whole point of having seeds in the first place is for the fruit to ensure its long term viability as a species, so technically, a fruit full of seed is a fruitful plant. However it seems as though the only purpose for the existence of fruits nowadays is to appease human gluttony, and our lazy asses have made us spiteful of the presence of seeds. So we breed the seedless varieties. Seedless oranges, seedless grapes, and props to anyone who successfully creates the seedless durian. So seedlessness is now a virtue, not a bane to a species' continued survival. Which on another note, is absolutely confounding as to how they even reproduce now. I tried burying a seedless grape three months ago but the plot is still bare.

I guess my point is, evolution is ultimately influenced by irrational human wants, but even then this still does not explain why fat people are still around.

Exam stress

It's been awhile since I've tried putting my thoughts into words.

Aasihdoiadiha  dsfhashodihfowe gjoijdfogqwnqnsas doizisdnanw dabnlshiofge asdnlncsaa.

A-Level Stress

A typical conversation between 2 students going to take the A-levels soon:

Person A: Working hard?
Person B: Hardly working.

Idiotic idioms and frail phrases

"Needless to say"

THEN WHY STILL SAY IT?

Dumbass.

Retractation

Remember this? I stand corrected.

Because apparently, with a budget high enough, you can churn out a blockbuster dealing with the exact same subject matter that I once decried. Inception was damn bloody good.

With that being said, I still do not want to hear about your stupid dream.

Peoples Less Fortunate Than Ourselves

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP / NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN / NEVER GONNA RUN AROUND / AND DESERT YOU PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS

PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS PENIS

Since the dawn of mankind, we have engaged ourselves in a never-ending process of technological innovation and advancement.

Man has thoroughly inbred in his very essence the desire for acquiring ever-increasing amounts of material luxury. There is no inherent wrong in the quest for a comfortable existence, but oftentimes, we, citizens of the First World, are all too guilty of selfish indifference to those less fortunate than ourselves.

Did you know: that the wealthiest 20 % of the world consumes 76.6% of the world's wealth?

Did you know: that the poorest 20% consumes just 1.5%?

Did you know: that Frederick Arthur Whitaker, Civil Engineer-in-Chief to The Admiralty, was also a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and a Commander of the French Legion Of Honor?

By the way, did you know that the coolthingamajig "Listen" button at the top of this posts reads out the words in pictures too?

Amazing word recognition software there.

Click "Listen" and try it now!

GP

Today, a friend of mine told me that there was once a GP essay question that went like this: "what priorities would you advise a 21-year old to have in life?". I replied "S_XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" (fill in the blank). My friend said, "I hope it doesn't come out for prelims. You might fail =/"

i laughed.

and then i wondered what if that really happened....

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Because it is Creative!

Also because it is Creative!

Did I mention that advertising with SMRT Media is Creative?

It is very Creative!

The most pointless conversation topic anyone can come up with

Today while conversing with my mother, I had the sudden revelation that the most inane thing anybody can talk about is his/her dreams.

Before you call me a hypocrite and demand I explain this post, I will let your hear the explanation so you'll shut up. You want to know why I talked about my dream but decry the arbitrary nature of such exchanges? Because this is my blog and I never claimed that it will make any sense. Also I wrote it when I was confused and vulnerable.

Now on to my main thesis. A dream, as we all know, often exists in stark contrast with reality. Unless you met Jesus or John Lennon in it, your dream honestly does not bear any inherent value to the rest of the human race. A dream often represents something wildly incredible and unlikely to happen in real life, and the fact that you choose to narrate one of your dreams to somebody only serves further to proof that point. Think about it, if you dreamt of something that is likely to happen within the confines of boring reality, would you have remembered it, let alone tell it to a friend? Hence the only dreams that are told are the truly fantastically improbable ones. Which brings us to the next point.

Since your dream is not likely to occur, what is the point of telling me your dream? The audience will be foolishly led on, sometimes even naively hoping for it to become reality. It is a giant cocktease, much unlike the general elections. Nobody enjoys getting played. Hell, the last time some dude in the US decided to tell everyone about his dream, he pissed everyone off so bad he got assassinated.

Also, another contentious point against talking about dreams is the lack of accountability. How do I know that you just lack conversational skills and just came up with this purported dream to keep the conversation going? I will use the classic dream-dating complex to illustrate this conflict. This particular phenomena states that if you go around telling people you scored a date with a babe (falsely), somebody who has too much time will eventually expose your claim. However, if you tell others that you dreamt you scored a date with a babe, no one will discredit you.

Alright you got me, there is no classic dream-dating complex. I just made that up. But if I told you I dreamt that such a complex existed, it would have sounded less questionable. Therefore, dreams, being entirely a figment of the imagination of the human mind, lack a higher authority that validates their authenticity. You can't just look up a search engine and figure out whether or not John dreamt that he could fly or if Alice really went to Wonderland. Maybe you can in the future but right now we lack the technological expertise to harness such complex data.

So there exists these weird people who tell you stuff that they have construed to have happened to them in their nocturnal subconscious. Then there are the downright mad people whom, deciding that it is a story that holds so much conversational value, tell you dreams that happened to other people. Seriously, what the hell? This makes you go from listening to something that did not happen to someone, to listening to something that did not happen to someone from someone else other than the someone who had nothing happen to him. Zero relevance to anything whatsoever. Ergo, there really is no point to talking about something that has no point.

Keeping all that in mind, I have just made you read me talk about something that has no point being talked about with no point. But I made a point in doing so, my point being that there is no point in talking about pointless things with no point. So that's different.

I'm categorising this as part of an existentialist crisis/evaluation of things.

Hopes and dreams

Last night I dreamt that I went to a very quaint hawker centre. Then I ordered chicken rice from an old man who was most happy to serve me. "Eat first, pay me later," he said joyfully.

After the sumptuous meal I walked up to the store to pay for the food. Just as I pulled out the notes from my wallet, Bob Marley starts to sing Three Little Birds.

I woke up before I managed to hand the cash over.

Which is very plaguing.


Genuine questions (serious answers only):

1. Did the old man get my money?
2. If he didn't, how do I make sure he gets his $2.50?

This issue has left me very guilt-ridden and disturbed. Some side of me thinks that my dream self spontaneously disconnected and became lifeless upon my waking up, slumping on the ground and allowing the old man to receive payment, just as he should. Like in Avatar. However in such a situation I fear for the welfare of my dream body as it lies unattended. On the flip side, I also believe that this is not a very accurate model since I don't always reconnect to the same environment as when I left off previously. How then will I pay off my debt? Do I incur negative spiritual karma as a result of my premature awakening? Maybe I did, and when I pass away my soul will transcend only to become an old chicken rice seller in dreamland constantly getting fleeced by people who prematurely wake up. Dreamland chicken rice seller cheat for a cheated dreamland chicken rice seller, an eye for an eye.

This is worrying. The only way to resolve this is to attempt reconnecting back to my avatar in the same place
I shall take a nap.

Law and order

Yesterday while I was home, the doorbell rang. I went to the door and opened it.

"Hi my name is ______ and I'm from the Church of ________," a teenage boy said, "would you like to hear about the love of God?"

"Would you like to hear about the efficiency of the Singapore Police Force?"

He said no and I said no and I closed the door.

Common Tests

Let's salute heroes amongst us who dared to take that extra step to scoring worse while making our lives abit happier (through laughing at them)....

Life, exemplified by a Tampinesian incident

Pictured: Not Tampines

(via @victorllc)

Ha ha. MacPhersonian losers. Not the main focus of this post. (Like they ever were in anything in the first place)



Today, just like any good Tampinesian would, I stood up to the man and decided to boycott large money-grubbing corporations, making a conscious decision to patronize the local barbershop instead. Okay fine it was a hair salon. Alright alright I went there because they give haircuts for $3.80. Happy now?

Since back-to-school haircuts are part of the national culture, there was a crowd and I had to wait. You know the cheap fifty cent a ride machines that deface neighbourhoods islandwide? Fifty cents as in half a dollar, not the rapper. They call them kiddy rides the last time I checked. Imagine the paedophiles that poorly crafted term would attract.

Where was I again? Outside the barbershop. Just testing you. So I was sitting by one of those machines when a kid no more than 5 and a woman no less than 500 came along. Judging from their faces, she should have either been his grandmother or he her grandson. Which is actually the same thing. Event that followed shall be summarised in point form, for my narrating skills are worthy of a Pulitzer's and should not be wasted on you.

1. Boy gets on the kiddy ride
2. Boy simulates driving, although I was quite sure he thought he was actually driving. Kids these days are dumb.
3. Boy pesters granny
4. Granny, "You must be kidding me on the kiddy ride, kiddo."
5. Boy, "Though a kid I am and a kiddy ride I am on, I kid you not for this is one of the best ride kit a kid can ride and the greatest kite I can bid"
6. Granny, "Fair enough, here you go."

She promptly inserts a shiny coin into the coin slot, much unlike what you can do at the casinos, except that there is bound to be no payout. Silence. She investigates and everything seemed to be in place. Except that the damned music won't start and a good half of her dollar is consumed by the machine. Anguished, the lady bemoans cruel fate.

Then, the game is reversed and she chides the child. A string of I-told-you-sos and now-my-fifty-cents-is-gone followed. Read the six points above. Nowhere in hell did the lady tell him so. The boy was silent. Indignant to the harsh words of the elderly matriarch, he swivelled the steering wheel furiously, determined to get his ride by hook or crook. And determined he was, for I swear that if not for the hinges on the vehicle, the boy would have went all Tokyo Drift on them amateur motherbitches in the car/motorbike park up ahead.

Maligned and torned apart, he staged his protest. He sat there, vroomvrooming with a stone heart, oblivious to her desperate pleas for him to go home. After 20 minutes and when I'm quite sure he completed 50 laps and was in pole position, he finally decided it was time. What moved his strong-willed ass, you ask? The granny, tired from NTUC bag carrying had a stroke.

Of ingenuity. Stroke of ingenuity. She moved that descendant by acquiescing to his unwavering motor-madness. By successfully convincing him that they will get a bigger, better, and shinier ride that actually works "tomorrow, at Tampines Central", he was pleased and decided to seal the deal. He trudged home happily.

Only one minor detail.

Tampines Central has no kiddy rides. Not a single one at all.

At least the child got a headstart on the countless instances of injustice and disappointment that will plague his later life. Hold on tight, kid, for it's a hell of a ride.

Then I went in and got my haircut and it's terrible as usual.

PS: Kids are like apples and grandparents like worms. They are spoilt rotten.
PPS: Analogies are like the Italian team. They don't really work.

Mathematics

Mathematics is interesting. It provides a form of measure that enables us to quantify every single aspect of life. Twelve years of mathematics makes you really proficient in the discipline too. Yet applications to real life are rare, if any at all.

Take the world cup for a quick example. Given that there are two teams playing at each match and there always will be a better team based on the FIFA rankings, common sense would prevail and one would assume the better team to win. However the countless disappointments so far in the tournament only serve to disprove this notion of correlation, and that every statistical occurrence is random and unpredictable. Also for the fact that this has occurred for 100% of all matches, it goes to show that any mathematical prediction of events is unreliable and the best statisticians will be the punters who guess scores accurately each time. Hence my advocacy for their employment as mathematics teachers instead. However this is problematic and will be met with limited success since football betting is much better paying than teaching, especially when you are good at it.

Another related concept is probability. Often in the stats papers you see how the probability of students passing a test increases with increased amounts of studying time. Sounds like a simple enough thing to wrap your head around, you say. You mug your ass off, burning through notes with flaming skulls, finally marvelling in awe as you step into the exam hall. Yes! The odds are in my favour!

That is exactly how probability works. It's just not how reality works.

This ended more depressingly than I thought it would.