Well, it's that time of the year again, when you look at your life and say, "Eh, I've been alive for so-and-so years meh? So fast ah!!!!" Yup, May 19 is just around the corner, and my 30th birthday (gasp!) is just around the bend. Hard to believe I'm still standing, but hey, thank God for small miracles.

Anyway, in the spirit of the season (if you can call it that), I've decided, for the first time ever, to do a wishlist of things that I would love to get as a birthday present, for those who are actually thinking of getting me something, that is. I'd be pretty happy if you guys just turned up for my party, but if you're having a mental block on what to get me, you can use this list as a guide.

OK, this is a wishlist, so if you see anything here that's like "Fricking hell, I can't bloody afford THAT!", just bear in mind that I understand, not all wishes come true, not that I expect them to any way. So, without wasting any more precious time, here's the list!!!


THE I-DON'T-BELIEVE-HE-WANTS-THAT-AS-A-PRESENT LIST
1) A hairbrush
Yes, a hairbrush. I keep losing mind and end up not combing my hair for weeks. So there. The more the merrier. Wooden brushes preferred, but I'm open for anything.

2) iPod Shuffle Earphones
I lost mine. So my Shuffle has been lying dormant forever.

3) Clip-on Air Freshener for my car
OK, I'm pathetic. So sue me.

4) Towels
Thick ones. Aww come on, I bathe a lot, therefore my towels get worn out quicker.
Stop sniggering.

5) Hands-free Kit / In-car Charger
So I can answer your calls when I'm driving. Without getting unnecessary attention from the Rasuah Squad.

6) A First Aid Kit
Hey, better safe than sorry right? Everyone knows how clumsy I am...

7) Comforter (Quuen Size / Super Single)
So I can finally wash mine... ewww...

THE MUSIC IS MY RADAR LIST
1) Subscription to Rolling Stone / Q / The Face
OK, one of these is out of print. I just don't remember...

2) Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots - The Flaming Lips
3) Anything from Chet Baker
4) Achtung Baby, Pop, All That You Can't Leave Behind - U2
5) Anything from The Velvet Underground except Loaded
6) Primal Scream, Sonic Youth, Phish, Pavement, Polyphonic Spree, Beck - Any Album
7) Actually, I'm game for anything. Except boy bands. And techno. OK so that's not much help.


THE-DVD-PIRATES-OF-THE-CARIBBEAN-LIST
Ahoy, me hearties! Pirated DVDs do great birthday presents make, ARRRRR!

1) Prison Break Season 1
2) House Season 2
3) Babylon 5 Season 1 - 5
4) Supernatural Season 1 - 2
5) Surface Season 1
6) Six Feet Under Season 1 - End
7) Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 1 - End
8) Angel Season 1 - End
9) Hex Season 1 - End
10) Gray's Anatomy Season 1
11) Nip/Tuck Season 1
12) 30 Rock Season 1
13) The Simpsons - Any Season!
14) Justice League - Any Season (if you can find this, I love you!!!!)
15) Superman - The Animated Series - Any Season
16) Transformers - The Original Animated Series
17) Beastwars Transformers
18) Millennium Season 1 - 2

THE I'M-PRETENDING-TO-BE-LITERATE LIST
1) Magazine Subscriptions
Wallpaper, Empire, Time Magazine, Blueprint, Interview, Fast Company, Wired, Campaign Brief Asia

2) Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
3) A Wild Ship Chase, Norwegian Wood, Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
4) Anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez ie. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
5) The Hunters Blades Trilogy by RA Salvatore
6) The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde / Charles Dickens / Edgar Allan Poe / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
7) Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus
8) Anything by Michael Chabon except Summerland
9) Anything by Toni Morrison, Zadie Smith, Nick Hornby, Brad Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk
10) Better yet, LOTS OF BOOK VOUCHERS to save on your headaches! Kino or Borders Prepaid Card preferred, but anything works!

THE I'M-OBSESSED-WITH-HEROES-LIST
Comics, graphic novels, sequential art; I love 'em all! Available at all good bookstores...

1) Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan
2) Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham
3) Watchmen / Absolute Watchmen - Alan Moore
4) DC's New Frontier / Absolute New Frontier - Darwyn Cooke
5) Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes / Sandman: Dream County / Sandman: The Doll's House / Absolute Sandman - Neil Gaiman
6) Batman: The Long Halloween / Absolute Batman: The Long Halloween - Jeph Loeb / Tim Sale
7) Batman: Hush / Absolute Batman: Hush - Jeph Loeb / Jim Lee
8) Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore
9) Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on A Serious Earth - Grant Morrison
10) Arkham Asylum: Living Hell - Dan Slott
11) Black Orchid - Neil Gaiman
12) Animal Man - Grant Morrison
13) Batman: Year One - Frank Miller
14) Identity Crisis - Brad Meltzer
15) Batman: A Death in the Family
16) Showcase Books - Batman, Teen Titans, Justice League Vol. 2, Green Lantern, Superman, The Brave & The Bold, Metamorpho, Challengers of the Unknown, Elongated Man, Shazam, Legion of Super-Heroes, Green Arrow
17) The Complete BONE - Jeff Smith
18) CONCRETE Vol 1 - 5 - Paul Chadwick
19) CEREBUS - David Sim
20) Doom Patrol / The Invisibles / Flex Mentallo - Grant Morrison
21) New X-Men Omnibus - Grant Morrison


The ones in red are the really expensive wishes, so try not to go there. Anyway, I know that's one LONG list, but hopefully it will be of help! Thanks in advance for those of you thinking of buying me anything. Remember, it's the thought that counts, so don't go overboard with the spending, k? See you at the party!

Oh no... I'm blogging again. Which could mean several things; 1) I got tired of my battered and scratched copy of "Barely Legal: Topless in Seattle", 2) I'm looking for an excuse to get to work late or 3) I'm piss drunk, and nobody wants to talk to me. Or it could be that I've just gotten the urge to sit down and type just for the sake of typing, meaningless meanderings be damned. Meaningless meanderings? Jeez on a trike. Talk about overstatement.

Anyways, if you're looking for a point, a punchline or some revelation to pop up somewhere along the line, I'd advise you to click the FILE menu on your toolbar, select NEW and punch in, er, whatever you usually punch in when you're looking for a point, a punchline or a revelation, 'cause you sure ain't gonna get one here, no siree, this is gonna be pointless, punchline-free and revelation-less all the way. And that's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Gawd.

What? You say you've never read a blog without a point before? Well, lucky you! There's a first time for everything, and in your case, probably a last time too. If you're smart, you'll leave right now and move on to something more enlightening and less dangerous (wait... did I just rip off Lemony Snickett? Because nobody rips off Lemony Snickett and lives to tell the tale... at least, not without suffering a series of unfortunate events, and at least 13 hours of being inundated with the nightmarish visage of Jim Carrey as himself but dressed up as many other people, although I think the movie lasted just under 2 hours; those visions just stayed with me... what atrocious accents, what disgusting disguises, what terrible teeth...)

Speaking of teeth, I've just learned that I may be in a car accident in the 4th and 11th months of the Lunar calendar, and that one way to escape this dreaded fate is to visit the dentist and have my teeth cleaned. The theory is relatively simple; seeing as a trip to the dentist always leaves me short of at least 3 pints of blood, in the celestial scheme of things, this could offset the the possibility of losing that same amount of blood in a car accident, and therefore prevent such a motor mangling from ever occuring. Other ways of avoiding this include taking a blood test or donating blood. Too bad I don't get the menses; that would be a sure way of guaranteeing I NEVER get into any other sort of mishap that would cause me to lose blood. Thanks to my beloved girlfriend for the heads up. What, you thought I made that up? Don't mess with the Fates, man, all they need to do is snip off a little here and a little there and voila! your life in a bronze urn. Or solid oak coffin, whatever you fancy.

Well, anyway, enough nonsense for one night. Thank you for listening. No encores, but I'll be here till, er, whenever. Cheerio.

Oh look... more recycled blogs... remnants of past glories... ehehe...

The Dark Knight on a Dark Night
Coming back from Singapore a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity (finally!) to read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Actually, to read and RE-read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Now, Frank Miller is one of those writers who can never go wrong in my book (mind the pun), but he really outdid himself in this one. OK, so comic buffs out there would probably be thinking; "What?!?! You just read DKR?!?!" but for the uninitiated, the Dark Knight Returns is Frank Miller, (and Batman, and comics in general) at its (their) most uncompromising, most brilliant, and most engaging. The most talked-about part of it (if only for Holy Sh*t value) is of course, when the aforementioned Dark Knight pounds the living daylights out of Mr. Smallville himself. Yes, the Big S, the one who leaps tall buildings in a single bound, who looks nothing like a bird or a plane (unless the bird wore red undies on the outside, and the plane wore a cape). Read it (if you haven't already) and you'll see why this graphic novel has changed the way people look at comics so profoundly, it's actually used as the basis of a course(Literature, Pop Culture, Philosophy?) in some universities over in the US of A. Then again, so is Madonna.

Why this sudden talk of Frank Miller and Batman? Two reasons; Sin City is coming soon (or not, once our censors are done with it), and after that (God willing), Batman Begins. Probably have to catch the former in Singapore or something, though; our "moral guardians" don't respond well to nudity (of which there's a lot in Sin City, hence the name. Duh.) As for Batman Begins, well, let's hope Christian Bale makes a better Batman than TMSKADO (or the Man Sometimes Known As Danny Ocean), and that there's no Robin. Unless it's Carrie Kelly (read DKR).

Murakami, God of War, and Japanese Bananas
Haven't blogged in awhile. Didn't have an urge to. OK, YOU try staring at the computer 10 hours a day as you mindlessly manufacture meandering, meaningless copy for bloated, bragging brochures and lame, lifeless leaflets, and then try blogging. You'll probably come up with something like... this?!? So instead of penning down my thoughts (not that I have many, and "penning" only in only a very loose sense), I've turned to fortifying my intellect (er, for want of a better description) with, what else? reading. Yes. And read I have. I breezed through "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" (I think that's the whole of the title), which, interestingly, has a chapter devoted almost entirely to a "Malaysia, Truly Asia" poster-thingy; then I devoured Banana Yoshimoto's (yes, this is the banana I was talking about in the title, in case you were thinking about something else, you perv) "Kitchen", a melancholic, strangely enlightening tome about, life, death, transsexual parents, dead lovers, and oh, a love for kitchens; and then Haruki Murakami's (aka God's) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which is, well, both literally and figuratively mind-blowing. No wonder he's supposedly the Japanese version of Franz Kafka. Heck, I've never read Kafka, (not completely) but if this guy is anything to go by, I SHOULD. Oh and in between that, I've been pounding away on my PS2; God of War kicks ass like nothing on button-mashing earth!!! Nothing's more satisfying than tearing a the head off a butt-ugly gorgon. Well, except single-handedly bringing down a freaking hydra of course. PS2 buffs, PLAY IT!!! And if you don't like it, well, I'll buy it from you. Mine did a Windows on me and froze... right after I decimated a bunch of Sirens. Damn. Well, anyway, these are my excuses for not being on the blog scene. Apart from the fact that I'm finding it hard to write coherently, of course. But hey, I'm back. For better or worse. And now... to Clive Barker's Abarat.

(PS: Anyone wants to borrow those books I talked about, feel free to visit me. Satisfaction is guaranteed. Or you can opt for the 14-day trial period. Bloody brochures.)

OK OK... this blog is going nowhere. Hmm... since I'm an inane, insane, irreverent, irrelevant and completely and utter bonkers, I'm going to turn this blog into an ode to nonsense. So for those who need something stupid, off kilter and pointless to make you appreciate just how wonderful your lives really are, welcome. Feel free to refer to my blog for career-ending ideas, depressingly unfunny jokes, feel-bad anecdotes, gibberish, hogwash and tales so tall they make Dubya's promises look like Gospels. Heh.

You have been warned.

If u've ever read my old blog, u'd know that the last three posts were from there. Haha. So sue me, I ran out of ideas.

Once i said
i have no blog but i must rant
now i have one
i truly can't.
There once was a soul from Sperm
Who knew just to squiggle and squirm
he felt quite deceived
when he was finally conceived
with the lifespan and mind of a germ.
If I could write
I'd be a writer
If I could bite
I'd be a biter
If I could fight
I'd be a fighter
But if I could light
that would make me,
er, a lighter?
This sucks.
OK help me out here
Is there anyone out there
who writes as badly as me
blog me and see
what nonsense we could create together.
Am I mad
Am I sad
Am I bad
You don't really care do you?
Figures.
Neither do I.
This sucks.

I have no Alzheimer's but I must forget that I keep forgetting

I think I have memory loss. Or selective amnesia. Or Dory syndrome. Ok, so I coined the last one (actually I didn't, it's not even original. Who cares? What is?) I'm sure I'm not old enough or sick enough to have Alzheimer's. Or am I? Anyway... I have a knack for forgetting things, except those things I WANT to forget. It's like when your computer crashes, and the things you LEAST want to be corrupted are, guess what? corrupted. Completely bad-sectorised. Computrash. Or whatever you want to call it. Why? I used to have a splendid memory. Almost photographic. Heck, I remember remembering that I could remember the picture that I drew when I was 5 (or 6, my memory fails me) and Mom dismissed with a pleasant "Oh that's nice". It was a (badly-drawn) picture of a wizard complete with stereotyped cone shaped hat holding a stereotyped staff with a stereotyped orb held in a stereotyped dragon's claw BUT I WAS FIVE WASN'T I?!!?! (or 6.) And it was shooting this stereotyped (straight) beam of light out of it into something that looked like a cross between a dragon, a snake and a (badly-drawn) dog. And get this; it was SHADED. Y'know, shadows and all, in, er, shadowy places. I thought (then) it was rather imaginative of me. After all I'd drawn it from (you guessed it) memory. (Remember Dungeons and Dragons? The cartoon? With the wimpy sorcerer and his green hat? Wait... he didn't have a staff... or a beard... er...) You're waiting for a point to this story aren't you? There isn't one. So go back to work. Or try drawing something from memory before you forget about it. Like me. Or better yet, forget about it. Really.

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on My Head

I miss her
everytime it rains
the comforting thunder
disrupts my slumber
just to remind me
how much I want
to kiss her
Pitter patter patter pitter
Heavy drops in puddles
Patter pitter patter pitter
Streaking down my window
Pitter pitter patter patter
Soothes and befuddles
Patter patter pitter pitter
I'm awash and aglow
When the storm comes
I'll want her here
All around me, all inside me
A smile or a tear
Just surround me, sleep beside me
And I shall not fear
When the storm subsides we
will go outside
where the world is wet
and taste the cold
with our feet
it won't ever get
won't ever get old
as long as she is here
with a smile or a tear.

How's this for a conspiracy theory?
Every year the haze returns with a vengeance. The source of this malevolent miasma? Peat fires in Indonesia. When the haze comes, Malaysians are advised to stay indoors, or can end up suffering from, among other things, eye infections, breathing difficulties and skin irritation. Now what if this isn't an accidental occurence / natural disaster / yearly phenomenon? What if... Indonesia is trying to smoke us to death so they can take over our country without losses on their side? Has nobody ever questioned why tens of thousands of Indonesians come to Malaysia to work, and only a few thousand ever go back home... I tell you, their trying to take over our lives from within... The next time the haze hits, it will be worse... There's going to be something in it that numbs our brains and makes us think it's ok, it happens every year, I just need to wear a mask outdoors and spend more time indoors... Then they will strike, like something out of THE FOG, only this time it won't be shambling zombies, no, it will be Indonesians who look just like us walking out of the haze, and every year there will be more of them and less of us... after a few more years, we would all have been replaced, and we'll all have names like Penggunawan Marihantok or Elsi Elwai. Shudder...

(No Indonesians or Malaysians were harmed in the production of this admittedly fictitious epic tale of horror, displacement and identity crises)

Here I am, back again at the keyboard trying to find something to say and not really getting anywhere. It's funny because when I think of something to write, I usually can't. I don't sit down and tell myself "OK, let's start a blog. I'm going to talk about this and this and this, and sometimes that, and I'm going to do it everyday so that when I'm old I can look back and say I wrote a blog and I'm damn proud of it." Bleh. It's really embarassing for me as a writer to look at the blogs of some people I know who, by the way, are NOT writers, and find that they are so much more perceptive, innovative and engaging than I am. That just sucks. Heads up Mdmafia, PGan, mah bro Vernieman; you can outwrite me anytime, and rightly so too. Writing has just become too much a pain in the ass for me that I can hardly sit down and type because it feels as if someone stuck a rusty spiked pole into my nether regions, the pain of which rather tellingly wipes out any desire whatsoever to write. Oh, maybe once in a while when I'm feeling masochistic I'll be able to write a paragraph or two (like now), but to regularly put out insightful, readable and thoroughly entertaining posts? You'd probably have more luck getting shot in the eye by a stray bullet ricocheting off the armoured breast of a Valkyrie taking a breather on a silver cloud hanging over the Sahara Desert. Anyway, welcome back, me. Hope I'm here for a long time, and all that.