The Umpteenth Journal Attempt

On the way to a wedding with the folks, the car radio mentioned that today was the 15th of May. The date seemed significant, but it didn't hit me until moments later: it was their second anniversary. My, how time flies. And then there was something else I realised: the batik shirt I had on was the same one I wore two years ago. Must've had some subliminal thing going.

Anyway, there were many people who knew Mum 2 from way back when, and some had also brought their kids along. Fodder for Dad on the way home, with the main gist being it's natural for parents to want their kids to marry their friends' kids (the parents' friends, that is). And then he went on about how looks and sex appeal aren't the only important things, that any potential bride-to-be should come from a good family background, etcetera. Good advice...the thing is, I already have all that in mind, so he's just preaching to the choir. But it's his anniversary, so I'll let it slide.

Cosmic pop culture reference coincidence of the day: was tuned to Channel V, watching Jet Sessions, a special featuring Jet performing live in the studio, interspersed with interview footage. Switch to MTV Asia, and it's a TV spot for a special on the making of Shrek 2...with Jet's 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl' as background music. But then again, that song's being used everywhere, so maybe this isn't that big of a coincidence...

...

I dunno, to me that comes off as one of those lines that probably looked good on paper, but when it came to the actual scene...it leans more towards "Do you know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning?" than "On my signal...unleash hell." Troy hasn't come out here yet, and I'm still undecided as to whether I'll watch it or not. Though it's got a pretty good cast (Eric Bana rules, Brian Cox (huhuhuh) was cool in X2), I've lost my enthusiasm for these big budget period epics. The last two I recall seeing (Gladiator and The Last Samurai) weren't even my choice; I just went along. So I guess if anyone asks me to go with them, I'll check it out...and wait for that line to come up. And snigger aloud.

I've suddenly gained a whole lot of respect for psychiatrists. Sure, it might seem simple: go to psychiatrist school, set up a practice, have patients lie down on the couch, tell them whatever they need to hear, get paid. OK, that's oversimplfying things, but at least there are no scenarios where one false move causes patients to die on the spot. More pressure on medical doctors.

Anyway, I've just discovered one important trait that psychiatrists ought to have: the patience of a saint. Now, I'm no psychiatrist. And though people occasionally ask me for advice regarding their lovelives, I'm the first to admit I'm no expert on the subject, but I do the best I can based on logic and reasoning.

With that in mind, it's incredibly disconcerting when someone whom you regard as smart and mature fails to see what someone with the I.Q. of a retarded gnat would consider as so bloody frickin' obvious. Like I said, I'm no expert, and certainly no genius. But God...

And you know what's worse? There's more than one person I know who's like that, and I'm sure there's many more out there. We're led to believe that women are more mature than men of the same age, but as far as I'm concerned, that's a huge pile of steaming bollocks. Though on the other hand, maybe I'm the one who's taking things too seriously vis a vis my male contemporaries, thus proving that the perception that the mental development of the average adult male is severely stunted is also a giant crock.

Judging from the above diatribe, I guess you could say that I'm sick of giving advice. Well, not totally sick. My first instinct is always to give help when called upon, but...it's hard. I'd never be a good psychiatrist or be able to write a self-help book, because I'd be too pre-occupied with wanting to gut my patients like the hapless fish they are.

Or maybe it's just me who can't accept it when people don't want to take my advice. I tend to think it's because people only want to hear what they want. That certainly applies to me: I rarely ask for advice, because I already know what people will have to say will not be what I want to hear, so why bother setting myself up for that fall? Can't really call that self-denial, as I'm usually aware I'm doing something incredibly stupid without the need for people to point it out for me.

I see that asking for advice is an invitation for people to bring you down, so you don't realy have any grounds for complaint. Pop the question, have them say their piece, and SHUT UP. You asked for it, so take it. People take time out of their own lives to help with your problems, so the least you can do is take them seriously and hear them out. Whether or not you want to do what they tell you is entirely up to you, but have the decency to not piss them off.

"Miss Oklahoma, who would you like to meet?"
"Justin Timberlake, so he can teach me a few dance moves!"

Appreciate the honesty, but whatever happened to wanting to meet Insert Predictable Humanitarian Here? Or at least wanting to meet whoever it is that inspired them to be all they could be? Just before announcing the winner, they had the five finalists step forward for what could be their last hurrah, and you could just see this "what the hell was I thinking?!" look on her face. To be fair, each finalist only had 30 seconds to answer a question written by one of the other finalists and the outgoing Miss U.S.A. on the spot, so they had to come up with whatever they could think of. But it's like Miss Oklahoma forgot where she was and came up with something they'd ask you on TRL instead. Talk about shooting yourself on the foot. But ah well, better to go down in flames now then during Miss Universe. Now that would be disastrous.

Guh.

Switched on the TV to see Donald Trump introducing "51 of the most beautiful women in the world" in Miss U.S.A. 2004. Cue the opening credits, showing these 51 so-called beautiful women prancing around Los Angeles and introducing themselves by name, age and state. All I could think of, "What 51 beautiful women?" Granted, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and just about all of them would be out of my league in realistic terms. But in the eyes of the couch potato, there's only a handful that I'd consider stunning. Explanation? Well these pageants apparently aren't solely based on looks, so these women must've been the ones that managed to maintain the most balance between beauty, brains and personality in their respective states, while their more attractive yet vacuous peers have to settle for hoping Playboy turns their attention towards them or it's back to Hooters they go. Moral of the story? Looking good gets you far, but it's not be-all and end-all. Some consolation for us Average Joes and Janes.

Cosmic pop culture reference coincidence of the day: as I was flipping channels, I briefly stopped at Star World, which was showing adverts for About A Boy, the Hugh Grant movie based on Nick Hornby's novel, due to screen on Star Movies sometime soon. Flipped to the next channel, E! Entertainment, which was showing an installment of 101 Reasons The 90's Ruled. I was just in time to catch Reason No. 46: "Stammer Time: Hugh Grant Becomes Star". Freaky, eh? I think I'm officially psychic, though too bad that my psychic abilities don't seem to have any practical uses at the moment.

High Fidelity music geek moment of the day: a while ago Jamal broke his tape of Weezer's Green Album and asked me to tape him another one. He even supplied a blank tape. Now the thing is, he gave me a 60 minute tape, and that album's running time doesn't even reach 30 minutes - just enough for one side. So the question was, how to fill the other side? Actually I knew the answer to that: I had an assortment of b-sides at the ready. Going about the actual taping process: now that was the tricky part.

Here's the thing: I used to make loads of compilation tapes until about a year ago, when I got a cable connection. Before then, my method of taping was to draw on a variety of sources: other tapes, CDs, and mp3s straight from my PC. I'd record from tapes in the double deck hi-fi, then hook up a CD player to the stereo to record from CDs because the hi-fi's CD player was busted, and then plug the line-in/line-out cable to the PC so I could record mp3s.

Problem: the hi-fi and computer are too far apart for the cables. Previously this wasn't problematic, as I could just roll the computer table as close as possible to the immobile hi-fi. But now it's not viable, as the internet cable doesn't reach that far and I can't take it out for extended periods. So I had to cross out mp3s from my mix tape source list.

Second problem: I need mp3 sources for this Weezer tape, to fill in side B. My CD player is supposed to play mp3s, so I copied them onto a rewritable CD. But for some reason, it wouldn't play the CD-RW. Gah. So I had to convert the mp3s into a proper music CD, and then use the newly-burned CD as a source. Worked fine save for several times when the bastard CD player would suddenly cut out in the middle of songs, necessitating me to go back and re-record.

What does this all mean? It seems that, for me, mix tape compiling has become more trouble than it's worth. It looks like I'll have to eliminate the tape element (both as source and target), use CDs as the target, and download any source songs that may be on tape.

Here's another wee pop culture coincidence: in relation to yesterday's occurence, I was looking up High Fidelity on www.imdb.com when I found a quote from the movie, basically talking about the difficulty of creating the perfect compilation tape - and as it turns out, I just experienced first-hand exactly what that quote meant. Well, to be honest it was more of a struggle from a technical standpoint as opposed to trying to figure out the appropriate contents. And given the technical convenience offered by CDs...it just might be time to say goodbye to the mix tape...

No campus today. Was going to get work done, but as usual ended up doing nothing. Slept the whole day. Funny thing was I didn't get any calls reminding me of yet another deadline violation. Guess they're bored of going through the usual routine or maybe they've secretly replaced me with someone else...

Oh hey, here's the latest example of the cosmos aligning in terms of me and pop culture references: there was this John Cusack movie from 1997 called Grosse Pointe Blank. Cusack's a hitman who regularly goes to a shrink (this pre-dates The Sopranos), and ends up taking a job where he has to go back to his hometown of Grosse Pointe - just in time for his 10 year high school reunion. While he's there, he also tries to reconcile with his girlfriend (Minnie Driver) whom he left on prom night to join the military.

Anyway, this movie never showed in the cinemas here. I read about it in a five-star review in Q magazine, and for some reason I felt compelled to watch it. When I found they sold the VCD, I bought it - even though I didn't have a VCD player at the time. The main thing was that I could watch it, even if it meant bringing it to people's houses just so I could view the damn thing. Anyway, though I have no idea where that VCD is now, I do know that I really enjoyed the movie, and I even had the parents buy me the soundtrack from Saudi Arabia ('cause that, too, didn't come out here). Had the riff to the Violent Femmes' 'Blister In The Sun' imprinted on my brain, and it happened to be one of the first things I could pull off on the guitar.

Now I've barely given any thought to the movie for several years now. And then sometime in the past week or so, I saw an interview with Ronan Keating on E! News Live. I have no idea why they'd interview him, considering he hasn't exactly lit the American music scene on fire after several tries. Probably had something to do with his duet with LeAnn Rimes on the song 'Last Thing On My Mind', the video to which I'd seen several times on TV but had never given any thought to whatsoever. Anyway, Ronan mentioned in the interview that the video was inspired by Grosse Pointe Blank. I couldn't instantly place the connection, since I didn't recall seeing Ronan brandishing pistols in both hands and blowing away dozens of rival assassins. (Hmm, must've been paying more attention than I thought.) But then he went on to explain the link, namely the "finding love through DJ broadcast thing". See, he plays a radio DJ in the video, and LeAnn listens to him via her truck radio and ends up being drawn to him. In the movie, Minnie Driver is the DJ, John Cusack switches on the radio when he drives into town, and things develop from there.

So what? So...after the big revelation, my thoughts on the movie evaporated just as quickly...until I switched channels about two hours ago. Lo and behold, it was on TV! So there's your cosmic coincidence for today. And me, feeling nostalgic, stopped whatever I was doing (most probably nothing) to sit down and watch. I gotta say, it's really held up well seven years later. Top notch dialogue, hilarious situations (on several occasions when people ask him what he's been doing and he says "professional assassin" with a straight face, they don't bat an eyelid and assume he's joking), and if I had a list of my favourite actors, John Cusack would be way up there. You could say that it indirectly led me to liking High Fidelity, which is definitely one of my favourite movies of all time. Anyway, it looks like these events have had an effect on me. Looks like I'll be updating my favourite films list...

Had a shot at playing impromptu love advisor via Yahoo Messenger:

Q: I have a boyfriend, and I can see myself having a future with him. There's nothing wrong with him, except for the fact that I don't think I love him as much as he loves me. To make matters worse, there's this other guy, whom I know I won't have much of a future with, but I feel like I have chemistry with this guy. I'm not going to leave my boyfriend, so the question is: how do I forget about the other guy?

A: Stack up all the good points of your boyfriend against the good points of the other guy. If there's nothing wrong with the boyfriend, then it's just a matter of letting the chemistry between you grow. As for the other guy, you already know that any relationship you try to pursue with him will eventually come to nought, so why waste your time and feelings on a dead end? Save it for someone who deserves it.

Our session ended there 'cos I had to go out, but my solution prompted her to declare in apparent surprise that I was wise. Heh. I'm dishing out what I feel I'd do if placed in the same situation...but would I actually practice what I preach? I'm keeping my feelings under check because I don't want to waste them...but holding back is killing me, because I've got nowhere to channel them properly. And by properly I mean someone with whom I can have the kind of relationship I'm looking for. And the kind of relationship I'm looking for is...a long story, which I might talk about next time. Right now my eyelids are going up and down like a busted toaster. So I'm off to bed, again thinking about the woefulness of life. D'oh.