TWSofGMM

2006-10-10T09:05:00.000+08:00

When you get that sick feeling of too little too late

you know you haven't tried hard enough

When turning left is more fun than turning right although the alternative offers blissful stability

you turned left

When you've gotten the first in a series of decisions wrong

you hope there're second chances

When you feel guilty about step one because of step two although you've decided long ago that step one was how you would be

you wonder if step one or step two is the one really at fault

When the third step has never been so uncertain before

you seek directions from..?

When you realise...

you pray that the final punctuation of your sentence wouldn't arrive

At least not now...please

2006-08-06T00:44:00.000+08:00

...If its true, if its you,
as part of your obligation to fulfill, face to face, are you for real
in confrontation ain't no conversation,
if i feel i'm in violation, any hesitation'll get you killed
if you conceal it, reveal it. Being reasonable will leave you full of bullets,
pull it, squeeze it till its empty, tempt me, push me, pussies, I need a good reason to give this trigger a good squeeze...

"You can try stretching my patience. You can't try stretching my trust."

Let's see how this plays out. I'm game.

2006-08-05T00:16:00.000+08:00

"Nothing goes down better with high-cholesterol seafood than a healthy amount of alcohol and a healthy amount of teenagers with healthy enough bodies to waste away."

2006-08-03T21:28:00.000+08:00

An Errata to the Theory of Relativity of Time

Apparently, time isn't as bendable when a foreign body lives in your home.
Too bad then.

Ciao~

2006-07-30T00:30:00.000+08:00

Sneaking in a quick post

The taiwanese is finally here =O

busy day today
busy day tomorrow
busy weeks ahead><

i'm so tired, and this is so not my style.

2006-07-25T22:28:00.000+08:00

There's nothing as fun as reliving your childhood days of complete recklessness and utter craziness.

Ask any one who stayed back after physics lecture today.

2006-07-20T21:53:00.000+08:00

Once Upon a Time

Back in the good old days where the world was grey and all was fine, everything remained undefined and everybody was generally happy.

Then came a time where somebody came up with the notion that grey wasn't good enough. In fact, there has to be something better than grey. Maybe, if there were 2 colours to choose from, instead of just grey, everybody would be generally happier, rather than just generally happy.

And so black and white came into existence.

There were people that chose black, and there were people that chose white. But as with all choices, people started comparing which choice, and in effect which colour was better. They wrote lengthy theorems, held lengthy debates, and grew lengthy whiskers that they didn't have time to trim, all to prove one another right or wrong.

After years of heated discussion with breaths abated, some forward thinkers of their time concluded that using black to prove white inferior and white to prove black superior was in fact the same thing after all. They decided that more was needed to prove their point.

And so the various hues of glitterring reds and blues, the multitudinous shades of dirty yellows and greens, and even the angry splotches of brown and dark brown came into existence.

This allowed for more sides to be taken by the people. More sides means more choices. And more choices means more lengthy theorems. And more lengthy debates. And even lenghtier whiskers. Soon, everybody's whiskers became so untrimmed that everybody began tripping over their own facial hair so often that they can't tell purple from indigo.

But that's not the point, because the point is that everybody quickly forgot why they introduced all these colours in the first place.
And why there was even a black and white.

As the centuries passed, and this great academic discussion spanned generations, genetics came into play and ensured that each new generation would be even more likely to have even lenghtier habits that leads each new generation to become even more cranially damaged from the constant trips due to the lengthy whiskers.

Within 27 generations, everybody have ceased to be able to think properly or even walk properly. Focus became impossible. Colour differentiation even more so. Everything turned back into a seamless gray for everybody. Nobody remembers anything anymore.

The world is grey and all is fine, everything remains undefined and everybody is generally happy again.

2006-07-09T23:54:00.000+08:00

Recipe Checklist for Life

When your life adheres to, and is adequately described by, the following strict recipe: 60% Truth, 15% Half-truth, 15% Lies, 5% Libel, 3% Unnecessary Vulgarity, and 2% Violence.

you know your parents have done something right.

when you treat other people with that same recipe of "60% Truth, 15% Half-truth, 15% Lies, 5% Libel, 3% Unnecessary Vulgarity, and 2% Violence"

you know society has taught you well.

when you treat people who aren't in the category of other people with 60% Truth, 15% Half-truth, 15% Lies, 5% Libel, 3% Unnecessary Vulgarity, and 2% Violence,

you know school hasn't been a total waste of time afterall.

and when you treat people who aren't exactly people but don't really fit into the category of other people with 60% Truth, 15% Half-truth, 15% Lies, 5% Libel, 3% Unnecessary Vulgarity, and 2% Violence,

you know your manners have served you well.

but when you treat people who are people and not other people and are people that you ought to know and care about with 60% Truth, 15% Half-truth, 15% Lies, 5% Libel, 3% Unnecessary Vulgarity, and 2% Violence,

you know you've totally screwed up somewhere.

finally, when shit lands on you,

you know that shit doesn't just happen, it smells and sticks to you too.

meanwhile,
ciao~

2006-07-07T22:35:00.000+08:00

"For tips, check out my next post in the next near future next time."
fishinbowl, years back.

I guess time -is- relative afterall.

because these tips only arrived like during december. wooo~
Lying 101 - Kissbee
dispersonification of the personal me in 3rd person, conjunctifying the truth within layers of subtle quasi-poetry, sophistocation of the process philosophising about the non-absolute truth of the sub-para-normal reality that everybody screws around in.
and i still blog when i'm pissed.
I guess I haven't changed afterall.
wow.

Know that I'm about as real as your average phantom and remain about as real as any illusion. Reach me not, touch me not, fuck around with me not. Now get outta my head.
I wish i hadn't known you afterall.

ciao~

2006-07-07T22:24:00.000+08:00

When ignorance = bliss, knowledge = power, and your ass is glued to a tree, change your posture to feel better.

but

When history strikes you with a forgotten blog account and password, DODGE!
I mean, I was that pissed before?

I present,

A brief history of Anger
(or rather, a moment. brief moment. you get me.)

"

hmm...so this will be another one of those anonymous blogs on the 'net that would be babbling about how one survives yet another day or week or whatever.

How interesting. Continue reading if this still holds your interests.

Today sucked. So was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before the day before. Now guess what tomorrow should be like? Wow. Hard question. I'm guessing it shouldn't be good. Let's see what made things so bad. Could it be school? Nah, don't think so, even though there was school for the past few days, because following the pattern, tomorrow being a bad day should be a schooling day. Tomorrow's sunday. Figure.

Work? Job? Impossible. Read above.

Oh, goody. After some elimination, the only thing that has stood out from the rest, is my gymnastics training. So you think learning to flip, fly and defy the laws of gravity within the boundaries of physics all the while trying to injure yourself grievously is fun. Congrats. Welcome to the sec 1 club. with training that's 6 days a week, anybody is bound to get worn thin, endurance-wise, physically and mentally. That's a definite ggnorekthxbai situation. Try quitting? Try quitting when doing so will ensure the eternal damnation of your soul and the slow, deliberate torture of your mind as you beg for death.

Absolute power screws your ass and glues it to a tree absolutely.

So, being stuck in this position isn't exactly comfortable. Despite absolute power, I'm made to do all the suckiest work of the club, while not entitling me to any allowance to slack off and just chill out, like the rest. Everything has to be explained, reported, detailed, failing which, eternal damnation of your soul in everything Wayned ensues. You see, this certain gymnastics club that i'm in, is supposed to be an elite club, so a level of discipline is required. But the thing is, i joined gymnastics as an interest, but what is now required of me is now getting way beyond what i'm willing to give. Throw in the coaches fucked up attitude? Give me sessions with the devil himself anytime.

Wait, getting off topic here. this is supposed to be about the suxyness of things, and me surviving them. Throughout years of experimenting, i have found that lieing, and as some famous psychologist or other said of something regarding wearing the right masks at the right time, do improve your chances of surviving shit-quality coach-attitude, 6-9 daily schedules, with family, friends and school thrown in. For tips, check out my next post in the next near future next time.

Signing off plsthxkbai.

"

coolio
ciao~

2006-05-04T23:21:00.000+08:00

WHAT THE HEY

I'm just back, and look what happened to my blog while I'm gone! There I was, just taking a month-long holiday in heaven, and there it was, somebody saying that I've passed on?

Anyways, speaking of passing on, what's past is past, and I'm now back in full force! Let's just say I've had a really great holiday in heaven, will be telling you guys about my adventures there soon!

2006-04-04T22:11:00.000+08:00

On this unfortunate day of April the 4th, the author of this blog, fishinbowl, alias kunnie, has unexpectedly passed away, with reasons that remain unknown at the point of the posting of this entry, although it is highly suspected that it is due to "Project T-BAM!" What it stands for, or what it is supposed to be, however, still remains unknown too.

Let us all spend a minute in silence to grieve his passing.

-- 1 minute --

Further investigations reveal that at least he died happy.

2006-03-31T19:32:00.000+08:00

Patterns, Coincidence, Fate, and a Whole Lot of Bull - Part 1
A 2-part mega-fun series dealing with...what's in the title. Duh.

Humans are strange creatures. They look for patterns in the strangest of places, attribute it to coincidence, and when several coincidences coincidentally come together, they'll point to it and go,"OMG FATE!"

As usual, when something like this happens, we'll need to zoom out to get a larger and clearer perspective.

Let's zoom out to...roughly...the universe.
The universe is a very complex place. Humans, being unable to understand the why and how of the universe, will therefore retreat to familiar territory and attempt to figure everything out, through lenses distorted by familiarity.

Case in point: Human sees bird fly. Human cannot fly. Human see swings of birds. So human thinks it's because of the wings. Human makes wings. Human tries to fly. Human dies.

Of course, other humans gradually understand, and realise that it's not just the wings, it is in fact the whole anatomy of the bird, that allows the bird to fly.

Now we have to return to a universal perspective again.
There is this theory floating around that goes something like this, "If the universe was ever figured out, it would instantly be replaced by another even more complex universe."

So now, although their frontier of familiar territory has been greatly increased, what they see will still only be: Human sees bird fly. Human sees the whole anatomy of the bird working in synchronym to keep the bird in the air. Human sees the hollow bones, the extremely strong pectoral muscles, the aerodynamics, and the lightweighted-ness of it all. Human realises the futility of trying to fly. The spirit to fly dies.

What they don't see, is how the bird flies.
They think it's because of the flapping of the bird's wings. Or their lightness, or even their aerodynamics. Whatever.
The real reason for the bird being able to fly, is that they are extremely easily distracted. Yep. You got that right.

You see, the way to fly, consists of just 2 simple steps.
1) Launch yourself as hard as you can towards the ground.
2) Miss it.

Now, the ground being so mind-bogglingly huge, it is indeed a very difficult thing to miss. That's where distraction comes in. You would have to be distracted at the very last second, just before you hit the ground. Birds are easily distracted. They always get distracted at that last second, hence they are able to miss the ground. Humans don't realise that.

Now that I've got the concept of familiar territory covered, I guess this will be it for Part 1.
Part 2 coming along real soon, so hang on for the ride!

Ciao~

P.S. I 've had a really long sabbatical from blogging properly because of...reasons I'd like to keep to myself =) Let's just say it was a really long lunch break.
Meanwhile, take comfort in the following words, "I apologise for the inconvenience."

2006-03-26T20:46:00.000+08:00

I've been having three meals a day. Which is normal.
I've been sleeping adequately. Which is normal.
I've been exercising properly. Which is also normal.
I've not been blogging for over a week. Which is not normal.

Why have I gone missing without any prior explainations for that past week?
Then again, the reason why is not of importance.

Let's just say that I've been too preoccupied with spending time doing something else.
Read: Lazy, Proscratination, Or otherwise just getting a life.

Still, I've been thinking, not necessarily reacting.
So fret not, the next few entries are are on their way, albeit still on their way.

On a lighter note, I'd also like to thank everybody who's been supporting this blog, for fishinbowl.blogspot.com has finally achieved 1000 visits!

Ciao~

2006-03-16T21:50:00.000+08:00

Date:03/15/06
Time: 21:50

This is a post from the future saying how happy I am at the moment. The reason is not of consequence.

Signing off,
fishinbowl

2006-03-15T18:57:00.000+08:00

On 9/11

"It's easy to imagine an infinite number of situations where the government might legitimately give out false information. It's an unfortunate reality that the issuance of incomplete information and even misinformation may sometimes be perceived as necessary to protect vital interests."

You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.

To believe it or not, will be up to you.

The truth is that scary. The world infinitely so.

www.loosechange911.com
The video that says it all.

... and I say a prayer, "Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen."...

... and I continue, "Lord, lord lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer. Amen."

2006-03-10T19:10:00.000+08:00

Shit Happens

As humans living in this impossibly random and possibly complex universe, it helps to understand that not everything can go according to anyone's plan. A well thought out plan will only be able to cover what one can possibly think of, and going by a human's limited capabilities at thinking, a well thought out plan is often merely just a guideline of action, made up according to the changes during the course of executing said plan, or guideline. Something always crops up. Sometimes at the last minute, sometimes way beforehand. In other words, shit happens.

Shit happens to the most health conscientious of humans by letting them die of cholesterol poisoning.
Shit happens not to the drunk driver, but to the car-accidentee.
Shit happens, and in happening, causes other shit to happen, will cause other shit to happen.
Shit happens without reason.
Shit does not need a reason to happen.
Shit, just happens.

No need to be complex here, for the world's a shitty place.

Peace out and ciao~

2006-03-07T22:02:00.000+08:00

Sparklers

So bright. So pretty. So dead so quickly.

Embers

So dim. So ugly. So dead so slowly.

How would you prefer to live?

Either way you end up so dead.

What's the point?

To remain as a lasting memory?

Or attempt to last long-ly?

2006-03-04T23:57:00.000+08:00

There's passion... and then there's perseverance.
Let's try a new style.

My friend once remarked to me why do I remain in gymnastics even though the training is grueling, the instructors sadistic, the injuries multitudinous and painful, and the psychological strain scarring.

I replied, "Passion ma!"

Indeed, those were the days of passion, of hope and improvement, where every training session was something new, and there was everything to look forward to. Everything was seen as a challenge, something to surpass and overcome. The challenge to gather enough courage to accomplish something new. The challenge to control your body and not give in to panic while flying. The challenge to juggle time between studies, training, and myself. Optimism and positiveness were the auras around me.

But Earth turns, things change, people age, and become different.

The same friend asked again, the same question.

I shrugged.

This indifference scared me. Scared me more so than crashing headfirst upon failing a difficult move. Scared me even more than the coach's unpredictable temperament. What happened to me? What changed? Why?

I realised that without knowing it, I've committed the scariest act a human can ever possibly do, and that is to settle into a routine. That is where I've changed.

Basically, a routine is what numbs you from what is comfortable, and of course uncomfortable, to you by feeding you a constant loop of the same information over and over again. Your body adjusts and gets used to it, molded into a mould that is not you, but yet is supposed to be.

To be in a routine, is to await death. Not accept it, but to be expectant of its coming. What little time you have left, will just be whiled away, not feeling comfort, angst, or any sort of feelings whatsoever. A voluntary act to be empty.

In a routine, everything appears to you as 'been there, done that'. Because in a loop, you indeed would have 'been there' and 'done that', for as long as the loop has existed. Nothing becomes interesting anymore. Stark contrasts of colour become a monochrome of dead grey as the loop spins, and spins, and spins, and spins...

I noticed that. And I think I've broken out that routine. At least I can determine what's comfortable to me now...

Still,
Where's that passion? That fiery heart? Those burning eyes?

Muted by experience.
Diminished by age.
Cooled by time.

So what still keeps me in this place that others refer to as more torturous than hell?

A streak of sadism?

I think not. With experience, age and time, passion lost becomes responsibility and attachment gained. One would become less self-centred, and continue training, not because it's fun. Not because it's a challenge. But because one becomes attached to that place, and feels responsible for it. One would thus persevere, even though he has seen through the lies of everything being a challenge. He confronts the truth, and stays with it. He remains.

Passion eventually matures into perseverance.
So I ask myself again, have I matured? Just as my passion has woven itself into perseverance?
They are afterall an easily confused pair. Am I persevering because I still am somehow passionate about gymnastics? Or am I really persevering, not through passion, but because of responsibility and attachment?

Ways and means to the same end, but just as it's the process that's important, isn't it the motive behind whatever one is doing equally important?

2006-03-02T21:47:00.000+08:00

There's determination... and then there's justification.
Because reality does not lie. Humans convince themselves otherwise.

kunnie: It just struck me.

beefwifonion: What?

kunnie: Now I feel retarded.

beefwifonion: Why?

kunnie: All the while I thought I was doing the right thing by forging ahead... trying my best and everything, you know?

beefwifonion: And?

kunnie: And it turned out that along the way I'm just continuously 'justifying'.

beefwifonion: What?

kunnie: That's what struck me. I realised that I've confused justification with determination.

beefwifonion: What about those two?

kunnie: Determination is the will and decision to do and accomplish whatever it is that you were doing, be it hopeless or not. Whereas justification is the act of convincing oneself that whatever it is that you're doing is a thing worth doing. If it was hopeless or pointless, you'd convince yourself otherwise.

beefwifonion: Whoa...That's a big chunk, but I catch your drift. You're saying that those who are determined knows how the situation is, and knows what they are doing, and yet still forges ahead. While those who justify are those who prefer to lie to themselves about the situation and continue to forge ahead, in deliberate ignorant bliss?

kunnie: Exactly. It's a difference in motive and reason.

beefwifonion: So how have you confused the two?

kunnie: Like... flying.

beefwifonion: What about it?

kunnie: At first when I began, I was determined to fly... Touch the blue and all that fluffy puffy things, you know?

beefwifonion: And?

kunnie: It became clear that I couldn't. A hopeless endeavour.

beefwifonion: Then you began justifying.

kunnie: And I blamed the winds for affecting my take-off. I blamed the humidity for mussing my wings. I convinced myself that should circumstances be right, I'd touch that blue someday.

beefwifonion: And how would you be were you to be determined?

kunnie: Were I determined, I wouldn't need to justify. I'd have continued trying, and trying, and trying... This reminds me, justification seems to be a cushion for determination. What you can't be determined with, justifiy it.

beefwifonion: You're straying.

kunnie: I mean, I refused to look at the inside, instead of the outside. Were I determined, I would have knew that I wouldn't be able to fly. Long story short, I justified, and I thought I was being determined.

beefwifonion: So whatcha gonna do about it?

kunnie: Dunno... I know I can't fly, but I really wish to believe that I can fly... I need to believe.

beefwifonion: So continue justifying and forget that we ever had this conversation?

kunnie: Guess so.

fishinbowl: And the above, is a wonderful example of the human thought process. Flight, Fight, Suicide. Tadaa.
me: You're being OT.

2006-02-27T17:52:00.000+08:00

The Human Thought Process

After a long period of observation and experimentation, I've come to deduce this about the thought process of humans when dealing with new and foreign situations, which shall be presented as shown below.

1) Can I comprehend it?
Yes and no, both proceed to 2
2) Can I procrastinate?
If no, proceed to 3. If yes, proceed to 7.
3) Can I deal with it?
If no, proceed to 4. If yes, proceed to 7.
4) Can I ignore it?
If no, proceed to 5. If yes, proceed to 7.
5) Can I terminate it?
If no, proceed to 6. If yes, proceed to 7.
6) Terminates self. Or at least part of self involved with said situation.
Proceed to 7.
7) End of conscious thought involving said situation.

Basically, this means that, first and foremost, it does not matter whether the individual in question even understands what the situation is about. Understanding and knowing the reason why, is not of consequence. Completely.
With this, time could be saved by not asking why, and not answering that question.
A lot of time. All the time.

For instance, a human falling from the sky. Why he is falling from the sky is not of importance. He could save invaluable time by not asking why on earth he isn't on earth and yet is rushing towards it at an increasing speed, and then spend the time having flashes of his life going before his eyes. At least he would manage a more complete montage before he's a red gooey mess on the ground.

Following the same example, we shall explore the later parts of the thought process.

It is very interesting for a human falling from the sky to think about whether he can procrastinate his falling down from the sky. However, given the infinite laziness of a human, no matter what, the human will always see if it is possible to do whatever it is required of him another time.

What follows after is rather logical. A series of quick calculations of whether the human can take that impact (literally and figuratively), followed by an attempt at self-denial if the answer to the former turns out to be negative, and then attempts to fight back at the situation should self-denial fail, sort of like how an animal would behave should it be cornered, and failing everything of which the human would proceed with suicide, or what others call "go with the flow".

The human falls, calculates that he can't take that impact, then tries to deny that he is in fact in that precarious situation. Failing to complete that task, he is forced to fight back at the situation by trying to terminate the sky, which turns out to be slightly harder than expected. Realising the futility of his struggle, he decides to "go with the flow" and just let gravity carry him to the ground. Classic flight, fight, suicide reaction.

Alas, the human mind is a flighty one. Or a lazy one. Whichever. It would quickly flit from one thought process regarding one situation to another. That is why if any of the answers in the thought process is positive, the mind would be satisfied that it has finally achieved a "Yes", and proceed to end that train of thought. Such lackadaisical attitudes leads to much mess.

And that is why the human world is a messy one.

Ciao~

2006-02-25T22:03:00.000+08:00

A typical discourse between me and me

fishinbowl:I'm troubled.
beefwifonion: Over?
fishinbowl: How do I know I exist?
beefwifonion: Does it matter?
fishinbowl: That's what troubles me. I don't really care.
beefwifonion: I guess there's no point in continuing then.

Another typical discourse between me and me and me

fishinbowl: I'm troubled.
beefwifonion: Still thinking about whether you exist? *punches fishinbowl*
fishinbowl: Ouch, what was that for?
kunnie: There. You felt pain, therefore you are.
fishinbowl: Do you feel mine? *stabs kunnie*
kunnie: Ye..aarr...gghh.... *collapses*
beefwifonion: So you've proven your existence further by snuffing the existence of another.

A third typical discourse between me and me and me and me

fishinbowl: I'm still troubled.
beefwifonion: Again? *wheels fist*
fishinbowl: No, I remember you saying that my existence is further proven by snuffing another.
beefwifonion: What about it?
fishinbowl: Does this mean that there is a multitude of existences? That they all relate to another?
beefwifonion: Yes and almost yes. The latter only occurs upon acknowledgement of another's existence.
kunnie: *climbs back up* Yes. I acknowledge your existence. Please help staunch my bleeding.
beefwifonion: That's another way of getting yourself acknowledged. You can hurt or help.
fishinbowl: *applies pressure on kunnie's wound* There.
me: Eh? What am I doing here? And what's with all the blood?

A not so typical discourse between me and me and me and me

fishinbowl: I'm troubled again.
beefwifonion: Again?
fishinbowl: Yeah. How do I know I exist, in your existence? As in, how do I know that you know that I exist?
beefwifonion: I tell you outright. You exist. Now bugger off.
fishinbowl: Then how do I know I exist in kunnie's existence? *points to kunnie* What if he doesn't tell me outright?
beefwifonion: That's a toughie. It's really hard to tell.
kunnie: *turns away from blood pool* Whaaa?
me: Actually if you guys don't mind me intruding on your lovely conversation...
fishinbowl: We don't care.
me: ... Anyways, it indeed is hard to tell. But if you observe properly, it's still possible to deduce whether you exist in another's existence.
fishinbowl: ?
beefwifonion: Like, all the little things? Things that are done? Or not done?
me: Sorta. I think you have the general idea.
fishinbowl: Oh... That's complicated.
beefwifonion: Existence is a complicated thing.
kunnie: I think... I need... a trip to the ho... *collapses once again*
fishinbowl: A trip to the ho? What's that?
beefwifonion: No idea. Don't know don't care.

2006-02-18T20:20:00.000+08:00

On Bullshit -- 11/12
Reflections -- 1/2

Humans do not like the truth. That's why the television was invented. They hate looking into mirrors at their own reflection, at their own miserable state of being, so they've decided to look at other humans just like them living miserably to feel better about themselves. They like to look at people living miserably because of family ties, because of estranged love, because of some general indication of the person being a complete and utter failure, so that they wouldn't have to look at themselves as the complete and utter failure.

But today we're not talking about being a failure. We're not talking about you.

What we shall discuss today, is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the really ugly, miserable, painful, failing truth.

Let's being with the definition,
Definition from m-w.com
truth: noun
1) sincerity in action, character, and utterance
2) the state of being the case
the body of real things, events, and facts

From the definition, we can deduce that there are 2 types of truth. The first being the truth inwards. The truth towards yourself, from yourself. Which happens to be known as sincerity. And we understand that sincerity is bullshit, according to earlier sections. We also understand that humans do not like bullshit, nor defecation of any kind. As such, linking 2 with 2, and we can therefore understand why humans have a distaste for truth, even their own.

The second type of truth is the factual kind of truth. The reality. As they all say, reality is cruel, and there's no escaping reality. So humans will naturally do the next best thing, and that is to look away, and pretend reality does not exist. Tadaa. Problem solved, temporal-illussionarily.

However, given the infinite lack of intelligence of humans, there will always be some that fail to look away and decide to look at the truth instead. i.e. the mirror. Here's what they'll see:

greying hair. pockets of fats in the most unsightly of places. pockets of hair in the even more unsightly of places. lack of pockets of hair in some other places.

Now let's see what of those who've turned towards the wonderful invention of television.

greying hair. pockets of fats in the most unsightly of places. pockets of hair in the even more unsightly of places. lack of pockets of hair in some other places. ON OTHER PEOPLE.
This really makes me want to make a smiley face. So here goes =D

Finally, now that the reason for truth's unpopularity is out, the next and final chapter in this bullshit series will be out, when I feel like it:):):):):):):):):):):):):)

2006-02-14T19:19:00.000+08:00

You've got mail

The mailman

Had a little walk

Delivers his mail

A little disquiet walk

Whistling

Not the wind

Inside the mailbag

Nor the shadows

A red envelope

But the sunshine

Yearning

Turning flighty

The envelope

Still the pretty warmth

Holds no colour

Drawing ever closer

Mysterious

Yet it addles

The letter's words

A little disquiet walk

Are layered

Had a little walk

Veiled

The sunshine's warmth

It's intent

Hidden

2006-02-12T20:16:00.000+08:00

The sun burns today?

Hurt.

Yes, it burns today.

At least I'm certain of one thing.

It'll surely burn tomorrow?

A dreadful sense of foreboding.

Just as it had yesterday?

The past, a future's self-fulfilling prophecy.

But why will it burn tomorrow?

Questions plague me.

Tomorrow pissed off the sun?

Confused.

What's wrong with the sun?

Was it right in the first place.

Burning yesterday, today and tomorrow?

The intrinsic workings of a demonic mind...

on bullshit 7

2006-02-12T18:54:00.000+08:00

Bullshit -- 7/12

One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable.

His interest in telling the truth or in lying presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to tell the difference.
Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have only two alternatives.
The first is to desist both from efforts to tell the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from making any assertion whatever about the facts.

The second alternative is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way things are, but that cannot be anything except bullshit.

on bullshit 8

2006-02-12T17:00:00.000+08:00

Bullshit -- 8/12

Why is there so much bullshit?

Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased.
Without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.

This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled - whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.
Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country's affairs.

The lack of any significant connection between a person's opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.

on bullshit 9

2006-02-12T16:09:00.000+08:00

Bullshit Double Edition-- 9+10/12

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowinghow things truly are.

These "antirealist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry.
One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by the pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity.
Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature.

It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to tryto be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.

But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the scription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake.
As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know.

Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution.

Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial - notoriously less stable and less inherent that the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.

on bullshit 4

2006-02-11T14:01:00.000+08:00

Bullshit -- 4/12

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth.
Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth and he is to that extent respectful of it. when an honest man speaks , he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.

His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

on bullshit 5

2006-02-11T13:10:00.000+08:00

Bullshit -- 5/12

In his essay "Lying," Saint Augustine distinguishes the lies of eight types, which he classifies according to the characteristic intent or justification with which a lie is told.
Lies of seven of these types are told only because they are supposed to be indispensable means to some end that is distinct from the sheer creation of false beliefs. It is not their falsity as such, in other words, that attracts the teller to them.
Since they are told only on account of their supposed indispensability to a goal other than deception itself, Saint Augustine regards them as being told unwillingly: what the person really wants is not to tell the lie but to attain the goal. They are therefore not real lies, in his view, and those who tell them are not in the strictest sense liars.

It is only the remaining category that contains what he identifies as "the lie which is told solely for the pleasure of lying and deceiving, that is, the real lie." Lies in this category are not told as means to any end distinct from the propagation of falsehood. They are told simply for their own sakes --- i.e., purely out of a love of deception:

There is a distinction between a person who tells a lie and a liar. The former is one who tells a lie unwillingly, while the liar loves to lie and passes his time in the joy of lying... The latter takes delight in lying, rejoicing in the falsehood itself.

What Augustine calls "liars" and "real lies" are both rare and extraordinary. Everyone lies from time to time, but there are very few people to whom it would often (or even ever) occur to lie exclusively from a love of falsity or of deception.

on bullshit 6

2006-02-11T13:01:00.000+08:00

Bullshit -- 6/12

For most people, the fact that a statement is false constitutes in itself a reason, however weak and easily overridden, not to make the statement. For Saint Augustine's pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason in favor of making it.

For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a reason in favor nor a reason against. Both lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully.
For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person's normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands.

The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether.

He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and opposes himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

2006-02-06T22:23:00.000+08:00

Relativity -- Money

As it has been observed previously, numbers written on timetables are not absolute.
In other words, some numbers are more absolute than others, depending on its position and vectors in the space-time continuum.
Further derived, we come to the understanding that mathematics is inherently an unstable science, based on inherently unstable foundations of non-absoluteness.

And since the handling of money involves the use of mathematics, money is therefore inherently unstable. However, money is a special case in point.

Here's why.
The handling of money, whether past, present or future, requires simple mathematics, at least. When required, as always will be when handling money, humans calculate. Or attempt to. In cases of computational inabilities, they turn to estimation. Estimation in itself, is a mathematical guess based on the most probable set of parameters for that situation, in itself, another act of estimation. A triple guess.

A triple guess based on rickety science with wobbly foundations makes for money being relatively, relatively, relatively, relatively relative. Which is not very relative.

Hence, although it might be very plausible to bend time, it is barely possible to bend money. Especially coins, they're harder than notes. And you don't bend notes, you fold them.
We shall proceed.

Some wise-crack of a human has come up with the following reasoning.
Suppose that one gets paid hourly, and that one can essentially stretch time with the aid of a timetable, one can also therefore stretch the amount earned in a period of time, which is akin to bending money, such that one would have more to spend, or a heightened ability to purchase.

Nice try, but things don't work that way.

As humans always do, they ASSUME, and we all know what it stands for. Yup, ASSUME makes an ASS of U and your MEntal capacity. They assume that it would be the variable with the highest stretch-factor that will have it being accounted for. Rather, the truth is that it is always the lowest stretch-factor that will be accounted for in the equation instead. Afterall, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and one can only bend over as far as his stretchiest leg tendon. So by correlating money with time, it would only result in time being unable to be bent, wasting much potential on the time's part. What did I say about that wise-crack being a wise-crack?

So, now that you know money is about as relative to you as a dog is to a cat, quit worshipping it and trying to be it's favourite nephew.
I'm here first. At least take your queue number and stop jostling.

Ciao~

on bullshit

2006-02-05T11:38:00.000+08:00

Bullshit 1/12

Here's a rather interesting, if otherwise dry and boring 67-paged book that I've recently read. I shall now proceed to shamelessly rip it's contents.
Book title:On Bullshit
Author:Harry G. Frankfurt.
renowned moral philosopher, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University
About the book,
Long story short: Sincerity itself is bullshit.

Long story long: (note: horribly boring and unhumorous entry following this bracket. Generally acronymed as SPPOSO, Slowly and Painfully Pointing Out the Surprisingly Obvious)

"Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through"
-Elder Simpson, towards his son, Arthur Abdel Simpson, in Dirty Story

This presumes not only that there is an important difference between lying and bullshitting, but that the latter is preferable to the former.
Now the elder Simpson surely did not consider bullshitting morally superior to lying. Nor is it likely that he regarded lies as invariably less effective than bullshit in accomplishing the purposes for which either of them might be employed.

Afterall, an intelligently crafted lie may do its work with unqualified success.

It may be that Simpson thought it easier to get away with bullshitting than with lying.

Or perhaps he meant that, although the risk of being caught is about the same in each case, the consequences of being caught are generally less severe for the bullshitter than for the liar.
In fact, people do tend to be more tolerant of bullshit than of lies, perhaps because we are less inclined to take the former as a personal affront.

We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug then with the sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire.

We are generally more benign toward bullshit than toward lying.

---To be continued.---

on bullshit 2

2006-02-05T11:03:00.000+08:00

Bullshit 2/12

The pertinent comparison is not, however, between telling a lie and producing some particular instance of bullshit.
The elder Simpson identifies the alternative to telling a lie as "bullshitting one's way through." This involves not merely producing one instance of bullshit; it involves a program of producing bullshit to whatever extent the circumstances require.

This is a key, perhaps, to his preference. Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth.
This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values.
In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true.

And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.

On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom.

His focus is panoramic rather than particular.
He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as required, to fake the context as well.

This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying.

It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, colour, and imaginative play.

on bullshit 3

2006-02-05T10:28:00.000+08:00

Bullshit 3/12

What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs.
Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false.

Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent.

The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be.
What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us is about his enterprise.
His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.

This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar.
Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that.

But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not the know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false.

The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.

This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

2006-02-02T22:40:00.000+08:00

Relativity -- Time

And here I bring to you the first of the Relativity Series, Relativity -- Time!

Let's begin with my latest time survey,

Number of hours of sleep each night: 6 X 7 = 42
Number of grooming hours per day: 1 X 7 = 7
Number of hours for meals/snacks per day (including preparation time): 3 X 7 = 21
Total travel time weekdays: 2 X 5 = 10
Total travel time weekends: 3
Number of hours per week for regularly scheduled functions: 12
Number of hours per day for chores, errands, extra grooming, etc.: 1 X 7
Number of hours of work per week: 22
Number of hours in class per week: 30
Number of average hours per week socializing, on the phone, chatting on MSN, etc: 20

Total amount of hours in an average person's week: 168 (24 X 7)
Total amount of hours in my week: 174 (coincidentally, that's the bus I usually take home from school. hey-ho, it's a funny old world)

It is clear, that I'm living 6 more hours of my life per week compared to anybody else. This would normally have been a rather baffling discrepancy if not due to the fact that nobody ever takes this point seriously enough to investigate them. Until Einstein.

Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now realised that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in schedules. And just as space is measured in numbers and time told in numbers, we can safely assume that time is also not an absolute, but depend on the observer's movement in his mind and how he plans his timetable.

The first instance of time being non-absolute is the amount of time one estimates to spend on doing a certain activity. This will vary during the course of the activity itself, while bearing no apparent relation to the actual amount of time spent doing that activity itself, or the time wasted while rehearsing that activity mentally beforehand.

The second non-absoluteness of time is the given time of actually beginning that activity, which by itself is known to be one of the most bizzare mathematical concepts, a time which can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of actually starting on an activity is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that the activity will begin.

The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the timetable itself, the relationship between how much time the person assumes to be available, the estimation of the duration of the activity to be performed, the weather, the amount of work left undone, and how much punishment the person is willing to take (from the respective authorities), while bearing no actual correlation to how much the person is willing to lie to get out of it all.

Therefore, the startling truth came to light, and it was this:
Time told by numbers written on timetables within the confines of the timetable itself do not follow the same mathematical, physical, and scientific laws as time told by numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the universe.

This means that with the timetable, we are essentially able to stretch time as much as we want, allowing ourselves 25, or even 40 hour days. Not that anybody would want to drag their miserable days that long.

The potential is limitless!
Although I highly doubt you humans would know how to utilise this revolutionary discovery effectively.

Meanwhile, ciao~

a fishy perspective 3

2006-01-20T17:59:00.000+08:00

Of Control, Hope, and Carrots.

Humans are easy to control. You can control them by fear, by oppresion, or best of all, by controlling them to obey your commands like a zombie. A happy zombie. Or a donkey. They're cuter.

As Sun Tzu said, "Have intelligence and half the battle's won."
Intelligence in this case being how your enemy is and how you are, not it's other meaning, which is what you lack if you're not reading this.

The one thing to remember:
Humans are simple creatures, driven by a singular desire.

Namely, the desire to achieve happiness.
Note: It's the desire to achieve happiness, not the desire for happiness. Subtle, but worlds apart in terms of lasting ability. Humans generally were never smart enough to figure the latter out.

So,
Give them the stick, and they become unhappy. But we're not going to discuss about the stick today. For stick-control is unpopular.
Give them the carrot and they're happy.
Keep the carrot in front of them, just out of reach, yet tantalising close, and you'll have them thinking they'll be happy soon. Eventually. Maybe tomorrow.

Humans call this hope.
I call it carrot.

That's it.
You have the human in your hands. Under your control. See? Simple.

Next time you need help twisting another human to willingly slave for you, just remember to have a carrot handy.

But for now, ciao~

2nd screw up

2006-01-18T20:22:00.000+08:00

“事后诸葛亮”
For those who can't see what the line above means, it's a chinese idiom, Shi4 Hou4 Zhu1 Ge2 Liang4. It basically means people are always smart only after they screw up.

Chinese humans are at least smart enough to figure this out. But otherwise...
Humans are ever only smart when they look backwards. And when they do, they are not entirely smart at those particular moments as they will hence be unable to see what's coming, and maybe trip and fall and get to skip a few days' school.
Not that if they look forwards they'll be any smarter than their back-looking counterparts.

Humans also never treasure such opportunities of increased intelligence to learn something. Like lessons. On looking at the now.

As such, we can therefore come to this conclusion that;

Humans never learn. They turn their heads one way, and think they can divine the future and prepare for it, and as soon as they turn their heads another way, things still remain as murky as before. What they end up with, is just another instinct-based decision, and wasted hours of empty preparation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that the human instinct's mentioned, I think I'd like to delve slightly deeper into this section and go rather off topic such that the rest of the topic can be better understood.

Instincts are merely train of thoughts that individual humans have managed to drill, shove, or otherwise hone into their thick skulls through countless repetitions of such train of thoughts. In this sense, instinct is rather similar to habit, and rightly so. Except that instinct refers to the mental activity that leads to a final climax of outward physical actions, while habit refers to the innumerable repetitions of outward physical actions which leads to the eventual altering of one's mental activities.
Summary: Instinct shows how stupid one is. Habit shows how stupid one wants to be. Both are cultivated through time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyways, moving forwards and looking forwards always thrusts us in situations that we may or may not have encountered before (which means we get thrusted into all sorts of situations. D'oh). In such unfamiliar territories, humans will thus rely on their instincts, and keep things simple, for they do not have the luxury of time to BEE. They'll revert to whatever they've had been doing since they existed, and so end up screwing up by instinct, as has always been.

After screwing everything up, they'll look backwards and sigh, "I should've done this/that/nothing/more/screamed like a maniac and charge around like a berserked troll". After which, they'll proceed to trip and hurt themselves on the proceeding tree/rock/stairs/building/WWE Wrestler. Following that, they'd look backwards again and say," I should've looked forwards instead." And remain in that position.
What did I say about humans learning their lessons?

I gather it has become already become a genetically inherited instinct, that all humans get from their forefathers who has screwed up whatever they were meant to be screwing up, to look backwards.

Anyways, upon looking backwards at all these humans, I've gained sudden flash of insight from my temporarily heightened intelligence which I shall pen down now lest I dumb down and forget again.

LOOK AT THE NOW!

_|_ looking backwards, for they're past.
_|_ looking forwards, for they are yet to come.

LOOK AT THE NOW!

uhhhhh......looking backwards on it, that seems cheesy and ripped-off some lousy motivational handbook thingy on how to live a human's life. I can tell I've lost my temporal heightened intelligence.

duh....... ciao~

slackfish

2006-01-18T20:00:00.000+08:00

Post script to the above post:

This is actually more for myself than for other readers, for I am kind of a waiter. I wait, and I anticipate things to come. I look back, and I regret decisions 5 minutes past. And I wait somemore, hoping things will turn out better. I've wasted countless Nows, and still many more to come. This entry will serve as a reminder of how screwy things can be, when one waits, anticipates, plans for it, and misses the moment. I hate looking back, and I hate posting on this blog, for it is an act of looking back, and everytime I post here is my creative moment, and my creative moments only come when I screw something up and I hate screwing up. Posting here, in short, is an unhappy moment.
Not gonna be a waiter anymore.

Cheers to this messy day.

fishy life ditties

2006-01-11T19:37:00.000+08:00

The 70% lifestyle

I live my life the 70% way.

You're just giving yourself an excuse not to try your best.

I'm trying my best in the long run. 70% effort makes for easier maintenance.

You dream to be a giant of giants.

Who doesn't?

Yet you choose to remain as a giant among dwarves.

I have decided to take delight in little things.

You're afraid you'll fail in reaching for your dreams.

I can always hypothesise that I'd succeed had I gone 100%.

You therefore excuse yourself by failing through choice.

I'm a voluntary failure. Free will.

You are thus seen as a successful failure. Cool.

I'm sick of trying.

You'll always have room for improvement.

I figured it's easier than trying so hard for disappointment.

You're not living up to your full potential.

I reap what I sow. Sow 70% effort 70% reap 70%. A2.

You'll regret it next time.

I can live with it.

You'd wish you had been living the moment.

I have gotten used to it.

Your pride prevents you from turning back.

I don't mind.

You would live the life of another part of the mass.

I'm okay with it.

You'd live the 70% lifestyle.

I'm contented.

You won't be remembered.

I won't remember, too.

For, you, have chosen to doom yourself to being a giant among dwarves by choice.

Free will? Bah. I got to exercise mine. Will you?

You'd hate yourself for this.

Boohoo.

fishy updates

2006-01-09T23:24:00.000+08:00

-----Transmission start. -----

I break the smooth flow of entries to break this breaking news to my fellow fishes.

I work erratically.

----- End of transmission. -----

See, news is boring if you just state the facts. Sometimes, adding in miscellaneous almost unimportant junk news along with the most important of the news, is what keeps a reader interested. Or turns a reader off.
At least it's what keeps your newspaper articles long and your dailies thick, and the printing mills busy. What do you think they do all day? Print money?

But anyways, I'd now bring in the implications of that breaking news, to keep this article long and almost interesting yet undeterring.

Working erratically, you can expect lots of updates over a really short span of time, or lots of updates over a really long span of time. I try my best to update regularly. Okay, so my trying my best was more like a feeble attempt at following an effective timetable of dusty New Year's resolutions.

Generally, I'd be working on 4 entries at any one time. This usually allows me conserve brainpower by not controlling what I think, and I'd just wait for the occasional bright spark to light up the hollow above my neck and skip to the appropriate entry. Works for me anyways.

However, this would then mean that the entries would generally be completed in spurts. Not fun for habitual surfers.

Actually, this is just an excuse-cum-delaying tactic that I'm employing now to buy me time to finish my next series of entries. I doubt anybody is smart enough to highlight this and check it anyways.

a fishy perspective 2

2006-01-07T15:57:00.000+08:00

"... the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's secondcourse,
Chief nourisher in life's feast."

Shakespeare makes sleep to be so wonderful, so important, so bad a punishment to sinners by depriving them of it. Like taking candy from a naughty child. Like hiding the TV remote from your dad on football night. Like the fantastical Macbeth.
But that, is still, and will only remain as, another human's view, on what they can't do without. Partial.

Whereas, for fishes, as in me, we never sleep. Incredulous? Go check out your nearest aquarium. At 3am. 3pm. noon. morning. night. afternoon. dawn. evening. summer. winter. autumn. spring.
You would never catch our eyes ever closing. Never. Not once.
And if we appear to be as still as a rock, as some of my relatives often do, they are either:
1. camouflaging in a game of hide and seek
2. meditating

That's also why we have made do without the cumbersome screen in front of our eyes that you humans call eyelids.

Okay, enough deviation to prove my point. My point being, humans need sleep. Humans partial to sleep. Fishes do not. Fishes impartial. Fishes fair. Therefore my judgement is accurate, and least affected by almost not totally unrelated factors.

To continue, let's lay out the facts first.

Sleep:
8 hours a day. 7 days a week. No resting. No stopping. No excusing yourself from it. No escape. Almost, but not quite, not entirely unlike a 9 to 5 day job. Except you don't get paid for doing it, and other humans will despise you for doing OT on it. No chance of a promotion.
Robs you of a third of your conscious life. Retaliate by doing less of it would only give it sufficient motive to find ways and means to crush your consciousness. Absolutely.
You started your life by sleeping 10 months, any earlier, and you'd find yourself trapped within plastic cages with lots of tubes poking in and out of your body. You'll end your existence by sleeping underground, or in a big fire before being urned.
Urned: verb
the act of being placed in an urn.
People living in small countries generally get urned when they die because of the lack of space for a proper burial.

Research shows that sleep is beneficial to humans? Research by human scientists? Ever heard of provenance? Check it.

And with the overwhelmingly exactly unfavourable evidence presented, I therefore deem Sleep to be not only bad, but also absolutely, astonishingly, evil. Anything associated with it, living, unliving, feeling, unfeeling, moving, still, shall, too, burn in hell.

So, how can you, as a human, resist the monolith that is sleep?
You can't. Oxymoron. Human, resist sleep? lykeomgwtfbbqlol?

What you can do, is just to accept your fate, go to sleep feeling really guilty, and just pray that hell won't be as hot as imagined.
Alternatively, you can take Macbeth's advice.

"Better be with the dead,
Who we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy."

Till then, ciao~

fishy life ditties 2

2006-01-03T21:39:00.000+08:00

Lying 101 - Part 2
Some people have questioned the 101 title to me privately. I say, it's a LIE. D'oh!

Now that you know lying is a very important skill, here's the most important rule and only rule you will have to adhere to, to lie like a professional.

KISSBEE
Keep It Simple Stupid, or Be Extraordinarily Elaborate

As it says, lie simply, or lie so elaborately that nobody would care to find out the truth, and if they do manage to do so, you would be have already escaped to somewhere safe in the mountains, or they would be so impressed by your abilities that they would be too awed to take any actions before you manage to make it to the mountains.

Just as there is beauty in simplicity, and there simplicity in beauty, let's begin with simplicity to captivate your attention.

The simplest lies are often lies that are closest to the truth, that way, the truth won't have to be twisted too much to turn it into a situation or a circumstance that best suits you at the instance. Simple lies are generally preferred to elaborate ones for that reason -- the less you twist reality, the easier it would be easier to maintain that twist -- your lies will be less likely to be detected.

There are several ways to keeping your lies simple, but all of which can be reduced to this:

By revealing only a portion of the truth, telling half-truths, and generally leaving out anything incriminating or can be used against you, while being as brief and vague as possible.

For instance, when a girl asks you how she looks. (watch out boys! this is always the killer!)

"Well, how do I look?"

Telling a portion of the truth, "You're beautiful."

(When she asks for elaboration)
Telling the half-truth, "Your eyes are wonderful."

(When she asks for your honest opinion)
Generally leaving out anything incrimination or can be used against you, "You look fabulous in that dress."

Observe the way in which everything is kept as brief and as vague to excite the girl's imaginations to enhance your bland descriptions. She'd literally answer herself.
This way, you get to both please your girl, while still being able to keep your freedom of opinion healthy.

KISSing, though effective, is not the miracle lubricant that gets you out of all sticky situations. In such situations, a BEE might be more effective instead.

Being Extraordinarily Elaborate entails creating something out of nothing. Just that. Sounds simple?
Then you're too daft to comprehend the meaning of creating something. To create something, you would first have to know how to warp reality, and twisting it to the point that you end up spraining it, or better, fracturing it. Next, now that reality is all warped and groovy, you would have to employ that slimy mush in your head that rarely gets employed anyways, and get it to imagine something to replace that hole in reality's boo-boo.

Translated to English, it basically means that KISS means using as little brain as possible, while BEE would need you to squeeze out every ounce of that juice within your cranium to piece together something plausible.

Since BEE is generally difficult to execute, the best situation to use it in would be one where you can premeditate and plan for it beforehand, such that you would have ample time and opportunity to get your BEE into action.

Like when you wish to skip school.

There would be only several valid parameters to allow you to skip school.

1. Letter of Excuse from parents
Let's deviate for a while now and explore this parameter. Poke at it a little, bend it slightly, and see how far you can go. Afterall, a large part of any successful BEE is sufficient and effective planning.
Now how does the school know whether the letter is from your parents? From the signature? Won't this make the signature the weakest link in the chain confining you in school if you're willing to take the risk? Suppose if the teachers buy that squiggle you make in that corner of that Letter of Excuse, what excuse then, should you use?
Here's 2 probabilities for you to consider (for the rest has been struck out due to it being the school actually allowing you to be absent, or you're dead):
Death in the immediate family (Would you really want to?)
Emergencies at home (no, your grandpa needing to take a wee-wee while you're still in school doesn't count)

Obviously, either way teachers can always make a call to your parents to counter-check. So unless you manage to come up with some really ingenious excuses, please just stick to the more plausible option, which comes next.

2. A valid Medical Certificate
The same thing, some exploring needs to be done to show why this is the better choice.
To obtain a valid MC, there are several ways. Bluff your teacher that yours is a valid. Alternatively, you can bluff the doctor that you're sick to obtain that get-out-of-school-free card.
Generally, general practitioners, can't wait to give you that damn card, just so that they can siphon off your money by prescribing some not entirely useful medicines, and then proceed to do the exact same thing to the other person behind you, with perhaps the exact same motives too.
Win-Win. They get the money and are happy. You get out of school legitimately, and are happy too. Everybody is happy.
So, any ways of appearing sick, or just complain of some non-existent pain in some strange areas, and with some greenbacks, that MC would be yours in no time.
There. You've created something out of nothing. You've created a reason out of emptiness. You've wrenched the very reality, and so the teachers grant you a day to frolick around in the field and just enjoy the wonderful weather. Or to be the average urban-dweller and waste your life away in front of the television, or any other things with a big, glass screen. You'd be better off watching me swim in my tank.

Remember. KISSBEE. Now you can lie like a professional too! No, I'm not lying when I said that. Seriously.

Postscript: This how to lie part of the Lying 101 series grew and grew and became even longer than i'd expected, so i apologise for the long delay that it took for it to be finally published. Sincerely. Serious.

fishy updates

2005-12-31T11:46:00.000+08:00

Tagboard up.

Now you humans can scrawl on the glass of my fishbowl so I can better know what you think.

If you're smart enough to realize, this would in effect cause the words to appear to me as inverted length-wise. If you're smarter still, you'd realize that fishes think. Fishbowls are round. They have infinite sides. To read what you write, I'd just look on the corresponding opposite side of the fishbowl, and read the reflections.

So whatever you write, as long as it's in english (for it's the universal language of all intelligent, semi-intelligent, and almost-intelligent life-forms across the universe), no matter whether it's humans or fishes, we should be able to comprehend your scrawls.

fishy favours

2005-12-31T00:58:00.000+08:00

By some quirky twist of fate and reality, some strange intersecting angles and graphs in The Whole Sort of General Mish-Mash, and a whole lot of unexpectedly predictable set of improbable outcomes, I, as a fish, the fish have a brother. Make that 2. Wait. Make that 2 brothers sharing my same tiny fishbowl in a manner that's as cool and adrenaline-jacking as the average bungee jump without the bungee.

Well, one of them gave a rather glowing review + referral to my little fishbowl, so being one that returns favours (eventually), here's the person with the longest hair in the family, the tallest height, the most interesting job, the most fiendishly evil sounding blog named meekia , what with all the carbohydrates and a general lack of vitamins and minerals and proteins. Did I say long hair? Oh, and not to mention his murderous choice of nick, it'll totally clog up your social life when enough carbohydrates manage to pack themselves comfortably around your tummy and waste. I meant waist. Shhhh...

Anyways,
Read and cower before his height! and long hair. and height!

fishy musings

2005-12-29T13:31:00.000+08:00

Humans always give the soppiest but rarely accurate depictions of how first love is like.

But now that I've been there and done that, I think it's time for my turn to have a stab at it.

To me, first love can be very much described and depicted simply and accurately, as a can of beer. That's right, wholly unromantic, but totally scientific --- as in, precise.

To be even more precise, while retaining the concise-ness of your everyday quoteworthy quotes, first love is in fact much-frickin-worse than a six-pack (or 2, or intravenously, whichever feels more like a baseball bat to the cranium the next morning).

You see, just as first love can lift you up to the heavens, make you do stupid things that you swore never to do at the bachelor's party, and mess up your priorities by showing you that there are more important things besides whichever is occupying you most at the moment.
It can also make you feel infinitely wretched when you have to respond to ,"Hello Scottie? Earth calling. Reply if you are still there." and that floaty feeling experienced only minutes before disappears without warning. or minimal warning. or maybe too much warning that was left unheeded because your head was stuck in the clouds.

Although this is a job usually performed best by said six-pack.

It makes you go up really high. But that stupid law of gravity has to exist and soon you'll be plunging down really fast (with an acceleration of 9.8m/s/s if you geeks really want to know), with no end of terminal velocity in sight, and termination almost immediately. No, actually you don't really get terminated, although you would wish that you did, because landing at that kind of speed and landing headfirst (because your head is just that damn heavy), you can expect to get the mother and father of a pair of headaches, with many more coming right up.

Everybody really wishes that they can stay up high (and high) forever. Head in the clouds and all. And people really think they can stay there longer if they could just stretch a little more and make their hang-time a little better. However, reality, as does gravity, always has other plans that necessarily refuses to coincide with your wishes.
So everybody still falls, and as usual there will always be the lucky ones, who will land on a really tall tree, that will at least still keep them rather high. Let's just say I made a rather large dent on the concrete pavement.

Still, just as you can always start on another six-pack, there will always be another chance at romance.

So till then, just continue checking reality and obeying gravity.

Ciao~

fishy life ditties

2005-12-27T08:12:00.000+08:00

Lying 101 - Part 1

Sometimes, people tell the truth. Mostly, people lie. Reality is just too harsh for the truthful innocence of toddlers. Wait, I meant, Reality is just too harsh for the truthful innocence of not entirely almost unintelligent toddlers. It has been proven that children with higher I.Q. generally start lying at an earlier age, because they have understood that despite what their parents tell them, a simpler way out is a more effective way out. Since high I.Q. increases the child's probability of lying, parents who want their children to be smart and score straight As and grow up to become a consultant, lawyer, politician, or a doctor, will want them to lie.
Conversely, parents who want their children to follow in their footsteps, will want their children to tell the truth.

One of the most important skills needed to get around life as easily as possible, while expending minimum amounts of energy to do so, is lying. Lies are abound in human (and fish) history. Kings tell lies to keep them and their peasants in place. Peasants who could tell better lies than the King were either killed, recruited into the ranks of the official scum, or for the most intelligent of them all, lie their way to a uprising so that they themselves can become King instead, a revered King.

But history is only so important, and can only serve so much use, so modern examples will be needed to show why lying doesn't just decide the course of history, but rather, the course of your (currently) miserable life too.

For instance, in this situation,

from a witness's viewpoint:

Ming dynasty vase fragments on the floor. You standing beside the pedestal where the vase used to be.

what really happened:

You stand at said position. Dog chase cat. Dog runs down Ming vase instead of cat. Dog escapes from scene. You are screwed. Said witness enters at this point. Doubly so.

Telling the truth would cause the eventual bankrupt and premature ending of your miserable life by means of suicide.
"Er... IT WASN'T ME! THE DOG! THE DOG DID IT!"
"Right... security!"

Telling a lie, however, would make things much simpler.
"Hmm... Antique fragments of a Ming dynasty vase, it's artistic beauty still shines through despite being in pieces. A real work of art, a real work of art!"
Said witness would think nothing of the evidence and the commotion and just walk away thinking nothing important happened.

It would be best for you to escape the scene at this point.

For tips on how to lie, stay tuned to Part 2.

a fishy perspective 1

2005-12-27T01:03:00.000+08:00

Humans are almost not totally unlike fishes. That is, they metabolise, and they die. Otherwise, the finest and yet most distinctive difference is that fishes think; humans think they think, and think fishes don't think beyond their aquariums.

To elaborate:

Humans say Knowledge is Power, and Ignorance is Bliss. Since Knowledge entails knowing and learning, and Ignorance involves not knowing anything, thus it can be said that acquiring Knowledge is the act of eradicating Ignorance. This implies that Knowledge and Ignorance are mutually exclusive, and presence of one denies the other, in effect, leading us to the conclusion that since Knowledge = Power and Ignorance = Bliss, we can substitute them into the equation and understand that Power and Bliss are mutually exclusive too.

However, the reality is that powerful humans are rarely happy, and those who happen to not be powerful are also unhappy --- albeit more so. Hence we can also conclude that power only makes people less unhappy, rather than becoming happier. This brings up an interesting situation. Power and happiness are not merely mutually exclusive, they are totally unrelated at all! (although power and unhappiness almost forms the nearly-perfect curve of inverse proportionalities)

But, as was the purpose of this commentary on humans,

Humans think power gives them happiness, and to achieve happiness, they hunt for power. See? Get me? Humans just think that they think, rather than really doing the thinking.

Conclusion: Hunt for power anyways. It helps to take your mind off the inane, dull, uninteresting, boring, mundane, daily life that all humans have to go through before Godot comes. Or until you stop metabolising and die anyways.

Have a nice life. Ciao~

The world's swimmy!

2005-12-26T22:44:00.000+08:00

World still spinning.

My bowl's still alright.

Or is it my head spinning?

At least I'm still underwater.

What if both are spinning?

Yup. There's still dissolved oxygen.

If both are spinning in opposite directions, does it mean i'm spinning doubly fast?

Mmhmm. My fins are still around.

Do i take into account the spinning speeds and the temperature and pressure?

So is my head. I think.

Everything's going swimmy!

Henceforth, as the fish that thinks, I'll think. And write. And think, I think. And write, can't forget that, or at least I think I'm writing. Or am i writing my thinking? How do I know and tell the difference?