No English? No Problem!

Saturday, January 03, 2004

New Website!

No, not the blog, unfortunately.......... but i did up a simple one for the pix i took on my camera phone.....there aren't much there right now, but I will put more up! Yessiree I will! My Photos
Things to note:
I used frames for the site, so if you don't see anything.... er, your browser doesn't support them n i'm sorry.....
I know the resolution sucks! It's a camera phone so whatdya expect?
I will not put up pix of my frens, in accordance with my views on anonymity on the Net. So don't worry, I won't put up those embarrassing shots I took of anyone while you were asleep.

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

2 features today: A link on whether Jesus might be gay, (?) and a lengthy complaint about Light Years. I don't usually hate shows so much, but this one has earned the honour.

Jesus May Be Gay?

This was originally sent in an email to me by Tenderheart, but hee..... it's so interesting I just have to share it.... before the lightning comes down and strikes me anyway.... Anyone out there more religious than I am... please tell me how much of this could be truth or not....

Was Jesus Gay?

As a sample, the authors note this fragment from the Bible:
"And the youth, looking upon him (Jesus), loved him and beseeched that he might remain with him. And going out of the tomb, they went into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And after six days, Jesus instructed him and, at evening, the youth came to him wearing a linen cloth over his naked body. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the Kingdom of God".

Your Pain On 5

Pain. Hurt. Anguish. Agony. Just a sample of what I went through tonight. And I have only one thing to blame for it.

CHANNEL 5 PROGRAMMES ON A TUES NITE

My family and I were watching the TV while eating our nasi lemak dinner. First on was Tan Kheng Hua and some show on food. Not too bad. Tan is very vibrant, very bouncy and looks very natural while doing so. A talent that sadly, something like 90% of the actors ( and actresses ) in TCS lack. ( That was just a general estimate by the way. Actual figures may be closer to 99.9999% )

Then came Phua Chu Kang. A lot of lame, slapstick kinda humour, ( One of the blur workers thought he had breast cancer because he felt a lump on his chest and ended up being dragged for a mammogram by the 2 women of the household ) but we expect it. After all, it's Phua Chu Kang, him of the perms-mole-boots getup for heaven's sake. Anything else from this show would've been like asking Mr Bean to perform Cirque Du Soleil.

After that, however.....

Oh Carol! came on. ( for some reason, my mom suddenly felt like doing the laundry ) I don't know if it was intentional or not, but apparently there was a technical error, so we didn't get any of the canned laughter that usually came on during these shows. That's what I first thought. Later on, I was getting to be of the opinion that the laughter didn't come on because there was nothing funny in the show. She screams at co-workers. She suffers pre-marital anxiety and cancels her wedding to Utt. ( which probably brought sighs of relief to female MTV fans all over Singapore ) Oh well, ho hum. Pass the samosas.

The really painful part came on during Light Years. Harken this name, all intelligent beings, and be wary of it. It is awful, the characters are totally fake, utterly unbelievable and extremely childish. Not only that, but the entire plot is so predictable, you start feeling clairvoyant. Let me give a good example of bad scriptwriting from the show:

( background: in case you didn't know, Light Years is about a group of students in Poly and their experiences. Good, now forget it, because it's not worth knowing )

One of the opening scenes feature this girl, a student, let's call her A, and B, a guy, getting into a cab at the exact same time, and telling the cab driver the same address. ( some fictitious poly ) Then when they become aware of the other person's presence, they start arguing about who got into the cab first, how rude the other party is, and will you please get out of the cab.

Of course, the "twist" at the end is that A finds out that B is her new lecturer, and the school term starts off on a fine new note for her.

Now, let's get one thing straight. I've never watched Light Years when it first came out, so I never had any strong opinions on it before. Hence I decided to watch it tonight and see what it was all about. And OMG, it was about the worst pukeworthy crap I had ever seen in my life.

Let's start attacking the opening scene. Firstly, what the Hell are the chances of 2 people walking into a cab at the same time? Won't they have seen each other before then? They couldn't have been standing next to each other and not being aware of each other now, couldn't they? Fine, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They only saw a cab and were so blur they were totally unaware of their surroundings. Which makes them pretty clever creatures for being able to hail a cab in the first place.

Secondly, they proceed to argue with each other, and A demands that B gets out of the cab, and doesn't see why she has to share the cab with him. I'll tell you why, honey, so that you can SHARE CAB FARE. You two are going to the same place, hence you can split the fare 50-50, and pay cheaper fare! A simple, obvious fact which was pointed out by the cab driver, but she still put on that arrogant-piss-ass style and said she didn't see why she had to share a cab with him. OMG! How did this girl have the brains to supposedly rise to 3rd year in Poly? I can't figure out how she even got past Primary 6 if she couldn't even see such a simple logic on her own. And although B was supposed to be a Poly lecturer, he was also stupid enough to argue with someone obviously lacking in her intellectual faculties. That's like fighting with a donkey over a carrot, and a rotten one at that. He didn't even see that they could share the cab fare and reasonably point it out to her.

There is a fine line between stubbornness and downright stupidity. These folks ran all the way past it and jumped headfirst into the Point of No Brains, all the while arguing with each other about who should jump first.

Thirdly, the rest of the cast act so childishly, you'll think you were watching Moulmein High instead of Light Years. At least in MH, they were supposed to play sec. sch students. A certain level of immaturity is expected. But surely not of 3rd year poly students! This guy, whose character came back from a student exchange trip in Japan, kept going on throughout about how he was so cool in Japan, how the girls loved him in Japan, and how cool he thought he was. Newsflash: Did you happen to miss, say, Changi Airport on the way here? Did you fail to realise that you were in Singapore, and not Japan? Or were you just wondering why everyone was suddenly speaking English around you?

Fourthly, the cast, as poly students, are more fake than an LV bag bought off the street markets of China. Did the scriptwriters actually think that Singaporean youths speak like that? That fake, pseudo-American accent became so yesterday, like.... yesterday. This Speak Good English movement has a lot to answer for, if you ask me. And the lines are so bad, they made me cringe, literally. The actors sound, at times, like those wooden dolls that go "Mama!" when you pull a string at the back. Wooden lines, wooden accents.

This show is not just BAD it's pukeworthy. No, scratch that, I won't even want to puke on it. It's trash, rubbish, bollocks, bullshit, and I'm pretty certain if you watch it enough, your IQ will drop till you consider Forrest Gump to be the pinnacle of human intellect. Do NOT watch it even if you have time to waste. I feel sorry for the campus that lent itself to the shooting of this show, because now everyone who watches it will think their students are childish, argumentative, stupid, fake, egoistical lowlives like certain TCS actors.

And as a note, all this rubbish happened in the first 15 minutes of the show. I switched channels because I was starting to feel pain just watching it.
Sigh..... having trouble again with photos... really considering whether i shld fork out the money to rent space on the Net....
maybe if I manage to get more students....

Sunday, December 28, 2003

Hey guys, long ramblings below which go ever on and on, but if you get bored halfway, there're comics to entertain you along the way. You can also scroll all the way down for some links, if, *sniff sniff* you don't like my writing, despite all the trouble *sniff* I went through to write it *sniff* what with my eyesight being what it is....

Paper to Film

With the showing of the ROTK, the endless battle once again is started..... that neverending struggle between the forces of good and evil.......

Yes, it is the place for confrontation between fans of the book and fans of the film.

Gimme My Comic!

Usually I do a review for the movies that I watch, but this one is so heavily reviewed and raved..... I think there's no point preaching to the highly converted. Instead, I will offer some comments on an old issue that this has raised again.

In this week's 8 days, [Britney Spears cover] David Fuhrmann-Lim mentioned 2 kinds of LOTR fans. There are the film fans, and the book fans, and the differences are highly marked. As living examples, I will highlight 2 people I know. Let's call them D and C. [if you know who i'm talking about, let's just maintain anonymity here, eh?]

Gimme My Comic!

D is a book fan. He's read all 3 books, The Silmarillon, The Unfinished Tales, possibly all other books by Tolkien, hails Tolkien as the Father of Modern Fantasy, and is able to deliver a treatise on how every other fantasy writer out there has stolen ideas from Tolkien one way or another. [An example: kender in the Dragonlance series highly resemble hobbit in Tolkien] He's seen the films and thinks they're "ok".

Sidenote to Dragonlance fans: Don't you think the undead armies of Lord Soth are highly similar to the Armies of the Dead? Ok, back to the crap.

Gimme My Comic!

C is a film fan. She thinks Legolas is the hottest thing in the film, but Orlando Bloom looks better in that film than any other. She downloads pix of Legolas onto her handphone. She thinks the scenery is stunning, the actors are hot, Sam and Frodo are possibly gay, and who's Tom Bombadil?

The rest of us just watch the films. Haha! But you get the idea.

The 2 extremes in this case are either like Jason/D/Book fans, or Paige/C/Film/Orlando fans. And they have utterly different reasons for catching the film. D would most likely want the films to be as close as possible to Tolkien's original vision. C is just thankful that Peter Jackson cast Legolas as such a hottie. [no offence to C, who may be reading this..... but face it....... haha!] And I sure as heck do not ever want to involve both parties in a LOTR discussion, unless I want to see D strangle C in total exasperation.

[ one of my favourite lines below. "Filler stuff"? ]

Gimme My Comic!

So what is the difference between the 2? Frankly, there's a lot. If you have read the original Tolkien novel, just the first 3 books, you would know that there are tons of history and character Tolkien has that Peter Jackson does not, due to the shortcomings of film. For one, there is the character of Tom Bombadil. Also, Aragorn's history is never really explained clearly, to my satisfaction, and the Aragorn-Arwen romance is played up too strongly. [Arwen's character in the film is kinda extra, in my opinion. There seems to be no satisfiable reason for her to be there, other than because pple like to see romance in the films.]

I happened to watch the movie before I ever read the book, but from personal experience, book-to-film adaptions never really work to satisfaction. My experience during the first Harry Potter movie was such. The first film didn't just lack, but was utterly bereft of the magic of Rowling's writing. Although it was an entertaining movie, I felt that I was watching something without soul, or character. The magic was lost. To explain it in other words, the movie was not entertaining to engage me the way the original book did. To this extent, I can understand the feelings of book fans. I can also understand the feelings of Jason in the comic below....

[ Another good line. "Who's Gollum?" ]

Gimme My Comic!

And it's not like some of these books need the additional publicity from the film anyway. JK Rowling was already an international bestselling author before The Philosopher's Stone was ever made into a film. Tolkien was already well beloved as a master of fantasy literature. In fact, it was their fame in the first place that led to these books being made. These directors, in a way, were betting on a sure winner, books with their loyal following of fans that would earn money and publicity for the film and ensure that it wouldn't be a total bomb altogether.

Also, it's absolutely frustrating talking to a total fan of the film sometimes, when u even a slight knowledge of the books and Tolkien. When C talks about how cute Legolas is, and how gay Sam and Frodo are in the film, it makes me wanna tear my hair out. [thank the gods, i've never done that.] How the heck do you expect me to explain that this is just P.Jackson's vision, Tolkien's experiences in war, and the possible interpretation that Sam and Frodo represent the camaderie between the upper and lower classes that evolved during the binding crucible that is war? All the freak she can talk about is how gay they are!

Gimme My Comic!

*sigh* I know the usual excuse for this is "Each To His Own", and I know that everyone has their own preferences, even if it's freaking-little-white-face-Orlando-Bloom, but Gees! For the umpteenth time, Sam and Frodo are NOT gay, and stop casting this lime-giantic-1000watt-spotlight on Legolas! He's a supporting character for heavens' sake! It's totally alright to be fans of the book, or fans of the film, but at least do not accept either as the gospel truth and elevate Jackson to god-status! Because Jackson, technically, is copying a script from Tolkien and adding his own interpretation of it. When you keep seeing scenes of Legolas jumping over oliphaunts and shooting arrows into its driver's back, that's Jackson's vision. When you insist Sam and Frodo are gay............... er, that's just your own mind working.

Gimme My Comic!

My main stand here, I guess, is that take whatever view of the show you like. Whether it be book or film. But never accept one totally. Read/watch the other medium, expose yourself to other interpretations, or the original version, and at least have an awareness of the other side. If you've read the book, accept that Jackson had to cut certain scenes out or portray them differently, in order to accomodate the shortcomings of film. If you've watched the movie, at least attempt to read the book, to open yourself to Tolkien's original vision and understand where he's coming from.

Unless you're now a firm Orlando Bloom fan. Then please go off on your own tangent and stop muddling the discussion.

For more info on the characters, I found this site:
The Barrow-Downs

And for pure entertainment, this flash was sent to me by C, but I couldn't load it. You guys try.
Gollum Rap

According to a random piece of Javascript, one of my elvish names is Pennberaidiel. Haha!
Try It Out, Guys n Gals


Foxtrot Comics are done by Bill Amend, and these strips were from UComics. If you're from that site, and you see these comics here, please have the courtesy to send me a letter giving me a chance to take down the strips before you start suing me. Thanks.