Tam Lin and the Elf Queen

Had i known but yesterday what i know today, I"d have taken out your two gray eyes and put in eyes of clay, and had i known but yesterday you'd be no more my own, I'd have taken out your heart of flesh and put in one of stone.

See the love there that's sleeping

Today's about film. After the 3 films i've watched in the last 2 days, i feel compelled to mention them. First up, the early-anticipated Across the Universe, the semi-arthouse, semi-musical Beatles tribute film that relied WAY too much on corny puns and self-indulgent directing. (spoilers warning) The stupid 'she came in through the bathroom window' comment + the totally superfluous existence of the character Prudence (just so they could sing Dear Prudence) and the final image of Lucy literally in the sky with diamonds (with the song really playing in the background) did not do anything for originality. (spoilers over)

And this was a great scene. As you can guess, it was Strawberry Fields Forever- totally trippy, and they layered on the images of the Vietnam war, and if you can get over how contrived/cliched that whole theme is, it was a nice edge of violence they added to the song there.

Click here for the opening scene of the film (which is one of my favourite parts because it goes slightly downhill from here). If anyone's not a hardcore fan of the Beatles, I'd say give this one a skip. The songs aren't their most well-known ones, and the ballads are only thrown in for very halfhearted love scenes that could be edited out without much consequence. Very impressed with Evan Rachel Wood though, who actually sings most of the songs.

Songs to look out for: While My Guitar Gently Weeps- Martin Luther McCoy, Because- whole cast, Girl- Jimmy Sturgess, Blackbird- Evan Rachel Wood, Happiness is a Warm Gun- (the guy who played Max) , A Day in the Life- Jeff Beck, and the best one, Let It Be- Carol Woods and Timothy T. Mitchum.

Speaking of Evan Rachel Wood, I absolutely loved her in Running with Scissors.

A psycho memoir about two psycho families, totally dysfunctional, completely whacky and very sad at the same time. Loved the entire film- i was literally quite riveted for the entire 1.5 hours. Go watch it everyone! Annette Benning is a genius. Everyone has a little madness in them, the world is so strange it's oddly comical yet tragic at the same time, there is no escape for insanity, and homosexuality is made even more twisted. Is it wrong i found Benning's character's delusions of grandeur very endearing.

Here's a scene- Click here.

And last of all... 21 Grams. It's sort of one of those playing-around-with-editing-and-saturation kind of films.. slightly experimental, like Crash meets Memento meets Pulp Fiction (at least in terms of editing) meets all depressing films with themes like racism, fate, mortality and heroism. Not that i didn't like it. Del Torro was great, Naomi Watts was great, Sean Penn is always great, etc etc; the whole thing was just so.. exhausting.

The editing moves between the future, the present and the past, and while all that is very dramatic and atypical of Hollywood (ie, a good thing for the most part), the ending was just so typical. Like (spoilers warning) YES WE GET IT, we lose 21 grams when we die (loss=death), we retain that when we're alive (unless you need a heart in which you lose one and gain one back), we gain weight when we're pregnant (gain=life), life is precious, poor Jack, cocaine is bad, fate and mathematics entwine, tattoos can be removed with a hot butter knife, and even though the title is tantalising, the entire film barely touches upon the potential of this loss/gain theme(spoilers over). Man. That was exhausting.

Lets take the road before us

Music: Xmas Carols

Okay. I don't want to bore everyone with lengthy narrative, so let me shorthand everything for you. Since finding the USB cable for my camera, these are all the labels that belong to the photos:

Deck the halls

Xmas dinner

Bangkok trip that was fantastic.

This last one here's for Domi- do you even REMEMBER taking this photo???

Quotes.

Clifford: (Xmas eve, outside Zouk) You know, im such a snob.
Domi: Why?
Clifford: Because I'm thinking like, hey im way too good to be standing out here with all these people! I need aircon!

Me: Nick wake up!
Nick: -grunt-
Me: WAKE UP PLEASE
Nick: -grunt-
Me: Hey my eyes hurt! OMG they hurttttt
Nick: (shooting out of bed) where where what happened!
Me: HAHAHA just kidding .. i got you to wake up
Nick: I am going to get you back for that.

Playing SimCity4-
Me: Can i put a police station here??
Nick: You can put it anywhere you want silly
Me: yeah BUT if i put the police station near the schools the prisoners might escape and attack the children!
Nick: HAHA you have worries never heard of before in SimCity

Nick: Look! They're going to build a house for the Mayor!
Me: ooh! LET'S PUT IT NEXT TO THE HOSPITAL. That way, if we get assassinated, we can be rushed next door and might not die!
Nick: oh..sure.

Domi: OH HELLO, so your name is GABRIEL?
Gabriel: yes.
Domi: ARE YOU AN ARCHANGEL?

Love and be silent.

Merry Christmas all :)Watch this one.

there's a light that never goes out

Take me out tonight,
where there's music and there's people
And they're young and alive.
Driving in your car,
I never never want to go home.
Because I haven't got one,
Any more.

You know how people always talk about the 'honeymoon' period of relationships, where everything is new and fresh, no one argues, you just keep learning new things to prolong infatuation, you have your 'first' everything, and the all-famous butterflies and jitters.

How is it that no matter how tired we are, no matter how late the hour, even if we'd been fighting, i still feel a pang of sadness every single time i open the car door to get out at the end of the night?

Take me out tonight,
Take me anywhere, anywhere
I don't care I don't care I don't care.
And in a darkened underpass, I thought,
Oh god my chance has come at last.
But then a strange fear gripped me and i just couldn't ask.

I just want to know that some things are for me, and by that i mean JUST for me.

Quiet domino, bury me now

Music: Jesus, etc; Wilco
"don't cry, you can rely on me honey"

Lacan: The mirror is where we, as children, catch a first glimpse ourselves and recognise our reflections as a separate entity. Often we forget that this 'separate space' is not real, but an illusion, and a kind of ideal "I" that we aspire towards, but not embody.

So what is it about Lacan's 'Mirror Image' theory that is so cruel? The real "I" is so much more disappointing when we can see the ideal.


you were right about the stars,
each one is a setting sun.

I <3 International Relations

Exams, part deux, Political Science:

9 Chapters in syllabus
studied 1 chapter (International Relations)
5 questions in total
International Relations came out in 2 sections (ie, both essays)
started studying 1.5 hours before the exam started
2 hours for exam
2 questions
1 hour for first question
1hour25mins before i walked out of exam hall

So concludes the module that is the bane of my existence.

I <3 the Bell Curve

Exams Part un, 20th Century British Lit:

Studied 6 texts (Carter, Winterson, Beckett, Stoppard, Eliot, Yeats)
Left out 3 texts (Joyce, Woolf, Scottish poetry)
Spent 15 mins getting from 'Fragrant Plant Garden' to exam venue
Used 4 texts (Carter, Winterson, Beckett, Stoppard) on gender and Derrida
Wrote 9 sides
Went to the loo 2 times
Finished 10 mins early
Sat 2 seats away from Rohai
Panicked for 8 mins before deciding on questions
Didn't understand 78 words in Scottish poetry

Quotes of the day-

Rohai: (to Hana) eh how come you have these notes! WHAT IS THIS!

Lilly: Check out my notes for Joyce! (proudly displays 3 meagre sentences on huge sheet of blank paper).

Me: Lilly are you okay?
Lilly: i don't know!
Me: so what questions did you do?
Lilly: I DON'T KNOW!
Rohai: WHAT do you mean you don't know!
Lilly: I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW! (throws up his hands in despair)

Lilly: There is no exam; there is only death.

Rohai: (to me) eh how come you have this book! WHAT IS THIS!

Me: You know, i think we should have a sushi van that goes from place to place with conveyor belts flowing out the back, and a grill with a chef.
Lilly: OH MY GOD that is the best idea i've heard in my entire life.

Rohai: you know ah, i was halfway through my paper and then i realised, WHAT is this Dialogue of Self and Soul about?! WHAT IS THIS!

Dr. Yeoh: (at the end of the paper) So for you people, I'm sure all of you have Fergus' echoing in your heads eh? 'how great webs of sorrow/Lay hidden in the small slate-coloured thing!'

One final patronising kiss

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

I think we're over the storm

Flying me back to Memphis,
Honey keep the oven warm.

Now hang me up to dry

I need a reality check. I have never been a fan of the 'love will grow' philosophy, but could it be that I was so afraid of lacking instant spark, that i forgot about the possibility of unsustainable love at first sight?

Either/Or

Music: Between the Bars ; Eliott Smith

"the things you could do/ you won't but you might"

Irony always seems to find us at our most despairing. I've spent the last week watching all 6 seasons of Sex and the City, and after cooping myself up rather unhealthily at home for the entire month, the invitations are in for parties - one week before exams. I'm utterly burnt out, not with studying, but with sitting on my ass watching TV.

Hot Piece of the Day:

A King Charles Spaniel Cavalier. This is what i want for Xmas, people. Don't forget.

But fire thought she'd really rather be water instead.

Music: Heart of Glass ; Nouvelle Vague

"we could've made it crusin', yeah"
They say A swallow doesn't make a spring. Well maybe then this spring could bring the swallows.

If you see her, say Hello

Hot Piece of the Day:Hot bitch Elizabeth Perkins as Celia Hodes on Showtime's Weeds. I love that woman.

This weekend marks the last one i will be slaving over a stupid essay- all the rest from now til doomsday will be for slaving over my exam preparation -.- Oh, and since i can't comment on Stardust, having NOT WATCHED IT YET, Bee Movie is a sad but adequate substitute. Renee Zell-whatever should use her pretty whispery voice more and hide her blotchy face. She looks like a melting cake.

15 Steps to Post-Modernist Literature:

1) Fragmented structure
2) Episodic chronology (or lack thereof)
3) Multiplicity of self
4) Upheaval of a patriarchal society that is oppressive, along with its ideals
5) Social criticisms
6) Search for meaning abolished
7) Lack of meaning established
8) Death treated lightly to highlight meaninglessness of life

9) Intertextuality heavily employed

10) Meta-fictional elements

11) Constant undermining/irony of epiphanies, meaning, languge, and culture

12) Strong motifs that are ambiguous

13) Lack of meaning = changeability of every single thing = instability of language

14) Elusive ending (or lack thereof)

15) Sweeping philosophy that must be unique.

AAAANNNND you've got a post-modernist piece ready to go.

'Stay', you said we'd build a nest

So i left my life

Tried on your friends,

Tried on your opinions.

So when the bridges froze and you did not come home,

I put our snowflake under a microscope.

Guess my heart's been hard to find

Baker baker, can you explain, if truly his heart
was made of icing, now
and i wonder how mine could taste.

Burning down the house

Music: Tori Amos
"I just want a little passion to hold me in the dark"


Ever wonder why we sabotage things? The term, don't fix what ain't broken. Sometimes it doesn't apply. Sometimes just being static and fixed is not enough. People claw against injustice, bias, and rage. Yet, we don't fight back enough against the unspoken sins, the unknown, uncertain ones that keep us wondering. Someone called me a "sinker", one who purposely keeps her head underwater longer than she has to, drowning more than she has to. I think that's alarmingly accurate. I lie in bed longer than i should, I think about things that aren't necessarily there, and i push and push and still get no where. And then i dip my head in a little more.


I don't know if i'm becoming even more of a pessisimist than before, but everything's spinning out of control and if i couldn't stand it before, now it's only serving me more panic and desperation. It's not like i keep myself in misery on purpose- like i said, i keep trying to float, and you keep kicking my head back in.

Juli, if you're reading this. Your pillbox analogy is cruel. You assume status quo (and as Bryan says, assumptions are the mother of all fuckups). It assumes things remain static whenever you turn away and turn back. They never do. The world goes on and people go on. See, when you pick your pills and neglect the rest, they might just get tired and expire.



Hot Piece of the Day:

NUS's webcast system. Two days, 10 lectures to finish watching. 2 hours each.

my heart is like the ocean,
it gets in the way.
so close to touching freedom,
then i hear the guards call my name.

And my priest says, you ain't savin' no souls.

[ Tori Amos - Take to the Sky ]

The trick is to keep breathing

Boredom-Crushing Hot Link of the Day: Jeff Dunhan's Achmed the Dead Terrorist - viewed 6 million times and counting.

This stuff is hilarious. No joke. Dunhan is apparently the best ventriloquist in the world, and he does wicked stand up. Best part? 'I say.. "Ello, I'm Lindsay Lohan!" ' - special thanks to Yuhao.

Anyway, today marks day #239483742834 of Operation Mountain Tortoise and i must say, staying at home is at first calming, then addictive, then so frustratingly banal you'd do anything for a bit of release, even run through the streets naked shouting 'Eureka!'. Okay maybe not. At least i've, in a miraculous burst of inspiration, dashed off my 6-page Film essay in 1.5 hours, rendering the rest of my day a blissful/triumphant stupor. Not productive at all. Need.. to.. survive.. this.. week..

Hot Piece of the Day:

I can't decide if the hot piece is Jeff Dunhan (who reminds me of a more humorous version of Parkman from Heroes, but is a little hotter), or Achmed. I think for the 'i kill you', the doll wins.

So maybe im still a fool

Music: Love Foolosophy (Mondo Grosso Love Acoustic Mix) ; Jamiroquai
"i dont want the world i want you"

It's a great remix. Watch it here for musical enlightenment.

Quiet Saturday night. I mean, i've cooped myself indoors all week in a desperate attempt to gain artistic insight, or at least to finish all my damn work. Well, so far i've gotten as far as 3/4 of a Romanticism essay, 3/4 of Wuthering Heights, 0 to 6/7s of a creative writing short story (depending on quality of writing), and finally managed to get out to Video EZY to rent Psycho and Citizen Kane for film essay that still has yet to exist.

We're having dinner guests over tonight which = oxtail stew, shepherd's pie, spinach pizza, garlic bread, fruit salad, avacado salad, wine til you drop, and cheese/grapes/crackers. I love having dinner guests. Michelle and i gossiped about the sad state of NUS folk (not you guys my dear friends) and tried to convey to the parents the fact that golf is NOT the panacea to all health trouble/ social awkwardness/ stress-filled existences.

Today i spilled hot green tea all over my 'countdown calendar' for the holidays- VERY bad omen, according to myself. Diluted days of existence, scalding experiences, and fading of the ink of spirit. Hard times indeed

Hot Piece of the Day:

Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).

Memorable Quotes:
'You eat like a bird.'
'A son is a poor substitute for a lover.'
'i think i have one of those faces you can't help but believing.'
'They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching... they'll see. They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...”'
'shut up! shut up!'


Haha, gotta love him.

Taste your love along the way

Music: Ten Years Gone; Led Zeppelin

"did you ever really need somebody and really need them bad?"

I don't know when i turned into a swooning, sentimental, bi-polar fool. People say the key to accepting change is adaptation. But what if we can't draw distinctions between adapting to something, and getting so used to it that it becomes important enough to it consume you and take over your life? By that i mean so far under your skin that you can barely remember what things were like before.

As far as intense emotions and sensations go, I cope with rage well enough. Really bad bouts of gastric-flu type fatigue nausea will tame me and i'll go quietly to bed. Happiness can be contained by detaching myself. So for the life of me, i don't know why i can't detach myself from the emotions that do bother me. Disappointment. Hurt. Jealousy. Seemingly gentler on the intensity scale, but it's the private hells that can kill the fastest.

I'm passing days in a robotic daze- and maybe that's the only way to survive. I do my work, eat food without manically pursuing the 'dietry nutrition' page (maybe that's one bonus), go to school, lie in bed and stare around listlessly, and time still passes by either blinkingly fast, or in laguid, torturous stretches. When im not simply passing time, im paranoid; I analyse everything, i wonder why time spent playing xbox can't be time spent with me. I swing incessantly from doubting my own beliefs, to a violent stubborness to cling onto them. I come up with worst-case senarios so i can cope with the future. I'm afraid of imagining a better time, although those thoughts are the only ones that get me through. I'm sick of asking, is this permanent? is this a sign? is this going to happen even after 3 weeks? does he just not know? am i being unreasonable? And all i can do is rail in vain, and quietly acquiesce. What else can i do. I mean, i don't want to see my worst-case senarios played out but nothing is convincing me otherwise.

Hot Piece of the Day:

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I chose an unremarkable kind of cover for the picture because, well, today is a day of suppression. I need to survive.

'May you not rest, as long as i am living. You said i killed you- haunt me, then' -Heathcliff

Easy like sunday morning

Music: KT Tunstall; Heal over
"Everybody sails alone but we can travel side by side"

Anyway the title of today's entry is somewhat ironic because i'm going to talk about my pet peeves. Yes, list updated as of today, the 1st of November 2007.

1) Neon-coloured highlighters. I realise all highlighters have to be "neon" but i especially shrink away from the orange and yellow ones like we flee from the glare of the sun. Which brings me to,
2) the Sun.
3) People who say "have a sit" and "seat down". If they can pronounce both words, WHY ARE THEY CHANGING THEM . are they confused? are they stupid?
4) running out of hot water in the middle of a shower/ streaming videos that stop halfway. I decided to put them under the same number because they share a general kind of 'misplaced hope' and 'first they give then they take away' philosophy.
5) The phrase "jolly well".
6) People who ask me, 'What can you do next time as a lit major?'. Well it's really none of their beeswax is it? why so elitist? why so narrow-minded? Well, i can tell the difference between modernism and post-modernism. i can read a 600 page novel in a night and actually know what classical form is. Can they? I think not, my friend.
7) Those diabolical frozen peas/carrots/corn vegetable combination. What do they do but add needless colour like highlighters do? They certainly don't bring any kind of viable flavour that doesn't offend your palate and make you want to hurl. And there's something really offensive in really. small. foods.
8) Typos.
9) Clothes in a store that have no price tags on them.
10) Tickling.
11) Computer trouble. Although i've been resigned to my fate, being of a computer-illiterate ilk that machines have some kind of thing against.

That's about it, folks. If you ask me, i've mellowed somewhat. Speaking of number 11, my Hot Piece of the Day was going to be Mr. Rochester but i can't seem to upload photos. BAH.