A friend sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago, telling me how beautiful the Christmas decorations were at some mall. Truth be told, i find Christmas mall decorations rather nauseating.
The garish festive music interlaced with advertisments of cheap couches, discounted dairy products and artificial affection. Large men dressed in red and a fake beard sitting on a large chair in the middle of fake snow, leeching money off parents of inglorious children for photographs and false hope.
How did the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, the symbol of humility, strength and modesty, turn into an economically and socially manipulated display of forced cheerfulness and goodwill?
This, coming a person who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ in the first place, is astonishing isn't it?
Buying cheap gifts in bulk for friends you have been avoiding for the whole year? Treating your family for a meal in an overpriced, overcrowded fancy restaurant, when you don't even bother to call when you're away from home?
Is this what the holiday season is all about?
Are we just being nice to people because Hallmark tells us to?
Yesterday my best friends came over to my place for pizza and ice cream and inside jokes. The occasion wasn't covered in glitter or came with a fanfare but it was the one of the best afternoons i've had.
Touching Bruno inappropriately on the iPhone, listening to my Mom's obscene jokes, coming up with This-should-be-printed-on-a-tshirt lines.
If we truly cherish someone, shouldn't we be nice to them everyday (you know, except when they're PMS-ing and acting like Persephone) Not just every Christmas, Birthday, Anniversary, Saint Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Kedahan Sultan's Birthday etc.
I've stopped buying people gifts they don't deserve because i've come to realise that the best gift for my Mom would be me telling my brother "Don't be rude to Ma!". The best gift for my roommates would be to keep their secrets safe. The best gift for a sad friend would be a hug after sim lab and no questions asked.
I guess i have a knack at reducing universal problems into a couple of simple sentences, but i can never settle my personal problems. Or have the courage to face their demonic wrath.
I understand perfectly why my parents haven't said a word to each other since i got home so well that i can write a whole novel about it. But there's nothing i can do about it and sometimes i fear that it will jeopardize my whole perspective on marriages.
And i also cannot make KH understand that i am not that person he fell in love with 4 years ago and that he can't see that he doesn't have feelings for the Aimee now, instead he's wrapped up with the idea of being in love with the concept of an Aimee.
Nobody ever told me that maturity was directly proportional to perpetual feelings of shittiness. Acknowledging problems you cannot solve.
Clement was going through my 2004/05 blog entries and he said he'd love to see me fall off a chair like how i used to.
I'd like to be 16 again and break into hysterical laughter after falling off a chair too.
I dislike myself. I do not understand the universe, so i try to make up twisted conspiracy theories to compartmentalize the world. A futile way to try to comprehend the incomprehensible.
This is very debatable, but i don't like pretty people. Uhh...maybe 80% of them, i don't know. Because beautiful people have choices.
They can choose their friends. They have a say over their lovers. They choose their lifestyles. They control their influences.
With choices comes freedom. With freedom comes authority. With freedom comes power. Chuck Palahniuk once put it "Beauty is power the way money is power, the way a loaded gun is power" or something like that.
Being a person whose head probably spins in the opposite direction as they earth, i don't particularly like power. Why? Because people can't control theirs'.
Perhaps it's with experience, or with borderline-paranoid observational skills, i find that beautiful people are more likely to manipulate you and wring you till you have nothing left.
I once had a friend who was very pretty. She was the school's social butterfly and EVERYBODY loved her. She was flawless. But commit to being her friend for more than 6 months and you'd notice that she was everything you thought she was not.
Her favourite past time was backstabbing. And her most remarkable talent was uhh...acting. I spent a long time trying to figure out why people behave that way, and i concluded that it was simply because, they could.
They can afford to lose people who cared about them because new ones come along at the rate of 75 per second. In the end they just end up with 1739 friends on facebook, and not one who understands them.
When i meet someone who's beautiful and doesn't try to screw people over for their advantage, i genuinely like them. Really, really like them.
Because although they have power, they choose not to abuse it. That is, control.
Control is sexy.
*
That might just be the 2nd most fucked up theory i've ever came up with.
You want to hear about the first?
You know how every year we celebrate BIRTHDAYS.
What is a birthday? A birthday is a birth-day. Like the day you were born?
So technically, we are only born once. We only have one BIRTHday.
Every subsequent year should only be birth-anniversaries.
Lee Zhi Wei, my next musical challenge for you would be to write a catchy Happy Birth-Anniversary! song.
I dont know if it's because of my hypersensitivity but lately the people around me has been feeling very down.
Is it very sexy to be dark and ominous these days?
If it's infectious and i started it then I'M SORRY LAH! I will call plague-control first thing tomorrow morning.
Thing is, after 20 years of being a homunculus (har har. i learnt that in The Big Bang Theory today. It means small human being. Jeremy thinks i'm malnourished. Actually we also learnt that in motor cortex physiology but it meant something else) and observing the properties of human behaviour. I am sad to admit that i do not know how to cheer people up.
Sometimes i'd throw food in their direction, but i really should stop that because it only makes them put on weight. And if they are anything like me, their weight should be inversely proportional to their general happiness.
And if you give them other consumables like morphine! gasp!, if they cheer up it wouldnt be to your credit.
(I KNOW LAH I AM SO UGLY!)
A good way to not feel like the world is stomping on you would be to find an appropriate distraction.
My roommate Alice brought back a silly board game a couple of weeks ago and we spent the whole night playing it. The stakes were currypuffs!
At the time i was feeling pretty shitty but that no-brainer board game, which i wasn't even good at, made me laugh so hard i could've sprained an abdominal muscle.
It's easier to preach than to practice. But a lot of times we just got to take pride in the little things we manage to achieve. For example, i am very proud of
a) being up to date in Glee episodes
b) Dr Ranjith praising my streak culture
c) Angelin not being able to send me MMSes but she gives them to me via facebook mobile
(Uh, yes i enjoy children's books)
If all else fails, just embrace your sadness. I mean, sorrow is your humanly emotion too. Why should happiness be welcomed and sadness be shunned. The more you consciously push something away, the harder it springs back at you.
So yes, blast some emo songs and slit your wrists superficially (please disinfect your instruments) cry and whine about it.
This writer does not endorse self-harm. She just enjoys dramatic writing.
In my most far-fetched dreams, i'd be married to KK and we'd have 20 gorgeous children.
Uhh maybe not. I wouldn't want to be with someone with more male fans than i do. And right now i have, none.
My favourite part of Dental Dinner wasn't the 4 hours of getting ready, or the 23820934 dresses i tried on, or performing in front of Professor Smales.
It was Shan's makeover. Jac, Melanie and I made him try on six thousand outfits and everything looked so refreshing on him, i was contemplating robbing a bank.
I even managed to talk him into getting a hair cut, and everything paid off on that night.
He has been elevated to the position of the most popular guy in class. I can feel Raymon's soul curdling.
The only downside to his popularity is that he has been committing acts of strangeness like
a) Stealing umbrellas from simulation lab lockers
b) Getting rid of his placid, mask-like face which we have all been so accustomed to
c) Sweet talking me so that he could take advantage of my ability to drive.
But i like his new look. If you stick your fingers into your eyes and ask Shan to stand a little further away, you can almost pretend he's Dr George.
The best thing about this makeover is how little it has changed him. He still spends all his time watching movies, and meticulously reviewing them. He still unbashfully praises the girl he likes publically. He still comments in my blog as someone else and acts as if i'm stupid enough to not know.
I stole this off facebook, so the size is wonky.
There is another issue that i feel the need to address. Recently i changed my display picture and that has been getting a little bit more attention than i am used to.
Now people whom i have not talked to for 2387492 years are all of a sudden entranced by me. Not by my biting wit, or my unquestionable intellect, but because of my "good figure". FML.
I don't think i've ever met anyone who was ao ambiguous about looking pretty. But i feel like such a FRAUD!
If i have to spend hours gluing on fake lashes and applying fake skin and comb my fake hair, i seriously do not look like that in real life.
So yes, if you SUDDENLY have this need to meet up with me for lunch. Or SUDDENLY want to have my phone number because you seem to have lost it 73 years ago. I'm sorry to disappoint, but no thank you.
Dressing up and pretending to be pretty is like starting a fire. You no longer have a certainty. You no longer know what people want from you. I may not be able to get away with as many things, but i'm pretty well adjusted to being plain looking.
But here's another picture of KK. As Angelin's homecoming present.
