wear that red ribbon

December 1st marks World Aids Day - don’t just think of pink fairies, campy Fitness-Firsts, dildo kings, nerdy poofs and Carmen Mirandas wanna-be. Forget the dyke-day-out at the Indoor Wall Climbing Marathon and ball-less scratching competition. Don’t just go mindlessly and pay rm$40 for a badaboom-body-gyrating fun at Bliss or Liquid. Don’t just wear the red ribbon, wear it knowing why you do. Don’t wanna be a downer but don’t wanna be cuntlips about it. But just think of all those who are living it, those who suffered and those who died to mark this day that should have never been here in the first place. Lets raise our cheap-champagne glass to toast to all the wonderful people who could only live on borrowed time; may they live to fulfill their dreams – to see that each and everyone of us help and contribute, just so they may live their lifetime.

The Endless Nights

how orgasmic can a comic book cover be? I bought this last night at Kinokuniya. I am so utterly dissatisfied because right in front of me are other gaiman’s character spinoffs and i can’t afford but one hardcover. There were four books on Lucifer (“The Divine Comedy”) – god’s favourite fallen angel and I am still waiting to see if the eyeball eating nightmare Corinthian will have his own book too since Death’s series has been graceful, loving (yes, she loves all of us and in the end of time, we will go to her… enticing lil bitch, ain’t she?) and human. Even Titania and Auberon of The Faerie had a book each and like Death (‘The High Cost of Living’ and ‘The Time of Your Life’), just two books will never be enough to tell a story of a person/god/entity. Even David Beckham has more than two book with his mugshot smile on it.

I stayed up till the cock-crowing A.M. devouring every word that stared back at me. You wouldn’t believe how etherealistic it is; gaiman’s words don’t just tell a story, it embraces and brings my body into another sexual, empyrean and cosmical kind of realm. I am itching to finish the last of the pages but the experience of being stroked by gaiman’s words is just so sublime, that i’m taking my own sweet time. I just don’t want to miss anything and I just don’t want such a good read to come to and end.

For anyone who’s unfamiliar with the works of master fictionist Neil Gaiman, the book Endless Nights is a good place to get acquainted with his main character, Dream of The Endless. It paints an episode for each of the siblings of The Endless. Every story box details an unwritten situation, pictures are definitely worth more than mere thousand words. Neil Gaiman allows a different illustrator for each sibling and starts off with (my personal favourite) Death by Sandman’s original artist P. Craig Russell. Can a man barr his door with steel and bricks to keep Death waiting (at his door) while he plans and throws magnificent masquerade parties in grandiose scale year after year after year? Will he, won’t he be so rich so bored so jaded that he ultimate wish is to be crushed under an elephant whilst on the brink of orgasm between two virgins? Will he, won’t he be so rich so bored so jaded that he knows he’s keeping the one thing away which will only fulfill the only condition to living a lifetime?

That is only the tip of the iceberg, people. One day when i’m eccentrically, outrageously and disgustingly rich and have i mentioned – rich (forget the famous part) and Neil Gaiman has passed on; I’d buy his body, mist it in a cyrogenic chamber and keep him frozen amongst my collection of plastic covered graphic and paperback novels he wrote, in my Le Chambre Comique covered wall to wall ceiling to floor with life size figurines and wallpapers of The Family Endless next to Catherine Zeta Jones body in Wonder Woman outfit and Uma Thurman’s body in her Poison Ivy getup, her Lucy-Liu-killing-Samurai-sword and Dakota Fanning wax figure in a Shirley Temple dress. Who knows? I may just add Cuba Gooding Jr’s body in a Forest Gump outfit complete with the wooden bench and a box of chocolates. But Neil Gaiman’s is the shits. He is the KING of dreams, he is the Baron of emotions and conditions, fairy tales and gods, godesses and darkness; the only one who could make gentle glow of words pour out of Lucifer Morningstar’s luscious lips and very much my current-day Christopher Marlowe.

The book is Endless Nights, people – don’t forget to put it in your Christmas wishlist…

Gone to Clinic

My laptop (still haven’t got a name for this puppy…) is currently in the mobile pc clinic in bukit mertajam, penang waiting to get a new svideo anally inserted so i can watch dvd on tv. As if anyone wants to know, i won’t be online for a while – until my puppy comes back to me…

btw – any suggestion for a name?

Remembering Stonewall

The landmark case of the gay revolution aptly happened in 1969, the same year Woodstock grouped tripping hippies for a rock festival, the fore drag queens and pretty boys of New York decided that ‘fuck off’ isn’t enough anymore – they needed to tell the world that queers do have balls. No longer will we stay behind beehive wigs or fade into the glory hole, let’s remember Stonewall -

Happy Books

Last Week

After having read The Beach, Henry and I spent more than two hours scouring Kinokuniya for a book each to bring home. Feeling utterly dissatisfied and incomplete, he ransacked my miserable collection of literature, took home All That Rage by Yasmin Borland and left me with his Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused. I promised him a good read but I also warned him that this is a chick lit.

Fast forward 7 days, we meet again – at 1U for a movie (The Matrix) then to dinner at Fridays. He filed in a complaint. He couldn’t relate to the book. Didn’t I warn him, it was going to be a chick lit? A debate was looming. BOOKS! His list of ‘I-can’t-relate-to’ books includes works of Terry Pratchett and J. K Rowling. “What do you mean you don’t like Harry Potter?!” I asked him, feigning a connoisseur’s defense. Its not like he has no imagination, everything about Henry is art. Its all just too feel good, he says. He’s probably looking for something that would deliver an impact more intense than The Beach. Warren from across the table was snapping his fingers trying to find an explicatory word… snap snap snap, “whats that word…?”

“You know the word; snap snap.. when you just want to read about something a bit mental, a bit rough, dark and real and all that is *good* cannot be true …I will come back to you on that word” Warren explained. The word aptly described Henry’s reaction to happy books is cynical. Although I love the Harry Potter having read them all, listening to Henry also made me realized; perhaps I have become a sheep, bleating with the rest of the world about the maa-maa-magical wonder of the triumph of good over evil. Baa-Baa-But isn’t that what makes a bestseller?

We’re from the Ethan Hawke generation, part Kurt Cobain, all one-hand-in-my-pocket-and-the-other-smoking-a-cigarette kind of generation. Confused bourgeois child and altogether living la vie boheme, full of attitude and angst. “Therefore you must read corny feelgoods sometime,” I reasoned with him. We can’t yodel forever seeking unseekable answers to who is it that will save our soul because we have to move on and since we cannot afford to be prozac happy then we would just have to make do with bloody chick lit. Now Jewel Kilcher’s gone all bubblegum and Alanis’ last hit song is about thanking india. It’s a prerequisite in today’s generation where everything is pop and candy. Why should they be angry? They’re the children of the OKBs (orang kaya baru). Pop handphone, pop PDAs, pop Wi-Fi, pop camera-phone! Pop ecstasy pop pop pop…

I should understand Henry’s perception since half of my collections are works by none other than Neil Gaiman. But Gaiman’s is adult’s fairy tales in thought provoking graphics while the Chairman Mao is hard-core realism, black humour, exoticism, eroticism and brutality. The kind of stories one can imagine happening in the back alleys of Communist China. I certainly would not expect to see Desire, Despair and Delirium challenging Dream to instill hope in human being; although symbolically – in real life, it does happen.

There must be a reason why I love Harry Potter besides wishing Hermoine Granger was 22 instead of 12. After all I can’t read depression back to back without a little tryst with Betty & Veronica. It only serves to balance my state of mind, so I don’t fall off and turn deranged. Although I did read Harry Potter back to back so much so that I really did believe I could pitch a wingardium leviosa and levitate my cold beer to me. But depressions do create geniuses and it feeds an active creative mind like Hen’s and since creativity is the very essence of his present and future, he is constantly in search for mind-fucks. No nonsensical self-centered talking black dogs and definitely no more Yasmin Borland. Soon, i’m sure Warren will be adding the latest work of Amy Tan or Terry Pratchett to his collection and I have my eyes on the delicious array of Neil Gaiman at the Mind Shop though it still depends on how I feel – I might just end up reading the non-fictional Blood of Revolution that’s been sitting in my room since I got back from KK. And as for Henry, I fervently hope he will come across another thought provoking paperback soon enough because it would be such a shame if all that happy books could destroy his ingenuity.

a prayer from this old lady

now i lay me down to sleep
i pray thee lord my soul to keep
help me through the morning bits
when i wake and see my sagging tits…

Katak Di Bawah Tempurung Kerajaan

That’s us – He knows that the kataks can now hop out of the tempurung and find books on toyols and pontianaks, so help us god. So he reacts by taking away our freedom to read, little by little. His argument is seemingly simple: these books bear no educational value… BUT, let’s not ban Stephen King or Harry Potter, he says, because the former’s work is for adults and the latter is benign.

So what exactly are the criteria books need to have in order to induce nightmares? Where exactly is he getting at? And precisely who will benefit from this? Surely he knows that we are capable of forming our own thoughts regarding any books. Surely he didn’t think that we would buy these books purposely to scare the shit out of our arse.

If Chor Chee Heung needs to make a statement through a ban, he must exercise the true extent of the powers vested upon him by the people and make the ban true and wholesome. A half baked ban is very distasteful and it leaves the people extremely dissatisfied, not to mention – disoriented. Make that ban a blanket ban so we, the people, can sit back and watch what a fool he’s allowed himself to be. There’s always Amazon.com –

To my dear DEPUTY HOME MINISTER, Datuk Chor Chee Heung…

This was in THE STAR NEWSPAPER yesterday; take a trip to www.sharizal.net – you will find angry like-minded young malaysians air out their outrage at the Deputy Home Minister Datuk Chor Chee Heung and his brilliant idea to BAN BOOKS THAT CAUSES NIGHTMARE. There is one common point these future voters want the government to know: DO NOT INSULT and UNDERMINE OUR INTELLIGENCE.

ban this ban that – my! won’t we be the ‘cleanest’ country?

E M M E T T H O N E Y C U T T

Queer As Folk character: Scott Lowell as Theodore Schmidt and Peter Paige as Emmett Honeycutt

Observe Peter Paige’s (QAF character: Emmett Honeycutt) answer to Larry King’s question in the CNN’s Larry King Live Interview: “Queer As Folk” Immoral or Harmless? Aired on April 24, 2002.

KING: You play, Peter, the character you play, I understand, is really out there.
PETER: He’s really out there.
KING: He’s sort of ‘swishy’ as you might say.
PETER [laughing]: You could say swishy. I wouldn’t, but you could.
KING: Danger in stereotyping there or do you know people like that?
PETER: I know people like Emmett. I wanted very much — what I think is so great about Emmett is he’s very effeminate. He’s out there, He’s unapologetically gay and he really likes himself. He’s sort of figured out that he was OK. Whether or not you think so doesn’t really matter to him. And I thought that was really revolutionary to see on TV.
here’s my two cents worth:
I adore the character Emmett and now I’m beginning to love Peter Paige. Larry King is the expert interviewer but Peter establishes (in the ‘swishy’ answer) that not only two people can have different opinions but in the process laugh about it too. When King throws the ‘danger in stereotyping’ card, Peter tells him the truth about Mrs. Theodore Smidtz ie. Emmett doesn’t give a toss about what anyone would say of him. Mr. King need to be better prepared in the future so as not to put his own words in his interviewee’s mouth (“…as you might say…”).

Another favorite of mine somewhat similar to that is:

“Keep your friends close but your enemies even closer”

~The Godfather

Posted by: Yanti at November 5, 2003 09:23 PM

hey yanti, for a minute i thought it was Sarah Michelle Gellar who said it in Cruel Intention… *lol* just kidding ~