Ah, it's over. Oh, that I had Paranoid sitting on my CD rack, so that I could put it on and breathe in the atmosphere of War Pigs*. Perhaps a strange desire on my part, given the pretentious pseudo-intellectual tendencies that I sometimes present. But occasionally, I think you just need to get back to basics. And what better way than to hear Mr. Iommi do his thing?

I have a fair few comments to respond to, not to mention posts to make. There was something in particular I wanted to write about..what was it? Ah, that's right, I remember now.

There is a set of comics (or tracts, as the website calls it) here that are apparently handed out by (fairly hard-core I'd imagine) Christians to try and convert people to their faith. Nothing surprising about this. But some of the stuff, for instance this one makes me quite sad. I don't know if sad is the right word, but when I read about the person who writes these, I get the feeling that he believes what he says. This is how he sees the world. I think he really does believe that D&D provides "intense occult training", and while initially I must admit I laughed, I then wondered about what it must be like to live with such a mindset.

I hesitated to provide the above link because I thought it might seem like I was mocking the writers. But no, that's not it - it truly is a feeling of pity and sadness.

I don't know whether it's wrong of me to feel pity; it's certainly not mockery in any form, but rather I think it's just a feeling that..ah, I have come to a potentially touchy conclusion on thinking about this. Here goes: I think (I'm not sure though, I could be mistaken) the reason I feel pity is because I feel that God (if he exists) wouldn't want them to live like this (devoting their entire lives to him, telling others why their lifestyle is wrong and that they ought to embrace the one true God, etc.). Ironically enough, by making such a claim, am I not acting in a similar way that they do, taking my own beliefs about God and the universe and then trying to explain why the actions of others are wrong? I think that, as usual, I am employing a double standard. But is there a way to reconcile the fact that it seems to be rational to believe that God doesn't want us to live life like that? As I type this, I think the answer is no, and wonder whether rationality is relative. Actually, I think it would be true to say that rationality's interpretation is relative. Of course, we also have the matter of whether rationality has any place at all when talking about God, but that's a story for another rainy day.

Enough pseudo-philosophical nonsense for now, there'll be plenty of time for that later.

Yessir, the next three months should see this blog once and for all claim the title of greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind. It's time to wash away the filth and sins of the past and rise up and snatch eternal victory.

I can't say that I have any particular plans for this holiday. It just seems like such a long time ago that I was sitting here, blogging about how I was going to spend the last break. I thought that having a blog would inspire me to do interesting things and then post about them (thereby piling on the ego-stroking), but alas, it never came to fruition, or at least, not to the extent that I would have liked. Heh, it would seem that instead, I spent most of the day immersed in Baldur's Gate, which was a fine accomplishment in its own right. For now, I have the blog to remind me of the failures of the past, so that I may look ahead to successes in the future (what am I blathering about?) Anyhow, I'll be sure to keep you informed, gentle reader.

* I can't remember if I mentioned this, but apparently Joy Divison cited their influences as Black Sabbath and Dostoevsky. That just cracked me up when I read it.

Update from Nov '10: I still remember my desire to have Paranoid, and the somewhat suffocating need for it to be "sitting on my CD rack". It took me six years to go ahead and purchase the darn thing. I'm almost tempted to leave it unopened.

It was little over a year ago that I made my first post to this blog, back when I was devoid of pretention and the various delusions that are the driving force of most of my posts these days. It's hard to believe that another year has gone by, but even moreso that I've been blogging fairly consistently for a year. I thought it was just another temporary distraction, but it has lasted longer that many of my other "projects", and I can't help but feel a certain amount of pride with what I've made of it. It is still indistinguishable from the vast majority of blogs out there; there are countless pages that offer far more, but I don't care really. I'm happy that I've managed to do something which I can hopefully look back on with some sense of accomplishment.

I can't help but wonder how long the whole blogging-spree is going to last. Countless new blogs seem to pop up by the minute, but is it ever going to end? You know, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no, they are not going away anytime soon. For better or worse, they are here to stay.

What of this blog though? Will it ever be set out into the pastures when its time comes? Somehow I also associate this blog with my youth, and the last remnants of it. As though when I lose it altogether, I will put this silliness behind me and become lost in some meaningless pursuit. But I don't want that to happen; as I've said before, this may be my only shot at immortality.

A belated happy birthday, dearest blog.

I apologize in advance, for this is the sort of post that I loathe to make. One that's about me, and directly connected to my life. But I think this captures a very interesting state, at least as far as my mental health goes.

I thought I might stop posting till the exams got over, but lately I've had a hard time going through a day without thinking about how I might actually fail a unit this semester. If it turns out that I don't, then this will be the worst case of paranoia that I've ever-experienced. I actually feel like I may get a panic-attack soon. I've been paranoid about things before, but never have I actively believed that I may fail an entire unit. Assessments, yes, but a whole unit, no.

Part of the problem is that I have already failed two assignments one assignment* (see edit) this term, and the more I think about it, the more it seems likely that I will fail a couple more. I have no idea why things have gotten to the state they are. It probably has to do with my manic-depression at the start of semester, eh? I was in no mood to do any form of study, and I guess I slipped further and further behind.

It strikes me that the moment that these marks are put online, the few seconds it takes for the page to load is like waiting for a moment of truth. Nervous ticks where the nervous mind plays all sorts of tricks on you. I can easily picture the future-me staring at a poor mark and just feeling like I've hit rock-bottom. At the same time, I can picture a future-me staring at a pass (not a spectacular mark, but a pass nonetheless) and laughing away this silliness. Oh how I hope it's the latter.

If it turns out that I do fail, watch out world, because I'm going to lash out. Hah, I couldn't resist; no, in truth, if I do fail, what will happen is I will probably go into another spiral of self-pity and soul-searching, with the icing on this infernal cake being me having to explain this failure to those around me. Especially parental-figures.

If I don't fail, I will update this post and make a mockery of myself for being so stupid.

I've remarked to a few people that I don't know anyone else whose marks could go down as much as 40% between two semesters, without a serious crisis occuring in their lives. What is it that makes me so untemperamental? I'm obviously a loose cannon, brimming with creativity and energy that I can't be contained...no, I kid you again, it's probably due to the fact that I am a narcissistic fool who has become blinded by grand idealistic notions of life, and subsequently forgotten how much I take for granted.

I don't know why, but I seem to have this almost instinctive reaction to script out conversations and events in my head well before they come to fruition. To be more precise, when the situation is bad, much like it is now. In my head, I explore virtually every way in which a conversation, say, ends up with me being in even worse shape than what I'm currently in. So, already I have scripted out in my head me having to ask an honours coordinator whether my WAM can be considered excluding software this term, after having failed it miserably, thereby ruining all future prospects, and so on, you get the general idea. I've also scripted out me having to schedule a meeting with the lecturer, trying to explain why I think I should be passed, and being denied on the basis of the tutor's impression of me (not a very good one). Oodles of pessimism or what? This, to me, is the strongest indication that I do indeed have serious, serious issues.

I would never be able to make it in the real world, precisely because of incidents like this. I give a whole new dimension to chronic paranoia, eh? It's times like this that I wish there were an interventionist God. (Maybe there is? Who knows.)

You also tend to realize that art can't always save you. No matter how powerful words, thoughts and feelings may be, nothing seems to matter in the face of such bleak desperation. If only I were stronger-willed, then I probably could embrace concepts more powerful than myself, and find the strength to do way with this excess paranoia. But it's always a case of "if only", ain't it? (No, it isn't, but humour me) I wanted to end this post with a nice poetic quote, an appeal to some higher power, but no, I won't do that. I am too nervous that the outcome of this situation will be a negative one, which will then mean that the quote will forever be tarnished, much like this post (which will surely go down in infamy in this little blog's history)

Edit:

* A funny thing happened with one of my "major" assignments, worth 15%. It was a machine marked assignment, where we had to hand in a program for a computer to mark. Now, obviously, the program that marks it isn't some highly sophisticated software, and as such it has some guidelines as to how the output should be formatted. For this assignment (which involved the computation of minimum spanning trees, for all 0 of you techies who read this), we had to display the output in sorted order.

I remember not being in the right mental state for that assignment, but it's hard to explain what a "right" mental state is. One big indication that things were not going well was when I came in on the day it was due forgetting to send my code in the morning. It just totally slipped my mind, even though it is there in nice bold letters on my calendar. So, I had to wait till I reached home to send in the code; it would still be well on time, but I felt uneasy that I forgot about an assignment worth 15%. I think the reason I forgot was that I hadn't done too much work on it that week because of another assignment (the one I am concerned about failing, and if I do, I will probably fail the entire unit due to the assessment requirements). Once I handed it in though, I was fairly confident that I would do alright; I was doubtful about whether I could get full marks, as one ought to expect with an assignment whose marking scheme as lax as this (if the output was right, you got full marks, no questions asked), but I didn't lose any sleep over it.

But then when the marks were published, I saw next to my SID a lovely 3 out of 15, a complete eyesore among the numerous 15s that littered the screen. Looking at the logs, I realized what went wrong. Would you believe it, the ouput for my program was not sorted. I had remembered a few days before that this was a requirement, and I thought I had made the necessary changes to sort the results, and then I conveniently forgot about it. But whoopee, my answers were all correct, just unsorted, but the program didn't care - it just failed me in almost all the tests!

That started my descent into paranoia I think, because I have never fared that badly in a major assessment before; certainly not in the last 10 years or so. I know, I know, marks are meaningless and knowledge is what is important, but I'm not talking about the difference between a credit and a high distinction, this was twenty out of a hundred versus a pass. Naturally I couldn't rest properly that night, and when I woke up the first thing I thought about was what a terrible, terrible mess I had gotten myself into. This one bad assessment meant my overall mark for the unit shot down to 60%, while the other students were living it up with comfortable 90+s. Even with scaling and weighting, I figured I was royally stuffed.

Desperate to see if anything could be done, I mailed the lecturer, asking (no, imploring) him to review the logs, and see whether he would consider passing me. There's a bit of a story behind that too. Like I mentioned earlier, I often pre-script conversations in my head, and the one with the lecturer was no different. I envisioned him replying quite coldly saying "Tough luck", and on some days even with him shouting at me for being so careless. He had a fairly neutral view of me during semester; I never said much in tutorials, so he couldn't be irked at me not paying attention, but at the same time I had a feeling he wasn't too pleased that I had virtually zero participation in discussions, unless forced.

But, even with my mind feeding me these possible outcomes, I bit the bullet and sent the mail anyway. After doing so, I thought a bit about what might go through his head when he read it. I put myself in his position, and figured that I would probably be irritated at a student who was so careless in not following the specifications that were clearly laid out. I would probably think such a student were a slacker, someone who obviously didn't care enough to pay any attention to detail. Lord knows it has happened before; it's so easy to judge someone based on one incident or two, when the truth can be oh so different. I saddened me that people can form a very different opinion of you than what the truth is.

Anyway, I predicted that the lecturer would refuse to budge, and based on this loose assumption I started criticizing this form of assessment in my head. I (somewhat rightly) scorned the idea that marks were not being awarded for knowledge, but rather for rigid adherement to a set of criteria. I started philosophizing about how transparent marking schemes aren't necessarily good or fair, but they can easily pretend that they are. You get the idea - I kept revisiting these ideas in my head till I felt I would explode.

But then, I was amazed to find out that the lecturer had, firstly, taken the time to read my mail, secondly, that he decided to take the time to investigate the matter, and finally, and most amazing of all, that he decided to upgrade the mark to 14. He reduced one mark because he didn't think it would be fair to other students, and I understand and agree with that. Yet it turned out that all the endless chatter in my mind, of me scrutinizing how things could go wrong, all turned out to be useless speculation. As the dust settled, I was reprieved for a lapse in concentration when handing in the assignment, and given an equal opportunity (not having to worry about a 30% deficit) to demonstrate knowledge come the final exam.

I am not out of the woods yet, I am afraid. For though this tale was long and seemingly reaffirming, this was not the subject I was scared of failing (which shows you how bad things are going for me). No, the other one is still a large question mark, because I am praying that I will somehow manage to scrape through, but the voices of doubt are growing stronger by the minute. I think the panic-attacks I talked about previously have started to set in (loss of breath at regular intervals?).

I can only hope that very, very soon I can edit this once again and give you a nice long tale about how everything turned out for the best in this subject. Yet the pessimism is stronger than ever, unfortunately.

One quick post before I let this blog go silent for a bit: here are a couple of atheist writings that are of some philosophical interest to me. I like to have my ideas challenged once in a while, I think, although I think when it comes to God and the like, I am less receptive.

Due to daylight savings, I tend to stay up an hour "extra", so now it's really Thursday. As a result, my prentention knows no bounds whatsoever - I mean, the following poem is utter nonsense that is perhaps indicative of a deep-seated superiority complex, even if it isn't intended to be about me. But I don't think it's a coincidence that so many of my poems of late have had this general theme of ascension (I mean, the guy in this poem is pretty much saying he is God), immortality, eternal youth, and to some extent evil. I think the real me is coming out; I mean, I suppose we all think about these things at some point, sometimes seriously, sometimes not so much so. But I am concerned that this makes up an active facet of my dreams and aspirations - it's not healthy, that's for sure. Then, of course, there's the fact that this perfectly fits the drivel you see on so many other sites, with the calculated and cliched rhyme and laughably over-dramatic style. But I'm comfortable with my flaws, really; after all, it isn't as bad as it used to be, and I can think of worse pieces of writing, both by myself and by other equally deluded souls.

---

I wish that someone with spirit true
Would offer me a flower,
For then as I reject it, you
Could watch their face turn sour;
Watch now, as love turns to hate
Watch now, as the lover turns her face
Which meets my cold, indifferent eyes
Which in a shrug, to her surmise
That I know all God's secrets.

She turns to leave and I wipe the tears
Of laughter streaming down my face,
I'd lived a lie for twenty years
But now that I remember
My one true name
I stand, and wake up
The consequences of December.

I have always believed that one day,
By the grace of that divine angel
Whose life I surely must have taken by birth,
I shall escape from these fools and their followers,
And I swear on all their holy fathers,
That I shall rip these leeches off one by one,
Climb to the top of that eternal mountain,
Seek my final meeting, and look to see
If it's my reflection that beckons me
To take a sip from the fountain.

I think this is significant: "Here's the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals will read bin Laden's threat and say, "Gosh, we better do as he says." Conservatives will read it and say, "Bring that mess ON, *****. We killed most of your friends, and we're going to kill you, too"". It's a conservative's view, and I think it explains some things about what is going on in this world. I get a very bad feeling from views like this again bin Laden - I can't tell if these gung-ho attitudes are just blowing off steam or what some people really believe in. It's just a bad vibe I get from reading stuff like this. It borders on fear, I think; one of the sharpest images of fear and uncertainty that I remember was when I read that Mullah Omar had sent out radio broadcasts in Afghanistan, telling the people to prepare for a holy war. Gah, I can't rationally explain any of this, I'd better dawdle to sleep and leave my quest for understanding politics better out of my blog for good.

Minor spoilers follow

I went into Collateral with high hopes, since the lovable duo on The Movie Show gave it a high rating. It's fair to say that my expectations were all met and rewarded, perhaps even moreso. I thought the pace really picked up quite soon into the movie, and like how Max (Jamie Foxx) is painted as a normal guy who dreams of greater things. He maintains that being a cab driver is only a temporary thing so that he can gain a footing for some "other projects", his real aspirations and dreams, but then as Vincent (Tom Cruise) finds out, he's been doing it for 12 years. Vincent is a hitman, and it's really interesting how the two form some sort of strange quasi-relationship till the inevitable climax. There are no punches pulled from either side - Vincent (quite rightly) sees that Max is deluding himself (he ironically remarks at the start "I can see you're one who does, not talks"), and that by being so reserved and idealistic he is going to wake up one day and realize that he is left with nothing. Yet Max sees that no matter how nonchalant Vincent remains about his profession, there are certain truths that he can't escape; his childhood shifting between an abusive father and a foster home has left him unable to figure out what anyone else in the world is thinking.

I think their relationship is somewhat epitomized by the way that Vincent saves Max's life in the club - of course, that Max's life is at risk in the first place is entirely Vincent's fault. Then, of course, there's Vincent's appreciation for jazz, and Miles Davis. His suggestion that they kick back and go to a place where the legends of the West Coast play, right after Vincent has killed another person on his list is priceless.

In a way, Vincent is a good influence on Max because he forces him to become assertive and stop living in his comfort zone - this is of course taken to the extreme in the movie's exciting ending. It's also interesting how these two people are almost like lost souls, wandering the heartless streets of LA at night - where "a man can be dead for 6 hours on the MTA, and no one even notices". It's Max's home that he defends when Vincent professes he feels like leaving everytime he visits the city, but it can clearly be a dark, lonely place, captured nicely by how Max, who hands have been tied to his steering wheel, cries out for help, only to be heard by muggers who proceed to take his wallet at gunpoint.

I don't see enough movies to be able to critically analyze them, or for that matter appreciate the good from the bad, so take my approval with a grain of salt.

My eye drifted towards the "Previous posts" box on the right of screen. I notice that 6 out of 10 posts start with the word I.

Here's an analysis of TS Eliot's one and only Prufrock. It made me realize that I am Prufrock in more ways than one. Everyday, speaking of Michaelangelo (talking about great men) and expounding my views on life and death, but at the end of it all, I am left measuring my life with coffee spoons, eh?

I suppose that too often I take an overly romantic and idealistic view of life. Yet, at the same time, when under duress I can also cut past all the pretty metaphors and notions in the sky and paint a cut and dry (read: oversimplified) picture of the world. How can one strike a balance? Should one strike a balance?

Paul McCartney's concert in Red Square was on a few hours ago. It was amazing to think about the effect The Beatles seemed to have had on communist Russia, it truly brought a smile to my weary face. I then tried thinking about any other artist who might evoke such a reaction from such a huge crowd (which at one point included Putin, although he didn't look like he cared much for the music!), and then I realized there was no-one that I could think of. I thought a bit about how, no matter how great or revolutionary Dylan, Morrison, Reed and the like may have been, it seems that there is nothing that quite matches the universal appeal The Beatles had (have?). Sigh, it must have been special to hear "Love Me Do" as a young lad/lass in 1962..

Tomorrow's US election will surely go down as one of the more intense ones in recent memory. I wonder how much truth there is to the rhetoric of this being an election not just for the US, but for the world itself..hmm. I don't quite know when the election takes place Sydney time, but I am very anxious about the result!

UPDATE: Wow, it was almost a repeat of the Australian election, eh? A lot closer though, but still, Bush did get the majority of the popular vote. I guess he really isn't as hated in his own country as you might think..? I wonder what is going to happen these next four years.