In Tha Ghetto

Is your neighbourhood turning into a ghetto? Mine is. Here are 10 signs that your 'hood is on the way down:

1. There are more drug dealers per square foot now in my 'hood than there were, say, ten years ago. What's your vice? Marijuana, codeine, crack, heroine, morphine, glue, speed, ecstasy, it's all there, baby.

2. The playgrounds are empty: Little kids don't come out and play any more, and it's not because the merry-go-round needs fixing.

3. Frenzied property development in the midst of festering urban decay: It's cool when new buildings come up, but not cool when there are a whole shitload of old ones still around that look like background scenery for films like Resident Evil 2.

4. A marked increase in police presence: It's OK when you see a cop car cruising down the street at four o'clock in the morning, on your way to a pre-hangover burger pick-up. It's shit when you see the fucker circling the block four times just to make sure he saw what he saw.

5. High school kids chugging beers in brown paper bags in front of the 7-11.

6. Roads that are forever in a state of ill-repair, then get magically re-paved just before the elections. Abra-Cadabra! Who's Your Daddy!

7. Sound-proofed neighbours: Intermittent screams? Check. Marital spats on mega-phone? Check. Cheesy pop songs broadcasted 24-hours a day at 150 decibels into the threshold of pain? Check.

8. Gestapo-sponsored kindergartens? Check. (see previous post)

9. Irregular garbage disposal. Need I elaborate?

AND DRUM-ROLL PLEASE, HERE'S THE BEST ONE SO FAR:

10. Nobody looks like they give a shit.

There you go.

I could go on, but this shit isn't funny anymore.

Haha.

I Don't Care Where, Just Far...

If I ever have kids, I'm not going to raise them in this country.

At least, not during their formative years. No Sir-ee.

There's a kindergarten a few doors down from where I live. It's a bright, colourful little house at the neck of our cul-de-sac, a spasmodic proliferation of purple, yellow, green and blue, an approximation of diarrhoea in full Nickalodean glory.

The kids sit out front, in neat little rows, in their beige shirts and little red shorts, unwittingly joining the ranks of collectivistic consciousness. A pudgy Drill Sergeant (Oh and she looks pretty butch to me) barks out orders at her cowering co-dependents:

"Why y'all never put all your bags properly?"

"No talking! You never pay 'tention, ah?"

"Stop crying, your mother gone already!"

(HEY TURKEY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TEACHING AT A KINDERGARTEN IF YOU CAN'T FUCKING TALK RIGHT?)

Those poor little kids.

The yelling goes on all morning. Stray out of your invisible Dilbert cubicle and the bitch starts honking. Take too long to respond and the bitch starts honking. Stupid bitch.

Being kids, they don't seem to mind. They get used to it. Of course, it won't stop little Jennifer from growing up into a child-beating crackwhore later on in her life, but they get used to it.

The bell rings with military precision. Out into the yard, back inside after 10 minutes. Don't eat the crayons, don't smudge your shorts. Oh there's Mommy, let's all put on a big smile and wave.

"Now, all sing Negaraku!"

It's quite depressing, really.

Those poor parents.

They send their kids to pre-school Auschwitz everyday and pick them up in time for lunch.

Nice Quote!

"Men may now sail West, if they will, as far as they may, and come no nearer to Valinor or the Blessed Realm, but return only into the east and so back again; for the world is round, and finite, and a circle inescapable - save by death."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion.

28 Months Later...

Zombie flicks never looked this good...Here's a still photo from Audiotrixx's upcoming album, Menace in Motion. Dig it.




Oh and thank you, Photobucket, your moron-proof approach to image-hosting has added a Zen-like dimension to my otherwise disordered lifestyle.

Looking Good

Mac's hit and run tactics had us all brockin out like bitches. It was a while since I saw such enthusiasm on the dancefloor at Nouvo.

Drum n bass at its finest.

Straight up.

The Return of Forever

You gotta love the Japs for being economical when it comes to the art of expression. I wrote these haikus during James Kuake's classes at Help:

He stands at the front
Time is a lost memory
But I am still here.

Alcohol evaporates
My throat dry, the taste of sandpaper
This is what Monday is like.

I am an automaton
Try to see, without your eyes blinking
This day, has been done before.

Cute freshies
I should graduate
But not yet.

Candy Ass

In our rush to embrace the essence of bling, we have grievously estranged reality.

Conjecture perhaps, but how else do you explain having club nights in town with names like Ghetto Heaven?

What an oxymoron.

Human error. Such convenience.

-----

On a completely unrelated note, I was severely compromised, just the other day.

I was the unwitting victim of the Jedi Mind Trick of the female species, my powers of reasoning reduced to a near-catatonic state:

"Do I look fat in this?"

"Er...Um...Well..."

"Do I?"

"It depends on the lighting, I guess..."

Stupid.

Lost and Found

Here's something I found on an old backup disc: a vivid reminder of past afflictions, a temperamental outburst of intense colour :

Self-Immolation

by Suffian Abdul Rahman

May 13, 2002

“Pardon me while I burst…”
-Brandon Boyd.

So, what’s it like being twenty-two, and waking up everyday feeling like you’ve done this before?

Everyday is a déjà vu death in Technicolor, a dark Kinescope of silent pain. How do you explain being suddenly walloped on the back of your head with the kind of cynicism that seems to feed on even the most insignificant of joys, and grows meaner and stronger every day?

Haha, it kind of feels like trying out your first cigarette after walking out of a room full of iron lungs and dead Marlboro Men.

Yes, smoking your first cigarette and immediately realising that every cigarette you smoke afterwards is probably going to taste exactly the same, filling up your lungs with the same tar and nicotine, the same sickening bad breath afterwards, and knowing that you should’ve just given up smoking before you even tried. And what the fuck for, man?

-----

This ugly episode of cynicism that I’m broadcasting (in UHF, no less) to the entire fucking planet right now seems to have been the result of a heady mixture of self-denial, over-reaching idealism and the accumulated naivety of recent years of subconscious turmoil.

The thing is, I can’t really pinpoint when this crushing wave of cynicism started off. Maybe it first hit me after that gut-wrencher of a break-up a few years ago, when I said goodbye forever to a girl who was the closest thing I ever had to a childhood sweetheart. Sad.

Or maybe it first hit me after my brief spell as a news reporter, after seeing with my own eyes the desolation and hypocrisy that suffuses my nation’s political landscape. My baptism of fire into the world of journalism fuelled whatever nerve I had left to leave political issues to the tired old men who threw bricks at each other’s glass houses. Have fun messing around with party politics for all I care, motherfuckers; after all, it’s your funeral.

Or maybe it came to me one day after realising that I couldn’t really change much of the world all by myself, that I’d never amount to anything more than an anal probe up the backsides of evil empires of greed, lust and power. So much for Che Guevara, and all his bravura tales of guerrilla warfare in the countryside. These days, Man gets more excitement out of changing channels on cabel rather than changing anything else, really.

-----

(and wakefulness is not without its nightmares )

Or maybe this is just a bad dream, and I’m going to get up and crawl out of Alice’s Wonderland after I say my peace.

Whatever the cause, this cynicism is actually so bad that I’ve just resigned myself to the possibility that a mid-life crisis isn’t even halfway as scary as the notion that reaching mid-life is not much to look forward to, anymore. No more surprises from here, Doc. We all know how it ends, a silver bullet for each one of us, right?

Oh, so now you think I’m just another bad case of depression, in the long, sad history of ultimately depressed writers. I often wish it were so. Things might have been easier for me to explain, every day would be a happy cloud of Valiums and I would not end up having to write something like this to feel better about myself. Or worse.

A pretty girl not-so-recently told me to smile more often; she said I shouldn’t be so stressed about everything. I wish I could tell her all about it. But then she would probably run miles away like she just met Elvis or something.

-----

On one level, I feel like the worst case of burnout since Thomas Edison pissed himself trying to invent the light bulb. On another level, this overwhelming sense of cynicism has taken me deeper into my own sub-conscience than any amount of drugs would ever do. (Jimi Hendrix can stick his flaming guitar where the sun don’t shine; I’ve been on badder trips, damn you).

Maybe I should write a memoir; A Very Short History of Cynicism By Suffian Abdul Rahman.

This memoir would be the logical conclusion of my fascination and love of writing, a sort of presumptuous way of telling my side of the story: the story that I keep hidden away in the deeper recesses of my mind. That insulated, dampened area in my brain that feels like Tool’s Schism video.

Ah, but it would have to be dark, dark, fucking morbid shit that would involuntarily turn any eight year-old who read it into a Type-A schizophrenic. Just like in the Schism video. Otherwise it probably wouldn’t make any sense to you or me. Yes, dark enough to stale the air in your room, to fade out lights and to make you wonder what it feels like when you think you've got nothing to lose anymore. Let go, Luke, let go.

Conversely, it would need to embody the stylistic elements of inflated and flamboyant memoirs that celebrities churn out to dull the masses into believing that they’re buying into Something Big. It would have to sell, I guess.

I’d have to fib, here or there, and suffocate the reader with boring anecdotes of childhood traumas. I’d have to create an Alpha Male identity wrapped around unattainable notions of sexual bravado, intellectualism and charisma. Yeah, right.

But then again, attempting to write an autobiography when you're a twenty-something nobody is probably one of the most irresponsible and egoistical things that any writer could be capable of. It’s like ending sentences with prepositions, like a case of premature ejaculation.

How could I even consider writing something of those proportions when I’ve barely lived life? When I’m not even old enough to afford buying my own house, my own car or even my own fucking petrol?

But this is life, not a freaking Panadol advert. I have no answers right now, and I don’t even want to think about it anymore…

But what am I supposed to do here? Could I ever write a memoir? Would I ever be in the right frame of mind to do so?

-----

Interestingly, I kept a travel journal once, when I was on an expedition in the jungles of Borneo, in ’98. That was the nearest I had ever gotten to establishing anything remotely close to a sense of discipline. I remember staying up late into the night, every night, tucked away in my sleeping bag, pitching back and forth in my hammock, and writing.

I’d industriously fill in my journal with the high points and low points of the day, oblivious to the mad humming of mosquitoes and the pitter-patter of the rain. An overwhelming sense of peace would transcend over me, dampening the fatigue of a day’s hard work. And that made everything feel just right.

I tend to think that I got more honesty, emotion and wisdom out of that weather-beaten journal than all of the news articles, special assignment pieces and bullshit feature stories that I ever wrote. Because it was about me, and it was from inside of me, and no one can ever take that away.

But that was a while ago; I was relatively younger, naïve and tragically idealistic. Now I’m older, deeply cynical and idealistically tragic.

But why do people write their memoirs, anyway? Do they think anybody else gives a shit?

Do they hope to inspire others with their high achievements and their profound sense of self-worth? Or do they just want attention from strangers because their own friends are too busy leading happy, normal lives to even fucking care about them? (Insecurity Feeding Hours are from 2:30-4:00 am everyday, except Mondays and Public Holidays, Thank You.)

I don’t think I want to write a memoir anymore. I think I’ve said too much already.

Given to Fly

Goodbye Ayu!

Have a safe flight.

Best of luck in New Zealand, and remember, sleeping next to 3 American girls is a non-issue, OK?

Hello Bandwagon

According to the Department of Internet Statistics, approximately 1 out of 5.678 blogs have posts that consist entirely of song lyrics, for the purpose of communicating both the writer's current state of mind and projecting their musical preference to the audience of readers.

There is no Department of Internet Statistics.

But I love this song:

Phantom Planet - Turn Smile Shift Repeat

Here they come the business men like a herd of cattle rumbling in,
the exchange has officially begun.

Now all the offices are buzzing the executives are busy bees,
they watch the gears turn in the employees.

They just Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat.

There's a crowd forming on Wall Street near the tallest building on the block,
a suit has lost his fortune to the stocks.

There was no time to see his fatal flaw, the madness set in with the loss,
now he cuts at throats to watch the heads fall off.

They just Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat.

Decimal points and dollar signs, taxes, penalties and fines,
he's come to cut you down.

Numbers, passwords, protocol; it's not enough to save your soul,
he's come to cut you down.

Bring you right back to zero.

They just Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat.

Fresh Tendrils

Some lessons re-learnt in 2004:

1. Music is everything.

2. Objectivity is relative.

3. You can fall in love with a girl within 3 seconds of meeting her.

4. Never-fucking-ever take your friends for granted.

5. The plot always thickens.

6. Honesty is the best policy, except when it comes to Foreign Policy.

7. The difference between a bottle of wine that costs 30 bucks and a bottle of wine that costs 70 bucks is the company in which you share it with.

8. Club culture isn't dead; it's just very fickle, that's all.

9. Grudges can be meaningful.

10. The past always catches up with you.

The Sound of Inevitability

The difference between an incoming shell and an outgoing one, says Dad, a veteran of the Emergency and numerous live-fire exercises, is that unmistakable whistling sound it makes as the warhead (with your name on it?) is about to impact on your position.

Not to be confused with the deliberate whoosh of an outgoing shell, which makes a sound like ripping linen as it arcs across its flight path, or the concussive whump, whump, whump of the consequent explosion. No, says Dad, you'll know yours when you hear it.

Today, my sound of inevitability was the whir-click-whir of a dentist's drill as it made contact with the yellow wall of plaque on my molars. That tumultuous second before it bores into your teeth and starts to screech and whine like a kid with a particularly bad tantrum. That eerie buzzing sound, so itemized with finality of intense pain.

(They're made of diamonds, did you know that? Fucking diamonds!)

So, I sit there with my back slightly arched from the expectantcy of pain, my mouth an obscene gaping maw, my tongue hugging the roof, all in a day's work, the drilling goes on and on.

It's purgatory, it's every dentist in the world winking at you and saying I told you so. It's every single nerve in your mouth on fire. It's way overdue.

That was actually the first time in many months that I went to the dentist. So what!

It's not that I don't believe in the miracles of modern medicine, but I brush my teeth at least twice a day and do my 30-seconds with the mouthwash like everybody else.

Isn't that enough? Jeez, do you really have to go every six months?

Evidently, you do.

Well, OK.

And so:

"This might hurt a little..."

They always lie, don't they?

The Birth of an Entropy

In being born, I was commissioned to occupy this space.

To develop this personality, to commit to a future that I cannot yet comprehend or describe.

Twenty-five years of living and I have yet begun to live.

What happens now?

A Formal Absence of Precious Things

This is how the New Year starts.

Or at least, this is how it feels. Some things are missing. Even on the sixth day.

I experience both a continuing fear of abstracts, and an intense longing for them: Peace of mind, closure, release etc.

People and things.

I wonder what waits for me this time around. And I shudder to think at how it will change me even more.

But here's to a new beginning, anyway.

Roll Over, Play Dead...

OK folks, I hate to break it to ya like this, but this social experiment is over.

Yeah, this Anti-Blog/Non-Blog thing is getting old pretty fast.

From now on, Suffian Says this blog's going to be a normal blog, warts and all. I'm not saying that I'm going to try to explore the everyday depths of the mundane, or keep on complaining about how I hate it when the newspaper is always soggy in the morning because the dumb motherfucker paperboy always aims for the puddles, but hey, things are taking a turn for the conventional.

Yeah, let's see where this goes.

(When I've finished San Andreas, that is; right now I've just made it to Las Venturas and I'm itching to hit the Strip and gamble away my life savings.)

Fuck you, Big Nose, I don't want to buy insurance.

What's the best way to say "NO", can anyone tell me?

Where have I been?

Asleep, writing advertorials, day-dreaming, Los Santos, joining in the festivities, listening to way too much Klute, chasing skeletons out of my closet, Limewire, lost, hungover, Menace in Motion, grieving, Hospital Records, trying to make the reverb work just right on the Rhodes, tired, happy, happy but tired, Mont Kiara, alone, shopping, thieving, hurting, bleeding, denying accusations with the greatest sang froid, compiling a wishlist, compiling a deathlist, hoping for World Peace, Traffic, television, Playstation2, searching, lost, searching, lost, Exitmusik, driving in the rain, Phantom Planet, writing more advertorials, Damansara, wondering, winning, losing, Bowling for Columbine, fading out, burning in, mixing, waiting, planning, thinking, Stereophonics, editing, worrying, smiling, feeling, Sinusitis, fighting, consoling, playing no part at all, Dsylexia, being elusive, posturing, posing, trying to score four to the floor, Ramallah, comforting strangers, learning that patience is indeed a virtue, Coldplay, being childish, being stupid and now I think you should stop reading this...

A Sign of the Times

If you were a child of the Eighties, then you'll love this:

http://www.keenaschips.co.uk/index.php?page=articles/misc_rainbow

No wonder I'm so fucked up right now.

(And no, Ayu, I haven't finished San Andreas yet)

Meet tha Sims at South Central, yo

THIS BE A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT, yo:

This Blog gonna be off tha hook till 'ah be done pimpin' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

'Fo sho.

Later, hommies...

The Best of Both Worlds

Stupidest conversation of the month:

Friend: Hey man, you're mixed, right?

Me: Yeah. Northern Indian and Malay.

Friend: Yeah, thought so. You know what, that means you can be a good lawyer, but a lazy one.

Me: Ha! Thanks, I never thought about that before.

Friend: Anytime.

But who you are isn't about where you came from, it's about where you're going, and how you're going to get there.

Peace, out.