mr r.

jamie reeves made me laugh out loud today. when they were analysing the line-ups for turkish side fenerbahce's clash with manchester united, he highlighted fener's tall dutch striker pierre van hooijdonk as 'their big-name player, both metaphorically and literally.'

whazzat?

listening to : starsailor - four to the floor
still reading : jeffrey eugenides - middlesex
watching : gravedigger - dave matthews

today's misheard lyrics:

nelly furtado, "i'm like a bird"

correct lyrics:
for my love is great
for my love is true, oh.
misheard lyrics:
for my love is gay
for my love is coolio.

correct lyrics:
i'm like a bird
misheard lyrics:
hung like a bird

i really can't make out what she's saying.

and in a tribute to the most thought-provoking lyrics ever uttered (sisqo, the thong song - 'she's got dumps like a truck'), rapper pharrel of the group n.e.r.d. says in his song 'she wants to move' that 'her ass is a spaceship - i want to ride'. only on mtv, folks.

remember unriven?

courtesy of rachel.

oh yeah.

the write ingredients.

listening to : franz ferdinand - 40'
reading : jeffrey eugenides - middlesex
watching : city of god
wondering : where have all the cowboys gone?

my writing prompt for the day was on a kitchen scene where things go wrong. it isn't terribly funny, but neither is a kitchen. you can read it here.

truss nobody.

for all you avid fans of lynne truss's best-selling book, eats, shoots & leaves, here's a review by the new yorker that will clear your mind of her ideologies. review of eats, shoots & leaves.

i've resisted capitalising words for very long now, but sad to say, my friend damien has thrown in his lot with that nasty stickler. i still follow what i consider to be the critical rules of punctuation. and so it shall remain. as captain jack sparrow once said, we have reached a very special place... spiritually... ecumenically... grammatically.

stanford prison experiment.

"i began to feel that i was losing my identity, that the person that i called "clay," the person who put me in this place, the person who volunteered to go into this prison -- because it was a prison to me; it still is a prison to me. i don't regard it as an experiment or a simulation because it was a prison run by psychologists instead of run by the state. i began to feel that that identity, the person that i was that had decided to go to prison was distant from me -- was remote until finally i wasn't that, i was 416. i was really my number."

compare his reaction to that of the following prisoner who wrote to me from an ohio penitentiary after being in solitary confinement for an inhumane length of time:

"i was recently released from solitary confinement after being held therein for thirty-seven months. the silence system was imposed upon me and if i even whispered to the man in the next cell resulted in being beaten by guards, sprayed with chemical mace, black jacked, stomped, and thrown into a strip cell naked to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding, covering, wash basin, or even a toilet....i know that thieves must be punished, and i don't justify stealing even though i am a thief myself. but now i don't think i will be a thief when i am released. no, i am not rehabilitated either. it is just that i no longer think of becoming wealthy or stealing. i now only think of killing -- killing those who have beaten me and treated me as if i were a dog. i hope and pray for the sake of my own soul and future life of freedom that i am able to overcome the bitterness and hatred which eats daily at my soul. but I know to overcome it will not be easy."

from the stanford prison experiment


the mind becomes a prison so easily, trapping us in our thoughts and desires. victims of abuse become perpatrators of abuse, casting shadows upon those with impressionable minds. the power of others and our weaknesses plant seeds of hatred in us that we nurture during the idle moments of our minds. our identities try to circumvent this absence of absolute power by giving us a sense of uniqueness; our authority is in our hairstyles, our accessories, our clothes, our tastes, our friends.

welcome.

listening to : the who - won't get fooled again
reading : jeffrey eugenides - the virgin suicides
watching : zoolander
wondering : who thought up of slim water

why have i moved? nothing significant, really. i'm not trying to escape from blogstalkers nor am i bored with the old layout. i've moved because i wanted a site that was easy to update, maintain and use to interact with my readers. google and blogger have put together a sound system for doing all of the above (with the exception of a tagboard and a blogroll - for now) so i'm going to use it. now there's no need to use any 3rd party script providers to keep this baby up and running. however, it's always nice to link other sites to this one so i'll start a link-list soon enough.

i've broken my collar bone and it's going to take at least four weeks to heal. my right arm is in a sling now and typing is a bitch. damien says i wouldn't have a problem if i had a larger penis. wow. thanks.

i'm going to persist, though, and continue my blogging and writing. writing with my left hand is difficult because my hand isn't very stable. it's getting more legible though, what with all these "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" lines i've been scribbling. mum came in yesterday and commented that my handwriting is still illegitimate. that bastard handwriting. good one, mum.

i noticed just now how comprehensive the blogger profiles have become. there's even the obligatory randomly-generated question for you to answer, to give you a chance to display your pedigree and timeless wit. the question i got was 'if mud is dirt plus water, what is clay?' you can check my answer here.