Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Saturday, July 10, 2004 Weird things happen. I appear at, of all places, one which I've sworn never to set foot in ever again, the flattering durian in Singapore's crown the Esplanade. Never to set foot in it again, out of protest of the fact that unlike any respectable theatre, they do not use bells to indicate to the audience that the interval is drawing to a close and that the performance is about to resume ... which means that the last time I was there I became very happily obvious to the fact that I was shut out of the performance and, upon discovering it, was ushered to stand in a musty, poorly-ventilated room with a skewed view of the stage for my tardiness, instead of heading back to my comfortable seat among the stalls. And my bag was there! Anyone could have just popped over and filched it or simply dug their sweaty fingers in and swiped whatever they could have laid their hadns upon. Well, excuse me, but I don't recall them ever advertising themselves as theft-proof, especially considering that such places rarely often hold themselves liable for a customers' losses of any kind. Experiences like that really make you loathe the place with an exceptional passion, and I can safely say that it wasn't my fault because no respectable theatre in the world would ever fail to sound the bell for its performances. Or maybe I was at fault. Which brings me to the conclusion that the Esplanade is not a respectable theatre, and thus not worthy of my esteemed patronage. Hmph ... *folds arms in indignation*. Well, but whether the Esplanade was worthy of my esteemed patronage or not is beyond the point in question as it was on a rather absurd whim or delusion upon which I decided to amble down Citylink Mall all the way to that pursing pair of pustules festering beside the Singapore river. Basically, I was bored, and slightly deranged, a combination known to be hazardous to public health but perfectly conducive to comic relief when it is a helpless, impotent young individual who is afflicted with such a malady. And why else would anyone troop down to the Esplanade without the slightest intent of watching a concert or performance of any kind? The multitudes of couples thronging the riverside, obviously tottering on a fragile precipice dropping into the depths of passion and entrapment, would be sure to provide you an answer of a certain kind, but I prefer to provide my own points of view. Pleasantly surprised not to see those damnable and occasionally pornographic advertisements exhorting the life of herbivores (The destiny of herbivores is to be consumed by higher life forms. I guess I could like such imbeciles ... if they were carefully prepared and grilled to a pleasant medium-rare.), I was similarly turned off by my attracting several rather inquisitive and occasionally twisted glances from the hordes of skaters thronging the little basement which SMRT thought so wisely to construct but so poorly as to what to fill it with. A matter of ascending several flights of escalators, and I was once again in that detestable, disgusting durian known as the Esplanade. Shopping in the Esplanade is, beyond a doubt, pathetic. But not pathetic due to the lack of crowds, rather it is the nature of the customers that would be drawn to such stores. Arty-farty freaks of nature, shameless poseurs, and street mimes sound like the people most likely to frequent stores selling oddities ranging from unusual bedroom ornaments to movie memorablia. Finding something palatable to my middle-class tastes was also much of a chore, the eateries in the place largely consisting of high-class bistros of inordinately attired people speaking in weird continental European (non-English) accents, or alternately of the semi-professional indulgence of that sector of morons in this world who would fain speak proper English instead of the mangled argot known to us as American. Idling about the shiny hallways of the Theatres on the Bay, I recalled the existence of a branch of the sactum National Library located within, and grew determined to seek it out, remembering how copies of uncommon texts which I had been searching for in the local libraries always seemed to inexplicably be located at the Esplanade. Filled with eagerness at the anticipation of one last place of sanity and seriousness in the twin-peaked madhouse, I searched for the library determinedly, finally discovering it on a higher floor of the building. But a rude awakening awaited me as I stepped into its not-so-hallowed halls. Honestly, if you're not a freak of any aspect of the arts, the Esplanade Library is not for you (um, in that case, the whole darn Esplanade isn't for you ... unless you're one of those skaters in the basement). All they have in the library is books about arts. Plays, films, scores, instructions on how to posture the body in an obscene fashion more commonly known as dancing, are all that the library offers. Sure, it does its job well, but ... can such a travesty seriously be considered a library? At least stick something in front of it, like 'Esplanade Library of the Arts' or something, so that the common passerby is able to distinguish the Esplanade's meagre offerings from the traditional realm of knowledge which a library is so often expected to be. Not to say, of course, that I was totally disinterested with everything that was on offer. Seeing as to how I was already there, I thought it more foolish to leave immediately, having come here out of some idle fancy, and so proceeded to peruse the shelves. Several scores for choral pieces caught my eye, and delighted with the contents on flipping through, I decided to check them out and hasten my departure from this otherwise unworldly place. Yet, my hopes for a quick exit were stifled as the machines at the desk resolutely refused to allow me to borrow those books. Clarifying the matter with the staff at the counter, I was horrified to learn that one needed to be a 'premium' member of the National Library in order to be able to check out scores, as well as other sensitive material far too delicate for the coarse and untrained hands of the brutish commoner. Has elitism really induced this semi-aristocratic, self-obsessed and conceited assortment of artists in Singapore to limit the information on which they established their status to themselves? Or is the National Library Board simply being possessive, paranoid, or just plain daft? No wonder the shelves of scores were so free of browsers, I recalled with the benefit of hindsight. In my desperation, and with the relentless repetition of the library's closing time ringing in my ears, I strode over to the Plays section, fished out a few choice texts and proceeded to borrow them, without incident, but otherwise thoroughly disgusted and disappointed. Walking out, however, I noticed a set of escalators which led to the 'rooftop', and ever curious and possessed by a persistent desire to throw myself off a high ledge, I took the path up to the roof of the Esplanade, which in fact served as one large viewing gallery offering panoramic sights of the city, the bay, and the sea. Among other amenities, there was also the muffled strains of music seeping out of pores in one of the great durians (a SYF youth choir, apparently ... very much out of tune), not to mention numerous nooks and crannies wherein courting couples might carry out their scarcely clandestine affairs. Too soon, however, the hum of the music below and the rumble of cars passing by were abruptly replaced by the jarring wails of some amateur rock group, performing freely at the mini-amphitheatre by the bay and attracting a sizable crowd of bemused passers-by. Unsettled by the unencumbered auditory sensations that the position on the top of the roof offered, and feeling rather ornery after all my exertions, I concluded that the time was right to finally leap off this self-serving pedestal of affectation and return to dwell on more human affairs, specifically, the need to satiate hunger. Strolling down to the ground floor by the way I came, I grew increasingly famished as I passed by each restaurant on my way down and around the building. While the absence of filthy and fat-filled fast food outlets was a welcome relief, most of the restaurants were either too expensive for my budget, or sold an unusual selection of things that did wonders for stimulating the speculative mind (Just why would anyone eat chocolate for dinner?) but little for the appetite. The least I longed for was some respectable coffee place, one that had coffee good enough to prevent you from dwelling on the exclusive Americanism of the place, but such a thing was not to be. And there was Thai Express, and some kind of cafeteria, but when an outlet is empty in a place teeming with people crowd mentality discourages one from entering, and besides, food fare no matter how average is considerably marked up the more upmarket a place portrays itself as. I was resigned to going home hungry, or at the most taking a trip to some other place more suitable for having a meal than to give arty-farty types an excuse to sit around in a place for a long time talking loudly, but it so chanced that I spotted several of those movable carts selling sideshow wares by the banks of the Singapore river, and one of them was selling attractively large stickloads of cotton candy. Oh, I was bought that very moment as another girl not too dissimilar from myself walked up, handed over a dollar, and happily received the most massive cone of cotton candy I have ever seen one Singapore dollar buy. Well, in good time (actually, less than a couple of minutes) after purchasing that cotton candy, I found out just why it was so attractively priced, for the stuff melted and disintegrated into hard, sticky lumps of ... of cotton candy ingredients upon contact with air.This did much to expediate my consuming of aforementioned candy, and while it could definitely have been better, I could say that I enjoyed it just as much as I would have visiting any other restaurant about. Still feeling that little bit unplacated after that quick snack, I again wandered the hallways, seeking something of culinary interest, and as I rounded a corner and nearly ran smack into an alarmed young lady clutching a coneful of rich and tantalising ice cream in her hand, I gave up on my resolution to keep within budgets as my pocket gave up its futile attempt to hold on to my cash. A very expensive orgiastic consuming of expensive, but very delicious Haagen Daaz ice cream followed. Which nutter would eat just cotton candy for dinner, anyway? That was the end of it all. There was little more of interest to see and absolutely nothing to do, so with heavy eyelids, a barely-filled tummy and an absolutely empty pocket, I headed home to face the dreariness of another weekend. I said that I wouldn't write about books if I didn't want to recommend them, but I never passed any such guarantee about any other discussion I might make. The Esplanade has been a prominent target of my lambasting, and my little jaunt down there did barely much more than to reconfirm and reinforce the absolutely dismal impression I have of the place. Anyway, next time I visit somewhere interesting or thought-provoking, I really should write a travelogue ... to share my thoughts with others, and simply as more practice for my writing. posted by Charlotte | 4:57 pm (0) comments Friday, July 09, 2004 Praise the Lady! Can it be true? Two book reviews in a row! Though logical sense can pinpoint such an occurence as being due to the unseemly (and, as shall be revealed, unsatisfactory) smallness of the second, logical sense also says a lot of things which us illogical people have a sad tendency to ignore. So, let us be on with it! The sad victim of the process of literary mangling otherwise known as Charlotte's book reviews this time around happens to be a text whose main character(s) are exceedingly famous, while the rest of the story happens to be largely unknown, and even the vast majority of people bearing interest in aforementioned character(s) are wholly ignorant as to the author of that text himself. While just about everyone knows that the otherwise unknown Bram Stoker happens to be the author of Dracula, fewer still known that Mary Shelley (quite contrary) happens to be the author of Frankenstein, almost no one knows the author of the subject of my gabbling today, even though he is very much famous on the basis of another piece of work. I'm talking about The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by (who, you say?) Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. Honestly, however, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (hence Jekyll and Hyde) in its actual form falls far below expectations, especially considering the relative fame of its title character(s), for reasons which I will touch on later. Much unlike the various comic and film adaptations and reworkings of the central event, the actual text itself is not so much about terror as tragedy, and issues touching on society and the individual are brought forward for introspection. As expected. Unfortunately, it seems the author must have been far too eager to expound upon his various theories and hypotheses about these issues as far too many errors in writing, in particular one more disfiguring than any concoction Dr. Jekyll might ingest, have been committed. However, being of the mould of people who thrive on getting the best of others I feel it is necessary to at least take the prospecting reader through the text, to dispel the cloud of myths surrounding it and in the process win kudos for my indomitable ingenuity ... um, forget I said that. Essentially, despite discussing several important and controversial issues as a piece of writing the text makes poor reading, and the main reason why I'm reviewing it is to dispel the erroneous misconceptions surrounding the story. While the mysterious transformations of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are well known to readers of horror or science fiction, the rest of the world is otherwise starved of knowledge of the exact circumstances surrounding the otherwise unassuming good doctor. In Victorian London, a dark, sinister figure begins to stalk the streets, one characterised by his hideous appearance and terrifying brutality in his actions. The narrator of the story, the lawyer Utterson, hears the tale of the nefarious acts of this insidious creature known as Edward Hyde, the least of which include heartlessly trodding over a fallen little girl in the street. Utterson recalls that the recently republished will of his good friend Dr. Henry Jekyll has made an undue amount of reference to only one beneficiary, a certain Mr. Hyde, whose heinous acts are so opposed to the kindness and generosity of the good doctor. Utterson seems to suspect something is wrong, even more than ever, when he notices that Hyde's appearance seems to coincide with Jekyll's indisposition or reclusiveness, suspicions heightened when Jekyll is reluctant to discuss the character of Hyde or the reasons for naming him as a beneficiary. Utterson's investigations of Hyde draw to a terrible conclusion when, during a long period of Jekyll's unexplained disappearance, Hyde is witnessed in the act of beating an aged councilman to death ... with a cane which Utterson recalls having given to Jekyll as a present! The act of murder by Hyde naturally sparks a citywide manhunt for the murderer, and, needless to say, results in Hyde's mysteriously vanishing for (so it seems, now) an unusually long time. Meanwhile, Jekyll has returned to the social scene and, despite the sober nature of all about him, seems to be in high spirits, welcoming friends and hosting dinners ... and remains non-conversant about the villain now murderer Hyde. Jekyll's renewed vigour does not last long, however, as within a week he retreats into reclusiveness again ... and in a few days' time Utterson is jolted into action by a new tragedy, this time the mysterious death of one of Jekyll's and his best friends, of seemingly natural causes. In his friend's home, Utterson discovers a letter which seems to indict Jekyll as playing some part in his friend's death, and goes to the root of the problem by finally braving all hell to confront Jekyll personally in his laboratory. Finding the whole of Jekyll's mansion (the lot of these socialites all being incredibly rich people) in an uproar, with the servants alike all affrighted by recent events, lawyer Utterson turns warrior as he leads them to beat down the door of Jekyll's laboratory ... to find a hideous, horribly distorted figure lying in a crumpled heap, a vial of poison in his hands ... And that should be the end of the story. I say 'should be', because, just like FFIX, the author didn't know enough to end the story where it was at its best. Instead, the story continues as Utterson discovers two letters, one by his recently deceased friend and another by Jekyll himself, and takes them home to mull over them. The letters explain all of the mysterious events which have surrounded the characters and eventually explaining the relationship between kindly Dr. Jekyll and the terrifying Mr. Hyde. And that is the end of the book. Two letters. It doesn't end with the surviving protagonist Utterson saying or doing anything, or even sharing his feelings about the whole situation with some clichéd maxim. It just ends with the two letters. And even the trashiest, most pathetic primary-school composition wouldn't end with something so abrupt as a transcript of someone's letter. It's not that I hate transcripts. Transcripts may be seen as a way of cheating, or explaining the unexplainable, in first-person or protagonist-centric novels, but at times they may be essential or even necessary. Examples of transcripts appear in quite a few of my recent reads, such as Treasure Island by the same author, or The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Transcripts are basically cheating because they discuss things which the protagonist is wholly in ignorance of, and are for the benefit of the reader alone. In other words, they are like explanations of things unknown to the protagonist, and which are likely to be of concern in the next few chapters (or in those immediately preceeding). However, sometimes, they may be necessary in order to preserve the flow of the story, allowing for a short interruption in order to ensure the essential continuity of the narrative. Situations when transcripts would be necessary include times when the protagonist is incapacitated ("So we're not going to say or do anything until Charlotte wakes up?" "Yep.") or when the protagonist needs to confront an unusual series of unknown obstacles, and is rendered helpless and wholly in the guidance of another character. Of course, with the emergence of the stream of consciousness as a writing style, the use of transcripts has gone out of fashion and is largely abhorred by most professional authors, but they still have their uses. Unfortunately enough for Robert Louis Stevenson, serving as an ending is not one of them. Hearing Jekyll lament the depths of his misery and remarking on the final curtain does not constitute an appropriate conclusion to a narrative otherwise dominated by Utterson! While yes, Jekyll's troubles which result from (and in) these transformations are the centrepiece of the novel, simply sticking them in the ending through the benefit of a transcript is not a good way to emphasise them! The reader is left pondering on the thoughts and the fate of the lawyer Utterson as he returns home reading the letters, and undoubtedly, like me, feeling that it would have been more appropriate to leave the ending at that. Unfortunate that to do so would mean leaving the reader wholly in ignorance as to the reason for the friend's death, and for Jekyll embarking on this adventurous project which tragically resulted in his self-destruction, and, in the consequence, a large degree of the discussion about humanity and society. And that is the failure of the author. The transcripts at the end could easily have been reworked into the rest of the text, for example, it might be possible for Utterson to read his dead friend's letter earlier, before confronting Jekyll ... although that would mean he would know what he was up against in bashing down the laboratory door. Jekyll's narrative, despite being rushed and too much of a summary, does bring across many of the points of the author, and is difficult to insert anywhere else in the text. Rather, the circumstances of Jekyll's revelations could have been better handled, for example with Utterson sharing the memoirs with the servants in Jekyll's household, or even with Utterson merely making some kind of closing remark. To end your text with a transcript is to categorically deny the least semblance of importance in anything else you have written before that last profound ending! That last rant having been concluded, I'm sure that all who read this know the process of Dr. Jekyll's transformation into the terrible Mr. Hyde, so there should be no need to go into depth about it, only to make some clarifications for the benefit of less-informed readers which might have been deluded by the misrepresentations of him in comics and films. Jekyll never turned into Hyde by accident ... it was his original intention, for Jekyll reveals, in his narrative, about his unusual split personality (Bah. Another terrible error of authorship which I dub the 'magic wand', basically, introducing unusual reasons explaining characters' actions far too late in the text without inserting any premonitions of them earlier, the greatest offenders being fairy tales and Harry Potter), about how he feels constrained by the rigidity of modern society and seeks to release a more wilful, spirited side of himself. The effect of Jekyll's draught is to allow a person to be wholly consumed by an aspect of their personality for a period of time, until the application of an antidote, and allow the person to act out their hidden innermost desires like a full-life opiate. Mr. Hyde, instead of being a massive towering monster as he is often portrayed in comics and films, is actually a small, shrivelled man ... but a man with a terrible face, and brutal strength, supposedly due to the natural retardation of such wilful desires from Jekyll's attempts at self-discipline, but it retains its hidden potential for doing evil. What Jekyll never expected, however, was that the upsurgence of the evil Hyde would affect his real-life personality, as all drug addicts think when they take that first dose of narcotics. What Jekyll did not anticipate, either, was that he would eventually lose control over his evil side, that it would take actions far beyond the capability of his real-life self such as the injury and murder of innocents, and that it would eventually begin to dominate his 'true' self, one which, as a natural composite of good and evil, was subservient to a being that was wholly evil. Jekyll's desperation at losing control of himself calls for the ultimate solution as, in his last moments of sanity before slipping into bestiality from which his 'antidote' can only provide temporary relief, he opts to kill himself and put an end to the being of evil and the knowledge of evoking it. Draw the themes yourself, they're there. My verdict on Jekyll and Hyde is that, like all proper English authors, there is a good use of language and a great degree of creativity. However, it is ultimately crippled by the flaws in Robert Louis Stevenson's authorship. It is a good read as far as exploring the themes mentioned above are concerned, but as a story and a narrative it is a disastrous failure. My opinion is that Treasure Island is a far superior piece of writing, though it is unlikely to excite the interest of all you pedantic analysers of literature out there due to it being a simple piece of adventure fiction. If you liked the story of Treasure Island and want something more of the same, perhaps with a little bit of social commentary added ... I'd suggest you read Gulliver's Travels instead. Well, okay, you can read this too. And if you're one of the few who has already read this but hasn't read Treasure Island, then as someone who is quite fond of Stevenson's adventurous style of writing I exhort you to try other books by Stevenson, and you'll find that there are many which are superior to this one. And if you just want a title of something famous but often misinterpreted, you can pick this off the shelf ... and it's only a hundred or so pages long, enough for a couple of hours' read. Well, ta-ta for now, then. Charlotte drinks the antidote ... and promptly transforms into a puny inches-tall fairy with feathered wings and a halo. Didn't you learn anything from reading Alice in Wonderland? What, not to try to drink anything that says "Eat me"? posted by Charlotte | 4:49 pm (0) comments Thursday, July 08, 2004 Yay! At last, I have finally written some more in a short, but a sweet period, full-fat and fine-grained, with no artificial sweeteners added. Considering the appalling taste of just about all of the multitudes of artificial sweeteners available, you must be incredibly stupid or grotesquely obese to actually consider swallowing such vile concoctions. Alarmingly enough, too, I notice that my shortfall in writing these few days coincides with the time last year when my computer so tragically expired, the only good fortune (or saving grace, rather) of that is that the warranty only expired several months after that. Is it the ghost of the past come back to haunt me again? Just as Frodo Baggins' wound happens to pain him year after year, or Harry Potter's scar tingles on each anniversary of its fateful infliction. Bah. And if medical science can hold true that old wounds dissipate with time then hopefully such a drought of disconcertment shall not strike me so severely again next year. A remarkable coincidence that quickly sobers the individual. Though not of the drunkenness of satisfactory writing, thankfully. Be ever drunken, till you can't drunk how think you are. posted by Charlotte | 4:12 pm (0) comments Wednesday, July 07, 2004 I just read a Socialist appraisal of the Wizard of Oz written by some strange twisted (American!) Commie bastard called Jack Zipes. Yeah, well, it does make sense ... if you follow every bit of analysis he instructs you on, but please for heaven's sake you don't need to drag a perfectly innocent piece of children's fiction into the gutter along with your filthy perverse deluded idealism which goes utterly contrary to any of the laws of nature, man or economics. I'm not saying that I deny that authors inevitably weave their opinions on not just politics but any controversial issue into their writing (a habit which characterises my own writing, for that matter), but I'm sure that converting innocent young children into picket-wielding Socialist revolutionaries was one of the last intentions on L. Frank Baum's mind. Well, given that the reviewer is not twisting the author's words to support his socialist ideology but rather explaining how the author's writing evinced his own belief in a higher form of socialist utopia, I should instead be glad that if transforming the next generation of young readers into Socialist vermin was indeed one of L. Frank Baum's intentions, then it was not a very successful attempt at all. I hate Communists. I hate Socialists. I hate welfare or social justice or the imposition of egalitarianism of any kind. You know that if you know me. Then again, I also hate democracy, and I hate human rights, and I absolutely loathe natural conception in the species which I happen to be a part of and thus consequently am liable to suffer from. But I rant. And you already know that in me. And did I mention that I hate Catholicism? And the Jewish perpetrators of occupied Palestine? And nearly (thankfully, slightly less than) half the human race never ceases to rile me up endlessly. And did I tell you ... ... etc. etc. posted by Charlotte | 4:47 pm (0) comments Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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