the2ndrule Issue 09
The 2ndRule
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Sep 2000 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Biological Moseses [Koh Beng Liang]
2. Perspectives [Paul Tan]
3. the death of nonsense [Sim Pern Yiau]
4. RealTV [Koh Beng Liang]
5. 8 Ways of looking at a Banana (excerpts) [Alfian bin Sa'at]
6. Unglaze [Shannon Low]
7. Snowboarding [Koh Beng Liang]
Editorial
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Hey there, did you miss us?
Well in case you had we'd like you to know that while we were away we'd been bringing out more techno goodies on our website. We've added an improved subscription form on the front page so now when you go to http://here.is/the2ndrule you can enter your email there and subscribe directly. And you can just give your friends our URL when you recommend the magazine to them. And please do continue spreading the word. There's no budget for us for marketing so we're relying mainly on your help to reach out to new readers.
Another new feature on our site is a free-for-all forum for your instant views and opinions. http://pub26.ezboard.com/bthe2ndrule is where it's at. Please post up any comments on the articles in general, feedback for the writers, or any topic you would like to pick a fight about.
Let me clarify here why we have an email edition and a website at the same time. We send the magazine out as email to everyone because it is the most direct and accessible way of getting it out to you. The email *is* the magazine, with none of the bells and whistles to distract you from the message. The website is where you go to get more. There you'll find archived issues, a nicer looking HTML version of the magazine, the forum, and the subscription form for new users. However, the website is not meant as a substitute for the email edition. We will continue sending out the email edition as our electronic frontline troops.
If you're wondering, we haven't the faintest clue as to where those tiny stickers with our URL pasted around Singapore came from ;)
As usual, we are on the lookout for new writers, so do contact us at the2ndrule@hotmail.com . Hope to hear from you soon!
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2ndRule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Ong Ee-ing, Sim Pern Yiau
Contributor : Paul Tan
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Biological Moseses
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When it comes to the physical sciences the general public accept them almost as an auxiliary religion. Atomic science deals with particles much too minute, and black holes are much too distant and bizarre, and this remoteness from daily life allows the ideas to be accepted in a casual, detached manner. Though most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the Scully-Mulder range of skepticism, in general we can accept scientific facts as cold, hard truths. We are easy believers; we flip light switches with ease.
The arrival of the new white-coated biological Moseses in the past 50 years bring the sciences much closer to the skin. Watson-Crick are the new Lenin-Marx, the new Buddha-Ganesh. But because biotechnology affects us so directly, because it treats the body, the holding vessel of our soul and spirit, as machinery to be manipulated, to be violated with impunity, we should not expect the public to accept medical advances so readily.
Yet there is much talk of late by economists, academics and government officials of the "life sciences", heralding it as the next wave of progress after the current computer craze. The conditions are ripe of a sustained pharmaceutical boom, accompanied by an overburn suck of liquid cash into research. Already the gattaca's of the human genome have been painstakingly laid out for feasting. And there are a healthy number of diseases waiting to be conquered, or to be vaccinated into oblivion.
But one should not be overly optimistic. For nothing cuts closer to human ethics than the human body itself, the mushy and queasy hollow-man matrix of nerve and fibre and bone. Anyone who has ever been sick would know how great the craving is to be well again, and the medical profession is governed by idealistic Greek oaths, but like any other human profession the ground level application of the ethical laws may be subject to corruption, vanity and controversy.
Some of the major drug discoveries in recent years (and I'm not talking about those found in Olympic urine) have been very commercially successful, but the ways the purely bottom-line driven companies are marketing such drugs may pose sticky issues. Prozac fights depression, but should we be making fruit flavoured versions for children? Viva Viagra, but are we comfortable with grandpa buying condoms? And there is AZT, side by side with rumours that the disease itself was engineered. It once seemed a good idea to invest in tobacco companies. It may not be so wise to pour good money into pharmaceuticals, or for governments to make the life sciences a national objective.
Ambitious governments trying to encourage biotech development should be wary of the limits of legislation. We are not even certain as to when life itself begins. Cloning experiments have been considered to be violating the human rights of the 16-cell embryo. Siamese twins may get double the rights. Hollywood movies glorifying monsters or people with mutant powers actually expose the underlying collective public phobia cum fascination with the biological sciences. People who are afraid of death watch violent movies. People who fear hospitals watch E.R.
I am not advocating the end of Dolly Sheep or a return to mystic tribal cures. Improving our expertise of our bodies and diseases has the great potential to vastly reduce our human sufferings. What I do urge is that we should start to discuss more openly and pragmatically the complex issues brought about by developments in biotechnology. The information revolution hit us with such great force that we are still unsure of the full extent of its effect on our societies. Let us exercise more foresight for the impact of the life sciences.
- Koh Beng Liang
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Absence makes the hands go fondle.
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Perspectives
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In Malaysia, I'm the bothersome adik, the thirsty neighbour whose arrogance will evaporate when the taps run dry, the air-space intruder, the source of inflation and traffic snarls, a well-oiled pump of foreign capital.
In Japan, I'm a bargain basement, a safe haven for visitors with a yen, a misty Syonan-to from an era that cannot be remembered, a season-less island where corporations are parked.
In China, I'm sophisticated - women there look at me with undisguised lust. I'm the diaspora done well, the tall buildings that scrape the sky, the ticket out of the slums or the forgotten village, a role model, a business opportunity.
In India, I'm Tekka market where walls ooze gold, the reason why the menfolk are away.
In the Philippines, I'm a cosmopolitan hub of nasty employers, a hanger of innocent maids.
In Indonesia, I'm a refuge and playground for rich Chinese, a small secular red dot.
In Australia, I'm part of inevitable South-East Asia, grudgingly admired, inclined to crassness and flashiness, an ambivalent tide: a supplier of foreign students, foreign exchange and sometimes permanently, foreign talent.
In the UK, I'm a colonial outpost, the original Singapore Sling, muggy plantations, the tropical island with guns pointing the wrong way. I'm the crossroads on the Orient where brave troops fought but fell, defending God, Queen and Empire.
In the US, I'm vaguely known, an exotic appendage to some peninsula or Chinese hinterland, a flogger of vandals, a gumless country with sharp teeth. I'm too many regulations, probably undemocratic, possibly independent, a catalogue of faults to find.
- Paul Tan
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Mulder's gone. Scully's pregnant.
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the death of nonsense
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the death of nonsense
will mean your death
in these sensible, utilitarian days
i've forgotten how to fuck around
so i forget how to make love
i forget how to fuck around
between us and our love
stand a million barriers
the flag, the logo, the deathly anthem
the pledge, the plague
the equatorial snowflake
tv in my morning papers
our heart of lightning, soul of thunder
by the true reds encircled, tamed
trapped in the people's meritocracy
Action! Action!
towards a desired end
not of our own making
still life painting is
just an act, not an art
join the pact, play the part
the party's over before its begun
and i've not turned 21.
- Sim Pern Yiau
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I would gladly fuck for my country. My wife is not so keen.
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RealTV
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Why settle for faster, higher and stronger?
Put your hands on your hips and cross the line.
The round ends. You score a point. Perpetually skating
around the track. Dodge the flying elbows.
Catfight with the bitches. Rollerjam!
Suplex. Figure-four. Filial piety soap drama.
Once in a while someone really gets hurt,
and dies. Learn the introduction songs.
The referee fights. See effigies of society
wrestle each other on WCW!
Vote the stranger friends off the island.
Septuagenarian Navy SEAL can't start a fire.
Smells like Lord of the Flies. A real corporate motivator
is showing you his naked butt. Survivor!
- Koh Beng Liang
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Choose the words that most and least describe you:
(a) content (b) team-player (c) persuasive (d) hot
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8 Ways of looking at a Banana (excerpts)
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(For Tang Da Wu)
1
After spending thirteen years overseas
Where he learnt to fall in love
With Streisand, Puccini, and his
Art lecturer, a certain Mr Henriksen,
Wee Keong came home only to be called
A 'yellow banana' by his parents.
'Yes,' he thought to himself, indignantly
Unwrapping bottles of marmalade, Derek Jarman
Videos and back copies of The Advocate;
'It is true. I am a fruit.'
2
Sheila sat at the cafe after having been
Dumped by her boyfriend of sixteen days.
It wasn't so much her addiction to Camels,
Or that she paged him alphanumeric
Professions of passion, but because
She had simply refused to 'swallow' even
When he coaxed her with ludicrous euphemisms.
It took tremendous reserves of strength
For Sheila not to break down and sob
When she opened up the cafe menu
And read the words 'banana milkshake'.
4
'Eat that,' Zubaidah's mother tells
Her, 'and you will get twins'.
Zubaidah looks at the
Pair of bananas in her hand
Sheathed in one skin, the fissure
Between them like a healed scar.
Zubaidah glares at her mother
From the corner of her eyes and sulks.
Zubaidah would never have children.
Two months ago Zubaidah was a man.
Zubaidah's mother adjusts her
Spectacles, and chuckles sadly
As she returns to her sewing,
To the precise, throbbing tension
Of her stitches.
5
All it took was one look
At the three week-old
Bunch of bananas
On the table, blackened,
Mottled, shrapneled with
Fruit flies, for Susheela
To moan, and wish that she
Was still in London, far away
From the powder-dry bathroom,
The dusk-enticing walls,
The bookcases and ashtrays,
And that Trafalgar Square
Postcard in her letterbox
Which she had scribbled on
With a pen borrowed
From a blond man at the post-office:
'Each time I hear the bells peal
Something in me feels ready
To burst its seeds like a fruit
That can only ripen in an unfamilar
Season like this.'
- Alfian bin Sa'at
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The surfing veteran never had to hold the handlebars on the subway train.
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Unglaze
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Squeak in the bushes.
Step on a snail.
An island of ants in a bottle of water.
All that life around us that we don't notice as we pass each other with that glazed look in our eyes. All those opportunities to connect with a totally different mind, with an entirely different perception, that could create so much more than we could ever anticipate. Lost. Because we look past each other and avoid each others' eyes.
Living every second, dying at twice the rate.
- Shannon Low
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My parents determined me to be a gymnast.
- Andreea Raducan, Romanian Olympic champion.
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Snowboarding
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The hard pounding soundtrack in the commercials is misleading.
The true sounds on the slopes are the benign hum
of carving snow, the soft windrush and the occasional
blunt thud of a snowboard landing.
Even the musical accompaniment from my mental radio station
is muted, more Ted Hawkins folk and acoustic Hendrix.
In the end I am happy tired, satiated yet drained. Curiously
the atrophied hip-thrust muscles are the most sore,
being seldom exercised in daily life.
You never conquer the mountain, you build a relationship
with it, you get down with it. The struggle is internal.
And it is in that white space where you find your own paths,
to play with the gradients, to fondle the powdered flakes.
When I return the mountain is still there.
- Koh Beng Liang
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the trap is set, the game's afoot
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Biological Moseses, (c) 2000 Koh Beng Liang
Perspectives, (c) 2000 Paul Tan
the death of nonsense, (c) 2000 Sim Pern Yiau
RealTV, (c) 2000 Koh Beng Liang
8 Ways of looking at a Banana (excerpts), (c) 2000 Alfian bin Sa'at
Unglaze, (c) 2000 Shannon Low
Snowboarding, (c) 2000 Koh Beng Liang
