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the2ndrule Issue 06

Published in

· 4 years ago

The 2ndRule
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Jun 2000 email edition
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Web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule

Contents
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0. Editorial
1. Kinny'sQuestionTime [kinny]
2. Melissa, inmate [Koh Beng Liang]
3. Eclectic Apathy [Dustin]
4. The Electric Ghazals [Alfian Bin Sa'at]
5. Demolition ball [Shannon Low]
6. Hang time [Shannon Low]
7. Heat [Cyril Wong]
8. No, I'm not a feminist, I'm a female [Ong Ee-ing]

Editorial
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1. Slacker. That Gen-X ideal from just a decade back seems really dated today. Work these days is hyper-paced, especially anything related to the Internet. So the advice this month: loosen up. Let go. Learn a little Zen before it becomes a Hollywood movie.

2. We've been getting really little feedback these days. Are you feeling alienated? Not been connecting with the articles? Well, the best thing to do is to write back. Yell at us. Demand an explanation, and we will duly provide it.

email : the2ndrule@hotmail.com

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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
Contributors : Cyril Wong, kinny, Dustin
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Kinny'sQuestionTime
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"Wall Street greeted the unemployment data with euphoria, after weeks of worrying about whether the tight American job market would keep the Fed on a roll of raising interest rates." - Reuters, Jun 4, 2000

Picture: "Brokers erupting in euphoria after news of the poor employment rate. - AP"

kinny: see! who says that unemployment is all that bad? at least Wall Street is celebrating.

Confused: "just what do people in Wall Street do anyway, how can they like bad news? how can they cheer at the thought of people not being able to find jobs, pay off loans, send their kids to school and feed their starving families? i thought no one likes bad news, unless its bad news for your enemies or people you are at war with or something, even so, isn't it morally wrong to celebrate - and *horror* publicly!! - someone else's misfortune?"

kinny: very clever, at certain levels, the market economy can actually work as a means of organising the economic life of a society and to allocate resources fairly and efficiently. it has the ability generate productive work responsive to the needs of the individual while adding to the total wealth of the society.

the current capitalist picture is a totally different thing. people are hired (and fired) according to their ability to create more money merely by a pushing a few buttons and making a few hand signs while staring at a big screen simultaneously. this form of no-holds-barred capitalism is not about meeting genuine needs of the people but about using money (capital) to make money for people who already have more money than they already need. most important and vulgar of all, market speculators benefit at the expense of those who do real productive work.

many are called "analysts" or "investors" but that's just an euphemism for the dirty word "gamblers" i prefer to call them Thieves.

these "analysts" are paid to stare at a computer screen all day at some abstractions...numerical figures and impressive-looking graphs scrolling up and down a screen; it means nothing more to them than that. they are just n-u-m-b-e-r-s...

NowVeryConfused: "so you're saying that many crucial decisions are taken by people who are insulated from the human consequences of their acts?"

kinny: yep.

NowVeryCONFUSED: "...and do they care?"

kinny: obviously not when its them who are kicking ass.

NowMad&CONFUSED: "so they just stare at the screen all day?"

kinny: well, its more complicated than that, they have to do something else to justify their fat salary packets. sometimes, outside people will come over to ask them to comment on the latest market trends and significance of newly-released market data. their job is to offer kind advice by regurgitating their favourite - and well rehearsed - "theory-of-the-day" just to show the rest of the world how clever they actually are.

JUSTMAD: "but do they really know what they are talking about?"

kinny: no one is really certain. but hey, why confuse the Public with facts...

*to be continued...*

- kinny.

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The future is all about people.
- Wired Magazine 7.01
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Melissa, inmate
---------------
http://www.meet-an-inmate.com/_borders/melissam81.jpg

The mechanism behind her pointed allure is that she's
unattainable; in the physical and legal sense,
she sits across the moral divide. Society (that vague
and fluid entity) forbids and frowns its great
collective-eyebrow upon all lawbreakers,
an anti-Nietzsche protection of the frail. Yet
remote beauty, like fairy-tale Rapunzel lock-ups,
are greatly prized, such is the power of jealousy.
We have R&J much to blame for making
barrier crossing romance romantic, and e-mail
and chatrooms are our modern day masked balls.
"She's gotta be horny" the loser thinks, sending
out electrons of dirty talk, not realising the power
of vibes and five-fingered lust.

-Koh Beng Liang

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Boredom is the privilege of children.
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Eclectic Apathy
---------------
Apathy is a plague that so many suffer from unwittingly.
Never caring enough about anything to actually grasp life with the same vivacity with which they stake their claims that they do.

So what is wrong with existing without doing anything with your life?
Don't we all die and return to level ground in the end anyway?
But then again, do we know what awaits us in our post-humus existence?

What do we do in the meantime, wait for life to overwhelm us and forsake us in the end?
Or decide that to grasp life by the horns and make sure that none of our sentences will start with 'if only' when we're lying prone, senile and weak on our deathbeds.

To make sure that life, that living is a prelude to death.

We just get along, degenerating to animals that are born to live and die.
Endowed with the capacity for intellect but defaulting to instincts instead.
What are we headed for, a life lived in accordance to cycle, tradition, status quo and restricted by our own lack of passion.

We no longer feel compelled to think, just committing ourselves to watch the world pass us by through ease tinted eyes.
Missing the sheer beauty of the web nature has woven around us wearing those horse blinders of habit and walking along the well-beaten path.

I'm tired, sick, lazy, dumb, not interested; all excuses.
Let's be honest for once and say, "I don't particularly care."

- Dustin

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Failed mountain climbing expedition resulted in
severe frostbite? Hands-free Nokia.
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The Electric Ghazals
--------------------

1. Ghazal of Oblivion

When the blind are lonely do we lend them our mirrors?
If only we would vanish when the lamps are turned off.

To wake up is to break these cobwebs on our bodies.
And to stay awake is to spin them once more like floss.

I wish to fall over and over, losing every contact with the world.
Even drowning is to be intimate with the skinlessness of water.

How many people can you pray for before you lose count?
In the candle's aura only the fervent loneliness of your lips.

Darkness is what I ask for, where my breathing becomes familiar.
In bright light the shadows keep dancing with the restless sundials.

Alfian, remember that pale dawn after a night at the playground?
You brushed sand off your body as if you were a cracked hourglass.

2. Ghazal of Death

Visiting ghosts speak in broken sentences.
In my dream I could not tell the questions from the answers.

Izra'il, the angel of death, and the cinema of the afterlife.
On his left wing, a hell tableau, on the right, a scene from paradise.

I want to leave behind only a bright empty room
Where a curtain's sudden swish may be mistaken for my sneeze.

Your fingernails will change, and so will the colour of the night.
A beetle on your wrist pulses with its insect heart.

Will my final breath be ejected, or extracted from my lips?
To think the soul departs the moment it is revealed.

Alfian, no heaven is imaginary, but they have to be imagined.
Your prayer is both the falling feather and two open palms, uplifted.

3. Ghazal of Love

Inside this body another body is leaning.
Under these eyes another pair is gazing.

A universe simpler than the design of a seed.
One star rules its galaxy, in its sky only one constant bird.

How often have the flowers mocked him with their petals.
O foolish collector of red glances, blue whispers!

Only in my dreams does his feet touch the ground.
When I smile for no reason, it is he who etches the dimples.

Always by the window or with a cheek on a pillow.
When a breeze passes through the body his soul is transparent.

What will you do, Alfian, when he opens the door?
When he surrenders the key into the hands of the beloved?

4. Ghazal of Happiness

The sun falling on one side of my face.
Believe me when I say my body is a source of shade.

To live each moment in suspension of the next.
The bead of water gathering light and weight.

That lipstick smeared across your cheek made me laugh.
Yet it happened when you tried to erase your own laughter.

The silhouette of a cartwheel, an ice-cream bell.
All these even when I have turned my back.

Remember to keep one for me, whatever it may be.
And yet if it is not possible do not break it in half.

Alfian, how wantonly you break the rules of the ghazal.
But if it makes you happy to call this one, then be happy.

- Alfian Bin Sa'at

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Common short urban aubade: "oh shit!"
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- Shannon Low

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Generation X? Generation Equity
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Hang time
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"I don't get enough hang time in my life," says my skater friend. He means the freeze-frame at the top of an arc that you make in the air when you jump. When you notice that there's nothing under your feet and nothing holding you up. The split-second in which you're suddenly conscious of the fact that you're thinking when you don't want to be wasting that kind of time. I throw myself off cliffs. I wonder if it's more hang time that I want, or just higher cliffs.

The anticipation is the best. When your toes and your head are just over the edge and you ignore the little voice that says, "don't do it, don't do it." And then the feeling of leaning over the invisible point of no return, not knowing exactly where it is. Just letting go of where you are in the present, everything in your past that held you back, and not wondering about the future, how hard you're going to land. Time compressed into a couple of seconds and the air rushing up around you.

- Shannon Low

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Yuppie fear. Ruffian's delight.
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Heat
----
This heat
will kill me,

swallowing me, a sock
over a foot, membrane
over my body, wet scab over
my eyes, my mouth, sticking
shut every exit, every entrance.

This air is too much company;
I long to freeze, for once,
that lonely feeling.
I want to feel my skin again:
dry, touchable.

This heat is really
husband, wife-beater
murdering me with one hand
on my neck, wet fingers
plunged down my chest, submission
the silence of sweat beneath my breasts.

A snake in reverse, strained
into an earlier skin, this heat
once shed I return into like a womb.

- Cyril Wong

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Torture. Injustice. Oppression.
http://www.amnesty.org
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No, I'm not a feminist, I'm a female
------------------------------------

Well, this article _was_ going to be about people and institutions, but I've just gotten riled up about something else. And because of my own mother, no less. Institutions will just have to wait (come to think of it, they will in any case).

There's been this recent case in the papers about a military guy accused of sexually harassing a subordinate, his defense being that: "it was consensual." In the end, he got charged with "conduct unbecoming to an officer," and was punished with a demotion and a docked gratuity. Whether or not he got off lightly is not something I'm going to discuss here (though I have a few thoughts upon that subject too). What has really gotten my goat is my mom's reaction to this issue: "He must have had marital problems."

Excuse me? The poor guy had marital problems, so he goes out and sexually harasses - all right, fine, indulges in conduct unbecoming to an officer (courtesy of any lawyers who might be lurking around - PLUS, this is setting aside the possibility of other cases which might not have received official attention) - and that's OK? What, wifey doesn't give him enough love and tender understanding, so he's justified in going out and having some fun on the side? Having marital problems gives him the right to dishonour his marriage vows, forget his duties as husband and father, or even the basic behaviour necessary to being called a decent human being?

Let's take this a step further. Assume that the above hypothesis is true, that marital problems = need to seek consolation outside. Which is tantamount to saying that it is ok for these married guys to seek consolation outside. Not like they're saying that they *should*, nonononono, just that it's *understandable*. (I mean, gee, they're not being treated like kings at home, so they're feeling a trifle upset, the poor things.) The logical question then is: what about those single guys who also indulge in what might be called questionable behaviour, in the workplace or otherwise? What's their excuse?

Let me think. My girlfriend and I just had a fight. My girl just dumped me; my girl just doesn't understand me. (And before anyone makes any snide remarks: NO, I have not had a fight with my boyfriend.)

Oh wait, I've got a better one. Mommy didn't look after me properly, and I'm all screwed up now, so 1) I don't know how to behave properly, and/or 2) I'm looking for love and affection in the only way I know how. It's really not my fault. I'm not a jerk. I'm just a lost lonely little boy who was brought up in a dysfunctional family, which was not conducive to my development as a human being and as an adult. We can even bring in an oedipal complex here somewhere if anyone has the time and inclination.

You know what's even more appalling? The fact that quite a few people probably share my mom's opinion as well. What it boils down to is that they think that somehow, in some way, the woman is at fault.

So what's new? But what does that say about our society, a society which in thinking such a thing is basically condoning such behaviour, and from one who as a member of the officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces is supposed to be a model of rectitude and integrity. What has happened to personal responsibility, and accountability for one's own actions? What ever happened to being an adult and behaving like one? Miserable or not, unhappy or not, and culpable of harassment or not, he had a clear choice before him: whether or not to have anything to do with her. And he made his choice, eyes wide open. No excuses.
"He must have had marital problems." HAH!

- Ong Ee-ing

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Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
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Kinny'sQuestionTime, (c) 2000 kinny
Eclectic Apathy, (c) 2000 Dustin
The Electric Ghazals, (c) 2000 Alfian Bin Sa'at
Heat, (c) 2000 Cyril Wong
No, I'm not a feminist, I'm a female, (c) 2000 Ong Ee-ing