the2ndrule Issue 39
the2ndrule
====================================================
May 2003 email edition
====================================================
web edition: http://the2ndrule.com
Contents
--------
0. Edit
1. 2 extracts from Performing Words 2003 [Eva Gauss & Adelina Ong]
2. Instant Cafe Radio Episode 16 [Koh Beng Liang]
3. Flourishing [Yvonne Koh]
4. Five Other Signs of a God's Decay [Nicholas Liu]
5. 24/09/2002 07:01 - 07/10/2002 11:20 [Matt Sho]
6. There's a Certain Comfort in Isolationism [Vivian St.George]
7. Shorttakes [Long Sin Yin & Russell Chan]
8. the2ndrule takes off! [Jason Tong]
Edit
----
Beauty and Mortality -
Can death be beautiful? Does death make you cry?
Can beauty be mortal? Does beauty make you smile?
How long - do we wait - to be beautiful - or to die?
Please send your comments, suggestions and contributions to: editor@the2ndrule.com
------------------------------------------------------------
2ndrule team : Koh Beng Liang, Shannon Low, Benety Goh, Russell Chan, Alfian Bin Sa'at, Jason Tong, Judith H
Contributors : Eva Gauss, Adelina Ong, Yvonne Koh, Nicholas Liu Matt Sho, Vivan St.George, Long Sin Yin
------------------------------------------------------------
2 extracts from Performing Words 2003
-------------
I. The Haircut
When a woman has a new haircut it often shows a big change in her life. If she wants to end a relationship or to start a new career, she will have a new haircut. Once I saw a haircut that said: "I will die very soon".
I did not know, that she was so ill, but I noticed her clothes and the new haircut. She wanted to keep herself in shape.
No tears, no sorrow, even walking very straight. Her suite more formal than usual.
The very stiff grey wool holding the posture to sustain a crumpling soul.
I should have seen in her hardened face, that she had to walk to her death.
- Eva Gauss
II. Untitled
I found some postcards in bottles, floating over the sea:
"I am cold. There is nothing to eat. I lost your photograph when they came with guns yesterday. But I remember you here (points to head) and here (points to heart) and they can't take that away from me. I started drawing yesterday. Today I found some brick and it makes a lovely red colour. I wish I could send you some."
Everything has changed since I've found these bottles. All my life I was raised on this ship. Like most others here, I have never left. And we only hear tales of places and lands. We have been floating since forever and I am tired of transit. I think...tomorrow I will jump off this ship and swim.
- Adelina Ong
------------------------------------------------------------
Unearthed -- Saddam's Sand Reserves Discovered in Iraq.
Ben Harrison
25 April, 2003 -- 4:56am
Vast amounts of Sand have been discovered throughout Iraq. In a statement made earlier today, Scientists confirmed that the former Iraqi President had access to huge undeclared stockpiles of Sand. Doctors agree that sufficient quantities of Sand, if swallowed, can be lethal.
"To date, there has never been a single recovery from any sand-related death -- in the same way that no-one killed by chemical, nuclear or biological weapons has been known to return to life," said an unmanned Pentagon sauce.
Experts state they expect to unearth more Sand in days to come.
------------------------------------------------------------
Instant Cafe Radio Episode 16
------------
Try singing after you've duct-taped your nose.
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue39/instantcafe.html
Playlist:
National Anthems - France
David Bowie - I'm afraid of Americans
Bob Marley - War
David Letterman - Apr 30 monologue
Fischerspooner - *#!@$%
Sassi & Locco - Bibleopoly (Cooling Bros. Mix)
Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight
Bomb the Bass feat. Justin Warfield - Bug Powder Dust (La Funk Mob Remix)
Fat Boys - Human Beat Box
Neri Per Caso - Sogno
Neil Finn (Crowded House) - Fall At Your Feet (acoustic)
Pet Shop Boys - The Night I Fell In Love
Mo' Horizons - Fever 99
Groove Armada - Raisin' The Stakes
Ge Lan - Carmen (from The Wild Wild Rose soundtrack)
- Selection and mix by Koh Beng Liang
------------------------------------------------------------
"I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man."
Che Guevara, Oct. 9, 1967
------------------------------------------------------------
Flourishing
-----------
At fifteen he learned the mouse's art,
running for his life through a labyrinth.
At thirty his circumstances broke.
At forty he lay down to veiled mirrors,
slanted on a bed, relief blooming up the spine.
His lungs are trees that have never
seen the sun, thick with forgetful smoke.
In such a quiet den all things leave him,
fierce heat of hunger, the pale moon faces
and crying mouths of home.
Footnote:
(Confucius said, "At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. At thirty I established myself. At forty I was no longer plagued by delusions. At fifty I knew the mandate of heaven. At sixty my senses were refined. At seventy I could do as my heart desired, and yet not deviate from propriety.)
- Yvonne Koh
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.epitonic.com
------------------------------------------------------------
Five Other Signs of a God's Decay
-----------
"that is to say blast hell to heaven
so blue still and calm
so calm with a calm which even
though intermittent is better
than nothing" - Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
I walk past throngs
(and the clown at the walkway
squeaking - mouselike, incongruous -
into the microphone, to the tune of 'Waltzing Matilda'
as he, with bow in right hand, makes
a great show
of playing a ragged little teddy bear held in his left)
into surprising darkness, and overheard choruses
of "Blackout, ma'am, closed for the day"
from sadly electricity-reliant storeowners
and from others, no cash registers clicking and ringing
or green-lit digits
but unheard and unheard of scratching on paper; a sad day
for the mall.
Skylight the only light, raining, as it happens,
down on temporary stalls in the middle of the atrium
hawking New Year wares and snacks
- some for children and others, stickier
for deities - red and gold
and red
attracts some, who stand and browse half-heartedly
enjoying the suddenly-novel combination
of cool air and light. Shoppers on upper levels
gravitate towards the railings (to marvel?).
Others, more practically-inclined,
brave the corners and basement, which
in the darkness seem to smell of old Perrier and hospitals,
in their quest
for groceries and bubble tea. But I
with my own small clan of strangers
for whom not light nor cool air
nor two-dollar tea
provide incentive enough, mull for a while and then
disperse
in mute diaspora.
The clown on the walkway is the same clown, but now
in the newly-noticed heat
I see the cut-throat motion of the bow
back and forth without the need for rosin
and the brown joke-shoes of matted fur, donated, perhaps
by the teddy bear's doting mother
and the small pile of coins which grows with slow but steady speed
as home-bound people stop and bend, and leave again
without their offerings.
Among this whole exodite tribe, surely
there must be four or maybe six like me
boys whose feet do not quite touch the ground
and girls with eyes and pockets full of stars
and maybe some of them
returning home with half-lit masses in their heads,
hostage bears and laughing genuflection,
will, to the tune of half-heard clownish squealing,
also write a poem
and maybe one of them
will be braver than I
and burn it.
- Nicholas Liu
------------------------------------------------------------
Check out these t-shirt designs under "Product". Tea towels coming soon!
http://www.mr-bingo.co.uk
------------------------------------------------------------
24/09/2002 07:01 - 07/10/2002 11:20
----------
24/09/2002 07:01
sweat sweat everywhere now then here the sun the sun ra ri ra rarrsp tongue caught by cat isn't it it it amazing zing zing for sara hubrich
24/09/2002 07:13
said i said tonight not a good idea said you should stay said nothing nothing at all said away to dresen said too much for cornelia freyer
24/09/2002 07:21
i can't i can't he's waiting take nightbus take me hon sweet sweet as sugar sunshine leaves you binge bimonolisloe lulnelsglii nont for ruth mcleod
24/09/2002 07:28
do i make sense are my pupils large good good ally's got to go go see sophie another half cheers mate somethin to eat or a fag? for allyson waller
24/09/2002 11:13
1.1 he awakens to messages he could not understand. the sun, the silence in his ears, the taste of sweat.
25/09/2002 04:01
stockholm for a week paris for a day dublin two am i mysterious oyster queer foul miltag trod vile plea lyria for sally sasaki
25/09/2002 09:21
2.1 again he awakens, and he cannot understand. are they dreams? or parts of himself he is trying to remember?
29/09/2002 02:39
the telly is left in the flat as usual she is late the cat is not inthe bag the situation is not such paul rae speaks english hanson ho is not gay
05/10/2002 13:00
3.1 many versions of the same theme. too much like a recurring dream. he wonders if his life is an endless repetition. waiting for stillness that never comes.
06/10/2002 20:39
Et dire que tout ce que nous aimons doit mourir. - michel leiris
06/10/2002 20:40
Everything that we love will die.
07/10/2002 11:20
4.1 it is the nature of love, and the nature of death. why lament?
- Matt Sho
------------------------------------------------------------
Lomographic Embassy Singapore presents...
"Good Light" - The legendary Holga: one of the most low-tech machines in photographic history! The camera's imperfections reinterpret reality as we know it; it is the art of accidental photography: distortions, light leakage, superimposition? The result is a fantastic voyage, saturated and surreal, where life's simplicity takes on the beauty of magic.
Catch "Good Light" from 10-25 May 2003 at
Song + Kelly 21: The Forum, 01-38, 583 Orchard Road, Singapore
http://lomography.com.sg
------------------------------------------------------------
There's a Certain Comfort in Isolationism
--------------
An uncle of mine who adored my playing is, due to a brain aneurysm, dead at the age of sixty-six. My blood aunt's husband, he was my second father - the parent who picked me up from school when my mom and dad were both at work, the parent who would randomly buy me cheeseburger Happy Meals for no reason at all, the parent who took me to see every Disney movie on Friday nights, and made me pancakes on Saturday mornings. I played movies in my head when the doctor gave us the news to keep from losing control and bursting into tears like everyone else in the room.
I never cry in public. To me, tears are an inappropriate and imposing form of expression in the sense that crying causes worry and discomfort to other people. When I lost control and let a tear slip, I'm breaking the image of composure that I project toward everyone, and people immediately know that something is wrong with me. But today is the day of his funeral, and I know that at some point I will probably have to cry. All around me, I see people crying.
I hold back my tears. To avoid coming to terms with what lies before me, I choose to fill my head with trivial details, dissecting the reasons I disdain crying in public, the priest's vestments, the field of death I stand in the middle of. I look to the side and see rows and rows of brass plaques evenly spaced over the perfectly manicured lawn like buttons on a corporal's uniform. Each plaque has a name, a ranking, a date of birth, and a date of death. Some of them have no ranking, the graves of veterans' wives. Some of them have no date of death, the reserved plots of cautious widows who have already paid thousands of dollars for holes full of dirt to ensure that they will lie with their husbands for eternity. I take all this in while trying to focus on everything except that which I choose to think about, that which I choose not to see.
We all line up to toss a red rose into the grave: first my aunt, then her sons, then her siblings and me, and then everyone else. Eyes cast downward in order to avoid looking into other people's tearful eyes, I joint the queue. My eyes arrive at the hole in the ground, and as I look into it, I see my dry eyes reflected in the shiny surface of the coffin. I grip the rose tightly to keep my eyes from welling up, clenching my fist around the tough green stem. A thorn penetrates the skin on my sweaty palm, and I fling the rose into the grave in pain and surprise. Suddenly I burst into tears, not from the grief of losing a parent, but from the sting of a rose thorn. A trivial pain causes me to act out the motions of a deeper grief. I walk past the grave, angrily sucking on my palm and cursing myself for having lost my poise in front of my entire family and our close friends.
Now crying is all I want to do. It's unfair that I have to expose myself so openly to all these people. It's especially unfair because they're probably all worried about me, and I've never trusted any of them enough to let them see me cry.
In the adjacent garden is a statue of an angel, looking perfect, calm, composed, and without flaw. I look past my reflection in the coffin and see my uncle inside, waxy and frigid and perfectly still. Wondering which one I'd rather be, I decide on the angel. In stony lifelessness, there's no voyeurism, no exhibitionism, no need to trust anyone enough to cry in front of them, and no one to cry for you when you die.
I run out of sobs and am faced with the choice of whether to keep crying or sit silently. If I sit silently, they'll think I'm okay and they'll talk to me, expressing their concerns for my well-being, tell me that they're worried about me, that everything will be okay. If I continue to cry, they'll just leave me alone and worry about someone else. But crying reveals the grief within, the hidden ugliness. Do I dare expose myself any further?
I cry harder. I cry so hard that no one puts their arm around me, no one gives me a tissue to dry my tears, and no one tell me that it's going to be okay.
- Vivian St.George
------------------------------------------------------------
Catch the British Television Advertising Awards
"Best Commercial of the Year - National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children"
http://www.btaa.co.uk/flash.html
------------------------------------------------------------
Shorttakes
-------------
Not quite bearbricks...
http://www.the2ndrule.com/issues/issue39/bb5.html
- Long Sin Yin and Russell Chan
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.shift.com
------------------------------------------------------------
the2ndrule takes off!
---------------
The 2ndrule is going ballistic!!! Take off with these free PDF downloadable designs! Print them on teeshirt transfer paper and put them on your own teeshirts! Remember to set your print settings to invert your print-outs on your teeshirt transfer paper! Or print them out and cut them into stencils for "redecoration!" (We couldn't be encouraging graffiti, could we?)
Enjoy... You may also just print them out and stick'em up!!!
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue39/2ndrule-T1.pdf
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue39/2ndrule-T2.pdf
Teeshirt-making competition!
Take a photo of yourself and your custom 2ndrule teeshirt, or other creative uses of the graphics (e.g. stick them up really big next to the toilet) and send it back to us for a chance to win an actual 2ndrule teeshirt. Email: editor@the2ndrule.com
- Jason Tong
------------------------------------------------------------
http://shift.jp.org
------------------------------------------------------------
* 2ndrule t-shirts *
Non-uniform of the guerilla army. Now available at S$20 each.
Sizes: Girls (28,30), Boys (40,42)
http://the2ndrule.com/issues/issue24/2rtshirt.html
Please send your orders to editor@the2ndrule.com
Haircut (c) 2003 Eva Gauss
Untitled (c) 2003 Adelina Ong
Flourishing (c) 2003 Yvonne Koh
Five Other Signs of a God's Decay (c) 2003 Nicholas Liu
24/09/2002 07:01 - 07/10/2002 11:20 (c) 2003 Matt Sho
There's a Certain Comfort in Isolationism (c) 2003 Vivian St.George
Shorttakes (c) 2003 Sinyin and Russell Chan
the2ndrule takes off! (c) 2003 Jason Tong
