the2ndrule Issue 15
The 2ndRule
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Apr 2001 email edition
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web edition: http://here.is/the2ndrule
Contents
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0. Editorial
1. to grow or not to grow, that is the question. [redredfish]
2. Oranges sliced against the grain in scorn of Oranges that are peeled [Felix Lee]
3. Towgay [Judith H]
4. Sleeping Beauty [Cyril Wong]
5. Butterfly [Shannon Low]
6. Untitled [offspring nirvana]
7. two ways to [Ng Shing Yi]
8. A beggar's tale [Lester Goh]
Editorial
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Take a seat on a sunny day at the city's busiest junction and watch the pedestrians cross, veiled behind your coffee cup. Some rush through with knitted brows, like tanks, punching through the crowd as if they were minor inconveniences. Some take their time to cross, always hesitant, always checking the right, the left, then the right again. Some relish in the transitional experience -- they'll dance a little ditty on the divider. Others, they're just crossing to follow the crowd, one of the lost sheep in the directed herd.
You stay seated on your three-legged stool, waiting. An old man aged over 75 puts on his white cap, and, singing the songs of his country, dances across. A team of doctors, armed with Siamese knifes, put their heads together, and cross. A fighter jet pilot, rubbing his nose, holds up his email address, and crosses.
You walk up to the curb and wait. What's stopping you from crossing the road?
*
If you have an article you'd like to submit to us, or f you feel you've got something to say, email us at 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, Judith H
Contributors : redredfish, Felix Lee, Cyril Wong, offspring nirvana, Ng Shing Yi, Lester Goh
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to grow or not to grow, that is the question.
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Many people stop growing by the time they turn nine. Some do so even earlier. It's the way kids stop growing after puberty. No more inches to be gained. Neither around the bust, just much about the waist.
My friend choy wanted to grow tall like the giant in jack & the beanstalk so that he could roam among giants & perhaps gather more fortunes for those like jack. He aspired to be a generous giant, a very generous one, & very giant too.
So he began football games, pokemon tricks & rapping with other potential giants. Like fellow potential giants, he spoke the giant language, ate giant food & thought giant thoughts. He had to be careful not to give away his potential robin hood aka choy the giant identity, so it was very difficult.
With giant food, he grew like a giant. With giant thoughts, he spoke like a giant. & of course he acted like one. & we stopped playing marbles together 'cos he couldn't pick them up with his giant fingers.
When we turned eight, he couldn't even see me 'cos he was so big. He would make an awful din playing with his giant friends - & they played all day long. & I wondered if he remembered me & his jack & the beanstalk abridged ending & robin hood.
By the time I was dwarfed by age, I knew that choy had grown & remained tall; but that his dreams had shrivelled away to fill peanut shells.
- redredfish
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Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might want to live in someday.
- Christopher Locke, The Cluetrain Manifesto
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Oranges sliced against the grain in scorn of Oranges that are peeled
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People at a loss as to what to do, need not know when to do it. Where
and Why are as incidental as icebergs to a ship.
Meekly waving with a mere 10% of their hideous damage potential.
Makes you think about that lithe and beautiful she standing at the side
of the road waving gently. Crack... hull breach. Submersion, blurp blurp blurp... too caught up in the act to realize that aside from spectacularly waving, I am drowning.
I wish that it was because of me, that she looked crestfallen today, or
me because she felt more free than she usually did. But we are more than worlds apart...
A cog looking wistfully at another beautiful cog in the workings of a
huge machine, glistening alluringly through a thin veil of oil; I am no more able to influence her than through the method of the machine. That is the beauty of fatalism. She looks crestfallen and feels the cool wind of liberation down her back not because I wished it on her (I did, believe me) but because 'he' didn't call today and because her low
backed halter was a bit too low, and the wind a bit too cruel...
Lost, and in want of direction... I am constantly being directed. For
better for worst.
Take me forward... position me. My dandelion wings are ready to soar,
high and far and wide.
Leaving me stripped of all colour, a staid bare stalk
Concealing the genetic memories of a more deaths and rebirths than you,
my love could ever fathom.
My finest hour... trapped in a minute of martyrdom;
A cog, a seed, a potential weed.
Remember me well, O ungrateful sunrise...
As I fly forth to break hearts,
Inexorably, my own.
- Felix Lee
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Gentleman rogue
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Towgay
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Go to market, go back home. She likes this life, wants to cook for him when he comes home for lunch, in the afternoon. So she go to market. Today, the towgay is very fresh, she knows it is good, because the shopkeeper sell them with roots, and the leaves are very green. Plus, it's his favourite. She also buys some fish, and tofu. She is very happy, because the shopkeeper gives her discount, because she comes every day. So every day, she gets discount.
When she walks back, she thinks of Ah Boy, worries about whether he took the wrong bus again today, that boy, very blur. Then she worries that he'll take the wrong bus back also. She walks quite slowly, because it is very hot, and the plastic bags with those red merlion heads on them are very heavy. The one with the fish inside is breaking too. The pavement is not even, so she has to walk slowly. Must buy new slippers soon, the ones she is wearing coming out already. Must be the glass on the pavement.
In the kitchen, it is cooler, so she wipes her sweat and sits down, gets out the back-scratcher. Wah, shiok. But must hurry up, it's almost ten o'clock already. This table is so wobbly, but it is so old. The old chair is also shaky. She sighs, and gets out her yellow plastic basket, and her white plastic basket. One for the towgay with "tails", one for the towgay without "tails". And one piece of newspaper for the "tails".
She likes pulling the towgay tails. She likes feeling the juice splash, to prove they are really fresh. It makes her feel important, like her husband. Her husband is very clever, like Ah Boy. He got an office job. He is quite important there, he said. He also has to sort out things, with two trays, he told her one time. He said sorting things is a very important thing. In factories some people have to sort out things too. Sometimes he works very hard sorting out very important things, and he never come home until very late. Then she worries and she will tell him to be careful, don't work so hard. Now she feels important, like a factory worker. So she hums a happy tune from the advertisement she saw on TV yesterday.
Actually, she wanted to do a job. But her husband said there's no need, she stay at home, enough. Look after Ah Boy, make sure he does his homework. So of course she stay at home. She wonders what it is like to work in a factory, with important machines. But never mind, she only has O level, how to look for a job? But actually, her friend, Siew Cho, from upstairs, she also got O level only, she is a salesgirl in Orchard Road. But never mind. She needs money, can ask him. No need to tell him that.
She's finished doing the towgay already. She also finished cooking all the things. She puts them nicely on the wobbly table, and puts the food cover that looks like an umbrella on top. And then she turns on the TV, watch for a while. She is bored. It is almost 1:30 p.m. already, he still hasn't come back. Maybe his business got lunch today. She starts to worry again. She looks at the food, and sighs.
Ah Boy also got ECA today, he will surely come back late. Maybe she will eat her food first. But then, she wants to wait for him. So wasted, she cooked his favourite towgay some more.
- Judith H
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I've got better things to do with my life than get screwed by men I've never met.
- Shirley Manson
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Sleeping Beauty
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If I am happy,
Then I must be crazy.
Because this is ridiculous.
Marrying some prince
Based on that fact
Of a kiss. So what if
He braved a fortress of bramble
Did not his armour protect him?
(Being a princess does not
Necessarily mean I am stupid!)
And look at his face, so high
On the beauty that wasn't mine
To earn; whatever virtues
Were sewed in at birth
By fairies with their needle-wands.
I must admit, however,
They did a pretty good job
My image is so perfect
I turn away from embarrassment.
What do you think
my life was like
everyday in a castle?
Before or after the pricking accident,
It was pretty much the same.
So now someone has saved me
From a variation of slumber.
Hurrah. Three cheers for the prince
And the idiot writing this.
(So tell me why I still feel
like I have not yet woken?)
- Cyril Wong
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Time flows much faster in Tokyo than in the countryside; I can feel myself becoming more impatient than I used to be. Isn't that awful?
- Kanako Masuda, 23
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Butterfly
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The pulse of the city beats against her temples as she waits for the traffic to pass. Traffic. She stares across the road at the cafe window and just barely makes out her reflection in the glass. Reflection. But as the lights turn green a wave of people surge forward and she is lost in the crowd. As is her reflection. Traffic. Lights. Amber. Pulsing. The throb of people striding, pacing, ambling across the road at myriad rhythms that combine into a pounding beat. Surrounded.
But in the midst of the crowd a butterfly floats by and settles on Jill's shoulder. And she surveys the world over the tips of her ochre wings. Before floating up and off again on another breeze.
- Shannon Low
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When Chuang Tzu awoke, he was unsure if he was a man who had dreamed that he was a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly who was dreaming that he was a man.
- Dave Gibbons, Butterfly
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Untitled
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he sees her crossing the road but is afraid to follow.
"then while i was feeling sad and angry at myself, i looked up at the sky and the lamplights were shining mockingly as the sun was rising and their light was useless, but not cowardly."
- offspring nirvana
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See a window? Crowbar.
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two ways to
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that edgy indefinition in your voice
yes it turns me on
some folks got wonderful round elocution
the chipper idiom, smooth transitions
nice and dandy for long and slow and slippery
but for a hard day with plenty of cracked smiles
slip me the tension of tongue
two ways to: the bricked way
and the rocks of faith
- Ng Shing Yi
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detox, retox
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A beggar's tale
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A beggar picked up from the dustbin today
A dirty yellow soft toy bird
A piece of chipped sea shell
A birthday card
A satchel with a bear on it
A small friendship band
A few old letters
And a half torn photograph
The old man thought to himself
- Lester Goh
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Ambiguity is our friend.
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to grow or not to grow, that is the question, (c) 2001 redredfish
Oranges sliced against the grain in scorn of Oranges that are peeled, (c) 2001 Felix Lee
Towgay, (c) 2001 Judith H
Sleeping Beauty, (c) 2001 Cyril Wong
Untitled, (c) 2001 offspring nirvana
two ways to, (c) 2001 Ng Shing Yi
A beggar's tale, (c) 2001 Lester Goh
