The final days

I don't think there's any real pressure, but I think most year-end posts tend to end up all introspective and meaningful cos we feel the need to make it so. Cos if we didn't, our year would be crap wouldn't it?
Though I've been prone to obsessive bouts of self-examination (Am I a crap writer? Is my cock too small? Do kids under-12 read my blog and should I be toning down my shit?), I'm not by any stretch a 'meaningful' person. To prove it, the next paragraph will have no connection to this one.

And the cow jumped over the moon. Well, not jumped exactly. It farted and the farmer was smoking and ignited the largely methane-composed gas and Fwoom!


My thoughts on the past year, over the space of about 15 minutes, in no particular order:

• I have never seen a bus refuel. All these years pulling up to gas stations at various times of the day and not once have I seen such a thing. Hail, I've seen Fuel Tankers refuel but never buses.
• The (biological) children of a good friend read my blog. Girls, if you're reading this, I invite you to contribute a cartoon to illustrate each post. I think people would love it.
• It's better to show than to tell. But that don't mean telling isn't important. And I will keep telling.
• I have two new friends whom I would not have become closer to had they actually been able to keep their Boxing Day appointment in Penang. Thank God.
• There is The One. And sometimes, it ain't the one you're with. It is simultaneously the most beautiful and terrible thing to realise. It don't matter how you met – only that you did.
• I have true friends. The proof of it is I do absolutely nothing for them. I can't advance their careers, give them decent advice, lend them money, provide no-obligation sex, none of these things. And yet they do so much for me. Funny, this.
• I read a lot of Science Fiction this year.
• I spent a lot of time being right rather than making it right. I'ma try and do that less.
• You can't change the outcome for some stuff. You can only change your experience of it. I coulda made my experiences better and I didn't half the time. I'ma try and do that less too.
  
• For the first time since 1988, I am a fan again. I know more about Battlestar Galactica than anyone I've met. I get strange looks, rolled eyes, and screams with the words 'Shut' and 'Up.' And Debbie Gibson, if you put out another album, I'd definitely download it. I still believe!
• You guys remember my neighbour's son? The one who got in trouble with those loan sharks? I haven't seen him in more than a month. Where is he?
  
• What I do is the second most important thing in the world. What I'm paid for, most likely the second least important. How's that for irony?
• India is now on my list.
• I don’t want to die average. I can die unknown, but I don’t want to die average.
• Do I have Alzheimer's?
• What are the symptoms for prostate cancer?
• When listening to my iPod, I’ve fallen into the habit of skipping my favourite songs cos I didn't want to 'waste' them. I'm going to stop that. What the fuck am I 'saving' them for?

A few months ago, my mom photocopied an article for me and left it on the dining table for me. It was a speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in June this year. I can recite certain bits by heart, so deep was its impression on me. One of them is the following:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future.You have to trust something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.

Happy New Year everyone.

Movie review: King Kong

Question: Can Peter Jackson make movie that isn't three hours long?

Answer: No.

To know if it's worth it (in nowhere nearly as much time) read my review.

3 pets: the dog

My brother brought him home and announced flatly, sternly even, that he would live with us now. “He’s better off with us.” He never told us where the dog came from, or what caused the deep scar on its rump.

He had a brown coat, smooth and shiny.
His eyes were bright and alert but his brow always carried a concerned frown, like he was worried for you. And maybe he was.
He was a wonderful guard dog. He could tell someone was approaching a hundred feet before they reached the door.
His ears were like a bat’s, large and triangular.

We called him Radar.

The year before last, his liver, then his kidneys began to fail.
But he would always get up to greet you, no matter what.
He struggled to his feet often in those last months, falling occasionally.
And then one day, my dad noticed he was bumping into things. Then we saw his eyes.
The vet told us he’d had an aneurism of sorts and it filled his eyes with blood, striking him blind.

But when you came home, he’d get to his feet without fail.
And he’d find you with those amazing ears.

One morning, we found him lying in the sun, asleep for the last time.
I called my ex and I spent 10 minutes on the phone with her, just listening to her cry.

We put him in a blue blanket so he wouldn’t be cold.

My dad still leaves a big gap between the door and the front fender when he parks the car.

I wish you coulda seen him.
He was so beautiful.

3 pets: The bug

My brother learned the word ‘arachnid’ before I did (something that stings to this day).

When he was 15, he brought home a scorpion.
Words he used to describe the creature were:
Cool
Harmless
Arachnid (“Insects have six legs stoopid”)
Baby

Words I used to describe my brother:
Sicko
Wacko
Psycho (“You know any words that don’t end with an ‘O’?” “SHUT UP!”)
Dead

It was a tense time for our family.
We just moved into a house I hated, my mom just started her own business and we missed her terribly, my dad wouldn’t stop playing Anne Murray…
Last thing we needed was a scorpion in the household as a fucking pet.

My parents, after failing to get through my brother a.k.a. Wacko’s skull, decided to let my brother keep the creature. Their logic being as far as acts of teen rebellion went, scorpions weren’t as bad as say, drugs or being a Jehovah’s Witness.

I presented several plausible, well-argued scenarios, mostly ending in our death.
But nooooooo, they wouldn’t listen.

One day my mom noticed what she thought were clumps of coconut shavings on the kitchen counter. She picked them up with her fingers. The shavings separated, then began to crawl up her hand in a swarm.

Turns out mom wasn’t the only female with kids in the house.