Of Happiness and Valiums

It’s camwhore time!

Relish this rare occurrence people, I only do crazy shit when final exams are coming up. I think it’s a disorder.

Remember when I said I bought feminine clothes? Never quite used ‘em, but hey there’s always the future. I’m not ready to wear them yet, but since I got a new camera, I’m guess I’m going to…

NOT take pictures of them! Yay!

Instead, you guys are getting a list of my favourite clothes. Maynard, don’t judge me. :<

Source: Gift from Auntie Khathijah;

Brand: ROMP

Very comfortable, and I like the colour. It even complements the toiletries accidentally captured in the picture as well.

Source: Gift from Mak Long;

Brand: Dolce and Gabbana

I like to pretend I’m badass when I wear it… you can actually see that for yourself… plztoignorethesyoksendiriexpressiononmaifacekthxbai.

Source: My late father got it for me;

Brand: MNG

Very the suitable for chilly weather because it’s very the hot when you wear it. So much so that no way in hell am I going to camwhore in it in a non air-conditioned room anymore…

Source: Another one from my late father;

Brand: MNG

Thinner than the last one, in fact so very thin I suspect it’s just for show. But I LOVE how it brings out the bathtub! Such elegant hues!

Source: Gift from my younga sista who got it from my olda sistah;

Brand: Glassons

I just like hoodie sweaters. I think anyone who wears hoodie sweaters looks cool, unless it sports patterns of skulls and crossbones and/or embarrassing toiletries in the background. In my case however, the cheap shampoo and generic body shampoo is an… artistic addition.

Most favourite;

Source: Gift from ma olda sistah;

Brand: Cotton Concept

The lining inside is ultra soft. It serves its purpose as a sweater rather well too, by, get this, WARMING ME UP! I know! I mean, who actually uses sweaters for that purpose. Hello, it’s just for fashion, d-uh~!

Least liked:

Source: Bought during a clothes shopping spree with Mak Long;

Brand: Agenda

It’s in the favourite list because it’s simple, cotton-y and white. However, if you take notice, all the previous clothes were gotten for free. I paid for this one myself. :P

It’s RM49, the price of a 4GB pendrive… So yeah, least favourite-ted.

If I ever make this my Friendster, Myspace or Facebook profile picture, please kill me.

I know I have less than two weeks before my finals are up, but I have done next to none studying… Currently praying for God not to give me great scores, but at least some motivation or incentive to study.

Pray for me, slaves fellow peers I duly respect and admire.

“Liek, ow mai gawd, you don’t have Facebook yet?! Liek, lame! Keep up with the times, gurl!”

Oh.

Dear.

Fucking.

Lord.

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

For some reason, this shitfaced species we call the human race (They’re even on top of the friggin’ food-chain. How did that happen?) has been bequeathed this rare and unique talent – Probably inherent since the days of Genesis. It’s called immense fuckardation and I’ll be glad to introduce to you this term;

Fucktard:

“A combination of “fucking” and “retard”. Usually reserved for instances when either of the previous two insults are simply not enough. Otherwise known as a George Bush.”

– EncyclopediaDramatica.com

Fucktardation:

“A highly undesirable circumstance; the state in which fucktards are doomed to continually exist. Paradoxically, fucktards (consciously or unconsciously) also perpetuate the state of fucktardation everywhere they go. Thus, the fucktard essentially functions as a living virus of fucktardation.”

– UrbanDictionary.com

Social networking sites have been going round, running rampant and spreading its ill-gotten influence to the youths of my generation. We’re proud of our hip-hop trend, sexed-up music videos and muse-filled, deep lyrics of sex, Paris Hilton and booty-shakin’. What’s new-age and modernisation without the texture and jiggle-capacity of Spears’ ass, you tell me. Of course, the mega-commercialised cyber based industries find much appreciation from the artistic roots we have cultured and they have harvested it anew; by the introduction of Friendster, Myspace and Facebook.

In 2006, after much current-trend-and-teen-culture ignoring, I did some heavy online socialising. I mean, if I neglected the real live version of this like, “socialising” thing, I should probably practice on the the online version of the “game” to brush up on reality.

A bit disappointed by the lack of casual killing and non-consequential violence though.

Friendster

Friendster was introduced in 2002, way back in the day. I opened an account before it became the rage thanks to Yee June but soon forgot I had one.

I’d never have doubted my generation if it weren’t for my exposure to Friendster. However, it did have its leet factor. With the implementation of the 6-Degrees Separation Theory, I managed to cyber-bump into Primary School classmates and patch things up again with old rivals. It was also a very economic way of getting in touch with friends you’ve just made, yet are still unwilling to part with sacred Prepaid Credit for just yet.

What grated my nerves was that when individual customisation of profile pages became possible, suddenly personalising your profile with epilepsy-inspired colours, personality-embodying music and statement-shouting banners using scripts or dumbefied web programs specifically written for the tech-challenged makes you the equivalent of a genius programmer. Basic knowledge in photo editing also deems you a master-level Photoshop user, where you exhibit your talent by adjusting your pictures to ridiculous brightness and contrast levels to hide the acne and blemishes on that deformed feature we call your face.

And you know we love the generic, death-to-grammer-and-spelingz captions as well.

Usually further creativity is showcased by taking your picture in various angles so as to hide certain unattractive features. The more creative breed would set the picture in black and white while covering their faces with their two-pound-hair-gel hair to catch the emo, angst-filled and burning-with-passion soul entrapped in that misunderstood, tortured shell of a life.

There are other things to nitpick on as well:

Testimonial boards become inbox for personal messages, with people informing the whole world about your credence and respectability by going “Yo dude. Sup? I’m fine, yo.” and “Apa KhaBar HehEHEee.. I lUv ur ProF PiC…”

Bulletins become the outflow of your inspirational messages that goes like; “I Am BoReD!!11!” or “I LuV <3 <3 My PinKy PoOo~~”

The race for presumed social superiority contends how many friends (or random strangers, lurking paedophiles, whatever. Makes no difference nowadays) you’ve managed to get ahold of, and how skilled you are in maintaining multiple Friendster account at one time because you have the special skillz of clicking the mouse and locating the “Add as Friend button”, and why waste such talent? The amount of “thx 4 da add!!!” testimonials you get is proportionate to the awesomeness you have and an endless list of friends is a public testament to your socialite self and party-bumpin’ ways.

You might think it doesn’t get worse, but it does. The problem compounded further when the internet bore fruit to a new, blue-clad offspring.

Myspace

Soon in 2003 Myspace popped up like a new resilient breed of weed, strengthening my unfulfilled dream to have humankind castrated. I understood, from what my friend June informed me, that it was a music-based Social Networking Website. Fans of alternative and original music, with artists trying to make it big with original lyrics and actual instrument-playing, found in it their escapist haven. I opened an account and also soon forgot I owned one, probably because it was just too lame for me.

Or that I only had one friend…

The concept of Myspace I deemed ingenious, and people like June highly appreciated the incentive to music lovers like herself. A new change from the blare of “I’ll never breaaaaaak youuur heart,” or “Oops, I did it again!” from mainstream radio stations. It’s just not everyone’s cup of tea, especially not those with IQ points higher than pre-pubescent 12 year old girls.

I soon lost respect when, years later, I met a friend’s relative at a social gathering who actually talked to me (Note to self: Never do that mouth-movement thing at social gatherings. Actual sound comes out and people think you actually want to… talk) and says this;

You have Friendster? Oh of course you do. Everyone does, it’s so over-rated. You should open a Myspace account. Oh? You DO have a Myspace account? Wow, and I thought like, so very few Malaysians have it! It’s like, virtually unknown!”

I don’t think I needed to ask her if she had an account.

My second encounter with the Race of Stupid (They prefer the Homosapien nomenclature) was this:

“Friendster is so stupid,” says a person whom I was beginning to think highly of after that initial statement, “Myspace is the way to go! Don’t these losers get it?” she continues with her shit-for-brains self.

As the changing of seasons come and go, and by that I mean as we experience perpetual rain and shine in our tropical country and still have people fashioning fashion faux pas like wool scarves or snowcaps in public, trends, with its dynamic nature, naturally follows suit. Everyone shifted to Myspace, though maintained their Friendster account still, adding friends they’ve already enlisted in one of the accounts to the other and pretty much committed to the aforementioned idiocy I mentioned above. Only this time, simple maths tells us it’s doubled

Oh joy.

Thus, we managed to turn a profound idea into another plaything for the brain-dead. Nothing new, nothing new. What was new is embodied by the neoteric essence in creative, photo-snapping technique popularly termed “The Myspace Angles”.

Myspace Angles:

When the camera is placed above your head at an angle to take a myspace picture.
This is usually done by the horribly mangled, ugly, and/or obese users who still want to be hunted by pedophiles, as to make them look more attractive (or at the very least more human) than they really are.

– UrbanDictionary.com

After finally getting the hang of it, I stopped thinking that this extension of new-things-teenagers-come-up-with-which-haven’t-killed-them-in-the-proces-dotdotdot-yet wouldn’t bind me in surprise anymore but I was proven wrong.

Facebook

Facebook is relatively new to me, though I realised it gave birth to a new breed of elitism.

“You know, Friendster is so annoying. I am so annoyed by all that colours! And the music! That’s why Facebook is so much cooler, it’s for the more matured society.”

“Facebook is for adults, those annoying teenagers are still playing around with Friendster and Myspace. You should join Facebook, the others are for kids.”

I succumbed, but only because my cousin managed to persuade me to. Out of the 10535 earlier attempts by others, she’s the only who managed to convert this unbeliever. Of course, I’m preferring Facebook from the rest currently, but I’ve only started out and have rarely been toying with it, so I can’t tell you much. Though I can tell you that I’m expecting another steep downgrade in the wire installation within the human brain circuit.

And that’s the optimistic view.

Interesting stuff I dug out on Friendster, Myspace and Facebook:

This is thanks to my cursory glance over Wikipedia extensive research for the purpose of getting the facts straight.

1. Friendster was founded in March 2002, Myspace in August 2003. Facebook actually started out in February 2004 but was made public in September 2005.

2. Friendster has more than 85 million members worldwide, and is most popular in Asia, especially the Philippines with estimate figures of over 90% of internet users in Philippines having an account. They rack in 39% of the site’s traffic.

3. Myspace is probably the most controversy-filled and media-covered of the three.

Myspace parties have received front page news from the events of gatecrashed Myspace parties, seeing as news of the party can be spread to uninvited guests via newsfeeds. These are the few:

• A party hosted by Corey Delaney, a 16-year-old boy from Narre Warren in Melbourne, and advertised on MySpace, resulted in 500 people attending. Police cars were attacked, and they called in support, including the dog squad and a helicopter.
• Allen Joplin, a  17-year-old American high school student, was shot dead by an uninvited guest at an underage party after it had been publicized through MySpace.

In June 2006, 16-year-old American Katherine Lester flew to the Middle East, to Tel Aviv, Israel, after having tricked her parents into getting her a passport in order to be with a 20-year-old man she met through MySpace.

In October 2006, 13-year-old Megan Meier committed suicide after being the victim of cyber-bullying instigated by the mother of a friend who had posed as a 16-year old named “Josh Evans”.

In July 2007, the company found and deleted 29,000 profiles belonging to registered sex offenders.

Makes you feel all the more safe, doesn’t it?

This was my second personal experience, and compared with the first, I didn’t actually witness a spectral figure or sensed a ghastly presence of anything. For that, I refused to call it a supernatural awakening. Still it was creepy.

I spent the remainder of my Raya holidays in Langkawi with relatives. This meant – for me – free food, free lodging, free rides, free tourism activities and you know, the experience of familial bonding and shared closeness with your related kin or whatever.

DID I MENTION FREE FOOD!?!?

On the last day before having to leave early tomorrow morning, we headed out to a few tourist spots namely Makam Mahsuri, Forgettable and Overpriced Tourist Spot #1, You’ve Got to be Kidding Me Location #2, This Sure Was a Pleasant 5 Minutes Experience That Took Us Half an Hour to Get Here #3, Langkawi Cable Car and Underwater World Langkawi. Of course, dehydration was a constant bother so I chugged bottles of water as we drove to the designated places. My 3 years old niece, Adriana, probably excited by the sudden elasticity of my abdominal area, decided to play bouncy ball on my full bladder and refused to sit anyplace other than directly above the Human Organ Balloon. I am much tempted to verbosely tell you how extremely pleasant that experience was but it was actually dimmed by the more excruciatingly thrilling events of driving on bumpy streets and over speed bumps while having an approximately 15kg giggly and jumpy deadweight on your bursting full bladder.

I heart kids. We should teach them to play with scissors and other random sharp objects.

Anyway, it was a seven-seater car, and I sat way back with the kid. She was at an impressionable age undergoing the mimicking phase. She’d imitate your actions and words and I was quite proud of the new range of profanit—err vocabularies that I exposed her with. Wouldn’t it be nice if she grew up into a Jr. Aziemah? I’d be making the world a favour ‘cause she’d have my bubbly optimism, egregious generosity and love for all things happy and cute teehee! :D

Dyjae stop gagging.

We were driving to the Underwater World (actually enjoyed the place) and she was staring intently at the back windshield, at the miniature horizon growing smaller as we drove past thickets of bushes and sparsely grown trees. Then she pointed out the window, and I presumed she was pointing at the car behind us;

“There’s someone there! Someone over there!”

“Uh… congratulations kid. You can detect humans. Your mom must be proud.”

“There’s someone there!”

“Yeah it’s called a driver. Wow, right? Your aunt Aziemah is a genius.”

She was pointing vigorously still and I noted that the car behind us already drove past. There was nothing there. Before I comprehended anything, she asked the window;

“You want to go to auntie Aziemah’s house? You do?”

She nodded excitedly a few times and turned to me;

“Can we go to your house? Can we?”

Note that the house she was referring to is the adjacent room my cousin rented for me at Kampung Tok Senik. By this time, alarm bells started ringing… though it was just Beyonce’s ‘Ring The Alarm’ song playing on my Zune.

“Uhhh… who’s going to my house? You’re going to my house, Adriana?”

“Yeah I want to go to your house too!”

“Then”, I emphasised this part out of paranoia, “only YOU can come to my house.”

I thought the matter settled, eked out some courage and tried to focus on burning a hole on the backseat of where my eldest sister was sitting (This is for chuckling whenever we ran over a bump, you No. #1 sister in the world you!) before lil’ Adriana started doing something more creepy. She continued staring outside the window for several minutes, and just like how she’d imitate me everytime I stuck my tongue out at her, she started the imitation of bulging her eyes out and sticking her tongue much further out than people usually would. Her whole tongue stuck out of the crevice of her sinisterly creepy smile and she kept her eyes bulged for quite some time, all the while keeping an intense stare outside the window. I just gaped at her, chilled to the bone at the creepy face she was making and made a mental note to sleep under the covers that night… not because I’m scared, but, uh… because I’m… anticipating chilly weather and such and such.

After that, she got distracted as 3 year old kids would usually do and resumed her favourite pastime of imagining auntie Aziemah’s full bladder as a makeshift trampoline.

I almost prayed for her new friend to come back.

The creepiest thing was, when we got back that night and I slept in my respective bed… It happened… I actually…

…Slept like a frikkin’ baby.

Thanks for inviting the Sandman over, kid. Here have a penknife. Pergi main jauh-jauh, preferably without adult supervision.