and Thou Shalt Not Gamble

As the furore boils over the purported gambling habit my friends and I have developed, I'm planning a poker marathon to celebrate my birthday... hooray!!!

Poker's taught me so much. But since no one's cared to ask - or more specifically, bothered to listen - i say fuck 'em. I'm just happy nobody's questioned my badminton habit. I'm pretty sure i love badminton more than God, since i'd rather be playing it than praying, fasting, reading the bible, crying on my knees... yada yada yada... I don't think God will mind if i say that either. What have we got to hide from him anyway?

If i close my eyes and concentrate real hard, i can understand why people seem so alarmed at our poker habit. This level of intense mental focus also allows me to levitate 3 feet off the ground. But using previous examples of church wide crisis of conscience as a yardstick, it'll all blow over. I recall a Holy Inquisition of sorts, when we were all experimenting with alcohol. It was someone's birthday at La Bodega, and someone was daring someone else to down their glasses and someone got drunk and someone leaked it to the Holy Inquisitors and someone panicked and some others got a telling off or whatever.

Nobody gives a fuck now. Now we order beer at a whim and we down shots on a fancy. Sigh... such decay...

So am i worried someone will bust down the doors and raid our gathering? No for 3 reasons. The first is because my church doesn't have a Nick, Anthony or Raj anymore. I think some people will remember Raj's midnight sting at a cybercafe to recover some wayward sheep? Hilarious. Secondly because nobody's actually come forward to level any allegations. It's all hearsay at the moment, which in the old English is known as gossip. And thirdly, well, nobody gives a shit even if the door did come down - not if anyone of us has a pocket Aces riding on a 5 ringgit pot.

Here's to all of you, on your moral high-horses as you come galloping down a hillock before meeting the most unsophisticated of molehills. Cheers!

3:33 PM<3

One For Poh-Poh

A few days ago, we held a wake for my grandmom of 80-odd years. I wonder which pervert saw it fit to call a funeral service a "wake". English is so fucked up.

Poh Poh or Chan Ah Heng as she officially called herself, had been bedridden for the past 2 years. During her final months she was somewhat senile and over her last days, drifting in and out of conciousness until her shrunken frame finally heaved its last breath.

I didn't visit too often at the oldy house where she was placed. I was too indifferent. I told myself it didn't make a difference since she couldn't recognize me anyways. That view was much too short-sighted. Visiting her would have made a difference to me.

My Poh Poh lived nothing short of a tumultuous and tragic life. Orphaned at a young age, she was then separated from her siblings. As the story goes, all but one sister died. No contact has been regained till this day. But that's not the worst of it. The darkest and most evil parts were never revealed to us. Nobody for instance, knows her real name or her age. Nobody knows why she chose to be a single mother after her second child. Nobody has ever spoken of why she's missing her left eyeball. Nobody can remember what her husband was like; his looks, countenance, or even the location of his grave. We simply know him as Louis Pharamond who died when my father the first born was still wetting his pants.

I myself never brought these questions up. A sort of merciful negligence since it was inferred that such queries were too painful or too deeply buried. I caught murmurs from time to time but these things will never be substantiated. Once as a child Ebony's age, i overheard my father say he suspected she was tortured by the Japs when she was young. Those fuckers deserve a hell all of their own. It's a very colorful, very engaging and if truth be told, very misleading comment. Who can ever know?

Whatever her story she kept mum till the very end, with every secret secure in her heart. Never to be revealed, as if she broke the key in it's lock when she turned to leave her secret garden. She would have been a great novel. Tragic, beautiful, poignant and all the other wonderful adjectives that accompany a work that moves people to review their place in this world.

This post is for her, the lady who never forgot my birthday. Maybe I'll still find out her story one day.

2:17 AM<3

The best way to capture the beauty of innocence is to leave people to their own devices. Then you’ll see without tint or bias, their truest colors, because essentially, you’re privy to an intensely private view.

I remember a photographer who once wanted to take photos to portray how women honestly viewed their bodies. He put each woman in a room of mirrors with a camera on a tripod and locked the door behind him as he left. With a mobile trigger, the ladies just started snapping away. The pictures spoke all sorts of stories. There were contorted faces and angry hands grabbing lumps of buttock flesh, cherubic eyes on legs spread wide to show rosy clitoria, some even unsure smiles and awkward poses. You know it’s not pornographic because as you look, you begin to feel, and connect, and you understand. If you’re really paying attention, you’ll relate. That's a good goal to strive towards, isn't it?

12:02 PM<3

Movies talk to me, and Jesus talks through the movies.

I think...

If Steve Hyde was right about God using all sorts of mediums to communicate, then Batman was my rayma... sort of...

The revelation that i took away with me, is during the most desperate of hours, you can expect the best from the worse and the worse from the best. I suppose i found some solace there because i know which camp i belong to.

After all the confusion about identity and subsequent efforts to live up to standards too lofty for a mortal like me, it feels damn comfortable here.

5:40 PM<3

Did you know, John Lennon once said the Beatles were more popular than Christ, and was subsequently shot 6 times?

Did you also know, bisexual Mexican poet Juan Don Juan once puffed on his cigarette before blowing the smoke (second hand, no less) up into the sky saying, "this one's for you Jesus." He later died a horrible death to lung cancer.

Did you know you tongue hold the keys to life or death?

Did you realize, well meaning Christians still send out imbecilic emails with a fair warning to guard your tongue? - ok, fuck, i'm probably the first specimen who should take that advice seriously. But humour me and let's exercise a spot of imagination ok?

So there's a fat girl with the cutest bangs in my office who wants to take me to her church after i derided her for sending out those stupid emails. She says i'd really like it there. People are friendly, the food is excellent (did i mention she has large buttocks? like super-ultra-super-super-ultra big), and that God always makes a grand entrance. Plus, everyone there knows their tongues hold the keys to life and death.

I swear i wanted to respond sensibly, but i convulsed as vomit built up in my larynx. After regaining control, i thanked her and said i would consider it. Her double chin wagged enthusiastically as she nodded her approval. She's a sweetheart to work with, but only on her good days. Other times you wonder - is this the same peach (after peach, after peach, after peach) of a girl who only yesterday said God is pure love and unfathomable wonder?

Cutting it short, we had a little back and forth over email which ended when she asked if i was still going to church.

I had to admit, it had been a while. So long i still feel it necessary to condemn well-meaning morons. I mean, i've overweight too. Who am i to judge her?

Sigh...

11:39 PM<3

5:14 PM<3

I thought of my friend Nick - a teenhood buddy who now sports original Polo shirts and a well worn passport. I thought of Siming - who's parents prefer a moneyed man. I thought of my own life - specifically the times i fancifully told myself a guy like me needs a bigger orbit than grooming products. And i thought about self development - the stretching and testing that builds a man.

Now i only think about one thing - quicksand.

5:55 PM<3