The Whateverlah Blog

I wanna watch The Boat That Rocked:

Why? Because it looks really entertaining and it’s done by the same people who did Love Actually which is quickly becoming my favorite Christmas movie.

Did I mention I was really disappointed with The Wrestler? I didn’t? OK. The Wrestler was a let down. Everything you needed to know you already saw in the trailer.

Just got done watching Revolutionary Road. That one was only one step up from The Wrestler in not quite meeting expectations. This is a Sam Mendes film. The guy who made American Beauty. Problem was Revolutionary Road was a little too much like American Beauty with none of the latter’s charm and heh, beauty. Real shame because I’ve always been attracted to stories about the scary suburbs sucking the life out of you.

(Embarrassingly enough, I didn’t make it out to see Talentime and I’m pretty sure it’s no longer playing in the theaters. At least the ones near me.)

The hardest part is uploading the pictures, really.

In this series: Briyani, dishes from ‘big fry’, rojak love and luk-luk love a.k.a. “food from the back of a van”.

(more…)

Aluminium casing. Intel dual core Core 2 Duo. Backlit keyboard. 4gb RAM. 500gb HD. Only bad thing so far – no firewire port.

I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous. I must not be jealous.

NYC: Hi, it’s me.

Me: Hi me. What’s up?

NYC: You never think about me anymore.

Me: Wha-? How can you say that? Just last week I blogged about Coney Island.

NYC: So you only like me for the tourist parts?

Me: Well, I…

NYC: I’m more than just a tourist destination, you know!

Me: I was… I’m… what’s this about anyway? Are you having self esteem issues?

NYC: ‘course not!

Me: I dunno. You just seem… I mean, a city with the most amount of obnoxious people per square mile, it’s just not very like you to be insecure.

NYC: I feel like you think about LA more than you think about me, and I don’t mean the amount you blog. 

Me: Now you’re just being irrational.

NYC: Says the one who’s having an imaginary chat with a city in her head.

Me: Touché.

NYC: So…

Me: Look, LA and I… we have history together. Three and a half years. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t immediately enraptured by your beauty the first time I stepped foot in the city. The happiest place on earth for me isn’t Disneyland, it’s Central Park. I love the way Canal Street smells. I adore your cultural diversity. You know I’m completely smitten by the sexy curves of your subway lines–

NYC: *Teehee*

Me: –especially the Brooklyn lines that dip into Manhattan before going back across. I think the world of you. It’s just that… it’s really difficult for me to think about being with you cause I really miss all of that and I want more than just a few nights. I want a long term thing, and I don’t think we’re both ready for that kind of commitment. Plus, the laws of the land makes it tough, not to mention there aren’t a whole lotta calls for school librarians in any of the five boroughs.

NYC: Welllll…. I suppose so. But you have to promise to visit soon.

Me: As soon as humanly possible.

NYC: One last thing…

Me: Yea?

NYC: Be straight with me – does Staten Island make my butt look big?

The last time Britain’s Got Talent registered on my radar, Paul Potts had just got done laying the smackdown with his version of “Nessun Dorma”.

Check out this weekend’s surprise in the form of a Susan Boyle, doing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables.

A state representative of Texas had allegedly suggested that Asian Americans should adopt names that are easier for her western tongue to deal with.

Sounds rather inflammatory and even racist, huh?

All hell breaks loose and a city councilman in Texas (Asian, of course) demands an apology, failing that, a resignation. (The last time I encountered outrage from the Asian American community when something offended them was the Rosie O’Donnell debacle. I came down on Rosie’s side, but that’s no indication of how I feel about Rosie personally. Heh.)

Representative Betty Brown tried to walk back her statements by saying: “At 1 a.m. after we’d been through ’bout 10 hours, I probably wasn’t speaking just as I should.”

So everyone and their mother expresses outrage. I googled the topic and blog commentators in what I’d call the ‘liberal’ blogs are being offended on my behalf – the Asian half, I guess.

I’d feel the same way too if I didn’t stumble onto the video of the hearings.  Some quick background: Texas is working on a voter ID bill and this is why all this is going on, to explore how to best legislate.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that the representative gravely misspoke around the 0:50 mark and people got their knickers in a wad, jumped all over that and didn’t bother to allow the second half of her statement to be included in their leftist rants about the right being racists. 

As you see, quickly following the incendiary “would it behoove you and your citizens…” she did say “I’m not talking about changin’ your name – I’m talking about the transliterations, or whatever…” and that I believe was the true intention – finding a way to somehow standardize (not possible) all the non-Romanized names in roman alphabets.

Did Representative Brown put foot in mouth? Yes. Should she apologize for that? Yes, and she did. Are people making mountains out of molehills while ignoring the real issues that needs to be tackled? YES.

Forchristsakes. The reason they have these meetings is to hash out all the little tangles before they can write law. There are too many real wars to be fought and a cheap shot at trying to bring someone down like this is absolutely amateur hour.

As Napoleon Dynamite would say.. GOSH!

When the conservative movement decided to use ‘tea bagging’ as a term in their campaign to protest taxes, ostensibly referencing the events at ye olde Boston Harbor (a whole separate rant on how history is being misrepresented exists here), I don’t know how why no one thought to say, “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea…” 

So because no one stopped to think about the repercussions of whimsically throwing ‘tea bagging‘ around, it becomes fodder for people like Rachel Maddow. Watch as she giggles her way through the segment.

I’m waiting for Jon Stewart’s take on this… probably be the Monday episode, if I’m lucky.

Frivolous expressions of indignation like this (the tea bagging, not Rachel) amuses me. It’s like that whole turn off your lights for an hour to “vote for earth” thing a few weeks ago – pointless. But that’s just me.

On the return trip from my jaunt into town (in search of The Donut) on Tuesday I was standing at KL Sentral and as I looked across the platform I saw something very strange. Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture?

OK. No? Take another look then:

 
Holy shit! They’re all queued up in neat rows! Way before the train showed up. 

Check out that gap they’re leaving for when the doors open.

I’m seeing a whole new side of you, Malaysia. You’re making it really hard to give up hope.

[Photo by Joshua H. @ flickr]

Taken at the Vermont Marriage Equality Rally. I really love the sign but I can’t help the intense urge to grab a sharpie and color in a comma after LOVE.

Maybe he meant that Jesus also wanted us to love the beyotches in our lives.

Also, did it seem like the “ES!” in “BITCHES!” was an afterthought?

Wow. A real sex crime story. Almost felt like old times. That was a whole lotta CSI/Millennium/X-Files gruesomeness there. Judith McCreary writes decent eps… With GIANT ASS PLOTHOLES!!!

Shall I list them?

• Serial killer case assigned to a lone detective? Yeaaaaaaa rite. 
• There’s an information leak ZOMG!!!1!eleven! freak out!!! and then… nothing.
• The guy has an alibi for a crime he’s going to commit the next day, but for the alibi to work he’d have to know that the victim has a kiln which he won’t cause he won’t have known who his victims are until he gets his delivery list, presumably on that day. So he couldn’t have created his alibi yesterday! (This one hurts my brain)
• Why couldn’t Alex charge him for assaulting that undercover cop?
• The chief of detective is a grade A asshole and he looks like a prune. (this one is not so much a plothole as it is a pain in the ass plot device)

Also, still not eeee-nough of Alex Cabot. Don’t try to distract me with Cabot Hotness in a Ponytail, you evil producers and writers. Every episode since the one in which she returned we’ve seen Alex for all of like five minutes. The rest of the time she must be off somewhere chewing cud or something cause she sure as hell isn’t doing a whole lot.

And I miss Olivia, dammit. This has been a fun episode but if I have to get through another one without Benson menacing a perp, or telling off the Chief of Detective (ooooh) I’m going to cry.

It’s too late now to change anything this season, I realize that. But let’s try and make it work next year. For the sake of the children?

Addendum: There’re only what – three more eps left? On review, the better episodes of this season have been the earlier ones – like the one with the kid trying to confess that he’s a child molester, and ‘Swing’ (I heart you, Amanda Green). This season continues to follow the downward trajectory set sometime in season 8, and the more I watch, the more frustrated I get. Alex’s return hasn’t turned this thing around. Her presence merely, and temporarily, numbs the pain of convoluted stories, over-acting, and general haplessness of the SVU crew. Sigh.

Something struck me as I was wrapping up my reading of the by-elections tonight… voter turnout for the Bukit Gantang election was 75.1%. That’s a solid three quarters of registered voters. So, rigging of vote counts and other shenanigans aside, you can say what you want about democracy here but there are people who actually showed up to cast their votes. A whole bunch of them.

Low voter turnout is often the first symptom pointed to in discussions of the general social apathy towards politics. For the purpose of illustration and because it’s the only other country where I can somewhat claim knowledge about their election issues, we’ll talk about voter turnout in US elections. In non presidential election years, percentage of voter turnout is usually the high 30′s, when it’s time to elect a president that goes up to around 50-55%. Last year, it hit a high of 56.8%. (why I think people need to go out in higher numbers during the ‘off’ years is a whole nother discussion).

I couldn’t find a copy of the 2008 General Election Report from the Malaysian Elections Commission so we’ll have to go with the 2004 report that shows a 73.9% voter turnout that year. I’m dying to see the report for 2008. 

All things being equal, it’s just something to think about.

Have you seen the light?

OMG!

Krispy Kreme store under construction at Berjaya Times Square. Right next to the uninspiring version of Papa John’s actually. I didn’t know if they were actually opened or not. Their website is of no help. So what to do but go check it out in person. Imagine my disappointment!

The information posted on the wall says that completion of construction is around April 12th. So the opening should be a few weeks following, no?

Funny story, how I discovered that Krispy Kreme is in town. Was having my breakfast and reading The Sun. The front page was an ad taken out by Berjaya Corp and its subsidiary congratulating our new PM. So I thought, “Let’s have a look at Vincent Tan’s empire… Starbucks… mmmhmm, Borders, Papa Johns, Kenny Rogers, uh huh, Krispy Kre— WTF????!!”

So there you go. Read your papers. You never know what you’ll learn.

on AIM earlier…

me: *snort* i love reading towleroad. so this thing in iowa rite? the congressman thinks that iowa is gonna become the gay marriage mecca now

i dont care how you spin it… but there is no way iowa could turn into a gay mecca anything… it’s IOWA ffs!

it’s corn and cows

ayche: what’s happening in iowa?

and yeah, i’m pretty sure all the grrls and bois aren’t gonna flock to there…

me: oh, the supreme court in iowa just ruled that the gay marriage ban in that state is illegal. [i meant to say "unconstitutional" but whatevs -ed]

thus gay ppl can legally get married in 3 weeks

ayche: heh. They prolly did it just to get more tourism!

me: that’s what i’m sayin tho…. i dont care if you let gays marry… you’re not gonna be gay mecca even if you painted main street in rainbow colors.

just sayin.

ayche: agreed

me: anyway. stupid congressmen.

although, constitutionally, this is by far the most interesting thing i’ve read in awhile.

<– nerd

ayche: lol

but the good kind of nerd

me: also, memo to California: you just got pwned by Iowa.

I was reminded by The Gothamist that Coney Island is open for the season today.

If you haven’t yet gone, these warm months might be your last real chance to see Coney Island as it is before the controversially approved redevelopment of the area is set to take place and to be completed in 2011.

I was lucky enough to have seen (but not actually visited all of) Astroland before it was closed for good at the end of last summer. I did ride the Cyclone, a wooden coaster – lived to tell the tale and loved every bone rattling minute.

The hot dog eating contest will still take place though. Will Kobayashi win it after losing two years in a row now?

Yasmin Ahmad made a couple of short films for Singapore’s National Family Council:

Gotta hand it to the Singaporeans. They are totally serious about social engineering, and, ya know, they’re pretty good at it. Except maybe for that decline of birthrate thing that ex-PM Lee Kuan Yew was lamenting on recently.