Listening to: Steamboy OST - Steve Jablonsky

So anyway I got a job, and have been working in a hospital for the past 1.5 months or so.

It's considered normal for anyone to ask how's work - I ask people how's their work, common courtesy and niceties and conversation-starters and all that. The problem is these days when anyone asks me how's work, I shrug and say the same thing:


If you're wondering, no, it's not a good thing.

See, people *want* to talk about work - they like to talk about how their day went, good or otherwise. They want to tell people about the funny stuff or about the sucky colleague who keeps pinching your paperclips. They want to talk about the people they meet, the things they do, the oddities they see.

I don't.

Save for my parents and Doris, I don't even talk about working life anymore after the first week of work. In my parents' case, I keep it brief because I don't want them telling me to "grow a spine" again after I was a nervous wreck of insecurities three weeks before work started and made a mistake of telling them about it.

One day after several "S'ok"s, Kelly caught me online and asked, "So, truthfully, how is work?"

I said, "S'ok".

Why is it so hard for me to tell people anything more?

One would be how far my world has drifted from everyone else. They're all at the last chapter of Odin Sphere, I'm struggling to finish Gwendolyn's story because work requires me to have at least 6.5 hours of sleep and I'd rather spend my nights checking net stuff and making pointless ranty blog posts like this. Same thing with work - how many people can I talk to about erythrocyte sedimentation rates and not have to explain the whole damn process and finer points before getting to the punchline, and by then everyone's forgotten the whole joke? Cranky doctors not getting their parking lot because orientation is having a training session there?

How many people would understand the insecurities of being expected to know how to stain bone marrow aspirates despite only having three weeks of haematology in uni? The frustration of staring at results desperately trying to interpret the finer points of high/low platelet counts and the correlation to Large Unidentified Cells? The pressure of having to pick up the standard procedure of each bench in a month when the only colleagues who can help are unhelpful? When Doris came back for two weeks, I spent a day just pouring 1 months' worth of ranting to her because I didn't have to explain much. We'd just compare notes on procedures, and the joke would continue.

Secondly is my fault of being deluded long enough to think this was what I've always wanted.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy lab work (hell I enjoy hospitals) - but I don't feel *happy*. I don't wake up every day going "oh boy today is going to be fun!" because colleagues are MUCH nicer to students on attachment in a day more than they'll ever be to me. I spend weekends in cinemas at climactic battles with a sinking feeling knowing that the movie will end and I will have to wake up for work the next day. If not for being buried in work 8 hours a day, I'd spend every other hour staring at the other hospital I turned down and wonder what would my life be if I'd picked them instead, or what if I bit the bullet, went for a writers' course and tried to jam my foot in the literary world (like what everyone thinks I SHOULD have done seven years ago). People who work 5 days a week going "oh noes tomorrow's monday" get no sympathy from me because I work Saturdays, a half-day where I work more than the entire week.

The first person I ranted to replied:

"Aiyah, working life is like that lah, isn't this what you wanted?"

Years of working to that goal, and now I'm not so sure.

Which comes to the third reason I don't talk about work:

I don't want to hear, "grow a goddamn spine" every time I open my mouth.

I hate whingers. We all hate whingers. We tell whingers to sit down shut up and take it like a man instead of sounding like an emo loser.

The first time I was genuinely frightened about this, my dad told me to stop whinging. Mum told me to stop whinging. People I thought I could talk to told me to stop whinging.

If there's nothing lovely to say, best to say nothing right?

When people read this, they'll pat me and say it's ok we understand. They don't. They *won't*. These are people who told me after my first week that I'll be OK and I'll enjoy it and I'll learn fast; they've also thrown away all knowledge of lab work never to use it again, or never spilled a tube of blood on their hands and smeared blood on all and sundry trying to clean up the mess. If an engineer or a computer programmer came and told me all their woes and insecurities, I wouldn't get their situation either - and I'm honest about it. Don't say you can "try" to understand because "trying" to understand requires 2 years and several thick textbooks, something I haven't done well either.

In the end it's easier to say "S'ok" and hope that people get sick of my answer soon enough to realise it's pointless to ask when they've already got a stock answer printed in their head. You want to hear the good things? Well here you go, I'm sorry it's such a boring answer, but that's my job in a nutshell.

In one emo conclusion: Nobody understands.

There I said it. Now go buy lottery tickets.

Listening to: Dreams in a Pie - Sakamoto Maaya

This is not madness, this is

SPARTA DESECRATION HOUR!!!!
MOVIE: 300

History loves men.

History loves men leading in short skirts with horses (Alexander the Great), men leading in armour with horses (The Crusades), men leading in turbans with horses (Saladin), men leading in nifty uniforms with bomber airplanes (Hitler)...

...history loves men, full stop. Whether this means history is homosexual is up for debate, but anyway.

[The Spartans] of Greece were leaders. Born and bred to fight and win or die trying, their culture would be remembered for their track record in winning a lot of battles. You gotta hand it to them - sure they violate human rights, but try finding a modern army who fights like them. Terrorists? [Viet Cong]? Pssht, they have to hide in holes with guns to score a hit, and that's if the bombs and mines don't hit the enemy first.

So first up, they fight like real men - they face the enemy, ready their shields, and have actual fighting strategies that involve charging into the enemy and beating the crap out of them. They lead like men. They are the very epitome of manly men. History loves men who lead right? Sure they do, Tolkien likes men who lead! Command & Conquer players dream of being men who lead, how else can we explain the RTS genre explosion!

So we got the history who loves the Spartans, the culture of loving the Spartan way, the badass Spartan fighting, all that's left was:

[Frank Miller]: Okay I want to make a story about the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae....history's got men in short skirts, turbans, uniforms...I know, I'll have the men in blinding red SPEEDOS! Nobody's thought of that one yet! I r genius! Bwahahaha!

Thanks a lot.

See, we can handle men in short skirts - who liked seeing Brad Pitt's ass in Troy? How many men got calf envy from seeing those muscular bronzed Greek legs? But in 300, these men bare more.

Needs more manboobs.

Let's reiterate, they're muscular and barechested. No crime in showing off a toned body, but there's a reason why people fear speedos - it shows off more than you need to see.

In this case we probably never wanted to guesstimate how well-endowed these men were or how muscularly perky their manboobs are, but THERE THEY ARE and you have no choice but to look because if you turn away, you're better off not watching the movie at all, really.

Good thing the pectorals don't ripple during the action scenes! Oh wait.

Epic pectorals are epic.

In case the title doesn't spoil the plot enough or for some reason you missed out on every single 300 parody the internet has to offer despite never watching the movie, the Persians want Sparta to surrender, and [King Leonidas], king of the Spartans screams the plot every 5 minutes (in case you forget). You can't miss him, he's the bearded guy in the trailers who keeps screaming, "THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!". If you missed that, you were probably staring too long at his speedos, twit. 

The rest of the movie is dedicated to the Spartans fighting the [Persians]. It goes like this:

Spartans: THIS! IS! SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! *AHWOOGA! AHWOOGA!*
*they run down hundreds of Persians*
Spartans: TONIGHT WE DINE IN HEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!
*they run down hundreds of Persians, then die*

Somewhere in the movie there's also King Leonidas' wife who's a badass in her own way, but nobody cares because they're all hypnotized by the bouncing pectorals (and speedos) of MANLINESS.

Yes, 300 barechested speedoed men, an effeminate God-King, and a limbless harem girl (don't ask) can only mean this is a MANLY MOVIE. MANLY MEN charging into battle, MANLY MEN wearing speedoes and baring their MANboobs as the biggest symbol of MANLINESS, MANLY MEN fighting and killing and making MANLY noises, MANLY MEN at war! MANLY camaraderie, slapping each other on the back and looking out for each other! MANLY MEN of MANLINESS fighting a MANLY war with MANLY honour and MANLY CG effects! It's all about MEN of MAN of MANLY MEN!

And if you think that was purely heterosexual, then by god, you are one HECKUVA man.

I say this because not one guy I know who watched the movie is straight anymore. For hours they gush about Gerard Butler and his bearded charisma shouting SPARTAAAAAAA and how it arouses them. Their hearts pound furiously against their chests as the experience of the thunderous roar of three hundred spartans pushing and heaving and groaning under the pressure and strain of the persian army, never relenting, never resting, seeps into their loins. They gaze at the determined faces, the expression of raw grit in the face of adversity, and say "I want to be like that."

Most importantly, they come out of the theatre clutching their eyes and scream "OH GOD THE GAYNESS" and proceed to blame all the girls they know for the suggestion that the movie is nothing but blatant gay propaganda. Thank heavens they weren't naked like in the comics; there may be no such thing as a straight man after that, let alone anyone who can follow the spartan ideal. =__=

If you're male and you looked at this pic, you are now gay.

So...How is it?

It's an entertaining movie.

It's not a bad movie - once you realise that the director's vision is to turn the movie into a frame-by-frame replica of the comic, the only thing left to do is to sit down and see how well the hojillion special effects translate to real life. Don't bitch and rant about the inaccuracies of the actual battle, because that's not it. The director says read the comic book, you do the sane thing and bitch that Frank Miller is inaccurate, not the movie.

This is a case where the actual movie isn't half as interesting as the [ridiculous] [photoshopped] [pictures] because SPARTAAAAAAAAAAA is the new catch phrase. Need quick money? Yell THIS IS A BANK ROBBERYYYYYYYYYY and kick down the doors! Claiming custody case? Scream I AM THE CHILD'S FATHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and kick down the courtroom, running out with the kid! Telling your date your plans for the night? Just say TONIGHT WE DINE AT [insert restaurant here]; you know everyone will love your Spartan badassery for LIFE.

So....movie good, music good, manly manboobs disturbing, parodies better, but it's a good way to pass time with a few friends.

At least it's MUCH better than Pathfinder, stupid waste of... =__=

---

SPARTA DESECRATION HOUR!!!!
GAME: GOD OF WAR 2

Shortly after a movie about 300 manly Spartans was released, Sony released a game about one manly Spartan. It's like saying "so what, you got 300 Spartans? We only need ONE, beat THAT nyahnyahnyah!"

Pity their one Spartan is such an idiot.

Once upon a time a pissy emo Spartan named Kratos became bitchboy of Olympus as thanks for making him so badass. However, he's so pissy that he kills everyone and everything without any conscience. As long as he benefits, it's perfectly ok! ^__^b

By the end of the first game (which I never mustered enthusiasm to play), Kratos becomes the God of WAR (not to be confused with RAW, though he'd make a great wrestler).

So ok he's got women at his feet, he's got power, he's a friggin GOD, maybe he'd stop being pissy eh? Fat chance, he walks right out of Olympus and becomes Kratoszilla as support for his fellow Spartans until Athena reduces him to normal size and has him fight the Colossus of Rhodes.

Kratoszilla smash!

Later, Zeus sucks Kratos' powers away and leaves him to die. However, now-mortal Kratos is too emo and pissy for death, and claws his way back to the mortal world to fly to the sisters of fate and reverse his fate.

Along the way he will learn that he is NOT the goddamn Prince of Persia and running and jumping and graceful grappling should be taken out of the third game in lieu of a better blocking system.

Kratos is a hulking mean-spirited Spartan. He rescues hapless translators just for the sake of making them translate a few words then pound their heads into the ground to make them bleed to death for a sacrifice. He carries around two blades connected by a large heavy chain. He attacks a minotaur 3 times his size by snatching the beast's weapon, beating them with it, jamming his weapon into its chest, then pulling them onto the weapon, impaling them.

Why then would the programmers make him swing along a series of grappling hooks and force him to make jumps he doesn't look like he can clear without countless tries of precision timing and screen-staring? Why give him a gigantic viking hammer to beat things up when it's so slow I get knocked off in midair? Why give him gliding wings when the ability to block mid-attack would be better?

Consider these two scenarios:

1. Kratos pulls back a spiked battering ram from a gate. As the battering ram inches towards the gate, Kratos runs into the passage, pulls a lever, then must button mash to open the gate before he is impaled! This requires accuracy and button-mashing to escape before the battering ram impales you. Repeat for an hour.

2. Kratos pulls down a lift to get to the bottom. Skeletons attack him and stall the lift. He needs to beat up the skeletons and pull to the bottom before the lift's spiky ceiling impales him. Since Kratos is the sort where once hit he's a punching bag for ages, a swarm of skeletons swarm him and there's not enough time to pull away from the ceiling and WHAM he's dead again. Repeat for an hour.

The worst is after a certain amount of deaths, they ask if you want to go to easy mode. Hello people, I am not in trouble because your enemies are hard to kill, I'm in trouble because your constraints for testing my reflexes are LUDICROUS. Add to the annoyance of being mobbed once one hit connects and I'm only killing them brutally because I want it over with, not because I'm enjoying it.

Here's a hint to the developers: YOUR SPARTAN IS WEIGHED DOWN BY ANGST AND VIOLENCE. USE THAT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE, DAMMIT. Don't make him fly and glide and climb and jump and grapple and hang and dodge and prance and skip, leave that for when you have to press a series of buttons to cause dramatic damage. Give me more parts where Kratos will block when I hammer BLOCK and then counter with my combo of DOOM! Don't give me that nonsense about having to block THREE consecutive gorgon stares and dying because Kratos doesn't block as fast as I tell him to!

Kratos is NOT, and will never be the Prince of Wallrunning Persia. If I wanted to play a game where a character dodges attacks by prancing around while comboing enemies in midair, I'd play Devil May Cry. If I wanted to miscalculate a jump and fall into a ledge without the game patronizing me, I'd play Prince of Persia. When I want to play Slaughterfest Spartan Edition, that's where YOUR stupid game comes in. I don't want to dodge and tiptoe and fly, I just want to kill and smash things with the occasional button minigame and you're not letting me do that!

This doesn't even start on what's really wrong with the game: I see no appeal in Kratos at all.

First he's not satisfied that he's a god, then he's not satisfied with people screwing him over, then he angsts that he's been wrongly treated and Olympus wants to screw him over, boo hoo hoo. Meanwhile I'm thinking "Hello if you weren't so hung up on thinking Olympus owes you NONE of this would have happened!" because it's true - the entire story stems from Kratos' inability to stop being pissy emo and crying to the skies that it's all Zeus' fault. Dante gave the finger and went with the flow, and at least the Prince of Persia blames himself first because he knows it's his fault; Kratos' idea of setting things right is throwing an injured soldier into a bone-crushing machine to open a new area for HIM to waltz through. How benevolent!

Assholic Kratos is assholic.

Penny Arcade said Kratos killing all those Greek myths and legends are epic; Shadow of the Colossus was more epic than this, and the guy didn't have to yell "I WILL REND YOU FROM THE DEPTHS OF HADES" (or something) all the damn time.

Hey Kratos, you ever heard of karma? Here it is ripping you a new one!

So...How is it-

*RIP* STUPID GAME. =___=

The 3rd game had better redeem him (what idiot turns back time to beat up Zeus some more instead of just reconciling with his past?) with better controls and less stupid MANLY twitch action gaming, or Kratos stays in my "characters whose necks I'd gladly break" list.

After that, I played KINGDOM HEARTS 2. SORA is more badass than you, stupid emo Spartan!

My dad enjoyed the story though, so I guess if you're still remotely heterosexual after 300 you'll like the story. Men, what weird beings you are indeed.

The only part of the game I enjoyed. Sad.

(Pictures ganked from [Rope of Silicon] and [Gamespot])

Listening to: Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I'm now officially jobless for 3 months. If you didn't know, well...now you do!

I have been growing extremely reluctant to leave the house and socialize. It's like a metamorphosis into a hikikomori that it's somewhat fascinating and scary at the same time.

There's a reason: I'm sick of fielding the same question over and over again.

"Have you found a job yet?"

See, life delights itself in being hopelessly difficult to me. Interviews don't happen all the time; The only time I struck gold was when one place called me less than 24 hours after submitting my application, otherwise the fastest people call me back is after a month...or two, after I've waaaay forgotten that I even submitted an application, and for what job.

It's understandable if you haven't seen me in 6 months and the last time you heard from me was from my last workplace; asking every time we speak on MSN is not. Neither is the excuse "I'm just interested in your life", because it's emotionally tiring and it's not a nice to go to bed feeling useless and guilty because everyone's gainfully employed or having money and being able to support their parents as opposed to, you know, not having any. Your mum gets pissed and calls you a retard for sitting down and enjoying Kingdom Hearts 2, there's no call from anywhere you've gone for an interview for 3 weeks, and you're more afraid of being accepted  because that means you're going to rearrange your life to accomodate career, and being free on Saturdays becomes a luxury than a necessity.

The other day I went back to collect my last paycheque, and one conversation with weird gaijin people went like this:

WGP (weird gaijin person): How've you been?
Me: Good.
WGP: Gotten a job yet?
Me: No.
WGP: How nice~

Of course it's nice to kick back and not worry about work and get bored reading Newtype USA day after day, but the fear that money runs out and that you're wasting time when you could be wasting time earning a living pops out, and it never stops. The pressure is always there even when people innocently ask "have you found a job yet" as if all you need to get a job is snap your fingers, tada there's your interview and contract and whatnot! These people I especially want to strangle and pulverize, because my experience with job hunting is completely different from yours, and it is a difficult and painful road just to do what I want to do as opposed to what I could do.

All the ranting, and it comes to one answer I've learned: When I get a job, I'll let you know. Believe me.

And believe me, you WILL know.

---

The next post will allegedly be post #200, I'm a bit at a loss at what to write to commemorate it. Your choices are:

• Spartan Desecration Hour (300 + God of War 2)
• FF12 Desecration
• Kingdom Hearts 2 Desecration
• Code Geass Desecration

Help me decide by writing in the comments section. Comments, not tagboard. Have a nice day!

Listening to: Requiem - Mozart

MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR:
3-IN-1 SPECIAL

1. Blood & Chocolate

A werewolf girl sees her family brutally murdered and runs to Romania where she lives with her chocolatier aunt and has to marry the pack leader against her will. Being a witty loner, she hangs out in an abandoned church and meets an American artist (played by a Brit actor) researching wolves. The pack takes this as a threat and decide to take him out.

But that doesn't mean werewolves are evil, nooo. They need to hunt once a month to fulfil their instinct so they grab the worst of human felons and chase them down for the thrill of the hunt. Plus they do society a favour! When they transform into wolves, the visual effects people go nuts and pan the camera 360 degrees and close-up for 5 minutes before turning into a wolf. It's pretty, really.

The problem is the story is crap - angsty girl opens heart to guy, it's Mary Sue fiction brought to life. The girl even transforms into a white wolf because she's SPESHUL. To make things worse, the writers couldn't decide how to end the movie and wrote 3 endings for it. First it looks like she's dying, but that'd be sad so the guy rescues her. Then she overcomes her killing instincts in 10 minutes, but that leaves too many plot holes, so they have wolves coming after her. Finally she goes she-rambo and machineguns and kicks everyone and drives away with her beloved (who was so out of character for a while it wasn't funny).

The upside? There's plenty of guys to look at. There's the pack leader for people who like older men, the quiet sensitive boy, and other miscellaneous fun-loving prettyboys just looking *pretty*. The only reason you would want to see this movie is for the cute guys, really.

For the guys...you can stare at her nipples.

Otherwise, don't bother unless someone's paying for your ticket.

---

2. Pathfinder

AKA "Eomer Annihilates Some Orcs".

Vikings invade America, white boy with identity crisis overcomes and saves native americans. White boy becomes honourary red indian, rar.

The movie really does portray Native Americans as helpless putzes - a group of rampaging indians run into a deathtrap, prolonging the movie by an hour *headdesk*. The white guy only gets the girl because her fiance carelessly died while the Vikings look like a cross between the Mongols and the Colossi from Shadow of the Colossus. I was thinking "I paid RM10 for this?" and glaring daggers at Tuna during the credits.

At least I get clearer shots of the guy than in LOTR...but still.

Unless your transport expenses are paid for, don't bother; you're better off watching LOTR again.

---

3. Music & Lyrics

The movie opens with an 80s music video. There is questionable video quality, bad hair, bad clothes, plastic faces, New Kids On The Block style, loudtastic synths.....if you don't get the joke, you're not an 80's child. I was too young during the 80's, but I remember those videos vaguely.

Alex Fletcher, ex-pop group teen heartthrob (and awful songwriter) is 20 years older, making his living entertaining now-30something women who were his hardcore fans. Suddenly, he needs to write a song for pop princess Cora in 3 days to propel him back into fame. It's a good thing his substitute plant lady is good with words otherwise there'd be a song going, "you can call me a perv, i just want a way back into love", and we'll all know the movie won't end well.

The show itself is very predictable - boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets back girl - but it redeems itself with a witty script and parodies of the music industry. Hugh Grant does his best impersonation of Simon Cowell; Avril Lavigne's songwriter loves writing emo songs of RAGE and hates anything mainstream and mushy; blonde ditz idol (see Britney) Cora's concert desecrates a religion better than Salman Rushdie can ever do - you're supposed to laugh, and it shows.

Even then, the music is catchy and sticks in your head - I came home and immediately got the OST, that's how good the songs are. It's a feel-good romantic comedy that shows a bit of the realities of a has-been and how hard it is to climb back to the top. 

It might not be worth full price, but do try to catch it - the credits is worth staying back for. XDXDXD

O.o

It's still disturbing to see Hugh Grant sing and dance and shake his hips though.

(Pics ganked from Rope of Silicon)

Listening to: Piano Concerto no. 20 - Mozart

Overfreeness is not a word; please don't use it in your essays.

Requested by Victor:

MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR:
CASINO ROYALE
(spoilers ahead, be warned)

We have a problem with this review: due to bad subtitles (what is a "royal space flash three"?) and general mumbling, I have no idea what the hell happened, so I'll go about this the best I can.

There's James Bond, who shoots first and brutally murders second. He's hotheaded and broody and never smiles and.....he gets beaten up a lot. The good part is that he has a pretty hawt body, so when he gets thrashed and recuperates, he gets a chance to show off his hawt body (dad says he's no better than Tarzan; at least James Bond only exposes his chest...most of the time).

See? Haaawt.

Then there's this French guy they're after, some making out, some [free running] in Madagascar at great vertigo-inducing heights (exciting!), some destruction of international relations, then he makes out with some woman, and then James Bond goes on another frenzied car chase when he's supposed to order champagne, and then an explosion is averted, hooray! /(^_^)/

Then he meets this girl named Vesper Lynd (nice name) and they're supposed to act married in Montenegro. There's a poker game (I...THINK it's poker), more frenzied chasing/killing, this time with PYRAMID HEAD'S KNIFE OMGWTF, James Bond loses, James Bond gets poisoned (gasp!), and then James Bond PWNZ teh poker, w00t!

Then he gets stripped naked and gets his balls whacked with a carpet beater (ow >_O) as torture by the angry French guy, who gets shot by another guy...is it me or are the French always evil? First Kingdom of Heaven, then this...

Anyway suddenly James Bond is in a wheelchair, the guy from Montenegro gets tasered, James Bond shows off his hawt body again, he's off to Venice with Vesper and makes out with her, she takes some money and runs, ANOTHER frenzied chasing/killing scene, angst, and finally a bitter James Bond in a suit and a machinegun going "Bond, James Bond." Cue James Bond theme (duh duh DAAH duh duh DAAH tarataratara!), aaaaand the franchise restarts, paving the way to a new generation of James Bond fans.

...You know what, Wikipedia has a MUCH better summary than I can ever make, [knock yourself out].

So....how was it?

When I was a wee DMling my dad once took me to a James Bond movie. I don't know what title it was, but I think it had Sean Connery in it and then he was making out with the girl and then I told my dad I was bored and threatened to blow up the cinema when he whisked me out and looked apologetically at the movie usher (it was in the days when there were actual cinema buildings). I didn't care what the name of the movie was or how much the tickets cost my dad, that's how little I care for a worldwide-acclaimed spy franchise that has enchanted young boys and men for over 30 years.

James Bond and me in general don't go too well, and this one is no exception. I only watched Tomorrow Never Dies because Michelle Yeoh was in it, and so we had to see the hype (not that it was good anyway).

Casino Royale isn't exactly a bad movie, but I can never understand poker, so the whole poker game (which is the point of having CASINO in the title) and its suspense is lost on me. The free-running scene was interesting, aaaand one other scene touched me, and that's it.

Awwwww. Warms my goolies, it does.

I never got the story or the intrigue or the plot hole like who were the other bad guys in the end, and sadly I can't be arsed. I'd recommend it if you're a James Bond fan or if you like spy intrigue and action and gambling and hot girls or if you're a guy in general, but I don't think I could watch it again.

No, not even for the hawt body. =(

Haaaawt...but no. Sorry. ^^;

(pics ganked from Rope of Silicon.)

Listening to: Requiem - Mozart

I'm SO glad the permalink is finally visible! I've been struggling with that stupid thing for two years! Many thanks to [Swifty] for the help! (^__^)/ m(_ _)m

This calls for a celebration!

MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR:
AMADEUS
(It's 3 hours long, I can't spoil the whole thing anyway)

A long time ago, it was very fashionable to wear white wigs that looked like you put a bomb in your hair, as KiDChan puts it. Bombed heads (her words not mine), colourful wigs, geisha makeup, boobs spilling out from tight corsetted dresses, pseudo Gothic Aristocrat clothing....it's 18th Century [Harajuku], if you ask me.

Spot the difference.

During that time there was a composer named [Antonio Salieri]. If you don't know who he is, it's OK. People who know their classical music will prolly recognize him as "the guy who was [Mozart's] rival", which is as close as it gets.

Salieri's full of remorse because he says he killed Mozart and they take him to a nuthouse after he attempts suicide, then a priest enters to listen to his confession, which brings us to the longest flashback in history. The original movie is about 3 hours, and you can actually see the progression of time in the room - it starts off in the morning, then the sun's more glaring in the afternoon, then the room dims at night, then early morning, then back to morning again. I don't know which to be more impressed at - the fact that the director actually thought of this small detail instead of leaving it daytime ALL the time, or the fact that neither character needed a toilet break.

Winter or no, you get dehydrated, you need to drink water to stay awake to listen to this old rambly guy, and you don't even need to go at least ONCE? The longest I've gone without a bathroom break is about 10 hours, and this guy's listening to a 24-hour confession. Then there's the old guy, who prolly needs to go every 3-4 hours or so, but there he sits and goes on and on...Power of God isn't cutting it for me, sorry.

See his face? He REALLY needs to go.

Salieri tells the priest about the first time he was so fascinated with Mozart the boy genius who can play backwards and blindfolded and write music like drinking water at an age when we were in Standard 1 and about how he started his dream towards becoming a musician as great or almost as great as Mozart.

Several years later, he meets Mozart for real and it all goes downhill.

Big colourful hair, showy clothes, rock idols....it must the 80s! 1780s, that is.

[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart], contrary to portraits and impressions we've seen throughout our lives is...pretty much like IRCFiesta - loud, uncouth, dirty-minded, showy, and just plain nuts. The difference is Mozart is one man, so that makes him MUCH more offensive than a group of people with similar traits.

Salieri starts wondering WTF is God smoking - here's a musical genius who seems to be God's gift to music, a prodigy who writes great music all stored in his head, lyrical and compositional beauties, all of them; yet he's not even remotely pious and has worse social graces than the most brutish lout in the ghetto AND a damn annoying laugh to boot. It all reminds me of someone familiar.....

[She's kinda sorta like Mozart]...WITHOUT the annoying laugh.

So Salieri eventually gets jealous of Mozart and plots his downfall as a way of getting back at God. He vows:

"Because you chose for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me only the ability to recognize the incarnation...I will ruin your incarnation."

And so for the next 2 hours you see Mozart wreck himself with his pride and bad financial management and eventually kicks it. Just like how the Titanic sinks and King Kong dies, this isn't a spoiler - if he didn't die it'd be more disturbing, trust me.

And then Salieri calls himself a mediocrity whom everyone has forgotten - nobody plays his stuff, but everyone hums Mozart. Weird [Mozart figurines], [baby Mozart] CDs, Mozart sheet music reprinted and rearranged to fit every age demographic, it makes you wonder if it's worth being famous to have your name plastered over cheap gimmicks for a quick buck. Salieri? He doesn't have reprinted sheet music, but he gets a poem, an opera, a [play], and an [Oscar-winning movie] about him, I'd say he got the better end of the dignity stick despite allegedly murdering Mozart (which he didn't anyway).

Which now brings me to the point (finally!):

The relation of mediocrity

I read a review that we're supposed to relate to Mozart, the genius who eventually had everyone railing and defame him because he was SO good and the world eventually killed a genius who till today can never be replaced.

I think it's Salieri we're supposed to relate to.

Face it, we're not geniuses - none of us are. We'd like to think so, but we're not. Salieri in the movie prayed to God to have the same talents as Mozart as long as he remained steadfast in his beliefs and sacrificed all the joy in life for it and came up with good stuff, but nothing fantastic. Most of us are like that - we pray and pray that we become really good at the one thing we enjoy, be it science or writing or drawing or cosplaying or making mudpie sculptures, but end up playing second fiddle to someone who's miles better than us and does it with minimal effort. It's an unfair world, and the movie drives this point home.

However much we respect these geniuses, we still envy them and wonder why God why wasn't I given teh mad skillz and instead that asshat got all the good breaks. It's awful but natural to wish all sorts of bad things happened to them so that you can experience the same stuff they do. If they die you'll feel guilty, but we never think about it BEFORE they kick it right?

That's the worst about mediocrity - we work our arses off and the effort's swept away by the flood of genius and talent. For every Mozart and Shakespeare, hundreds and thousands of struggling musicians and writers don't get a short story to their name. When Salieri absolves mediocrities at the end, I feel melancholic pangs because there is no patron saint for it. Like it or no, your biggest sin was being born normal, and even if you climbed all the way to top, someone better can and will knock you down, and it takes nothing short of luck to get back there.

Deny or justify it all you want, but deep down it's true because you've been there.

So...how was it?

I despise playing Mozart's music.

Nothing against the guy, but he crams longass arpeggios and chords and scales that require either a fingering chart or skipping notes or screeching to a halt and playing that part really slow, and the erratic timing makes me want to remove my left hand so it can play independently while I concentrate on the right hand. By the time I'm done, a 7 minute-piece has stretched to 30 minutes, my hands and eyes hurt from squinting to read the notes, my parents tell me what a sucky pianist I am, and I'm cursing myself for wasting my life. Practice doesn't make perfect - I practiced [Rondo Alla Turca] for a year and nothing happened. Gah. >__<

Oh wait, you mean the movie.

It's interesting even though the movie was made in 1984 I don't feel the age, I don't get an 80s vibe (prolly because it's a period piece), and it holds up against modern movies without excessive CG. I suppose that's what make Oscar-winning movies what they are - you can watch it 20 years later and it doesn't feel dated. I wonder if LOTR or Matrix will give the same vibe when we're 40, that'd be nice to find out.

Then there's Mozart's music - this was written 300 years ago, and it doesn't sound boring or give me cold hives (see slow oldies). I'm saying that not just because I've been listening to classical music since I was a foetus, I'm saying that because there's a reason why people still insert pieces of Mozart into movies and ads and games - it's universally recognized, and that makes him and his music great.

Despite the historical inaccuracies up the wazoo and the fact that it's based on a play we never saw, it's a pretty damn good movie with pretty damn good acting, Mozart's damn annoying horse laugh included. 3 hours gone just like that, I never considered a bathroom break, and I'm still glowing from the experience.

Plus, you will never see Mozart this good-looking anywhere else.

...WHAT!? I know I've no taste in men, shuddap already! >__<;;

(Side note: Does anyone find it freaky that this and the kidchan pic above have the EXACT SAME POSE? Didn't realise it till I put up the pics, really. O_O)

(Pictures taken from Amadeus [Immortal], [IMDB], [howardfrench.com], and Google Images)

Listening to: Love3Tune: Adrianna Krikl

A lot of people have this impression that I like art movies and that movies with crass slapstick humour and comedy disgust me. While the latter isn't too far off, I don't exactly extol the greatness of art movies either, so I wonder where people get that idea.

So I decided to live up to my reputation. Or something...I need to read more.

MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR:
[FILMMAKER'S ANONYMOUS 2]
(click on youtube links for movies)

So this is an event in a pretty obscure place (took me ages to tell the security guard where I wanted to go), and it's a screening of amateur movies by local amateur filmmakers. I wasn't supposed to stay for all the movies since it was already 10 PM by the time it ended and the LRT closes at 11, but something made me stay back and watch and hang out for the Q&A sessions, so I figure it'll be nice to review all nine movies because I'm opinionated that way. Plus you get to see some of the stuff yourself without leaving home, lazy buggers. See what a nice person I am. XP

1. "Girl Disconnected" by Edmund Yeo/Eliar Swiftfire

Summary: A girl goes to the moon to find her internet love in 15 minutes with the help of Chinese moon legends and a cute nerd who tags along. Seriously, the nerd is cute. o_o

So you have a girl who wants to meet this guy she met on the net, except that he's in a foreign place and she doesn't exactly know where to start, so off she goes wandering in a surreal area of ballerinas and Moon Goddesses with flat acting and red balloons all over the place that I think signifies love.

Sure there's a storyline, and the music is sweet and touching and brings a certain melancholy - it's like the poor nerd just tags along and there she is all giddy and excited wondering what the meetup's going to be like (haven't we all had that feeling?) and you really feel for the nerd even though he barely talks and the camera's more focused on the girl.

That's when I started thinking who was I supposed to root for, because as much as the story's supposed to be about the girl, the nerd does so much for her that...I don't care about the girl. I don't care if she eventually did meet up with him or that she more or less confronted the Moon Goddess, because in the end the nerd sacrificed what's important to him for her, he gets insecure about the meetup and hides the directions she needs to find Jaric (the guy she likes), and he has to face the embarassing surreal moment of moon ballerinas in a field of red balloons. It makes him so human he doesn't even need monologues to get his feelings through. In that sense, the movie is a bit of a disappointment since it lives up to the movie title by disconnecting the girl from the audience.

2. "Taking Precautions" by Audrie Yeo

Summary: 1.5 minutes of a woman taking great pains to hide her identity during a private moment. Squeeble take note, an Ultraman mask was featured. =D

So this woman takes out a mask before going to a public toilet, apparently a social message about how technology always has a way of exploiting women's rights.

The thing is when the lady actually starts peeing, the screen blacks out, and the impact is wasted. If you want to make a message about how technology truly exploits women, why omit the part that actually proves it? If the guy's already angling his spy camera into the toilet cubicle, he sure isn't going to turn it off and wait until she's done. Maybe you don't want the woman's identity to be revealed, so take camera angles that hides the woman from us completely and credit the actress with a pseudonym. It might be respectful to do otherwise, but the point is pretty much lost.

3. ["Hello Goodbye" by Chitoo]

Summary: Back and forth on the LRT from Kelana Jaya to Putra Terminal in one clean shot, set to music.

Someone should tell this guy the LRT has warnings not to put stuff at the front of the trains, really.

It's really meaningless - you sit in the LRT and go from one end to the other, take the video and fast forward it, then take a second copy, set it to rewind, and put both videos running concurrently, that's what this is.

I like it.

I liked how the tracks just go on and on to Gombak that most of us never bother to see (because we all jump out at KLCC as if the train's gonna explode at the next stop), I liked recognizing the landmarks we see in the distance along the tracks, and I liked the perspective I never quite saw when I sit in the LRT. Maybe because the actual train is so friggin slow that seeing it move at 3x speed is SO COOL, but I just do.

4. "Lost and Found" by Roy Vimalan

Summary: Along with a step-by-step guide on how to steal shoes, it comes with a short discourse on whether possession really is nine-tenths of the law and why don't Malaysians use it to fuller effect.

So a foreign student comes to Malaysia, gets his shoes stolen, and gets pissed off like as if it never happens in China...or any Third World country for that matter. Bunch of people are interviewed on the relation of possessions to human rights (which seldom works because firstly you need to consider each item lost equally important and worth kicking a fuss about), then a Sunway College hostel guard explains the procedure in recovering lost items, and it is the single most hilarious bit. I paraphrase:

1. Lodge report
2. Check whether item stolen was a break-in or an inside job (so if the lock's not broken into....it must be an inside job! Kill your housemates!!)
3. Investigate people who have been entering your room in the past 24 hours (because EVERYONE is a suspect...even the guards themselves!)
4. ????
5. PROFIT!

Or something to that effect. Apart from that it feels like something every arts student must make in this country to increase credibility. When in doubt, debate thy human rights, that be the motto.

5. ["The blind girl and the thief"] by Johan Arif Mazlan

Summary: There's a blind girl, there's a thief, and there's a twist! Not.

The movie...is funky, in the sense that the backgrounds look traced over actual stuff to give it a more kiddy-drawing style, but there's a lack of depth, and when the thief makes a cup of milk for the blind girl, the spoon doesn't even touch the cup, which just makes it look like play-acting. Still, it's something different.

Now if only the STORY was something different. Blind girl has family angst, a thief breaks in, OMG that's who the thief is, look at the regret on his face! Look at her wide-eyed blind innocence and how it touches him so! Look at him turn away from his life of crime and drugs, look at the especially contrived act of him stepping on the syringe, symbolic of his new path ahead!

Oh gawd the tripe, it KILLS. It feels like every other smarmy cliched Malay drama they air on TV with the forced melodrama and I hate having to be told what to feel. Probably the only movie that I actually didn't like, bleurgh. =__=

6. "Aunty Wahid" by Umi Salwana Omar

Summary: 30-minute interview and a peek into the life of an unconventional  transvestite.

This one is pretty much the star of the screening - the disappointment of the crowd when the organiser said the director wasn't attending was really loud.

The movie pwns - Aunty Wahid is the star, with enough screen presence for everyone to be fascinated at her. She (that's what s/he wants to be referred as) speaks about her sexual experiences in a straightforward manner sans dramatics, which have me imagining KiDChan screaming "BL OMG SHOTA" (actually I imagined her screaming the whole time). It covers a lot in 30 minutes - a supportive family (shokku!), her pals (gay stereotypes bitching about gay stereotypes! Irony for the lol!), her career as a fashion lecturer in Cenfad, a strange unwavering faith in God, and just showing her as a person who's been there, done that, and still standing strong.

I suppose the movie can also bring the message that it takes strength to stand up for what you are and be the better for it, but if you don't see that, watching a 50+ year-old transvestite teasing the camera and being so open with her sexuality is equally fun as well.

7. "This Sweet Refrain" by Fairuz Sulaiman

(it's the only video I'm bothered to embed because it's SO STUPID GOOD)

Summary: A karaoke music video! In deliberately crap pirated VCD quality too!=D

Hey, remember how every time you want to sing your fave song in Yumekukan/Redbox you'd have to put up with some smarmy video of a girl walking through some foliage interspersed with some bits of her frolicking with a boy and a garden hose (not THAT way you dirty-minded people) even though the song is Dir en grey's The Final?

Now take that image and bastardize it to hell. >)

Face it, a chubby guy in a LOUD shirt walking through KLCC park reminiscing the good times he had with his fish-head girlfriend before she became fish head curry with MS Powerpoint-type cheapo scene transitions in a good satire is MUCH better than the usual stuff, no?

No? Screw you. >(

The song? I didn't hear the song at all - was too busy laughing at the video.

8. "Red Drawing" by Margaret Bong

Summary: There's Chinese Opera...and a boy...something something something.

The biggest attraction was the little adorable cheeky boy who, like all of us and our first experience with Chinese Opera, can only recall the opening of the red curtain before it all blurs out and it gets boring and we all just want to go home and sleep. x__x

At least that's what I think the story is - the scenes are all over the place. First there's a teacher marking books. Then she goes to school and distracts the students by making them draw while she finishes marking books. Then the boy plays a prank and pays for it. Then he makes wire butterflies. Then the teacher walks by and then the movie ends and I go WHAT? Apart from a scene where teacher says flowers are red means flowers are red (a jab at our education system!), I don't see the relation between each scene, and the director had to explain the point herself for everyone to understand, not good. =(

9. ["Kg Chubadak"] by Mokhtaruddin Lasso

Summary: Somewhere in Sentul, a bunch of houses get demolished.

Now while all the demolishing and house-toppling is going on, the PM's New Year speech plays in the background. So there the PM is talking about all the development and the progress the country has made and there's the video of all the poor people getting shafted in the name of it. There's irony and feeling sad for the settlers, but there's also the feeling of activism because obviously the normal papers didn't carry it (malaysiakini covered it though), so it gives even more of the "government is perpetually bad and oppressive" aura that....malaysiakini tends to give off anyway.

The problem with the video is that in 3 minutes, all you really see is a bulldozer and a crane demolishing houses. There's no background info of the village, or why is it being done, who are these settlers, are they settlers or squatters, nothing, nada, zip, zero. I had to google it and watch the [video coverage malaysiakini had] to fully grasp the situation. Now think about how youth today can't be arsed to read the newspaper - what makes you think they'll look further into the movie and think beyond "government baaaad"?

---

After that there was a Q&A session with the directors, KM asked Chi Too for his opinion on the LRT movie and the guy just went O____O all the while, and I suddenly thought, "Hey, I want to hear Swifty blather," so I asked a question....and unsurprisingly, [Eliar taped his answer (you get a brief shot of me desu!)]. Seeing him aim the camcorder at himself briefly after the question was hilarious. That, and he spoke more than all the other directors combined, so everyone was just giggling. XD

Then it was already 10.30 and I didn't want to walk back to PJ, so off I ran to the LRT, the end.

So...how was it?

Well...it's indie filmmaking, Oscars this ain't.

It was pretty good, and for a brief moment I entered an artsy socially-aware world that I'd never been to, and with good reason - it's freaky.

Since KM and I reached early, we met the...organiser?....of the event when she was testing equipment. and we had a brief chat. It went something like this:

Her: Do you make films too?
Me: No, I write.
Her: Where do you write for? [some magazine name]?
Me: ...not really...
Her: Oh, you freelance?
Me: ...Not quite.... .__.;;

This isn't the usual "Oh, you write? What do you write?" for the sake of making conversation, this is a world where the assumption is you've done something good with what you enjoy most and that you're automatically good at it, and that's what scares me.

But otherwise, it was interesting all around. Next artsy event I attend, I'm SO wearing a beret.

Listening to: I Don't Feel Like Dancing - Scissor Sisters

After finding out I'd only watched a grand total of 4 movies last year, something had to be done.

MOVIE DESECRATION HOUR:
DEATH NOTE & DEATH NOTE: THE LAST NAME
Once upon a time a Mr. and Mrs. Yagami had a son. They decided to be trendy and gave their kid an english name...as english as you can get with the Japanese, that is.

And so Yagami Light was born, and all was good.

Seriously, Light? The hell? L sounds much less dorky after that.

Light (or Raito because it just sounds so much better) grew up to be a smart, attractive young man, with wonderful heroic ideals befitting the son of a policeman. He went to law school, got a girlfriend, and lived the life of a very smart college boy who doesn't seem to get enough homework despite being a law student. Any law students want to confirm this? Do you people really have this much free time, or is it just a gap in between actual slogging?

Then one day he got a funky notebook, and it all went to hell.

At least he wasn't named Fish or Ice - he'd be a LOT more bitter.

So Raito went about executing his self-righteous ideology by using the notebook to kill criminals left and right. Of course people like criminals dying since the law doesn't punish people properly, so they put up websites worshipping Raito. However since they don't know who he really is, they put their wonderful engRish to good use and dub him KIRA (as in Killer, but sounds cooler) and dedicate shrines and SMSes to him. However, Grand Theft Auto has taught us that one-man vigilantism no matter how helpful is never the way to go, so the police start trying to arrest Kira.

The Raito/Kira starts kills off the meddling police officers, and he lives happily ever after with his pet shinigami/attention whore Reuk, munching on apples and making the world a better place for all.

You wish.

EEEEEE

Enter L, a brilliant young detective with a penchant for sweets and curling up on chairs (completely nutso, like every other anime detective) but just SO adorable eeee *pinchpinch*. X3

So it becomes a cat-and-mouse game of nutso vs nutso, both with different ethics and stands on human life and criminal justification with a dash of philosophy thrown in...Or it's a movie where two pretty guys talk their heads off for a total of four hours while writing ominously in a notebook, your call. There are other things like a Japanese idol named Misa with a reverse crush on Raito (usually it's the guy crushing on the idol, not the other way), and a subplot involving a TV station worker who uses the book for her ambitious ends (but gets comeuppance, sadly - I was really rooting for her, facial resemblance to Kemu notwithstanding), but it always returns to Raito and L sitting around and staring at each other with thinly-barbed comments for the fangirls to squeal at.

While people will argue that there really is some tense action with an alternate ending that totally makes up for the manga's ending, one can't avoid the fact that the source material is pages and pages of speech balloons flooding a page. This is a talkie with summer movie CG effects, and you know it.

So...how is it?

It...is not for everyone.

The movie caters to quite a lot of people - J-movie fans will go for the sake of watching a J-movie, manga fans will go because they're suckers for anything related to their fandom, lovers of pretty people will go because L and Misa are just SO CUTE, and effects afficionados will go because Reuk and Rem are well animated.

However, the casual viewers will go in and look at their watch waiting for the talking heads to end (you gotta give the actors credit for memorizing SO MUCH though), but it never does. Just when you think they're going to give us a break, they start talking again. No wonder they split the movie into two parts, can you imagine sitting for 4 hours listening to L and Raito debating the finer points of evading detection and suspicion? Death Note is not Lord of The Rings - just because LotR revolutionized the longass movie genre doesn't mean everyone is willing to numb their asses in the cinema for YOUR movie, bishies and good acting or no.

So as much as I'd like to see L again (EEEE), I'll just wait for the DVD where at least I can skip everything else and look at him all. The. Time.

And best of all, no numb butt. =D

Listening to: I Don't Feel Like Dancing - Scissor Sisters

When I was a 14-year-old DMling who had yet to swear an oath to a non-beef religion, McD's released a beef burger that dripped with messy gooey but oh so PEPPERY black pepper sauce that just made me go pikapika and shiny, sparking my first romance with a particular food.

I speak of course, of the [Prosperity Burger].

Now the problem with this burger is that....there is no chicken. Or at least, it never lasts long enough for me to satiate my appetite, short of eating it 3 meals a day, every day. For people like me who are bound to religion to NOT EAT BEEF, this is obviously a problem.

1. The chicken prosperity burger not only comes out a good 2 weeks after the beef, the local McD's no longer carries it....a good week before Chinese New Year.

2. In its place, they promote the [Prosperity Beef Foldover], attempting to hike the unpopularity of the Beef Foldover with the allure of the black pepper sauce of win.

3. To add insult to injury, the touted Red Bean sundaes (my mum, not me) get sold out within the span of two weeks. Seriously, what's the point of plastering the stupid ad and writing "sold out" in tiny print two weeks later?

When the guy at the counter told me this, my first mental reaction was:

WHAT ASSHATTED DUMBFUCKERY IS THIS?

Here's a burger designed to celebrate the Chinese New Year, a celebration that is celebrated by THE CHINESE who don't happen to be Christian (because believe it or not there are Chinese Christians who refuse to celebrate CNY because it clashes with Christian beliefs don't you give me that "you're a liar" because I'll just jam your blinded self-righteousness right up your ass where it belongs), and chances are if they're Buddhist or pray to Kuan Yin/The Goddess of Mercy, there's a very good chance they're not allowed to eat beef.

So WHY is the cow burger given the extra attention?

With this they not only alienate the people who are supposed to eat the burger, but the entire Hindu population, and everyone who just plain don't eat beef. How do they tackle this? Throw beef prosperity foldover advertisements onto TV, have people wondering [why would a chicken prosperity burger exist] (which is different from [saying the burger sucks], that's a valid albeit tasteless opinion), all for the purpose of taunting the people who don't happen to follow a cow-mauling religion (or lack of) or assuming that if you can't eat it, there's no point in trying to make you like it.

If this doesn't mark a sort of cultural ignorance in McD's marketing department (or just Malaysians), I don't know what else could it be.

Forget the talk of racial unity in universities and whatnot - start with making the chicken prosperity burger available for just as long as the beef version so that everyone can enjoy it. Heck, let's cater to the vegetarians and come out with a tofu version, or just bottle the damn sauce and sell it because that's the only good part, really.

If you can't even be aware of different religions in a country that boasts of a "cultural melting pot", you can damn well forget about whatever unity goal the country has for its 50th independence.

Now give me a chicken prosperity foldover already so that I can give your exploitative megacorp MONEY, asshats!!! >__<

Listening to: Mum.

Unfortunately my brilliant dissertation was brought up by someone else before me, so while I risk looking as if I'm stealing the guy's' ideas, I shall hereby use the excuse that I'm "reiterating his opinion".

1. Comic Fiesta needs to be sure of how big they want to be now.

It's stated in CF's website that it wants to be the launching pad for more anime/manga awareness in Malaysia, and it's done that;

So now CF aims to be the Malaysian equivalent of [Comiket]. Given the current resources, Comiket Fiesta will be a reality when the children of the committee members are running it, I assure you.

Now that CF's expanded quite a bit, it's getting the attention of more companies who are interested in throwing money at the event to make it bigger. The question is how much money do we (CF) want them throwing at us?

It's easy to say "you give us the money and we'll make it big" but it's obvious that anyone would be wary of the idea of giving money to a bunch of late teens/ twentysomethings, even if the group in question has pulled together their act long enough to successfully run a pseudo-con for 5 years straight. Asking for the amount of money to run an actual Comiket would be murder on the logistics - location, staff (remember, CF is nonprofit at the moment)....staff.....staff... -__-

Unless we're being funded by [the most desperate venture-capitalist ever] it's not going to happen, which comes the need for proposals or a more descriptive budget to have a clearer idea of what CF wants to be. In fact CF cannot grow any faster than it currently is for the main reason that it is really perpetually understaffed. Let's take a look at [Anime Expo], currently the largest anime con in the US: In its 5th to 6th year, it increased from about 3000 to....4000. W00t!

This is pretty much where CF is at at the moment, and where it rightfully should be. Checking the [three biggest anime cons in the US] shows that we're about par for the course, which is good enough for a bunch of teenagers/twentysomethings who gave up the option of doing something better with their lives for this (which had better be fulfilling), AND the fact that CF runs one day less than cons.

So if companies want to throw money at CF, how much should CF be ideally asking for?

I'd think enough money to rent the smallest hall in the [Kuala Lumpur Convention Center] for two days with proper audio equipment would be quite the stretch, but that's the next best logical step. Alternately, the Sunway Convention Center might be cheaper, but as I recall it was pret-ty big, plus it's more accessible than a school hall will ever be.

So then comes convincing the companies that yes doujin and cosplay chess will be a fantastic hit and people just stream in when you give them a good location and that is why you should give your money to us, but I'm not in the committee, and I'm thankful for the freedom of speech. XD

Which brings us to:

2. How much ACG-centric will CF be (and continue to be)?

There's no question about this: CF is an con primarily for all things animanga. Sure there's the rogue Transformer bot of d00m or Edward Scissorhands or western cosplay/ western-style art doujin, but the majority of doujin features big starry-eyed girls/boys with sweatdrops and Shounen-Jump battles where the main character powers up through constipation and battles some MORE.

To reach the size of Comiket, artists who draw things like Gila-Gila and those REALLY unfunny comic strips supposedly laughing at the foibles of Malaysian life with incomprehensible street Malay (Lat is the sole exception) have to participate in order to reach the larger attendance size, since depending on the animanga fans alone won't cut it.

The problem is getting them to.

CF has been touted as an anime con for the past 5 years, so much so that when the [Malaysian Sci-Fi club] had their own event, anime fans weren't all that enthusiastic to try out for the cosplay competition because they weren't sure if cosplaying anime/game characters were allowed. The event also clashed with CF and given the choice between one catering solely to animanga and one that kinda sorta caters to animanga, it's easier to go where your priorities lie.

After 5 years of being an anime con, it won't be easy to open up to the other half of the market. First, these people won't go because they'll think that their stuff won't be appreciated (and rightfully so, if you've seen half the unfunny junk they spew) and then they'll get all indignant at being snubbed for "that Japanese manga crap" (don't deny it, you know it happens here too) since they'll be sitting smack dab in all things otaku. Then the ACG (anime/comic/game) people will be looking at THEM and avoiding their elitist tendencies and nationalistic pride in art style AND incomprehensible Malay scripting (thereby whacking the language barrier up 500%, congratulations!) and it just goes downhill from there. Everyone knows that the twain'll never meet, and it shows.

CF isn't called COMIC FIESTA for nothing - it's not ANIME Fiesta, not ACG Fiesta, not Cosplay Fiesta, it's COMIC Fiesta that wants to promote comics and doujins and graphic novels as a means of communication just as good or better than a dime-store storybook. To do that means hammering home the point that comics are meant for EVERYONE you elitist sods and willing to put aside pride and improve the crappy stories, awful language and questionable art quality (that goes for BOTH sides thankyouverymuch) for the greater good.

And that's the hardest part.

CF's got 5 years in their belt, it's getting popular, and it can only improve from here. Sure it's an optimistic outlook, but someone's got to, right? ^__-