Why do girls always put each other down?

Okay, not all girls are like THIS, but many are:

From The New Paper, a long time ago during the World Cup season:

Soccer dudes women love...
and wives & girlfriends they hate
THEY are one of the world's most famous celebrity couples.
But while one name sets many a heart fluttering, the other drives women to clench their fists and turn up their noses.
By Avis Wong

04 June 2006
THEY are one of the world's most famous celebrity couples.
But while one name sets many a heart fluttering, the other drives women to clench their fists and turn up their noses.
We're talking about the Beckhams, of course - David and Victoria.

'I think Beckham is too good-looking for her. She's got a funny nose,' Beckham fan administrator Shimah Jailanie, 33, told The New Paper.
Added football fan Amy Seow, 18, a student: 'She seems to be always concerned about glamour and being in the limelight.'
The New Paper susses out other footballers whose wives and girlfriends other women love to hate.

Kaka and Caroline Celico

'Kaka's very quick and creative as a midfielder. He's versatile in terms of setting up goals for his team mates,' said Rachel Isabel Yang, 24, a student.
This Brazilian dude doesn't just look yummy, he has a big heart too - he's the youngest ambassador of the United Nations World Food Programme against hunger.
Too bad that the 23-year-old midfielder, whose real name is Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, is already taken.
The object of his affections: 18-year-old Caroline Celico, a nubile model fresh out of high school. The couple tied the knot in December after dating for three years.
'He's really young and to get married at such a young age is shocking. When I saw her picture, I thought he could get a better girl. I don't know why he chose her,' said student Izyan Mellyna Ishak, 19, who's a Kaka fan.
NUS student Chow Jiexin, 20, would love to be in Celico's shoes.
'Why not? He's cute and he's powerful with his shots and skilful in his dribbling,' she said.

Rafael van der Vaart and Sylvie Meis

Married in June last year, 23-year-old van de Vaart and his 28-year-old TV presenter and ex-model wife recently had their first child, Damian Rafael.
'He's big and strong and he holds his position well,' said sports manager Kim Lau, 36.
But remarks about his wife have not been as kind.
Miss Ajax said in Soccerpages Forum: 'I think Rafael isn't the good player he used to be. And my opinion is that he misses his good form because of... Sylvie Meis! She sucks!'
Another footie fan, AFCA 1900, thinks Meis is a tyrant and a diva, saying: 'She will turn into a tyrant and a militant control freak and she will not rest until she has made absolutely sure that she will be treated like a princess.'

Francesco Totti and Ilary Blasi

'He commands respect from his team mates. If he's around, they seem to be more confident,' said sports manager and soccer fan Kim Lau said of Totti.
In keeping with his status, he is married to one of the most beautiful Italian celebrities, Ilary Blasi, 25. They married last June amd had their first baby, Christian, early this year.
The sex bomb, who currently works as an announcer and host on several TV shows, was in the limelight just three months ago for a 'Janet Jackson moment' - her plunging neckline dress slipping open to reveal her nipple. It happened on national TV on the opening night of Italy's top TV show of the year, the Sanremo Song Fest.
The boo-boo only reinforced the image some soccer fans have of her.
'She looks trashy and fake... so many footballers marry women like her though,' said Natasha on SoccerPulse Community.

Andriy Shevchenko and Kristen Pazik

The Ukrainian striker may not have spoken a word of English when he met American model Kristen Pazik at a Giorgio Armani party but that didn't stop him from hitting it off with her (they speak Italian).
The couple married in July 2004 and had a son, Jordan, that same year.
'Sheva is so sexy, I tell you. But his wife is too skinny. I can't stand all the bones, and she doesn't look that great. He has a lot of money. He should buy her more food or just get himself a sexier wife,' said student Izyan.
Shevchenko, or Sheva as he's known, has recently set fans talking about his move from AC Milan to Chelsea, with some attributing it to arm-twisting from his wife.
'I don't really know much about this Kristen Pazik but she seems like a really manipulative bitch,' said Scotsman on The Red & Black Forums.

Theo Walcott and Melanie Slade

Pictures of the Arsenal striker and girlfriend Melanie Slade, who is currently studying for her A levels, have been drawing eyeballs.
The couple are both 17.
'She's a nice intelligent girl who knows what she wants to do. Melanie doesn't seem to me like somebody who will embrace being a footballer's wife and only a footballer's wife,' said Michelle Gayle, wife of ex-professional footballer Mark Bright.
Even so, Slade has her detractors.
A local football fan, student Dyl Lee, 19, griped: 'She's about my age and she has such a dishy boyfriend. I just want to kill her for being so lucky as to pick the right guy!'


The girls like the guy, but not the girl whom he is with; so guess what? They trash her. I feel that all this is terribly ironic. How many times have we heard it already? I often wonder why women have to put each other down in this way. It seems as if they think that their only competition is other women, and because of this, they have their heads filled with so much shit that they allow the men to have the upper hand in deciding just how good they are.

When is a girl not good enough for a guy?
1) When she is too skinny.
2) When she is too slutty.
3) When she is too bitchy.
4) When she is too controlling.
5) When all the other women L-O-V-E love him.

This is just like what you find on all those Discovery Channel "nature" documentaries where the animals are all humping like crazy and fighting like crazy to get the right to do that humping. Except that there, it's the males who do all the knocking down of the same sex, HERE, it's the females.

I doubt if any woman would really care what another one is like (anorexic or whorish or anything like that), especially if they don't know her from Adam (let's forget female empowerment, the average lady who takes to the streets these days for this kind of thing is just incredibly busybodied about the way Other People lead their lives, not really championing a Good Cause). I mean, really, in this world it's every man for himself, if a girl lands herself in a crap-hole, who's to care? Unless of course the ones who care actually have some kind of ulterior motive and are still pretty much in denial over it.

Honestly, by no means am I saying that it's wrong of these people to like a guy, in fact, it's even good as it proves that they're normal. What I don't understand is how it becomes a matter of competition with other women for the same guy. These women don't say--it's a pity I don't stand a chance with him; rather, they say--she's not good enough. Why put a total stranger down in that way? It doesn't make sense. It's mean and dishonest, makes them appear like fools and totally misses the point of Women's Liberation, whatever that was supposed to mean in the first place.

Part of Women's Liberation, I think, is not to fight over a man. It's about being a thinking individual who's good enough for anyone and anything and letting other women have the freedom to be the same.

Parmigianino's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

I fell in love with this guy when I was thirteen years old. That happened in the library at Woodlands; I was wandering along pretty aimlessly and then I stopped to look through an art book, and then...there he was.

It was a self-portrait done on a wooden semi-sphere when he was twenty-one years old.

The colours were pale--not vivid or lifelike--as if the entire scene had been limned in quicksilver, the effect was to make it look as if it were a reflection of the painter in a mirror. it was absolutely breathtaking, one hand looming large at the edge of the picture and the face and the rest, body and fancy dress all drawn in, tiny, tiny, the parts of the image nearest us physically and yet shrunken and distant. It was a curious piece.

I still wonder now if the artwork had just been a small contrivance by the artist to show the pope his tricks with the brush or whether it ever meant anything deeper.

This is the poet John Ashbery's interpretation of it:

look for it on www.poemhunter.com--http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=12981&poem=182576

This is a short account of the life of Parmigianino:

Italian Mannerist painter and etcher (real name: Girolamo Francesco Mazzola), born in Parma, from which he takes his nickname. He was a precocious artist, and as early as 1522-23 painted accomplished frescoes in two chapels in S. Giovanni Evangelista, Parma, showing his admiration for Correggio, who had worked in the same church a year or two before. The originality and sophistication he displayed from the beginning, particularly his love of unusual spatial effects, is, however, most memorably seen in his Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), in which Vasari said he looks 'so beautiful that he seemed an angel rather than a man'.
In 1524 Parmigianino moved to Rome, possibly via Florence, and his work became both grander and more graceful under the influence of Raphael and Michelangelo. The Vision of St Jerome (National Gallery, London, 1526-27) is his most important work of this time, showing the disturbing emotional intensity he created with his elongated forms, disjointed sense of space, chill lighting, and lascivious atmosphere.
Parmigianino left Rome after it was sacked by German troops in 1527 and moved to Bologna. In 1531 he returned to Parma and contracted to paint frescoes in Sta Maria della Steccata. He failed to complete the work, however, and was eventually imprisoned for breach of contract. Vasari says he neglected the work because he was infatuated with alchemy — 'he allowed his beard to grow long and disordered ... he neglected himself and grew melancholy and eccentric.' His later paintings show no falling off in his powers, however, and his work reaches its apotheosis in his celebrated Madonna of the Long Neck (Uffizi, Florence, c. 1535). The forms of the figures are extraordinarily elongated and tapering and the painting has a refinement and grace that place it among the archetypal works of Mannerism.
Parmigianino's range extended beyond religious works. He painted a highly erotic Cupid Carving his Bow (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1535), and was one of the subtlest portraitists of his age (two superb examples are in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples). The landscape backgrounds to his religious works have a mysterious and visionary quality that influenced Niccolo dell' Abbate and through him French art. Parmigianino, whose draughtsmanship was exquisite, also made designs for engravings and chiaroscuro woodcuts and seems to have been the first Italian artist to produce original etchings from his own designs.


More here--Links:
http://www.haberarts.com/parma.htm:
An Era's Portrait in a Convex Mirror
John Haberin New York City
A Beautiful and Gracious Manner: The Art of Parmigianino

http://www.people.virginia.edu/~djr4r/parmigianino.html

Art History at Loggia the Artist Parmigianino at a GlanceThe artist Parmigianino at a glance, with information about art books ... Parmigianino at a Glance. Self Portrait, by Parmigianino. artist Parmigianino. lived 1503-1540 ... www.loggia.com/art/artists/parmigianino.html More pages from loggia.com

A little bit on the poem:

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8016.html

www.hum.utah.edu/hgc/papers/blitch.pdf :
Blitch 1File type:PDF - Download PDF Reader... Ashbery uses formal poetic techniques at the level of the line in many ways ... the identity of Ashbery sometimes merges with that of Parmigianino. And because Parmigianino's ... www.hum.utah.edu/hgc/papers/blitch.pdf More pages from hum.utah.edu

http://www.lacan.com/leadash.htm:

Lead in the Looking Glass: A Lacanian Approach toJohn Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"
Jack Bedell

http://www.d.umn.edu/~jjacobs1/utpictura/parm.htm:
Self-Portrait in a Convex MirrorAs Hollander notes in The Gazer's Spirit, in John Ashbery's long and complex poem. ".. ... in repose. It is what is. Sequestered . . . Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror. John Ashbery. Hollander also notes that "The ever-problematic gaze of the subject in self ... www.d.umn.edu/~jjacobs1/utpictura/parm.htm More pages from d.umn.edu




Now do me a favour...write me some comments.

4c1, you're a class of arseholes...

Thursday--ignore the above date--it's the 27th of July

...this comes from your classmate.

I'm saying all this because I am being perfectly honest and I don't give a shit about what you lot will do to me as you will not do anything and I'm absolutely proud of what I'm saying.

You are a class of arseholes. Here is why:

YESTERDAY--Physical Education class. You all know this one. What is wrong with you? Don't know? I'll give you a recap and I'll let the rest of you all (innocent bystanders) know exactly what happened.

Okay. Time to be civil now that my initial anger is gone anyway. Our school got it into their heads that they would let us choreograph dances for our twice-a-week all-Crescent morning exercises. They instructed us with just this: Short and simple, eight counts. All nine secondary four classes have to do one and teach it to the rest of the level.

Are you clear, people?
Alright.

So the school already said SHORT AND SIMPLE, but apparently/obviously, 4c1 no undastan ingalese, make dans so fukkyng difikul, musta be-a tha' Rain ah? (Korean fellow, big and tall, "fabulous" dancer with BIG muscles--hope that's not the only thing that's BIG about him, I seen sum pix of tat gi an' he dress like no balls'a--fags are IN, is it?) So it took a long time for ALL of us to learn it, especially ME (my dad told me a long time ago that my sister and I have no coordination at all, I'm inclined to believe that). But that was all right. I can't fault others for not being able to FOLLOW instructions if that basic level of IQ hasn't been bred into them. No hard feelings there.

That was last week.

It's this week's events that made me angry. Yesterday's PE class was a total bomb, a total waste of my time--no, not really. I learnt alot about the TRUE nature of TEAM spirit and that of the ego, and sadly, none of the former really exists within the class despite the number of bl_ _dy times they have sung Happy Birthday to a classmate or yelled the class name in unison. This week's PE lesson was to rehearse the dance, or at least I imagined that it was until the PE teacher supervising the lot of us clapped her hands and said that we needed a "close" to our routine. Fine. But after that, some bright sparks came up with this absolutely ridiculous idea of arranging ourselves in some formation or other, first, they ("they" because I don't know WHO thought of it first) wanted a pattern of two concentric squares.
And then a group of classmates whom all suddenly gave themselves "leadership", spoke louder than anybody else (even if that anybody undoubtedly had the better brain) and commanded the rest of us to "go there...go there...NO, GO THERE..." and after like fifteen minutes of tussling, the teacher interjected again and said that we were SO STOOPIT, CAN WE NOT SEE IT? And then it was "this way and this way and there...go there..." That kind of shit.
And then came the shouting. Everybody--the arseholish ones--assumed authority and started yelling and staring self-righteously at everybody else and yelling and screaming--like: I'm the only samrt one here, I'm clever'n'right'n'tite and you all are positioned WRONG so LISTEN to ME. They were all yelling and no one was listening even though I had long ago concieved the brilliant idea of a SIMPLE square block formation. Honestly, I have never seen my class get so F-ing excited over something, they're the type who clam up and giggle and sulk during our literature classes. It seems as if they only get excited over the teeny-tiny trivial parts of life--well, that'd explain Rain, huh?

Yeah.

And THEN, as if it weren't all enough, so idiots came up with a 4c1 formation for class pride. Thankfully, they dimissed that silly suggestion, but instead, started changing the dance moves so that we could yell "4c1!" or something like that. (On a side-note, "Fuckin' 4c1" would have been very appropriate, but it occurred to no one.) So my sister and I and other poor folks who have good brains but lousy dancing skills lost track and were chided by the Rain-dancing fanatics. Oh Lord. That's what I felt like.

They value this "class spirit" so much that they take every chance to yell the class name--they think it affirms identity (or some other crap like that), but unfortunately, all these girls have absolutely no understanding of other people, no empathy, no sensibility. They think only for themselves, they only know "me me ME", what THEY like, what THEY want, what THEY think. And they think that things are perfectly fine, A-Okay that way. It's sad that they're so small-minded, sure, when it comes to parties and birthdays, they're great fun, but when it comes to giving, when it comes to being responsible and actually making a CONTRIBUTION (1, see below), they never do it.

Note:
1) When it comes to doing LITERATURE notes as a class especially. No one does their part, everybody makes totally shit notes. They're most likely afraid that the next person will take their notes and do better than themselves.

4c1, I demand to know when things will get better. I demand to know what's wrong with you all.

More reasons--Coming Soon...

Robert Penn Warren

Evening Hawk

From plane of light to plane, wings dipping through
Geometries and orchids that the sunset builds,
Out of the peak's black angularity of shadow, riding
The last tumultuous avalanche of
Light above pines and the guttural gorge,
The hawk comes.
His wing
Scythes down another day, his motion
Is that of the honed steel-edge, we hear
The crashless fall of stalks of Time.

The head of each stalk is heavy with the gold of our error.

Look! Look! he is climbing the last light
Who knows neither Time nor error, and under
Whose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swings
Into shadow.

Long now,
The last thrush is still, the last bat
Now cruises in his sharp hieroglyphics. His wisdom
Is ancient, too, and immense.
The starIs steady, like Plato, over the mountain.

If there were no wind we might, we think, hear
The earth grind on its axis, or history
Drip in darkness like a leaking pipe in the cellar.

Robert Penn Warren



And from http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/warren/evening.htm
On "Evening Hawk"

Harold Bloom (1984)
[Bloom’s overview of Warren’s career finds its focus on the images of the hawk or hawks repeated over several poems. Among a number of things it represents, the hawk is, Bloom suggests, "an emblem of certainty in pride and honor."]
… ["Evening Hawk"] is surely one of his dozen or so lyric masterpieces, a culmination of forty years of his art.
[Bloom quotes the whole poem.]
The hawk’s emotion is that of a scythe reaping time, but Warren has learned more than his distance from the hawk’s state of being. I know no single line in him grander that the beautifully oxymoronic "the head of each stalk Is heavy with the gold of our error." What is being harvested in our fault, and yet that mistake appears as golden grain. When the poet sublimely cries "Look! Look!" to us, I do not hear a Yeatsian exultation, but rather an acceptance of a vision that will forgive us nothing, and yet does not rejoice in that stance.
From Harold Bloom, "Sunset Hawk: Warren’s Poetry and Tradition," in Harold Bloom, Ed., Modern Critical Views: Robert Penn Warren (New York: Chelsea House, 1986), 203-204.

Calvin Bedient (1984)
Warren’s most strenuous "Platonic" poem, "Evening Hawk," is torn between image and idea. As image, the hawk enshrines the poet’s Nietzschean love of heroism: as idea, it is the Platonic Good, the Platonic True. The poem attempts to break into allegory with
Look! Look! He is climbing the last lightWho knows neither Time nor Error, and underWhose eye, unforgiving, the world, unforgiven, swingsInto shadow.
The poet cannot know all this except by wanting to believe it; here the mind ceases to be wholly realist, universal, and manly and becomes sharply, universally judgmental.
With its rhythmical loveliness – an evening lull quickened by hawk-motions – and its unrepentent sensory vividness, which triumphs at the end, and most of all the hawk’s animal vigor, the poem stays alive, however fought over from inside. The emotion remains true and intact, because the poet is not contemptuous of vitality per se, but only of vitality that fails. Here, vitality in its full power is consonant with Platonic freedom from death and error.
From Calvin Bedient, "His Varying Stance," Chapter 4 in In The Heart’s Last Kingdom: Robert Penn Warren’s Major Poetry (Cambridge: harvard U P, 1984), 166-167.

John Burt (1988)
Audubon’s birds, this is to say, are the stern celestials Warren himself celebrates in "Evening Hawk" and "The Leaf," those not-angels who know everything but mercy, of which they neither feel nor see the need, and who stand outside of time even as their motion is the motion of time’s ruthlessness. …
The bird of prey is not an emblem by means of which the necessity it embodies may be examined. If it stands for anything it stands for that contempt with which necessity spurns comprehension.
from John Burt, "Audobon and Evasion," Chapter 6 in Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (New Haven: Yale U P, 1988), 103-104.

From http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/17

A Way to Love God
by Robert Penn Warren

Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.
And the line where the incoming swell from the sunset Pacific
First leans and staggers to break will tell all you need to know
About submarine geography, and your father's death rattle
Provides all biographical data required for the Who's Who of the dead.
I cannot recall what I started to tell you, but at least
I can say how night-long I have lain under the stars and
Heard mountains moan in their sleep. By daylight,
They remember nothing, and go about their lawful occasions
Of not going anywhere except in slow disintegration. At night
They remember, however, that there is something they cannot remember.
So moan. Theirs is the perfected pain of conscience that
Of forgetting the crime, and I hope you have not suffered it. I have.
I do not recall what had burdened my tongue, but urge you
To think on the slug's white belly, how sick-slick and soft,
On the hairiness of stars, silver, silver, while the silence
Blows like wind by, and on the sea's virgin bosom unveiled
To give suck to the wavering serpent of the moon; and,
In the distance, in plaza, piazza, place, platz, and square,
Boot heels, like history being born, on cobbles bang.
Everything seems an echo of something else.
And when, by the hair, the headsman held up the head
Of Mary of Scots, the lips kept on moving,
But without sound. The lips,
They were trying to say something very important.
But I had forgotten to mention an upland
Of wind-tortured stone white in darkness, and tall, but when
No wind, mist gathers, and once on the Sarré at midnight,
I watched the sheep huddling. Their eyes
Stared into nothingness. In that mist-diffused light their eyes
Were stupid and round like the eyes of fat fish in muddy water,
Or of a scholar who has lost faith in his calling.
Their jaws did not move. Shreds
Of dry grass, gray in the gray mist-light, hung
From the side of a jaw, unmoving.
You would think that nothing would ever again happen.
That may be a way to love God.

From New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 by Robert Penn Warren, published by Random House. Copyright © 1985 by Robert Penn Warren. Used by permission of William Morris Agency, Inc., on behalf of the author.


Mortal Limit
by Robert Penn Warren
I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.
There--west--were the Tetons. Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations. Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck? Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?
Or, having tasted that atmosphere's thinness, does it
Hang motionless in dying vision before
It knows it will accept the mortal limit,
And swing into the great circular downwardness that will restore
The breath of earth? Of rock? Of rot? Of other such
Items, and the darkness of whatever dream we clutch?

From New and Selected Poems 1923-1985 by Robert Penn Warren, published by Random House. Copyright © 1985 by Robert Penn Warren. Used by permission of William Morris Agency, Inc., on behalf of the author.

We Love You Gigi

My sister and I just wanted to say this--We Love You!

It wasn't really the WC that did it for us, or your reputation as the world's best goalkeeper, no. (We don't know the first thing about football.) It was really your decision to stay at Juventus and play in Serie B--very brave of you. I could come up with one hundred and two not-so-complementary reasons as to why you would want to do something like that, but I won't. I was rather surprised when I read about your decision to stay, it's not terribly good for one's career now is it? But, since I tend towards the sentimental, I commend your choice, it's sincere, from the HEART not the HEAD (nor from the POCKET). Even if no one else does, I'll remember you for this.

Also, we're very sincerely sorry for calling you a ratface and we promise we'll never do it again.

The problems with my school...

...and those of the entire Singapore education system

Yes, in case no one's noticed, I'm a Singaporean.

I notice that I am often furious with my school, oh, it's for little things; little, little things on paper that translate into big, BIG things in real life. These are problems which just about everyone ignores, the people-in-charge because no one of any importance knows about them, the students because they cannot do anything about it.


My school, Crescent Girls' School, frustrates me for numerous reasons. These are mainly to do with the people and their way of doing things.


The teachers are often sloppy, they do not seem to care about their work or about us, the students. I feel that they do not look at us as people but, rather, as just another task to finish as quickly as possible and then put away. The teachers teach us as much as possible within set periods (between about a half-hour and an hour), toss us some homework, mark and return it after it is handed in and give us tests now and then. It's not a terribly effective style of learning as the teachers just say: You got this wrong and this wrong and this wrong. Correct it. And then we're done. Although they do go through the homework and tests in class, they do it at lightning speed and students have to keep up or fall behind and never get up again. We do not get many opportunities to ask questions in class if we don't understand this or that, this is due to how little time the school system gives us to get things done. AND THEN, when we do ask questions (or myself at least), the teacher doesn't seem to think or listen to what was asked, to them, the answer is THAT way BECAUSE and only because. It is discouraging the way the teacher often tries to brush us off in that way. However, I understand to some extent why this happens as TIME is very TIGHT, and there is nothing we can do about it.

What gets me MORE is this: the teacher's attitude. Many of them do not respect us students as people with the same rights as they themselves. They have absolutely no respect for our time. As one of the Secondary Four students, I know this tendency all too well. You see, we are taking our O' Level examinations this year and as a result of this, the school gives us many mock-tests (two a week really, on Tuesdays and Fridays) and the teachers are making us come back during the long holidays for extra lessons too. (Yes, that just about sums it up--sounds exhausting, no? YES!) Ironically though, the teachers often choose to absent themselves at the last minute, when we have already made the time and cleared out all our other plans and have waited for them. And, more often than not, the teachers choose not to inform us beforehand or even at all so that we are on standby for the whole time before we gather up the nerves to leave. And then, after all our sufferings, they pop up the next time we are scheduled to see them and they inform us that we have not had the lesson, and therefore, we must all make time on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday etc. so that we can finish up the syllabus as we are far, FAR behind all the other classes. My PHYSICS teacher, a middle-aged nobody who acts like SOMEBODY who is anybody, is a classic example. He is a certain LIM MIN CHO--that's his name and I'll say it loud as he deserves every bit of shit that is coming his way. Alright, I've had my rant, now for the story. I have so much to tell that I don't even know where to start. So, I'll tell today's example and whatever else I can remember. Today is Friday, so we had a mock test--physics--no prizes for guessing. I'll close my eyes awhile--deep breaths. Put it simply: he made things difficult for us. Our test started after our curriculum time lessons ended, at 3: 45pm. It was already very late then and I really really wanted to begin and end on time as I had already pushed my tution back so that I could do what I had to at school. So we all sat down in the classroom and waited, the teacher in charge (someone I don't know--good for her) was giving out the papers when LIM MIN CHO suddenly popped in at the classroom door and said that we had to push our desks apart, at least HALF A METRE. This was extremely inconvenient as the desks were arranged in four rows, two by eight desks all huddling close so as to get a better view of the whiteboard. All my classmates groaned and told him that it would be really inconvenient as we would have to move the desks apart and back again and promised him not to peek, but he still refused to budge and we had to shift the tables. Some other classmates were hoping he'd relent and kept requesting him not to request something so absurd of us girls--well, old LIM MIN CHO (yes, remember the name) declared that he'd be back in three minutes and we had better shift the tables, OR ELSE. Of course, he didn't say it THAT way. He didn't have to. He was just rather indulgent, self-indulgent about it all, we would have to do it whether or not it made sense because he was boss. If we didn't do it, he'd keep us back. It was his prerogative as long as we were in the school. Oh lord, I wished to give him the swearing of his life, but I shifted my desk instead and waited for the teacher to be happy. After LIM MIN CHO sauntered off, some girls were still moaning and groaning over the tables and of course the fat lady in charge of us was all too happy to assert her own authority over us. She told us to shift our desks and quick, otherwise she would not let us start and we'd go home late. My friend whispered to me that she had to go see a doctor and let her mother fetch her at 4:30 pm EXACTLY--if we started late like the old C_ _ NT told us we would, she would be late and her plans ruined. And, in the end the old f_cktard didn't come back. What does that tell you? LOADS--about our school and people in general. The teachers are cruel half-arsed loserlifes who most likely don't get a fuck a week and take all their frustration out on the kids. No. Not really. Here it is:
The teachers are insensitive to our needs.
The teachers don't respect those below themselves.
The teachers are most probably not doing what they love or do best.
They abuse us, they abuse their authority.
The teachers are uneducated in the worst possible way, do things only at their own convenience and have never given a thought to the students who have no choice but to DO AS THEY SAY or else.

The mock tests are also a waste of time. We should have done all this earlier. We shouldn't be doing this at all as the teachers don't pay attention or place any importance at all to them--so what's the point of doing them? The mock tests are a pain in the arse. the mock tests are most probably the principal's, LEE BEE YAN'S, silly idea as the school staff are too lazy and tired to do their job.


Okay. Got everything that I can recall AT THE MOMENT down. Now here's what I think of the school system.

The Singapore school system has started this new TEACH LESS, LEARN MORE scheme. It's all based on this politically correct, INNOVATIVE and SOPHISTICATED-sounding idea on creative learning. The minister (of education, not church) just said some crap about creative learning blah blah not like robots blah blah initiative...independence...cultivate love of learning. That kind of crap. It sounds all good and fine, it sounds as if the kids are going to have FUN and LOVE learning--but that's absolutely not it.

The government has come up with an impressive-seeming idea, but will it work? NO. The scheme is all flash and no substance beneath the lovely marble veneering. They don't know what they mean, they don't know what we need. They are stuck too far up in their ivory towers and are unwilling to climb down and TAKE A LOOK. We don't need more expensive equipment, we don't need new tablet PCs (certainly you've heard of that! My school made all the girls below our level--their hare-brained scheme was too slow to catch us--buy their own tablet PCs at around $2500), we need an education. Yes, an education. We need guidance, care, attention. We cannot have 38 girls crammed into one room with one teacher who cannot/will not attend to us as individuals. We need to learn how to learn. We need solutions, not distractions. We need respect and understanding from the teachers and school in general, and this we will duly give back. We don't need and don't WANT pompous fools pushing us over the edge and making us grow to dread the labour camp we call a school.

Will they give it to us?

I don't hear an answer.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Lorca was a Spanish poet and playwright, and is remembered as one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. He was born in 1898 and was killed by the Fascists in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

I first learnt about him about two years ago after reading Harold Bloom's supposed book of "one Hundred Geniuses"--the man's (Bloom, not Lorca) is rather pompous but still an intruiging introduction to great literature for the uninitiated. I can't say that it was love at first sight, but I was charmed by the extracts I gleaned from the book, even if I couldn't understand them. (Which was/is understandable as he wrote after the style of the French Symbolistes, which to this day I cannot understand either.)

Okay. So the guy grew on me. Now, he's my first choice to go visit Spain with.



To me, Lorca is one of the faces of Spain and Spanish culture. His poems have the mystical charm and rythm of folk songs and the imagery and diction (perhaps not so much this, I can only read the English translations and then make up for the deficit Lost-in-Translation with my instincts) clearly reflect the "rocky gravity" of the Spanish terrain. They also encompass a quaintly dreamy, mournful romance regarding the culture and spirituality we all associate with the Iberian Penninsula; it's obsession with death and it's perfume of sleep are sublime. I also smell some Moorish influences here--Spain was once home to the Moors until the Catholic Kings drove them out, it was another very beautiful era, but bloody too--I'll have to think more about it first before I can say anything.


This is what he looks like--http://www.whitbyhs.cheshire.sch.uk/features/blood/lorca.htm--charming fellow.

Some of his poems:

City That Does Not Sleep
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the
street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead
dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.
One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
eyes of cows.
Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention
of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.



Gacela of the Dark Death
by Federico García Lorca Translated by Robert Bly
I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
I want to get far away from the busyness of the cemeteries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.
I don't want them to tell me again how the corpse keeps all its blood,
how the decaying mouth goes on begging for water.
I'd rather not hear about the torture sessions the grass arranges for
nor about how the moon does all its work before dawn
with its snakelike nose.
I want to sleep for half a second,
a second, a minute, a century,
but I want everyone to know that I am still alive,
that I have a golden manger inside my lips,
that I am the little friend of the west wind,
that I am the elephantine shadow of my own tears.
When it's dawn just throw some sort of cloth over me
because I know dawn will toss fistfuls of ants at me,
and pour a little hard water over my shoes
so that the scorpion claws of the dawn will slip off.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of the apples,
and learn a mournful song that will clean all earth away from me,
because I want to live with that shadowy child
who longed to cut his heart open far out at sea.

More here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/163


Now, I know that most Spanish people are NOT like him unless perhaps you count the really old ones living in the countryside or something. I know that most of them like football and beer and coke and movies like other normal people.

I just feel that Lorca brings out the mythical, wounded side of this country for he could find it within himself in his struggle as an artist and fear and worry as a homosexual.

He was killed by the Spanish Nationalists for his sexuality; the murder was made to look like an indecent assualt.

Gotta love these videos

1) A collection of Man of the Moment Marco Materazzi's fouls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJPKM5aJGW8&search=shevchenko

I watched this over YouTube some time before the WC Finals, so I was thinking: Is this, like, a joke? Well, now I know it isn't, he's for real.

2) Nonsense, Frosties make you fat. They're totally encrusted with sugar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC8aQrn0neM&search=fernando%20torres

featuring Spanish international footballer Fernando Torres--hard to believe this guy is twenty-two and not twelve.
But it's rather cute, I was like, So, is this Calvin 'n' Tigger, or Christopher Robin 'n' Hobbes?


3) ...and so does beer...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMnlORJeH_c

featuring about half the Spanish national footy team

I could never understand the logic of advertising for the life of me! Just a whole load of crapped-out fallacies.

Why I dislike discussing my weight with other people

The World Cup is OVER, people. Now it's back to me, even if Zidane is going to go round appearing on national TV to complain about Materazzi--Oh, that naughty, NAUGHTY boy...

OK. I know, I know. Now it's back to me until when I say so:



RE: Why I dislike discussing my weight with other people

I am a fifteen year old Chinese girl am I'm on the short and fat side of society. I'm pretty used to this and I accept it:

1) I don't go clothes shopping in places like ESPRIT where Fat People Really Aren't Allowed To Shop in the illusion that "if I just lose a couple of pounds, I WILL fit these clothes and I WILL look as good or even better than all my skinny classmates." No, I'm not like that.

2) I'm not anorexic and never will be. I'm big-boned and gain weight very easily. Anyway, I think it's stupid, vain and irrational. I get annoyed at anorexic people, especially if they're self-pitying and emo like the ones in all those children's storybooks that basically tell IMPRESSIONABLE young girls like me that " anorexia is B-A-D BAD. U MUST LUFF URSELF". Yup. That's about how MORONIC they are.

3) What else? Hmm. I hate exercise?

However, I do get annoyed whenever people react to my weight.

Some of them, I suspect, treat it like a bloody joke when I having trouble squeezing through the aisles at school and ask my classmates to kindly tilt their chairs up a little higher.

Some of them don't bother to hide their utter shock at how much I'm eating or how large my clothes are. Fortunately, this does not happen very often.

Worse still is when people becoming condescending/start pitying me. When I get comfortable, I'm pretty nonchalant about my size (the pain only comes when I'm out shopping for clothes with my mother, I'll tell you this a little later on--down). So I say something like: "oh, dear god I'm fat. That's why I can't eat too much" to explain (This happened when I was trying to lose enough weight to get out of my school's compulsory twice-a-week weight-loss boot camp) why I'm only eating two slices of bread for recess.

This is when my friends/accquaintances (can't tell them apart no more these days) say stuff like: "Oh, you're not FAT, I'm fat, I eat five times a day", all the while making no effort to hide their stick thinness. I dislike that. Do they think I'm stupid? And will it make things any better? No.

Yet, I dislike it when people make rude comments about my weight or even say: You're fat. This is because I don't know why they're saying it. The INTENTION largely characterizes the ACT.

BUT: I'm not on the other side of this fat-thin camp. I don't make FAT/LOSER an identity that I can LOVE/SEEK COMFORT from. I don't say that "Big is Beautiful"--I love beautiful people (Botticelli's women and suchlike, not so much of the Gwen Stefani variety) and they're ALL SLIM, let me tell you that (although not SKINNY).

To all fatties out there: DON'T DO THIS TO YOURSELF, DON'T LET OPRAH (YEAH, the oprah winfrey) TRICK YOU. DON'T READ BOOKS LIKE THESE: Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767912926/ref=pd_cp_b_title/002-8892279-7692001?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155.

Appreciate, love, celebrate beauty.

And don't hate men just because they like their women thin, they can't help it (don't campaign for men to love fatsos, they might just turn gay from all that trauma).

Zidane's headbutt: I have a theory...

Materazzi (snuggling up to Zizou from behind): Hi GoldenBalls.

Zidane: Get away from me you wicked, wicked man...I shall never yield my honour to you...NEVER.

M: Just a bit of sugar...please...you wouldn't say no to a nice boy like me?

Z: No means no. Look for someone your size, I'm way out of your league you little bugger.

M: Little! How dare you...you're the little one... (tosses his head and walks off)

Z: Nobody messes with me, NOBODY...you here me there you...

M: Keeps on walking

Z: I demand an apology...I will not stand for this--HEY!

Z: Runs up to the front

Z: I'm going to teach you--nobody messes with the big Z!

Z: Turns into Miss Piggy

Z: Hai....AHH! HEADBUTT

M: OUF!

M: Falls over, winded.

The rest is history.

This is again one of the theories my sister and I concocted. Hope you liked it.

+

Lukas Podolski = Adam Sandler

Gianluigi Buffon = Rat-Face

Now that the World Cup is over...

A Final Summary of My Thoughts and Feelings:
Favourite Players:
1) Fernando Torres--a great player and a very interesting personality, just try looking up articles on his life. Need I say more?

2) Aaron Lennon--England-Portugal. That was the only England match I saw, but when he came on he really did get involved. Sped things up too.

3) Owen Hargreaves--Yep, there's only one of him. England-Portugal. I can't really tell whether or not he was good 'cos I don't watch football and I don't play it either, but he was working really hard on that pitch and giving it all he had. I feel that the effort must have been worth something, anyway--although I know that it's awfully naive of me--he seemed like a nice guy.

4) David Villa--I think that now I'm being totally irrational (and ignorant) here. This must all be due to my overly avid ardour concerning miners and little old hick towns in Spain (but then who wouldn't be charmed by them?). Also, from what I can tell from the pictures, he has a disturbing resemblance to my autistic brother when he grins (and the brother in question is a thirteen year-old who looks like an up-sized seven year-old), so I guess it's just all the strange thoughts floating about my unconscious mind. Funny.

5) Zinedine Zidane--don't know much about his playing, but that head-butt was fabulous, it was THE MOMENT of the game--but rather stupid too.
(more below)
6) Philipp Lahm--looks like a sparrow

7) Miroslav Klose--looks like a fox terrier

My Moment: Zidane's 111th minute header in the finals.

On the grand finale:

My sister, my dad and I were all awake at two in the morning and sitting in front of the TV. My sister said that she was so disoriented when our dad first woke her up, she thought it was time to go to school, but then it didn't seem right--until she remembered and realized that it time for the party.

The match: pretty okay. All right.

The HEAD-BUTT: My dad was like WOW and so was my sister and I was like ...huh? what? I was so busy going up and down to get a glass of water that I only caught the replay. The announcers were pretty stunned too. It seems as if Materazzi just caught Zidane back a little and then said something to him before running on ahead of him. And then Zidane just went on walking behind him until he caught up, then he ran in front of Materazzi and lowered his head and POW! knocked the other guy over. Materazzi took a few inches into the air and fell backwards.

After seeing that, we were all discussing it. My dad commented that it was so strong and sudden that it must have given Materazzi the shock of his life.
Quote: He was just like, PUNG, must have given him the shock of his life.
&
He was like an animal there, no facial expression...(the rest is kinda woolly in my head)


Really, I thought that it was quite scary seeing him like that, so much for being a "Zen Master"--that's what our papers dubbed him before that morning. He was, yes, like a rhino or something. That head is DEADLY, my dad commented that he had a very strong, hard head--"as hard as ebony". And I could see that his vein were practically POPPING out of his head. It was strange that afterwards, when he was sent off, he was totally disoriented and was like, you can't send me off...

Later, all of us agreed that the head-butt was the best moment of the entire match...pity it got the guy sent off though.

Hey! hey, hey!

My sister commented on my last entry.

She said she wondered whether R. Kelly watched it.

R. Kelly, if you've forgotten, is the guy who sang the corny-o song: I Believe I Can Fly. He's better known for watching kiddy-porn and being arrested for that.




Well, anyway, my sister and I will be watching the finals. It's TONIGHT--no, NEXT MORNING!!! Monday morning! Am Excited. I like the thrill of being up that time of the night.


Here's a poem:


Seascape

This celestial seascape, with white herons got up as angels,
flying high as they want and as far as they want sidewise
in tiers and tiers of immaculate reflections;
the whole region, from the highest heron
down to the weightless mangrove island
with bright green leaves edged neatly with bird-droppings
like illumination in silver,
and down to the suggestively Gothic arches of the mangrove roots
and the beautiful pea-green back-pasture
where occasionally a fish jumps, like a wildflower
in an ornamental spray of spray;
this cartoon by Raphael for a tapestry for a Pope:
it does look like heaven.
But a skeletal lighthouse standing there
in black and white clerical dress,
who lives on his nerves, thinks he knows better.
He thinks that hell rages below his iron feet,
that that is why the shallow water is so warm,
and he knows that heaven is not like this.
Heaven is not like flying or swimming,
but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare
and when it gets dark he will remember something
strongly worded to say on the subject.


Elizabeth Bishop

Splendid, isn't it?

France vs Portugal

This was supposed to be Thursday's post. But I had SCHOOL and was TOO BUSY school or no because I'm a slacker at heart and every few days I realize what totally deep shit I'm in and have to do my work. But slowly.

No, ignore that. I didn't know what I was doing...but anyway...

The match was good. Nice. Particularly because it was 3 am in the morning (Thursday morning). My sister and I and our dad watched it together.

So, France vs Portugal...guess who won...

FRANCE, on a penalty kick by Zidane. So the score is 1-o.

The Portuguese were fouling and diving and play-acting at being hurt (the French did it too, but they were obviously more successful). Referee didn't believe them. When Ronaldo did get one, he missed. He was very dramatic, and very funny. And then there was this other time he didn't get the penalty kick and that was even worse. He was pouting like some little kid. Must be the first time I've seen a grown up do it...hope it's the last. But, yes, that was the definite pederast's Golden World Cup Moment. Oh God...

Our World Cup joke

My sister and I noticed that the papers were making this big fat deal over Cristiano Ronaldo and Rooney and some poor other guy's balls being stepped on.

After some careful thought-experiments and investigation (speculation), we came up with our own extra-intelligent theory. You see, it's actually not Ronaldo's fault, it was that stupid gay magazine poll that spoilt England's World Cup chances as well as a beee-u-ti-fool friendship between old Ronnie and Roo. And well, here's the story:

Back in England at the locker room of whichever club the both of them play at, all the other players are gathered round and chanting: Fight, fight...

Rooney: (grabbing Ronaldo by the shirt collar) You really f_ _ _ _ed up my World Cup. Now I'm going to clock you one!


Everybody else: Yeah stick 'um, stick 'um, the b_ _ _ er!


Ronaldo: (frantic and squealing) Ah, ah, no! No, you've gotten it wrong amigo! I'm innocent, please!

Roo: (raises eyebrow) Oh? How so?

Ron: It's all that gay mag's fault! I read this awful, awful poll in there that voted me the...the most yum football player in the World Cup. And then I got so scared that I was in a daze all the while...please, please... (whinging and whining)

Roo: (face softening) Umm, o--hey, what were you doing with that queer mag!

Ron: (pale and sweaty 'cos he knows he's in a spot now) I....I...I um

Roo: (lets go of Ron's collar at once and starts brushing his hands off on his jersey) I knew there was something unnatural about you! The hair, the boots...

Everybody: (grimaces and moves away) Eww!

Ron: (flapping his arms like a penguin trying to Take to the Sky) No, no you've got me wrong! Make friends, make friends, please, please... see (holding out a handmade card drawn with Peace, Man signs and Forever Friends stickers), I even made you a card...



The story ends with Ron running off to some other club 'cos he's afraid of getting murdered by his homophobic team-mates.

Years later:
Rooney to someone else: Now I know why he was so damn concerned about that other fella's delicate bits.



Note:
This is entirely fictional, none of it is true.

Take to the Sky is a Tori Amos song, now you go figure it out.

Lastly, I'm not at all anti-gay (even if I do sound as if it were so). I'm NON-gay. Safely neutral. In fact, it's the BRITS who are homo-haters. But no, I'm not a Brit-hater either.

W. C. Germany vs Italy results: Italy wins: 0-2

Sad. I liked Miroslav Klose and Philipp Lahm quite a bit.

England vs Portugal World Cup

Sunday morning:
my blog clock is often wrong.

Watched the match last night with my dad and my sister.


Portugal won on penalty shoot-outs. Their goal-keeper (Ricardo?) was really good. He caught THREE of England's shots.

Rooney showed again that he's not too clever. He got himself sent off in a very unnecessary way. Stomped somewhere between a Portugal player's legs (but isn't that what you wear a jock-strap for, huh?) trying to get a ball that another guy was already kicking away. And then he shoved Ronaldo. The commentator speculated that that was why he was sent off, not for the stomping.--well, it was an accident...


Cristiano Ronaldo is a selfish _______. My sister and I noticed how he kept going for the goalpost when the England players were hot on his heels instead of just passing it to a team-mate. And he was a busybody too. Kept getting involved when the opponent's players fouled his team-mates as if he were the referee or something.

Guess what? He's the guy who was voted cutest/most good-looking by this gay magazine. (As a besides, I didn't find that list a very good idea. It's not nice to spring something so creepy on the players at such an important time of their lives. :] Just kidding.)

Match ended (90 minutes, then 30 minutes extra-time) 0-0. So it was penalty shoot-outs.

I went to bed at near 3 am in the morning. Nice match. I kind of like the type of violence you get on the field.

My dad stayed up for the Brazil vs France match. FRANCE won. 1-0. Thierry scored the winning goal.

My dad says that he's not too surprised. Said that Brazil wasn't too good even from the outset. Of course, I can't validate that he's not even the teensiest bit surprised, I was asleep, and my dad is (my mama told me this, it's not sign of my wickedness really, that I'm saying this) the type of guy who always has to be right and who likes to super-impose his OWN idea on what turns out to be the CORRECT answer so that they turn out to be EXACTLY the same. But well, yeah, I believe he was being honest about that anyway.




Oh yeah, forgot to tell you the other day, during the Germany-Argentina match, Miroslav Klose accidentally knee-d the Argentina goalie in the ribs (or stomach, didn't see it too well). He (the goalkeeper) was in a lot of pain and then he was carried off on a stretcher. My dad says that he might have broken a rib.

At times like these, I find myself caught between sympathy and detatched fascination.

Hope he's alright.