Dreams of Matrix

After going through some of the essays found on matrixessays, I realized that among most of my reading materials I have never read a fanfiction of the Matrix. Never. Before you wonder about the connection, let me just point out that I love to both read and write fanfiction. You just never see that much of them on the Net. Most of them are offline in my home computer. Nearly everything that has affected me has a fanfiction about them. If they're not on the harddrive they're in on of my many books of ideas. If they're not there they're in my head. I even have a few fanfics about Anne Rice floating in my head, and I'm not that big a fan of Anne Rice.

I am a big fan of the Matrix. It is one of the very few movies that manages to marry mass appeal and intuitive/philosophical threads without sacrificing either one. It's one of the very few successes that has managed to bring more people in with the second and subsequently third movie. I'm a media student, and among other things I study the effects various medias have on each other, known to some as a mass media campaign or a marketing strategy. They're roughly the same.

The thing is, you have to give credit to the Wac brothers for the way they tied in the whole thing. If you want to know the whole story you had to have first watched the Matrix, then watched the first set of the Animatrix, then watched Reloaded, get the rest of the Animatrix and finally, get the Enter the Matrix game. For those of you who don't have the money, skip the game. It's BAD. In terms of gameplay. Not storyline. I want to watch it for teh cutscenes and the story, not the gameplay. And Seraph is cute! ;p *drool...*

*Whack! Bash!* Ahem! Please forgive the author of this blog. As her muse, I cannot control her all the time, and she is one of those people who like cool and 'talented' guys. Her boyfriend is like that. He's cute and talented. Now, back to the blog...

I applaud the marketing genius of the Brothers and the philopsophical discussions of the Matrix. Talk more about that later. Ciao!

Faith

I’ve realized that what we see, hear, feel and do affect us in many strange and different ways. Just this morning I was about to continue my nap when a chapter of the Legion of Mary in my district came to my grandma’s house. (Gosh, I hope that’s the right term.) I was touched by their simple dedication to their faith and the way they helped my grandmother. All they did was to offer some prayers and to give the Communion (the Eucharist) to my grandmother, but the way they did it was simple but at the same time, profound.

I think I can safely say that devotion has kept my grandmother alive. Not faith, but devotion. The problem with most people these days is not only their lack of faith, but their lack of devotion. I should know that, cos it describes me too. I believe in Christ. I believe that the Father sacrificed Him in order to redeem us, but I don’t show it very much. Like most people I go to Church and I say my nightly prayers, and that’s it. I don’t live my faith. I don’t observe all of its tenets.

One of the most basic tenets of Christianity is love. It is not only describing romantic love, but more importantly, I feel, filial love, the love shared by friends, and the love of those not romantic in shape. Love is very closely related to compassion. It is very hard to feel compassion for others if you don’t have love in your heart. Those of you who have read the Bible would know the meaning of the phrase “Let him who has not sinned cast the first stone.” We judge too easily. And when we judge, we lose compassion.

I would be the first to agree to that. I judge people and sometimes, I don’t even know that I’m doing it. I know this may sound ridiculous, but when I was watching the Amazing Race on satellite recently, I judged one of the contestants. I said that she was a conniving little back… well, you get what I mean. The thing is, I may be right, I may be wrong, only He knows. But who am I to pass that kind of judgement on her? I don’t know her. I only see her on television.

Devotion to faith is one of the most important things in the world. Faith may be its foundations, but devotion is what you use to build the rest of the structure. Here’s a reminder for me and whoever else that reads this blog:

WORLD SATANIC CONFERENCE ....READ IT EVEN IF YOU ARE BUSY
Satan called a worldwide convention of demons. In his opening address he said,

"We can't keep Christians from going to church."
"We can't keep them from reading their Bibles and knowing the truth."
"We can't even keep them from forming an intimate relationship with their savior."
"Once they gain that connection with Jesus, our power over them is broken."

"So let them go to their churches; let them have their covered Dish dinners, but steal their time, so they don't have time to develop a relationship with Jesus Christ."

"This is what I want you to do", said the devil.
"Distract them from gaining hold of their Savior and maintaining that vital connection throughout their day!"

"How shall we do this?" his demons shouted.
"Keep them busy in the nonessentials of life and invent innumerable schemes to occupy their minds," he answered. "Tempt them to spend,spend, spend, and borrow, borrow, borrow. Persuade the wives to go to work for long hours and the husbands to work 6-7 days each week, 10-12 hours a day, so they can afford their empty lifestyles.
Keep them from spending time with their children. As their families fragment, soon, their homes will offer no escape from the pressures of work!"
"Over-stimulate their minds so that they cannot hear that still, small voice."
"Entice them to play the radio or cassette player whenever they drive...to keep the TV, VCR, CDs and their PCs going constantly in their home and see to it that every store and restaurant in the world plays non-biblical music constantly. This will jam their minds and break that union with Christ."
"Fill the coffee tables with magazines and newspapers. Pound their minds with the news 24 hours a day. Invade their driving moments with billboards. Flood their mailboxes with junk mail, mail order catalogs, sweepstakes,and every kind of newsletter and promotional offering free products, services and false hopes."

Keep skinny, beautiful models on the magazines and TV so their husbands will believe that outward beauty is what's important, and they'll become dissatisfied with their wives. Keep the wives too tired to love their husbands at night. Give them headaches too! If they don't give their husbands the love they need, they will begin to look elsewhere."

"That will fragment their families quickly!"

"Give them Santa Claus to distract them from teaching their children the real meaning of Christmas. Give them an Easter bunny so they won't talk about his resurrection and power over sin and death."

"Even in their recreation, let them be excessive...have them return from their recreation exhausted. Keep them too busy to go out in nature and reflect on God's creation. Send them to amusement parks!, sporting events, plays, concerts, and movies instead."

Keep them busy, busy, busy!"

"And when they meet for spiritual fellowship,leave with troubled consciences."

"Crowd their lives with so many good causes they have no time to seek power from Jesus. Soon they will be working in their own strength,sacrificing their health and family for the good of the cause."

"It will work!" "It will work!"

It was quite a plan! The demons went eagerly to their assignments causing Christians everywhere to Having little time for their God or their families. Having no time to tell others about the power of Jesus to change lives. I guess the question is, has the devil been successful at his scheme?

You be the judge! Does "busy" mean:
B-eing
U-nder
S-atan's
Y-oke?

Response to comments

I'll be doing this every time I get an interesting comment (or if I get one at all), so this is in response to a comment by viceice:

What is art?

Each person has a different perception of what they feel is art. To me, art is basically a form of expression. It is an expression of free speech. In Malaysia, free speech in the press is VERY limited. The students will be the second to admit that. The first would be the press members themselves. It may seem easy to say that free speech is essential in a democratic country, but that is like saying that everyone in the world can eat spicy food. We all know that that is not true. Not everyone can stand spicy food (yours truly being one of them). There are many factors why certain people cannot take spicy food, and thus there are certain factors why total free speech is not applicable in Malaysia.

The most obvious reason is because of the diversity of races in Malaysia. We used to be thick-skinned. But now, thanks to some idiots in office, Malaysians are very thin-skinned when it comes to matters of religion and race. Just the hint that one of them is being offended is enough to make the authorities go up in flames... Hmm... I wonder if we can actually do that... Make them go up in flames I mean. I wonder if there is a way to trigger spontaneous human combustion...

*goes off to research on that*

And before I go off, let me say that when it comes to matters of religion, we should not take them to be the end all and be all of everything. After all, if God meant us to be blind and fanatically faithful to him, why did He give us brains?

Ciao!

Cultural Terrorism

Much has been said and written about the recent debacle about how DBKL (the City Hall for Kuala Lumpur) had handled the Bolehwood Awards that was staged by ICT (Instant Cafe Theatre) as a sort of political satire. Perhaps they were hoping that by doing so, they would be able to stay in power. Perhaps they also meant to show that they were good little Muslims. MIGHT I add that I think they were also trying to show those who are coming here in October that they were trying very hard to protect the morality of the people but those non-Muslim 'infidels' and their 'Westernised' Muslims were vereeeeee bad.

All I can say that this is not the first time it has happened. A few years ago they also banned the production of a rather interesting show called "The Vagina Monologues." Apparently this ulamak (And I mean that in the nastiest way possible, whic is really bad cos lama can either mean old or long (time) in Malay) who was living under a coconut shell somewhere heard the dreaded 'V' word.

BLASPHEMY! CORRUPTION! he said.

We are exposing our children to the grossest kind of indencency, he continued. It's a dirty word! he concluded.

Sigh! Need I go on?

Tell me what ya think about that.

Augmenting reports

The thing about blogging is that it is essentially an online journal. You're putting your journal/biography/autobiography out for everyone to see. That doesn't mean that like your journal, you are free to rant and rave. In fact, I think people who blog are actually more at risk. Though they are posting their own opinion, they have to be careful that they do not cross the line and that they are not being seditious. In some respects this is easy because many people realize that what bloggers are doing are just letting people know what they think about certain issues and their opinions.

It stops being so easy when the blogger attempts to make it sound like him/her are reporting events. I know I'm guilty of that in some respects, but I think it's not that bad yet, is it?

The reason why I am bringing this up is because being a nw blogger, I tend to be on the look out for tips and tricks on blogging. Might I say that so far, Techtv has been a big help? I like their blog reports, although they tend to feature Movable Type rather than blogger. Well, can't have everything, I suppose.

That's all for now. Blog some more later. Ciao! ;p

Race

Just how prevalent is the race issue in Malaysia? If one were to read the latest debacle by the Klang Municipal Council (MPK), it is a very prevalent issue. It is a sign of contempt to me though, as it shows that some politicians would do anything to avoid accountability to those who are paying them.

Then there are politicians who claim that wearing certain garbs demeans Islam and show that people are using these garbs to get off the hook easily. Again, I disagree, for there is no one rule that says a person cannot wear certain garments because they demean a religion. In fact, I think the demeaning of a religion is tied closely with the actions of the few who insist that their way and their way alone is the true religion.

Islam is not the only religion where there are many schools of thought. The most obvious is Christianity. They are similar, but they differ on certain points of theology. The effect may be likened to a large family with most of the family members having different ideologies and willing to die for them.

Compared with some of the others, Christianity, and more importantly, Catholicism, seems to be a very ‘loose’ and easy religion. Believe me, it is not. And by the way, if I offended you I did not mean to, as I am a Catholic. I do not have in-depth knowledge of the other Churches, so please forgive me. If you don’t like what I have to say, feel free to email me. I’ll post my email address at the bottom.

I know about being a Muslim though. One of the most obvious answers to that is because I’m living in a secular Muslim country. Unlike other Muslim countries, in which there is only the Syariah law (the Muslim law, for want of a better term), in Malaysia we are guided by the Constitution. Though many Malaysians feel that the Constitution favours Malays and bumis, I for one, am perfectly content with it.

(Note to self: read up again on the Constitution). ;-p

The alternative, as proposed by the Opposition party, is a scary and terrifying one. I have always believed that religion and governance should be kept as far as possible from each other (think of the Dark Middle Ages), unless you are speaking of governance of the religion itself.

The Opposition party I am referring to is Pas, also known as Parti Islam Se-Malaysia. Now, the only thing I have against Pas is their extremism. They came out with a declaration recently, cleverly couched in terms to make it non-threatening to non-Muslims like me. However, the crux of it is still terrifying.

Pas proposes to place the Hudud and Syariah law above the Constitution.

I’m sure that most Malaysians would immediately understand the implications of these. And to tell the truth, my arms are getting tired, so I’ll stop now. Oh, and here’s my email add:

Hot_gal84 at cuteandcuddly.com
Replace the at with the @. I’m paranoid about spam.

Ways to fight spam- Change ya browser!

I was reading on slashdot today (16 July 2003) about the weaknesses of Internet browsers, particularly Internet Explorer. What struck me as particularly funny was the comment by one user: Using Internet Explorer (IE for short) is like walking into a battlefield with a large bull’s eye on your head (user: viceice).

I use IE a lot, and I perfectly agree. I don’t like it, but in college it is the only browser that we can use. I’m currently trying to find out how to bypass the firewalls and switch to Mozilla. I like Mozilla for one reason and for one reason alone. That reason makes it far more superior to IE and puts Mozilla in a class of its own. Mozilla allows only pop-ups that you want.

We are all familiar with pop-ups. When we click on a website, we not only have the page loading, but also those annoying pop-ups as well. Having taken marketing during my foundation last year, I understand the need for a company and its product to stand out of a crowd. Let me point out, for no particular reason, that I don’t mind banners. I don’t mind them at all, except when they get into the way of me reading something.

The only person who does that is Geocities. Excuse me while I go and see whether my Tripod account is still about.

* Ahem! *

Sorry about that. I really like wandering off now and then.

What I meant to say was that if you take a concept or idea that in the beginning was creative, it would tend to wear out after a while. Now, we know that most things on the net have a short lifespan. Add to the vast amount of copycats, and well, if the product last more than six months you have good reason to be impressed. For some reason the Sims come to mind.

Well, pop-up are overused and over-annoying. Mozilla does what may seem to some as a tiny feature, but to the rest of us it’s a godsend. (Please bless the guy who came up with the idea, and then bless the guy who programmed it and the guy who allowed it to be used in the browser Lord).

Now, let’s say that a game page is loading. And then an ad pop-up appears. Mozilla blocks that ad pop-up. No big deal. IE and Opera (I think) can do that. What they can’t do is to choose which pop-up to block and which not to. Mozilla can. Let’s say on that website I click a link that will automatically open a new page (not an ad). While Mozilla allows me to do that and block the ads, none of the other browsers do. Is there any wonder why I love Mozilla, despite never having used it?

Spam 1

What is spam? Spam is basically pork meat, that has beaten and grinded to a pulp. Well, I'm not sure if that is it, but I do that it is made from rejected parts of the pig that are too good to throw away.

Now, what is email spam? Same as above, except that the base parts are not made out of pig meat. They are made out of gluttony, which is what a pig does anyway. The only difference between the pig who 'donates' his meat to humankind to be eaten and the 'pig' which produces email spam is that you can actually eat the pig spam. Eating the other spam will make you sick, or in some cases make you severly doubt your sexual identity.

Well, that's all the things I can think of to write about now. In case you actually understand the meaning of the word Linux, Opera and Mozilla, go to slashdot.org for some serious geek news that show that geeks are closet comedians.

Rape

Rape. What an ugly word. Despite all efforts, it still looms large in our society today. Not only in Malaysia, but in other countries as well. It is more than a sexual crime, more than a crime of violence. It is the basest crime of the human race. It doesn’t matter who are the victims or the perpetrators. It doesn’t matter whether the victim was a man or a woman, the perpetrator a relative or a total stranger. It’s all about power on the part of the perpetrator, and absolute domination over the victim.

You may have noticed that I used the word perpetrators, and not criminals. This is because when you refer to a crime, you can normally atone for your deeds. You can be punished and in many cases, you can ask forgiveness for it. The loss of material things is one thing. You can always work to regain them. The loss of innocence, the loss of life, is far more painful, far more difficult to overcome. What’s more, you can claim compensation if you’re dead, but not so for rape.

Let me explain.

Rape cripples you. In many ways it is far more devastating than simply dying. When you die, that’s it. Nothing to it. You’re dead. It’s final. But when you’re raped… You have to live with the knowledge that you were brutally violated. And remember, the stigma will not be on the rapist, but rather the woman, the victim.

I’ve known any number of men who told me that if a woman should be raped, why should she keep on fighting? Whether she wants to or not, it’s going to happen. Furthermore they say, women should not be wearing such thin clothes or such short skirts or walking alone.

These are the same men who say that women should be clothed from head to toe, regardless of their religion, skin colour or race, or most importantly, simply because they are women. They should not tempt men, because men have no self-control. That says something about their thinking, doesn’t it?

If it is about deterring rapists, there should be one, and only one humane way to do this. Castration. You’re not going to kill anyone, you’re not going harm them. You’re just going to take away their ability to have children. This goes especially double for incest offenders.

If the human rights organisations say it is too barbaric, then is not rape a barbaric crime? Why should we be compassionate to those who have none? And compared to any number of other options, I believe that castration is the only deterrent and punishment suitable for rape. And for incest family victims, their relative can still earn a living. After all, what role is that small part going to play, in let’s say, office-work?

Piracy in Malaysia

There was a proposal recently to make CDs, VCDs and DVDs controlled items. For those who don’t know, this means that the Government will control the prices of the above items. This is happening in Malaysia of course. Hey, I’m a Malaysian, so I think that givens me a right to rant and rave about her. ;p

Previously, the controlled items included only essentials like foodstuff. Ceiling prices were fixed so that consumer would not be fleeced, particularly during festival times. The method has worked well so far. They now want to apply it to the recording industry, in a move to tackle the menace of pirates.

Anyone who has been to Malaysia in the past few years would know about the ‘scourge’ of piracy. They used to be limited to items such as watches, branded clothe, etc., but now, piracy of CDs and VCDs are big business. When it first started, movies were being shown about three months later, if ever, in the cinema from the US release date.

Thanks to piracy, we now get to watch them almost simultaneously, if not before the US audience. Hehehe… I call that sweet revenge. However, the industry made a huge noise, saying that they were losing a lot of money. Hmm… How shall I put it delicately… Bullshit?

Most of us don’t bother to buy VCDs to watch the good movies. In fact, we would all trek to the cinema and buy tickets to watch the show. It was rather rare for us to buy VCDs of popular movies, unless the movie was good enough to warrant repeated viewing. Most of the movies are the exact expressions of Hollywood, no substance, just air. Good marketing though.

The Malaysian recording industry say that if the Government were to control the prices, it would affect the livelihood of the artists who depend on royalties to survive. To them I have only one thing to say.

Have you guys ever considered that you should give more royalties to the artists and spend less time in your cushy seats? I’m trying to say that the recording industry (i.e. the CEOs of the companies and the Board of Directors) should not take more than maybe, 5% of the total cost of producing one CD. It would make the whole thing cheaper and ensure that the artist gets his/her rightful pay. Make up for the loss of profit with volume.

Like most of my friends, mention the words “Malay Music” and I have an immediate suspicion. There has been nothing to suggest that Malay music is nothing more than simply singing about romance. After all, what is the harm in singing about peace, etc.?

Assuming they get past the Censorship Board, I’m sure they’ll get their money’s worth. If not for the quality of the music, than simply for the novelty of it all.

BTW, I have nothing against Malay music. It’s just that most of them either can’t sing or the lyrics are simply horrible.

Now, please excuse me as I start running away from the ahem! invisible horde of Malay Music Fans (the above to is merely Malay pop music)

Anyone who has seen a Chinese martial arts show dealing with the supernatural or even something that comes close to it will realise something almost immediately. All those who fight demons etc., are all excellent kung-fu fighters, or they have some of the basics.

The reason is simple. Anyone who has read or heard of chi will immediately understand. Chi, or sometime qi, is basically about breathing techniques. Those who read Dragon ball and other manga titles in the same veins will understand.

What martial art does is to give the practitioners a focus. Chi exponents use martial arts to focus their breathing. I once asked my grandmother, and she told me that as recently as 60/70 years ago, people were still able to fly and to do many other things we now see in the movies. Unfortunately, the knowledge seems to be lost now.

Martial arts were to have originated in China. More specifically, in Shaolin. There were two Shaolins, if I am not mistaken. One was in the North, and the other in the South. Either way, there is a saying that all martial arts came from Shaolin. This is not quite true, but it serves. Martial arts, as we know today, came from Shoalin, but Shaolin martial art itself was a mixture of different styles. What they did was simply to give the styles a structure and format.

The reason why I’m bringing this up is because I just saw a TV show on battling demons and in some cases, a “Wu Lei.” Wu Lei are basically demon foxes, particularly those who have the ability to appear as human. There was one thing that was similar between both humans and the Wu Lei. All those involved were good at kung fu.

Write some more on this later. Ciao!