So I was Talking to Myself...

: Last Sunday, 9.25am, I suddenly found myself having a Brainy-Baddie discussion.
: Brainy-Baddie discussion? Is that what kids nowadays are calling ‘being delusional’?
: Talking to myself isn’t delusional. A lot of people do it and it’s healthy intrapersonal communication.
: ‘Healthy’ and ‘intrapersonal’ in one sentence can only be found in masturbation subjects. Under Self-Porn.
: Dirty talk like that is why you’re the Baddie.
: And you think you have any claim to being Brainy? You’re naming metaphorical entities of yourself! How stupid is that? This better not be a regular feature.
: Why? Because I might find myself interesting?
: No, it’s nice to appreciate one’s self in a way that has nothing to do with losing 2 kilograms.
: So what’s the problem?
: You’re blogging this.
:Your point is missing. It’s my blog.
: Unless telepathy can be done online, should you really be writing your every thought?
: Considering I’m pretty limited in freedom of speech, take this as a new form in freedom of mind.
: Ahh...
: See? This is why I’m Brainy.
: Well, we’ve already brainy’d this far. What’s bothering you?
: A lot of things. Starting with the project proposal I was supposed to send to Dr. Visor.
: Your new supervisor? Sweetie, that’s not a problem, that’s just being lazy.
: Yeah, it’s more tedious than hard-to-do. And he’s expecting it by January 23rd. This Wednesday.
: OK, you better DIY ASAP. The man’s a phD.
: Let’s put that on top of the list and get started in 2 hours. What else do we got?
: I thought I was the one giving the answers here.
: You know as much as I know because you’re me, so you propose something I know you know I know we’re - I’m - in trouble with.
: I rejoice in the knowledge that you know I know what you want me to know.
: Smart-ass.
: Makes two of me. Our next trouble would be when I can get the Taco Bake recipe started.
: For the blog entry? That’s not really a big issue since there’s no serious dateline.
: Yeah, but I already got the step-by-step oral process written out. Yet Mak is so often at the kitchen; I can’t do this and take pictures of the details without rousing her chatterbox.
: Eeep! The only way when too many cooks spoil the casserole happens when Mak’s one of them.
: She’s an industrious and busybody cook. That comes for being the eldest daughter of eight siblings.
: And the recipe is full of cheddar cheese. Do you think you should gain more kg’s?
: After the neighbour’s house warming party yesterday? After all that honey-barbecued chicken wings and mini-pizzas? Point taken.
: Settled then. Postpone the Taco Bake recipe blog entry until, say Tuesday?
: Great! Little brother Genius will have gone back to Malaya University by then and he hates cheese.
: Psycho.
: Glad I have a mutual agreement with myself.
: We’re - I'm - turning crazy. Let’s get on with this before my sanity disappears completely.
: Your turn.
: Next on the to-figure-out list is how to post blogs more frequently.
: Skip that. We had this discussion before, right? I can’t.
: Yeah. I could sure use some money falling from the sky right about now.
: Keep wishing. Next?
: Mak is sending me to Liza’s for an alteration-,
: Hold it. Aren’t you Liza?
: Don’t be obtuse. Liza is, of course, my real name but we both know what I meant was KakLiza the Tailor.
: I’m just helping you be Brainy, hehehehe.
: Stop helping. You’re not helpful. You’re not even funny.
: Wait for tomorrow then. I might find something to amuse myself. Just go on.
: I need an alteration on the ‘jubah’ dress I brought from my cousin.
: Yeah, that dress is as big as a tent. In fact, our baby nephew did use it as a tent the other day.
: That ‘jubah’ dress was made in the Middle East for tall Mediterranean women. Unfortunately it was brought by a small Asian woman who then sold it to another Asian woman who’s only slightly taller.
: Don’t start talking about yourself in 3rd person now. It’s bad enough that there are two of me here.
: Well, back to Liza’s-,
: Which one?
: Stop that.
: Hehehehe...
: KakLiza the Tailor can alter the ‘jubah’ dress by cutting the hem and make the waist more form-fitting.
: ‘Jubah’s aren’t supposed to be form-fitting. It’s a traditional Arab dress that didn’t managed to be the fancy bed sheet it was originally designed for.
: It’s the weird Islamization this country is going through. Since the West is warring with the Middle East, everybody with a ‘blue burqa’ sister is spending tourist money in Asian economy.
: And bringing their ‘blue burqa’ sister with them.
: And our men think it’s sexy. Thankfully for me, it’s only the ‘jubah’ I’ll have to deal with.
: Quick, find a liberal boyfriend before your uncles thinks arranged marriages are sexy too.
: That one will be our - my - problem in the not-so-immediate future.
: Speaking of problems - which what all I’ve been thinking - how is KakLiza’s trip a problem?
: That’s in case Mak objects to the dress being more form-fitting. You know that she’s the one who really wants to wear the clothes she brought for me.
: ‘Jubah’s and ‘kurung’ dresses. She still refuses to acknowledge that I’m a ‘kebaya’ and blue jeans girl.
: Hopefully banking on KakLiza’s experience with every daughter’s maternal nightmare, she’ll agree to some degree with me.
: It’s just so nice to have a Kampung Baru private seamstress instead of an expensive KL-modiste.
: Mak did have her good uses.
: Glad I have a mutual agreement with myself. Again.
: All problems over now?
: Just one more. Do you think Ayah had made the police report yet?
: About last night? That we got robbed?
: You know I know you kn-,
: Okay, okay! I’m guessing he did. I think.
: We don’t know really. He didn’t say anything about it at breakfast. But Ayah being Ayah, he wouldn’t let something like that go down easily.
: Wounded male pride methinks.
: Luckily it’s just the garden chairs and the thieves didn’t break into the house.
: 3 green iron-wrought garden chairs and small matching table. Heavy set, probably used a large van or a lorry to cart them off. Scrap metal thieves.
: Those were the garden chairs which we laid out the trash-box bee hive massacre the other night.
: It’s the faulty old automatic gate. It doesn’t close properly anymore. You have to stick your thumb to it.
: So the thieves found an unsecured gate. They just waltz into the front garden by our front gate?
: I would say I’m appalled as you are but that’ll be redundant.
: Heh. Neighbourhood security guards don’t clock in until after 11pm. The chairs were still there at around 9.30pm. So the time the garden chairs vanished was maybe between 10pm and 10.45pm.
: While we were out at Tesco hypermarket obviously.
: Ayah must have felt guilty. Those were his well-used, morning-coffee RM$1200+ chairs-table set and he was at home during the robbery.
: So he’s going to be extra moody for the next few days.
: Guilty mood, eh? Tip-toe around him?
: Obviously. He’s already asking repeated questions about my studies.
: That’s because he caught you watching Animax on Astro.
: It’s morning on a Sunday. When else do I get time to watch Animax?
: Weeknights, late at night, preferably after 11pm. You can keep watch on the trash-box iron doors while you’re at it, in case the thieves come back to get those.
: Haha. Hoho. Oh my ribs. We should have kept those damned bees. Shouldn’t I be studying for something? Like that project proposal?
: I’ll get the guidelines.
: And I seeeeeeeeeeriously need to get out more.

Bee-Gone!

Still without any access to the Internet, I would have loved to returned the comments on my Men and their Protuberances entry (funnily enough, target audience was for girls!) but even if I had any Internet connection, it still won’t put extra 2 hours in my Saturday as it turned out to be a pretty busy day.

For one thing, the night before, Ayah finally got his wits enough to call in a fireman-guy for advice on how to (finally!) get rid of them stinkin’ bees. For the new readers, let’s look into my trash-box photo one more time.

This was the size of a grapefruit, a month ago. Now it’s the size of a full seasoned watermelon.

Away from the actual event (I was engrossed in a book), nobody had thought to call me when the one-man-team exterminator came and Ridsect-spray the bugs; a big can in each hand. Little brother said that the guy had the finesse of a vandalism artist.

I came down for the proceeding event though. Dead bugs all over the driveway, crushing underfoot, going squish-squish-sqlomp. Even if I had the stomach to check the undersides of my shoes, on a RM$2-dare, I wouldn’t have been able to see the bee-mush due to the lack of real light.




We had to do the bee-gone process at night, to kill them in their sleep, so to speak.

Mak was ballistic; she had been constantly worried about her first and only grandchild being so curious, banging and tugging hard to open the locked trash box. Ayah was as pathetic as sympathic; he had been willing to wait another 6 months before calling a professional bee-farmer.

I’m just there to take pictures.

So we defiled the nest, poisoned the community and stole about a waxful of non aerosol contaminated honey. No sh**. Of course, one mid-50s, bee-supporting genius forgot to properly contained the looted honey and now it’s the back garden ants that had looted and plundered our, er, loot.

I, discoverer of the trash-box bees, for now, have complete and utter disdain for anything dark and creepy (though I do still listen to My Chemical Romance). I have retreated from the Garden Wars into the safety of my sterile bedroom, where there are no insects, baby nephews or any other kind of creeps within sight.


Oh-f***-f***ing-God...! – pardon, no actual disrespect to the Almighty - is that a monkey on my window?!

Harry Potter vs. Harry Dresden

VS.

Alas! I’ve finally finished reading the latest book from my favourite series, White Night of The Dresden Files. It took me several trips to Borders and about RM$50 worth of petrol money to read through all those chapters. Numerous trips, I was surprised the security guard didn’t kick me out for being ABONEY (Always Browsing Never Buying).

Once I get my hand of the Jim Butcher’s real paperback copy then I can start spending extra RM$50 petrol money on either his Codex Alera or maybe Robin Hobb’s latest. I’m getting tired of reading via Wikipedia (sob!).

For those of you without Sci-Fi channel or Torrent (what do you mean ‘what is Torrent?’), you wouldn’t have heard of its TV series either. The Dresden Files series highlights the life of one Harry Dresden, a certified wizard living the life as a Chicago private investigator. He helps innocent normal people fight against the forces of evil and the general public misconception that he does bunny tricks at kids’ birthday parties.

But then he gets involved in all sort of juicy magic mayhem; a vampires’ war, a Summer-Winter faeries conflict, a wizards’ council politics, a Christian knight’s crusade and otherworldly menace dripping ooze in his shoes. He also had to deal with the Chicago police, the undercover mafia, the globe-trotting mercenary, his semi-possessed ex-girlfriends (note plural), his gun-ho apprentice and a partridge in a pear tree.

All he wants is to pay his apartment rent on time, afford insurance for his Volkswagen Beetle, date a nice girl and NOT get shot/burned/thrashed/haunted/booed at every other week. To put it simply, think of it as an alternate Harry Potter, if Harry Potter was born in USA and there’s no clear Voldemort; everybody’s out to get him for two or three reasons.

I found the series long before Harry Potter Book 6, when I wasn’t looking for anything new to read. But MySis’s husband left his books behind after her little family moved to their not-so-new home and I was hooked from Dresden book one.

I liked the similarities between HP and HD, the latter story is much deeper, more adult, more mystery-involved and more wise-ass talking. If you’ve read HD, you can see how often I try to emulate Jim Butcher in my blog entries (hehehe!).

There are an unusual number of similarities between HP and HD stories. Unable to find a Pensive and needing somewhere out of my head to put this (and to spoil your HD reading pleasure so you better stop reading now), I’ve made a comparison list. So if you haven’t read HD, you better stop reading now.

Both are orphans.
Both are wizards.
Both have issues with the narrow-minded body of goverment.
Both have close ties with a family of seven children (and a Molly in each).
Both have a godparent going through prison.
Both have teacher-student issues.
Both have girlfriend issues.
Both are out to protect innocent people from the forces of darkness.
Both are outnumbered, outgunned and underminded.
Both have werewolf friends.
Both have former pretty visions of their never-met parent shattered.
Both have allies ready to fight to the death.
Both are acquainted with a large intelligent cat.
Both use Latin verses.
Both often get bad rap from the press.
Both are used to non-technological environment.
Both have a piece of unwanted evil magic within them that they can't get rid of (yet).
Both get bullied a lot in their earlier childhood.
Both have normal humans acquaintences who just don't like them. Really don't like them.
Both felt betrayed by their idol-teacher at some point even though it was for the best.
Both nearly got killed sometime in their past.
Both knows places to shop for wizard parts.
Both seem to have problems holding on to their wands.
Both are acquianted with a girl with multi-coloured hair.
Both are rescued by a big dog once.
Both knows a big cat who is generally on polite terms with a big dog.
Both have enemies that uses dead people.
Both are responsible for an enchanted sword at some point.
Both have the normal human communities kept in denial.
Both are already doing rescue work before the body of goverment approached them.
Both had a chance to deal with a huge thundering female lizard.
Both had hidden in an accomplice's old family house.
Both had problems with their hair at some point.
Both carry a significant scar-mark at some part of their body.
Both have half-human allies.
Both had problems at some point with an overly-righteous member of the body of goverment.
Both have a smaller-sized magical creature under their service at some point.
Both had said smaller-sized magical creature who liked to dress in odd things.
Both had discussed plot-based mysteries with a disembodied female while taking a bath.
Both had been commented to have their mother's eyes.

Harry Potter may have sailed into the bright sunset of ‘The End’s but Harry Dresden is still going strong at book 9. The author plans to write all the way to Book 20 and a finale trilogy. In full, the author is planning world domination starting by having an entire shelf dedicated only to him in every bookstore.

Hmmmm...

That’s alooooooooot of petrol money to go back and forth between house and bookstore. Maybe I’ll just find a job there instead.

Men and their Protuberances

Men have more extensions to their persons than a cluster on a banana tree, metaphorically speaking. And tend to become just as big. Or as tiny. Soft or firm. Really depends on the banana.

The ones with the biggest protuberances (men, not bananas) had the propensity to stick them where it’s not suppose to be, particularly at rush-hour train rides, crowded house parties, prior to project presentations or right behind you during school examinations.

So if a guy pokes you somewhere with... with himself, either accidentally or on purpose, it’s best to identify which part of him he’s using towards you and how to effectively react and dispense accordingly.

As curiosity is my begetting sin, what I’m always wondering is how many are there and where can I find them and what are they used for.

The Nose
The most obvious and most advertised. When a guy won’t stop talking about himself (my bad dates always have something like that), a girl’s gaze tend to waver to the centre of his face. This part comes in all shapes and sizes and hair colour.
A man uses it to...
Smell food. Hold up their spectacles. Apply sunblock lotion. Poke it into women’s business.
A girl uses it...
A girl can lead a guy by the nose if she wants something done. If that doesn’t work, it’s a good place to start hitting in order to knock some sense. Otherwise, I heard it’s a nice place for a kiss.

The Ears
Not always noticed, mainly because it’s hard to find a man who puts them to actual use. Often over-accessorized with pins and studs. Bad haircuts tend to exaggerate this anatomy.
A man uses it to...
Listen only to other guys, especially during a high tension football match or about the results of the match on the day after or the potential outcome of the next football match.
A girl uses it...
To educate him. But since the Y-chromosome enables men to switch off their ears, the movie ‘The Man-Whisperer’ shall never be idealized.

The Tongue
A protuberance with lots of potential, mostly because it’s hot, wet and flexible. Its usage in kissing activities defines the man’s level of expertise. Funny thing is, if he’s too good, he might be a serial boyfriend.
A man uses it to...
To taste food. To kiss. To lick things. To get stuck on icy lamp posts.
A girl uses it...
To let him taste weird foods first. To exercise his tongue muscles. To stop him from licking things. To re-evaluate the relationship.

The Thumbs
God has created man with two of them, in case he misplaces the other. They tend to jab sorely in all the wrong places, especially in crowded LRT trains (at least, I think they’re thumbs).
A man uses it to...
In the early years, sucking. Later in life comes hailing taxis, sending SMS, giving reviews or accidentally hitting it with a hammer. Mostly, it is to excel at Playstation and Xbox games.
A girl uses it...
To beat him at Playstation and Xbox games.

The Big Toes
Most often people don’t take notice but it had been a sticking point in much male demeanor. Particularly when they don’t trim those nails and they walk around in sandals. Eww...
A man uses it to...
Dance badly. To walk very quietly in the dark with shoes in hand. To accidentally trip over something. To stub at a hard object, and then teach little children some four-letter words.
A girl uses it...
By stomping on them very hard makes it a great pervert deterrent; use best in crowded LRT trains.

The Family Jewels
Just as women have humps and lumps, men got... bumps. Specifically, it’s the ones between their thighs. It’s a very sensitive area. Of all the other protuberances, men protects this the most. There are times when I ask myself this; when the flagpole goes up, can a guy still walk naturally in tight pants?
A man uses it to...
One part is done in the bathroom. Two parts is to make babies with. When all 3 parts is used together, it’s to play with (the sad ones play with themselves).
A girl uses it...
You can either make him work really hard in bed or you can use your knee-bone on ‘em. The latter gives immediate results, not necessarily the most favorable course of action (at least, for the man). There are other ways a girl can use them but I’m not running that kind of guide here.

Well, that’s as much as I know. Now, can anybody tell me what else can a guy (and a girl) use his protuberances for? Keep it clean by the way. In the meantime, I am little hungry. I could really go for a banana right about now. A nice long one.