I know I’ve been linking to tons of youtube videos lately, but I just have to put this here. It is too awesome for words. Too awesome for words.

For some reason, for the past year or so I realize that I’ve had this constant nagging feeling that I’ve been a burden. To my friends, to my family, to everyone.

As much as I’ve tried not to.

When I was discharged from NS, not wanting to financially… sponge off my relatives’ money, I took 2 jobs immediately, working six-plus days a week to try and live off my own work. Tried to lessen the load of dependency that I’m putting on everyone’s shoulders.

Then I got hurt; I screwed up my knee and tore enough shit in there to seriously worry my orthopaedic surgeon of an uncle. I couldn’t walk, was bedridden right away, had to have surgery which cost several, several grand right away.

The doors I once held open for old ladies, older gentlemen and girls were now being held open for me by the same people who I once tried to help. My first day in U of T, forgetting my own plight, I offered to help these 2 kids move their stuff… and got laughed at. Smooth.

I haven’t earnt a cent since I stopped working at the magazine… I don’t know. And from what I’ve been told all I bring is “hatred and sarcasm”, that I’m “possessed by the devil” even. Am I that much of a burden, not just financially but psychologically now?

Logically, I know I’m not. I am trying my best to do whatever I… try to do. I don’t know why I feel this way. But now I have to let a friend down about something. I don’t like breaking promises, don’t want to add to anyone else’s busy-ness and responsibilities but it seems that’s all I’ve been doing nowadays.

It’s not even that I’m self-centered, am I? Don’t I try and help people when I can? Why then do I feel so hurt inside, for no apparent reason other than myself? Why do I feel that all I’ve done is bring people down, unwittingly or not?

Maybe it did start with the knee. Maybe up to that point I felt invincible, I felt that I could be depended on to get things done and to add to the solution, not the problem. Maybe its just my ego getting the better of me, lamenting the fact that I no longer was a plus… but a minus.

Whatever the case, I suddenly just can’t shake this stupid feeling that I’m a minus, that I subtract from things, that I’m a detriment to people, that I’m just not helping, that I’m increasing someone else’s burden, that I am someone else’s burden, that I’m making people miserable, making them upset, making them cry… that I’m letting someone down at every turn whether I try to or not.

I’ve never felt so absolutely negative in my life. I need to lie down.

Argentina is so gonna win the World Cup, though we shall see how true this is in a month. Whoever saw them play Serbia & Montenegro the other day would have seen a selfless attacking efficient machine at work. Watching the Copa America 2 years ago, this is the team that really caught my eye - not Brazil.

Here’s Carlos Tevez’s goal where he literally humiliates two defenders in a tremendous solo goal… even the commentator was speechless, reduced to chuckling into the mic.

And here’s probably the most brilliant teamwork I have ever seen in my life - on a real soccer match or in Winning Eleven - Cambiasso’s goal that put Argentina up 2-0.

Damn you Jerry Stackhouse. This is wayyy too flagrant a foul.

I mean in my time I’ve fouled people hard. I accidentally barged into this fat guy a head taller than me running for a loose ball in sec 4 during our Zone competitions, with the collision sending us both to the floor. I was so winded after that, since the dude was easily 15 kg heavier and probably 182cm tall, but no one came to my aid as I lay on the floor. Then I got up and realized why: when the dude hit the floor he dislocated his hand and he was um pretty, pretty messed up. Ouch.

One knee surgery and 5 years later, and after a lot more basketball, I realize that basketball is at the end of the day… just a game. Good advice that a Serangoon Gardens CC ah beng told me when I was fifteen or so that right now makes more sense: winning may mean a lot, but at the end of the day, its a game.

Playing dirty might be um fun and all, but there’s a line to be drawn when you do something that borders on the confines of being called for a technical foul, or worse.

So take a look at Jerry Stackhouse’s NBA Finals game 4 flagrant foul on Shaq: he basically ran across the floor, shoulder barged into the dude and just smacked him across his body. This is the kind of foul that ends careers. Way, way, wayyy too hard.

In Book 2 of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series, The Doll House, an old couple living in a big house in rural America locks their unwanted nephew in their basement to rot, all the while collecting the welfare support money that the government sends them to take care of the child.

What just sickened me halfway through my lunch is the fact that in downtown Toronto, the very same thing happens today. How an elderly couple in their 50s can starve and effectively kill their own 5-year old grandson is beyond me. How any of the other six adults in the house can do this to a child over years and years, all the while getting on with their regular lives is just a sick, sick thought.

Sentencing these people to 20 years in jail isn’t the solution. They didn’t feel any remorse when they watched the poor kid suffer, let him live and sleep in his own urine and fecal matter, drink from a toilet. They didn’t feel anything all this while, when they treated him like he was “invisible“; a “non-person”; locked him in an unheated, cold, dark room all day long as he wasted away into nothingness.

The only remorse they have felt is the loss of a few extra government cheques.

So instead of sentencing them to 20 years in jail and wasting thousands of dollars of government money supporting these murderers, I propose a sixty-cent solution to the problem…

02 X 5.56 mm FMJ rounds to the head

… since they have all eternity to think about remorse when they burn in hell.

Ugh…

Singapore Idol sucks so much… so, so much.

I remember two years back when the first season cursed the airwaves…

Quite possibly the worst thing about it was the commercial for it: if you guys remember it, it featured Gurmit Singh and the judges doing some really ridiculously lame dance moves and trying to look cool with a backdrop of glitzy classic “idol” graphics.

I remember watching the ad for the first time with some friends (i forget who), making snide sarcastic comments at it and laughing my head off thinking that it was a spoof commercial… but when the commercial came to an end and the punch-line to the alleged spoof never materialized, I was left gaping in shock at the utter lameness of the commercial.

In other words, what I thought was supposed to be a funny spoof commercial of the judges and Gurmit making fun of themselves… was the actual commercial itself for the show. Horror and embarrassment.

Gurmit Singh MIGHT have been “cool” a decade ago when he was hosting those nightlife variety shows where all he did was run around from club to club interviewing kids dancing to bad trance music… or when he had his own comedy show, which wasn’t half bad. But not now. He tries to be funny… but no.

No.

What adds to this cheesiness is the fact that nobody really did win Singapore Idol 1: since both Taufik and that King of Bengs himself, Sly both signed recording contracts. This not only took away from the fact that the (admittedly talented) Taufik had clearly outperformed the Sylvester in the finals… it also made the who finals show a mere farce. It took away from the credibility of winning the nation-wide performance, something I feel that Taufik deservedly umm, did.

What made it EVEN worse was that for months after the series ended, in an attempt to take advantage of the publicity from the show, BOTH performers were made to parade themselves and make joint public appearances TOGETHER all over the place. Geez.

Uber-ly gay.

I’m not gonna be around to watch this season of Singapore Idol but o hare-brained producers, please grow some balls and make a show which actually has some credibility. Please.

Then again since nothing substantial has been produced since they took the extremely hilarious Ra-Ra Show (which featured the immensely talented Kumar and the young duo of Koh Chieng Mun and Andrew Tan) off the air since it was deemed to have wayyy too many “dirty jokes” for the viewing public, I wouldn’t expect much.

I jolted awake out of bed at 7am this morning with a strange dream. In my dream I was driving around alone and the sun was going to set on a cloudy, soggy day… when I stopped my car at a very quaint brown-brick building and got in.

I think… the building was a library or something, and it had this warm glow emanating from within, the kind of aura that radiates from camp fires on cold windy nights. I remember walking inside the building, then stopping in front of a big wooden-framed mirror and gazing into its depths.

All of a sudden, a ghastly apparition of a bald man filled the entire mirror; he had sickly blue skin, and an accusing, piercing look to his eyes, his face an expression of… of shock, of fear or extreme agitation, I couldn’t tell. His skin might have been blue, but very red blood was coursing down his face, down between his clenched teeth.

That instant where the blue man appeared seemed to stretch forever, long enough for me to remember in great detail the man’s face. And then, the mirror shattered. Cracks began to spontaneously form through the mirror, dividing it into a thousand shards; within each shard, a blue man stared piercingly at me. The next (and last thing) I remember was the mirror shards losing their integrity and falling onto me as the army of thousands of blue faces rained down on me.