11.29.06

the war behind closed doors

Posted in the usual stuff at 10:03 pm by mr joel

screw the war in iraq. quit frontin’ about the ‘oppresion’ in china. look closer - at the war in your bedrooms.

The world, as always, has been a pretty depressing place. Newspaper headlines everyday scream the most shockingly unbelievable facts about how sick and sad the state of humankind is. Thousands of Iraqi innocents died just last month thanks to one man’s “commitment” to finishing his “mission”. Millions are dying in Africa thanks to malnutrition, civil war, disease and a whole lot of other things that would make the good ole’ fire and brimstone seem like a beach resort. Just recently, in Toronto, a mother of four in her twenties killed her own month-old child - by placing the baby in a microwave and pressing “cook”.

And of course we have the nobler things to worry about. Like freedom of the Iraqi people. Does this look like “democracy” to you? And ooh, how about the scary lack of “democracy” in China and their breach of “human rights”? Now that’s something to get riled up about, isn’t it? (By the way this little piece here sums up what I think about this issue.)

Yeah, there are tons of things that are happening in the world today which seem urgent, depressing, sad, infuriating, maddening, and the like. I’m sure they are worthy causes for our time, effort and money - donating to organizations that fund children’s health programs, raising funds for a new church or community centre, or heck, even taking a year or two to fly off to some country languishing in poverty with Doctors Without Borders to go be a modern-day Apostle.

But you know what, fuck all that right now.

Cut the hypocrisy, because those are issues you have no business putting your time in, if you have your own issues at home to set right. Yes, I’m talking about problems that people deal with at home, and with their families and friends. That doesn’t sound like much compared to fifty thousand innocent dead souls in Iraq, no it doesn’t. But its relevant, and a lot easier to ignore because its a lot easier to care about some faceless dead people rotting in a pit halfway across the world, or some poor Chinese kid who can’t surf whatever site he wants to… than your uncle dying of cancer, or your kids who you pay no attention to every day because you’re too busy killing your brain cells with alcohol.

These are relevant issues. Family issues. Issues that you see, hear, feel, smell - every time you wake up from your bed and walk into your living room. And that’s why these issues are all the more easier to ignore, because it is truly a lot easier to care about someone you really don’t know and won’t care about when he or she gets blown into unidentifiable bits of gore by a stray US mortar or a crazed suicide bomb.

…

Which brings me to my number one pet peeve: guys who abuse their wives, girlfriends and kids… and any women in general.

Now, let’s get this out of the way first. I did an approved psychological test about two months back, which profiles my “Masculinity” on a scale of 7, with 7 being “very masculine” and 0 being “very feminine”. I got seven-point-zero. What this means is not that I’m some Governator who crushes egos with a curl of his biceps, or some hugely bigoted Male Chauvinist Pig. What this really means is that I believe that men and women aren’t equal. And they aren’t. Men are better at some things (physical tasks like hunting, reaching for the high shelf, etc.) while women are better at others (social tasks like keeping everyone in a team on the same page, empathizing and negotiating and stuff).

Now I know this is an over-generalization, but my point is that guys are biologically different from girls. We’re bigger and have more muscles. We are also blessed with the ability to think with both of our heads. A combination of the two usually results in wars, bar brawls over lost arm-wrestling matches and the like.

In many homes, behind many closed doors, however, the weaker of our male species who do not have the testicular fortitude to challenge other men - be it in terms of wits, muscle, or otherwise - flex their bantam-cock machismo onto the only beings on earth they perceive are weaker than they are.

Women. Children.

And the sad thing is, a lot of us men are guilty of this - behind close doors, behind the forced smiles and underneath their Sunday best, how many couples are trapped in a brutal, hopelessly tragic relationship of weakness, dependence and abuse? How many guys out there are guilty of this - of being the filth of our species, the scum of the earth?

…

Yeah, I’m talking to you. So she slept with another guy. You weren’t there for her. You never were, and someone else - not necessarily better, but someone there for her - came along. You couldn’t take the hit to your pride so you strangled her. Shoved her around. Hit her. Abused her in every unthinkable way - in front of your sick-fuck parents who supported you and called her names. You are lucky you’re not in my time zone right now, but it won’t be long.

You too. You who couldn’t deal with her breaking up with you and your little insecurities, and started verbally abusing her right in the middle of a packed subway train. You who tower a good foot over her - is that all you’ve got? The balls to take on a sweet, pretty girl a foot shorter?

…

And you before I forget, you.

You insecure, clever little dog. More bark than bite - and I hear that’s only when you’ve had one too many. You sweet-talking, flattering, filter feeding cowardly rat. I’d accuse you of not using your brain - and using your other head to think, but then I’d acknowledge the existence of your gonads, which I highly doubt exist.

I guess you did come from a tough neighbourhood. One where you had to defend yourself against girls four to five years your junior. Those girls from your ‘hood must be tough, right?

Because hey, you sure impressed me with your strength right there - how readily you and your ruddy red pride rose to the occasion, not hesitating an eye-blink to come to blows with a girl half your size.

It didn’t take much too - just her yelling at you - for you to scream back and raise your fists in defence; otherwise, I’m sure that little girl would have hurt you plenty! So you shouted back and started swinging your fists around. Like any little, little man of your feeble ilk would.

And you if dare do this to some girl you barely know, what’s to stop you from abusing people in your household - people you can get away with abusing, physically, emotionally, or otherwise? I pity and send my condolences to your poor mother.

I feel ashamed of you. Sick to the fibres of my being for you - you and the rest of the filth who knowingly abuse people who are weaker. I actually take back my own first insult - to say you are a dog, to say you are subhuman, to say you are a mere beast would be a blasphemy to many a noble creature of animal kingdom.

Because you aren’t worse than a human being. Unfortunately, you are one. One who represents the very worst of what we’ve always been. One who pretends to be greater than what he is, but in truth, is nothing more than a waste of oxygen.

…

But hey. Contrary to how I might sound, I don’t hate you. Because that’d be too good for you, because it would mean that I harboured immense ill-will toward you as a person, as an entity. But don’t worry, because I don’t!

Because there are things that exist that are foul, loathsome, freakish aberrations of nature that cause great harm - but don’t elicit hate. The AIDS virus. Malaria-spreading mosquitoes. Cancer. Birth disorders. Kevin Federline.

So fret not - there’s no ill will toward you, no grudge at all. I don’t hate you and am not angry at you.

I just despise you - from the second I saw you raise a fist against a woman who wouldn’t have the slightest chance of defending herself against you.

You’re a disease.

I hope we one day find a cure for you. Soon.

11.17.06

Joeloholics Digest Vol 9: WHEN HOMELESS PEOPLE ATTACK!

Posted in the usual stuff at 7:29 am by mr joel

My back is fine now. I finally have put some links up on here, but since I updated this and upgraded to blogger beta, I lost track of my tagboard and most of the old links I had, so if I linked you / was supposed to link you, my bad. I really haven’t had the time to sit here and write much anyway, not in the past few months, and things’ve been going so fast (oh no being vague again) as usual.

It’s a surprisingly warm Thursday night, if wet, and I’m right in the middle of my big projects for my classes. School this year has been hectic, for sure, but the classes have been a lot more intriguing than they were last year, due perhaps in part to the relatively smaller classes. As a result I’ve been a lot more active in classes this year, especially in discussions and stuff, as opposed to the quiet, behind-the-scenes stealthy kind of guy I was last year.

I’m not sure which one is me, to be honest, since I usually vacillate between being quieter than the average person… and being a lot more loud, in-your-face and uh, out there than most people are, though the latter is a lot rarer for me, and only comes out due to circumstance.

I will try to write here more, since I do not wish to lose my ability to write. Already I find myself misspelling stuff in my notes, and wondering how many S’s there are in “weaknesses” while I was doing a SWOT analysis just now was a wake-up call.

Anyway.

Today while on the subway to school I was attacked by a crazy homeless guy.

I was sitting in the carriage, reading the metro (Toronto free newspaper which is surprisingly good) when this tanned, ambiguously Asian and very, very unshaven man in his 30s or 40s walked in, whispering and mumbling unintelligible gibberish to himself, and sat on the seat facing me horizontally.

Aware of the man’s presence, disturbed but yet unwilling to move away from my seat and thus concede that I was in fact disturbed, I continued reading the metro and attempted to ignore the man. Unfortunately, as the train moved along its path, the man’s murmurings got louder, and they sounded increasingly agitated.

He then brushed my shoulder and murmured something to the effect of “Hey you talking to me? What you say to me?” To which I replied, as calm as I could, that I did not say anything, and I continued reading my paper.

This, however, seemed to agitate the man further, and it was not long after I turned away and began to read the metro again that his murmurings grew more and more loud, and angrier still. He then began to start shoving me and punching me on my shoulder, with increasing strength, several times - which I ignored, trying to keep a steely disposition all the while.

It was after a few shoves, however, that the man slammed his fist on the back of my seat hard enough so that the entire carriage had heard, and was staring at him and me. I turned to the man in shock, and he asked me the same question he had asked me before, with even more menace and anger than he had the last time, “Are you saying something to me?”

I once more said that I wasn’t, and, unable to ignore danger and a potential fistfight, I picked up my bag and walked to the nearest subway doors, where I stood waiting for the next station - Old Mill. When the train finally reached the Old Mill station, which has a subway platform overlooking the Humber River several dozen feet below, I got off - but couldn’t resist looking at the crazed man in the face, in an attempt to “read” him.

This, however, drove the man totally nuts and as the subway doors closed behind me, he stood up and started gesticulating wildly at me, while smashing his fists on the train’s window panels, while behind him, bewildered elderly women and their young grand children watched.

It took a lot of willpower to not show him the bird, or to bang on the window back and yell something at my assailant, but I somehow managed to turn around and just look at the beautiful flowing river below me, which I continued looking at until the train left the station.

I’ve seen my share of crazies, in Singapore and Toronto both, but this is the first time I have been… in such contact with one of them. Pris said that you don’t see this kinda thing in Singapore, to which I don’t exactly agree with. Within cities such as Toronto and Singapore lie such powerfully stark dualities; here we have Spadina, what one of my professors last year described “the dark underbelly of capitalism”, home - if you would call it that - to too many homeless people, beggars, crackheads and the like, and yet barely 15 minutes away lies businessey Bay Street, with trendy, chic Queen St even nearer.

Back in Singapore, you don’t have to stray too far from the beauty and cleanliness of the city to see its own darker side. The infamous lorongs of Geylang lie sandwiched between the lovely downtown’s Singapore’s eastern borders and the gorgeously scenic East Coast area. The duality in Singapore is, however, most stark on Orchard Road itself. Right in the heart of the city’s lively entertainment district, its immaculately clean Orchard Road stretch, with the majestic maroon twin Takashimaya towers at its core, we can see this. You barely have to walk five minutes from Orchard’s subway exit to reach Orchard Towers, a highrise den of prostitution and promiscuity, nestled amidst embassies, corporate office buildings, cinemas and the like. Need I even mention Desker? Joo Chiat?

London was the same. Vancouver even more so. And so, I feel, is Hong Kong.

Big cities attract the good - and the very worst, perhaps - that humanity has. For every sharply dressed go-getter in a Harry Rosen suit standing on Bay Street, there is a homeless man waking up from a daze on a street corner at noon, absently realizing that whatever money he had had been invested the night before in the empty bottle of cheap alcohol that lay behind him, and in the burned out ash remains of the spliff that stained the pavement not far from where he now lies. Yin and Yang, perhaps.

I have been pondering about this for too long; it’s already 0330 hrs and I’ve gotta be up in less than six hours. I haven’t slept well at all lately.

Good night.