CHEER YOU UP!

I have a very important question. Does the following cheer you up?




















Just want to know whether it's me who has a perception problem or Giordano designers with their CHEER YOU UP campaign. I don't feel cheered up by the shirt, it looks like a dead guy with a smile.

The only customers I can think of are necrophilics, who hopefully aren't in abundance in Singapore. The whole idea of cheering up the living with the dead seems to have originated from Korea, where MC Yoo and Jang Dong Gun are endorsing the idea. But i seem to be the odd one out who doesn't like the shirt, because when i google "cheer you up giordano" all that comes out are the marketing campaigns, desperate angmohs looking for the shirts and even offering to buy second hand ones cos the shirt's mostly meant for asia, and other random people exhorting about how cute the shirt is. I scrolled through 5 pages of 10 results and there's not a single criticism of the shirt. Fucking incredible. And I stopped looking after 5 pages because I give up on you, world.

It creeps me out but because Giordano is all over Singapore, and occasionally people buy it, I'm forced to see this shit. Frankly, all this shows is that Giordano has a very good marketing department in that they can sell a t-shirt with a lousy design that doesn't make sense for a decent price, which is more than we can say for a lot of talented designers. So seeing how giordano has pimped their shirts, we at talkcocksummit are more than inspired to make our own and cheer you up. Stay tuned.

Work and Stress

After about a week at work, it's blindingly obvious that it's not very good for health. Stress has been blamed for everything from natural disasters such as earthquakes (stress at points where tectonic plates meet) to serial killers (school schooters and stabbers must have been pretty stressed up) to suicide cases (nothing new there). Work causes stress, and by work I mean a chore that you don't actually like doing, but you do it for money, or simply because you're forced to, like half the population in singapore. Though they'd like you to think you're doing it for pride, honour, glory, family, friends, country, security, society, anything but forced labour.

Back to stress. It differs very much in the work that is bring done, but one can tell the nature of the work from the stress levels. Let's illustrate an example in a graph, because they make everything look professional, and everyone fall asleep.
























The x-axis shows the time, and the y axis shows stress levels. I would believe stress is normally measured by blood pressure, but in this case i shall use cm^3 instead, the assumption being that if the stress levels are more than the volume of the brain, the brain will just explode. But i digress.

This graph depicts the profile of someone who goes "above self, beyond duty, many extras". The day starts off relatively calmly at 8am. Optimism is in the air, it is going to a great day of accomplishment and satisfaction, and you have the world at your feet. It's as if everyone standing up is giving you a standing ovation to celebrate your messianic presence at work. You enjoy the peaceful walk to your office, and your stress levels instantly increase upon seeing that stack of paper on your table. But sitting at the table, surrounded by your dear friends Printer, Computer, Pen and Paper, it's impossible not to get a warm feeling of familiarity. Getting 'in the zone', one draws up a to-do list and it's almost like conquering the world. On a high, adrenaline rush, it seems as though one can finally reach the holy grail of productivity. Thus, the stress levels remain relatively stable till about 12.

Then, it's time for lunch, time to think about where to eat. A little stressful sometimes, especially when the food sucks, but it's not really a problem. After lunch, it gets really tiring, and all that has been done for the day is the to-do list. So it's a dilemna. To sleep or not to sleep? If you sleep, precious time is lost, and if you don't, you're incapacitated mentally.

And as you decide, time ticks by anyway oblivious to your whining, and in the end you fall asleep anyway, because it's hard to stay awake. Wake up at 3, and realise it's really really close to the magical time of 5pm. Try to change the world again, but people won't pick up your calls, or not in, or whatever. You realise that it's ultimately futile, and continue to lay in a collapsed heap at your desk. That is, until 5pm acutually hits like a sledgehammer to your frontal cortex. There are 2 options:

a) fuck off and go home

b) stay and work and feel pathetic

b is the option shown by the graph above, because when 6pm hits and then 7pm, there's an increasing sense of desperation as each hour at work leads to one less hour at home enjoying. And finally, the brain can't take it anymore and explodes, leading to a bunch of happy retards running around at work. And that is the end state.

A Tale of Two Andys

First of all, no matter how realistic the story below sounds, it is entirely a work of fiction. Just a very realistic work of fiction.

How do great stories start? What the fuck i try to think of a great chapter 1 and all that comes to my pathetic mind are " A dark and stormy night" (Snoopy style), "RRing! My alarm clock rang"(primary school style) and "With the advent of globalisation in the blahblahblah" (jc style). That's 12 years of education and 2 years of degeneration for you.

So it's off to copy a great beginning, because copying is really the greatest form of flattery and what better story to mimick than Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Well if you've never read the story before, fear not, because i haven't either, other than the kiddies' abridged version. Fortunately, there's always sparknotes for those who love to pretend to have a more literary background than they actually have. I've even very kindly included the link "http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/twocities/section2.rhtml" for those among you who got Excuse Typing.

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of stupid pple, it was the age of stupid things. It was the epoch of no off, it was the epoch of no leave. It was the season for flu, it was the season for MC. It was shit in spring, ITS ORD IN NOVEMBER! and such was the entire setting of the story, because i have the attention span of a hamster and i can't even finish reading sparknotes.

On this fateful day, I woke up with a start. My eyes turned to the clock instinctively. It read 7.45am, and the fucking phone was vibrating against my wooden table again. As my hand reached out to grab it, i dreamt of that beautiful november day when evil spirits would stop using the phone to manipulate my soul.

"Hi, this is your slave here, how would you like to abuse me today?" I chirped in my most cheerful voice.

"You gotta go to court today." The evil spirit's message reverberated through my heart, my soul, and every sinew of my iron-marked body. Still I had my brain with me, so I was shocked.

"What the hell did I do? If im going to jail for punching somebody, it'll be nice to actually have punched somebody! And there's no lack of people in mind!" i replied good-naturedly.

"Your colleague Andy is going to get charged. So you have to be there." was the terse reply.

"Oh ok. I'll go. Andy's a great guy." I said, obviously under some Jedi mindtrick.

With that, the connection ended, and i lapsed onto my bed, exhausted. But there was no time to to relax, for i had to get into some decent clothes and fast. So in the end, i got there with Andy, don't ask me how, use your own godamn imagination for a change (and don't say im lazy!).

I have never been to the court before, so it was an eye-opener of sorts. Here are a list of things that i recommend that you do not bring there.

1. gold bar
2. the memento piece that you chipped off the Eiffel Tower
3. anus ring (if it exists)

simply because there are metal detectors. There's no check of identification, so if at any time you feel that life is meaningless or that you simply want to prove to yourself you aren't that forsaken by God after all, compared with other people, you could swagger into the place and witness the full power of the law, assuming you don't have an anus ring.

So i strode into the courtroom with andy. It wasn't like any place i've been before. One bored looking dude also known as the judge sat behind a high wooden table sounding very irritated, and he had every reason to be. From his high perch (probably signifying his moral high ground) he could probably see the mass of humanity, all on the fringes of society awaiting his judgement before he could finally go home and take a shower.

So i sat down and waited. It was cramped and uncomfortable, like waiting at any other government body, except that there was no queue number. It's a simple case of get up on the stand when your name is called, and the system is flawless. That is the power of the law. No matter how many tattoos the guy has, he's still punctual. I mean, try getting a battalion of NSFs to arrive on time for an outcamp run, and 'er. i got stomachache' or 'wah sorry i didn't know i took the bus in the wrong direction'.

One distinct difference between the court and other government waiting rooms was the undeniable sense of anxiety, even though there were so many people moving around looking busy, seeming even chaotic at times. And so it was in this uncomfortable atmosphere that i waited for the verdict. I could see the defendants take their stand one after the other in front of the irritated judge, and finally andy's verdict came.

I waited with bated breath, only for the prosecution to say, " Your honour, we are not ready, please give us another 2 weeks".

I can't remember the jargon that the judge said, but it amounted to 'ok whatever'.

Well i was kidding about the bated breath that part, because andy told me that particular court acted as a coordinator of sorts, throwing cases to different courts, and didn't do the dirty job of sentencing. What the verdict meant was andy got his freedom for another month, since it took that long for a case to move through the bowels of the courts before squeezing out a verdict.

So this Andy got his freedom, albeit for a short while.

So now it's time to see the other Andy, this time for my freedom, from the pain and suffering bugging my knee of course. It was my first time meeting this other Andy, and he promised to relieve me of my suffering. It's going to be a long time, but i'll deal with it. I'm not going to talk about this other Andy cos he's a mysterious fellow. So unlike Charles Dickens' famed novel, this particular story won't have a touching, moralistic, complete ending. That is also a reason why I don't write novels.

Instead, I shall be a complete fraud and edit his ending. With the help of the second Andy, i hope to have a far, far better rest, than i have ever had, for these 1 year 10 months. The End.

Soccer blues

There are two things a man likes: soccer and sex.

Maybe I generalise, but I can tell you these are two things any normal man would like. Doesn't interest you? Probably means you need to go for a checkup.

Recently Caster Semenya, winner of the females' 800m in Munich, came under fire for looking like a man and behaving like a man. If you observe her name.. Semen, ya? You realise that there are so many redeeming points for her.. to be a man.

Check out that six-pack. I couldn't have asked for a better one myself. But that's not the point. Given that a female can be a male; likewise we can say a male can be a female.

So if you don't like soccer and sex, better go for a checkup.

As the new Premiership season kicks off, I guess most men can get their weekly fix of soccer, me included. Thank goodness. I was going mad every weekend sitting in front of the computer not knowing what to do. And there's nothing to blog about without the soccer.

But I find that I get more than I bargain for. Because even though I aim to talk about man's first love, soccer, this one inevitably crosses the boundary to the second. (even though obviously there's no direct link)

Such gay tendencies. Man, it is one thing to have R-21 movies in cinemas; but having these images where young impressionable kids are able to uh, get influenced are just unacceptable.

Maybe we should consider soccer a R-21 sport. And they should issue yellow cards for such unconventional behaviour.

I don't know what else to say. Frankly I could blog more since this topic is so controversial, but in the army, my language lets me down. As the army highly emphasises on progressive training, I won't keep this post too long.

I need to watch my weekly fix of soccer. And I've wasted 15 minutes of time blogging this.

Till next week, then.