Exercising humour

With the help of icanhascheezburger.com, I created this yesterday (the captions). If you're unfamiliar with why it's written that way, please Google 'lolspeak'. It's hilarious!

I was quite proud of my creation and showed it off to a friend. Her feedback was that it was 'okay'. Recovering from my burst ego, I realized she was right! I could do better captions! So here we gooooo.

1) I'm in ur bukkits, etting ur lefovers.
2) U LIE! U ONY KONT TO 3!
3) Jamp on in. Waterz fien!
4) Wat u meen dis not doilet?
5) Is 2 dollah per howre. Want?
6) Me bukkit si su bukkit.

Mat Motor Mania

If you're a driver around KL, you might've noticed this. Anytime you run into a bunch of Mat Motors, they seem to know nearly every other rider. Whether they're stopping by the side of the road to hide from the rain, traffic lights, or even while riding, you keep seeing them talking to each other.

Flawed assumptions time!
1) Motorcyclists are friendlier people
2) Companies that sell motorcycles aggressively promote 'Friend Get Friend' deals
3) Natural abilities include Small Talk, and Sound Filtering
4) Riding solo all the time makes you so lonely you'll talk to anyone
5) They're all part of a secret social network that only riders get access to at the cost of being bound to ride for all eternity (agenda unknown...)

Wastrels

This is a 2 in 1 vent. If you're living in KL and read the papers fairly regularly, you'd probably have heard of the extravagant proposal this young dude did on a massive billboard a month back. If you haven't, it's simply his mug shot and him holding up a ring asking his girl to marry him. The estimated cost was RM 40,000 for the spot.

Unanimously, every girl I've spoken to has said what a dumbass he was. He should've just blown the cash on a bigger ring / better holiday / a downpayment for a house / car / taste?

Now the 2nd biggest waste is by a brand called 'Brands'. Great position on the Federal Highway, no doubt costing them heaps, plus what looked like good production values. They bothered to have a headline, but with all that space, they decided to put the words "Oh, Brands".

Yep. That's it. Some people just need to be shot.

Story #9 - Last Song

The seed of this one hit me as I was listening to the radio. I know that there's 'virtually' unlimited variations of how music can sound, but imagine if it was finite. Since music is really something special amongst man, perhaps the end of everything begins with the last song? ;)

-.-

One day, far into the future, there appeared a man who claimed he had the last song in the world. Most laughed and ignored him. Others jeered and taunted. However, his agenda wasn’t to gather followers. Satisfied that the very last person heard his claim, he sat down with man’s first instrument and began to sing. Around the world, people paused and strained their ears, wondering what it was they heard in the wind; What feeling was it they felt on their skin. As the final note rang, tears streamed down their smiling faces. They knew they were being called.

-.-

Beautiful people

My definition for beautiful people here will be 'people that exhibit physical qualities that are above average and are desirable to the majority of the specific society'. What a mouthful, but with a word like 'beauty', it's best to get everyone on the same page. =)

Now civilization has been around for a long time and in each age and/or culture, there are always those identified as 'beautiful'. I shall conveniently blame Westernization for the onset of increased pressure for people to become 'beautiful'. This practice has obviously spread eastward, as the rest of the developing world joins in this massive beauty pageant.

So we have:
1) The pressures and standards of beauty increasing
2) The near-instantaneous communication of it, across multiple society's
3) The increased production and availability of products that 'make you beautiful'

Which leads me to my million ringgit question (about USD 310k now haha).

Are there more beautiful people in the world today?
If a bunch of cavemen thought 20% of their cave-dwellers were beautiful, would we coke-light-sipping first-worlders find more than that amount to be qualified as beautiful?

I'm tempted to say no, simply because standards have gone increasingly higher, but we aren't exactly X-men'ing our evolution into beauty. However, thank the many advances of science for cosmetics, Botox, collagen, and boob jobs.

So what do you think?

The Mist

As testament to how this mysterious universe works, I 'impulse' watched a movie today. I had a choice between Stephen King's 'The Mist' or the new John Cusack 'The Martian Child'. The mysterious poster sold me the former. (Yes I am a sucker for book covers too)

Why the mystery? Just last night, I posted about Fear vs Joy. Thanks universe, you've got amazing timing. This movie did a fantastic job of highlighting how fear affects people.

*Warning: Spoilers ahead*

As a concept, it is rather B-Grade. In a nutshell, the story is simply about a gateway to a parallel universe (demonic of course) opened up in a little town, and a great mist envelops everything. From the mist comes a slew of pretty nasty, but awfully cool looking creatures. Kudos to the director for maintaining that 'mystery' feel for some of the larger/ interesting buggers. Then on, the story revolves around the people stuck in a grocery store, and what happens to them both psychologically and physically.

You'll find well demonstrated situations of personal sacrifice, regret, religious extremism, small mindedness, simple mindedness, and other aspects of human emotions. A particularly memorable line is when a woman goes "But aren't people inherently good? We're a civilized society!" The reply she gets was "Yeah, as long as the machines are working and you can call 911". I completely agree with that.

Do go and watch it; if anything to see the cool monsters. Bewarned though. The writer is a sadist, cause the ending of the movie seems like a big f*ck you to all those that love happy endings. However, it's a nice touch. There's way too many happy endings anyway. ;)

Fear vs Joy

The subject of motivation interests me. According to Tony Robbins, there's only 2 base motivators, which are:
1) Toward pleasure
2) Away from pain

I realized that the words can easily be replaced with two more familiar ones; Fear and Joy. My question is, which of the two is more powerful? Is there even an answer to that? Here's what I think.

It's a common statement that 'everyone is insecure' inside. This is of course, a gross generalization. However, from the many people I've met, and being in the business of 'persuading' people that they're incomplete without my product, I believe the statement reflects the majority. I also believe that people are creatures of habit, and that change happens at a glacial pace, rather than sweeping personal revolutions. (this I reserve for another post)

Perhaps overly simplistic, my argument rests on these two points alone. If you're predisposed to being insecure, and being human, unlikely to change that very quickly (and not with some severe discomfort involved), fear would be the more powerful of the two. How many times have we decided to do something because the alternative could represent pain (for us and/or others).

Have a think about the decisions you've made. I for one have made quite a few based on fear. It's not necessarily bad, depending on the situation, but sit and ponder how releasing the feeling of joy feels, and how 'true' it is to make a move towards that.

I will strive to make more of those calls in life. =)