Goodbye, Grey Skies

So. This is the end. Today's my last day at Grey and thank God, I don't have any work to do, leaving me free to pack up all my crap (as well as assorted crap that isn't mine but I'm gonna nick anyway). Later on in the day I'll e-mail the obligatory 'It was great working with you all...' e-mail to everyone in the office and I'm tempted to attach a photo of badger porn with it, just to fuck with people a bit.


It's strange how, three years ago, I was doing the exact same thing at around the same time: leaving work, trying things out for myself, etc. Except last time I didn't quit, just straight walked out, and had no idea what the fuck I was going to do. At least this time things are a bit more planned and premeditated.


It's gonna be odd, though, not having a steady paycheck for a while, and it's gonna be odd not having to come in to work everyday, but then again, I don't have to put up with the undue stress I often experience here.


Sigh... I'm bored. Maybe I should skip the rest of the day. Besides, what are they going to do? Fire me?

3 Months and Counting

So.

Yup.

I've officially resigned.

Eddy did it first and posted about his resignation first and had a cooler title for his post. However, my tardiness is not due to being over-worked or laziness.

I took longer to resign because when push comes to shove if I have to be in a big international company there's no other company I'd rather be in than Grey.

Yes, I bitch about it, talk smack about it, I complain about my stupid hours and stupid jobs and stupid clients, but I have a great team, a bunch of real cool friends here and I learnt a lot.

But I do have to focus. Hopping from one thing to another, juggling my advertising job with my music and filmmaking and my attempts at a social life have left me incredibly exhausted and lacking in brain juice.

I want my brain juice.

When I passed my letter to the head of HR her first words were,

"What's wrong?"

And I honestly told her "nothing". Whilst working in this company can be a drab and sometimes it's dull and sometimes it's downright infuriating I can still persevere here.

IF I wasn't doing the other stuff.

I know there are some at the office who may be dissapointed with me, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

(Where is that line from? Anyone who knows shall receive a cookie.)

So in three months I'll be saying goodbye to Grey. Goodbye shitty windows 98 PC, goodbye drab white walls, goodbye idiotic and poorly written job requisitions, goodbye Wisma-bloody-Genting...

...and most of all, goodbye to all the great people I've worked with and all the good times we shared.

...

There, that's enough of that emo business. Click here for some hot beaver action.

Calmer Now

Had some time to relax. Feeling calm now. Just needed to rant out all of that crap in one vitriolic bile infested paragraph. A lot of crap's built up that needed an outlet. After all, that's what blogs are for, right?

Phew... fuck it. Back to regular Khaiser in control. Nicotine and duck has a soothing quality. It's time to release the rampant wilderbeasts, smack the cheeks of some fine, perk booty, pull out the radish and yell, "Chicken Uber Alles!"

Ah... the silliness is back.

Hot Shot Creatives Can Suck on my Toe Jam

Being told you've done something wrong is never fun. In fact, more often than not, it's downright depreciating and embaressing.

Being told you've done something wrong when you're presenting someone elses work and the person you present it to thinks it's your own is not only depreciating and embaressing, it's incredibly infuriating, insulting, degrading and has the ability to piss you off in new found ways you never thought existed. Especially when you're in a position where you can't say otherwise.

So there I was. Yesterday, to be precise. Chilling at my desk with not too many tidbits of work on my plate when my traffic person (so called because he/she coordinates the 'traffic' of work going to and fro from the servicing department to the creatives) comes over saying that I'm needed on a job which is, apparently, a 'no-brainer'.

"All you have to do is present the stuff. All the work's being done from Singapore."

I'm already wary. Nobody's telling me what the product is, what it's about, what's the strategic brief, nothing. And this is a pitch.

I manage to get a call from Singapore where the person on the other end who's come up with this stuff, some multi-award winning creative director, 'briefs' me. Understand me when I say I'm using this term incredibly fucking loosely.

The storyboards are faxed over and as I look through them and listen to the explanations I can already spot a bazillion flaws in them. After the phone call I ask my traffic person whether these ideas have been bought internally. She says yes. Fine, then.

I go through the run-through with the rest of the 'team': all heads of their respective departments. I am but a lowly junior copywriter, but I'm the only one available, and if everyone else is fine with the work (which I, by this point, think is worth less than nothing and am of the firm belief the person who did these ads wouldn't even be able to sell tit-mags to pimply teenage boys) then maybe they know something I don't. I had just come off another pitch where I thought the overall ideas and concepts were passable at best but everyone was happy and the client was, apparently, in awe. Maybe this was the case with this pitch too.

Fat fucking chance. If there's anything this has taught me, it's to trust my instincts.

I brought up my concerns, but it didn't seem like a problem to them. Fine.

This morning I presented these boards to the Chief Operating Officer. This man has seen me in a couple of pitches before and so far my (creative) reputation with this man has been pretty clean. But the dude intimidates me. And when I've got something I didn't do and don't even believe will work, it's a bit tough to sell, to put it lightly.

He politely told me where to stick it.

One of the ads is usable. The other two are about as effective as horse semen on a cockroach.

And, as I expected, I got whacked for it.

Whilst the blame wasn't put solely on me, the fact that I'm the only guy representing the creatives meant there really wasn't anyone else to talk to about how crap it was.

And, to top it all off, in retrospect I should have voiced my opinion of the ads and talked about how I wasn't happy about them and that it was a serious concern. That's my bad.

But, leaving that meeting, the feeling of fucking anger I felt was incomparable. I was ready, right then and there, to tender my resignation because I have better and more productive things to do with my day.

Then came the kicker. I called up the hot shots in Singapore (who, I might add, have less clients than a 2 cent whore with no legs and a moustache) and told them, as politely as I could, about the situation and how another ad is needed to replace the two worthless scraps of fecal matter that hang from the ass crack hairs of there foetal excuse for a concept.

They, in turn, defended the ads with all their might, stating that they "don't see what the problem is", the concerns are "unwarranted" and they feel it "unfair to have to put in more work".

I put down the phone politely before yelling obscenities at the poor machine, much to the shock of the others in the office.

Thankfully, by then my superior was back and I told him of the problems. He's gonna be the one that has to end up presenting this worthless shit to the client (if he couldn't make it I was back-up, hence my involvement). He took one look at the work and was prepared to vomit blood. I then told him what happened and what the multi award winning creative directors from Singapore told me. I deduced that either

(a) they truly believed in their work (*ring!* hello? Ah, it's your village, they say their idiots are missing),

(b) they have no intention to work on this project anymore than they already have (which is weird considering it's their fucking JOB) or

(c) they believe that my requests and point of view is of no interest to them for I am but a lowly junior copywriter whereas they are decorated award winning creative directors (and they probably won the awards by stealing ideas from lowly juniors).

My superior reckons its (c).

So now we at Malaysia have to fix up their stinking turd of an ad, we have to make it all up and we have until tomorrow.

I find it particularly ironic that the product is for one of those baby milk powders that supposedly makes your child more intelligent and creative and yet the people in charge with making these ads have the intelligence of a fart and the creativity of a nose hair.

If it wasn't for the fact that I have a few friends in Singapore I'd bomb the place just to make sure those fucktards don't breed.

Late Again

So here I am, in the office, late at night. Haven't done one of these for a while.

I've actually just finished all the stuff I need to do, but I figure since I'm here I might as well use it as my own makeshift office to make calls to my actors and crew for the rest of the months shooting. No more late cast and crew calls, no more re-shoots, I want to get this movie in the fucking can. The first ten minutes right now are pretty much there, but if the rest of the movie can't hold it together it'll be a 'Snake Eyes': kick ass opening, regular movie from then on (or, in some people's opinions, a worse movie from then on).

Once again, I've also gotten the re-write bug. The ending just doesn't do it for me enough. So I'm thinking of fixing that tonight together with the schedule.

Best of all, I'm gonna use this late night working as an excuse to come in late tomorrow. Hahaha. Feel my office terrorism.

Bumper Gila Babi Siaaaaaal...

Okay.

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, apart from a pretty face your favourite part of the female anatomy was ass.

And not in an anal sex kind of way.

No, just imagine you were a person who likes cute butts. Something about them makes you go buckwild. Call 'em what you will: ass, butt, buttocks, rump, back, booty, posterior, double-parked VW beetles, whatever. To quote Shakespeare, "a tailfeather by any other name is still as sweet".

Or something.

Now, given the above, imagine you work in an office of about 200+ staff. Amongst these 200+ employees, 65%-75% of them are female. Out of the female population of the staff, at least 50% of them have an average booty and out of that 50% a good 10% have a better than average pair of bumpy bits.

Out of this 10%, imagine there are 2 individuals in particular who's asses look like they've been sculpted by Michelangelo.

No, not the turtle. The artist.

Imagine these asses for just a moment. Curved peaches that dip into the middle at a perfect angle, not jutting out too far from the rest of the body but just nice and perfectly proportioned to the rest of them. And the rest of them ain't too bad either.

Imagine if you have to work in this office and watch these perfectly positioned posteriors walk past every day. It hurts to look at that ass. It's the kind of ass that's so beautiful it makes you look ugly as you say, "goddamn, that's some fine ass."

Welcome to my life.


"Peach. I could eat a peach for hours."
-Nic Cage as Castor Troy in 'Face Off'.

Beyond Ranting

I was in a briefing today about a product from a company which isexactly the same as another product from the same company (same shape, same ingredients, etc) except it's cheaper and the packaging's a different colour. Listening to how 'great' the insights and ideas were and how 'important' the job was I began to question in my head exactly how much this job makes a difference to my life in general.

Things are at a supremely low point right now as far as work is concerned. The conspiracy theorists have surmised that our office is not of the right 'Feng Shui'. In fact, they believe the structure, the colours, even the floor number are acting against us. In the last building we were on the 28th floor, a number they believed brought us wealth and fortune. Strange symbols were placed on the ceiling. Now we're on the 14th floor - 'die every day', apparently. The symbols are gone.

This line of thought seems to be more and more appealing as an explanation of current events since we moved here, but whilst it may be a reason, it does not fix things. My care and love and attention to my work is at a point right now where I'm actually planning on leaving little booby traps in my work. In-jokes that may backfire on the client one day, hopefully when I'm long gone.

I have French names to come up with. I'm tempted to put the words 'Arse', 'Fellatio' and 'Pig Fucker' in the names in French and tell the client the words actually mean 'Peaches', 'Talent' and 'Rural Activities'.

And now, as I discovered in the meeting, the inspirational speeches aren't working anymore. I'm just doing this for the money at this point and it won't be long before someone realizes I'm putting zero effort into everything I do between the hours of 9 to 5.

Sorry. I meant 11 to 5.

All I know is it wasn't like this when I first joined. I don't care slaving and working my ass off if someone benefits from it, but I really don't see anyone benefiting from a damn thing I do. Especially yesterday when I spent 3 1/2 hours in the backseat of a Kancil and another 3 1/2 hours in my own car going through endless traffic jams. NOTHING was accomplished. Absolute fuck-all.

And when I know I could be spending that time doing something a lot more productive it pisses me off to no end.

My chips are currently on my 'extra-vocational' activities. By December I'll know for certain whether I'll be a corporate whore for the rest of my life who dabbles in the 'arts' (I hate that term) on the side or whether I'll be spendin my days doing stuff that I actually believe in. By December the Y2k album will be out. The movie will be done. These two releases will determine my 2006.

Till then, give me your fucking briefs and your inane deadlines and uninspiring speeches on the importance of marketing these products to the nines. I'll write your headlines, type your copy and come up with your inane concepts based on Un-Unique Selling Propositions.

And before anyone starts, I know there are a lot of people in this industry going through a much bigger hell than me and people in other industries going through worse and people who are jobless and thus not in any industry in particular going through even worse and victims in third world countries and other such malarky...

...but it's my blog. I'll rant if I'm not happy about the length of my pubes if it so pleases me.

Epilogue: Later, after this post was written, before I posted it I went to check on one of the TVC's we've sent for submission in the Kancils. We've recut it and used music I composed. Slight tang of pride, there.

Pussy Cleansing

That's it.

This time, they've gone too fucking far.

Asking a copywriter to write French is one thing, but this... this...

Sigh.

I've got to come up with 8 concise single sentence tips on how to best clean your vagina.

It's gonna be in supermarket and pharmacy aisles, so it's recommended I stay away from the words 'vulva', 'vagina', 'labia' and 'yeast'.

I never realized how much care a vagina needs. And all the descriptions and images are making me feel incredibly uncomfortable.

I have only been staring at vulva's for ten minutes, but already I feel I need to take a break. No offence, ladies, but some things we'd rather not know. I don't think any of you women want to know about dick cheese (a problem not suffered by the circumcised, btw).

Yeast. Yeast for fucks sake...

So I Was Writing My CV Today...

...what an inane fucking task that was.

God, it's been so long since I wrote a CV I almost forgot what one looked like. To top it all off, I don't have my old CV (or my old portfolio of made up ads, for that matter) saved anywhere. Probably at home. I think. I hope.

It's weird, though. Reading all your supposed 'accomplishments' and lists of 'experience' and 'skills' can elicit one of three reactions:

"Goddamn, I'm pretty badass!"

"Goddamn, I haven't done shit in 4 years!"

"Goddamn, I can bullshit like a motherfucker!"

I'm feeling a cocktail of the three.

I also pulled off the faux-pas of the day by describing a talent of mixed nationality as a 'mix-breed'. I just kinda blurted it out.

But what a wonderful mix-breed she was. 20 years old, Malay/Euro combo, a cross between Katie Holmes and Siti Nurhaliza. We have a video of her doing the hair flick thing repeatedly, shot from behind as she smiles at us over the shoulder. Lovely figure, pretty eyes, gorgeous smile and yes, baby got back.

Next to us, one of the art directors had numerous CV's and body shots of dozens of Chinese female talents. Some of the poses were also very enticing in the Southern regions.

A colleague noticed the video and recognized her. Aparently she's married.

How evil.

Written Much Earlier...

It's 5:22am, and we're just finishing up. I may be able to catch about 2 hours sleep if I'm lucky.

What's annoying is, all the caffeine I ingested early hasn't bothered to kick in until now. Just my luck. when I wanted the full force of its stimuli, it decides to leave me trying in vain to fall asleep on my chair using a box of tissues as a pillow. When the chance to lie in my uncomfortable yet functional bed arises, I'm all jitters and mad thoughts.

Buggerty-buggerty-bugger.

I'm not even typing this on my blog right now. I'm using SimpleText since for the past three and a half hours my computer has refused to connect to the internet.

No one elses computer. Just mine. Fuck Apple. Fuck it up its stupid little ass.

Right now even the whores outside have probably called it a night. I doubt anyone's looking for a fuck at 5:26 on a Wednesday morning. And to be honest, amidst my absolute lethargy, I'm still worried like a wombat about tomorrow.

And the thing is, about a year ago I would have been complaining about the late hours and lethargy and stupid iMacs too.

But back then it felt like it was worth it.

What to do... what to do...

I'm not in a position at the moment to drop it all and concentrate on movies and music just yet, although I would love to. At the moment, my steady income pays for the passions I wish to pursue, which I work on after I'm done with work. These passions, in itself, are hard work.

Work all day, work all night.

I still need a job at the moment. A steady paycheck for ease of mind, parents off my back and oodles of DVD's and comics.

Hopefully by next year, all dreams will be accomplished. The Y2k album will be released, hopefully whatever film I decide to do will be done by then and hopefully both will bring enough success for me to get out.

Long shot. I know.

But it's attainable. It's the first time one of my cockamaimy (I think that's how it's spelt) day dreams might actually work. The thought that something that was once a pipedream might actually come into full fruition brings much glee to my loins.

Or my lions. If I had lions. They would be very gleeful if I had them.

Come on. I'm done. Let me the fuck out already. I have dreams to dream.

It's 12:47am

...and I'm back in the office again. I tried to upload this earlier at 12:15am but this stupid iMac deemed it too hard a task.

Triple 6's performance at the gig went surprisingly well considering we didn't rehearse. Currently feeling unable to write with flourish. Fucking tired. But there's still work to do.

When I was 15 I discovered a book on graphic design and art direction. From then on I wanted to be a graphic designer but had my hopes shattered when my mom turned to me and said,

"Why? You're cleverer than that!"

What she doesn't seem to understand is the amount of hard work it involves, and even though that day I felt like shit for having my mother tell me my chosen vocation was for idiots (which, I assure you, it's not), I'm now glad I didn't take it up too seriously.

Because whilst us writers do a lot of conceptualizing and writing, the designers and art directors bust their fucking balls to make those concepts come to life in ways that would make you cum with glee.

I'm bitching now about how tired I am, but I can't for the life of me imagine how tough it is for those guys right now.

Let's burn the midnight oil, fuck-holes.

Grrr. Arrghh.

Goddamn motherfucking dick licking shit eating piss drinking armpit licking rectum reaming buttcheek cleansing masturbating nipple tweaking hamster felching dog sniffing cat fingering elephant raiding cow tipping donkey dipping peanut flicking cock caressing banana beating bishop bashing toe nail tipping sons of a motherless goat raped granola chunk of chicken cutlets.

That's how I feel at this precise moment in time.

We have a pitch tomorrow. And if the work today to realize that reality wasn't enough suits from all directions attack me with brainless briefs and the MC2 Young Guns is on this weekend on the same day as a gig that will also be the shoot for our music video and I've just discovered the last pitch didn't work out, leaving the spotlight on our little team.

Oh, and I've got a gig tonight, to which I'll be rushing to, play, and return to continue working till the wee hours of the night. Add to that this idea burning in my head begging to be put down on pen and paper the second I have the time for it. Something that could be shot wonderfully if I could just get it done in time.

Aaargh!!! All you motherfuckers will get crabs! I'll see to it. Crabs, I say!

...

I don't know about you, but I could do with a soapy tit wank.

Man's Propensity to Make a Complete Tit of Himself

So I'm sat at Coffee Bean, right? Treating myself to a decent lunch now that at least one of my cheques has gone through, when this cute little girl pops on over and asks whether she can join me for a cigarette.

She seems to know me and her face is vaguely familiar but i can't put my finger on it. Regardless, we chit-chat and she seems to already know, at the very least, my job description. From what I can gather she's in the same company and we've been introduced before.

But for the life of me I can't remember who she is.

We carry on chit-chatting and I excuse myself and go back upstairs but the question's still bugging me and I'm feeling quite bad for not remembering this person. I can't believe I've forgotten this person because she's a really nice person and the fact that I can't remember must mean I was in some pissed off state when we were introduced or too dead to take proper notice.

See what advertising does to you? Fucks with your brain.

I didn't like this feeling. It's bad enough my close colleagues are dropping like flies. The fact that I can't remember a new colleague (who happens to be interesting and fun to talk to, a rarity in itself in this city) pissed me off to no end. I felt stupid and quite ashamed of myself that I had a nice conversation with this person as if I knew who she was when deep down at that moment in time you could describe me with the title of the only decent Alicia Silverstone movie.

...

...'Clueless', jackass.

So I go over to one of my colleagues and ask about her. I have a name, that's all, and even that I got wrong. Finally we figure out who she is, which section she's in and where she's sat. It just so happens that she's on my floor. It just so happens she's that her room is right next door to the people I've been talking to.

And it just so happens that her door was open.

...

...Ah. Fuck.

There are only two possibilities right now. She either heard the whole thing (or one of her colleagues heard it and passed it on) and I've made a complete tit of myself or I'm in the clear.

I hope I'm in the clear.

Another One Bites the Dust...

So another colleague moves on to greener pastures today and it makes me wonder once again about what I should do about my immediate future.

Let's be brutally honest, here. The fun is beginning to rapidly diminish from this job. At least for the last month or so. There's a general mood in the colleagues closest to me of the "fuck all this shit!" variety. Many feel the need to jump ship and I'd be lying if I didn't feel the same way.

For the past month for some reason unbeknownst to me a number of friends have come up to me about possible job openings in other companies if I was interested. I do not think this is coincidence. Perhaps the gods are trying to tell me something.

As for my own personal feelings about my current situation? Indifferent. It's not as much fun as before, but it's not a great big strap on up the jacksy. I can still survive, and perhaps things will get better.

Perhaps they won't. We'll see.

Healthy Poop

For those who are wondering how this godawful haze is going, apparently it rained in KL yesterday and nobody noticed. Can haze deflect rain?

I must say, though, whilst I thought it was getting worse, I can see slightly farther out of my office window today than I could yesterday. Yup, I can now see two buildings away as opposed to yesterday's one. Whoopee.

Man Method reckons nature's fighting back. I reckon God's lit up a big Cuban cigar for the grand finale and blowing it in our general direction.

As for other news, I woke up in a slightly bad mood this morning. My mom was 'teaching' my bro his homework, and by 'teach', I mean 'make the kid memorize the answers to 6+... from 1 to 12'. Modern teaching. I hate it.

Hence, in a foul mood and wearing a gas mask I walked into 7-11 before going to work and bought me some fresh milk and Koko Krunch. I have not had cereal since my mid-teens and goddamn did it bring back a lot of good memories. I almost forgot how good cereal was. And fresh milk, Jesus! I hadn't had fresh milk since I was in England!

(For those wondering, most drinks in Malaysia are made not with fresh milk, but condensed milk, which is a lot thicker, a helluva lot sweeter and a thousand times more fattening. Fresh milk is a luxury. It's imported from New Zealand. Our cows aren't fit for McDonald's meat let alone fresh milk.)

I also forgot how cereal makes you wanna poop, and I was glad. After lots of tummy trouble the doctor gave me medicine that left me constipated all of yesterday. Today we poop healthy poop. Amen for fresh milk, cereal and above all, healthy poop.

The Fourth Fever

Naren e-mailed recently and asked whether everything is ok and whether or not I got my mojo back considering I hadn't posted anything since Thursday. Well, there's a reason for that.

On Friday morning, with only two hours sleep, I made my way to Port Dickson with my colleagues for an intensive training course. Very intensive. The second I got there we were ushered into the room so from 9 to 5 I was sat 'studying', if you will. Then, from 8 to midnight, 'homework'.

Shit, even school wasn't this bad. By 12.14am, I received an SMS saying it's free flow at the bar, courtesy of the HR department.

"Screw you guys, I'm getting drunk," was my message to the team. They followed suit.

On Saturday, our 'homework' won us a RM$50 gift voucher at Isetan each. Whoopee. I also won a rubber ducky, which I treasured a lot more than the gift voucher, but ended up giving it to my bro, who had been ill the whole week.

Saturday was also the day we noticed the haze. The very bad haze that has lasted till now. For those unfamiliar with haze, imagine a dense fog made of dirt and soot. That's haze, and it sucks balls.

For starters, it gets a lot of people ill, myself included. I should've seen it coming. Already on Friday at least five people were ill. One person almost passed out at lunch, another had stomach pains, headaches and migraines all 'round.

It was just a matter of time.

By Sunday I had a gig and was feeling the effects of haze and exhaustion, passed out on the floor of Paul's Place, weak and ill, desperately in need of sleep. I played my set and rushed out as soon as I can to rest and eventually edit my short film for television (which sucked balls. I felt like I was butchering my baby. Every 'bleep' and pixelation of cleavage made me wince).

By Monday, even though I shouldn't have, I went to work, ill as hell, and by evening the fever was breaking through and my nose kept bleeding and throughout the day I shat out liquid poop.

By Tuesday morning, I couldn't go on.

At the clinic I asked the doctor why I kept getting fevers. She said I probably have low immunity or something, I couldn't really make her out in my fever induced daze. She stuck a needle up my butt and gave me a ton of pills.

What I do know is this, though: four fevers in eight months. That's an average of a fever every two months this year. I have never gotten this ill this often, it's freaking me out.

So are the nosebleeds. Eddy says I should check it out, that blood should stay in the body. I have a phobia about doctors when it comes to nosebleeds, though.

Just nosebleeds.

No-Thang

Ok. It's ranting season once again. Open up your eyes and unzip your flies, lads n' ladies!

This is fucked.

Whilst emotionally I've recovered quite a bit from the mild depression that was Thursday over my inability to be creative, the problem still persists. I can't write. At least, not well enough to make me feel it warrants paying for.

Did I spell 'warrants' right? 'War... rants'. Warrr.... ants'. Shit.

I'm not sure what it is, but it sure is bugging me.

Add to that my constant lethargy. I've been experimenting with my hours of sleepage and it still doesn't make a difference. No matter how early/late I go to bed/get up I still feel the same during the day: dead. My motor functions in sunlight are completely dependent on caffeine.

My 'ad writing' skills are getting stale. This may or may not have something to do with my servicing departments dodgy briefs. Or maybe I'm just getting bored here and need rejuvination. Colleagues have been e-mailing me word of jobs available elsewhere. They pay more, but don't look too enticing.

Then there's the 'music'. Saiful just came back last week with a list from the guy mastering it on what I need to do to make the mix better.

It's a fucking long list.

The mastering master in Indon also said that it's not a good idea for the musician to try and mix the music because the musician doesn't focus in on tiny details when it comes to his/her own music, but the big picture.

Either way, even though all the points were valid, it did make me think "great. I can't mix for nuts".

I'm also a bit wary of passing the material to someone else to mix because I fear that once they hear the raw files they may turn to me and say "holy Jesus! What the fuck do you expect me to do with this turd?!"

Harumph.

Then there's the 'movie' thing. The precious 'movie' thing. My 'Celup' movie, as you all know, is on the backburner for a bit after strange producer issues reminscent of my first bands untimely demise. Whilst my short film is gonna earn me a cool RM$1000, I'm stuck wondering, "what next?"

My parents asked me this same question. They are interested in my movie movements. By the end of this month they'll see their sons first publicly aired short film and will probably bludgen me for the movie's content.

Meanwhile, Kit Ong (who I met when he was CD at FCB) has a two page spread in KLue about his filmmaking activities and is quiting his job to do a feature. Yasmin Ahmad is doing her 'Gubra' movie (I thinkthat's what it's called) and Pete Teo's doing the music whilst also appearing in a movie financed by Andy Lau and directed by Ho Yuhang. Amir Muhammad will finally have one of his movies screened nationally (although I can't remember the name for that one).

Reading about these guys and seeing the whole 'local-industry filmmaking wave' reaching a higher and higher crest and gaining more attention and buzz does hit me with a pang of "when the fuck are you gonna get your act together and make your Magnificent Octopus!?"

...

"...sorry. I meant Magnum Opus."

I have apologetic pangs.

But yeah. All my filmmaking heroes did their thang in their twenties. All the guys (and gals) doing it here are in their thirties, presumably because by that age they have enough financial security and connections to go ahead and do their thang.

My mind's a bit on the different. I don't want to wait until my mid-thirties to do my thang (from here on in, filmmaking endeavours shall be named the 'thang'), I want to try and do everything I've always ever wanted to set out and achieve before I'm thirty so that if it works out I can spend the rest of my life doing my thang (or other 'thangs', wherein 'thang' can also be used to characterize any other creative endeavour besides film) and if my thang don't work out I can at least resign to the fact that I tried to do my thang(s) and won't die regretting I never did my thang.

Y'all un'nerstang?

You may ask, "Is the Guber jealous of all these other guys making movies?" and the Guber would reply, "Fuck yeah!" It's petty, yes, but why lie? They're making movies. I'm not. Of course I'm fucking jealous. I'm not in a position where I have to watch every word I say just yet. Yes, I'm jealous of the fact that all those people are making movies the same way pencil dicks are jealous of African tribesmen.

More importantly, I'm jealous because they have an idea, and turning the idea into a thang. An idea is required to make thang, it is theessence of thang.

But I'm forcing it. I'm forcing out ideas for the thang, and you know when you're forcing the thang 'cos it's never as good as a natural thang. You force the thang out, and the thang don't like no forcin'. I'm trying to figure out any ol' thang, anythang I can pull of, but there ain't no thang.

I need thang.

Something also appeals to me about being the young punk who went out and did his thang as opposed to the middle-aged guy who's comfortably well off to pursue thang-ing and such.

But what thang? Hence the question below about what scares you: to try and formulate a horror thang. Other thang's in mind are comedy thangs and talky-introspective thangs. Any thang doable within the limitations of my thang. But no strong enough idea to turn into a thang.

There's too much mention of 'thang' in this here thang. Dang.

Karma Works

So earlier, as you can tell, I was feeling pretty goddamn useless.

Add to that the fact that I was meant to be seeing my girlfriend for dinner (just like Tuesday) and I had to cancel (just like Tuesday) because of work (just like Tuesday) where I felt my existence in the office was meaningless (just like Tuesday).

She was upset (and quite possibly ready to start surfing the crimson wave) and I was pissed. Supremely pissed. I was ready to rain sulphur. I actually wrote a lengthy post of rants and raves and spew and bile until the computer crashed on me.

So I sent a ranty, raving, spewy, bile-filled e-mail to the IT people asking for a computer that doesn't run on arcane technology from the days before the microchip (I actually checked the RAM on the computer. It said '0kb'. That freaked me out).

Annoyed and game for anything, a weird thought popped into my head, and I searched my inbox (with my fingers crossed hoping it wouldn't crash) and found it: an e-mail from Man Method.

In the e-mail was a powerpoint document of 'good karma'. As always with these e-mails, if you send it out to 5 or more people all your dreams will come true and naked women will fall on your lap from the heavens.

Naked, soapy women.

So, in desperation and madness, I sent it out together with this e-mail:

"Apologies for the interuption. This'll all be over shortly.

Ordinarily, I do not believe in this 'forward to five people and get laid instantly' crap, but things aren't exactly moving swimmingly at the moment in the life of Khai, so I've decided to test this out, once and for all.

I've sent this thing out to all of you. Now, if things suddenly get better, I shall be a true believer and give out my credit card details to the nearest scientologist.

If not, I shall accept that life is poo, go down to the LDP and throw live chickens at moving cars.

Cluck-Vroom-Splat.

Because life is too short to not try it out once."

I sent it out to a good 20 people and carried on being pissed. Then it happened.

First, I was called into a meeting. For a good half of the meeting I zoned out, pissed and stewing in my juices.

Not those juices. That would be sticky.

After a while, though, my ears perked up and started listening. I started contributing. I knew what page we were on and I blasted my way through it with mucho gusto, free Dominos Pizza (courtesy of the suits) in one hand and a ballpoint pen in the other. I was contributing. I was helping.

I was useful.

Glad that life at work had a purpose again, I went down after the meeting feeling a lot better and called my girlfriend. I calmed her down, consoled her, chit-chatted and was the sweetest, most caring guy I could be for her.

Glad that she's happy again, I walked over to the computer and chit-chatted with my colleagues. I no longer felt like the fucker with nothing to do. I shared their burden. I was going to be working late with them. I was part of the team again, and we laughed and talked about music, White Zombie blarring out of the speakers Eddy gave me before he went on to greener pastures.

Working away, sketching Vietnamese women and smoking mass amounts of Dunhill's, I checked my e-mail and (as you can see from my last post) my short film will be screened next Monday at the KSFM Malaysian Shorts July Edition screening.

It could all be coincidence, but it looks like, for a while at least, all my friends will be subjected to chain mail madness from me.

Weird. Karma works.

...

...still no sign of the soapy women, though.

Two Days

2 days of thinking. Storming. Rationalizing. Sketching.

Ideas, ideas, ideas.

2 days. And still nothing.

And what's it for, pray tell? What am I antagonizing over? What have I spent 2 fucking days trying to come up with an ad for?

A shitty little blinky free gift that you'll get when you buy the clients product. A shitty little blinking thing.

And I can't think of an ad for it. Every single idea is unconvincing.

Because I'm not convinced. I've been using the damn thing for 2 days and it's utterly useless.

And I can see the rest of the team working on the mega-important-crazy-timeline accounts, and they're on the ball and tired and stressed as fuck. I volunteered to tidy up all the other tiny jobs we had 'cos I thought it'd be a stroll in the park.

2 days. Perhaps I'm experiencing writers block.

After day 2 (yesterday) I was fucked beyond compare. Fucked, and slightly wracked with the guilt that all I've got to figure out is this shitty little ad whilst everyone else is working on this intensely crazy fucker of a job, and they probably think I'm slacking because I can't come up with one-good-idea. I feel like I've wasted 2 days. I do not like unproductivitiness.

That's not a word, is it?

At least, after all the crap that was yesterday (spending my time in the office eating shitty instant noodles instead of a three course dinner courtesy of my girlfriend) I got to spend some time with my band, Triple 6 Poser, at Eddy's place. The second Ed saw me at the door he asked,

"Bad day?"

"Fuck, yeah," was my reply, "I could do with a shot of whiskey."

"Black label or McGregors?" was Eddy's response.

A couple of shots later I was much more relaxed, playing my guitar amongst the dudes and dudettes, going through the songs and having a laugh. Izuwan brought some Pepsi Ice, a strange blue thing with that extra feature that's become so popular in soft drinks these days: the ice factor.

Pepsi's doing it. 7 Up's doing it. Nestea's doing it. Even fucking Nescafe. It's this added 'thing' they put into the drinks whereby, after you take a gulp, your chest feels like it's gargling mouthwash. Some people like this icy sensation. Some don't.

And some like to experiment. And, as one of the experimentors (ooh, possible band name) I can safely say that Black Label and Pepsi Ice is wrong. It's disturbing to the tongue, your taste buds turn back to you and shout, "what in the name of unholy fuck are you trying to do?!"

We have a name for this cocktail. Henceforth it shall be dubbed, "Ye Blue Shit".

But even with the relaxing times with the band and friends I still had trouble sleeping. And a worse time trying to wake up. And my pants have ripped. At the crotch.

Fuck, I forgot my guitar for rehearsals too, didn't I?

Something extremely nice happening to me today would be a Godsend. I implore everybody out there to clap your hands and shout out 'I believe' so that maybe, just maybe, my very own tinkerbell will wake up from her poisoned slumber and give me a rim-job.

Unless someone else out there would be just as willing.

Grande Latte Enema

A friend of mine recently told me over lunch that she once had a coffee enema during a detoxifying week.

I never knew coffee was involved.

I wonder how they came up with it. Did a proctologist-cum-health-guru having a particularly bad Starbucks experience suddenly arrive at an epiphany when he exclaimed, "this coffee's so shit I might as well shove it up my ass!"?

Possibly.

She didn't touch coffee for 3 months after that. Understandable, really.