How to Write an Entry

How do I really start writing an entry? I mean, do I have any kind of ritual before I commence into the writer's mode?

This opening would probably work better if someone else asked me those questions. But hey, I need an introduction - an imaginary third party would suffice.

Anyway.

And oh by the way, this may not apply all the time. The concept behind it works as just a general recommendation rather than a strict rule - or something like that, whatever.

So.

Step 1: Find an original work.

It's almost like plagiarism - but no, it's more like a review - in my own perspective - which may heavily influenced by the original work - hence, almost like plagiarism. In other words, I take someone else's work and process it into my own. This ranges from movies, articles, other people's blog entries, books, etc. For example, I found this article a little while back, entitled The 10 Emotions That Will Change Your Life. The yellow-ish (or golden I'm not sure)-coloured phrase means that you can click on it and it will opens a new page - hence, you can read it yourself. Well, by doing so, you have now completed my first step of this process. Now, lets move on.

Step 2: Find an interesting paragraph/section/part of the work.

Well, even a sentence could work. It really depends. What I do here is just that I'm trying to find something that could trigger some thoughts inside my head. For example, there are 10 emotions listed in the article: gratitude, hope, joy, serenity, interest, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. So, for this step 2, I've selected 'pride' as the interesting section of the work. Why? Because it is my own damn choice. You do your own entry if you don't like it.

Step 3: Develop that particular paragraph/section/part of the work.

This is the part where I explain why the particular part of the work interests me. In this case, the section about 'pride' in the original article, there are two reasons: it is among the short ones, and it is the most intriguing - being it as one of the seven deadly sins.

Here's a sample of the development.

It seems alright to have that sense of achievement about ourselves when we've hit a goal. At times, yes, we can be a little (or very much) smug about it. This is the tricky part. Of all the 10 emotions, pride is the only one is listed in one of the deadly sins. Well, it is a bit more dramatic to refer to stylish phrase such as the 'seven deadly sins' although it is originated from the bible. I'm not sure about in Islam though - I googled and found that there's 70 of them? I think the Quran presents the topic about sins in a different manner compared to the commercially sound 'seven deadly sins' in the bible. Nevertheless, the point is, pride is one the sins - and to where we draw the line to practice a good amount of pride - assuming pride is a good emotion to have?

"We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others,"

By the way, as you can see, in order to develop this section, I also refer to another written work somewhere else. You know, moulding them together. It's like Jack invented sugar and Lokman invented flour, and with those two things, I invented the cake - hence, an original work of my own, sort of.

Anyway, I always like the principle of Wasatiah in Islam teachings. The balance. Don't overdo things. We all know we shouldn't be reckless but don't overdoing it by being a paranoid. We should be understanding but don't be too much of accepting. Pride. Too much of it would lead to arrogance. Being too quiet about it does not benefit others in inspiration of greatness. Our strong presence of greatness liberates others to do the same.

Okay, something like that for a development.

Anyway.

So there's only three steps of making an entry: find a whole frame of picture, pick a spot on the canvas, and develop. I would thought it can be something like 5 steps to a great entry thingy, or something like a recipe - 15g of desire, 200ml of determination, etc. Somehow it becomes this long draggy entry, which doesn't appeal that well even to myself.

Maybe I shall write another one later. Hopefully a better one.

In the mean time, if you're somewhere around 10 years old of age, this may be a useful guide to write, well, anything really - I think. I'm not too sure. If it helps, good. But if it does not and it results to you failing an assignment because of following this crappy guide, well, you've been warned.

Hu-oh Another Film Review

So, what do I have to say for tonight?

I just watched New Moon on cinema today. Total crap. Well, .. not really. That is just rather exaggerated. But it is bad. Just, not that bad. You know, it's like having an extremely cheap chocolate ice cream that you bought from a particularly strange old man with a thick moustache selling out of a strap bag (and not a chiller!) on a sunny afternoon.

...

Maybe that is also an exaggeration. I just want to put that picture inside your head.

But it is a bad movie. Not total bad. Maybe not spending $10 for it. Maybe 26 cents is more like it.

Okay that is also an exaggeration.

My serious estimation would be $1.20, which equals a moderately cheap ice cream.

My only comments, for now anyway, is that the movie should have a lot less of Jacob and Edward and more of Alice and other hot vampire chicks (I'm not that very into Bella). Instead of stripping down Jacob (apparently for gazillion times), please put Alice in a bikini. Instead of slow-motion Edward taking the whole century to walk across the parking lot (and apparently he once flew in nanosecond saving Bella from getting hit by the van in the first movie), please put Alice in a bikini, in slow-motion, with other hot vampire chicks.

Remember Bram Stoker's Dracula? Remember the hot sexy vampire chicks in almost-see-through white sleeping gowns smothering Keanu Reeves? Now that is a good vampire movie. Oh, and also Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Yum3.

Other than that, New Moon is still bad. Over-development of the relationship between Bella and Jacob, under-development of the Volturi (more of Jane and Felix please), Bella is a slut (a vampire, a wolf and then what? Frankenstein?), Edward is a moron (you've lived over a hundred years, please show some sense of intelligence. No wonder you still stay in high school.), Victoria's plot is pointless, Charlie is okay, I thought the bike-riders were described by Edward in the first movie as evil and why didn't that fat guy raped Bella in that empty back dark alley?

Fuh.

Hence, that is my review for The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Nevertheless, I bet the book is good. Unfortunately, I don't read those kind of stuffs.

I'm Still Here

I just remembered.

Four days ago, it's been 3 years since the blog started in November 2006.

After the first year, I thought, "Hey, I'm still here. Blogging seems fit for me. No one else would want to listen to me rambling about nonsense in real life,".

Up to the second year, I found that I've written more frequently, received more responses, better English writings and more serious and sensible contents (presumably). Apparently, I grew more committed to this.

Now, reaching the third year of this blog's life, I just think that it is simply amazing that I'm still here. I haven't done the math yet, but I'm pretty sure the rate of entries has decreased. Not that I was planning to quit (well, sometimes) but I always thought that sooner or later I'd lose all reasons to continue this stuffs.

Maybe I haven't finished yet.

Why?

I'm glad you asked.

Because now, I have a super aim - to save the very human civilization.

9 Stuffs of the Week

I haven't really put enough thoughts in naming this type of entry but I'm planning to list down stuffs that interest me in recent, well, weeks maybe - or months, I'm not really sure yet. I like number 9, hence the selected number of items. Top 10 is, well, you can find those elsewhere. Another reason for this such attempt is because it's easy and does not require much effort on writing. Cheap shot for updating this blog.

Maybe this is kinda normal for any blogs. And I think I did attempt such thing before.

Oh well.

1. Defying Gravity by Idina Menzel. It's a song, from the musical 'The Wicked'. I first heard this song from the latest episode of Glee (Yes, I'm still watching it. It does have some good musics.). I googled the original song in YouTube. Found and completely hooked. Ahh, the love for broadway music.

2. Disney's Year of a Million Dreams campaign advertisements. My favourite: Tina Fey as Tinkerbell! Others include Gisele Bündchen as Wendy, Rachel Weisz as Snow White, Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella, etc.

3. I'm reading Lou Marinoff's The Big Questions, and some other books about philosophy, logic and er, well, cheese. It's pretty sweet. My cup of tea anyway. Some of the big questions: How do you know what's right? Are you guided by reason or passion? What is love? Can anyone win the war of the sexes?

4. Time Magazine: Issue November 23, 2009. The best inventions of the year: teleportation (an atom anyway - human teleportation is still impossible.), tweeting by thinking, solar shingle, bladeless fan, cyborg beetle, high-speed helicopter (you know, like Airwolf), a super swimming suit that outraced Michael Phelps, a fashion robot (real creepy) and other cool stuffs.

5. Zeitgeist: Addendum. Well, as you can read from the previous entry. I just gotta love the norm-challenging stuffs. Radical!

6. As long as Tina Fey is on 30 Rock every Friday, she'll always be in this list.

7. Stewie's joke to Brian, "Take your index finger and your thumb, and lightly grip the base of your tail, and run your fingers along the length of your tail." in the latest episode of Family Guy.

8. This sentance has three erors.

9. This list.

Food and Money

I gonna try to write a couple of movies review for this entry. I don't think I have written any movie review in this blog before. Nevertheless, there's always the first time. These two movies I just watched have, well, reached into my whatever inside this hollow masculine body, or head, that screams, "I think I should share this!".

It's a couple of documentary movies: Food, Inc and Zeitgeist: Addendum.

Food, Inc (2008).

This is a documentary film about, well, food - mainly industrialized food industry in the United States. You can find reviews all over the internet about the specific details of this movie. If you read the book "Fast Food Nation", this movie is something like that - with motion graphics.

This movie can open our eyes to what people in the industry do to our food - not the ones you can get from a small friendly butcher house down at Newtown, maybe. This is not the standard hygienic issue about picking up the meat on the dirty floor, throw it back into the cooking pan and serve it to the customer thingy. That is just automatically implied - simple plain unethical people who should be thrown in jail and continuosly raped.

This movie exposes what corporate people do to maximize profit in the meat industry in the United States - to the very source. Due to my inability to focus throughout the movie, I can point out two major things:

Animal abuse - I heard that one of the things that a human being should once in his or her life is to visit an industrial slaughterhouse. You do the math - how would you kill 5,000 cows a day, with least cost? I wonder how is it different in the halal meat industry.

Food cost - It's cheaper to buy a fast-food burger than a healthy lunch salad and broccoli.

Well, there are other things on how small farmers are inable to compete with the giants to provide respectable meat supply, E. coli bacteria, war on national health, etc. The message is simple, really, for me anyway: Do think about it whenever we go a fast-food restaurant, or a supermarket to buy packed meat, try and have a thought where did the meat come from. Do we even have the ability to control it anyway? Do we have the voice to do so?

They will all still do it for profit.

Which comes the next movie: Zeitgeist Addendum (2008).

While the previous movie tells about food, this movie, instead, shows about where money comes from. It opens with the very fundamental weakness in the monetary system that is currently heavily manipulated by the strong corporates. It continues to show how the strong corporates maintain its power on the monetary system and by destroying the economy of the weaker countries. And yes, it is all about profit. This movie leads to eliminate the monetary system and propose a resource-based economy - a moneyless society, and it's named as the Venus Project.

If you find the reviews published around the web about this movie, there's a lot of mixed responses - mainly opposing the idea. Nevertheless, the key thing from this movie is to simply open our minds. Does the monetary system today have been beneficial to the human kind? Can it be developed to fairly serve everyone?

"To see if we cannot radically bring about a transformation of the mind. Not accept things as they are - but to understand it, to go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind with every thing that you have to find out. A way of living differently."

-Jiddu Krishnamurti-

I like the idea of the moneyless society. Optimistic nonetheless. This is quite similar to my previous entry about guns and butter. Until people start to focus on producing butter, the transtition into a moneyless society is impossible. Try and watch the movie. It's available online anywhere. My advice is not to plainly accept everything - but to sit back, have a cup of coffee and have a thought or chat about it. This is about the future that our children will live in and perhaps, we can do something about it - one voice at a time.

Find the movies and enjoy.

Guns and Butter

"We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns."

Well, that was a speech by one of Hitler's closest associates, Joseph Goebbels, during the rise of the Third Reich. Well, as you can see, I'm trying to make a dramatic start to this entry with a speech quoted by the most famous group of evil known to the world.

I found this theory, or actually it's just a model, in macroeconomics stuffs - guns and butter. To put simply, this model states that a nation chooses between the two: invests in military or invests on production of goods or both at determined ratios. Although I'm not very sure whether this is still commonly applied or perhaps it has evolved into a more complex model for the state of economy today. Nevertheless, I don't want to talk about this economic model in particular - just the concept it represents.

Religions aside, we're put in this world to live. Back then, as human civilization started since the stone age, we wake up, hunt, eat, sleep and the cycle continues - at least that's how they depict it in television. Today, we wake up, earn money, buy food, eat, sleep and plus any other stuffs you'd like to do for fun. Well, the point is, back then, there were no guns, only butter - I think. I'm no historian to confirm this.

I'm just trying to say that to the very basic needs of human civilization, we only need butter. Guns are just the power created by human for human so that they can have butter without having to make them themselves. Today, the more power you have, the more butter you can get. It has reached to the point in time, making butter is not as important than making guns.

Well I actually wanted to talk about money. As in, guns is a metaphor for money as the spending power - if you haven't catch my drift.

So, today, the more spending power you have, the more butter you can get. It has reached to that point in time, producing stuffs is not as important as making money. Kids want to be rich. Heck, we all want to be rich. We like to have the sufficient spending power to do things that we actually want - to be richer. While that happens, less people are actually looking into who makes our butter anymore. As long it's available at any supermarket near you, you'll keep on earning money, to buy more butter - to live. Have you watched Food, Inc? I just think that if smarter people in this world keep going into the money-making stuffs, guess who's the idiot been handling our McDonald's Big Mac.

Ok, I'm tired now. Maybe I'll continue next time. For the mean time, my message is just really simple - we're here on Earth to make butter - not guns. Guns do not benefit the very human civilization - butters do.

But guns keep human in order I give you that - nothing more.