Friday, February 18, 2011

 

before and after

i am not very adventurous when it comes to magazines. (i'm not adventurous in anything for that matter). i tend to stick to the same old titles and when i like a certain magazine i will religiously collect every issue i can get of it. well, back issues that they sell at discounted price at least. and so i now have (among others) a respectable collection of the spectator , architectural digest, the new yorker, apollo, art news, arts of asia and granta. the last one is not strictly a magazine but a literary quarterly of course. and many years ago i used to subscribe to scientific american, art in america and my favorite scientific magazine of them all, the cheeky journal of irreproducible results. and whenever i travel i steal the economist from the aircraft.

i never realize until quite recently that the spectator is a tory leaning magazine and i hate the fucking tories. but it's too late now... when i was young i have this habit of reading newspapers from back to front. meaning i read sport pages first and then the racy stories and book pages which are always toward the middle or the end of the papers too and work my way to the front pages. and very often i never get to the front page which is quite fine because if you know malaysian newspapers, you know that the front pages are filled with nothing but cocksucking stories about some asshole ministers cutting some fucking ribbons at ground breaking ceremony of a new supermarket building and shits like that. and most days are even worse, you get these fuckers pontificating on some dumb issues that make you want to puke all over the paper.

oh dear, there i go off the rail again. ranting like a bastard at mere mention of these politicians. but as i was saying, i have this habit of reading things back to front and all the best writings in the spectator are at the back of the magazines. columns like low life and high life (that's two separate columns , please) are really demented and i love them . and so i am hooked and keep on buying the spectator.

as for the architectural digest the best thing about it is for me to have a peek into famaous people's homes and palaces. although i hardly read any of the columns in this magazine i love looking at the paintings they hang on the walls and salivating over their libraries. sometimes they have this before and after issues where they show an old house or rooms before and after renovation and interior decoration which is quite nice too.

which reminds me about the time i went to the dentist recently. most medical and dental clinics have really rubbish magazines in the waiting room. all those free magazines from credit card companies or airlines. and for some reasons motoring magazines (which i really hate- obviously for men patients ) and woman magazines (which i never read). and you can have some idea how rich some of these dentists and doctors are by the magazines they put in their waiting room. not many people i know read yatching magazines or those tatlers and wine spectators .... bastards.

and here i was waiting my turn and i thought hey let's have a look at this woman magazine then . i picked one at random and actually found some of the articles quite interesting. you know all those silly stuff how to make your man love you forever or how the wife of this asshole minister spend her time at home and such. won't make me start collecting women's magazines but enough to lessen my anxiety anticipating the coming pain and even more painful amount of money i had to part for the effort. and i remember this one before and after article. for before it shows a picture of a beautiful , slightly homely and innocent looking young girl . and then they start doing her up. it shows a series of 'improvement' steps from what i think they term as 'the facial' right up to dolling her up in proper costumes. and walla! they then show the masterpiece. her 'after' picture . she now looks like a fucking prostitute in a kind of dolce & gabanna costume went riot. God! women are so stupid! give me the innocent village girl anytime instead of this fucked up madness.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

 

love hate relationship with books and authors...


i've often wandered why i like books and writings by authors that i know i won't like to be friends with. these writers i find distasteful in some ways and not people that i would even want to meet or be associated with in any way. but i can read all their books no matter what they write on.


and today while going to the bathroom as usual i picked up a book at random from my library which has now spread into my bedroom . the book is (again) orhan pamuk's other colors and the first page i flipped open turned out to be chapter 52 titled Andre Gide. here mr pamuk mentioned gide's visit to istanbul in 1914 and the experience of the visit found it's way into his famous diary which mr pamuk described it as to contain some derisive and angry comments on turkey.


First Gide describes meeting a Young Turk on the train to Istanbul. This pasha's son had been studying art in Laussane for six months and now returning to Istanbul with Zola's popular novel Nana tucked under his arm; finding him superficial and pretentious, Gide turns him into a figure of fun.


well, i can understand Gide's feelings perfectly. exactly how i feel about the wogs in kuala lumpur...except that it's not that simple. looking at my library content and what i read and like i'm beginning to think that i too think and behave like that most destestable and pititful creature the wog. oh how complicated life is!


and sometimes i wonder why i collect all these books the authors of which i have no interest whatsoever to meet or make friends with even if they are still alive and if i have the opportunity. but a sentence mr pamuk wrote in chapter 52 on Andre Gide rings true...


We admire writers for their words, their values, and their literary prowess, not because they approve of us, our country,or the culture in which we live.


this explains somewhat the books that i like but the authors of which i may even hate...



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