Moments of Whoa.

Reality bites, they say. But compared to surreality, it but nibbles. Gums, even. Like an old dog sans teeth, gnawing bone.

Does anyone else get these, I wonder. What I've come to call Surreality Attacks.

They really are just moments of Whoa. Nothing in particular triggers it. Or, if you insist on the two-facedness of it all, everything triggers it.

You could just be walking, walking, walking and...

Whoa.

Everything becomes a little out of focus, a little less tangible. As the term suggests, it's an odd, dreamlike state. You're just a...consciousness. Sure, you're moving. And you're still in control. Think raise arm, and arm raises. Keep walking, and you do.

If only that applied to penises. But I suppose that's another matter altogether.

But, yes. There you are. Nothing around you has changed, yet at the same time, it all has. You're all drifty and floaty and there's a little part of you screaming that running into the path of speeding car to see what happens is not a good idea. Really.

People you pass and passing you become much more interesting. Instead of only focusing on the ones with cute buttox, you start to wonder, in wonder, about them. These are all...also minds. Which are the wolves and which, the sheep? What would it feel like to touch a mind? Reach...

Then you stop yourself inches from a pretty girl's bosom. Because the male mind has...well, a mind of its own.

It's at the same time rapture, yet profound melancholy. A contemplative state hard to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it.

It shares qualities with anal sex like that, I suppose.



That's going to earn me a few hits. One is amused at the visitors garnered off the title of last entry alone.

You've got to wonder WTF they're thinking. All sorts of keywords out there to get them what they want: girl, hot, pussy, cock, teen, orgy, gangbang, cunt, fuck, threesome, asian, latina, whore...

Um. Purely an academic proposal, that is.

But yes, any of those into Google, or the insta-porn that Google Image Search is. Done.

What do they do instead? Go on some weird search engine and type, "intercourse". Then they get confronted by Matrix Goat. What sia.


Hey, I suppose if they can get off on that, it's a moment of Whoa in itself.

Casual intercourse.

Nothing like what you're thinking, you salacious creature, you.

I think I've figured out what's wrong. In wanting each entry to be a full fledged article on its own, I turn it into work. And no one likes work. It's being drilled and drilled into me that good copy is read and re-read, written and re-written, at work.

But it's slowly dawning upon me that it needs to be done only when one has criteria to satisfy. It's great being an Editor, no matter where you are. You get to tell everyone to piss off, with their writing and your own writing has automatic sanction.

It's not really the reason why I started this thing, though. Sure, I want to become a better writer, but by my own standards. Which are strange and lurid and obscure and Mostly Harmless.

Besides, no one reads the shit, anyway. Not you, ma'am. I appreciate every bit of you. Well, except the bits I am by default exempted from appreciating. But we have an understanding, I believe.

Those of you who love your job and enjoy every bit of it, don't tell me about it. Contrary to popular belief, I am a violent person. So fuck you, Jason Han.

In a good way. You lucky bastard, you.

But, yes. Music.

Smooth change of subjects there, I know.

I have some appreciation of music. Not in the way that tends to be, these days. People tend to latch on to some imaginary classification of music and declare all other people to be baby-eating, grandma-raping neo-nazis.

Three hypenated word in quick succession. Deal with that, weak mortal brain.

Sorry, bit drunk.

You have an inkling of what I'm talking about, though. Personally, I've got a colleague who's -into- Placebo, and that sort of music. Where, you know, the lead singer puts on make-up and shit and sings in octaves higher than the norm and it's all so cool.

Bit revealing, when the person didn't know what the word Placebo meant in the first place.

"Something to do with drugs, right?"

Because we all know drugs are so cool.

I'm more, eclectic, shall we say. Hip-hop, rock, trance, opera - it's all the same to me. If I like, I like. Have got a better appreciation of trance lately, walking to work with music. Trance is the sort of thing you can lose yourself in, no matter what state you're in. And it's got a nasty beat to keep pace with.

No, really nasty. Try it sometime. Dancing to it is great, but walking. Woo.

Not that it's improved my dancing. Still dance like epileptic monkey.


This entry was brought to your courtesy of Sarah Brightman playing while I was taking a dump. She is painfully brilliant, vocally. The notes she can hit, gods.

Inevitably, as a warm blooded male, the thought comes to mind as to what she sounds like in bed.



"Oh yes...yes...

YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!"


"...Sarah darling, don't get me wrong. I love you. But that's the seventh set of really expensive crystalware disintegrated, this week. I think we need to talk."



Take that, ye demons of professional standards.

Remember, remember.

No, no, nothing to do with what has become the catchphrase of highbrow art.

Besides, it's nowhere near November. And while we could work on something for the month, it just wouldn't be the same, would it?

"Hey, hey, look it's May."

Nothing else really lends itself to that sort of WAH SO PRO feeling, hmmm?

"Keep in tune, it's bloody June"

"What's up girl, it's twenty-fifth April."

Hmmm. This might work.

"Unfurl your member, for sexual September."

No? Artless cretins.


But yes, where did the time go. Do excuse me, two people and small yappy-type dog. Been busy and looks like will be for a while yet. Do not, however, confuse it with a terribly exciting life. Some people look forward to planned exotic destinations and beautiful women. And there's me going, "Come on, gotta get home and play Chrono Trigger".

As far as highlights go, we met a primary school classmate, unseen for a little over ten years, a couple weeks back. She's doing well, her teeth are clean, eyes bright and her coat has a nice glossy shine.

Something seems amiss. Ah yes, species.

She really is doing well, though. And one begins to understand the allure in meeting people, once dismissably familiar and now something halfway between old friend and new acquaintance that one has to rediscover.

The instrumental voice with its unique lilt. The same contours of the face, subtly different. I get there and prove that I am retarded with directions before sitting down with her, getting the beer she'd ordered for me and talking about dead people.

...hey, if you think that was sudden, you need to hear how she did it.

Out of nowhere it cometh. "You do know Mrs Lim killed herself?"

I explain carefully to her that, having just met for the first time in over ten years, she was supposed to start with the little details and build up to things like those. And I thought I was whacked.

People die. Have been doing it, last time I checked. I've been fortunate up to this stage of my rent-a-life to not have to deal with people I care for, offing it. Mrs Lim, brought to sudden sharp focus in over a decade, was our primary school form teacher. If I recall, she also taught us English and Science. I've always got along with the English teachers and was in the Science Club of yore. She was part of my little world.

"You do know Mrs Lim killed herself?"

I couldn't feel a sense of loss, as much as I wanted to. It'd just been too long. She was a lovely teacher, with a nasal, scratchy voice that was unique in being not at all annoying. Those were different times. Very different.

Times of grass and grasshoppers and catching fish in the drains
Times of one-dollar bowls of food, in a place still called a tuckshop
Times when the ground was so much closer and you smelled the earth when it rained

And just so much, so much more, because everything was new and wonderful and you didn't have to pretend to be anyone else other than a small fat kid. If you didn't like someone, you could just not friend them. The world was just yay big and anything else beyond that was for'in lands. You could wear a two-dollar Ninja Turtle T-shirt and be the envy of your friends.

Life's different when you grow. And I'm not sure all, or any of it is better.


We got to how Mrs Lim had killed herself just before another old mate arrived. She was mentally distressed, having been assigned just about the worst class around. Then she got a form of cancer and was wheelchair-bound. At this time, my own teenage delinquentism didn't help. She had to write an appraisal of me, in all likelihood the feather that tipped the scales in my favour. Shortly after, she flung herself off a balcony.

I was...affected. Little fragments of a long-forgotten, knee-high world came to mind over the night. Even the ex-classmate's cute boyfriend was no great distraction.

Once again, I can't pretend to be morose about it. The distance is just too great. But I do wish I could have spoken to her before that happened. Claiming absolute reverence and relevance, my question was how she'd flung herself off of anything, in a wheelchair.

Such a fragile thing, consciousness. Good bye, Mrs Lim.

I remember you now and I think I will continue to.