Intermission: Boron (World's Most Boring Man) Reflects

I just swallowed a painkiller I got earlier this year. Mild headache.

Yeah, so earlier this year, I called a doctor friend cause I was having headaches. He told me, "Get your ass to the hospital NOW."

I was on three types of blood-thinners - Warfarin (an anti-coagulant), Aspirin (anti-platelets) and Plavix (some sort of vein softener) - and the risk with any headache is a fucking brain hemorrhage. While on those three blood-thinners, dengue would have been a death sentence.

So I went and got my head CT-Scanned. Fortunately, no hemorrhaging.

I was on three types of blood-thinners because after the heart attack, the MRI discovered a blood clot floating in my heart. If it travelled to my brain, I would have had a a stroke and died, or worse.

I am no longer on Warfarin or Plavix. Warfarin is of course the more serious shit drug.

Today I also swam 600m, which is 100m more than my usual 500m. I feel good, but I am constantly reminded of my weakened heart because it doesn't feel normal anymore. This is the new normal - this constant straining in my chest and a soreness that would never ever go away.

What I had was a major heart attack. I was lucky to survive it and doing all I can to improve my quality of life. It's a continuous thing that I will have to choose to do all my life.

I'm pretty good at the gym. I could do my one-hour cardio and 200 crunches no problem.

What I'm still training is my temper. I have never noticed how much I get angry at people and how much I bottle that up inside. You see, people lie. I take each and every lie as an insult to my intelligence.

They constantly try to manipulate others, myself included. Motivation for their actions include laziness, greed or just a sadistic desire to feel superior. It's usually that last one.

I have learned, in the course of one year, to not comment or reveal that I know what they're doing. It is so fucking hard because I have one dangerous vice - monologuing.

I like to expose people's little schemes and scams. I like people to know that I know. That I have always known. This is my ego, of course. So the training for this year of 2015 was to shut up about it.

I would give myself a 90% score.

Korang Semua Bodoh, Aku Sorang Pandai

Aku diberikan sedikit kerja sampingan dalam Bahasa Malaysia, jadi aku nak berlatih kejap kemahiran Bahasa Malaysia aku dengan menulis artikel yang bosan.

Aku agak kecewa dengan kegagalan dan kesunyian Pembangkang dalam hal menangani sokongan pengundi luar bandar kepada Barisan Nasional (BN). Walaupun undi popular (53.47%) sudah berpaut pada pembangkang, mereka gagal menawan Dewan Rakyat pada Pilihanraya Umum (PRU) lepas (2013).

Kalau aku Pembangkang, aku akan teruskan apa-apa usaha aku di bandar dan kemudian cuba menawan ketumbukan BN yang sebenar - kawasan luar bandar.

Aku asalnya mahu memberikan analisis objektif perihal strategi pilihanraya tetapi setelah meneliti nombor dan fakta, aku dapati kepercayaan dan telahan aku pun selama ini salah. Jadi aku berikan analisis kualitatif yang subjektif yang sebenarnya samalah seperti melancap di tepi jalan sambil menjerit-jerit.

Kalau diikutkan Twitter, memang Pembangkang dah menang lama dah. Tetapi, Twitter dan semua media sosial bukan penanda yang tepat, malah mengelirukan dan berat sebelah dalam mengambilkira sentimen keseluruhan negara ini.

Kalau hal atau isu berkaitan KL atau pusat-pusat bandar, sememangnya media sosial boleh dipercayai sebab kebanyakan pengguna Internet ada di bandar. Kalau dilihat orang luar bandar, walaupun ramai memliki telefon pintar, tetapi tidak semua memiliki data plan. Kalau ada pun data plan atau kemampuan capain Internet, berapa ramai yang secara aktif menyertai perbincangan kacau-bilau di media sosial?

Jadi penumpuan sumber dan masa Pembangkang pada keulungan mereka di media sosial bagi aku agak dangkal sebab mereka menang di media sosial sejak PRU ke-12 dan ke-13 tetapi nyata kemenangan di media sosial dan kebodohan BN sendiri di medan ini tidak akan menjamin kemenangan di PRU.

Kita balik ke isu akar - kenapa pengundi luar bandar mahu mengundi Pembangkang? Pembangkang tidak pernah memberikan apa-apa sebab yang kukuh untuk pengundi luar bandar mengundi mereka, kecuali Parti Agama Islam Se-Malaysia (PAIS-M) yang menjanjikan syurga.

DAP menerusi Lim Kit Siang menjanjikan penyokong mereka bahawa sekiranya mereka berkuasa, maka kakitangan awam akan 'diselaraskan'. Ini membawa ancaman kehilangan pekerjaan untuk ramai orang, terutamanya mereka yang berasal dari luar bandar atau orang luar bandar yang bergantung pada ahli keluarga yang menjadi penjawat awam.

Apakah janji PKR kepada pengundi luar bandar? Bahawa Anwar akan dibebaskan? Pengundi luar bandar pedulittaik pasal Anwar, kebanyakannya.

Isu-isu luar bandar lebih 'humble' dan realistik daripada idealisme melancap yang laku di bandar-bandar.

Persoalan orang luar bandar, sejak dahulu lagi - bolehkah mereka makan hari ini? Kalau ada ahli politik datang, apa yang mereka dapat?

Bukan semua orang kampung bodoh, sepertimana tak semua orang bandar pandai atau stylish. Ramai je orang bandar bodoh lepas tu pakai mekap untuk pergi parti mabuk tengah malam buta pada waktu tengahari terik, pastu cair macam pondan menangis sebab kalah Ratu Jambo.

Orang luar bandar juga tahu pasal delayed gratification - bersabar untuk kepentingan masa depan. tetapi, apa janji Pembangkang pada mereka? Yang ada hanya acah-acah cool dan ancaman neraka atau hilang kerja.

Kalau Pembangkang ni ikhlas dan bukan dianggotai mereka yang poyo, diorang boleh je sampaikan mesej kepada pengundi luar bandar.

Aku rasa semua ahli Pembangkang yang meroyan kononnya mereka tiada saluran atau disekat daripada berjumpa pengundi luar bandar hanya pukimak pemalas yang bodoh dan tak berguna. Baik ko pergi merangkak balik masuk dalam rahim mak kau sebab kau tak wajar dilahirkan.

Kau ada saluran yang paling hebat - mengumpat atau dalam istilah orang kampungnya, 'word of mouth'.

Katakan Pembangkang memutuskan bersetuju dengan beberapa janji manis untuk pengundi luar bandar dan kemudian muatnaik ke satu website. Website ini bukan untuk majoriti pengundi luar bandar, tetapi untuk penyokong mereka di bandar. Kemudian, rayu dan pujuk pengundi bandar yang menyokong mereka untuk membawa mesej-mesej ini kepada pengundi luar bandar.

Kebanjiran orang bandar yang menjadi boneka propaganda ini akan mewujudkan fenomena 'gerakan akar-umbi' yang melanda seperti tsunami pendakwah Mormon. Bayangkan jutaan insan bangang yang dipergunakan untuk membawa dogma dan iklan Pembangkang kepada kawasan-kawasan luar bandar.

Dengan 5-6 juta pengundi baru, taktik mudah ini sahaja sudah mampu, ikut tekaan aku, memenangi 3 juta undi ekstra, lantas memenangi Dewan Rakyat dan mengalahkan BN.

Namun, tak ada nampak pun Pembangkang buat. Pasal apa? Pasal diorang lebih teruk dari bodoh - diorang pemalas. Seteruk-teruk Najib pun, dia rajin. Tak kisahlah kau nak cakap dia rajin menipu ke 1Rajin ke, whatever ke, tapi BN memang tak pernah mengalah cuba dapatkan sokongan orang.

Selagi Pembangkang pemalas dan bodoh, selagi tu takkan ada peluang untuk mereka mengalahkan BN.

Kalau BN kalah PRU ke-14 ini, ia bukan kemenangan Pembangkang, tetapi kekalahan BN sendiri yang tertembak kote masa simpan senapang patah. Oh dan pasal pengundi baru tetiba je nak undi Pembangkang.

Dalam erti kata lain, korang semua bodoh dan aku sorang pandai. Hidup aku! Hidup aku! Hidup aku!

Star Wars, Max Landis and the Thought-Police

So I took my sister and brother-in-law to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens last night. They didn't like it as much as I do. My sister said it was "good, not great. Why are the reviews so awesome?" and my brother-in-law was shaking throughout the movie because he was halfway to a fever and the air-conditioning was turned up to Hoth.

So I went home and killed myself.

I took a shotgun and put to my brain and pulled the trigger. I'm writing right now, covered in blood, brain matter and tears because some people didn't agree with my thoughts on a movie.

Which brings us to Max Landis. Landis went to see Star Wars: TFA and then wrote some snarky comments about the movie, saying the lead character Rey is a Mary Sue because she is good at everything. I suspect he hoped this would condemn TFA to be dismissed as a fanfic, and because of his views, no one would do reboots or remakes or dare to work on any franchise whatsoever from here until the end of time, preferring instead to work on original movies like his failed (at the box-office) American Ultra movie. This is a solid and laudable intention, if not sneaky - if true.

I'm sure it's not true and I'm just blowing smoke up my own ass.

First of all,  from what I gather, a Mary Sue is a character inserted by an author/creator into an existing world that represents the author/creator and beats everyone at everything.

An example would be Wesley Crusher in Star Trek, though he is more of a Gary Stu due to him having a dick, probably. Wesley Crusher is good at everything, smarter than everyone and is an insufferable annoyance. 'Wesley' is series creator's Gene Roddenberry's middle name and he out-thought, out-scienced yet sadly did not outlast the other characters because fans caught on to it and booed him mercilessly or something.

Wesley Crusher grew up to become Wil Wheaton and God help us all. God help us all.

Is JJ Abram's middle name Rey? If Daisy Ridley's character was named Jacob, then maybe yeah. Does Rey have a dick we didn't see in TFA? Does Abrams secretly have a fetish to go into junkyards and scavenge for spare parts he would take to Simon Pegg who would then give him food? Is this some kind of sex thing Abrams does? Then maybe Rey IS a Mary Sue!

I agree with her beating everyone at everything, but so did Luke Skywalker. In fact, Rey is Luke, without the dick.

A farmboy suddenly becoming the best pilot in the Rebel Alliance with absolutely no training whatsoever? I see your farmboy with a scavanger, and raise you a sword-fighting Jedi.

I totally disagree with the Mary Sue insult thrown by Landis. Most of his other points about TFA sucking is okay and I agree with a lot of the flaws. Except for Amri Rohayat's understanding of Starkiller Base.

Amri wrote that if Starkiller sucked a star, then the whole solar system is dead. SO why shoot at planets? Well, the sun they sucked is in another solar system and they wanted to shoot at another solar system. Across the galaxy or some shit.

Starkiller Base as a concept is great if not for the previous existence of the Death Stars. I mean, Starkiller is a sort of (not really) Dyson Sphere, created by a Type II Civilisation. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you're not nerdy enough so fuck you.

There are tons of cheesy moments in TFA. Tons of things that don't make sense, either scientifically or plot-wise. But Star Wars was built on vague green muppets with dubious grammar and laser swords and space fighters with wings shaped like it was drawn by a 4-year-old.

TFA is not a perfect film, but Abrams only needed to do one thing - not fuck up. And he didn't. If you loved any of the Original Trilogy films, you'd probably love this one. If you want a cerebral character study, or a scathing indictment of how society has oppressed the voices of minorities to further their corporate greed, watch something else. In fact, Mad Max is a far better action movie than TFA. So go see that.

Anyway, so Max Landis, perhaps not content with the few rogue trolls here and there on Twitter, decided to make a series of videos on YouTube lambasting TFA.

So he began to get what he presumably wanted most - attention.

Guillermo Del Toro said that the whole Mary Sue thing is aid by killjoys. Landis jumped at that but GDT moved on to a million other things.

For a while, Landis was happy, it seems, from his tweets.

Unfortunately, what began as a triumph for him soon descended into something uglier. He picked fights, and then trolls started to attack him, and egged him and others to fight each other.

Landis was branded a sexist and anti-feminist because Rey is being lauded as a bad-ass female action hero.

Then Lexi Alexander started insinuating some stuff about someone, probably Landis, and then blocked him on Twitter. Landis tried to contact her but to no avail.

So, in response, Landis unwisely took it further. He made a video asking to talk to Alexander and asked people to forward the video to her.

Landis has about 50K Twitter followers, so Alexander probably get a few hundred people forwarding the link to her. Alexander flipped and started going full on feminist.

She said something like, "No one is entitled to a relationship with anyone else" and blablabla and harassment this and no means no and this is bullying and stuff.

Landis was caught in an unenviable position. He is an American, a Millennial, being called out for being a sexist asshole or something. American Millennials currently don't know how to respond to that effectively.

I'm an Asian who never set foot outside of Southeast Asia. If anyone were to call me a sexist asshole, I could always say, "You're not respecting the nuances of my archaic culture, brooo!". Even if that's total bullshit, accusers of non-liberal thinking often are scared of being branded as bigots themselves.

I don't think Landis is sexist, though he might be an asshole. I think he was unwise in pursuing Alexander's or anyone's approval. He also attacked Rey from TFA as a Mary Sue.

What I do know is, his lead character in American Ultra is a Mary Sue.

The lead character Mike Howell is a stoner. Max Landis, who wrote the movie (if I didn't state this already somewhere up there) likes to talk about doing drugs, sometimes.

Mike Howell is the best at everything. He has the best girlfriend, he is the best sleeper agent who defeated everyone, and he is also the most morally innocent. Howell is just a guy whom you can't blame for all the shitty decisions and mess he's made because he's just an innocent - he meant to do the right thing.

I find Howell to be the ultimate Mary Sue in recent times.

Am I right? Does anyone agree with me? I don't give a fuck. I'm better than everyone else.

So I wanted to talk about how the Thought-Police has come out of the woodwork in recent years as something other. They are dressed in different garb or uniforms, but their function remains the same: policing your thoughts.

If you like or hate a certain piece of art or pop culture, or think of things in a different way, and you honestly do, people like Landis or Alexander or me or any of the feminists, trolls, SJWs, dipshits and any of the fuckheads have no power over you to think otherwise.

They can brand you with anything - sexist, racist, whatever - but you alone know the truth and if you are in line with the truth, fuck everything else. You and everyone else can't change the truth anyway.

Wankoholic

People love Iron Man now, the way he's depicted in the current MCU. Talking about the movies, man. But the man I knew as a kid, is now a vastly overpowered superhero who cannot lose. He's basically a more colourful Batman. The fun Batman. Nothing wrong with that, except for one thing - Iron Man and Batman today represents a lot of people's belief that they could do anything and be great if they had the right tools. If they have enough money.

And they are losers because they don't. No point in improving yourself or your skills. Just make more money and buy your success.

The comics and cartoons went a long way and took a lot of trouble telling stories about the person behind the powers, abilities and the money. Professional photographers like Ken Rockwell bought a five dollar camera (fixed focus, no zoom) and took a photo that replaced one of Ansell Adams' pictures in the Smithsonian to prove a point. That it's the skills behind the tools that matter.

What we have nowadays is potentially gearheads' wet dreams and the power fantasy of capitalists. With enough money, anyone can win. Tony Stark? Bruce Wayne? Najib Razak?

One of my favourite episodes of the '90s Spider-Man animated series was about Mysterio causing absolute havoc with just his lame superpower of looking like other people. He worked his way up from the airport security to Nick Fucking Fury himself and almost succeeded except for one stupid mistake.

That's the kind of stories I like - anyone, hero or villain using whatever small ability or advantage they have and using the shit out of it.

For example, Hawkeye is pretty lame. He's got super accuracy or some shit. In one Ultimates comic book, he was captured and tortured. So he used the only weapon he had available - his fucking fingernails. Killed a few people and got free. Spoilers, bitch.

We don't have Stark's or Wayne's money. Not even Najib's access to cash. But even with what little we have, and I'm not talking about cash, we should get creative on what we can do and ultimately achieve.

This is the credo I have followed all my life. I have limited abilities. I'm primarily a pattern-recogniser, so I used that to copy writing and thinking styles. This ability was used by Neil Gaiman and members of the Uchiha clan.

The more intelligent people I encounter, the more I can understand new ways of thinking. Whether they are useful or not remains to be seen. This is why idiots waste my time.

Updates on Boron - World's Most Boring Man

I got home from a DnD session (yep. that's Dungeons and Dragons, bitches) tonight, I took a two hour nap and now finding it difficult to go to sleep again. So, a quick update.

As we wind down 2015, I am still reeling from the effects of the heart attack I got in 2014. I lost a lot after the heart attack, and not just my weight. I had some prospects on some projects I had to let go. It meant a massive setback in my projected earnings. I was not going to earn the money I thought I would.

I believed, naively, before the heart attack, that I could do some stuff for a few years and then  retire. I lost that with my illness as I couldn't work like that anymore. I used to be able to grit my teeth and work till 5am, then wake up at 7am, ready for the next day of hard work.

That's probably one of the main reasons my heart gave out. That, and the smoking and the stress.

Nowadays, I find myself losing energy quickly. I feel tired after just a few hours of work and despite my exercise routines, I think I'm getting more lethargic.

Some people STILL try to parasite off me, which is a clear indication that they would simply laugh it off in smoky rooms as I died doing stuff for them, if they could get away with it.

Oh well. Fuck them.

I was lucky to have some people watching out for me and sent me real help and offered me real opportunities. The things I do today and in the future will be enough to satiate my needs. Though my days of Great Expectations are over, I am confident I can make ends meet and pay off my own debts as long as others don't screw me over.

I started doing things I want to do. I started a comics publishing company called Maple Comics. It is sustainable yet not profitable (we're not making money but we're not losing money either) and I'll continue doing it as long as it's fun. My day job at a newspaper is okay, for now.

I started playing DnD with some nerds and it has become the highlight of certain weeks. Doesn't require a lot of money and I am happy to be a Level 5 Bard who doesn't sing so much these days.

There is far less music in my life nowadays, but I don't mind the silence nor the peace that comes with it.