Sunday, November 28, 2004
Disney just isn't the way it used to be.
which is weird because i grew up with hand-drawn cartoon animations. the kind of animation you see in a book when a cartoonist flips the pages one by one in a flurry and you see Mickey come to life within those booklets containing millions of painstakingly hand crafted DIY illustrations.
Colourful personalities, tinged with exaggerated comedic influences. Caricature. fool's paradise, a Visual Feast. a cartoonist's fantastic outlandish imagination, those heartstirring songs, innocent drama and heartwarming storylines, that sense of childlike wonder, no disillusion, just hope and that simple faith in humanity, in love and compassion. these traditional virtues of Disney that we all know of, blended in with the artist's odd notions of fantasy and a pure plain delight in music and laughter.
not that their virtually gone. but you forget the Disney feature animation department that used to boast about 1000 staff. replace them all with CGI. is there anyone who actually picks up a paintbrush or a sharpened lead pencil nowadays? a few blank pieces of paper, a spontaneous artesian pen, a desk, and you can work magic in Disney. but that was old school, now they shove you into box size cubicles armed with a mouse and a computer to work your 3D. a computerized The Little Mermaid anyone?
give me meticulously hand drawn frames and flip books anyday. i don't care for technology and rising labour costs. i shall treasure the animator's art. vivid colours splashed on paper, with beautiful characters that sing, dance, talk and emote on film, that twenty-fourth of a second, preserved on paper, outlined and frozen expressively; forever, in that moment of action.
i don't know about you but i grew up with animations like these. surely you've shared a Disney dream in that once adolescent age of yours. they may seem entertaining trifles to us, but they are living beings to the animators. it's different to have to manipulate an image on a computer, circumscribed by the aberrant wheeling of the mouse and digital pixels and measured 3D lines across the screen. you simply lose the magic, the enchantment of inspiration you capture with primitive tools. to make it so architectonic, so structural, is to lose that traditional Disney magic, that magic you capture on paper as soon as inspiration opens its floodgates. there is no immediacy, no rush of spontaneous joy when impulses and creativity hits; you reach for a pen and paper, and what do you find? an impersonal clinical carefully engineered computer which restricts ur genius and flair.
so this era has come to an end. i re-watch old disney movies everytime exams come to an end. it's an old sentimental habit of mine. be it their exquisite animations or dazzling colours, children like me learnt lessons from cartoons such as these years ago. i'd love to tell my kids one day how Bambi endeared himself to me watching him grow from pre pubescent days to tragedy and adulthood, or how Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast taught me that Love isn't just all about appearances, the teenage angst of Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the awe inspiring Simba frm The Lion King or how Pocahontas showed me that love doesn't always end with a forever ever after. but my kids will probably counter my top of the lists with movies of their own a la "The Incredibles" or Finding Nemo. not that i object, but i always felt that Disney was soul-less without their charming songs. who could forget the iconic Hakuna Matata, or Beauty and the Beast's melting classic Tale As Old As Time?
to be an animator, is to be a bringer of life, to deify them, enrich with songs and leave a permanent legacy. but where's my fantasy, the triumph of eternal truths and the whimsical expression of hope and love now? where's my surreal illusion of life? i want my unbridled invention of a cartoonist, not the sterile graphics of a computer designer. but they don't make films like that anymore. and it is a poignant loss. i have a wonderful past to look back on, through my path unwinding; My Disney Magic. But would the future generations ever comprehend the gentle ineffaceable touch Disney left on us old school nostalgic dopes?
so farewell my luminous effulgent lovely, you always managed to touch my heart with your endearing characters and soulful songs; you always managed to look resplendent in every way. Joyce Lim unzipped at 2:29 PM with 6 comments
Saturday, November 27, 2004
oh well.. my whole life, attenuating towards this end. now what? i feel suddenly at a loss. it's disparaging to know your thrown into another inward-development phase without a clue where to begin. what should i do? teach lit and english in sec schs? become a telemarketer, or work at some recruitment agency where i heard they pay you at least $1200. i'm all about the moolah, and i love talking by the way. hah, so i like to get a job tt allows me to open my orifice as often as possible. but i'll prob pick the job tt pays the most and moonlight as a tuition teacher.. if ANY kid wants me to teach hah. i can't teach science nor econs. english, lit, history, sec sch maths are my best safest bets. please leave a comment if you'd like tuition from me, i promise to be gentle.
now excuse me if i sound too materialistic. i just want good money to roll in. so i can lavish on my parents for pretty makeovers and give my grandma a diamond ring. they never like to spend their own money, i shall do that on their behalf. and buy a stellarfellar camera to quench my narcisstic pleasures. my grandma's pretty upset cos my greatgrandma is withering away in a hospital. i shall resolve to make her happy and buy her stuff she likes once i get my first pay.
i like my zen boy. i have dozens of playlists for every circumstance, or hour of the day. say it starts raining, and i'm curled up at home in my cozy bed, or beside the window in a sofa, i have the exact songs to accompany this romantic rustic atmosphere. i named the playlist "fresh out of laundry". it does give a rather homey refreshing feel doesn't it? like lavendar smells and pristine white sheets, like moonlight kisses and city lights-nights in motion.
or maybe i'm at the beach, and i think to myself, how cool it would be to be riding and slashing through the waves. my playlist spells "TEQUILA" and i play songs by longbeach, the ventures, the champs, sublime for a little surfer tribal beach feel.
i have this favourite song though. by Bap Kennedy. perfectly calming and utterly bathetic. perfect for nights when i'm walking home alone.
i can feel my heart
and it's fit to burst
i try to clean it up
but i just get worse
wish i could fall
on a night like this
it's times like these i wish i could share my heart's tunes with someone else.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 7:46 PM with 0 comments
Monday, November 22, 2004
presenting to you the online photo collage of Russ acting as (himself)
"well looky here, xmas presents the same golden colour as me!"
"hey er.. who shut off the lights?"
"damnit! this bloody thing won't fall off"
"ahhh much better"
"not in the mood.."
"did you just say food?!?!?"
"damnit woman! where where!!"
"you are being hypnotised by my muzzel, give me the food.. give meeee thy foooood..."
"ur teasing me again right. u do this all the time! u always do this to poor me!"
"i knew it.. ur such a bitch"
"hmpfh.. GO.AWAY."
"but i still lub chu.."
Joyce Lim unzipped at 6:14 PM with 7 comments
Sunday, November 21, 2004
soon.
21 more hours to the happiest day of my life. now won't you countdown with me :)
Joyce Lim unzipped at 8:00 PM with 1 comments
exam hall crazy invigilator:
"young man! wat do you think you are doing! let me guess. you are from the arts stream (reply: no, science). oh science. i see. shame on you."
"hello young lady it's no time to girl friend boyfriend now!"
"now can you please raise your hand if you see that your friend has not returned yet... so that we can locate that poor.. missing... child."
now these are classic..
"please take away all your belongings.. including.. your stationery.. and writing material.. and ... YUCKSS!! all your tissue paper!!"
"please pass up all your un-used paper! it's not that we dont trust you. its just that MOE instructed us not to trust ourselves to trust you"
A levels are fun eh
Joyce Lim unzipped at 1:51 AM with 0 comments
Saturday, November 20, 2004
not good at all.
but nevermind. i shall attempt to lay the "first" claim on other adonis-es..
top of my list: Colin Farrell
then Jude Law with his piercing green eyes
next comes Johnny Depp. hail mascara and eyeliner!
then Ethan Hawke. mind you.. i loved him way back before Gattaca. and before he divorced Uma. OH and BEFORE he married Uma!
now introducing Viggo Mortensen
and this guy who acted as Eomer in LOTR
oh and the other one who acted as Faramir.
now i know the top 4 have achieved mindblowing slit your wrists drown urself in expensive drugs and chainsmoking fame but i would like to say that i have a keen eye at picking out expensive talent.
so there. i have laid my claims. come and worship at their feet if you must but remember that i was the FIRST to fall.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 10:43 PM with 0 comments
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
some government branch advertisement. something about encouraging you to get THAT ASS off THAT CHAIR and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT LIFE.. THAT life which has no job.
so.. anyway.. this guy faces the camera and tells you his life story. they do that all the time these advertisements. ever since that Dove Shampoo ad where they pluck unsuspecting victims off the street and pay them to tell lies.
so this guy.. he just got retrenched,(apparently), you never can trust these people on telly. so ya he grins and says
"when i found out i was going to get retrenched.. i thought to myself, what is going to happen to my job."
-_- my god. what is wrong with Singaporean Script writers nowadays?? honey, i knew right away what they were going to do to your job. give it to somebody else and then throw u in the rubbish bin.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 10:35 PM with 5 comments
Friday, November 12, 2004
poor girl, i thought to myself. she looked absolutely sorrowful sitting there all by herself in the pouring rain. i helped by praying that the rain would stop, but God felt like giving us all a bath. we're probably damn filthy anyway.
so that girl kept complaining on her hp to someone on the other end how she was caught in the rain and kept telling her friend to be patient and wait for her. then suddenly she waved for a bus and boarded it. i suspected she was going to drop at the next stop when the bus turned right so she could alight nearer to holland v and probably just make a dash for it in the fatal rainstorm.
oh i was so true. that girl was damn stupid la. act seh only, tried to run across the road in the pouring rain but she barely made 10 feet before she realised one of her slippers was left on the road. she probably wanted to just die right there and then. see la! the consequences of acting seh. try to beat an oncoming car;worse! when u try to beat an oncoming car on a slippery wet tarmac road with nothing but prone to slipping off slippers. there's a reason why we call them slippers you know. so ya she had to run back to the middle of the road, shot out one melting hand to stop the oncoming mercedes, put her slipper back on, and ran back across the road oblivious to dangerous traffic, to malicious stinging drops and even more unconscious of the billions of people who snickered at her folly.
she was miss cinderella; only her glass slipper wasn't made of glass; and of course without the prince. tsk tsk so paiseh mann, i'd be damn malu if i were her. the ENTIRE holland V inhabitants saw her embarrassing display and singgered among their group of friends while they were waiting for the rain to stop. sniggering at the one who tried to act seh and try to cross the road when it's raining.
stupid girl. rain is very lethal one ok. one drop and you could get scarred for life. look at those people crouching down in fear at bus stops and outside corridor shelters. next time just imitate them, next time just wait till the earth rotates 180 degrees for the rain to stop la. so simple!!
stupid me.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 9:31 PM with 6 comments
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
dear Shoes and me
trigger happy! and not forgetting our cameraWOman zheng zhihong :)
yes those were the days when i could still do math and still smile and still keep my hair funky all at the same multitasking time
P.S do leave a comment if the links on the right hand side are covered by the photos and don't work. some unintelligent computers have no ability at all and i have to do all the nitty gritty stuff like resizing photos.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 1:59 PM with 2 comments
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Nevermind.. i shall listen to cheery songs first in a silly futile attempt to raise my confidence level. i shall just listen to "Sunny Hours".. damn nice song btw, and think to myself.. if i can date complete assholes and bastards i can do anything. i can do math.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 10:00 AM with 5 comments
Sunday, November 07, 2004
just so you know, and to give me some form of catharsis, i'm here to rant about this scheming cunning wily lil' fox whose been parasiting at our cafe. his back in jail thank God but i think he deserves to be serving term for much longer.
so this blood sucking condemnable parasite has been working at the cafe since August. one caveat from me, and i told my mom the very first time i saw him too, he looks like a weasel so i told her to watch him. my parents apparently didn't need any more advice from me, they'd already been put on their guard from as early as the 1st week of his employment.
see he told lies. and as we all know, lies spin their own webs of deceit. their threads extend far and wide till one day, as i shall enlighten you later, one gets ensnared by one's own web of double-dealing. from subtle untruths like forgetting to write down a customer's order and claiming that MY MOM (the nerve of him!) owes that guy a treat to outright trickery like stealing a regular's handphone and ipod.
so anyway, that devious conniving mind of his decided to open up a cafe just next door to my mom's. see we wouldn't mind that actually if you were selling sushi, but he intended to sell exactly the same food all in a bid to, in his own words, "take away 75% of our business". you can say there's nothing wrong about setting up a cafe selling the exact same food just next door but surely there's something wrong when he steals our menus and cutlery eh? i believe in the world of business there must be some code of honour and business ethics despite talks about every man for himself. but anyway he even tried to entice our workers away with his poisonous tongue and.. how would you say.. tiao3 po4 li2 jian1 between my parents and the rest of the employees.
so anyway.. all this time my parents had no inkling of his designs on the vacant shop beside ours. they only knew that he told lies and stole customers' belongings from time to time. so yes.. one day he was too smart for his own good. called in and claimed he was sick and had an MC for two days. hello.. my parents aren't dumb when you keep calling in sick 3 consecutive mondays you know. my mom decided to call his house but no one answered the phone. my dad tried 2 hours later but still no one picked up. we decided to call cisco. you see, this wily fox is an inmate. my parents decided to take him in as a regular employee since his jail term is almost up as part of the yellow ribbon project. technically if your not at work you have to be home, and cisco tags your whereabouts by some electronic device and it's against the law if you break this house curfew. but he did, so well.. his back in jail now, he even called up another of my mom's employee and made all sorts of threats to us and to the cafe and the staff in general when he was being detained.
-_- wow i'm pissing my pants. so anyway, it's only after he broke the curfew, got thrown back in prison that the rest of the staff told my mom about the cafe he wanted to set up next to us and how he tried to lure them over and how he often threatened them and how he always tried to borrow money and the countless lies he told that even my parents didn't know of etc etc etc...
this horrible episode had an amusing ending when 2 nights ago, a couple queried my mom on why the boss isn't at the cafe today. my mom was baffled (her expression was hilariously classic), and the couple was equally shocked to realise my mom and my dad actually owns the place. you see.. dear ole wily weasel had been going round telling customers that he owns Jacob's cafe, and that my mom, my dad and everyone else were HIS workers.
my mom just replied rather coolly that she had just terminated the Boss' service.
haha.. nah.. she didn't say that.
but i feel really bad for my parents. and i wish i could give him a slap on their behalf, there are so many profanities i invented for pain infliction and cause of death specially for him.
i ask you la ok.. this kind of pple, how to pin on yellow ribbons and not discriminate against them Joyce Lim unzipped at 2:11 PM with 1 comments
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
"i'm very interested in politics" ben affleck says.
Rrriight. we have a saying here bennifer.. in CHINESE actually.
gui3 cai2 xiang1 xing4 ni3
it simply means kiss my godforsaken arse only cos the defecated matter inside would believe you.
i was ranting on and on to my dad about how these people should just shut up if they don't know anything. but my dad told me very matter of factly that the americans have every right to behave like this. they are after all still the superpower.
-_- and so they are. fine. i shall shut up.
Joyce Lim unzipped at 8:45 PM with 0 comments