I seriously need help.
written: 9:29 p.m. on Friday, May. 02, 2008

He has man boobs. I've suspected this for a while, considering his beer belly, and I've scrutinised the 235438637693 pictures of him I have in my hard drive to ascertain whether or not my suspicions were right (any excuse to look at more David is a good excuse in my book. As for why ascertaining whether or not he has man boobs qualifies as an excuse, don't ask me; ask the Cooktard that has completely taken over this girl called Yelen who used to be sensible and sane). He was always in black/grey/dark green/grey-green though so it was hard to tell...but with that red shirt? OHMYGAD SO OBVIOUS.

Man boobs = ew, gross. But you know what?

I STILL LOVE HIM AS MUCH AS BEFORE, IF NOT EVEN MORE.

Guys, I need psychiatric help. Seriously. Everything about him is adorable, even physical flaws like his beer belly and his man boobs that will turn me off faster than you can say "oh my god gross" in a real-life guy. (I mean, David is real, but he's not REAL real. If that makes sense.) I'm superficial and I want my boyfriends to look like supermodels, or at least to look like they're capable of being supermodels. Apart from his gorgeous, GQ-esque face, Cookie is not a supermodel; his entire body is more likely to end up being the "before" picture of a weight-loss programme than on the cover of GQ.

And look, he has no waist; he's like a tree trunk. BUT I STILL LOVE HIM.

He needs to show me a flaw NOW. I'm even quite sure that there's no way in hell someone with his level of intelligence and worldliness is capable of being Republican, so that rules out another potential flaw for me...but then again, like I said before, even if he WERE Republican and voted for Bush twice and almost volunteered for the Iraq War and thinks that the US should bomb the shit out of the Middle East, I'd still love him.

The man has no flaws. Can someone tell me that he cheated on his girlfriend with his best friend's girlfriend back in the day and that he impregnated some girl and totally didn't stick around to raise the kid? Because as it stands, David Cook can do no wrong in my eyes. He has freaking MAN BOOBS and I think that's the most adorable thing I've ever seen in the world.

Have I mentioned that I need help? I really need help.

Having said that though, I never, ever want to see him shirtless. The belly and the boobs are cute, but only if he keeps his shirt on (OMG I typed "skirt" HAHAHAH the thought of David in a skirt HAHAHAHAHA OMG I'M GONNA DIE); otherwise, I might need bleach to cleanse my eyes of the horror of seeing David without a shirt on. Ordinarily I'd be all, OMG YES PLEASE! But um, I went through a similar kind of horror with Joaquin Phoenix and his belly/man boobs when he was shirtless in Reservation Road and...yeah, just - no.

If he ever tones up his chest though, David can take off his shirt anytime he wants. And: David has boobs + I have no boobs = we complement each other.

Okay, I can't believe I just said that.

Please remind me never to google for reviews of Stereophonics' albums.

Rolling Stone rated Language. Sex. Violence. Other? 2/5, which leads me to conclude that they're on crack.

Guardian called the "brilliance" of Dakota a "fluke" and went on to say that Pull the Pin sucks without saying why it sucks and that also leads me to conclude that they're on crack as well.

Someone said that Stereophonics sounds like American rock. The hell? Have they listened to the kind of crap that's popular in American rock today? This leads me to conclude that the reviewer is on crack AND deaf.

I don't like admitting to the fact that I like a band who's pretty much critically-derided because it makes me look like I have bad taste in music...which cannot possibly be true. No one can argue against Chopin and Ravel, no one can argue against REM at their finest, and the fact that I like Stereophonics doesn't reflect poorly on my taste; on the contrary, it only shows that Stereophonics is underrated, and that ALL THE CRITICS ARE MORONS.

This is a review that adequately represents Language as an album:

Stereophonics is not a band known for its critical acclaim. Rolling Stone made reference to the band being 'derided as the dregs of Brit rock'; The Guardian described its music as 'soul-destroying Brit rock chug'. One suspects it is for these critics that frontman Kelly Jones wrote Mr. Writer, released in 2001 as part of their third album, Just Enough Education to Perform.

With the release of their fifth album, Language. Sex. Violence. Other?, the Mr. Writers of the world have finally lost their ammo against the three-member Welsh band. Not only is #1 single Dakota a hit with both fans and critics, the entire album is distinctly unStereophonics. Long-time fans probably couldn't decide what was more shocking: the fact that the critics have finally let up (see, for example, Guardian's review of the album which described the music as 'invigorating and fresh'), or the edgier, more mature, and more cohesive sound Stereophonics has created.

Because Language isn't merely a great Stereophonics record; it's a great modern rock record, period. From the seductively derisive opener Superman, to the dirty, sleazy Devil, right down to the pensively mellow Rewind, Jones and Co. have created an album of hooks after hooks, drenched in deliciously heavy guitar riffs and urgent, frenetic drumming. Doorman is a three-minute encapsulation of Jones' personal vendetta against a bouncer that wastes no time with useless preambles and gets straight into the throbbing heat of things, presenting a nice contrast between the fast-paced, angry shrieking of the verses with the slowed-down, deceptively calm chorus in which Jones murmurs menancingly, "All I wanna do/Is to make a mess out of you." Language is characterised and defined by the band's usage of loud, relentless heavy guitars, as showcased in the likes of Pedalpusher, Deadhead, and Brother.

But what stands out in this album isn't the band's newfound enthusiasm for hard rock. It is the experimental, dreamy and wistful Dakota that single-handedly proves that the critics were wrong. Dakota, with its 80s-ish electro edge and evocations of endlessly long, life-defining road trips, sticks out like a sore thumb alongside its loud, thundering counterparts, and doesn't quite fit in with its mellow, reflective companions (Feel, Lolita) either. But it is Dakota and everything that it represents that defines Language as an album and the musical territory that Stereophonics has arrived at and conquered: brave, new, modern, and wholly and boisterously and creatively relevant.

Okay, so I wrote that, and I admit, it's not as well-written as I remembered it to be. I'm embarrassed by the "one suspects that Mr Writer is written for the critics of the world" or whatever it was, because I recently found out that Mr Writer was written in response to this journalist who followed Phonics around for a month and then wrote an article about them in which he basically insulted Kelly and compared him to a monkey. How nice of him.

And um, "the Mr Writers of the world"? Oh my god, I was so drinking the Straits Times Kool-Aid! I'm actually really embarrassed now, because that entire piece read like something you'd possibly see in Life! and I've been very vocal about how I think the Straits Times is jam-packed with talentless hacks who cannot write a complete, grammatically-correct sentence to save their lives.

(Case in point: I was flipping through Wednesday's Life! to see if there was a review of the Phonics gig - there was, and the way it was written made me want to die in an entirely bad way - and I happened to chance upon a movie review of the new Fann Wong movie, whatever it is. The first two sentences - and I use this word loosely - caught my eye, because they read: "This is a great movie. For a drinking game." I'm sorry, but since when was "for a drinking game" a complete sentence? I was appalled that the horrible piece of "writing" actually made it past the editing room, because if I'd edited it, I would've sent it back to the half-arsed "writer" and asked her/him to go back to primary school and take some grammar lessons. "This is a great movie...for a drinking game." Or "This is a great movie - for a drinking game." I'd go with the former rather than the latter because the ellipsis, when employed here, creates a dramatic pause that the "writer" obviously needed in order to deliver his/her oh-so-snarky punchline about the "drinking game". For the record though, I've read that so many times on TWoP that it's ceased to even be 1% witty anymore. LAME.)

The only part I like is the part about Doorman and yeah, I think I described it quite well. The part about Dakota, though? It SO gave me away as a total Dakota fangirl. Talk about humping Dakota's freaking leg and wanting to get into bed with Kelly Jones. I mean, I do, on a theoretical level, but to make it a publicly-available fact in a music review that's supposed to be professional and objective? Not cool, Yelen. Not cool at all. Granted, objectivity is a myth, but at least try to mask it and create a veneer of objectivity, you know?

Anyway, I wrote that like, at the beginning of Year 3 when I wanted to do some writing and thought it'd be cool to join NUSSU's Hooked, until they massacred my 1408 movie review which was actually written with PROPER PARAGRAPHING and I decided that it was a complete waste of time. Sorry, but Singapore-styled journalism is bullshit and yes, I do honestly think that I'm too good of a writer for that kind of crap.

This is precisely the kind of arrogance that will stagnate me forever and ever, until the end of day. Die lah, like that how huh huh?

Needless to say, in a bid to fight for my right to write, I'm trying to tone down the arrogance and stop thinking so highly of myself. I'll come right out and admit that I think I write better than Straits Times journalists and Dan Brown (comparing myself to Dan Brown is an insult to myself) and that if hacks like Brown and the Tuesdays with Morrie dude can write shit and get published, then there's no reason why I can't get published...on second thought, I'd rather not get published ever than to write shit in order to get published. Unlike some people, I have standards to live up to, thanks very much, even if they're personal standards that no one gives a shit about.

But anyway, as I was saying, I'm trying to shed the too-cool-for-school 'tude that's turned me away from many, many opportunities that I should've grabbed in the past re. the writing thing. I'd say that's an improvement. Wouldn't you?

Increasingly I'm convinced that I was born to do this writing thing, and that moment in which I believed in my talent for the first time has proved to be NOT elusive and momentary at all. I still believe in my talent, which implies that I believe that I have a talent for writing, which, yes, I do, thanks. If my dad can tell that I can write by reading some shit I wrote in CHINESE, then it must mean that I can really write. I personally don't really understand how he could tell, since that Chinese thing - my crap essay for Legal Chinese - was really quite shit, but hey, I'm not going to argue when my father tells me, "Ni de wen bi hen hao." (Basically: You can write.) He's the same father (um, yeah, I only have one dad) who's been discouraging me from writing ever since I mentioned that I wanted to be a writer, which was, oh I don't know, in secondary school?

(Aside: I'm not really fond of saying "I want to be a writer". You can't "want" to be something that you're not, and I genuinely believe that you're either a writer, or you're not. The same goes for acting and singing and music and all things artistic that require an innate talent to do. But I'm lazy, and saying "I want to be a writer" is easier than coming up with an alternative, so there you go.)

You know how I keep saying that I've been wanting to pursue writing ever since I was 18? Well, I was wrong. The truth is, I've been wanting to do this ever since I discovered that I could write, which was in Secondary Two when I started getting all these super high marks for my English compositions, and I've been writing ever since I was 11. Besides the diary (super hilarious stuff I must say), I remember writing some stupid "series" that was basically modelled after the Babysitters' Club series, with which I was COMPLETELY enamoured and obsessed. When I was 11 I did it for fun; when I was 14 and discovered that I wasn't completely without a talent, I wanted to do it for serious (haha). How does a person abandon an ambition that she's harboured for eight years? How does a person turn her back on something that both her head and her heart tell her to do?

How do I walk away from this? How do I NOT take the time to be the only thing that I've consistently said I'd be? I can already see myself in ten years' time, sitting in a law firm, wondering why I never took the plunge and regretting it and wanting to turn back time and do things over, but of course by then it'd be too late.

Do I wait until then to regret or do I not give myself the opportunity to regret at all? I'm already regretting law school and if I could do things over, I would've gone to England instead. I was too scared when I was 19; am I still the same scared-shitless 19-year-old when I'm 23?

Quite honestly, I don't want to be a lawyer at all. I never wanted this, the heart's not in it, and unlike many of my classmates, I don't have the natural ability to think on my feet and speak eloquently without a prepared speech in my hand (even with a prepared speech I can't speak eloquently at all). That alone is enough to point out that I'm just not cut out to be a lawyer and that it's, quite simply, not who I am. Add my penchant for verbosity and writing long, rambling sentences and paragraphs to the mix and you get an even stronger case for why I just cannot do this law thing. I'd much rather not have this problem at all and just enter the profession and collect my cheque at the end of every month and go shopping every weekend and buy a condo and a car and get my Peugeot 307cc, but even with all the material promises that come with entering the profession and getting the assurance of the $4500/month, I'm utterly unmotivated. I need a much, much better reason to dissuade myself from pursuing writing, and I'm so sorry, Self, but money simply isn't it.

I still don't know what to do, to be honest. I was unhappy for the first two years of law school, I was semi-happy in Year 3 Semester 1, and now I'm back to being unhappy. How great. What am I supposed to do about that? And can ANYONE possibly relate?

Just the other day I casually and jokingly mentioned New York and my dad said, in all seriousness, "Why do you always talk about New York?"

That kind of says it all. But I still feel like I owe it to myself to at least try. And I still feel like I don't want to continue underrating happiness the way the whole damn world is doing anymore.

In the meantime, let me just say this: Life is a piece of shit.

Yes, my eloquence astounds me too.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010