James Frey, the now notorious author of A Little Million Pieces, has finally admitted (on Oprah) that his "memoir" is heavily embellished. The "essence" of his "memoir" however, is supposedly real. That's right, the memoir's a fake, but the essence is real. Essence my butt. Reminds me of cheating spouses who go "But that was just sex! I love only you!". FTBSITTTD? FTBS indeed, and the BS is all Frey.

With all the controversy surrounding the book and the blatant lies in it, I'm surprised the publisher still classifies the book as a nonfiction memoir. It boggles the mind. Hey, maybe Harry Potter can be a memoir too.

The good thing for Frey is that he can now finally write a true memoir: Memoirs of a Liar. Probably not worth the paper it's printed on, but I bet it'll make a good fire, most preferably with the liar roasting on top.

Filed under: Books

The old feed was a casualty in the webhost shift. I've updated the feed buttons in the side bar. The new feed address, if you're so inclined, is this.

Filed under: Blog

Today, I've quietly crossed 30k hits. I'm guessing 10k of those came via Google images, searching for "Brokeback Mountain", when there's only a trailer here. I'm probably breaking approximately 20,000 copyright laws, but knock yourselves out (click for larger version).

Who needs a face that can launch a thousand ships when you can have a bottom that can sell ten thousand tickets?

Enjoying a tender moment. Don't even ask who tops.

"I'm sorry... I won't hurt your nose next time. Promise."

"Don't touch me. Go play with the horse, you brute."

Gyllenhaal decides to get even. The animals are unamused.

"What have you done?! My innocent little lambs won't breed now!"

Filed under: Picture, Movies

The Guild Wars: Factions PVP event/ Beta test was just over. Loads of new goodies, including a spiffy looking login screen:

For those who are equally enamoured of it, here's the Guild Wars: Faction MP3 theme (I presume). Needless to say, the MP3 is only for personal use. Enjoy.

Filed under: Gaming, GuildWars

So what is it?

Click on the image, watch the video, and you decide: (mirrored from here, via VR-Zone. Mirror is NSFW, NSFK)

Enter the poll here, or just view results! If you don't understand any of the choices, you're underaged, so go away and pretend you've never read this.

Personally, I like the machine concept. The ad is a different matter altogether. I must say the models did a great job not laughing to death though. And the product name? iLame.

Filed under: Humour, TV, DoNotSueMe

MercerMachine has apparently ruffled some feathers over at Tomorrow.sg. I think Tomorrow is a great concept. I think most of the editors (if not all) are trying their best to maintain a quality aggregator. I think it's a thankless job, and I don't envy them for it.

It's not easy being an institution, and that's what Tomorrow is. It's far easier to be an up-and-rising star or a young upstart, than to be an established icon with its own ingrained practices, habits or eccentricities. Unlike Microsoft vs. Google, Tomorrow has yet to meet its David, and it's unlikely that it ever will. But that doesn't make the dissenting voices any less stringent.

I'm not flinging any rocks at Tomorrow here, nor saying that everyone should love it to bits and pieces, nor take anyone to task (because [a] I'm an anti-social jackass [b] I'm too lazy) . I guess what I wanted to do, in my roundabout and clumsy way, is to give kudos to the editors who've laboured hard to ensure that Tomorrow runs smoothly.

Tomorrow is not perfect (perfect's boring anyway), but I'm sure many bloggers out there appreciate what it has done. Appreciation may hide in the shadow of dissidence, but I believe it's there, out there in the hundreds or thousands of Singaporean blogs.

Would you realize what Revolution is, call it Progress; and would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.
- Victor Hugo

Filed under: Blogging

Who? (Credits)

Whatever it is she does to occupy her time during the day should be submitted to the Health Science Authority as a list of activities which calcifies the brain. Perhaps she could cook up a story about how a XX-hater hacked into her site to impersonate her impersonating a XX-hater whom she feels is impersonating her.

Maybe Mediacorp can hire her to impersonate one of their staff impersonating as drama script writers. That'd be the day.

Filed under: Blogger

I don't get it. Why are the models in ST's latest print ad all Caucasians? Not that I have a problem with Caucasian models, but why would a paper based in Singapore, read mostly by Asians (I would presume), feature three non-Asians? Perhaps the ad is meant to imbue ST with a cosmopolitan sheen, but I find it pretty sad that they had to resort to using Caucasian models to achieve that.

Take a walk in any mall and pay attention to the models in the posters of Giordano, U2, G2000, Bossini. They're invariably Caucasian as well, right down to the little tots in Bossini's poster. Way odd, considering these are Asian (Hong Kong?) brands. In fact, I've neither seen an Asian face in the posters of G2000 and U2 nor actually come across a Caucasian shop in either store (perhaps because their clothes is sized for Asians?).

I can turn this into a social commentary but I won't. Suffice it to say that the Asian economy has a long way to go before Asian faces are considered premium in the advertising market. And shame on ST.

Filed under: Rant

Oh wait. I have Michelle Pfeiffer on my site too. Shame on me too.

I'm in the midst of trying out and eventually switching to a new web host. Doteasy has served me well for many years, but I'm beginning to feel the need for more bandwidth and features.

In the meantime, this site might suddenly become unavailable or funky looking.

The legions of you who come flocking on the keyword "brokeback mountain" may have to go elsewhere for the time being.

And no. No nekkid pictures of either male stars here.

IntelliSys Corporation

Introduction

You are the IT Director in IntelliSys Corporation, a computer software company. Your company has been working on a promising and potentially lucrative research project. The end product of this project is a software package called InfoScan.

InfoScan is an automated information mining system targeted at major firms interested in gathering business intelligence from online sources. It scans and monitors the Internet for information, which is then organized according to reliability, impact, relevance and other custom criteria. With advanced information management capabilities designed to prevent information overload, it is capable of effectively serving the external information needs of firms. These needs can range from environmental scanning to reputation surveys to rumor control.

While working on InfoScan, a rival computer software company issues a press release regarding iSearch, designed to perform the same core function of InfoScan. However, there is significant evidence that iSearch contains several advanced features absent from InfoScan. It is originally projected that both products will have an equal share of the total market.

Decision

At present, your company has already spent 50% of the budget for this project and the development of InfoScan is 50% completed. You are keen to know the latest assessment of your product market share. Hence, your company has engaged a professional consultation firm to do the study as they are more objective. They have recently completed their assessment and reported their results.

(Different subjects then receive different manipulations)

Manipulations from Draft #1 (October)

Positive feedback, positive framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to capture 75% of the marketshare

Negative feedback, positive framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to capture 25% of the marketshare

Positive feedback, negative framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to fail to capture 25% of the marketshare

Negative feedback, negative framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to fail to capture 75% of the marketshare

Manipulations from Draft #472,391 (December)

F-----g feedback, f-----g framing manipulation
F-----g InfoF-----gScan is f-----g estimated to f-----g capture f-----g of the f-----g marketf-----gshare. I don't give a f-----g f--- anymore. F---. F-----g f---!!!

Manipulations from Actual Experiment (January)

Positive feedback, positive framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to capture 75% of the marketshare

Negative feedback, positive framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to capture 25% of the marketshare

Positive feedback, negative framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to fail to capture 25% of the marketshare

Negative feedback, negative framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to fail to capture 75% of the marketshare

Manipulations à la Hwang Woo-suk

_______ feedback, ________ framing manipulation
InfoScan is estimated to _______ ______ of the marketshare
(Note: Randomly insert words later... I'll My researchers will fake everything later. Remember to buy stamps for submission to top rated academic journal.)

Filed under: Humour

That's right. Not even the photographer, who was probably too busy snapping photographs.

Granted, the photographer could have been too far away, hence the snap-first-help-later behaviour. The holier-than-thou attitude rankles nonetheless.

Filed under: Personal, Musings, News

Mr. Chan obviously knows a dead-end job when he sees one. Who else in Singapore is glamorous enough to be Mr Everitt Man-Gnome 2004,2005(,2006?), Obscene Gesturer, Masturbation Faker, Mr Most-Likely-To-Get-Murdered-By-Neighbours, All Around Mr. Unpopular? At the ripe old age of 70 no less. Who ever said rude old men need to retire anyway?

However, Mr. Chan is erroneous in thinking that a teacher's job is beneath him and his ilk. Who else but him is best suited to pass on such sterling social graces to the young? Why verily, there is an appalling scarcity of youths who walk around flipping their neighbours off. Just imagine the difference Mr. Chan can make.

Of course, he could always run away with Cirque du Soleil the next time they come to Singapore. Maybe they'll need someone to fill the role of an old obscene clown.

Filed under: Personal, Musings, News