Halloween, Halloween, it's a festival over here.

I was over at the Halloween parade, and it's pretty much a gala festival. Loads of people came. I mean loads. C'mon thousands of people cramming by the roadsides and pushing and shoving, and it was bloody annoying. And we could hardly see nuts. But then after endless hours of patience and a little squirming, we got a pretty good view of the parade.

Let's see. The costumes? Well basically everything you imagine is there. Well there were your basic pirates, ghosts, zombies, Freddy Kruger and witches. Sure, no biggie, you expect them every year. Nothing new. There were these huge giant skeleton puppets that waved and towered over the crowds. There were many people on stilts, clowns on stilts, zombies on stilts and it was kinda cool to actually see them dance while on those long poles which are like 8 to 10 feet high.

Then there were a whole lot of whores, sluts and prostitutes. Hey, I'm a guy. It seems that Halloween is that one time of the year where people can come out and dress as provocative as they want without being labeled a slut. Well, if they are remembered on Monday morning, then they would be a slut. But then somehow on Halloween, there are weird parties like Dress To Screw and Pornoween with actualy amatuer porn stars in the latter. So you get the idea how some people can dress up in thongs or just stick pieces of cloth over sensitive areas and hey, it's a costume! The most memorable one was where this chick came up to me and flashed her thong with the words Expose Bush! on it. What a way to drive a political message across.

Of course then the parade wouldn't be complete without New York's gay community, and it is pretty obvious who the gays are. They are the one crossdressing in public, and there were a couple of really gay air hostesses, gay nurses and well... just gay couples walking together holding hands. There was a cowboy walking around in his underwear, with the words Naked Cowboy on his ass. Then there is the usual sadomasochistic costumes, a chick in leather leading a man by a chain leash holding a whip.

Superheroes? There were many, Superman is always there, I saw many Spidermans, Robins are kinda popular, so is Wonderwoman and Catwoman. I even saw the Incredibles, hmm... the movie's not even out yet. And there were plenty of cartoon characters and characters from video games. To my horror, I saw the scariest thing you could ever see, Hello Kitty. There were Flintstones, Scooby-Doo and a lot of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Well here is where I guess I list those costumes which are kinda interesting. I saw some dude carrying a sign, Jesus for Kerry, and there was Jesus walking around. Behind him walked up this priest, and he kept saying "Jesus loves you, praise the Lord." and it seemed like an okay costume except that he had a child-size dummy with it's head pressed against his crotch, which brings to mind the whole Catholic priest paedophilia thing. There were loads of Star Wars geeks as well as Ghostbusters. I remember there were people dressed up as genitalia, and I guess the worst was men walking around with soiled underwear. My friend went as a naked man. Hmm.. that's a pretty cheap costume.

It's a pretty messed up thing, the parade, but I guess that added to the fun of it. Anyone could just walk in and join in the parade. So loads of people joined in. And people just walked and laughed down the streets. I must admit that some people were pretty drunk even before the parade started, and I remembered this bunch of thrashed b*tches clawing their way through the crowd for a better view. I guess what could make it better was less of the political propaganda and more fun stuff. The best float I could think of is either the one where there was this car filled with balloons and there were the words Bath Time scrawled over the side, or the one where Abraham Lincoln was spanking George W. Bush. Of course the float with half-naked chicks dancing in feather boas get honorable mention. There were sadly many people walking down the street dressed as George Bush giving everyone the finger.

But the worst part of the parade were the NYPD. New York's Finest were not exactly helping with the crowd control, instead prefering to stand in front and block the view of the crowd. They were pretty much paid to stand in front of the parade and chased away the parading people who came near the barricade. There was this one cop who was being nasty and wouldn't let a girl in a wheelchair cross the street where the parade was going on. And I got a better view of the back of the heads of New York's Finest. Hmm...

All in all, it was kinda exciting. An interesting watch. Maybe I should join the parade. But first, I think I should get a camera. There were so many things to see and remember. At least I'll be in time to take some photos for the Christmas parade.

Someone I knew just went over to the Dark Side. Sold his soul to the devil. Gave up on his principles and groveled his way to the bottom.

CrankyOldMan, why? Why?!?!

Why are there ads on your site? How much does Google Adsense promise you for your soul, for free speech, for the sanctity and freedom of the Internet? How much does Google Adsense pay you so that you desecrate your site with advertisemments and banners to resemble some cheap website? No, I shall not sell my site, I shall not sell my ideas, I shall not give up my soul.

You have gone over to the capitalist side.

The freedom of the Internet and bannerless sites are the last free bastion of the Internet. Inundated by the endless popups, banners and flashing lies all over commercial pagers, I think it is hard to sign over my site so that there would be some advertisements about washing machines when you know somehow the banners ruin the aesthetics. Washing machines. How low have you gone? Who visits your site to buy washing machines?

I shall prevail! Cut me, cut my life, I shall not cheapen my thoughts.

Note: This passage may contain strong language which must be used for the sake of describing the vulgar with vulgar terms. There is no other way.

The song Sympathy by Goo Goo Dolls is playing in the background.

Stranger than your sympathy,
This is my apology.

I am sort of pissed with the world again. It seems to be a common condition that every hot chick must have an obnoxious a$$hole for a boyfriend. It just so pisses me off. Really. Not that I am egotistical enough to believe that all hot chicks should be my girlfriend, but more of the fact that to get a hot chick as a girlfriend, I must be an obnoxious a$$hole. And it is not just me who thinks that these a$$holes are a$$holes, but rather on a grander scale of things that general consensus agrees that these a$$holes are really a$$holes.

"Hey you see that car?"
"Which one? The Mercedes SL500?"
"Yup. That's the one her boyfriend drives."
"You mean the a$$hole?"
"Uh huh."
- excerpt from a genuine conversation I had with my roommate -

I honestly don't know why these hot chicks like their a$$hole boyfriends. There must have been some blurred vision or tunnel vision that these girls must be suffering from. "Oh, he's so nice. He's the only one who treats me nice." "He really cares about me, really." "If you get to know him, he is a nice person." So I guess I'm wrong, and the rest of the world is wrong and you are the only truthful reliable source as a character witness for your a$$hole boyfriend. There is a reason why family and friends don't make good character witnesses.

Somehow the lines from the song Boys and Girls by Good Charlotte come to mind. Girls don't like boys, girls like car and money. That would explain why a$$holes are so popular with hot chicks. See the dollar signs? That probably explains why. Somehow I just don't believe it everytime a girl squeals in defense of her boyfriend, "He is a nice guy! You just need to know him." Been there done that, I'm not as stupid as you think as I am, neither am I as superficial as you.

I am somehow forced to surrender to this fact of the world, that I just have to accept the fact that this is how everything goes. Yeah, there are some people who do meet their Prince Charming who doesn't turn out to be Mr. Hyde, but fairy tales happen just about once a month around the world that it can be shown on Oprah right after the episode where they talk about drug abuse in teens and before single mom families.

Yeah, I'm telling a lot of chicks out there that they are hot, and that they have a boyfriend who is an a$$hole. Why a$$hole? Because I'm following the Team America definition of dicks, pussies and a$$holes. Pussies are whiny people who believe that everyone can get along and that everyone is good and nice inside. Dicks are people who just want to f*ck anything and everything. And pussies hate dicks because pussies get f*cked by dicks. That's probably why pussies like a$$holes. But a$$holes just want to sh*t over everything. So if dicks don't f*ck a$$holes, then we'll get sh*t over everything.

So I may be a crude, crass and disgusting person, but at least I know who an a$$hole is and I don't suffer from tunnel vision or peripheral vision. I don't view the world through tinted glasses and I see things for what they are. Why? Because I've seen from other perspectives before, and I remain an observer with no emotional attachments into anything. And if I, a distant observer, can be inflamed by such pussy-like behavior towards a$$holes, then yeah, I need a gun.

Live how you want, be "happy" with what you have. Tunnel vision. Dammit, who else is responsible for your own happiness? Makes me want to go out there and put a bullet in all the a$$holes out there. The world would be a better place.

I guess the greatest thing about New York is that it's the city that never sleeps. At 3am, my roommates and I were hungry and we went out looking for food. So we were wandering around heading downtown and there were still a lot of people hanging outside bars and clubs smoking and drinking and shouting at the top of their voices.

We went to Yatanga, a Turkish shop. They sell falafels. Small shop with 4 quaint tables inside. At the counter of the place there was this huge piece of roast lamb, turning on a spit being roasted by the electric heater. It was roasted nice grey brown on the outside with red juicy meat, and I look there and thought to myself; there are some things worth living for.

I asked for a gyro, and I sat down and slowly enjoyed my meal. Slowly, I chewed, trying to savour the fat and meat. Then, all good things must come to an end, and I finished the last bite of the gyro.

Smiling I stepped out of the shop. It feels rather warm right now. The wind isn't so bad, and the sounds outside have begun to die down. The shop lights still shining, and we all walked back to the dorm.

Life.

It is Parents Weekend and everyone's family is here. Except yours.

You walk down 10th Street towards 3rd Avenue and there is not a thought in your mind. This is just another regular weekend. There's nothing new. And you walk down alone to the Strand Bookstore and browse the one dollar books standing outside, for people to look and maybe even take away. No one cares, the books are lined up by the streets and no one is watching. One dollar is really a token sum, and I guess they would be happy if someone just took it away and gave it a home on a bookshelf. But then those books sit outside in the cold just because they are worthless and without a bookshelf to hold them.

You don't feel lonely at all. You are alone. You don't feel lonely. What are you? Too stupid to feel lonely? Or just too proud to feel lonely? Or just too cold to feel lonely? You have no feelings at all, you are indifferent to everything. And you just don't care. If apathy is the disease of the young, you are terminally ill. And you just don't care.

Bostons Red Sox beat the New York Yankees.

Now to anyone but a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan, that statement is just a matter-of-fact. To a Red Sox fan, this is pure reason of partying for the rest of the night and rest of the week. To the Yankees, I think this is the first time they ever felt that way. So the Red Sox are going to the World Series, and if the curse is still upon them, they will never win the World Series. Ah well, never mind this is touchy subject and fans would lynch me if I ever said something bad.

Anyway, this isn't all that important to me, but I think Boston Red Sox just lost their allure of being the underdogs for decades.

I was reading Virgil's Aeneid and my professor was telling about sortes vergiliannae. Simply translated it meant "Virgil's Luck Game". How this is played is the person asks a question, and then open the book and read the read line seen. Then somehow that line would answer the question. There was this lady who asked whether she should marry this Italian dude while her family disapproved, and Samuel Johnson the writer, who was a friend suggested she try the sortes vergiliannae and the line she saw was, "A man from Italy came..." and I don't know the rest of the lines, I'll look it up in the book. So she took it as a divine sign and went ahead and married the dude.

So what does this got to do with the Red Sox/Yankees game? Today in lecture I was asking about the game, and though I didn't get a clear answer, I think there was this one line where two men were about to lead an attack, and one man was saying that they had enough it's time to withdraw. I think that meant that the Yankees won enough, and let the Red Sox have a little celebration first.

Maybe I should try it again. When will I take over the world? And this is what the book says:
These wonders
Are all aimed at the Trojans! Jove himself
Has robbed them of their usual ally,
Not waiting for our swords and fires to do it.
The open sea is closed to Trojans now,
Now they have no way out. That element
Is taken from them, and dry land is ours,
Where all the tribes of Italy, men in thousands,
Take up arms.

What portent signs! Even the gods would help me. Muahahah... await world!

I don't believe in my fortune. Honestly, I am not superstitious, I don't look at horoscopes nor do I have any faith in numerology or other fortune telling methods. Yet, perhaps, I am a practicioner of Feng Shui to a small extent. I look and I notice things, but hey usually I don't give a rat's ass about it. But nonetheless, this month, I have a very good and interesting fortune.

According to my fortune, this is a good month for romance. So basically the superficial assumption is that I would meet a supermodel who is dying to go out with me. But then seeing that nothing has happened just yet, I tend to think to redefine my fortune as, you will find love.

No, the supermodel hasn't shown up yet, but then, I sort of begin to understand certain things about Love itself. Yes, the idea of me understanding this concept terrifies Ivan, just because I would somehow use this new enlightened theory to come up with my own cynical bizarre theory which would call for the destruction of mankind or the corrupt decadence of humanity. Yes, my heart is evil, and I revel in such petty joys. Knowledge is power, and knowing how to use that knowledge is key to ruling the world. So while I was playing Rome: Total War, my roommate was telling me, "Jason, you'll never take over the world."

But back to the idea of Love. I've been reading Plato's Symposium, and beneath the fickleness and the romantic and homosexual notions of love, Plato does have something to say which is beyond the physical and emotional. Love motivates us for certain things and love makes us better than we are. And all these start by loving another person. Love doesn't come to the loved, but rather to the lover, so I guess here is some food for thought on certain really abstract ideas.

Anyway, thing is, what is the point of love? I have my own answers, but I think no one would accept my answers. This is like one of those funny things where you have to go through the whole philosophical journey yourself, before you can see and accept things. But one thing that surprised me is that before reading Plato's Symposium, I have thought of some things almost exactly as he as put it. I have come to my own conclusions about life and love like Plato. So this just goes to prove, great minds do think alike, so while I bask in the glory of my own ego right here...

But if I do come to the same conclusions as Plato does, that means that some things are just universal, and 2300 years do not change the same notions about love. And I have never read Plato before this. It could be because of the pervasiveness of his views through our culture which is indirectly imprinted along me, which I would so hate Plato for influencing me without my knowledge. But yeah, perhaps, I do come to understand some things. Though the book, "The Road Less Travelled" helped a lot in understanding some, I guess enlightenment must be reached through contemplation.

By the way, here's something I learnt about love, and I guess most people would agree with me. I am beginning to like George Bernard Shaw a lot because this quote came from him, "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

Will you pay for my life?

Will you pay for my life?
I don't what to live in the ghetto,
To live in fear and want,
It's cold and dark out there,
One more mouth to make the world a sadder place.

Will you pay for my life?
An education to prevent comings of me,
A roof to cover our hollow heads and hearts,
Food to fill our empty stomachs,
You fight yet you do not feed,
Your cause is just like me: empty.
Why bother if you won't?
You imposing your beliefs as law,
Until we all become like you,
Isn't there enough of you already?

Will you pay for my life?
If my mother pays for my death?
Why must you decide what is not yours,
Let me be, let me decide,
Else, mother knows best.

Will you make the choice?
That is neither yours nor mine,
Yet it is you, you who decide,
And it is I, I who live with your decision.
Do I lament?
I did not come into this world by choice,
I would not leave it by decision,
Let fate decide what we cannot.
Sir Reeves could decide,
I salute him for his freedom,
Don't deny me mine.

First a brief update on what has happened. As my assignment to create a new homepage was due, I just ripped the code off what you guys used to know as my blog. So once my homepage was up, and I was kinda happy with the way it looked, I decided to implement the changes on my blog. I had loads of comments that it was too dark, hard to read as well as many other damned comments. Yeah, damn you people, especially Ivan. See? Serves you right your computer refuses to work.

I've changed my tagboard to Flobble, because basically TagBoard backstabbed me and forced popups onto my blog.

Secondly, home.ripway.com, where I hosted my pictures deactivated my account because I haven't logged in for a while. Serious, who logs in for a while every 30 days just to keep it active? I know I should, but anyway, my university would have to do some of the hosting while I'm using this page. This is also the reason why Angel Wings doesn't have the picture of her funky car anymore because the picture was from my account.

I hope this is easier to read, I made the thing resizable, and though there are some ActiveX controls, you might miss the cool fading effect if you let Microsoft determine what settings to put for security and blocked just about everything.

This is one lengthy and boring update, but just to keep with the changes. Also, I lost my counter, and I think it was as 2332 when I took it off. I can't find the code to put it back, and I'm kinda lazy to do it now. Anyway, I doubt I could reach 3650 visitors by the end of the year, but do keep on coming back.

Yours sincerely,
A very cynical and egotistical guy.

I know I would be hated for this, but look! There's actually an entry in wikipedia.org for Agent Smith of The Matrix!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Smith

That's something you don't see in an encyclopedia every day.

My computer is up and running. Therefore for those people like Ivan who would want to know how my computer is performing right now, it's running at 3.37Ghz, I have yet to try to overclock it further, I'm just sticking with this right now, and my Radeon X800 Pro is flashed to a Radeon X800 XT with 16 pixel pipelines and 520/560MHz. I have yet to try and overclock it higher.

The report so far, without overclock, my 3dmark 2003SE score was 10.1k. After the overclocks, I reached 12k. I strongly believe I can push this further, owing to the fact that I haven't reached the limit of my CPU nor video card nor RAM. So over the days, there would be marked improvement.

Yes, Ivan, my ubercomputer rocks. So screw you and quit posing as Me.

Somtimes you just wish,
there was someone to watch out for you,
to catch you when you fall,
to hold your hand to guide you,
And hug you to remind you,
That you're not alone.
That's too much to ask.
Is it not?

Okay, what do you call a parrot that ate a clock?
Polly-ticks!

Okay, don't kill me for that bad joke! One of the reasons I came to America was to look at how things are like in America, and how in the world did Bush get elected as President. Really. I wanted to know the people and what caused them to vote for Bush.

Well, I just watched the second presidential debates and to no surprise, it is just petty bickering, constant accusations and fingerpointing, and a lot of weird crap. Honestly, I think it's so bad that America should just elect me president. I could do so much more than what they are talking about. Bomb Iraq? Sure. Stem cell research? Go ahead. Tax cuts? Yeah. Decrease budget deficit? Simple. Really, some of the things they talk about were no brainers.

In short, here's the summary. Bush was a complete jackass. There was one point in the second debate where I could have sworn he was reciting. He is definitely more articulate than in the first debate, where some cartoonist mentioned what no one dared to mention, and that was the president was dumb and inarticulate. Bush had more to say than Kerry was a fip-flopper. He actually had some figures to prove it, and I'm amazed and applaud his effort to prepare for this debate. Bush was a complete jackass because he is so adamant that there are only 2 sides. This is shown so clearly, that either he is right or he is wrong. Just like his words on partial birth abortion. What the hell is that? Yes or no? What do you mean yes or no? This utterly reflects on Bush what kind of person he is. He is a naive idiot. If you answer all situations with a concrete yes or no, and he's not allowed to change his mind because he kept calling Kerry a flip-flopper, then you are passing judgement on all future events. It seems dumb, that you can answer any question wholistically and definitively with a simple yes or no. I thought we all learnt in high school that nothing was a confirm yes or no.

And Kerry is an overly idealist. True. He wants to do things which are great and wonderful and utopic and just plain idealistic. He claims to be able to do things better than Bush, achieve the same things Bush hopes to achieve and some more. Yes, I'm a bit sceptical on whether those things he promise would come true. True, some of the things he said are particularly offensive to the rich and wealthy. I must admit when I am earning 1 million dollars a year, I would definitely support a Republican so that I can keep most of my hard earned money. But Kerry seems to be heading everywhere and nowhere. Chances are he can't keep his promises.

So all in all, here's what I gotta say. The election is between a choice between Bush and not-Bush. And yeah, for all that Bush can do, I think he is more destructive as a president than anyone else. Granted Kerry might not fulfil his promises, but Bush definitely can't, because he made no intention to.

Oh yeah, and I guess this piece of news does go along with politics, because it strongly highlights how fickle and trivial this entire debate is, but then everyone still pays attention to it. Britney Spears is now officially married, as announced by her publicist. Her marriage license was filed on Thursday. Now, I think her child will come along in April.

I have been compelled by forces greater than me (i.e. my professor) to create a personal homepage displaying everything and yet at the same time, nothing. Though there is a direct link from that homepage to this personal blog and there is great risk in bitching about my assignments, I shall do so nonetheless for we are all young and imbued with the invulnerability of stupidity once. And some of us, like Ivan, continue to be imbued with his own illusion grandeur of his own delusion of greatness which arises from his own stupidity. And yes, honestly I cannot live a week without insulting Ivan once.

So here's the link to my homepage. If I get favourable results and responses, for all those who asked me to change my lousy layout, to go back to the "Sandbox in the Night", I'm sorry I don't have the code for that, and most of the code is lost, or back in my computer back in Malaysia, which I hope my sister does not delete. So instead, I propose this design, available for preview at http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jk1635". This site is much better as in that it allows for higher screen resolution such as 1240x1048 and higher, though it might have been optimized for 1024x768 and there might be some needed scrolling at 800x600. The graphics may be inferior, but I try to keep the loading speed of my main page to about 20 seconds on a 56kbps modem.

And if any of you have been experiencing popups while viewing my blog, no, it is not because I have fallen to commercial demons and let my page be a source of college funding for my higher education, but rather TagBoard has betrayed me and they now have a code for popups which I am unable to edit unless I remove my current commenting system.

If response is favourable for my preview homepage, I will immediately switch over to the new design and hopefully link over to create a better gallery than the one I have at my geocities site. This would also eliminate those stinking popups.

Anyway, anything else I need to declare? No I haven't got a camera yet and cannot show everyone the New York I'm experiencing through my eyes. It's great though. And yes, I still love Sopphia!

IRC is multiplayer Notepad. - Profound thought of the day.

I need sleep. Really. Somehow I don't have enough sleep. Spend too many nights going for food runs, drink runs, mucking around and doing nothing. It's just like that. I feel so sleep deprived. Only had 4 hours of sleep. Damn, will be going back to sleep. While I complain about sleep, I know a lot of people are having it hard. The only sure thing I can say is that I'm glad I'm not you.

So yeah, the weather is cold right about now. If those people from NJ think that LT5 is cold, well, welcome to New York. It's much colder than I can remember. So I'm just crawling back to my warm blankets. If any of you hate me by now because it would seem my life is no different during the holidays and college, you're right. I would hate myself too if I had to work my butt off just for a measly grade while I watch myself sleep late every day, do nothing, muck around and take over the world!

Look, guys, I don't know. I miss you all. But New York's great.

Something has to be said about feeling hungry at 1:30 am in New York, and your roommate looks at you and says, "Wanna grab something to eat?"

So there I was, sprinting down the middle of a one way road, jaywalking in front of those New York cabs, and standing at the corner of 4th and 6th, outside Gray's Papaya holding a hot dog covered with chilli and watching the cars go by as I poke my friend. There were a whole bunch of us, maybe eight, and a couple of them were drunk already.

But there was some sort of inspirational poetry at that moment, standing at the corner, looking at the warm hot dog in my hang, holding my jacket around me, crossing my arms and watching everyone laugh and joke as though there was not a care in the world.

It's moments like these that you know that are never going to fade from memory. And as I stood there, I felt there is something meaningful coming from all of this.

I savoured every bite of that hot dog. It was the best, best in New York City. And only 95 cents! Throwing away the wrapper, and looking back into the warmth of the shop, I wondered. Then I snapped out of my reverie and joined back with them, joking and laughing.

I so apologise for describing the way a squirrel runs across the road as sinusoidal wave.

It was bad of me, I'm sorry Jia Hui. That so completely ruins the imagery. The description was so completely wrong and spoils everything about the squirrel. I cannot describe the motion of the squirrel as sinusoidal. When I looked at the squirrel running across the road yesterday, I suddenly realised my grave mistake. Sinusoidal was no way to describe a squirrel motion at all. So no way at all. That completely ruined the whole beauty and symmetry of a simple squirrel cared for by Mother Nature and brought up live and have the grace and agility to run across the road. No I'm sorry, I shall describe the motion of the squirrel again.

The squirrel ran across the road, not in a sinusoidal manner, but rather a COsinusoidal fashion.