Territorial pissing

If you think this post is about Nirvana - well, you're wrong. That's not saying that I'm not ever going to write about one of the most enduring bands of the past 25 years; after all they did leave a mark on me in one way or another and I WILL write about that some time in the future. This post IS about leaving a mark though; and I'm not talking about the impression that we leave on the people that we meet throughout life, or about giving your girlfriend bruises and a black eye, and scratch marks on your boyfriend - I'm talking about marking territories. Like how dogs do.




Now, I assume you know why a dog does this right? Well if you're the sort of person that never gave a rat's ass about dogs because you think that every dog out on the street just wants to chase you down and bite you; dogs urinate on objects to mark their territory. Specifically, he is trying to communicate to other dogs who happened to pick up his scent that: "I am going to fuck every single bitch that happens to be in the vicinity of this tree/lamp-post/car tire/homeless person that I just pissed on - and if you have a problem with that - then it's gonna have to be me and you, perro-a-perro". Well apparently, humans do this as well; though it is more prevalent among the male of the species. There are many ways a guy can go about it. Some are subtle, and some are loud; and I mean artillery-barrage loud. In essence, it's all about communication.





Listen. I'm not gonna list down every single thing that a guy can do to communicate his possession over women; that would be asking for too much of your already limited, short attention span. Face it, you'd rather be watching a youtube video than read all this crap, right? Well, I apologize if I am wrong; but this is my blog. I don't want to write any more than I have to. At this point, it's totally appropriate if you would ask me if there is a point to all the bullshit I just wrote. Well, there is. I set out to write on how territorial pissing has evolved in this super-connected world that we live in; and there is no better example for that than Facebook.

Here's the deal. Facebook is just one huge fucking party where every one's invited. Social situations play out in Facebook as they would in real life. That means, a guy could potentially become jealous and possessive when he sees other guys commenting on a sexy picture of his girlfriend; because giving out comments to that same Facebook photo is pretty much the equivalent of commenting on his girlfriend in a real life situation, which does make some guys a bit jealous (or proud if he's slightly perverted). Worse, those same bunch of guys could already be staring at or worse, pleasuring themselves (fapping, as some would call it) to that same photo. It's magnified a million times when the girlfriend actually responds to those comments in a flirty manner; and usually, most guys who do get jealous fuck things up by retorting in a douche-baggy way and make fools of themselves. Shit. Bear in mind that the tables could be turned and a girl under the same situation could very well end up being labeled a bitch by her fellow girls. I'm just saying.




What I am really trying to convey is, if your significant other (assuming you enjoy having exclusive relationships) that's on Facebook (this time, assuming you guys are the type of couples who play out their relationships on Facebook) is not the type who would jealously retort to comments made to an especially attractive photo of yourself; pat yourselves on the back because you've managed to snag someone that's not the possessive type.

Now don't even get me started with couples who do all this shit to each other. Their problem is: A. they've managed to have gotten themselves stuck in a toxic relationship; or B. they let their relationship play out too much on Facebook - which is not the real world.

I've exhausted the mood to continue writing and besides, I have a sudden urge to take a piss.

My father's eyes

He never knew his own father, because his father passed away when he was still a toddler; too young to remember anything. I can only imagine what he felt when he held me - his first born son - in his arms. A feeling that I can only dream of experiencing myself.

With bursting enthusiasm, he set out to be the best father he could be; with what little he knew from growing up fatherless himself. He taught me to read at an early age; by cradling me with every morning paper that he read after breakfast. By age four, I was looking forward to read The News Straits Times with him every morning.

As a child I was always learning things independently. I was eager to learn more and would always try to outwit and trump adults way older than me. Nobody could teach me anything because I allowed nobody to be the teacher of me. It was different with my father. Every instance where he would teach me something was endearing to me. I remember when he promised to teach me the 'Solat' but forgot to; and I cried and my little heart was crushed. He finally got around to teach me, and to this day I still remember every moment of it.

Fast forward to my school-going years. My father had always given liberty as far my aspirations and ambitions was concerned. As a result, throughout primary school I had changed what I wanted to be when I grow up with each passing year. First it was an astronaut, then a tahfiz, then it changed to an architect. When we went to live in the UK, I had settled on being a singer/entertainer, courtesy of watching Michael Jackson's Moonwalker a hundred million times over; and besides, I was always inclined to sing ever since I was toddler (or so I have been told). Little did anyone know that that was a sign of me being a child afflicted with ADHD.

All good things must come to an end. Our wonderful life in the UK had to be cut short after my father had completed his Masters. Back to Malaysia we flew and with it, puberty hit. And boy, did it hit me hard. All those raging hormones conflicted with what I felt was a sense of longing for Good Ol' England. I missed my friends back in Greenwood Dale High School; Paul, Craig, Valbert and Corina - but most of all, I missed the whole scholastic experience that had so stimulated my pre-pubescent mind. Education was something I associate largely with school, where I could learn so much from the system and from the teachers themselves. It was obvious that I felt I belonged there.

It soon dawned upon me that the whole stimulating educational experience that I left behind was severely lacking in the school I attended back home in Skudai. So it was natural that I turned to something else that stimulated me perfectly well - my peers. I don't know quite exactly why, but I gravitated towards the bad apples; trouble-making kids who did as they please and most of the time, gets away with it. I must confess, I wasn't much of a saint myself; I shan't divulge on the little horrors perpetrated by me so as to earn a reputation as a little devil amongst my immediate family members.

To cut things short, secondary school was a time when I had substituted the school for the streets as my place of learning. I was a chronic truant; and by 15 I had cultivated a love for "the chronic". Marijuana was only available if I hung out with the older crowd and the dropouts; and for some reason they chose night-time to congregate. I had to sneak my way out of the house every night and stay out until it was late - and I mean late - until it was dawn, and I had to sneak back in to get ready for school. Naturally that did not sit well with my parents especially my mother. It still puzzles me why my father never made a big deal out of it; unless my mother's nagging really got to him and he had to get physical on me and deliver the obligatory beating.


-to be continued-

A prelude to my future posts

INT / HIRAA' CAVE / NIGHT

A man is alone in a cave doing what appears to be an attempt to light a fire. He regularly goes to this cave to escape, being a person who truly treasures his privacy. It is in this cave that he is able to contemplate his relevance and being; what he was, is and will be. He comes from a family of scholars and sages; men who spend all their waking hours pondering the workings of life and the universe. Alas, it is by the stroke of good fortune he is now married to a wealthy tradeswoman named Khadeeja - for he was once almost certain to have to spend all of his existence being a shepherd - that he can afford to expend hours upon hours dedicated to brooding alone. It is thought by some that during that stint, where his days was spent being alone, counting one goat after another, was where the seeds that made him become the man he will be ultimately known to history were planted.

The night was especially cold, even in the comforts of the interior and under lavish clothing afforded to him by his new-found wealth. He stoops over the fire to fuel it with more tinder and as the fire grew more intense, unbeknownst to him the plumes of smoke began to accumulate within the interior of the poorly ventilated cave. As he starts to breathe the smoggy air into his lungs, little by little his body is being slowly poisoned by inhaling carbon monoxide. Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning may include dizziness, followed by delirium and even hallucination. By sheer luck, he was able to survive by avoiding prolonged exposure to the fumes - the fire must have died out - or changing air pressure ventilated the smoke out of the cave.

Prior to that fateful night, he had been brooding over his supposed place within his clan. His lineage was acknowledged by other clans in his tribe as being learned and scholarly; trusted with managing the ritualistic goings-on at the Temple of Abraham. Although illiterate, he is famous among his clan as being - among other things - truthful and trustworthy. Al-Amin and As-Siddiq as he was affectionately known - and it was affection that was given to him in spades by some of the more important and powerful members of his clan - namely his influential uncles. Being of such virtue, it was inevitable that he was given the task of managing over his clans' goat herd; where in those times, the goats are assets that needs to be managed and secured. It was also inevitable that he would draw parallels between himself and another shepherd from Bethlehem whose story is told in the gospels and written down in the holy book of Injil. Surely it was obvious that he saw himself as more than just a goat herder and aspired to be something greater. He is after all, a culmination of good genes and of being a product of his enviroment.

Upon composing himself coming out of unconsciousness, he thought of the significance of what he had just went through. He was truly overwhelmed and taken over by the experience; and he could have also been aware of how close he came to his end. Being presented with one's mortality almost always changes a person completely. He picks himself up - his body still under the effects of carbon monoxide poisoning - and laboured towards his home; and once there - greeted by his wife who instantly assessed the gravity of her husband's condition - asks frantically for a blanket to be wrapped around him. After a while, he naturally recollects his experience to his wife and sets the precedent to the greatest theological and philosophical divergence in the history of Man.


-to be continued-

Sticking it to the Man

*cue soundtrack of cicadas on a monsoon night.

It took approximately an hour for me to come up with anything to write about. Such is the state that my once fertile (albeit fresh) mind is in right now. Allow me to declare that an accomplished scribe is not what I consider myself to be; nor a competent one. At least not as it were before or that which I had set out to be. With that out of the way, let's begin this incoherent rambling of a person seeking the last vestiges of his relevancy.

I used to rebel for the sake of being a rebel; as people immune or oblivious to clichés would call, "a rebel without a cause". As much as one would love to detest one's self looking back at all that naivety, suffice to say that during those formative years and up to this day, I can truly divulge that I have come full circle philosophically. That is to say, I went from being a staunch Marxist all the way to an Objectivist; and what a turbulent journey for my conscience it was.

I have found that after all these years, there is still one thing that I vehemently oppose: religion -- or as I would like to deconstruct as "Self perpetuating, organized indoctrination of hate, mysticism and blind faith". On that note, maybe I should re-title this post as "Sticking it to God", but it would be fitting if I were to save it for one of my future posts. Besides, I don't exactly oppose the concept of God as a transcendental form of existence; just the way it is portrayed and understood by lay people who have been unfortunate enough to be victims of religion.