You know how your life depends on things that are not essentially vital to your 'survival'?
It's an almost fatal situation when you have to share a laptop -the only machine in the comforts of your home to have access to the net- with 2 other siblings. Nah, you can't even think of exercising your veto rights on them coz all you want to do with it is surf till you drop and to try and win another season with your mesmerizing, tailored-to-success Man Utd (read: Football Manager). They on the other hand, are tight-faced about their assignments.
My 'survival struggle' has been going on for weeks now. With no effort of doing anything that's remotely close to productive, I compensated my lost net hours with flippin' TV channels and racking up my sleeping hours to unattainable heights.
But today, today in particular, was different.
It's
been close to 2 full months now that I've been silently moaning about
the sudden writers block that swept my songwriting senses off my
half-dead brain. So naturally I did all sorts of things to kickstart
things back into the course that it should be threading on but sadly,
none of it worked. This block, and a combination of so much more
slumped me on a slow ride to somewhere I'm not sure if I'll like it
when I get there. It did occur to me that perhaps what I need is after
all, just a plain ol' soul searching; something I've yet to do in my
"did all sorts of things" claim.
So today, I unearthed treasures that I thought was gone in the folds of history. The ones that stood as witness to my teenage years of being an avid follower of the local music scene. Oh boy, it was surely booming with immense quality back then. The discovery of press clippings that I collected from 2001-2002 surely brought me down to earth. I remember daydreaming about 'making it' someday. I can't say that I've made it yet with Telephony Delivery but the thought of whatever we're doing now is the sort of things we somewhat should be doing to achieve that, it's pretty surreal. I was looking back at how I started my fascination with all this.
Yeap, that's it. All of 'em scattered on my bed.
Damn. I even have the flyer for TONEdef. One of the many things that should've been the highlight of my high school years. Hmm.
Back then Poetic Ammo was still rockin' da flow and Lostprophets circa Shinobi was even cooler than Muse but they 'lost' their 'prophets' and pull off that emo anthem drag a.k.a The Last Train Home. Slipknot was donning the coolest jumpers ever but unfortunately it wasn't during their brilliant self-titled release phase. I could never find even an ounce of love for Iowa.
Urban XS mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnn! I miss it so much I can't even recall how's the song was like. And that Butter article was from Malay Mail, they got the coolest local music content next to TONE coz Terrina Hussin can really write. She's the one married to Emmet, yes? And that ATDI review was nicked off Galaxy. That former tween music bible had its awesome moments. Much missed.
Damn fucking Dirty Apes weiiii. After reading that brief yet inspiring review by Daryl Goh, I sprinted to the nearest cyber cafe and mailed Pedram about.....I don't remember what. That Nirvana piece was cut out from Times mag. I think I stole that from the school library. Hey, rather than it being a proof of felony, it proved that I even set foot there at least once. I so proud.
I don't remember which came first. My love for Herb Vendors' infectios jungle twists or Cyberwerk's ambient wickedness. Perhaps it was Discomafia's earth-shattering breakbeats (the only electronica record I still listen to till today). But local electronica was not spared from my ever-hungry ears for music. And apparently, not even Hong Kong's LMF too.
Fwah. Bloodymary also got. I remember writing a letter to them coz I wanted that cassette so badly. But the letter never even went into the envelope anyways. Also, if my sense of history serves me right, Jayzuan of Free Love's fame (or now, of Mohd Jayzuan's fame) was playing bass for that Ipoh band.
Haha. I plan on posting that pic of Irman on Malaise.
Back in '01 this would be considered the closest thing ever to a Holy Grail. The maniacs behind that crazy Slipknot masks were yet to be known by the general masses so this Kerrang! exclusive shot of Corey's mask-less back was something to lap up about.
So yeah. I found myself
smiling like a kid again going thru all that. I miss that innocent
naivety that was once my driving force to prove that I was not just
some kid going through a phase. Deep down I know what I was doing then
would run its course throughout my entire life. So did this whole
rediscovery helped solve the block? I doubt so.
But I can now move on knowing that I've not left any stone unturned.
I don't know what struck me, but I am somehow compelled to regale my first porn video experience.
That fated day back in '99 was not a first encounter. I mean, before that I had considerable access to soft porns in all directions. Like that one time at Mum's (my mother's sister) BBQ back in primary. I've always had this impression that Papa Zul's somewhat a sex freak. C'mon, the man's married with 5 kids and still he uses that condom container keychain for his car keys. Heh?
Anyways. So everyone else was outside the house. Trading gossips, shuffling between eating and drinking and all. I can't remember what was it that drove me and Zharil (my cousin) to his parents room but once we got there, he opened their wardrobe and at one deep corner we saw one huge pile of magazines and much to our giddy excitement, it was porn mags! I still vaguely remember the images we saw in those mags. Hey, those early days ya know? A lot like first love maybe, hard to forget.
Then there's also this one time (still in primary) where I somehow got so techy with computers. The Internet was rather new back then, back when Jaring was the hottest thing ever since Pamela Anderson. I somehow figured out how the History thingie works, and it gave me this grand illusion that we can surf the net without being connected at all in the first place. Silly, I know. But I didn't own a PC at that time. I think I picked up the know-how from the hours I spent at Afiq's. That dude was a tech-freak. His room was filled to the brim with stuff.
I put that newfound 'revelation' to the test when my family went visiting to Uncle Talib's. His Pentium II desktop was quite the ish those days so it was only natural that me and his son Nabil played around with it while both parents continue their chit chat in the living room. Then it came to a point when we got bored and perhaps, horny.
I browsed through the folders like a seasoned pro. Clicking at those links with such tenacity and precision that would make Gary Kasparov proud. My fiddling fingers came to a halt when we struck gold. Or more like, when the page loaded. The rest of the evening was one of the highlights of my life. It made me proud that I was so computer-savvy at such a young age. Haha.
But up to that point, it was all still very much soft porn. But I wasn't addicted. Just contented that I finally know why they make that nosebleed scenes in comic books whenever the character sees a hot chick passing by or more importantly, babies aren't delivered by storks to their parents through chimneys.
Ah, and then came '99. One of the many highlights in my life. It was the year where we Form 2s ruled the afternoon session by default as there were only us and the Form 1s for the session. I was in 2 Amanah, but we were far from goody two shoes. It's the only point of my life that I got the most disciplinary action ever. Like, 3 times. Hahaha.
I like having a small clique. A 4 crew posse was just nice. It's easier to handle with and dynamics wise, we would bounce and compliment each other well and there was no such thing as a third wheel nor was there a fourth.
Me, Hibat, Chee Keong and new boy Azrie was always doing stuff together. Be it in class or during recess. And then there's this time in KH that we're told to form a group for a project, no prize in guessing who was in my group. So for the next 3 weeks or so, we congregated at Chee Keong's to get to do the project. I think it was a wooden rack or something. We would get to his place very early just so we don't miss out on that tasty nasi lemak near Chee Keong's for breakfast. We'd buy like, 3-4 packets each. Crazy I know.
But that wasn't exactly our motivation to show up so early at his place.
Being the good china man that he is, Chee Keong has a healthy collection of VCDs (it was so booming back then) and yes you guessed it right, he got them porn vids too yo!
But it was a good driving motivation. We furiously get the project over and done with (in phases) just so we could enjoy the rest of the morning watching it. It was so clear that I was a virgin at it. I sat there eager and wide eyed, and even at one point reached for the remote and skipped it backwards just to yell out:
"Gila la! The girl said 'fuck'!"
Haha. The guys were so mad at me. Potong stim they said. Hahahaha.
And then the rest they say, is history. Still in the making. Ngehngeh. But the 4 of us grew apart after that year as we entered the morning session. Azrie went back to Johor, trying to grow his eyebrows back perhaps (long story), Chee Keong frolicked with them gangstaz at school which made hanging out with him very inappropriate. Hibat and I has always been bumping into each other even to this day. But we grew out of each other I think, for the better perhaps.
I remember Zul once asked me, will I still be doing music when I have my own family and all, I told him it's the same as porn. You can never let it die in you. But porn somehow thought me respect towards the opposite sex. It made me appreciate the whole complexity in emotions and relationships. So really, it isn't a bad thing.
My first proper post in ages and it's about porn.
Great.
