Thursday, July 27, 2006

another shot at life

I read briefly as I always do, the newspapers today. Recently my concentration has been somewhat on the waning side as I drift in an out of concentration, is it the haze? Is it the weather? Or is it general laziness because I don't want to remember details? In any case, I forget things, and rather rapidly at that. Which makes reading counterproductive. I prefer skimming through articles, headlines and key paragraphs. However, with a hyperactive imagination, sometimes you formulate snap judgements or misconceptions, which may or may not be true or accurate.

Anyway I glanced through an article about secondlife.com. Its an online community where you can browse a virtual world that is almost self-sufficient and you can thus 'live' in it. I found that prospect quite interesting, but thinking beyond the realms of online avatars, I'm thinking more of deep-freezing cryogenics where you sign a consent form allowing your vital organs to be frozen and your brain hooked up to this system where you can sort of 'live', interact with people, building communities, attend social events, and have the latest news wired to your brain. Your body will of course be placed in a maximum security underground facility up to a point where you decide you want to be 'defrosted', perhaps years later, or perhaps centuries later?

Who wants to live forever?

turn-yo-collar-up

On my frequent commutes on the train I see a lot of people, and notice a lot of things. One trend that I've noticed these days that annoys me till no end, even though I know it makes me sound like an old man, is the collar-turned-up fashion style. Something about seeing that makes me wanna smack the back of their spiky-haired heads with a gruff 'put your collar back on, boy.'

But it seems to have spread quite rampantly, much like the time when wearing-your-pants-too-low-till-i-can-see-your-boxers look was quite popular and can only be pulled off by these morons with flat asses, which honestly isn't something to be terribly proud of.

So you get people of all ages and all walks of life adopting this turn-yo-collar-up look, school kids trying to make their uniforms look cool, college kids trying to look hip, constantly readjusting their collars to make sure it stays up looking absolutely self-conscious perhaps from low self esteem issues, and recently, 2 very old grandmas in colorful polo tees looking like they were swept by a heavy gust of wind. So who started this trend? I did a little looking and found out that it was rappers like P.Diddy, Kanye West and the like, and others followed suit. Of course they had their bling-blings around their neck so they looked the part, see? I read in an interview once with a local rap artiste on style and fashion, and he said that artistes here can't afford to buy bling, its better to be yourself, why follow the trend when you know you can't afford it, or if its not practical? I almost laughed when I saw that because first of all, if you want to really have your own style, take off that headband like you're going to play tennis, and get rid of that ridiculous accent like you grew up in the Bronx. That was a mixture of ebonics, ghetto-speak, and nasi lemak, so what really do you mean by being yourself?

Well as for this turn-yo-collar-up fashion, it wasn't started by P.Diddy, it started centuries ago by this figure we know now as Count Dracula.