its_anto's Xanga

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tue, 08 May 2007 23:40:53 GMT

People waste disgustingly large amounts of food.

How hard is it to just order a bit and clean your plate? If you're still hungry, you can always order more when you're done.

It pisses me off.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Wed, 02 May 2007 03:22:50 GMT

I've been experimenting with prosaic poetry. It's kind of interesting to mess around with.

I would really appreciate comments. I just hope that I managed to get a message across.

Anyway, here's my poem.

*****

Who is Leaving Who?

Anthony Liu

No Child Should Be Left Behind.
But they want reasons. And they spread their eyelids a little wider.
A hint of a frown. A concerned stare; the hint of soft tears and a warm sniffle.

Because they are the future. They carry us with beaming faces towards the gleaming light that rises above a grassy meadow. They dance and play around the silvery buildings, they laugh and read and spin around the carousel, dressed in red, lacy skirts and denim overalls. They double-knot their bright sneakers, they eat their vegetables, they watch cartoons for only thirty minutes every weekend. They sing like twittering sparrows, chimes, bells, stars, glitter, choruses. And maybe Johnny will forget his sevens times tables. And maybe Jessie will fall down and scrape her knee. But they grow up, like the throat grows again after a little cough; it just needs a little chicken soup. And after Mom and Dad smile at their spelling tests, it off to soccer, or gymnastics, or the living room.

Because wee certified. Knowledgeable.

Smile.

Because your child is important to us! And here, we ensure that their continued growth and education is our first priority. Of course we follow our certified protocol! Yes, (and the intonation slopes and peaks and squeaks and beams with dripping syrup, but not too much, because it would give the kids cavities) we at the Academy enrich their learning to develop new practices that improve student achievement. In the Academy program, teachers participate in workshops and online seminars that enrich their content knowledge and teaching practice. The overall program promotes continuous improvement by helping teachers work together to establish their understanding of high standards and how to help students reach them. The Academy and the Evidence to Excellence process promote trust among teachers and the capacity to work collaboratively to improve instruction for all students.

The parents dip their biscotti in the little paper cups of sugary coffee. They shift in the little warm plastic chairs and nod lovingly.
Sway to the playful beat.
Swirling the little straws.
Switching the tinny audio track.
So don worry! Your child will not be left behind.

A heartfelt sigh.

They look around the room, standing, squeaking those little chairs. Heads turn, hands are shaken, fathers straighten ties and exchange cards. Mothers compliment each others?handbags, letting out those softly piercing laughs that come with practice. And around them, the sweetly crude finger paintings smile down at them all. The fluorescent pinks and greens seem to glow slightly like candy that has been wrapped in too much plastic.

An excellent choice!

Thank you, Mr. Dewitt. Martha and I are so glad to be part of the community.

And Johnny sits on the massive couch at home, toying with his fingernails. His toes wriggle at the digital clock, because when the first number turns into an Eight, they will rumble back into the driveway. And then hel tell them about his day, because Sally shared a sandwich with him at lunch. And the Triceratops herd found a new bivouac near the kitchen counter, because that where the subtropical plains are, and that a suitable habitat. And Mister D told him today that his math was getting much better, and he could finish his problem sheet in ten minutes.

But it still a Seven. And Johnny thinks about how a kid was saying the F Word in class today. And today, his friend told him that all black kids were stupid. Because they came from Africa and used to be slaves, but Abraham Lincoln let them stop working. His father told him that. And Johnny fidgets and squirms in his seat, and he keeps staring at those black, sharp shapes on the clock.

Still a Seven.

Seven.

Eight.

But nothing. Nine. Ten. Nothing but the clink of cocktail glasses, the smiling stupors, the handshakes that get softer and softer as the night goes on.

And

When John is Fourteen, he sweats and he grunts and he finds out how fucking pointless his history class is. Because it not actually important, right? In actuality, all he learns are facts. He knows the dates of

Watergate
The First Communique
The Joint Straits Treaty
And Pearl Harbor or something like it.

And honestly, who gives a fuck?

Fuck:

The usually accepted first known occurrence is in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed some time before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris." The "John le Fucker" occurrence in 1278 AD is doubtful. "This reference first appears in Carl Buck's 1949 Indo-European dictionary. Buck does not supply a citation as to where he found the name. No one has subsequently found the manuscript in which it is alleged to have appeared. If the citation is genuine and not an error, it is most likely a spelling variant of "fulcher", meaning soldier.

But I don learn

I use.

The word fuck has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as German icken?Middle Dutch okken?dialectical Norwegian ukka?and dialectical Swedish ocka?and ock.?/font>

And John steps heavily off of the front porch, eyes squinted, hands in pockets. And he knows all about the chances he been given, but it better not to think about them. And it doesn matter how lucky he is, or how gifted, or what an Enriching Environment he lives in.

And he strides quickly. But he was never abandoned.
They throw coins at him as he walks away.

His mind eye blinks. He sees those hot pink dinosaurs again, and tells himself not to cry, because he never really liked them anyway. Really.

*****

anyway, if people could tell me what they think, it'd be great.

Whoa. Xanga.

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:26:14 GMT

I kinda forgot about this thing.

But now that I've stumbled upon my site again, I'll leave you with this awesome video. This is the happiest kid. Ever.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:46:52 GMT

I found an old story that I wrote on my computer. This was written back in Year 11. In the middle of IT class.

Alf was sitting next to me at the time, and I was bored.

***

Alfred the pancake cooker was a very normal pancake cooker.
He worked on the 47th floor of a half-destroyed Hong Kong flat, selling illegal pancakes to illegal immigrants. He cooked in his own kitchen, turned his house into a small cafe, and bribed the police with pancakes every time they came over to investigate his house.
In other words, he was completely normal.
Alfred was not known for the quality of his pancakes, but for the speed at which he produced them. The entire neighborhood talked about his "Thirty Second Breakfast", which consisted of a lot of pancake mush crammed into a pot (Yes, he cooked pancakes in a pot) and a couple of spare pineapples to go with it. (His neighbor upstairs owned a perfectly normal illegal pineapple farm hidden under his bed).
This pancake cooker, perfectly normal as he was, always ran into his share of problems. Of all things, Alfred hated policemen who would refuse his pancakes. Of course, he had never encountered one who refused them before, but he hated them anyway. On his bedroom wall was a huge poster with the giant words  hate policemen who refused to be bribed by my pancakes?in several different languages. It was extremely fortunate that the police force was very fond of pancakes (however thick or pineapple-filled they were), as Alfred would go to any means to take his revenge on those who didn like his pancakes.
It was one Saturday night when he finally met one.
Saturday night was usually a quiet night for Alfred. His cafe business was almost always overtaken by the numerous bars and clubs below him that lit up the city. Saturday night fanatics were interested in absorbing liter after liter of alcohol, and not pancakes. During these rather lonely nights, Alfred liked to bring out his Play Station 2 and faded dance mat and play the extremely old game, ance Dance Revolution? Those in the flat always knew he was playing when the dust started to burst out of the crannies in the ceiling, and the pipes in the walls began to burst.
He usually managed to deter the complaining neighbors by giving them a pot filled with one gigantic block of a pancake.
On this particular Saturday night, there were no customers. Alfred sighed to himself, maneuvered around his very cramped cafe/apartment, and pulled out a dilapidated dance mat from the ventilation shaft. He shook out the lizards making a colony in the plastic, and cleared off a space on a mahjong table.
Soon the tiny flat was filled with energetic dance music, and Alfred was cracking joint after joint as he hammered himself against the mat on the table, using every appendage on his body to play. (Yes, every single one). He also sang along to the songs with his very rudimentary English. In fact, he was stomping and smacking and bellowing so loud that he almost didn hear the doorbell.
Standing in the open doorway (Alfred didn't actually have a working door anymore) was a policeman. He was completely normal. He was missing one leg, and stood on crutches. He also had his hat on backwards.
Completely normal.
Alfred looked up at him with a very bruised face. He was used to policemen.
This particular cop looked like he was about to fall over. The waves of loud music seemed to blow him backwards, and the pants leg that was missing a leg billowed back like a flag. Alfred realized that this one would need a lot of pancakes to properly bring back his health.
Mustering all his strength, the policeman hobbled towards Alfred, forcing his way through the palpable waves of noise. He tried to shout over the music in Cantonese.
Alfred, being an illegal immigrant from Sweden himself, had no clue what the policeman was saying. Leaving the music on, he decided that he better start preparing his pancakes and weaved his way into the kitchen.
The policeman tried again, falling over in the effort of shouting.
Alfred didn't even notice. He was pulling out a trash can sized pot from the light fixture.
In one final burst of energy, the policeman pulled himself up...
...and fell down again.
His crutches punctured a hole in the already battered floor, and he fell straight through into the illegal Panadol factory on the floor below. A huge cloud of dust, splinters, and lizards flew in all directions.
It took a while for Alfred to realize what had just happened.

***

I hardly remember what exactly I wrote that day, so reading this was really entertaining. =)

IT class was silly.

Edit: I'm thinking I might want to continue this one.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:34:17 GMT

Updating is overrated. =)

...hope everyone's doing well. I'll write something here later if I feel like it.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 02:06:30 GMT

I give up.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 08:12:39 GMT

I apologize for not updating. Lots of stuff going on, etc.
I'm still writing email messages to people. Some of you have gotten yours already. They'll keep coming.

Damn. There's way too much to do.
Will update properly soon.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Mon, 22 May 2006 12:45:08 GMT

I'm in a strange mood. And I'm sick.
I would like to thank the very few people who are here to listen, talk, and care

..oh, and my email "shoutouts" (I hate that word) are coming soon. To every person I have something to say to.

www.darfurisdying.com
..Something everyone should see. Play the Flash game.

another edit:
http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_140224831.html

Man Dies Fighting Over Chicken

(AP) FORT WORTH Fort Worth Police say a fight between two brothers over a piece of chicken ended when the older sibling fatally stabbed the other in the chest and temple.

Marcus Williams, 21, was arrested and charged with murder in the death of his 17-year-old brother, Michael. Police say the teenager had returned home at about 6 p.m. Friday night to the 4000 block of Hemphill with some chicken.

After his older sibling took a piece without asking, the two fought. Police say Marcus Williams retrieved a knife from the kitchen and stabbed his brother in the chest and in the temple.

The victim was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital where he died a short time later. Police said the three other family members were at home with the attack occurred.

***
...KFC should use this in their ads.
"Yes, the chicken is THAT good."

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Wed, 17 May 2006 05:08:17 GMT

I feel like shit, kinda. Good time to start writing.

Feel free to inspire me.

...writers are pretty depressing people.

=)

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Tue, 09 May 2006 12:56:48 GMT

No joke. Just now, I came across this hilarious crap:

*******

World of Warcraft to the Big Screen
Source: Variety
May 9, 2006

Warner Bros.-based Legendary Pictures has picked up film rights to adapt the popular fantasy video game franchise World of Warcraft and will develop the project with game publisher Blizzard Entertainment, which is owned by Vivendi.

While the "Warcraft" franchise has been around for more than a decade, the most recent iteration, the megahit online title "World of Warcraft," has transformed the video game industry.

Unlike most games, where players pay $50 once and play until they're done, more than 6 million people around the world pay $14.99 per month to participate in the multiplayer game.

Legendary put up half the money for Warners' Batman Begins and the upcoming Superman Returns.

*******

...you have got to be fucking kidding me.