#2 - To all you brave individualists out there,

"When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." 

"Ah! but what do you mean by good?" 

"To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others. One's own life - that is the important thing. Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality." 

From a brave individualist.

(The Picture of Dorian Gray).

#1

'I never approve, or disapprove, of anything. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.' 

Well, you've probably heard of The Picture of Dorian Gray (where the above quote is from) and The Importance of Being Earnest. But while going through a copy of his selected works I have lying around, I read The Canterville Ghost, a charming short story that made me laugh. It's so unconventional, it reminds me of Douglas Adams' short stories. I mean, who would think of treating scary phantoms the way they did in the short story? Full of humour, pathos, and unconventionality. And it's a short story, which, in this age where the average attention span is that of a hyperactive puppy, might be a charming quality.

Oscar Wilde.

I love Oscar Wilde. I, quite painfully, lack the faculty of explaining why I like something, but I'm still able to say I absolute adore something, and I do adore Oscar Wilde and his works.
I think it has something to do with genius. Something being remarkably clever, and so absurdly brilliant, that for one moment, you're elevated to an almost divine plane of existence. That genius might express itself through remarkable insight, expert use of language, or wonderfully deviant pathways of thought - and Oscar's work, though more often invoking the first genre, incorporate aspects of all three sorts of genius.

It was his birthday last Sunday, and by a lucky coincidence, I happen to have just finished a collection of his works. I'm sitting here, trying to conjure up a reason to explain why I'm about to say I'm posting up Oscar-related materials here every day, for a week - I mean, wouldn't it be quite boring? - but the truth is that I just love the things he writes, and when you think something is brilliant, you want to tell everybody, whether or not they want to listen.

So here's my sort of tribute to my favourite Irish wit, more a personality and a philosopher than he is a writer - Oscar Wilde.
Happy Birthday.

Travelling books.

Reading Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island would make you think:

If I do get around visiting Britain, I really should make a real effort to visit their cathedrals. 

Utterly immodest, eccentrically so.

So I was wondering if I should pretend to be normal, like how a nice Chinese girl ought to behave, or if I should just rock the eccentricity. As it happens, I wondered aloud on twitter.

A friend tweeted back nice words of support, saying something along the lines of how I ought to rock the eccentricity, because I'm eccentric, not just weird like some other people are, which is a completely different category.

That I immodestly do not doubt. I mean, everyone else can be weird, but do they get so many sketch ideas in a day that they don't bother writing any down, because they know when they finally get around to making a sketch, they'll have materials anyway? Is their own mind a reliable source of entertainment? I think not.

But it would be nice to elevate this eccentricity into a glorious form. Instead of being mediocrely eccentric (something I suspect is my current state of affairs), and letting down all the eccentric people out there, I should be gloriously eccentric to the point where I elevate eccentricity into a quasi-art form.

Now this isn't easy at all, because normal people can be such haters, so you have to fight for your right to be eccentric and yet still be loved.

X

Disclaimer:

Most things here ought not to be taken seriously.

This means war.

I'm wearing a ridiculous combination of a zipped-up jacket with no clothing underneath, and an unnecessarily long pair of pants.

Fuck you, mosquitoes.

Bite me some more and I'll fumigate the house with insecticides.