Graceland, Legends And The Art Of Rhetoric

So it begins: the shrill squawking of ministerial promises blaring from loud hailers easing down my street, the lightning-strike posters nailed to longsuffering lamposts -- they're everywhere, and they make me giggle because they remind me far too much of Elvis Presley's once-famous Taking Care of Business in a Flash logo.








Yet, clearly, I don't live in Graceland.

Here, the weather is always the same -- it's the tropics, after all. The malls are evenly air-conditioned -- just cool enough to make you browse -- though the prices can get too hot to handle. Public transport runs like clockwork and the airport is something of a legend in itself. The radio stations play a maddening mix of banal non-sequiturs; all imported from sophisticated countries where it is perfectly acceptable for people to call glutes "all that junk inside your trunk" and "gedwidchu" expresses a desire for sex.

But 14 years since I went walking in Memphis as a chubby youngster in search of my next great beignet, I will even take an event as farcical as a general election -- in which choice is a notion best pegged to a legend called Hobson -- as surely better than the default setting where there is no there: a lugubrious mediocrity that lingers in the air we breathe.

Here, nature truly favours the mediocre, and all things fair to middling. Each night, despite the odds, the mildly-depressed-for-no-good-reason, the dour and the happy-only-when-compared-to-utter devastation -- they all will sing with feeling the lyrics of disco diva legend Gloria Gaynor: "I will survive. Yes, I'll survive."

And, in case you missed it, "I will survive."

Now, I know I surely don't live in Graceland.

But there sure are a lot of people here who are getting freakily excited about the king, the one whose electoral blue suede shoes are best not stepped on. The one some call the son, the one they say might do greater deeds than his father, the one my mother describes (with the displaced affection of a die-hard rock fan) "rather dashing in an Asian-George Clooney kind of way if you look at him from the side ...".

Still, I wonder if Western rules of engagement apply to politicians in my clean-and-very-green neighbourhood which I honour and I adore.

For instance:
1. Do fortune, and voters, favour just the tall -- or also the relatively tall?
2. Just how effectively can a candidate apply the actions of loosening a tie and rolling up sleeves when it is di rigeur to wear polo T-shirts with short sleeves?
3. How far does a spouse's sense of style affect a candidate's popularity?
4. Do the partying habits of a candidate's children make a difference?
5. Does the shade of white worn by a candidate matter -- or will just any ol' white do?
6. What is beige?
7. How many times more does a political candidate have to use colloquialisms to secure votes the closer he or she gets to polling day?
8. What's an appropriate type of shoe for campaigning? Does a candidate select this based on comfort or looks?

I can only cite Elvis' immortal phrase as the drama unfolds over the next nine days of public performance: "A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favourite part of the business..."

Paper Pattern For A Dream

Dreams -- not the kind we forget because they hit us when we are literally asleep, but the thoughts we stray to when we are bored with where we are at the moment -- seem never to happen the way we imagine they should.

Any fantasy or aspiration that seems even to be within our grasp is surely doomed to appear limbless, with an ironic twist, shaken and sometimes stirred for good measure.

Conditioning from fables about releasing genies from bottles (or obsessing over that proverbial Pandora's Box) manage our expectations. So we grow up thinking that dreams, in fact, are not supposed to appear with the regular accuracy of our pizza orders.

There is always a lack of some vital detail, a kind of missing metaphorical salami, which albeit obvious in hindsight, never occurs to present itself before we pour our hearts into wishing, hoping and praying.

It is as though the universe does not so much conspire to help dreamers, but delights in giving them exactly what they want, with no polite disclaimer to explain this cruel and politically incorrect heckling.

No surprise we emit a pained wincing that passes for laughter when we finally face the half-baked fruition of our hearts' desires.

Take the romantic in search of eternal love who finally finds her dream guy, only to discover he has halitosis, which makes her go weak in the knees for all the wrong reasons. Or that dream job the ambitious corporate climber gets while he is so very young, but then, too soon, so his enjoyment of that achievement is not so great as the runner-up turk who gets there only after years of trying. Or that anorexic who finally stops starving because she decides she wants to be healthy and happy, and that, who knew it, but there is such a thing as being too thin after all, only to have her heart fail because her body refuses to comply with her epiphany.

But back to the issue of why we can't make paper patterns from our dreams.

Why have a cake, is my point, if you can't bloody eat it?

Can satiation really lie in merely the having? Or maybe we would not prefer cake that we can't eat, and would be happy enough just with just, say, a pretzel for a substitute. Or maybe any confection will do, because any part of a dream is better than not dreaming, so any vague impression of sweetness is better having no taste of it at all.

Or maybe we just don't know cake when we see it ...

Death And Peanut Inevitability

Illogical numbers show that human death keeps the peanut industry alive and kicking.

My personal survey of at least eight funerals in the last three years has revealed strong evidence to support this theory: no fresher peanuts-in-shells exist anywhere else than at Singapore funerals.

They just are that way, because they never have to keep.

Last year, there were 16,217 deaths in Singapore, according to the department of statistics. Assuming about 75% of the population here is Chinese, and that peanuts most commonly occur at Chinese funerals, that's at least 12,162.75 times peanuts were served to the bereaved in just 2005 alone.

If each dearly departed was survived by at least one relative, one friend, one spouse or child or parent, all of whom attended the average wake of three days, that works out to 109,464.75 peanut snackers in just one year. (At least.)

About a third of these peanut snackers are there throughout the day -- say, relatives and loved ones -- each of whom eats 30 peanuts after each meal. That works out to 90 peanuts a day. The remaining eat about 30 peanuts at each visit (assuming they attend wakes after dinner).

That's a total of 108,370.105 peanuts in a year at wakes, even with the most modest of estimates. But that sum doesn't account for the really stressful funeral day, on which peanut consumption is likely to double immediately. (If the deceased was very popular, that number may even be tripled.)

The conclusion? Based on current no-carb dieting trends that recommend eating peanuts (high fat) to lose weight, it is clear how funerals directly cause weight loss among the bereaved, even if they are stress eaters who are likely to pick at anything snackable under duress (in this instance, peanuts).

Alternatively, the truly morbid weight watcher can logically shed unwanted pounds by dining only at wakes and funerals...

Alibaba.com lists Peanuts-In-Shell details from Lord (China supplier):
1) Specification: 9-11, 11-13
2) Moisture: 8.5% max.
3) Imperfect grains: 5.5% max.
4) Admixture: 0.5% max.
5) Aflatoxin: 4ppb
Packing: 50kg/gunny bag

Beginning Rambling

in the beginning is nothing, for now. until inspiration motivates story, and time turns story into words. in the beginning is a notion, a thought, a throwaway sentiment that never sees light of day because too often it succeeds in its escape into the everyday dealings of the everyday. Else, it is too frightening to publish, because it is an idea so mundane that should go no further than its existence in one's mind. yet everything must begin somewhere, even the least of tales. or the greatest of them.