Fear(s) Of The Dark

One of the numerous outstanding animation films amongst other selection in the upcoming Animation Nation 2008, featuring the impeccable Charles Burns helming one of the five stories in this anthology film. A brief synopsis from the official site. Different black-and-white animation techniques tell several scary stories. There's a story of a teenage boy who meets the wrong girl. Another tale deals with a small community where people disappear and are never seen again. Then there's the narrative of a little Japanese girl who suffers from horrible nightmares followed by a tale where a man doesn't get the rest he hoped for in an old not-so-abandoned house. These stories are connected by the story about a man with a devilish smile and four enormous dogs from hell and by a woman's monologue about her fears.

"Sex Spy"

Something to stimulate the hearts and minds of all pornographers in Korea. She arrived as a refugee, one of tens of thousands to flee the world’s most oppressive regime and, for seven years, Won Jeong Hwa was a model defector. She toured South Korean military bases to lecture on the evils of the homeland that she had escaped, the totalitarian Communist state of North Korea. Ms Won had a secret however. According to a confession made to South Korean police, she was a spy who seduced the military officers she met, and plotted assassinations with poisoned needles. Now she faces execution for treason in a case reminiscent of the most tense days of the Cold War. “She used sex as a tool for her spy activity,” a statement by the Suwon prosecutors’ office said. Perturbed over the obscured photo in the article? Fret not, this is the interwub. At your service, a gallery of the clumsily dubbed "Sex Spy", featuring six unobscured images, including the one in the earlier image.

Love Is Blind

"How long will it take before I can't remember memories I should forget? I've been burning since the day we met."

My ZENith Moment - Currently Listening

Been listening to the outstanding cover of Massive Attack's now-classic Teardrops in particular after watching the literally heart-breaking season finale of House's Season 4.

R.I.P. Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam 1926 - 2008

"I get my strength from somewhere else, if you know what I mean," Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam said in an interview with AFP in 2006. "I refuse to conform to the world." Veteran Singapore opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam, who died Tuesday, waged a long and lonely campaign for greater political freedom in the tightly governed city-state. He was attempting a fresh political comeback when he succumbed to heart failure. The 82-year-old British-trained lawyer and former MP was the nemesis of Singapore's iron-fisted founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, 85, whose People's Action Party (PAP) will celebrate 50 uninterrupted years in power in 2009. "I haven't got very many more years," Jeyaretnam said in July at the launch of the new Reform Party, which was to be his vehicle for a comeback after years in the political wilderness. Will you miss the old man, who is always at your favourite neighbourhood MRT Station, selling books and touting "the truth"? It's the end of an era.