What I learned from "Joker"

“I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it’s a comedy” - Arthur Fleck

That poor guy. Yes, you might have guessed. I just watched the film. It is a beautifully made film yet disturbing. So disturbing that I can’t keep it for myself, I need to discuss it with somebody after the show and now the need to write it down.

After watching the film, some people said, “Bad guys are hurt good guys”. Well, bad guys are the result of bad society, consisting of bad people who tend to do bad things to other people. I mean, why the heck that rascals just hit the clown? He was just doing his job, man. Just because he was a clown doesn’t justify the bullying act. This made me realise how bad the society is, even in real life.  Imagine you are sitting in a cafe. Next to you sits another guy who looks somewhat weird. You have never seen that kind of person before. His skin is too dark. His eyes are… too small, probably. His face is too round. His nose is less pointy and a bit too big. What comes to your mind? Let’s ridicule him? Yes? You are sick. But, hey, you are not alone. They are out there, people with similar thoughts.

The next thing I realised after the film was how important the mental health is. Arthur Fleck had a condition a.k.a. mental illness. His mother was delusional. HE is delusional. He was bullied because of his condition. But he was still functional, the medication and psychiatrist kept him from falling deeper into the hole. Then, it was cut. That’s when everything went from bad to worse, I think.

My friend : “Well, he just had bad luck. Bad things happened to him all the time. He didn’t have somebody to talk to.”
Me : “If he got help, I mean the psychotherapy and the medication weren’t cut, he might still be able to stay functional. ”
My friend : “How can you stay sane when so many bad things happen to you? Plus, he is poor. It won’t make any difference. Let’s say he had money and could afford the therapy, he would still turn out to be Joker anyway.”
Me: “If he were rich, he would become Batman instead”

When you realize your life is a comedy, it's too late

We won't be taken down

It was Monday. A usual Monday in December. Cold. Cloudy.
My life has been flat for the last years, I didn't find it interesting enough to be written in the blog.

It was that Monday. I went to work in the morning. Nothing special happened except me discovering some mistakes on the experiment data. Never. trust. your. computer.
Who likes Monday, anyway?

Whoosh. Fast forward to the afternoon. After my saxophone class I went to have dinner with Mr. Neighbour at the Christmas market not far from where I live. Well, Christmas market is one of the highlights of December. It made the cold winter bearable. Glühwein and potato puffs (with apple mousse) are things you must buy from the market, at least once.

Because I planned to leave Berlin for several days and by the time I was back, the market would be closed, Mr. Neighbour suggested that we had potato puffs there.  So, our favourite place was this particular stand with a little kitsch decoration. It looked like a night club in the 70s. They also played oldies and Christmas songs, which would stay in your ears for hours after leaving the place.

With potato puffs and glühwein on the table, the Christmas in Berlin was complete. It was a normal dinner, really, until several minutes later. We heard quite disturbing sound. Boom! The light chains were moving like crazy as if somebody was pulling and waving them. I told myself, "Maybe a Christmas tree fell down". The lights of the stand across the street was out.

I continued my dinner, although the urge to find out what really happened was there. One thing I learned is that to always stay away from any incident site. We never know what would happened. Two old women behind me walked outside to find out what happened. One came back and said that a truck ran into the market. I didn't take it seriously and told Mr. Neighbour that the two women were being paranoid by associating the incident with the one that had happened in Nice, France. Sirene was heard. Police or ambulance was arriving.

We finished the dinner as if nothing happened. While waiting on the line to return the glasses and plates, one security guy came in and ordered the stand to be closed. The owner didn't like it. The security guy kind of screamed, "What the heck? Some people are dead and you still want to continue opening this stand?"

We walked out the stand. Policemen were outside, asking people to leave and setting police line. I looked around, tables were broken. One stand which sold Christmas decorations wasn't in a good shape. It didn't stand straight anymore. I just wanted to go home. I had a bad feeling. I checked the Internet. Nothing about the incident has been reported yet.

Fifteen minutes later I was home. I turned the TV on. There it was. It was claimed as terrorist attack. Ten people were dead, around 40 were injured. Berlin was in emergency state. I got a goosebumps. My days would never be the same again.

* * *

Two months after the incident. Flowers and candles are still there to remember those who lost their lives. Walking through that place gives you different feeling now. That place will always be the witness that we won't be taken down by such a terror attack.

C(h)oke Bottle

Okay, many people know, Agnes Monica aka Agnez Mo (in her way to go international she has changed her name, or at least her stage name) has launched her first single with Timbaland.

Long before the launching, there was a youtube teaser video of her performing in a club somewhere (claimed to be in the US). Well, in the video, she is dancing but barely putting the microphone before her mouth. Is that really her singing? Or? Well, you know it.

As a used-to-be fan of her when she was a child, I am not so impressed with her mature look and ambition. I mean, she is just simply a copycat mainstream singer. When Pink was popular, she tried to be like Pink: leather jacket, pink punk hair, underground video. Then came Rihanna – she is just like Rihanna wanna be. Then came Beyonce, her concert is just Beyonce-like. Even a friend of mine joked that Beyonce got the concept of the concert from her. And then Lady Gaga, and… well, you know it. Just name any prominent US Divas, she might have copied every each of them.

Inevitable, some of her news stuck in my timeline in twitter. Well, you know, she is famous. More or less, I know what she is up to from her fans aka lovers.

Several weeks ago, she tweeted that her single was at the top of a website, which happens to be the place for illegal downloading. Fine. But, you don’t have to be proud that your hardwork is pirated, right?

At the same time, I saw a tweet about another Indonesian musician, Addie MS. His album topped the iTunes chart. He was surprised, even when he got the news from Apple itself. How about our diva-wanna-be idol? She promoted herself. Of course, with the help of her “lovers”.

So, out of symphathy, I retweeted the link, mentioning her. I wanted to say, being humble never hurts. It is better than campaigning all over the world without a concrete result. Then, here comes the interesting story.

One of her fans told me that her song is not sold in iTunes Store Indonesia, but only in the US and Australia. I couldn’t compare it to Addie MS, whose album “only” charted the Store in Indonesia (although I can also find it in the US Store). Fine. I went to the US iTunes Store, searched with some keywords (including the “alay” one like Agnez Mooohhh – ah, it reminds me of a cheese advertisement). And tadaaaaaaa……. Nothing!

I later learned that her single was released last week. And as usual, her fans are screaming that her single is charting the iTunes Store in the US. Ouw, not bad. Her dream might come true. Searching in Google, what I found were some websites written by Indonesians living in the US. Maybe one of her friends who happened to let her stay at his house.  Here is the funny part of the blog:

“People here in the states may not know who she is, but Agnez Mo happens to be the most decorated pop star in Indonesia. (Feel free to go to Wikipedia and provide more info).”

Well, you count on Wikipedia to decide somebody is famous? (Go create your own page and you are famous!).

As a matter of fact, I think it is unfair if I only look for information created by “haters”. So, trying to be neutral, I went to iTunes Chart Top 100, with the hope to find her face there. At first, I was so happy that I thought I saw her face at position 3. But too bad, it was not her, it was her idol, Lady Gaga. Ah, maybe she imitated Gaga so well that I couldn’t differentiate them anymore.

So, in order to verify the news, I tweeted the link and mention her. Who knows, she might give me some insight. Then came her lover, maybe without even clicking the link, stated that the link I posted was made by haters. Hello? Tell me how this website can be a hater-made http://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/. Even if they are, they won’t even sell her single  at the first place.

Well, at least, I got what I wanted: reading her fans reactions. You know, they are bunch of fanatic fans with no…. Ah, you decide.

A Tooth Fairy's Tale

When I was studying in the States, we were required to do some sort of assignments called “reflexive questions”. It consisted of several questions about activities you have done and how you felt and what benefits or loss you might conclude from the experiences. The purpose: do something, learn from it, which in the end, learn about yourself. That, plus the great possibility that I suffer from histrionic personality disorder (really, the more I think about it, the more I am sure I have a personality disorder), makes me reflect on what has just happened to me and the reason behind it.

Some of you who have known me for quite a long time – especially if we went to seafood restaurants quite often – might have seen me crushing crab shell or opening a bottle of beer or biting off a label tag with my teeth. You might have felt the pain within yourself, as if YOU yourself had done one of those things.

Well, last weekend I had toothache (again, the same tooth for probably the last three years). I knew it clearly, as it has always been, that I wasn’t fit. This particular tooth was filled when I was in the high school. And everytime I am dehydrated or about to catch a cold, it hurts, as if giving me signal that I need to pay attention to my body and health. I took it for granted. I drank a lot of water, slept or recuperated myself as soon as I noticed the signal. Good thing is: the pain went away as soon as my body was fit again.

But, this time, things are different. The pain stayed put. It dragged my gum since Thursday (or probably Wednesday) and didn’t go away until Monday, regardless what I did to reduce it. On Tuesday, I decided to see a dentist, which I believe is not anyone’s favourite thing. The dentist decided to drill a hole in that tooth so that the heat, as a side effect of inflammation on the gum, to break out from my mouth. I had to go back the next day. He couldn’t pull it out as the inflammation was still there. “Come back tomorrow and hopefully it is fit enough to be pulled,” he said.

On the next day, I was ready and so far three dentists have handled me. The newest dentist tried to pull the whole tooth. This is understandable as it takes shorter time, less work and everybody is happy. But he failed.

“I need to cut the tooth into two so that I can pull each part of the root,” he explained.

I looked at the four surgery lamps above me with the hope that they could blind all my senses. Maybe this is why people hate going to see dentist.

He finally cut it and tried one more time. I don’t need to explain how it felt like when he hold the half-tooth and made a circular movement. He couldn’t do it, either. Oh, good. Then came the second doctor, a rather cool one with ponytail. He took a look and took over the surgery. Oh, man, I bet he does weightlifting quite regularly. I even felt numb on my anaesthetized left jaw when he finally pulled out one part of the tooth.

Thanks. That helped.

The new doctor continued the work. After a little more efforts, he finally took the second part.

Oh, thank God.

“Wait, what is this part?”

Wait. What?

“There is something more. Be patient, we’ll be finishing soon,” he looked at me smiling, trying to soothe me.

After the cracking and wooshing sounds from the machine, the tooth was finally gone. And here comes the explanation.

“Your tooth has three roots, that’s unusual. As you may have known, most teeth have two roots only,” he showed me a picture of anatomy of tooth. “We didn’t see it on X-ray because the film is two-dimensional, and this one hide behind the other.”

“Another thing that makes our surgery today a little difficult is that the root is not pointy at the end as the usual root. Yours are a bit thick at the end. Imagine pulling a bended nail,” he smiled.

As a bonus, I was allowed to see my tooth before it was thrown away. I saw at least six pieces bloody calcium. 

What a tooth!

After that I kind of thought to myself: That is why, I was able to bite off those hard things. Some of them might have more than two roots. I felt grateful that I decided not to wear a brace seven years ago. Maintaining my uniqueness is more important than having the same look like others as I might be defined by my teeth.

Eternal Rivalry and The Victim

One, who is a psychology student or having interest in psychology, should know Sigmund Freud.  Well, in case you don’t know, he is (or was, I am having difficulties to decide which tenses to use) the founding father of Psychoanalysis – once one of  the popular fields in psychology. And his fundamental theory about personality is the Id, Ego and Superego. Some people, including me, have difficulties differentiating those three, which are responsible for our behavior. Some of you may argue that his theory is outdated. But believe me, if you trace deep enough through the modern psychology, you will come back to these famous three.

Okay, enough about psychology and Freud. Let’s talk about those three directors of ours. Id is the part of you, that wants to enjoy the life as pleasantly as possible. That includes all the hedonic urges in you – hunger, sex, buying expensive but unimportant things. On the other hand, there is the police of the mind – the Superego – who regulate or limit the Id so that you don’t live like animals or simply destroy yourself with those desires. So, everytime you want to do something - or behave - these two legendary rivals will fight, or I should say, negotiate. Imagine the devil-and-angel thing like in films or cartoons. The result, or the treaty, of the negotiation is the Ego, things you finally express in your behavior – smiling and say no when a stranger gives you something or nod your head in front of your parents although you didn’t agree with what they say.

And of course, there come times when your Id is so strong but your Superego is surprisingly diligent in doing its work. For example, you want to swear (name all the derogatory words, mostly marked with derog. in a dictionary) but your social values don’t allow it. One thing I find interesting is how our Ego turns out to be, accommodating the hateful feeling yet socially accepted.

Instead of saying the word that means excrement, some people say “Shoot!”, with the same intention and tone of swearing, of course. Some replace the word which means sexual intercourse with “Fudge!”. If you are following the series How I Met Your Mother, you will learn many replacements – such as surgeon for a person who hasn’t had an intercourse or witch as in wicked witch to refer to seducing, annoying behavior of a woman or sandwich as a reference to the leaves that is illegal in most part of the world. In this way, they are safe from trouble: when somebody got mad, they could say, “I didn’t say the bad words.” At the same time, their loath was expressed.

Some people go smarter. Instead of showing one forbidden finger, some show three fingers with the caption “read between the lines”. Or pretending to rub their chin or eye, but the only active finger is that particular finger – as for this one, some do it subconsciously – and here comes another theme: defense mechanism. Oops!

Remember: there will always be a negotiation between Id and Superego within you. And the result is your Ego, for example, this article (and the avoidant of some words, oh, you know what I mean).