mollymeek (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} mollymeek) wrote,@ 2007-06-22 04:15:00 |
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Circum-scription: On Cut Citizens
Someone asked Molly what her views are regarding a matter raised by a letter to The Straits Times. It’s about NSmen’s haircut. This is the letter:
Molly must have commented on the issue before, directly or indirectly. There was, for instance, a reference to the rape of the lock. But since someone is asking, Molly shall comment on the issue and more. She shall provide her infernal, subjective comments that are, as always, totally unfair to the Establishment.
First, allow Molly to do some Colonel (Benedict or whoever it is) out there a service by providing a template for a non-reply to Lim’s letter. In fact, it’s more than a template. It has just about everything you need to send to the ST forum as a reply. Here it goes:
Dear Mindef, the above template isn’t copyrighted and you are free to use it, wholesale or in part. There’s no need to even credit Molly for it or ask for permission.
Now Molly is even going to come up with a template for herself to rant about her own non-reply template (actually non-reply is already saying a lot for a letter of its genre):
Nah, of course Molly wouldn’t dare to post an entry as the template suggests. She is not about to be labeled a self-redicalized terrorist who incites violence and threatens national security. Molly is just joking. In fact, she is not just joking; she is a joke. And she hates herself for it.
So she shall write something else instead. Something that will lessen her guilt over her pathetic existence.
The title. Circum-scription. Why circum-scription with a hyphen? There is, of course, circumscription. To be circumscribed, to be limited, to be placed within certain boundaries. “Circum” is also for circumcision. “Scription” for Conscription. Conscription, Circumcision, Circumscription. And circumfession, perhaps.
Cut citizens are circumcised citizens. Or perhaps they are citizens with their hair cut. No, perhaps they aren’t citizens, but are citizens who have been “cut” as citizens. Cut from what? Cut from fundamental freedoms. The cut: a violent wound that never heals. Never quite stigmata, but fresh wounds that burn so fiercely that it extinguishes all fire in the heart, soul, spirit and whatever entities that exist.
Nonsense as always. “Cut” is simply an ironic word. It is ironic since being a male Singapore citizen is not a great way of getting a cut of the profitable business Singapore is. It is ironic since there are so many hikes - tax hikes, cable TV hikes . . . There’s a hike in the number of hikes, it seems. No cuts except pay cuts for you unless you are have made it to the top of the sturdy corporate ladder without even climbing the ladder made from the bones of corpses to be retrenched when they turn 40. The same age that even the armed forces finds you useless.
But why spend time self-reflexively espousing on a title and waste time self-reflexively asking questions about self-reflexivity? Why can’t Molly just be moredisciplined?
Anyway, does “on” mean “about?” Or does “On Cut Citizens” mean “inflicted on cut citizens?”3
There are lots of cut (non-)citizens in the world. Nelson Mandela was one. Circumcised when he was young, before he became who he became. Just like Singaporean men who are cut. They supposedly become men.
Who becomes a man? Paul Monette became a man too. But perhaps we would send him to jail.
Can Molly Meek become a man too, but going through Basic Military Training? Why do some people become some men and other people never become men?
Con-scription is often thought to be significant. In fact, it is just signification. It creates the object it is supposed to defend, without which it has no justification at all. And there we go, round and round, round like the life cycle of homo sapiens, cyclical like ICTs year after year, round like the O’s in OO, Orientation Officer or Obese Ogre . . .
It is signification. It connects things that are not connected. It connects masculinity to physicality, to legitimized violence. It connects regimes of bodily discipline to decency, thereby also defining what transgressions are if you really do want to transgress. It defines you. It creates you despite you. When there is resistance to a connection being made, force the connection anyway. Even the North Pole of one magnet can be forcibly connected to the North Pole of another magnet if you keep the magnets within your grasp.
Grotesque signification. Like a ghost giving itself a material body by taking possession of yours and as your rot while going through your cycles, your routines, it is already looking for a new body.
Always circumscribed, you poor creatures circumcised while the womb!1
No, please don’t bother yourself with Molly. The Internet, especially with bloggers and blogs, is getting dangerous. Don’t radicalize yourself. Molly Meek is probably seditious enough to ask you a riddle that goes: what do Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells have in common?
You will then be led around the subterranean world of dangerous new media and find the answer.
Please do just go and get your hair cut. Go and get circumcised too - you might get a few days’ MC.2 Molly still hates Molly. Let her go on.
3. Well, who says that it has to mean anything? Why allow circum-scription to take place? Read this in relation to the part about signification.
1. Circumcision in the womb: that’s what modern conscription is; and that’s where it is more powerful than the circumcision of the foreskin. It’s in the womb because biological sex is determined way before one is born and that is what determines whether one is conscripted. No, that’s actually a misrepresentation. Conscription is more than circumcision. Foreskin can be cut once. But hair can be cut over and over again. Cycle after cycle. The alternative ritual allows for constant repetition. It’s a continuous reminder, an alarm set to snooze forever - well, till the Energizer in the clock runs out of energy anyway.
2. There is no guarantee, though, that you will not be accused of malingering. See how dangerous Molly Meek is? She gives bad suggestions. She’s never serious. Just look at how she uses italics and her use and order of footnotes. She’s not straight and upright, unlike you, you who have been trained to stand in attention. You are serious, decent people with hair that never touches your eyebrows or your collars. You are serious people. Never allow a wild kitten to lead you astray.
Never.
Someone asked Molly what her views are regarding a matter raised by a letter to The Straits Times. It’s about NSmen’s haircut. This is the letter:
Can NSmen keep their hair during 1-week ICT?
I ATTENDED my first reservist In-Camp Training (ICT) last week. I trimmed my hair before the ICT, making sure it did not reach my collar and ears, and my fringe did not reach beyond my eyebrows.
On the very first day, to my bewilderment, a warrant officer ordered me to hand over my civilian IC. His reason was that my hair was ‘not in line with SAF standards’. I was then told to join the long queue to get my hair cut.
When my turn came, the barber went through every strand of my hair with the shaver and left me with a crew cut, not much different from a recruit’s.
During the next few days of the ICT, I was surprised to see many NSmen with long, sloppy fringes. Then there was one NSman with dyed golden-brown hair.
Were the barbers instructed to trim every NSman’s hair so that they look like fresh recruits, when trimming the sides and the back would suffice?
If the warrant officer was there to check NSmen’s attire and hair, how was it possible that many with floppy and even coloured hair managed to escape his notice?
During ICT, shouldn’t the focus be on refreshing the NSmen’s skills to make them effective soldiers, rather than on the length of their hair?
How about those NSmen who have civilian careers which require them to keep their hair? Can they obtain permission to do so when they go for their ICT?
Even as we fulfil our national obligation by going for ICT, we have wonderful civilian careers where our physical appearance plays an integral part.
Take the media and entertainment industries. An actor may get to play certain roles based on his looks and appearance, and this would determine his career path.
In the competitive corporate world, where first impressions matter and we are more likely to do business with people we like, one’s looks may just make or break a deal.
Do we have to sacrifice our looks just because of a one-week ICT?
Lim Chin Yuen
Molly must have commented on the issue before, directly or indirectly. There was, for instance, a reference to the rape of the lock. But since someone is asking, Molly shall comment on the issue and more. She shall provide her infernal, subjective comments that are, as always, totally unfair to the Establishment.
First, allow Molly to do some Colonel (Benedict or whoever it is) out there a service by providing a template for a non-reply to Lim’s letter. In fact, it’s more than a template. It has just about everything you need to send to the ST forum as a reply. Here it goes:
NSmen required to Comply with SAF regulations on haircut
I refer to the letter dated June 21 2007, “Can NSmen keep their hair during 1-week ICT?” and I thank Mr. Lim for his feedback.
All NSmen (reservists) on duty are required to comply with the SAF’s regulations on haircut, as they are with other disciplinary regulations. Allow me to clarify NSmen are not required to have the haircut that is mandatory for all recruits and are free to style their hair in a variety of ways as long as they are [Insert a summary of the standards regarding haircut]. With each In-Camp Training (ICT), there will be routine checks on servicemen’s haircut. The SAF also provides a cheap barber as a form of welfare for NSmen and NSmen can communicate with the barber about how short they want their hair cut.
Exceptions to regulations on hair length are sometimes made on a case-by-case basis. It might be allowed, for instance, when a serviceman is in mourning or if his religious faith does not allow his hair to be cut.
I would like to take the opportunity to assure Mr. Lim that there are no double-standards in the SAF. Upon receiving Mr. Lim’s feedback, the Mindef has reminded all NS units o conduct the routine checks carefully.NSmen can only blame Mr. Lim now, if they check even more thoroughly than ever. Muhahahaha!!!
The SAF is critical for Singapore’s security and long-term survival. The enforcement of strict disciplinary standards is needed to maintain the caliber of our troops and the image of the armed forces. [Optional: Insert your pet doomsday scenario here if you wish and say that letting NSmen have hair touching their eyebrows will lead to this scenario.] Mindef seeks the cooperation of NSmen to comply with disciplinary standards.
Colonel [Insert Name]
Dear Mindef, the above template isn’t copyrighted and you are free to use it, wholesale or in part. There’s no need to even credit Molly for it or ask for permission.
Now Molly is even going to come up with a template for herself to rant about her own non-reply template (actually non-reply is already saying a lot for a letter of its genre):
[Choose from one of the following seditious and absolutely irresponsible and defamatory titles: 1) Colonel Strangelove: Making a Necessity out of a Superfluity; 2) When Rape is Necessary for Survival; 3) Why talk about hair when the issue is whether there should be conscription in the first place?; 4) Latent/Flawed Assumptions about Gender Propagated by the armed forces]
Oh my, my, my. Apparently, NSmen are complaining about [Insert a summary of the issue] and Mindef has replied.
First of all, Molly has to say that NSmen are often complaining about the wrong issues and in the wrong way. Look at Mr. Lim! Instead of complaining about the fact that the state is forcing him into military service (or maybe he’s more than willing?) and throw him into jail if he refuses to be coerced, he is complaining about stupid regulations on NSmen’s haircut.
Well, but why not? After all, the haircut issue is but a symptom of the terminal disease known as conscription, the most debilitating disease which Nobel-winning scientists have estimated to be at least 40 times more destructive than AIDS, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease and SARs combined. [Insert more controversial comments so that people will comment and slam you for not caring about Singapore’s security.]
Now, we have to ask the question which Mr. Lim asked. Is hair length and hair color going to affect the combat prowess of the army? The answer is obvious. No, no, no, no, no. Look, if a particular hair length is necessary for combat readiness, then there should be a single standard for men and women. Surely we can’t allow female personnel in the SAF to have longer hair at the risk of Singapore’s security? But we don’t. Why regulate the hair of males? (This is a question that can also be applied to school rules.)
We should consider the terms the armed forces use regarding hair length. According to Molly’s male friends (yes, Molly has lots of hunky, but oppressed male friends; but we are just, er, good friends), they are told to have a “decent” haircut. Yes, it’s a discourse of decency, of morality as it relates to men who are subject to the formidable powers of a ravenous state.
Yes, watch the Gatsby Moving Rubber ad and see how indecent Takuya Kimura is. Goodness! They should censor it.
Rub.bish.
Clearly, there is no connection between the hair length and color and how decent a person is. Just last night, Molly met a jerk with a crew cut who tried to grope her and kept staring at her absolutely natural 38D cup size. There is no connection between decency and hair length, though back in the good old 1970s, men with long hair were persecuted. Or so Molly heard. Apparently, they followed decadent Western values by keeping long hair. Which makes it a mystery why period TV serials like The Return of the Condor Heroes feature men from dynastic China with long hair? In fact, in the Ch’ing Dynasty, I think it was an act of treachery or sedition for men to cut their pigtails off. (Anyway, don’t we have some kind of a dynasty too and, for that, shouldn’t our men should keep long hair?)
Or maybe olden China didn’t have armies and never fought or win wars. And the men must have been thoroughly indecent. Let’s see. Did Confucius sport a crew cut or something? Hmm...
Of course, you can argue that certain hair lengths could be associated with certain character traits by certain people with warped minds, and it’s all a matter of image. But is there a reason to pander to the prejudices of misguided people?
Well, the other lame excuse for having a rule about hair is the ever-awe-inspiring rhetoric of Discipline, something which, strangely enough, many people take as a good thing. How scary. Often, discipline is only a euphemism for oppression. Oh well, even if you do have a discipline fetish, what is the link between discipline and hair length or color. A rule is a rule is a rule is a rule. If you don’t make it a rule for people to follow, people won’t be considered ill-disciplined when they don’t follow it. And some rules simply don’t have good reasons to exist. Why create a needless and mindless rule just to make it seem as though people are disciplined. (Do you suppose that someone whose hair is black and whose haircut is short will not go AWOL? And what is the state one day decides that circumcised penises are a mark of manhood, discipline and decency. Will circumcision become mandatory? After all, the same weird justifications for NS such as that it builds bonds between people, that it fosters cohesion by giving people a shared experience can be used with circumcision. And, in fact, similar reasons have been used in various societies and social groups.
Whatever it is, we know that the Mindef isn’t going to change anything. (Well, unless it is so embarrassed by Molly’s satirical blog posts that it feels compelled to do something. But I think you will have a higher chance of finding intelligent life forms living 2.4km away from the sun.)
And there goes. Once again, [insert your pet bleak, anti-establishment scenario to distort the truth and get yourself into trouble. Possibilities include: 1) the people can complain and have no choice but to accept reluctantly or, for some brainwashed ones, eagerly; 2) we see that the heart of the issue is really the lack of fundamental freedoms for people, including the freedom to protest about the predicaments into which they are forced; 3) you can complain and get into more trouble. Now they are going to be even more vigilant with their checks since one NSmen has complained that others are told to cut their hair or dye them black.
[Insert final acerbic comment on the perversion that pervades public discourse in Singapore and that exists in many a Singaporean “mind” so that there will be even more fingers pointing at you.]
Signed,
Molly Meek la Bimbo Satirique
Nah, of course Molly wouldn’t dare to post an entry as the template suggests. She is not about to be labeled a self-redicalized terrorist who incites violence and threatens national security. Molly is just joking. In fact, she is not just joking; she is a joke. And she hates herself for it.
So she shall write something else instead. Something that will lessen her guilt over her pathetic existence.
The title. Circum-scription. Why circum-scription with a hyphen? There is, of course, circumscription. To be circumscribed, to be limited, to be placed within certain boundaries. “Circum” is also for circumcision. “Scription” for Conscription. Conscription, Circumcision, Circumscription. And circumfession, perhaps.
Cut citizens are circumcised citizens. Or perhaps they are citizens with their hair cut. No, perhaps they aren’t citizens, but are citizens who have been “cut” as citizens. Cut from what? Cut from fundamental freedoms. The cut: a violent wound that never heals. Never quite stigmata, but fresh wounds that burn so fiercely that it extinguishes all fire in the heart, soul, spirit and whatever entities that exist.
Nonsense as always. “Cut” is simply an ironic word. It is ironic since being a male Singapore citizen is not a great way of getting a cut of the profitable business Singapore is. It is ironic since there are so many hikes - tax hikes, cable TV hikes . . . There’s a hike in the number of hikes, it seems. No cuts except pay cuts for you unless you are have made it to the top of the sturdy corporate ladder without even climbing the ladder made from the bones of corpses to be retrenched when they turn 40. The same age that even the armed forces finds you useless.
But why spend time self-reflexively espousing on a title and waste time self-reflexively asking questions about self-reflexivity? Why can’t Molly just be moredisciplined?
Anyway, does “on” mean “about?” Or does “On Cut Citizens” mean “inflicted on cut citizens?”3
There are lots of cut (non-)citizens in the world. Nelson Mandela was one. Circumcised when he was young, before he became who he became. Just like Singaporean men who are cut. They supposedly become men.
Who becomes a man? Paul Monette became a man too. But perhaps we would send him to jail.
Can Molly Meek become a man too, but going through Basic Military Training? Why do some people become some men and other people never become men?
Con-scription is often thought to be significant. In fact, it is just signification. It creates the object it is supposed to defend, without which it has no justification at all. And there we go, round and round, round like the life cycle of homo sapiens, cyclical like ICTs year after year, round like the O’s in OO, Orientation Officer or Obese Ogre . . .
It is signification. It connects things that are not connected. It connects masculinity to physicality, to legitimized violence. It connects regimes of bodily discipline to decency, thereby also defining what transgressions are if you really do want to transgress. It defines you. It creates you despite you. When there is resistance to a connection being made, force the connection anyway. Even the North Pole of one magnet can be forcibly connected to the North Pole of another magnet if you keep the magnets within your grasp.
Grotesque signification. Like a ghost giving itself a material body by taking possession of yours and as your rot while going through your cycles, your routines, it is already looking for a new body.
Always circumscribed, you poor creatures circumcised while the womb!1
No, please don’t bother yourself with Molly. The Internet, especially with bloggers and blogs, is getting dangerous. Don’t radicalize yourself. Molly Meek is probably seditious enough to ask you a riddle that goes: what do Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, and H.G. Wells have in common?
You will then be led around the subterranean world of dangerous new media and find the answer.
Please do just go and get your hair cut. Go and get circumcised too - you might get a few days’ MC.2 Molly still hates Molly. Let her go on.
3. Well, who says that it has to mean anything? Why allow circum-scription to take place? Read this in relation to the part about signification.
1. Circumcision in the womb: that’s what modern conscription is; and that’s where it is more powerful than the circumcision of the foreskin. It’s in the womb because biological sex is determined way before one is born and that is what determines whether one is conscripted. No, that’s actually a misrepresentation. Conscription is more than circumcision. Foreskin can be cut once. But hair can be cut over and over again. Cycle after cycle. The alternative ritual allows for constant repetition. It’s a continuous reminder, an alarm set to snooze forever - well, till the Energizer in the clock runs out of energy anyway.
2. There is no guarantee, though, that you will not be accused of malingering. See how dangerous Molly Meek is? She gives bad suggestions. She’s never serious. Just look at how she uses italics and her use and order of footnotes. She’s not straight and upright, unlike you, you who have been trained to stand in attention. You are serious, decent people with hair that never touches your eyebrows or your collars. You are serious people. Never allow a wild kitten to lead you astray.
Never.
