Cockroach

Cock: “Warning: the following content may not be suitable for the faint hearted. If you are, do not continue. If you're going to have your meal soon, especially a buffet, don't continue. If you just ate your meal, especially a heavy one, don't continue...just an advice.”

Bull: “Disclaimer: No animals were intentionally harmed to produce this post.”

This happened a month or two ago. I was in my room in my hostel, and out of the blue, I heard a zapping sound. Zzzzp… Sounded like that. I knew it was the sound of something that was hit by the fan.

Guess what? It was a cockroach. The mightiest insect in the world committed suicide by flying into the rotatable fan - perhaps to prove it’s mightiness? If you don’t already know, yes, cockroaches can and do fly, sometimes. (So next time if there’s a cockroach somewhere, remember to look up as well.)

The worst part was that the cockroach was cut into two. The blades of the fan slashed it’s body into 2 parts – the bottom part got stuck inside the frame of the fan while its other half laid on the floor.

Amazingly, that half-cockroach was still breathing and surviving. My roomie picked it up with a tissue paper.

Half-cockroach

As you can see, the top part of the cockroach is still intact. And surprisingly, it was still moving its antennae and hairy legs. Impressive! It’s spirit is one to be modeled.

Yikes, My bottom half!

The bottom part got stuck in the frame. It' doesn’t seem like a part of the whole insect but believe me it is.

Isn’t it something quite unusual? Imagine being cut in half and still being able to live, although not for long.  That can only be possible in magic acts of sawing people in half. Besides maybe earthworms, I know of no other living creatures that are capable of the same feat. If there is, do share.Truly, the cockroach is one hell of an amazing living being.

If I’m not mistaken. The cockroach is quite a pre-historic creature, having crawled the planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. The rather simple make up of its body makes it very survivable and durable for all these while. I bet it could survive longer than us humans too or any cocks out there, especially if there’s a nuclear warfare. Just for clarification, although the word cock is part of the roach, it has nothing to do with cock.

Speaking of nuclear, Japan is now struggling with nuclear reactor failures which could potentially escalate to a nuclear meltdown, after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake sent waves as high as 10 m upon Sendai. Hopefully all will be well for them. Sometimes it’s saddening to see the force of nature wrecking havoc on civilizations, but things like that is highly unpredictable and uncontrollable.

If there is ever a nuclear meltdown or warfare, rest assured that the cockroaches would survive longer than humans. According to a documentary I watched a long time ago, cockroaches can survive for as long as two weeks after a nuclear warfare when humans exposed to the same radiation can all die within a day.

How is this possible?

Cockroaches are simple structured insects, compared to humans which are so complex inside and out. So in a way, simplicity leads to long term survivability. When we are faced with a radiation, our cells could easily mutate and react to the contamination, but that’s not the case for our exoskeleton-ed friends.

Their eggs, also known as Ootheca, are also very unique. It looks like an armored shell. Because of it’s air tight, waterproof, tough, almost impenetrable property, it could survive a nuclear warfare. Definitely, the Ootheca is a tough nut to crack. So in an event of a nuclear warfare, the anti-radiation eggs could hatch after the war and grow into healthy adults.

Source: wikipedia

Even if a healthy, young cockroach is exposed to lethal radiation, the cockroach could lay an egg which contains hundreds of babies that could have the resistance of radiation passed down to them from their mother roach. Thence, the cockroach can continue to spread and dominate the world.

Have you seen an albino cockroach?

I don’t know about you but I’d seen quite a few with my own eyes. I’d seen them in the most unsurprising places of all – the toilet, specifically in the toilet bowl.

Now sometimes when you see a cockroach, you see that it’s white in color and think that maybe there exists albino cockroaches. Imagine, if it really exists, could it be an antithesis image of the normal kind? I do hope so. However, the truth is that there’s no albino cockroaches, yet.

What we’re seeing, those white versions of the cockroaches, are in fact normal cockroaches going through a phase of ecdysis, or shedding of the exoskeleton. After a cockroach sheds it’s skin, it will break out as a white roach. In a matter of a few hours, it breathes in huge amounts of air to inflate its body before the hardening process in order to “grow”. After that few hours, it turns hard and brown as usual. So that’s how people like me thought that white cockroaches are out there somewhere.

True, some of them are gross, but that might be the price to pay for being so adaptable.

cock-roach

Next time you see a mighty cockroach, try to admire them instead of hating them. Love them, don’t hate them. =)

Friend

Something strange happened yesterday when I was on my way back to Shah Alam. I was walking toward Masjid Jamek LRT (Putra line) when I saw two young men hovering around the side entrance. In their hands were some paper and some wrapped stuff.

From a distance, I saw one of them conversing with a passerby, obviously trying to promote or sell something, which reminds me of my days as a promoter. Ah, how nostalgic.

But my past experience isn’t the shebang here, my friend. Friend - That’s the main topic of today.

As I was observing the two of them while making my way to my destination, my eyes beheld the other one (who wasn’t occupied with a stranger) locking on me as a target. Hahaha. It’s kinda funny you see. Somehow when some random (well not just random, some promoter/seller) fellow from the street just glanced at you, you know that he or she will approach because you can feel it. You can just feel it. You know that you’re the target. There’s this look in that fellow’s eyes that seems to say “Aha! you.”

Bleep bleep bleep…target locked…ready to fire at any time….

So I well enough knew that he was gonna approach me, and I had prepared my response beforehand.

So as we were close enough, he blurted out.

“Friend, have a look at some art and souvenirs.”

His first sentence was a bit vague, so I don’t really get what he’s trying to sell or promote. He called my friend. Hold on. What? Since when was I your friend? We never met before and I certainly don’t have your image in my memory, so why bother calling me friend? I guess he was trying to be friendly. So I thought he was done with saying it once, but surprisingly, no, once was never good for him. Before I knew it, his was getting worse at this “friend” thing.

I said, “No thanks,” waved my hand as a sign for negative, and continued walking.

For a moment, he sort of followed me, calling out “Friend…friend…friend…” rather annoyingly, I must say. I even saw his arm reaching out in vain for me to stop. Well, at least he didn’t actually grab hold of me like some notorious people out there would (yeah seriously, some of them do, so be extra careful). He hoped that his use of friend would somehow slow or stop me in my tracks so that I’ll pay attention to him.

And right at the end was the funniest part. As I was about to appear out from his sight, he managed a desperate and weak “Friend…d..o..n’t….g..o……” In a way, it was like a beg rather than a plead, what’s with the dragging of the “don’t go”. His countenance was awful; he looked so sad. It was as if he lost a real friend. : ( 

I ended up laughing to myself, not at his lost, mind you, but at his choice of words.

As such, he lost a friend and I almost gained one. Makes me think, who qualifies as friends? Strangers that you just met overnight? That could be possible (especially with the advent of Facebook), but I think it depends on people’s perspective.

A good question to be asked and answered is: Are those “friends” you have in facebook your real friends? Personally, I think 5% or less of my Facebook friends are people I don’t even know, or perhaps forgotten. That’s because I accepted friend requests without taking into consideration whether they came from somebody I knew. But that was long ago. Now I only add or accept people whom I know, never strangers.

The fact is that many people have strangers in their list of friends. Isn’t that a bit scary. People who you don’t know could know a lot about you. As we all know, the internet is not a safe place to be. So be careful of people you add to your friendly list.

Sex kills

I pulled up behind a Cadillac;
We were waiting for the light;
And I took a look at his license plate-
It said, "Just Ice."
Is justice just ice?
Governed by greed and lust?
Just the strong doing what they can
And the weak suffering what they must?
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

Doctors' pills give you brand new ills
And the bills bury you like an avalanche
And lawyers haven't been this popular
Since Robespierre slaughtered half of France!
And Indian chiefs with their old beliefs know
The balance is undone-crazy ions-
You can feel it out in traffic;
Everyone hates everyone!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

All these jackoffs at the office
The rapist in the pool
Oh and the tragedies in the nurseries-
Little kids packin' guns to school
The ulcerated ozone
These tumors of the skin-
This hostile sun beating down on
This massive mess we're in!
And the gas leaks
And the oil spills
And sex sells everything
And sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...
Sex kills ...

Sex kills

This is a song by Joni Mitchell, a great female singer from not too long ago. This song is really interesting. In my literature class a few weeks ago, we had a discussion about this song.

At first glance one might think that this song is about sex, but it’s not. It’s about putting the blame on other things in difficult times. Blaming this, blaming that – everything but the cause.

I like the line “is justice just ice?” I find it cool and pun-intended. It may well be true in the case of justice being just ice. What really is justice? When someone is brought to court, will justice prevail? I doubt the bad fellows will face the music and the victim will get compensated always. Or maybe sometimes it’s the other way round where the victim is the bad fellow and the bad fellow is innocent.

Justice is ice, maybe. When one has the force to break it, or heat to melt it, could justice be his or hers. Maybe money is that force that can bend and mend justice in one’s way. Then if so, justice is really – just ice.

It’s just human to put the blame on others. We always hear people saying “don’t give excuse”. In the first place, that statement doesn’t really mean anything. When someone is explaining something, he or she is already giving an excuse. A simple excuse like “I’m lazy” is already an excuse. So why say don’t give excuse. If one doesn’t give excuses, then how should one answer the question of why?

Everything has a deadline, but we like to procrastinate. At the end, I myself always blame time for slipping by so fast that I could hardy get a grip of a multitude of tasks. So time and tide takes the blame.

When unfortunate things happen to us we ask – why me? We start finding fault in others. It's the jam that make us late; it’s the wealth that make us reach, it’s the nothingness that make us poor. But when fortunate things happen right in front of our eyes we fail to recognize them.

It’s his fault. It’s her fault. It’s it’s fault. It’s the system’s fault. It’s the fault of the universe itself. However, in another perspective, it’s our own fault.

And the gas leaks,

And the oils spills,

sex sells everything,

sex kills.

Create your own favicon

Favicon, a short form for favorite icon, is used in many professional websites as part of the branding process. Nonetheless, anybody can add a custom made favicon to their website to make the website or blog more personal. If you wonder what changes you could make to your blog, start by having a unique favicon.

Take blogger for example. Usually, an alphabet “B” in an orange background is the default favicon in blogger blogs. Look kinda boring after a while right?

If you have a blog, this is what you might have in your tab up there. Not very interesting.

It is not difficult to come up with your own favicon and having the default one replaced.

Looking at this favicon here, though the favicon isn’t really satisfactory, still at least it’s something else. It’s a complete personalization. Now instead of a “B” I have a “CL” on a green background. This is just an example though as the favicon is totally up to your creativity.

There are a few simple steps to make ye own favicon.

Step 1 – Design your own favicon

Use whatever designing tool at your possession like Photoshop or even paint and save it as an image.

Step 2 – Save the image as a .ico file.

For this step there are some options available. You could download any icon software or you could take an easier path – converting the image into .ico file in some websites. If you like challengers and prefer the former, try googling iconart.

For the easier way, these are some websites that offer image to icon conversions.

• http://www.favicon.cc allows you to design favicons online.
• http://www.favicon.com to know in depth about favicons.
• http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon easy to use image converter.

Step 3 – Uploading your favicon into the internet.

After having an icon, you have to host the icon in the internet so that the favicon will load when someone views your blog/website.

To host your icon, you can either upload it to your site or host it in free image hosting sites like photobucket.com, picasa.google.com and a whole lot of others.

After uploading it to the internet, simply paste this code in the html of your site before </head>.

<link href=”favicon.ico” rel=”shortcut icon” type=”image/x-icon” />

If you have a website, note that “favicon.ico” should be your file name. So if you file name is blog.ico then it should be (link href=”blog.ico”) instead of the one above.

If you hosted your icon in an image hosting site, your link href should be “http://blablablabla.ico”. Just copy paste the URL of your icon.

Have fun making your own favicon and enjoy the results almost instantaneously.

En passant, have you checked out the English pirate version of Facebook. Go give it a try. I bet you’ll be laughing your heads out cause it’s damn funny. Just scroll right down to the bottom of the facebook page and click on English(US) or whatever your default is to change it.

See ye later matey!

A word paints a thousand pictures

A picture paints a thousand words, as people would commonly say. That’s a veritable statement. A picture can capture a moment of time; it freezes everything into a single frame. With it, emotions, stories, feelings, thoughts et cetera are enraptured.

But what about words? Something we use everyday without fail to communicate with one another. We often take them for granted without really appreciating them. A word has a lot of power, and is no less impotent than a picture.

When we read a book we are looking at words. And as we read, we get mental pictures of the scenes in the story. Somehow it’s like watching a movie, albeit internally and mentally. If I narrate to you a story, you would somehow transform the words into pictures in your head. You’ll start imagining.

Words. They are very simple and straight to the point, while at times they can be ambiguous and ambivalent at the same time or different times. One word isn’t that simple after all, for a word can bring about so many meanings.

They say that a pen is mightier than a sword. How true is that. A sword can puncture and kill, but a pen is different. A pen can put lines into words. Being powerful a tool, words, if used in a malevolent manner, could bring forth unaccounted catastrophe. What’s worse than demise, a sword can ensure. Well, there are many things that are far worse than death. Humiliation, discrimination, mockery and such may be worse of than death itself. Words are the only things that can spark such an emotional strain that death cannot match.

Words, use them wisely, think of what you say. Be mindful. One’s choice of words reflects one’s character and disposition. Say what you mean to say and mean what you say to mean.

Let’s part with an example of a word painting a thousand pictures. Saying that this word evokes some deep feeling and emotion isn’t an exaggeration. Scroll down and use the method from the invisible post to see it. The effect wouldn’t have been as great if it’s clearly visible now would it?

FEAR

Resurrection

I have to admit, this blog is outdated. Look at the last entry. Wow. Even I myself got a bit surprised. I guess  it has been stagnant for a fortnight, a Cock and The Bull personal record.

It’s not that there’s no Cock and Bull no more, but rather things are getting hectic. This is a post with the hope of more things to come in the future. To those who update their blogs or websites daily, I really salute them. That kind of discipline and endurance are unmatchable. Yes, it involves a lot of self motivation and discipline. It’s something like writing a daily diary, but more devotion than that.

There’s a reason why I included the Quote of the Week section. I thought about daily quotes but then I knew it’s not gonna work out, thanks to my indolence. Instead, I opted for a quote of the week, so that at least I’ll come to my blog once a week to change the quote manually. In the meantime, getting some motivation to update the blog. But look at how well it all turned up. : P This is what I call self-sarcasm.

I’m been busy writing a lot, but not the usual kind of writing. For the past week, I’ve been submerged in html codes, so much so that I even dreamt about html! I couldn’t believe it myself. I studied C++ programming before but I dreamt everything but C++. The reason for my being crazily meddling with html is because I have to come up with a website design for one of my courses. It’s a group assignment, and I chose to do the layout.

There are many softwares out there to design a website like dreamweaver, wix, and so on, but I didn’t chose one of those WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editors. These are the ones you could drag and drop visuals to make a website. But no no no. I went straight for the basics – a simple free coffeecup html editor. Why I did this? Why, supposedly we are suppose to hand it in a form of a CD, so going for an online editor like weebly or wix is not so viable. Another, more troubling reason lies in the fact that html is more challenging. I’m digging  my own grave in a sense, but I survived, though I had to pay a heavy price as everything comes with a time tag. This means I had less time for other stuff like my test. You bet I haven’t been sleeping well these past few days.

Now, all is past. Looking ahead into the very near future is the mid semester break. Things are going to resume the normal slow pace again. It’s ironic that I like to keep myself busy doing something at least, like doing a personal project or something so that I won’t be doing nothing. I think it’s a good thing to always have some tasks at hand. This is where time management comes handy. And for now I sense that this aspect in me is slowly rotting away, as can be seen in the condition of this blog.

After somewhat successfully designing a website with a team of people and learning the basics of html in about a week. I think a make-over would be apt for this blog. It’s just too messy and clutter-full. I plan to simplify the layout and reduce unnecessary things.

But I guess the new layout have to wait for a fortnight. Haha. Resurrection successful.

Let me share a joke I shared during my class presentation today. It’s the brainchild of Rouffino.

Question: “Which country has the most parks?”

Answer: KOREA.[Use the invisible method to see the answer :p]

Hahahaha.  Hope you got that. If you got any work, hobby, blog, homework and whatnot that needs a little resurrection, hopefully you’ll retake the first step again soon.