What's wrong Mr Fingers? Do you not like my mouth words?

So here's a update on how I have wasted spent my holiday time meant for studying for block test. Now let's see, what was I doing...

-Cytus/Deemo

Yes, I have finally downloaded cytus. Despite the annoying cool down time I have had enjoyable time playing the game. Only bad thing is that I'm playing on my phone so whenever I slide the phone moves along and I end up missing a couple of notes. Hope that one day I can play on tablet.

Then I ended up watching loads of youtube videos about crazy people getting full combo using one hand, etc. Somehow I get introduced to deemo in one of the related videos. Seeing how the game is more similar to tap and piano, and how the music seems to be more nice sounding, I went to download it as well.

Turns out to be a really wonderful game, had lots of fun playing it. Especially love the song "wings of piano". Again some parts require me to swipe across the screen, which brings the same problem. Regardless it's a nice game, with beautiful graphics and a beautiful storyline.

-Salad Fingers

That's what the title is all about. I don't know how I got introduced to it, probably was in the related videos when I was watching cyriak. Then I went to see the first episode, then the second, then third...I can't stop, until I finished the tenth which I was first watching. Maybe because of too much cyriak, I wasn't creeped out or anything the first time I watch episode 10. But when I have finished the previous 9 episodes, I gained a bit of context, and also could be that it's 2am in the morning, that I ended up finding episode 10 the creepiest.

If you haven't watched the series, you won't know what I'm talking about here. The series appeared as a cartoon first on newgrounds, that was the pre-youtube era. It got really famous, due to it's disturbing nature and enigmatic meaning. It appeared to be really random, but at the same time you could not help wonder if there's some deep meaning behind them all.

I dug through the youtube comment sections and also some other websites that offer analysis and their own interpretations of the series. I'm going to do the same here, here are my two cents.

Overall

Many theories exist on what is the background of the story. Some say it's just random, some say it's salad finger's imagination, some say it's the post apocalyptic wasteland after the great war. I'm going to go with that the setting is created by salad finger's imagination. If you want to be literal here with the setting, then a series of practical questions emerge. Where do salad finger get his food from? Why does it appear that nobody is near salad finger, yet he can always find people? (the normal girl who talked to him, the bbq employee, the random boy who likes him, the yellow skinned person) If they are mutants, how do they live? Won't they be dead by now? Therefore, my conclusion is that it must have all been his imagination. In reality, he could be well taken care of, possibly in a mental asylum with stable supply of food.

The time this take place could be after both world wars, although only world war I is frequently mentioned (the great war) here. Ok, it could be only after world war I, but it doesn't matter in this case, because all we have to know is that he's living in a post war era where there's racial discrimination during his lifetime.

In overall, I think the main underlying theme of the cartoon is depicting his life through his crazy utterings and actions. It could be the things he has experienced through his lifetime, with random pieces added in here and there because the creator doesn't want to be coherent and too sensible. Now I shall do a detailed analysis of each episode.

Episode 1

Nothing is mentioned much here. In this episode we know that salad fingers like rusty things and spoons. We get introduced to the yellow skins guy, in this episode referred to as young child by SF. The yellow skin guy only cry like an elephant, but apparently SF can understand what he's saying. I guess the animator (David Firth) is just being random here.

Some theories say this obsession with rust could be linked to the obsession with blood, since dried blood do feel rusty due to the iron present in both.

Episode 2

In episode 2 things get intense. We get introduced to his friends, which are finger puppets he made, with formal and intricate names. My theory is that these friends are actually people who were important to him in his life. Real people, with names probably different from what he calls them (since he's seen anyhow making up names for people in later episodes).

Marjory Stewart Baxter is his wife. Jeremy Fisher is himself. Hubert Cumberdale is his alter ego that's bad and crazy. I know it's early for me to say these, but bear with me as I support with evidence from later episodes later on.

He tasted his puppets, first Marjory, which tastes like sunshine dust. Then Hubert which taste like soot and poo. This probably signify that he dislikes his bad alter ego.

Throughout the series, SF appeared really innocent, although the things he do can be weird and disturbing, he actually didn't hurt anyone. It suggests that he could have multiple personality disorder, if my interpretation is correct.

Also there's some correlation with France as he suddenly spoke french in the episode. He could have some french origin, or has received some education.

Then, he lured an innocent boy to reach a fish in his oven. From his expressions, it appeared to be deliberate. As the little boy go in and reach it, however, he released the door to touch a metal hook and poke through his finger with it. "I like it when the red water comes out", he said, which becomes his most famous quote.

Then he get some hallucinations, when he arrived in a meat filled place where a life size hubert stands. Some theories suggest that Hubert.C, when unscrambled, spell butcher. It could be his alter ego that's obsessed with meat, blood, stuff like that. Then Hubert suddenly screamed. Theories suggest it could actually be the little boy screaming.

The whole thing could be re enactment in his mind of him murdering a child, some suggest. I'm not sure for this one. All I can infer from this episode, is that it showcases the psychotic side of SF.

Lastly, in the scene when he just wake up from his hallucinations, we can see the puppet of marjory lying on the floor. It could mean that marjory has witnessed his act of killing the child, or the fact that the other two puppets are missing means that they are co-existing in SF.

Episode 3

Now things are getting weirder. First is his masochistic pleasures from nettles. He first put a nettle in a baby carrier and call it the nettle carrier, then push it away to his house. A guy in a BBQ company apron saw him and got very angry. He chased SF all the way to his house, and watch SF from the windows rubbing his breast with the nettle, which cause milk to come out from his teat :| The guy got really angry and banged his head on the door (with a number 22) cos he has no arms, which eventually caused him to die.

Meanwhile, SF said that the nettle make him think of happy times, with a flashback of him sitting with Hubert in a hair salon.

Then he finally opened the door, with the BBQ guy alr dead. He talked to the guy as though he's alive (like how he talks to other inanimate objects) and named him Milford Cubicle when his name tag apparently says harry. He then hang the corpse on a meat hook.

Then SF randomly start playing the flute, and in the end ask him if he would like a glass of warm milk.

I find this episode the hardest to interpret out of all. Some suggest that the nettle could be an actual baby that SF took, and harry is his father. Which is why he chased SF all the way to his house. The fact that he has no arms is really strange. Although I'm not a strong supporter of this theory, I do find a strong correlation between the nettle and baby.

I just thought of how similar nettle and nestle sound. But this seems far fetched. Ignore me I'm just random.

There are a lot of things that I don't get in this episode. Why does the guy have no arms? Why is his house numbered 22? Why does his happy times refer to him in a hair salon? Why does he play the flute?

I also suspect a correlation of meat with the corpse, since in the previous episodes we are shown many meat hang on hooks, just like this corpse. But this also seem a bit far fetched, esp since this meat-corpse correlation has not appeared much in the series.


Ok I realised how long this post is going to be if I am to continue with my analysis. I will end here, and possibly continue after BT or sth. One last thing to note is that SF use a lot of formal and proper English when speaking. This could suggest that he had been educated, or had a good upbringing.

I shall go back to the reality now.

Has the internet gotten more boring?

So I was looking at some old videos that I have watched on youtube, including the internet medley by gag quartet. Then I suddenly realised that, wow, all the memes are outdated. They are no longer being used in today's internet.

I mean, look at nyan cat, awesome face, leek spin, who still discuss them nowadays. Chocolate rain? That song is so long ago.

I'm amazed at how quickly the internet refreshes. In the blink of an eye these once popular memes and rage comics are a thing of the past. Nowadays youtube comment section is flooded with darude sandstorm and illuminati. Even these are getting old.

Maybe it's just me not using the internet as frequently now, but I somehow feel that the time when the internet is fun and buzzing, when it has created a variety of subculture, when different forums flourish, is gone. Now, everyone floods to reddit, and the gaming community seems to be the centre of the discussion. We haven't create many good memes recently, and the new memes created are random and bland of any cultural value.

I don't know, maybe I have simply fallen off from the train of new trends. We are no longer the most active users on the internet. The 00s, they are rising to be the strongest force on the internet. This is a generation bred in isolation and spoilt by technology, fed with fast food and blasted with trashy music. I don't know how they will grow up to become. Well, it's an universal law that the older generation always despise the younger ones. Maybe this generation will grow up just fine. But they will control the fate of the internet. From the current trend, it doesn't look promising.

Meep

Hihi it has been so long since my last post. Too busy since J2 started and today is HBL day so I can finally take a break. Actually not really given that it's 4am now what have I been doing with my life. Anyway,I don't actually know what to do with this post. Maybe, some music first?

And the cantonese version because this one carries more emotion, and there's lyrics.

Actually knew of the song sometime in January. Now the obsession has cooled down, still like it though, the lag oh well.

Now I feel like I'm entering a world of increasing complexity, especially my social environment. It has come to the point where certain things I know about have exceeded my level of understanding. I feel like there are a lot of things going under the surface around me but people refuse to tell me anything about it even though they may know somethings about it, and I just feel like I'm left in the dark. Everyone has a half understanding of things and then postulate and judge, and other people will then have half understanding of their judgements, and these other people will carry on postulating and judging based on their half understanding of the postulations and judgements. Cycle repeats. Some base their judgements completely on intuition, some worries about things that they have half understanding about and others assume things, with their dark thoughts as lenses, filtering the world into a dark reality. Sometimes, I wonder if those people who claim that they understand or know actually know anything at all, or if they are just blinded by their own judgements. If people judge less and be more open, I think my social environment will be a lot less complicated and I won't have a headache now.

I feel very old now. I feel as though I will be thrown into the adult world at any moment. When I was a kid, the adult world is dull and boring. It is about watching the news, stock market, formalities, a bunch of trivial and uncomfortable rules, grey buildings and excessive worrying about the weather. Therefore, since a kid I formed a natural distaste for things like economics and politics, because they are the things that adults do and what makes them so boring. Now I don't feel much different than my younger self, except with deeper understanding of the uncomfortable rules and human nature. Now the thought that I'm going to become one of them make me feel very depressed. I really don't get people's obsession with statistics and news. Sigh sorry I side tracked a bit. Anyway my main point is that I have no idea how to handle this increasingly complex social world. Shall I be ignorant or pretend to be? Will I take an arrow in the knee when I shut myself in the dark? If ignorance is bliss, I would rather live in my own world. Trying to know and understand everything is exhausting.

This is a meaningless post

I'm here today to ramble about random things, to just let words flow from my fingertips and print themselves in a haphazard manner on your computer screen, so, please do not read it if you want to see a quality post, go read some other entries that I posted.

Life has became rather meaningless recently, well life has always been meaningless, in fact now it's not meaningless, it's depressing. I'm just depressed for no reason, wasting my time away in a manner that I don't wish to. And I feel low and down for no reason. I thought it will go away, for I feel happy when I don't have a reason to feel sad. But no, now it's the other way round. I feel sad because there's no reason to be happy. I have no idea why I became so pessimistic.

Stress, stress is piling up. That moment when I just spent another holiday meaninglessly away without completing my homework, CenTaD research, all the things I have wanted to do at the start of the holiday. I was playing brainwars, battlecamp, smash, watching meaningless buzzfeed videos, scrolling through facebook and wechat anxious for updates, waking up every noon and going to sleep every dusk. I'm living a zombie life. I desire for change, but this lifestyle has gotten so comfortable, it has the same gravity as the bed at 6 in the morning. The pull is so strong you simply cannot get away.

(Away, I would rather sail away; like a swan, that's here and gone)

CenTaD is not going well, but I'm already too tired to invest any more time and energy into it. Partner is not very proactive, but now I just feel like throwing all the work to him. My accuse is not justified. He has olympiad training, I have nothing. Though I feel like I'm doing the majority of the work, and taking majority of the initiative. I don't mind doing more work, but taking initiative is tiring as hell. But, he has olympiad training, so it's natural that I shoulder more work and responsibility. Right?

If you see my previous post on emotional lessons, I mentioned that I spoke some harsh words. That's after I got scolded by mentor, in a subtle, sarcastic manner. Mentor is not that bad, just that we are too slow. Not doing something that could have done 2 weeks ago. I wanted to do things sequentially. Anyhow, now that I have done it, it became totally unnecessary. Now we will have to dismantle everything again. Maybe I'm taking TOO much initiative; mentor is right, this could be a one person project. I don't have to wait for my partner to do stuff, I'm supposed to do everything because partner is busy and doesn't care.

Sorry for the acidity. Now that I start thinking about it, I got angry again. Chill. Hold on a second.

Okay I'm back. Now that I have experienced anger, I shall go back to despair because I haven't done any holiday homework. Just looked through vector again and got stucked on one question for 2 hours. Was doing tutorial that was supposed to be completed before holiday began. Did two and half questions for an entire day, and it's not even supposed to be difficult. VECTOR GO TO HELL WHO THE DEVIL INVENTED IT AND INCLUDED IT IN A LEVEL SYLLABUS

Chill

Yes, so I have pretty much forgotten everything I have learnt in the previous year, haven't done any homework, research is screwed.

Ok, I think now my depression is justified.

Oh yes, and KI IS research. I still haven't settled down on a topic.

And screw maths.

Screw human relations.

Screw SSEF.

Ok I'm done.

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P.S.

Wow you actually managed to make it this far? I thought I told you that this post is going to be meaningless, why do you still read it.

Stare at you.

Staring intensifies.

Continue staring.

Still looking at you.

My eyes never moved.

You are getting creeped out.

My lips start to curl.

*smile*

*Laugh* you are really creeped out aren't you.

Have a nice day.

so much feels

Recently a lot of emotional things happen. It's almost like I'm taking a course that life offers me, everything is bundled and packaged nicely. It's just so coincidental.

First is the lost of control of my own emotions. Nothing serious, no harm is made. Sent a really long message that has a harsh tone, which I regretted later on. The point could be better conveyed. This is one of the few rare occasions that I let my emotions get the hold of me. I'm still trying to get over the feeling of guilt.

Then yesterday my friend lost control of her emotions. There was a built up throughout the day (being criticised by senior etc.) and when we are playing a board game with a senior and the senior criticised her again, she broke down.

She's the kind of person who cares a lot of what others think of her. She wants to be liked by others but it's precisely this sensitivity that kept others at a distance. And this incident just made her spill out all of the previous emotions that she has tried hard to keep under control.

The senior was at a loss of what to do at first and asked me to talk to her. I tried, but it isn't exactly helping. Since she's also quite conscientious about others seeing her feelings, I thought I will leave her to chill and talk to the senior instead. But she insisted that there's no need to hide it from her so the three of us went to a bench and started to talk about the problem.

It was a three hour long emotional talk. Turns out that the senior also broke down when he was at our age, for similar reasons, attending the same event. This incident rekindled his memory of the past. The two of them actually have similar personalities and more or less faced the same problems. The senior started to share his experiences and how he got over his problems. It is a very deep, emotional and insightful session. I felt I learnt so much after the talk, more than the emotional maturity I gained for a year.

This made me reflect about my own emotions. I used to lose control of it quite often. Now, I'm much much better at keeping them in a safe place. However, after this session I'm wondering if I'm actually avoiding or ignoring my own emotions. Over the years I've learnt to not show my emotions and to not care about a great deal of things. I saw this in a page I visited (http://www.intpexperience.com/emotions.php) and I thought it's really good:

For INTPs, the emotions can be like carrying a huge, overfull pot of soup. The chaotic swings and the ever present danger of spilling can feel dangerous. We develop a natural desire to Avoid the negative and dangerous ones, to keep the soup from sloshing and knocking the pot out of our hands. We learn to walk carefully, calmly. We try to keep balance.

In general, we believe that all observations contain important information about the workings of the world, including emotions.  We turn our rational functions onto our feelings to analyze and understand them, to find their meaning.  Even if the raw emotions are positive or otherwise manageable, the process of mixing focused thought with emotion super-charges them.  The emotions can feel very deep and meaningful.  That's not a problem until we get violated, embarrassed, or not valued.  Then, the super-charged emotion blows up like a ticking timebomb.  Again, the emotions are primed to be more intense than for other people.

Given that emotions can be radioactive for us, we become adept as using rationality to box in the dangerous animals.  Every time they get poked and start pacing in their cage, we use rationality to blanket the emotions and keep them within controlled, safe parameters. In short, our Avoidance has crystallized our rational preferences.  We've learned what we're good at, and what we're not.

So why are the seas so stormy for INTPs? First off, it's not our fault. Some people are simply more sensitive to certain stimuli than others. Some people can't stand the smell of perfume. Some can't stand rough fabric on their skin. Some can't stand bright light. For INTPs, the experience of emotions is like listening to music with the volume blasting. We like the music, but if it's too loud, it's painful to the ears. Even if it's not, the blaring music has a tendency to disturb the neighbors.  For most types, weathering a bad emotion is like a sailing a lake with choppy water. No big deal. It passes. But for INTPs, it can be like a hurricane. Howling wind and driving spray. You get off the boat looking like Nick Nolte after he was arrested.  We learn to become good meteorologists to avoid the storms in the first place.

And I resonated so well with this:

Let's meet Ivan and Irina INTP.

They are cute-as-a-button five year old children. Awww, aren't they sweet?

But already, they are carrying wounds. Particular wounds. They were inflicted by times like these:

*In trying to assemble a complicated toy, they just can't seem to get it right. They get really FRUSTRATED. The feeling that wells up in them is terribly strong. They feel so emotional that it feels like a coming volcanic eruption. They either need to scream, break something, hurt themselves, or cry (or all of the above). All of those things have consequences that they don't want to face (provoking something else, embarrassment, etc.), but the feeling is so strong that they can't hold it back. They might grab handfuls of their hair and pull. Or growl. Yet, their desire (or need) to assemble the toy correctly won't let them stop. Other children just leave behind what is frustrating them or cry for a little bit and move on. The INTP will vent an emotional outburst, then swing from intense anger to intense embarrassment because of what they've done. Big swings. Big highs and big lows.

*In a certain place or with a certain person, they feel enormous feelings of happiness and meaning. It's so powerful that they want to share it with others. But not just share by explaining it like a dissertation. At first, they assume that others feel the same strong emotion and want to feel it together. However, when they reach out and try, it becomes very clear that the feeling is not shared. The rush of positive emotions swings to sharp embarrassment and confusion. Again, the swing is extreme. Other people would be disappointed, but try again later. The INTP may vow never to repeat this very unpleasant experience and never reach out to that person again. Ever.

It's like my childhood. And I still remember the countless times that I nearly cried because I cannot solve a maths problem no matter what.

Re-evaluating my emotion is like opening up a dangerous portal. If I handle it well, I will become a better and more complete person. If I did not handle it well and become excessively emotional, it can wreck havoc in my life.

Maybe if I ponder about it long enough, I will eventually get it.