Those born with a Scorpio Moon experienced extreme mood swings and obsessive jealousy. Their emotions seethe and boil below the surface, like volcanic lava, and unleash itself in a violent eruption when they are pushed to the edge. Most of the time, they appear calm and cool and you would never suspect that such intense feelings reside within their hearts. Natives with this moon are always torn by their emotional ups and downs but they usually learn to master their feelings early. Their childhood tend to be unhappy, traumatic and their birth mother tend to have a character that is seen as powerful, demanding (sometimes manipulative) in the family. Sometimes, mother can be viewed as having “failed” in her nurturing role, because she has “abandoned” or “neglected” the child to his terrible fate, or it could be simply that mother is an abusive character. Either way, mother is experienced by the native as untrustworthy. 

Astrologers consider this moon as the most “hungry” of all moons. It is always eager to feed on emotions but never feeling satiated.

When they grow up, natives with this moon position crave emotional upheavals, and may provoke drama unconsciously just to “test” their boundaries. Their life is a perpetual Tamil movie, with all its sobbing and screaming and melodrama. In a love relationship, they are very jealous and possessive. They are suspicious of their lovers and can smell betrayal from hundreds of miles away, while busy sharpening their claws for revenge. Do not try to fool the Scorpio Moon for they can always see through your lies. And they hate deception. They have psychic intuition. They will want to possess you, to own you, body and soul, to make love to you and merge into you. If this sounds psycho, then maybe you don’t deserve their loyalty, which is the most fiercely devoted of all signs. They would gladly sacrifice their lives for you if need be. 

  

Like Kali-ma, the goddess of destruction, the Scorpionic Moon embodies the devouring mother archetype. This is why astrologers call a new moon formed in the Scorpio sign as a “raging” moon. 

   

Women with this moon position tend to be very sexy and magnetic. They exude charisma and sex appeal even without trying. Men with this moon tend to be more introverted, but their eyes are very penetrative. The men will stare at you intensely, trying to gauge your intentions even in moments of passion. Both male and female have been described as insatiable in bed.

Celebrities with Moon in Scorpio: Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Taylor, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Shakira, Lady Gaga, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Hurley, Avril Lavigne, Alan Rickman, Robbie Williams, Bruce Lee, James Dean, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley, Roger Federer, Adam Levine, Bono (U2), Mark Zuckerberg.

                                                                                                                     - The Venusian -

Asian cinema has its own share of mind-rotting, vomit-inducing garbage. During the early 90's, exploitation films were all the rage in Hong Kong. While the violence is not as graphic as "Hostel" or "The Human Centipede", Asians have a knack for artistic, subtle violence that terrifies you psychologically. Acts of disemboweling and chopping up limbs are only hinted, their ghosts are there to spook you, rather than to chase after you with a chainsaw. This, in my opinion, is a finesse that truly separates Asian cinema from Hollywood (who prefers violence to be crude, into-your-face). Asians play on the unknown fears, while Hollywood just wants everything to be blatant.

Enter Hong Kong's Category III Films, a type of torture porn made famous in the 90's. There is no equivalent in the Western world, except for maybe the NC-17 ratings. HK Cat III deals with serial killers, prostitutes, ah longs, imperial courts and bizarre fetishes. Below are my Top 5 "Best Of..."Awards for Cat III films.

BEST SERIAL KILLER

The Untold Story (1993), also known as Human Flesh Buns, is probably the most iconic film that defines the Cat III genre. Anthony Wong's performance as a disturbed, creepy psycho who goes about raping and mincing people into meat buns was brilliant enough to win him a Golden Horse Award for Best Actor. The plot is really simple: a man kills an entire family and masquerades as the new restaurant owner, while dishing up "pork buns" made from human flesh to his greedy customers. This movie tries to be deep. It provides a social commentary on police brutality, criminal law, the mass media and ultimately questions the notion of justice. You'll find the victim-victimizer role gets shifted around as the story proceeds. What a shame this film is so underrated and underappreciated (just because it is Asian). More people from the West should watch this! If you love grindhouse movies, this is definitely the one for you.

BEST STALKER 

 

Red To Kill (1994) is one of the sleaziest, most sordid Cat III films ever made. It is some sort of exploitation extravaganza full of gender violence. Plus it has the most satisfying climax and ending in an HK movie. The story is set in a neighbourhood plagued by a predator who stalks and rapes women wearing red clothes. The rapist gets turned on by the colour red. What is frightening (and educational) about this is the identity of the rapist. He is in fact, a teacher working with the mentally-disabled children in a shelter, and a trusted member of society. In my opinion, this reflects the reality of sex crimes; most people who commit rape are usually in a position of trust and responsibility (eg; family members, priests, etc) and therefore are able to slip under the radar easily. The least suspecting ones are in fact, the most dangerous. This movie rates really high on my list of "perverted filth" due to the amount of disturbing sex and gore floating around. Go watch it now.

BEST SEX 

Don't Stop My Crazy Love For You (1993) portrays obsessive love that turns bad real fast. Veteran actor Simon Yam starred as a fan who spies on his object of affection, Kitty, a pretty anchorwoman, who lives across his house. Problem is she does not realize his existence on the same planet. Besides playing peeping tom, he also sleeps with a life-sized dummy resembling Kitty. Then proceeds to send tapes containing harassing messages to her. If you think that isn't creepy enough, he eventually murders the poor woman's boyfriend in a psychotic rage. Our heroine, desiring revenge, baits her stalker using sex and this results in a very steamy, immensely smutty bedroom scene with some serious full frontal. The raw passion and lust that is captured by the camera lens during the love scene is quite unparalleled in its intensity, IMHO. Actress Yvonne Hung gained fame overnight for her salacious portrayal of the beauty in distress, and I find that fame rather justified. The rest of the movie is not very graphic, but the final climax more than makes up for it.    

BEST HISTORICAL SHIT 

Men Behind the Sun (1988) made controversial headlines the moment it was released. It becomes the first movie to earn the Cat III ratings in China. Directed by Mou Tun Fei, it is a documentary that supposedly depicts the cruelty of Japanese soldiers against Chinese civilians during World War II.  The Unit 731, a top-secret unit, was designed to conduct inhuman experiments on Chinese prisoners in order to create the ultimate biological warfare. Eeeww, those experiments are really pukeworthy. Examples: a man had his intestines explode when tortured by high frequency noise, a woman had her skin peeled off her arms, and a boy is dissected alive while his heart is still pumping. Although the term "documentary" lends an air of respectability to this film, I must say the exploitative elements tend to get played up a lot by the mass media, therefore misleading the public into thinking that this movie is just some cheap shitty gimmick. Personally, I don't find this movie sensational in any way. The media hype can be very damaging to a good film which I find to be more educational than your average history textbook in school. 

BEST S&M

Love To Kill (1993) is a little-known Cat III flick that remains a classic in the art of sado-masochism. Anthony Wong played the role of an abusive husband who forced his gorgeous wife to submit to all manners of S&M lovemaking. Domestic violence, while a heavy issue, has never looked sexier than in this movie. Hubby turns into a beast at home whenever he gets in the mood resulting in lots of hot Master-Slave scenario, ranging from bondage, spanking, insertions, asphyxia, water sports, etc. For those who are curious about genuine S&M techniques, this movie will educate you in graphic details. Despite its rather smutty nature, the wife never takes off her clothes fully and never reveals as much skin as other Cat III actresses. The focus here is not exploitation, but on the acts of violation done on the wife in the name of connubial love. Wifey eventually gets her revenge on hubby in the end, in a predictably gory and messy way. "50 Shades of Grey" can't even begin to compare with the nastiness of this HK original.

Are soft toys postmodern art? The beauty of soft toys is their transcendence, their ability to recapture lost spaces of our childhood while fearlessly defying fixed boundaries of age, race, gender & nationality. Dutch artist Florentjin Hoffman recently made headlines with his giant inflatable yellow duck swimming in the sea, migrating from harbour to harbour.

This bird is a contradiction. On one hand, it is a fantasy, on the other hand it is a reality. It is both a ship and a duck, making it a ship-duck. And the ship /duck is a closed space floating in an open space. While it is inflated in a duck shape, it is also deflatable meaning it does not have a definite shape. As a site of resistance towards identity, the duck disrupts the logic of time and space. It simultaneously refers to our past (childhood) and our present (adulthood). The exaggerated size of the behemoth ducky, meanwhile, is a distortion of space. Even the sea is a superimposed bathtub.

Dwarfing the other boats surrounding it, our yellow friend creates an estrangement / alienation effect of what a toy duck should be. In other words, we now look at ducks with a new perspective :)

With its free-floating ability, it deterritorializes and reterritorializes space. Frontiers break down. The ducky symbolizes mobility, a nomadic movement across smooth spaces of the sea. It is a place without a place.

Other works by Florentjin Hoffman. So, why soft toys? You may ask. The teddy bear with a pillow and cuddle bunny transports us back to the utopia of our childhood, to a time and place of great innocence & purity. Before children are corrupted by power and politics, we live in a naive, Edenic-like existence. Once we grow up, the reality of power hits us, and adults adapt to become evil. Paradise Lost. The giant soft toys hope to recover the child within us. Paradise Regained.

For more information on the artist, pls visit:
http://www.florentijnhofman.nl/dev/projects.php

For spatial theories, pls refer to Foucault's idea of the heterotopia:
http://www.heterotopiastudies.com/

One happy family :)

There is a manga called "Lord" (超三国志-覇) written by the famous Buronson. In case you have no idea who the hell is Buronson, he's the same guy who created "The Fist of North Star" series.

Anyway, "Lord" is a subversive piece of art.

Fiction can be subversive when it challenges history by reinterpreting events and characters. In this manga, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (a classic Chinese text) was given a creative twist. The hero is some Japanese slasher dude who is the "missing page" of history. He was never mentioned in history, because he did some pretty badass shit to Liu Pei & Cao Cao.

 The silly RPG cover.













The art is absolutely beautiful. Those darn horses look real.

Perhaps what is shocking & controversial is the distorted character of Liu Pei. In the historical texts, he was a cowardly hero who loved to cry.

But in this manga...Wow. He's a total asshole who goes chopping off ppl's heads & raping women dammit. I also don't get why he needs to be naked and horny all the time. Seriously??? And what's with that big sword?

Similarly, the tiger general Zhao Yun was given a plastic surgery to make him look like a total pussy. He has feminine eyelashes and silky hair that belongs to a shampoo commercial.... 

Do not mess with the Cao Cao.

                                         


3 brothers swearing under the peach orchard.
                                              

Verdict: I guess what is awesome about this manga is the creative treatment of history. The author rewrites Chinese history by inserting fictional characters and events that totally makes sense and is logical to the progress of the story. It offers a fresh new perspective on history that tries to explain the "missing pages" or "silent blanks." Good stuff.

Rating: 4.5/5

Follow this link to read this twisted manga:

http://mangafox.me/manga/lord/

"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" - Milan Kundera.

For those who are always suspicious of our shitty history textbooks - you are right.

History is written by the winners. There's too much garbage propaganda by the right-wing idiots to instil nationalism from an ethnocentric perspective. Nationalism is merely a distortion of historical events to serve a certain agenda. Textbooks are written to glorify a certain group of people holding the reins of power from a certain ethnicity. This is called racial hegemony. In a hegemonic version of history, women and minority races are forcefully erased & forgotten. You'll be surprised by the amount of missing pages in our textbooks that is only revealed by referring to alternative sources OTHER than the bloody textbook.

We should always question history and challenge the forceful imposition of amnesia on us. But most of all... the struggle against power is our responsibility to tell the truth.

That is the thesis of the novel called "The Garden of Evening Mists," written by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng. This book won the Walter Scott's Prize as well as the Man Asia Literary Award in 2013. It was further longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In a book-signing ceremony in Kinokuniya, author Tan shared his writing experience with aspiring writers.

                                                                                

He was signing my goddamn book with a nosy aunty fangirl beside him. She was totally salivating on him, thinking "Damn. If only there are less gay scenes in his novels. If only."

I assured the aunty that a dude can swing both ways in the spirit of universal love.

Sypnosis: Teoh Yun Ling is a traumatized ex-victim of the Japanese Occupation. During the war, her sister was forced into military prostitution while she herself was condemned to hard labour in prison camp. Her sister was executed and buried in an unknown grave. Yun Ling who suffers from a disease struggles to write down her memories before she succumbs to amnesia. She needs to discharge her duty of telling the truth before it's too late. She enlists the help of Aritomo, the emperor's gardener, to build a Japanese garden for her dead sister. She wants this garden to be a memorial to ensure that nobody forgets what the Japanese did. Meanwhile, the Japanese govt is free to erase history in their textbooks, denying their war atrocities against the Chinese, bla bla bla bla....

Rating: 7.5/10