The annotated budak

Faery tales for the faint of heart

The couple who left early missed out on the better half of Saturday’s double bill at Sinema Old School: [e’Tzaintes] + A Wicked Tale. Both directed by Tzang Merwyn Tong, the screening also charts the evolution of a filmmaker from a director of no-budget campus tragic-comedies to a polished producer of saturated atrocities that screw with stereotypes and taint visions of virtue in red and white.

Misfits rule and resign themselves to fate in the cringing opener set in a nondescript campus ruled by a blind caretaker and his little boyz in black. The less said of this the better, unless you like your acting stilted, editing scrappy, blood catsupy and script a molehill of whingeing punchlines and distilled epiphanies that outstay their welcome the moment they burst out with the ferocity of a half-bitten bullet.

A wicked world of a difference awaits in Tong’s retelling of a grim fairytale set to balletic distortions of Mozart and Tchaikovsky. A girl too innocent to be true dons a virginal frock and crimson cardigan on a mission to grandmamma through woods where wolves in name and nom lurk for prey of pleasure. In this fable of entangled fates, there is little to distinguish between the stalker, the woodsman and their respective quarry, for a mere taste of forbidden flavours can unleash appetites of unhinged minds. Wet cotton and dry blood mingle with living tissue to raise hell on earth in a massacre of modest proportions.

Mother knows most and tells least in this amorality tale that plunges deep into the Freudian barrel to scrape up lupine fantasies in a bonbon and nurse the darkest fears of devils in disguise. Pure bodies are clearly no strangers to sharp affairs and blind to the guiles of hapless hunters caught with their pants down in the act of unhurried seduction. Guns meet roses over Grandmama’s smoking body as Little Red Riding Hood plays hard ball with the facts of Faeryville and issues a cold warning to would-be puppet-masters still lost in an age of untrammeled innocence.

Blondie...

...is the nickname of this Protoreaster sp. (?), which differs from most of the other knobbly sea stars on Cyrene Reef in its bleached epidermis with small, pale knobs that radiate on a fine mosaic of dark pixels. It's also not as well-endowed as the newly recorded Pentaceratser mammillatus with its rim of marginal spines. Amidst our intrusions into its domain, this asteroid maintains a bearing of calcified stiffness, guarding its secrets and spilling no guts during our short stumble through its territory in a rare and precious hour of tidal latitude.

Wanna a piece of me?

A hairy crab (Pilumnus vespertilio) on Cyrene Reef threatens to pinch my duck. Even small ones an inch across can give quite nasty nips with their claws, so I chickened out of tweedling this much larger fellow.

I is sad. My little toy mouse is lost. And stupid duck refuses to buy me another one cos he claims he doesn't even have money to buy beer. And he says I shouldn't have smacked it around so much until it got lost somewhere under his piles of junk.

Bah! I told him he could get some kittehs for free instead but he says I only want to have them over for dinner in not very nice ways. What can I say? Duck has such dodgy thoughts...

NOMiptera

A preying mantis nymph holds the impaled remains of what was a living shield bug ten minutes earlier. The mantis was a fastidious eater, tearing first into the head of the hapless bug and sparing it the sight of witnessing its own dismemberment by munching off the eyes. It then chomped down on one side of the pronotum and chewed off each leg in turn, crunching every millimetre of chitin between its jaws. The speed of its devouring was uncannily fast for a creature with a modest head and mandibles that seem almost too delicate for a predator of holy mien. If these insects were the size of rats, they'd pose a real threat to soft and squishy ducks...

Biawak

A water monitor lizard (Varanus salvator) at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve. This name of this beast has always bothered my duck, as there was little to suggest why it is called thus. One G.A.C. Herklots, however, ascribes the term 'monitor' to a 'ridiculous etymological mistake' that arose from a misunderstanding of the Arabian name for lizard, Ouaran or Varan. Scientists who were uncunning linguists mistook the word for the German term 'to warn' and dubbed the creatures Warneidechsen, which was translated into English as 'monitor lizard'. Personally I like best the Indo-Malayan Biawak which has a more earthy ring and should be uttered with a sense of urgency worthy of a 8-foot long reptile.

Numerous mature individuals lounge around the visitor centre at Sungei Buloh, dining on scraps and smaller animals that underestimate the speed and agility of these modern day mosasaurs. At the reserve, they laze near the top of the local food chain, with little to fear other than the threat of large raptors, crocodiles and feral dogs. Happily, the lizards are known to feed on large, invasive suckermouth catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus) whose armoured body plates and spiny fins seem no hurdle to jaws that easily dismantle large carcasses. Other aliens are harder to handle though. A green iguana (Iguana iguana) abandoned by some hopeless herpetophile was once observed to assault a water monitor about twice its length by climbing onto the monitor's back and biting the latter's nape. After about 15 minutes, it was iguana win, monitor fail as the Varanus retreated to let the green monster claim its basking spot. 

In parts of Sulawesi and the Lesser Sunda Islands, Bugis and Makassarese seafarers have a respectful tradition of regarding monitor lizards as human spirits in a reptilian body. The lizards, as well as crocodiles, are thought to be spiritual twins to men which confer protection to their bipedal kin. Such benign views have no place here, however, as swimmers and scare-mongers readily cry wolf at the sight of grand reptiles who have a greater claim to the swamps and waters into which hunters intrude with vain notions and demands for human impunity. 
 
References:
• Eng Kiat, Chua, Ferl Iguana attacks Varanus salvator at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Biawak, 2007 1(1): 35-36, International Varanid Interest Group.
• Herklots, G.A.C., A Monitor Lizard (Varanus sp.) in Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1930 May).
• Koch, Andre and Acciaili, Gregory, The Monitor Twins: A Bugis and Makassarese Tradition from SW Sulawesi, Indonesia, Biawak, 2007, 1(2): 77-82, International Varanid Interest Group.
• Suranjan Karunarathna, D.M.S. et al, Observed Predation on a Suckermouth Catfish (Hypostomus plecostomus) by a Water Monitor (Varanus salvator) in Bellanwila-Attidiya Sanctuary, Biawak, 2008 2(1): 37-39, International Varanid Interest Group.