Stepping aside for Reality

For some reason, I still can't get excited about the Olympics yet.

I had hoped to read some blogs from Olympic athletes. Like finding out which athlete runs without underwear to save weight. Or whether the synchronized swimming team do everything upside down in their spare time. There is so much that I needed to learn. Not to satisfy my voyeuristic curiosity, you know, but to enrich my cultural understanding from a purely noble intellectual perspective. That's right.....from a purely noble intellectual perspective.....you got that?

However, Games athletes are not allowed to blog once they enter the Olympic Village in Athens because of International Olympic Committee regulations. Dumb-as-shit IOC and their dumb-as-shit regulations. I'm tempted to do something about it.
Dumb-as-shit IOC and their dumb-as-shit regulations. Okay, I've said that already.

I was very proud of my Haiku yesterday. So I told Harry about it. But he said that I composed it wrongly.

I told him that I had correctly followed the 5-7-5 format of Japanese Haiku; meaning
5 syllables(sounds) for the first line,
7 syllables for the second line,
and 5 syllables for the third line.

Harry said that although technically I had written a Haiku, I had not captured the correct essence of Japanese poetry. He explained that a Japanese poet sits quietly so as to be at one with Nature, and then let his words flow with what he called the " spirit of Unagi ".

I was not sure what he meant by that. But then, most of the time, I could never be sure what he was talking about.

Harry explained that because Japanese poets were so attuned to Nature, they don't compose Haikus about mundane stuff such as a car trying to gostan. Instead, they write about rivers, mountains, animals, forests and related stuff.

Finally, I understood.

Nature? No problem. I can do nature.

So here is the new and much improved Haiku, which is all about nature :

"Drove through the jungle.
Saw a monkey up the tree.
I honked the fucker."

I love poetry. But I don't normally appreciate Haiku(Japanese poetry).

Not till today.

Finished breakfast this morning.. Got into my car. Started the engine. Engaged the reverse gear. Looked into rear mirror and saw this car pull up behind me.
And my first Haiku was composed:

"Ready to gostan.
Retard came and parked behind.
I honked the fucker."

In yesterday’s posting, I ended up with the premise that all souls are unique. Meaning that if we remove the body-mind, we are left with a soul that is different from all other souls.

Why should there be differences among souls?

Consider the computer analogy. If a company purchased 10 computers of the same model and features, and install the same softwares, all the computers should be identical five years later, right? Wrong. Five years later, you will find that each computer will behave differently. Some will hang every now and then. Some will take forever to process simple tasks. Some will display characteristics not found in the rest of the computers. Each computer has become UNIQUE!

How is that possible, you ask, since they are identical models with identical softwares. What happened was that computers became corrupted with junk. Unapproved softwares that were installed were not uninstalled properly. All sorts of malware entered the computer. Undiscovered computer viruses run amuck in the hard disk. Remnant codes and corrupted files lurk in the folders.

What can we conclude from this?

The computers are different from each other because of the impurities. The pure are all the same, just like pure gold ingots are the same. The presence of impurities leads to differences.

Now back to humans. When the body(hardware) and the mind(software) are factored out, what is left is the soul. If each soul is different from one another, we can conclude only one thing: that the soul is a set of impurities.

Now we come to the next question. Are impurities bad?

My wise answer to you is that it would depend how you look at it. Pure steel is not very strong. But when you introduce carbon impurities in it, you will get carbon steel which is much stronger. Many alloys are essentially pure metal with impurities added.

I’m not going to judge impurities as “good” or “bad”. I’m going to just say that they are there. And they are the soul of things.


How many souls does a human have?

The answer is three souls.

Why 3 and not 29?

I shall attempt to argue this figure from the standpoint of natural patterns and religious observations.

We know that a human being has one body and two minds. One mind to weigh the pros and the other mind to weigh the cons. When you are deciding whether to buy that dress, one mind tells you to buy it and the other mind tells you to save the money. The dominant mind for the moment wins the day. Which is why people say things like, “I’m in two minds.”

People who say they have only one mind are talking nonsense. Having one mind is the same as having no mind. Just like having one choice is the same as having no choice.

Nature behaves in a pattern. So if you have one body and two minds, by arithmetical progression, you should have three souls. One, two, three.....see?

Religious people around the world are like the three blind men and the elephant. They see only one limited facet of life each.

Some will tell you that when you die, your soul goes to heaven.
Some will tell you that your soul goes to hell.
And some tell you that your soul gets re-incarnated.

Well, all of them are correct. Because you have three souls. One goes to heaven, one goes to hell, and one gets re-incarnated. I call this Viewtru’s Unifying Theory Of Souls.

We have established that the souls are sets of impurities. What actually happens to them when you die?

Let’s use the computer analogy again. Consider the actions of a good Antivirus program. It deletes viruses, quarantines those it cannot safely delete, and repair infected files so that the files can be re-used.

Your impurities can be divided into three subsets. They are Safe Junk, Malicious Codes and Re-usable Files. These are your souls.

This is what I think happens to them:
The Safe Junk goes to heaven and gets deleted.
The Malicious Codes goes to hell and gets quarantined.
The Re-usable Files gets repaired and re-incarnated to be re-used by new babies.

That is not quite the ending people expect. They expect to get eternal bliss in heaven. Bliss, bliss, where is my bliss?

But consider this: deletion is equal to eternal bliss. There is eternal freedom from pain and suffering. Getting deleted is the best thing that can happen to your soul.

The Malicious Codes soul goes to hell but doesn’t get deleted. Instead, it stays there waiting in quarantine forever. It’s like being in solitary confinement in prison. Isn’t that eternal hell? Maybe.....maybe not. Nature is always evolving and will find a way to delete these codes safely one day.

The Re-usable Files are grabbed by newly formed babies in their mothers’ wombs. These files are like programs. Ancient Buddhists texts called them ‘sankaras’ which can be loosely described as ‘reactions’ or ‘feelings’. For example, if you see a duck and are overcome by an overwhelming desire for roasted duck, that would be called a “gluttony” sankara. The sankara acted like a subprogram that is called to the main program by the sight of a duck. And these subprograms are the ones getting re-incarnated.

Do spiders have souls? Unfortunately, Viewtru’s Unifying Theory Of Souls does not try to answer this question. That’s because when Viewtru tried to see too deeply, he gets affected by a ‘sleeping’ sankara.

Okay, now that you know about your three souls, go ahead and have a happy life.
Live decently and moderately. And bathe often.

May you have a good life.

You ever noticed that people often refer to themselves as having “body, mind and soul”? The existence of the body and mind is easily proven. It may take a bit longer to prove that my friend Harry has a mind, but it will eventually get done.

The body and mind walks together. They are not two independent entities. Mongoloids, who are not all right in the mind, will have bodily(usually facial) features to indicate so. If the mind goes into a coma, the body is not going to go running about. And if the body dies, the mind dies with it. The body and mind are two faces of the same coin.

The soul, however, is thought to be an independent entity. It is thought to exhibit a parasitic character that attaches itself to a living body-mind. When the body-mind dies, the soul floats away much like a rodent deserting a sinking ship. Where it goes to, heaven, hell, or gets reincarnated back to earth, is in the realm of much conjecture.

Nobody, has been able to prove the existence of souls in humans. Why is that? Is it because souls are weightless and colourless?

The idea of souls came from ancient sages who were explaining the fundamentals of life to the people. The point I wish to make is that the ancient sages may not be referring to something real. That’s because a soul need not be real in order to be a useful concept.

Type ‘–1’ on your calculator. Hit the square root function key. You should get an error message. That is because the square root of minus one does not exist. It is what mathematicians call an imaginary number.

Now just because it does not exist does not mean that this concept cannot be of any use. Mathematicians and engineers often use the square root of minus one in a branch of mathematics called the Laplace Transform. Many complicated mathematical problems are easily solved through the use of this concept. In fact, people use it so often that we ignore the fact that this imaginary number does not exist.

So there is a distinct possibility that the ancient sages introduced the concept of soul to explain stuff, but over the years, people have taken the soul to mean something real.

Okay, let us, for argument’s sake, assume that you have a soul. Is your soul unique? Meaning, would your soul be different from that of your boss?

Of course souls have to be different!

How can God decide which soul goes to heaven and which soul goes to hell if there is no difference?

I mean, if everybody has the same soul, and you can’t tell one soul apart from another soul, then what’s the point of having an individual soul?

Which leads us to the next question: what makes a soul different?
I'm still working on the answer. But I should have a theory by tomorrow.

When I first started this blog, I wanted to write about serious and thought-provoking articles. Somewhere along the line, I got sidetracked into writing inane stuff.

The realization hit me that I just don't have the angst to write serious stuff. That's because I am basically a happy person. Not deliriously happy, but sort of an obnoxious happy-like-fuck happy. I don't think that I want to try to be less happy in order to write a serious thought-provoking piece. If that means that my serious articles come out a little bit inane, then so be it.

Some years ago, I was in a small town(that shall not be named) and I looked at the sky. It was a still and sunny day and the white clouds were in the blue sky. I saw a bright triangle up in the sky which I thought was a cloud. It was small, and had crisp straight lines, and looked like an isosceles triangle. I knew that it could not be a weather balloon or even an aircraft. The nearest explanation I could think of at that time was that somehow a cloud managed to form itself into an isosceles triangle by some freak of nature.

I looked around me. No one else seemed to have spotted it. After staring at it for about 20 minutes, I went about my business.

A few hours later, I looked at the sky and I spotted it again. Clouds change their shape with time, or disperse. This triangle did not. It still maintained its crisp straight lines. What was it? I don't know.

The next day, it was gone. It could have been a triangular flying robot trying to camouflage itself among the clouds like a chameleon. Maybe it was just a cloud. Maybe it was my eyesight playing tricks. I don't know. Does it really matter? But around that time, I became less sure of the world I knew.

There was a time when humans thought that the sun goes around the earth.
Then later, we learned that the earth rotates about the sun.

Today, we know that the motions of heavenly bodies are relative.
So it is just as correct to say that the sun goes around the earth as to say the earth goes around the sun. Meaning that facts are relative. And we can choose the way we want to view them. Much like we choose to think that the earth goes around the sun because it is more convenient to view it that way.

Does anybody really know anything? Everything that I knew of the world was the result of an explanation from someone else's theory. But if nobody really knew anything, then my own theories have as much chance of being correct as theirs. Which is why I have been busy sprouting theories. Heck, for all anyone knows, mine could be the correct explanation of how things are.

I still remember that white triangle in the sky fondly.

NOKA : "Okay, let's get dis meeting rollin'. We ain't got all day. Yo, Bow Tie! You da info man. Tell me what's going down!"

BT : "Well, nothing much happening in the past few days, except for that two-year old flyover that developed cracks."

NOKA : "That flyover goin' down? Is that it? That's serious shit, man! Why wasn't I informed earlier?"

BT : "Well, there was this gag order put out by Highway Hair here...."

NOKA : "Yo, Highway Hair! You put out the gag order? How many times I gotta tell your ass that nobody puts out no gag order exceptin' me? "

HH : "Well. I didn't want anybody to panic, or they would stop using the affected flyover".

NOKA : "You took any affirmative action yet?"

HH : "Well after that, I shut down the flyover."

NOKA : "Let me try to understan' all this. You don't want nobody to panic and stop usin' the flyover, and then after that you go and shut down the flyover. And that stopped everybody from usin' the flyover. That wut you saying? You flippin' real bad. Yo, you need a torchight?"

HH : "Why would I need a torchlight?"

NOKA : "Cos yer head's in your ass and you need a light to find yer way out. Now, tell me. How u plannin' to put out all this them here cracks. You ain't fixin' on gluing 'em all into one huge crack, 'r u?"

HH : "Actually I planned to use some space age carbon to fix this...."

NOKA : "Space age carbon! That's nice......that's good......that's beautiful......wut iz it?"

HH : "Well I can't explain what it is except that it is a very strong material from space."

NOKA : "Strong? In what sense? In tensile strength, compressive strength or shear stress? Or we talking fatigue strength?"

HH: "Err.....I dunno....but I will try to..."

NOKA : "You dunno shit! Wait, I'll ask somebody else. Yo Fat Mama!"

FM: "Who me?"

NOKA : "You seen any other fat mama in this building? Yes you! You know what space age carbon is?"

FM: "Not quite. I hear that it's used as a material for making bicycles."

NOKA : "Bicycles!!! We usin' bicycle material to repair roads now? Yo, Highway Hair! Gimme some damn good reason why u think this gonna work before I fry yer butt, y'hear?"

HH : "It came recommended by this new foreign consultant that I was going to hire."

NOKA : "Yo, wait up!! We hirin' a new foreign consultant? Again? There ain't no reason why we can't solve our problems ourselves. Wut, you can't see straight enough to pull yer head outta yer butt yet? What did I say 'bout hiring no foreigners no more?

HH : The last two consultants we had could not agree with each other so I decided to hire a third one.

NOKA : What? And if this third one don't agree, you gonna hire a fourth one, is dat it? Yo, you need a laxative?"

HH : "Why would I need a laxative?"

NOKA : "Cos yer head's in yer ass too deep. That torchlight ain't gonna work. Ya gotta shit yer head out somehow! Dammit! And how much it's gonna cost to repair the flyover?"

HH : "About 20 million."

NOKA : "The contractor's payin' for it, rite?"

HH : "Actually, we are paying for it first, and then after that decide who should pay for it."

NOKA : "Wut? We're talking 20 big ones here! Yo, you need a winch?"

HH : "A winch? Why would I need.......no, I don't need a winch!"

NOKA : "Yes, you do! Yer head's stuck in your ass so tight yo gotta winch it out! Now u go and tell that skunkass contractor to fix this one good! And fast! Or we'll be needing a new man for yer job. And dat goes for the rest of you people as well. Anyone who doan do their job like they supposed to is gonna get some good ass woppin' from me, y' hear?"

Everybody: "Yessir!"

NOKA : "Who da Man?"

Everybody "You da Man !"

NOKA : "That's rite! And don't nobody fergit it!"

The plight of these orangutans smuggled to Thailand has led me to put out a posting of a more solemn nature. Orangutans are not just Malaysia’s contribution to the English language. They are synonymous to the island of Borneo, which is shared by Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

It is sad that we humans have to resort to exotic animals to entertain us. Humans have been deploying animals for entertainment for more than a hundred years. But in the past, this had not caused as serious a problem as it has today. Wildlife was then more plentiful.

Today, we are faced with depleting wildlife stocks. We should be able to look elsewhere for our entertainment. That is why we have video games. That is why we have politicians. And even if they do not entertain us, there are such things as extreme sports. To remove an endangered animal from the jungle so that we humans can laugh stupidly at its antics really borders on mindlessness.

It is even more horrifying when you considered the method of capturing the orangutan. First, the hunter will have to look for a mother orangutan with a baby orangutan. The mother is then shot dead. The baby orangutan will hang around its dead mother, too distraught to try to escape, thus making it easy for the hunter to capture it. Sometimes, accidents do happen and the baby orangutan dies together with the mother. Then the hunter has to look for another mother orangutan with a baby. Casualties are high in the wildlife trade. Can you wonder that our orangutan stocks are depleting?

The only way to stop this terrible sequence of events is through education. We need to educate people to treat wildlife with respect. Our exalted position at the top of the food chain means that we have a responsibility to ensure the survival of the other species as well.

Most of Malaysia’s orangutans are found in the state of Sabah. The development of Sabah will put more pressure on the orangutan population. Not just from timber logging, but also from agricultural activities. Agriculture depletes forests much, much faster than timber logging. Unfortunately, the NGOs and environmentalists have focussed their attention on timber companies instead of agricultural companies. And not achieving enough as a result.

Environmentalists have their heads up their butts and can’t see the forest for the trees.
No, that pun was not quite appropriate.

They can’t see the forest because their heads are still in their butts, which are dark inside.
That’s better.

This is already quite a long post. Maybe I will explain another day why I say that the environmentalists are barking up the wrong tree in Malaysia. Bad pun again. But I have had enough of using the words “head” and “butt” in the same sentence for today.

Tonight's Friday night. Which means Malaysian Idol night. I'm rather excited about seeing all those 12 MI finalists on the boob tube. That's because I helped to vote in at least 6 of them. And now I needed to know if the money was well spent. Please don't begrudge me this little pleasure. Talented people like to watch other talented people. Besides, I'm watching "Malaysian Idol" for a scientific reason, which I can't think of at the moment, and not because I want to see some singing Sabahan babe like Nikki filling out her T-shirt nicely. Okay, that too.


Dick Tomatoski makes his well-earned exit today with the final episode of "The Ayam Investigation". Here it is:

5Star

The Ayam investigation – Final Episode

The excitement was building up in me as I ran. I knew that I had seen that brown crate before.

On the way to the accident scene much earlier, I had taken a route through a back lane, not because it was a shorter route, but more becasuse I'm a back lane kind of person. And I remembered passing an empty discarded brown crate marked with the name of an Old Folks’ Home just behind a gym.

Moving swiftly down the back lane, I spotted what I was looking for. Yes, the empty crate was still there, right behind AH BENG’S GYM. The Viagra pills were long gone. Whoever took them made sure that not a single pill was left. And whoever carried that crate was certainly strong, meaning that he probably worked out in a gym regularly. I stared at the back door of AH BENG’S GYM and pondered my next step.

Making up my mind quickly, I entered the gym building unseen through the back door. Peering into the dimly lit gym floor, I soon spotted a well-built man standing behind an exercise bike. He was alone, and he held his hands over his head. I wondered where all those Viagra pills had disappeared to.



Looking at the barbell mysteriously moving up and down on its own, the truth of the matter immediately dawned on me. Quickly, I reached into my pocket for my camera, and stealthily took some shots.

I had seen enough.

Slipping out of the gym and into the back lane, I whipped out my cellphone and made an urgent call to the editor.
“This is Dick Tomatoski. Stop the press! I just got you the story that may just win us the Pulitzer!”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, this story will drown the already shitty competition in more chickenshit!”
“Great job! Come on in and we’ll discuss your increment!”
“And another thing….”
“What?”
“I would like to take the day off tomorrow. There’s a gym in SS2 that I have to join, to work on a muscle.”

* The End *
----------------------------------

Have a good weekend ahead, everybody !

I see that our Highway Minister wants to use "space-age carbon-fibre" to repair the Kepong bridge. Carbon-fibres have been around for a long time. They have been used for making bicycles, helmets, and a host of other things. And their strength is directional. Meaning that it is strong along its length but not in a direction 90 degrees to it.

Somebody better remind that "nothing wrong" minister that it is the method of application of the fibres that is crucial. After all he claimed that there was "nothing wrong with the design of the flyover" and that the "cracks may have occurred during construction". That does imply that the contractor didn't quite know what he was doing, doesn't it?

Oh, here comes the second last episode from the Ace Investigative Reporter, Dick Tomatoski.

5Star

The Ayam investigation - Episode 4

I gazed moodily at the van driver who was still muttering gibberish to himself.

I was feeling irritable. With the chicken dead and no credible witnesses forthcoming, the news story was as good as washed out. I wished I was still back at the teh tarik stall, running up my tab and watching the broads swinging their tails past me.

But my professional instincts told me to first have a word with the van driver. The one that the cops could not understand what he was saying.

He didn’t look drunk and he didn’t look stupid. But he looked foreign. Must be some kind of illegal worker, I thought. I questioned him in both Bahasa and English, and both times he answered back in gibberish. Gimme a break, pal.

I wondered if he spoke Portuguese. Still trying to appear friendly, I asked him,
“Oye. Como va?”
“Daijobu desu!” he replied.

Now we’re getting somewhere. The foreign mug could speak Japanese. Using the best Japanese lingo I could muster, I asked him:
“Nihonjin desu ka?”
“Non, monsieur.”

Damn! What was wrong with the guy? Why was he replying to my Japanese with French? Okay, so maybe he was closet French.

I tried again, but this time in French.
“Parlez vous fancais?”
“Mai khao jai !”

Dammit! Now Frenchy’s talking Thai.

This was getting me nowhere. I wished he would stop irritating me by changing his language every time. I bet he was having fun with me. The hot weather was bad enough without this mindless linguistic display. I would have belted him one across the kisser, but the cops were still wandering about.

I swore at the van driver softly under my breath in the Hokkien dialect,
“Khee hor lang kan lah, lu.”

His ears pricked up, and I heard him say, “Sir, I would appreciate your not using profanities in my presence. Should there be anything you wish to know, I shall be most happy to enlighten you, but only if our discussion is of a civilised nature!”

You could have knocked me down with a feather! The chap responded to my crude Hokkien with the Queen’s English. This was indeed a whole new development!

Understanding slowly flooded my mind. The accident had affected the poor man’s brains. The brain mass sits in the cranium cavity, and is held in alignment by cellular linkages. An accident can lead to the brain getting out of alignment when the linkages are shaken loose. The van driver was suffering from B.A.L.L.S., or Brain Alignment Linkages Loosened Syndrome.

People suffering from B.A.L.L.S. tend to talk a lot of cock. This unfortunate condition, if not treated in time, can become permanent. Which was what had happened to a 5Star colleague, Ms Lai Ma’s editor. Or so she claimed.

I looked at the van driver sympathetically. His internal brain circuits must have somehow become disconnected and were trying to make new connections. I could see that the new connections were full of bugs, so that he thought Japanese was Portuguese, French was Japanese and Thai was French. And when he was speaking to me in English, he must have thought that he was actually speaking in Hokkien.

It was a stroke of pure luck that I discovered this before the cops did. My plan was to continue speaking to him in Hokkien so that he could continue replying to me in English.

I looked around. The cops were busy discussing the most innovative way to cook a dead chicken, and had not caught on to this unusual development yet.

So I pulled the van driver aside and whispered to him,
"An chua kuan?" (translation: "How?")
"I'm all right. But some stuff went missing after the van fell over."

"Pang khee simi?" (translation: "What did you lose?")
"A brown crate of Viagra pills has disappeared."

"Mai sian lah." (translation: "Don't bluff lah.")
"It's true. I was making a special delivery to an old folks’ home."

“Chuay boh?" (translation: "Is it a lot?")
“Oh lots. The crate was full and heavy. Only a very strong man could have lifted it up and walked away with it. The miscreant must have misappropriated it while I was still groggy from the accident!”

"Ni na beh !" (translation: *untranslatable*)
"Hey, leave my mother out of this!"

"Sorry. I didn't mean that!" I said, momentarily forgetting to speak in Hokkien.
That did it. He replied to me in some unrecognisable foreign gibberish.

But I’ve heard enough. A crate of Viagra? A crate of those blue pills meant ‘Action’ with a capital ‘A’. I could see that I needed to change my outdated opinion about old folks’ homes.

Suddenly, the heat didn’t matter anymore. Every fibre of my being knew that there was a great scoop ahead if I could get to the bottom of this before other reporters did. I knew I had seen that brown crate somewhere before.

It was time I hightailed out of there.

Maybe I would never know why the chicken crossed the road. It would be a mystery that would keep primary school kids entertained for years. But it didn’t matter to me any more. I had a bigger chicken to fry.

The reporters from the rival newspapers had just arrived. Bunch of snooty crap-fed morons. I suppressed a chuckle as I saw them heading for the dead chicken. It was good for only one thing now; the Cookery Page.

I left the scene quietly without the cops noticing me leaving. Once out of sight of the cops, I ran as fast as I could. I knew that the answer lies just two blocks away.

*Final Episode tomorrow*

I don't have anything to blog on today. So I'll just continue on to Episode 3 of 'The Ayam investigation'.

Oh, a bit about our ace investigative reporter, Dick Tomatoski. His name is a bit difficult to pronounce. And he's a bit on the chubby side. So the girls at the 5Star have nicknamed him "Fat Dick". It's not politically correct to use the word "fat" on people. But the girls claimed that in this case, "Fat Dick" was most appropriate. I don't have time to argue with that for the moment.

5Star

The Ayam investigation - Episode 3

The heat was getting to me. And I was still far from concluding the investigation. I eyed the fallen chicken. It was a scrawny rooster, with ragged feathers, and long past its sell-by date.

It had been a long while since I used chicken language. But I still remembered the tonal inflexion of chicken squawks. The damn chicken stared at me impassively while I attempted to make it understand what I wanted to ask..

Fat Cop came over and joined me. He wanted to know what the hell I thought I was doing.

I introduced myself,
“The name’s Tomatoski. Dick Tomatoski. Investigative reporter for the 5Star.”

“Never heard of you.” he said. “But I know the 5Star. Good paper. Also free.”

It turned out that Fat Cop knew chicken language too. So we decided to work as a team. Together we interrogated the chicken. But the bird was tough, and it didn’t say nuthin’.

Fat Cop and I tried every trick in the book. We even played “good cop, bad cop” with the chicken. I played the ‘bad cop’ because Fat Cop wanted to play the ‘good cop’. Still the chicken remained silent. Maybe I should have played the ‘good cop’ instead.

Fat Cop eventually lost his temper and shouted profanities into the chicken’s ear. The scrawny chicken did not as much as bat an eyelid.

Suddenly, pure understanding hit me in the face, like a gust of monsoon.

The chicken was deaf ! Totally stone deaf ! Damn !

I asked Fat Cop if he knew how to use chicken sign language. Fat Cop stared at me blankly. The look on his face told me what I was appalled to know; that he had failed the Chicken Sign Language Course in cop school. Fat Cop shuffled his feet in embarrassment. And in a moment of sheer carelessness, he stepped on the suffering chicken’s feet.

The chicken’s eyes bulged out in shock, and it opened its mouth wide to scream blue murder.

But there was no sound forthcoming. Not even a whisper.

It was becoming obvious. Not only was the chicken deaf, it was dumb as well.
Well, whadya know, a deaf mute chicken !

We were getting nowhere. Unthinkingly, I bent down to pick up a stray feather. And as I was bending down, I noticed the chicken eyeing my butt appreciatively.

Damn! Not only was the chicken deaf and dumb. It was also gay.

That's it. I’ve had enough of the stupid chicken. I walked over towards the van driver. Fat Cop started to follow me. That was when I heard a sickening crunch behind me. I turned around, and saw that Fat Cop had stepped on the chicken’s neck this time. The bungling clumsy oaf !

Now, not only was the chicken, deaf, dumb and gay. It was also dead.

It's never an easy situation where the cop kills the most important material witness.

There was only one left thing to do.

*Episode 4 continues tomorrow*

Klang Valley folks seem to be having highway problems this year. I understand that the closure of the 1.7 km flyover on the Middle Ring Road Two in Kepong was necessary, but why the gag order stopping parties from commenting on the issue? What good will a gag order do? This will only result in endless speculation.

The flyover is only two years old. I would have thought that it should have lasted very much longer before developing cracks. But let's leave this to the authorities to investigate at this stage.

Meanwhile, here's the second episode of our "investigative journalism" written by Dick Tomatoski. A word of caution here: the writer takes some light digs at the various races in Malaysia. Read on only if you can laugh at yourselves.

5Star

The Ayam investigation - Episode 2

The chicken laid on the street, looking up at me, with its expressionless beady eyes. It made me uneasy. I tried hard to ignore the feeling.

The van driver was incoherent. He kept muttering goobledygook to his van and the cops, much to their annoyance. Good. I needed to crack this case wide open before the cops did.

Scanning the crowd quickly, I counted one Malay man and twenty Chinese guys. They ought to have seen something.

Without hesitation, I walked over to the Malay man.
“Hey buddy. Did ‘cha see the chicken hit the road?”
“What if I did.”
“You could tell me about it.”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m an investigative reporter. My name is Tomatoski. Dick Tomatoski.”
“Never heard of you. And there’s nothing to tell. At the speed the van was going, this here all ain’t no accident. It’s a sandiwara......a govmint set-up.”
“A setup?”
“Yeah. Why did you think the chicken crossed the road?”
“Funny. I was about to ask you that.”
“To spy on the other side of course. That chicken…..it’s obviously govmint property. You don’t see many Opposition chickens around these parts. There’s some hidden political scheme afoot, I tell ya.”

I could see that I was getting nowhere with this old man. What is it with the Malays that they see politics everywhere?

The cops were now measuring the scene with a tape measure. One Fat Cop was busy shouting orders to the others.

I walked over to the Chinese guys. I wasn’t at all sure that they were Chinese. They looked young and rough, had oriental features, but they also had blond hair. Blonder than the blondest bimbo.

I asked them if they had seen or heard anything. They replied that they hadn’t.

Yeah, they were Chinese alright. The Chinese were famous for seeing nuthin’ and hearing nuthin’ in this country.

I said that it was not possible not to have seen anything. They said that they had been looking at the sky all day, searching for signs of rain. Said they did not even notice that there was a street in front of them.

I told them that there was indeed a street in front of them.

They said they knew it, but hadn’t noticed it. Bunch of tough nuts.

But I knew I could get at least one to talk. In a group of twenty, there is always one who could be broken. One who would sing like a canary. A stool pigeon.

But before I could work on them further, Fat Cop opened his fat mouth and shouted,
“Siapa mahu jadi saksi?”
(Translation: “Who wants to be a police witness?”)

The 20 blond Chinese guys vanished in a flash. Along with the red tablecloths they were holding. One moment they were there and the next moment they were gone. Damn! Don’t they teach the cops anything in cop school? That you should never mention the ‘saksi’ word? At least not in front of the Chinese? Amateurs!

I looked around hopefully for an Indian. I knew the Indians could talk. Which was why we had so many Indian lawyers and trade unionists, and so few Indian swimmers. I once tried to talk and swim at the same time and found that very difficult.

But there was no one left. No one, except the damn chicken. Which was still looking at me.

This was the part I dreaded most. But it was time to question the chicken.

*Episode 3 continues tomorrow*

No Malaysian paper has ever won an international award. Not even the best newspaper, the 5Star. This is very disappointing to all Malaysians me. Despite the many “Dear Lai Ma” advice it dispenses so freely, it has never been nominated for anything that remotely signifies “respectability”. How unjust. You would have thought that the 5Star would qualify for a Nobel Prize in Journalistic Honesty. The only problem is that, there is no such category.

How does a newspaper achieve respectability? I’ll tell you how. Newspaper respectability comes from “investigative journalism”. Which means that if we want to be respectable, we have to first dig up dirt on other people. Freaky, ain’t it? Well, if that is what the 5Star needs to do to get any awards, then we’ll give the world “investigative journalism”.

So, over the weekend, we hired ourselves an Ace Investigative Reporter, Dick Tomatoski to do the job. He has never written anything remotely close to “investigative journalism” in his life.

But he was cheap.

Also, he did mention in his padded CV that when he was a kid, he used to watch a lot of TV detective stories. Not surprisingly, he writes his investigation by the episode.

5Star

The Ayam Investigation - Episode 1

August in the Klang valley was hot.

Here I was, sitting in a teh tarik stall, minding my own business and watching the broads go by. I love the way their asses sway in the sun, hinting that they have more heat to offer than the heat I was getting from the hot weather. That was when the editor called me on my battered cellphone, and told me to haul my ass to the road in front of a pizza shop in SS2 where an unusual accident had occurred.

I knew the place. It was only 5 blocks away. After coolly telling the teh tarik stall owner to put my drink on credit in his buku tiga lima, I raced to the scene. The nasty shouts of the stall owner could still be heard very faintly, as I reached the scene.

It was horrible.

A lorry had raced down the street at a speed of 200 kph. It narrowly missed hitting a pizza delivery boy on a motorbike. The pizza delivery boy, swerved in panic onto the path of an oncoming van. The situation was bad and the van driver slammed on his brakes. The Proton Saga behind the van could not brake in time and swerved into a side lane to avoid a nasty collision. A Toyota 4-wheel drive vehicle in the side lane managed to avoid the Proton Saga by going up the kerb onto the 5-foot way, panicking all the pedestrians.

But nobody was hurt.

Everybody slowed down to a crawl, and heaved a sigh of relief.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a chicken crossed the road.

The van driver swerved and sideswiped the chicken, hit the kerb, and the van landed in the middle of the street on its side. The driver was unhurt. But the chicken lay motionless, barely alive, and too knocked down to get up and run.

My investigative senses were tingling. I smelt a rat.

The cops were already swarming around like ants. Walking about importantly and as usual, asking all the wrong questions.

I walked over slowly to the fallen van. Something fishy was going on. In the back of my mind, I could hear myself asking,

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

*Episode 2 continues tomorrow*

Ah.....Friday again. Malaysian Idol again. Voting again.

From the previous voting results, we managed to get 7 males and only 2 females into the final round. It's totally lopsided. I mean, dude, I wanna see more females up there shaking their bonbon on the stage. We gotta vote more females in, otherwise, what is there to see? But that's just me. I'm sure glad that in tonight's Wildcard show, most of the MI contestants are female.

I dunno about how you react to the judges, but each time Paul or Roslan say that the contestant was lousy, I would seriously think of voting for him or her. Am I perverse or what. Also, I think the first one chosen to come up to the stage and sing has a disadvantage. Nobody remembers the first song as well as the last one. So I usually try to give a sympathy vote to the first singer.

The past few sessions of Malaysian Idol has been unimpressive. I'm only watching mostly because PAS doesn't want me to.

Getting sidetracked a bit, I don't have a good opinion of religions because every time there is war and human suffering, there is usually some religion in the thick of it. Everybody's fighting for their religion and giving God a hard time. Sometimes I think that God would have less headaches if everybody was godless.

Still, I was pretty impressed with Pak Lah's speech at the World Council of Churches meeting in KL this week.

I found a similarly impressive entry in Hammorabi's blog(link on sidebar):
".......The Christians of Najran came to see Prophet Mohammad for a dialogue and it was a Sunday! They asked the Prophet that they would like to do their prayer and he offered them his Mosque to use it for their prayer! This is the real Islam........"

I have never heard of PAS making such an offer. The only thing PAS has done for me is to make me want to watch Malaysian Idol.

Well, have a great weekend ahead everybody! And please vote only for the MI female contestants tonight! If you don't want me to come to your house and shit on your sofa, that is. Eeeeew! That's like so gross. I'm outa here.

The recent hoo-ha over a couple having sex inside a Kancil has spilled over to the 5Star. Many readers have written in to asked for our expert advice.

Our 5Star columnist, Ms Lai Ma(formerly a karaoke lounge singer), is more of a 'Mercedes type' rather than a 'Kancil type'. Nevertheless, she will try to answer your questions as best as she can. And we wish to remind you that the 5Star is 5 times better than that lousy dipshit one-Star competitor.



Dear Lai Ma
Every time I and my girlfriend make out in a Kancil, the car will start rocking up and down. This motion attracts the attention of passing cops who then come and park their motorcycle in front of the car. Is there a way to prevent the Kancil from rocking up and down? I have already changed the absorbers, tyres and even the cushion covers, but nothing works. I hope you don't mind my asking you this very technical question.
Nuclear Scientist

Dear Nuclear Scientist
This is a very technical problem and needs very specialized knowledge to solve. I know that my departmental office boy makes out with his girlfriend in a Kancil in the car park at night. He uses a car jack to first jack up the side of the car a bit. When the weight of the car rests on four wheels and one jack, it will not rock very much. Don't be afraid to ask us technical questions. We, at the 5Star, are all very technical people.


Dear Lai Ma
I have made out with guys in both Mercedes and Kancils. I find that I am able to achieve better orgasms inside a Kancil. Does that mean that Kancil drivers are better lovers than Mercedes drivers?
Beh Pai Seh

Dear Beh Pai Seh
Kancil drivers are not better lovers. The reason why you have been getting better orgasms in a Kancil is because the car is very cramped inside, which gave you a much tighter feeling. The tighter the better mah......


Dear Lai Ma
My boyfriend just bought a new Kancil and I find that there is not enough space in the back seat for proper lovemaking. My legs would stick out of the left window and his legs stick out of the right window. Do you think we should modify the car?
Miss Contort

Dear Miss Contort
Your legs.....left window....his legs......right window. Oh...I understand now!
Please do not, I repeat, do not attempt the "sixty-nine" position inside any car. Get a hotel room instead.


Dear Lai Ma
We read so much about people having sex in a Kancil. My girlfriend and I decided to try it. So yesterday she went down on me in the front seat. But I find that the Kancil is really cramped, and her head keeps blocking me from reaching the gear shift. Is this normal?
First Timer

Dear First Timer
You want to reach the gear shift, for what? Oh....my.....gawd......!!! You are awesome !!!
But I think that in future, before you and your girlfriend try oral sex, you should stop the car first.


Dear Lai Ma
I hear everybody talking about having sex with kancil nowadays, like it is the hottest thing to do. I orso want. So I go to the jungle to see if I can catch a female kancil. But I catch nothing. Because I think everybody caught all the kancil already. Never leave some for me. Why like dat? Why the world so fucked up?
Chin Tu Lan

Dear Tu Lan
You are a pervert. Also retarded. Very. People have sex in Kancil, not with kancil. You understand the difference or not, idiot? Ni Na Beh. I don't want to answer this type of sick questions any more. And how many times must I tell you not to write to me?
But my talkcock editor said that we are a 5 star paper and we should not discriminate against perverts. He said that dirty perverts need love too. What a moron. But okay, if you want to make love to Kancil, go right ahead. Just stick your dick into the exhaust pipe, and have fun. And tell me which Kancil you are using. Because I want to come and start the engine.

Having posted The Bachelor Girl's Prayer last Friday, I was asked if I could come out with a similar prayer for the guys.

Sure I can. No problem.

If your mom is within earshot, you should say:
"Dear God, please give me a girl who can wash and cook."

If your dad is within earshot, then what you should say is this:
"Dear God, please give me a girl who is smart enough to hire a foreign maid."

Okay. Back to serious business.

When you're alone, what you really want to say is this:
"Dear God, please send me a bodacious babe who puts out.........and has a nice set of tits."

That was easy. But that's only because most guys keep their brains under their zips.

But wait! What if your mom caught you saying that last prayer?

Then you should explain to mom that the nice pair of tits is for .....er..... "cute containers to better breastfeed the baby".

Yeah, mom ought to buy that.

Morality question: Would you shoot a robot that can dream?

In 1939, Eando Binder wrote a short science fiction story entitled "I, Robot". It was a story of a robot that was suspected of killing its maker.

In 1950, Isaac Asimov's book, also called "I, Robot", was published. It was a collection of 9 earlier written short stories in which the three laws of robotics were demonstrated (......a robot may not injure a human, or allow a human to be injured.......etc).

Fast forward to the present.
In 2004, the Will Smith movie "I, Robot" was released. In the movie, a robot called Sonny, was accused of killing its maker. Asimov fans may be disappointed that the movie plot bears no resemblance to Asimov's book. None, except for the 3 laws of robotics and the presence of a character called Dr Susan Calvin.

Susan Calvin in my favourite Asimov character. She is a robopsychologist, meaning that she tries to manipulate the way a robot thinks.
In one Asimov story, she encountered a robot that had the ability to dream. And in the dream, the robot said, "Let my people go." (Shades of Moses in Egypt.) Susan Calvin blasted the robot dead immediately. She was taking no chances. A robot that could dream meant that it was taking on a character in uncharted territory. Machines are not supposed to dream. That trait could spell danger for mankind. Asimov's Susan Calvin was not one who took unnecessary risks.

However, in the "I, Robot" movie, the screen character Dr Susan Calvin allowed a dreaming robot to live because it was "unique". I don't think that many of us would be able to bring ourselves to kill off a dreaming robot. The first dreaming robot is at least 300 years away. Whether the human race survives after that is anybody's guess.

Robots have certain advantages over biological life. They are able to travel for hundreds of thousands of years in space without needing air, food or water. Which is why I think the aliens visiting earth are robots from other galaxies. Alien robots that can dream. Alien robots that gave humans religions and holy books. I think their purpose is more manipulative rather than sinister. If their purpose had been sinister, human beings would have been wiped out long ago.

Do I feel threatened? Nah. And I don't plan to be around 300 years from now either.

It's my 250th post today.

Amazingly, I made it to the 250th post without giving up. Just how much is 250? Well if one posting is considered one year, then I am 250 years old today. It's time to take stock of what I had posted since this blog began.

And this is what I had done:

• Indulged in social commentary


• Run a 'sure win' election campaign


• Wrote a Shakespearean play


• Composed a few songs


• Put up some comic strips


• Published a 5-star newspaper


• Gave some free English lessons


• Designed some T-shirts


• Taught meditation through the web


• Published a recipe('rotiboy')


• Wrote a decent prayer

The most "googled" items that lead visitors to this blog has been "Malaysian Idol" and "Rotiboy". Other search words worthy of mention are "National Service" and of course, the old favourite, "Malaysian gigolo".

I will not try to pretend that this blog will attract the attention of thousands of readers. And that's fine by me. This blog is an outlet for my expression and I do not intend to it to be a commercial vehicle of any sort. Which means that you are not going to get anything better than the dubious quality inane bullshit that you have already been used to here.

At times, I do wonder if this blog can be further improved.
But I don't think so.
Why?
Cos I don't have nekkid pictures.

I have been reading a number of women's blogs lately and I noticed a rather recurring theme. They tend to bitch about not meeting the 'right sort of guy'.

Hey, the reason you have not been meeting the 'right sort of guy' is because you have not been saying the 'right sort of prayer'.

Well, you can quit yer bitchin' now. Coz I've written the 'right sort of prayer' just for you. Yeah.

No need to tell me that I've got a heart of gold......I already knew that. Here's wishing you "happy hunting" this weekend.


The Bachelor Girl's Prayer

As I lay me down to sleep
Still wide awake while counting sheep
I pray: Dear God, send me a guy
Who'll hug and love me till I die

A guy who thinks that I'm the best
And tells his mom and all the rest
A guy whose views are truly kind
Who keeps a gentle, thoughtful mind

I pray he's not a lazy slob
But one who has a steady job
This guy should own a house and car
And he should treat me like a star

And when he takes me to his bed
He'll moan "Oh yes!" while getting head
I pray that when I suck him hollow
He doesn't try to make me swallow

Author  -  Viewtru

It's only Thursday.
It must be a slow day because I'm planning my weekend already. I don't think I want to go out with Harry this weekend. He's a fun guy, but he has to learn to control his motor mouth. He keeps saying idiotic stuff in front of the ladies that makes me want to say other stuff such as "I don't know him."

There are no niceties with Harry.
And he always fluffed his pickup lines.

I once taught him what I thought was a simple pickup line which goes like this:
"Does beauty run in your family?"

And then Harry goes up to this pretty girl and says:
"Does beauty run away from your family?"

No, I'm not going out with Harry this weekend.

When I blogged about "Spoonerism"  on Monday, I think I must have used a word that many people are unfamiliar with.

Blog visitor, FireAngel,  thought I was gonna talk about the techniques and the types of "spooning". Which is about sex. I am not sure how she jumped to that idea, but I sure like the way her mind works.

And another blog visitor, hari, thought that I was gonna blog on hand-outs. Which is not about sex.

Just how many unofficial meanings can "spoonerism" have?

Oh, hang on, I have another one: home dentistry with a spoon.
Just grasp the spoon with both hands and use it as a dental implement. The simplest equipment is often the best.



If this is not "spoonerism", then I don't know what is.

Of course, it works even better if you are naked.

Readers, please do not try this at home. You run the risk of not looking very intelligent standing naked with a spoon in your mouth.

I watch Malaysian Idol because PAS wants me to boycott it. (See news here or here).My rationale is this: if PAS hates it, then a true God would approve of it. It is sort of an automatic response for me. No, I don't think that PAS is an evil organisation yet. Misguided definitely, but not evil. However, I cannot be 100% sure.

Having watched a few episodes of Malaysian Idol, I must say that, so far, the results have not been vocally impressive. However, the human angle has been inspiring. To see these people travel, and queue up for the auditions, and then practise through the night so that they can be in the final 33 contestants send a sense of awe through me. I am one person who would not even queue up in a 30-man queue to buy cinema tickets. Don't even think of asking me to queue for hours for an audition. It is stressful, being a MI contestant. This contest brings out the will, the determination and the best in people. I am amazed by the fact that even though they are all competing for limited slots, they publicly support the efforts of each other. And many of them are so young. A true God would have been proud of these kids.

I have used the term "true God" here to mean something that is All-powerful, All-knowing, and Omnipresent. And it is INFINITE. I have no way of proving Its Existence, but let us presuppose that a true God exists. Then the purpose of all creation is to express the INFINITE in finite ways. And if you had done so, your Creator would have been so proud of you. Whether you get into heaven or not does not matter. For you would have done your part. You would have allowed your Creator to play out Its divinity through you. Each human being is an adventure for the INFINITE.

I have the opinion that humans should never try to earn their tickets to heaven. Those that seek their life everlasting will definitely lose it. There was a story which I once heard and it goes like this:

There once was a religious man who lived his entire life without sin. He spoke only the truth all the time. One day, he saw a merchant running away from some robbers. The merchant hid in a place nearby. The robbers came up to this religious man and asked for the whereabouts of the merchant. The religious man could not lie, as that would be a sin, and he might not get his place in heaven if he sinned. So he told the robbers where the merchant was hiding. The robbers got hold of the merchant, robbed and slew him. Years later, the religious man died, but was denied entry to heaven. It was not possible, he claimed, as he had never sinned in his entire life. The answer came that heaven doesn't operate that way, and he should have lied when it was required of him to do so. End of story.

I frequently have the nagging idea that religious people are not spiritual. A spiritual person knows in his heart what is decent and what is not, and lives his life in balance, without being too decent or too indecent. And I try to do that. Those of you following my posts will know that I am never too decent. Heheheh! I also control my usage of vulgarities so that I am never too indecent either. In my own way, I do try to achieve balance.

A spiritual person puts God first and religion last. If I were God, I would let spiritual people enter heaven and send religious people straight to hell.

But wait, the folks in hell may complain that the presence of religious people will make it an even worse hell.

Don't complain. Hell wouldn't be hell without religious people.

But I am merciful. So okay then. Maybe I'll send these unwanted cretins back to earth as worms.

Over the weekend, Harry and I met this guy who told us that he had a job in "moan farketing". Moan farketing? Sounds like a dream job with lots of sex. But it turned out that he was actually a handphone salesman. Say lah, properly........."fone marketing".

Apparently, this speech oddity affects certain people at times. It is known as "spoonerism", and involves swapping the first letters of two words. For instance, "hit the sack" gets verbalized as "sit the hack". This happens when the person is speaking fast.

It can also happen also in writing. I sometimes type "hte" instead of "the". Okay, maybe that does not count as spoonerism(which involves two separate words). And I admit that it's not quite in the same league as "moan farketing".

This posting is not complete without some "English Literature". Study the following story because it is going to come out in your comprehension test:

A company wanted to send one of its managers to a branch in a rural area. Nobody wanted to go. Usual lah. Finally, they got a lady executive to go on the understanding that the company would try its best to make her stay there as comfortable as possible.

She brought along her two pet birds in their cages for company. But the kampung kids were full of mischief and were always opening the cage doors. In desperation, she emailed her headquarters:

"In desperate situation. Need a couple of Cage Locks. Urgent!"

The reply by email soon came:

"Your request has been processed and approved. We presumed that when you typed 'Lage', you meant 'Large'. The specially selected guys will be arriving tomorrow."