Warming Up

October 2nd, 2009 gier

I’ve not written anything for a while. That’s because my heid’s been smashed every way to Sunday these past few months. I need to write some shit again, but really out of practice.

But, like exercise for the body, the heid needs to be exercised too, and before exercise, it needs to do some stretching and warm-ups. I’ll be damned if I know what to warm-up with, though.

However, realising that I’ve never been accused of the crime of originality, I shall reproduce here the script of Scene 3 from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This is as an accompaniment to the link provided earlier on FB.

It’s from a movie made in 1975, yet very much relevant as a counterpoint to … well … if you don’t know to what, you won’t get it, anyway. In short, PSM FTW.

Also, I need to figure out whether I can still spell, never mind write.

p.s. JQ, as usual, something’s in the works, dude.

Original source of script is at sacred-texts.

Scene 3

      [clop clop]
  ARTHUR:  Old woman!
  DENNIS:  Man!
  ARTHUR: Old Man, sorry.  What knight live in that castle over there?
  DENNIS:  I'm thirty seven.
  ARTHUR:  What?
  DENNIS:  I'm thirty seven -- I'm not old!
  ARTHUR:  Well, I can't just call you `Man'.
  DENNIS:  Well, you could say `Dennis'.
  ARTHUR:  Well, I didn't know you were called `Dennis.'
  DENNIS:  Well, you didn't bother to find out, did you?
  ARTHUR:  I did say sorry about the `old woman,' but from the behind
      you looked--
  DENNIS:  What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior!
  ARTHUR:  Well, I AM king...
  DENNIS:  Oh king, eh, very nice.  An' how'd you get that, eh?  By
      exploitin' the workers -- by 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma
      which perpetuates the economic an' social differences in our society!
      If there's ever going to be any progress--
  WOMAN:  Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here.  Oh -- how d'you do?
  ARTHUR:  How do you do, good lady.  I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
      Who's castle is that?
  WOMAN:  King of the who?
  ARTHUR:  The Britons.
  WOMAN:  Who are the Britons?
  ARTHUR:  Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.
  WOMAN:  I didn't know we had a king.  I thought we were an autonomous
      collective.
  DENNIS:  You're fooling yourself.  We're living in a dictatorship.
      A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
  WOMAN:  Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
  DENNIS:  That's what it's all about if only people would--
  ARTHUR:  Please, please good people.  I am in haste.  Who lives
      in that castle?
  WOMAN:  No one live there.
  ARTHUR:  Then who is your lord?
  WOMAN:  We don't have a lord.
  ARTHUR:  What?
  DENNIS:  I told you.  We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune.  We take
      it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
  ARTHUR:  Yes.
  DENNIS:  But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
      at a special biweekly meeting.
  ARTHUR:  Yes, I see.
  DENNIS:  By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!
  DENNIS:  --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!  I order you to be quiet!
  WOMAN:  Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
  ARTHUR:  I am your king!
  WOMAN:  Well, I didn't vote for you.
  ARTHUR:  You don't vote for kings.
  WOMAN:  Well, 'ow did you become king then?
  ARTHUR:  The Lady of the Lake,
      [angels sing]
      her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
      from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
      Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.
      [singing stops]
      That is why I am your king!
  DENNIS:  Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
      is no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power
      derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical
      aquatic ceremony.
  ARTHUR:  Be quiet!
  DENNIS:  Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power
      just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
  ARTHUR:  Shut up!
  DENNIS:  I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just
      because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd
      put me away!
  ARTHUR:  Shut up!  Will you shut up!
  DENNIS:  Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
  ARTHUR:  Shut up!
  DENNIS:  Oh!  Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
      HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
  ARTHUR:  Bloody peasant!
  DENNIS:  Oh, what a give away.  Did you here that, did you here that,
      eh?  That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me,
      you saw it didn't you?

Posted in Dazed and Confused, Lame Jokes | No Comments »

I’m Not Feeling It.

January 31st, 2007 gier

I’m getting a little anxious right now. I’m just not feeling the love. I’m not feeling the solidarity. I cannot “Walk With Us“. I think there’s something wrong with me. I trawled through the news sites and the socio-pundekpunditry blogs. I feel the peer pressure to unite even if I’m just a “junior blogger”, and not even one of them retiree bloggers that Mr. Ooi asserts are those “who command the powerful good old English — ingredients for articulate communicators …“. But I cannot.

All I feel is the hypocrisy. All is see is that the Walk With Us guys are “penembak curi” and that Mr. Ooi, esq. has not only refused to vilify them for being snipers, but is actually pointing people to that blog. I see the mealy-mouth, wishy-washy reasoning being accepted as self-evident truth. Giving analysis on prejudice and subjudice … peh! A conspiracy under every rock, stone and arse … peh! Oi dudes! You think you so smart, come out and play lah. You got so big cojones to analyse this, analyse that, but no cojones to say who you are. Peh!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not “walking with” the Riong Four and NSTP. Nor am I for the two defendants. I just think that since the plaintiffs seem to think that they have been aggrieved in some way — exactly what way, though, has not been made public — then within the law, they have every right to seek redress. And the defendants have every right to defend themselves. Making the assumption that we live in a civil society (granted, not all Malaysians believe that), then this is only right and proper. If the law is being used this way, then we should let it run its course. If the law gets subverted in any way, then we fight.

I get uncomfortable with the whole Bloggers Unite!, Walk With Us thing because sometimes it seems to run too close to looking like mob mentality.

I sometimes get the feeling that the same people who think that the PM and his government are populated by people who dig holes in the ground to bury their heads in are doing the same thing themselves.

Bloggers Disunite!

Posted in Blogs, Dazed and Confused, Rant | 2 Comments »

Don’t leave your brains at home

October 27th, 2006 gier

It’s a funny thing. I started this blog with the (ridiculous) idea that I could join the morass of punditry that pretends to be serious prognostication on the “blogosphere”. And I thought one of the requirements is to spew out pompous and bombastic sentences like the previous one. That is not true, obviously. It’s becoming clear to me that in order to blog regularly, you’d need to have at least one of these prerequisites (and preferably all):

1. A strong sense of personal worth (a.k.a. a predilection for navel gazing),
2. A strong sense that (perceived) justice needs to be done,
3. A cause that you strongly believe in (transparency, equality, p2p, open source, etc.),
4. A hobby (eating in restaurants, photography, ornithology, porn, etc.),
5. A hope (or confidence) that people will read your stuff,
6. An occasional tendency to have selective memory, and therefore
7. A predilection for what I call revisionist history.

When you don’t really feel any of the above strongly enough, and/or often enough, you end up like me. You blog very occasionally. Anyhow, the point of this entry isn’t so much about me (haha! See 1. above), but about 2, 3, 6 and 7, where if 5 happens, it’ll be a bonus. This entry is about our former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and the spat with our current Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. My first blog entry was about the spat, actually[1], and it was effectively the first time I got annoyed enough to actually write anything here.

You know, there is actually a reason why I registered mentera.org and why I call this blog “Mentera — Say Anything Often Enough”. Mentera is the Malay word for mantra and just go to that link to see what it means (if you can’t guess already), with the implication that if you say anything often enough, you and possibly a whole bunch of people would actually believe what you say is true and that you’re right. Do it long enough, with just enough things happening to actually be true and right, and enough people will think that you’re always right. For example, if you’ve led a country for 22 years, and were actually rather good at leading the country for those years, there’ll probably be enough people who will always think you’re right. Even after you’ve stopped leading the country, and someone else is sitting on the hot seat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Dazed and Confused, Politics, Rant | 1 Comment »

eBay has a university?

October 10th, 2006 gier

Yesterday I received an email. It was from eBay.com. I consider it spam, though technically maybe not, since I have an eBay account. Anyhow, the title of the email was: eBay Explained! 2006.

Natch.

The email explained (hah!) that for the first time, the Dean of eBay Education & eBay University Instructor will be in KL on the 12th of November ” to share his knowledge on how you can make your eBay selling, searching and shopping more effective and become successful online buyers and sellers.”

WTF? eBay has a university?

So, I googled for eBay University and the first link is to here. It’s an officially set up thingmy by eBay. So, this begs the questions:

1. Why did eBay set up a university?
2. What do they teach?
3. Can you get degrees from the university?
4. Are those degrees ratified locally?
5. What sort of job can you get with those degrees?

Okay, once you get to the eBay Uni page, you’ll get your answers to the above questions.  Basically it’s all about selling stuff on eBay. Didn’t realise that we needed “university” courses for that. Didn’t realise that you could call that shite university, either.

Posted in Dazed and Confused | 1 Comment »