Blessed Surrender

The silence unnerves her
A once bustling boulevard
Thrash strewn amidst jostling crowd
Of whom there were none this day

Slowly she walks
Afraid of hearing her own shuffling
Past what was once, what, a tent?
A smoldering heap, charred tinder

At the centre of the stillness
A hulk of a steely monster stood, once arrogant
A mangled cage, trace echoes of scream
Of its occupants dying a lifetime of death

Pass the iron horror she trudges ahead
Directionless, willed only by the need to move
Somewhere, anywhere
Where there is a soul
Kindred or otherwise
A soul she ask a soul she seeks

Except for the hulking wreckage where she gagged a vomit
The air is pure is clean is sure
A sun soaked clarity of a surround
Alas there was only sight but not a single sound
Except for a rustling of wind ruffled debris
Other than a gust of strewn dust

A square, of tents in people pushed to the brink
Finding their voices found long subdued
Only to be mutedly strangled
Tyrannical hands of vile might

Soon is Ramadhan
Is it not she thinks?
A month for shackling of lust of pride of desires
A month of peace of penance of repentance
A month of endless joys in blessed surrender
Ten nights of fruitful embracing of faith

If only
There was someone
Anyone to welcome
A month so waited

She trudges
Wondering why there was no scent
When death was too many
Too plenty too heart rending

Perhaps its Syuhada then
She thinks
She walks
She ponders

Dedicated to the lives lost in for making their voices heard.

Uselessly Yours aka Look Who's Back

Mr Black Felt Tip Marker Penner is back and rather than feeling indignant or affronted by his acts, I am feeling mighty twangs of sympathy instead.

He has been lying dormant for a while – at least I think he is because good gracious golly gee is my Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets full of stuffs he’d blackened out swifter than the Flash could blink – he is back in action with The Economist being latest to feel the brunt of his mighty blotting.

Not the Sports Illustrated. Not the Maxim. Nope, not FHM either. Nor an issue of the National Geographic featuring a never-before seen human tribe yet to discover the wonderful invention of clothes.

(I am kidding on the last, okay.)

Nope. We are talking about The Economist.

To be precise, some texts’ lines in an article “Taken to the cleaners — an overzealous government response to an opposition rally” in the latest issue of The Economist.

Sympathy because I cannot imagine the tedium of going through whole stacks of the issue to the exact sentences (not even whole, mind you) deemed offensive.

Yep. Usually the black pen is a moralistic answer to all that is society (ours) offending. Or used to, going by the proliferation of girly (manly?) magazines at newsstands, generally speaking.

Sympathy because despite all his effort, the offending texts are not only still read, the blotting out is pretty much posthumous in that people would’ve already read the article in whole elsewhere.

Sympathy because his effort will only block the offending texts from the eyes of less than 9,900 readers (unless you count those lazing away at office lounges waiting for their turn in appointments), the reported circulation of the Economist in Malayia 2010.

Sympathy because in the day and age of the Internet, even those who don’t usually read the Economist can gain access to the article simply by asking Mr Google.

Sympathy that instead of being seen and justified as a moral guardian, he is now treated with disdain as yet another sycophant of a government gone bonkers.

Once upon a time, you could still justify his existence by way of the moral high ground argument of providing something akin to (though cursory at best) a filter against the unfettered, liberalization of so-called artistic endeavors.

Alas, those days are long gone.

Imagine being yanked from retirement to do something that is ultimately useless, and you realized how much Mr Black Felt-Tip Penner deserves our deepest sympathy.

Thus, scorn him not.

Pages Yellowed

There’s apparently going to an adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Akira” by Warner Bros.

According to Reuters, this Jaume (House of Wax) Collet-Serra directed movie is set in New York and follows a biker who tries to rescue his friend from medical experiments.

Good luck to them, but going by the dismal Dragon Ball remake, fans of the Manga shouldn’t hold their breath too much.

I bought my copy of Akira a long time ago for RM30ish (can’t remember how much exactly) at a bookshop in (then) Lot 10 across Sungei Wang Plaza.

The pages have yellowed since then, but every now and then, I’ll pop into the storeroom-cum-temporary reading room for a quick glance.

Wish I could get the whole series, but it’s a whole lot of money to be handed over to the cashier at RM100plus plus these days each volume.

The anime was also hoot, despite cramming the 2,000 page epic into 125 minutes.

Another favorite which also received the adaptation treatment was Kazuo Koike’s Crying Freeman.

Video cassette was still the norm when I got my hands on the first few chapters of the tear shedding assassin, Yo Hinamura.

Mark Dacascos fared well enough as Hinamura in the adaptation, but replicating the sleek, silky moves in the anime was an impossibly BIG challenge.

Back to Akira.

The crash-boom-banging nature of Katsuhiro’s Akira makes it the perfect cannon fodder for a similar CGI-filled, crash-boom-banging charge ala the latest installment of the Transformers series.

It is however up to a formidable comparison with the original anime, and that is quite a high benchmark to achieve in the eyes of fans.

Wonder if anyone intends to adapt Otomo’s Domu – A Child’s Dream?

Could be a blast of an adaptation.

Sleepy Notes Echoes

Seconds in a minute of an hour for a day
Digitised ticking an elastic straining of moments held at bay
Outside, a sleepy sun sighs a silent sonorous slumber
Inside a mind blanked blinks a blanketed thought a sliver

A thousand books of gibberishy text
A playlist in songs of tuneless acoustics
Funnies two three four generations delayed
On the idiot box, a sitcom a trillion times replayed

On days like these a wishful wonder
A Kino, a Borders, a BookXS as neighbour
Or a box, old comics; pages yellowed staples rusted
Perhaps a radio show, a drama imagined, acts in the mind enacted

On days like these, to be elsewhere
Shades on whilst sunning under a shaded shadowed spot
Day’s paper unopened shirt unbuttoned a showing of body hair unflustered
Waves breaking the surf, the breeze moving at a trot

On days like these…

Maybe I should wish a simpler wish
A squishy marshmallow, a blissful nap, a walk impromptu
A surprise company with tales to astonish
Or maybe listen to a talking cuckatoo

Days like these…

Topping the Topper aka 6,000 and Going

Pinched outright from Dilbert.

Alice: I ran 6 miles even though I was sore.
Topper: That’s nothing. I broke one leg and hopped all the way to the office this morning.
Alice: You hopped 40 miles on your one good leg?
Topper: The broken one.

Pointy Haired Boss: It was the biggest fish ever caught in the lake.
Topper: That’s nothing. I once caught a dinosaur using nothing but dental floss and a pull tab from a beer can.
PHB: I’d like to see this alleged dinosaur.
Topper: Too late. I also make the world’s best barbeque sauce.

Soi Lek: To gather ten or twenty thousand to demonstrate is nothing great. MCA can organised 50,000 if you want me to do it, anytime.

Really?

This coming from a party which had trouble filling up their election ceramah venues without having to give makan - makan.

Sure or not?

Our very own Topper ha ha.

Alas, he was beaten to the mark by Umno, who came out with a 6,000 odd (is this correct?) delegates thingy the very next day of BERSIH so-called 6,000 odd official figure city rally.

Customer: I competed in the Iditarod, an 1,150-mile dogsled race lasting 15 days over the world’s toughest terrain.
Topper: That’s nothing. I completed the race while pretending to be one of your dogs.
Customer: Now, I don’t want to buy from your company.
Topper: That’s nothing. Now I plan to burn my company to the ground.

Chilling.

Walking the Talk aka For the love of an Ice Blended Mocha

Marina Mahathir walked the BERSIH walk. Imagine that.

While I was following the whole rally via Twitter and Facebook in the comforts of my home, the daughter of Dr Mahathir is with the very people her father – and a host of like-minded others - so deeply detests.

She started her post with a simple sentence: So I went.

Marina, you have both my envy and admiration.

Having read Marina’s BERSIH 2.0 experience, I am ashamed on at least two counts: one, for not being there despite my belief in the thrust of the rally’s objective, and two, for having doubts as to whether the BERSIH was worth it.

The latter came after witnessing the torrent of propaganda masquerading as “news report” churned out by TV3 and RTM1 news much, much later in the evening.

A TV3 reporter, supposedly reporting at the scene complete with the irony of an empty street for a backdrop, even quoted “unnamed sources” – aren’t they always - warning of God-knows-what unknown threats of unspecified nature but connected with all probability with the Haram Demonstrators still lurking around somewhere.

Pure bollocks and baloney. Nothing’s changed, I thought.

On top of these were particularly venomous postings and comments from the FB circle of friends.

What the freezing hell was that all about? Why the hatred for people who were basically walking to highlight their constitutional grouse for fair elections.

I was thinking, thus, of posting something along the lines of “So, have BERSIH actually achieved anything despite the euphoria of its supposed success…” and, in my mind, its mostly in the negative.

That was before I read Marina’s post. I’ve realized thus that in many counts, BERSIH has achieved something after all.

BERSIH has shown that it is possible to rally to a Rights centric cause in a non -partisan way. The rally last Saturday is ironically a showcase of the much spoken 1Malaysia concept with its diverse composition of walkers.

I particularly liked her comments of “reformasi” chants being drowned by a bigger chant of BERSIH. Rightly so, this is one movement that no one can hijack as it belongs to the Rakyat.

Sure, as one FB friends puts its “… so what if you have 100,000..”

Numbers are just statistics. God knows the current Governments churns them out on a regular basis with the consistency of a well blended iced tall Mocha Latte with whipped cream.

Notwithstanding the almost haphazardly organized look of the rally, this was a group that truly believed in their ideals and keeping to it.

Imagine that by 5pm, everything was back to the way it was and my so many FB Friends who lamented being burdened with not being able to lepak around KL can do so with complete abandonment.

Some roads will still be jammed through, BERSIH or no BERSIH.

But, who cares, right?

On To Something

A Minggu BERSIH, huh?

I, for one, sure like this suggestion by Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin following our Prime Minister’s backtracking on the whole 9th July get together.

Imagine a sea of yellow and a fluttering of the word BERSIH everywhere. Of course, there will be an intermittent of the colour… - urmm, what is exactly the colour of dirt aka KOTOR? – as this is, as far as we can tell anyway, a relatively, ahem, free country.

For the BERSIH steering committee fellas, a week (or even a weekend) should be enough to push the message through, doesn’t it?

There’s no need to even have firebrand rallies at the stadium if this BERSIH Week or Weekend plan comes afoot.

Ibrahim Ali’s Perkasa and Khairy Jamaluddin’s Umno Youth can have the same week or weekend so that their supporters can fly their Anti-BERSIH flags and what not.

Better yet, there’s also no need for Mahaguru Omardin to control his 50,000 silatists' emotions then. Huge relief there.

And please, for one, leave the “It’s all to divert attention from Anwar's case” bollocks.

Yeah, yeah, we know all about it and you know what, I dare say that he no longer matters that much.

Remember the “Who can that be?” question posted by Umno wayward blogger SakMongkol47? One his frequent reader / postee / commentator / follower Walla answered definitely: “They must obey the clean-and-fair governance demands of the enlightened rakyat.”

Pure and simple, isn’t it?

There are whole load thesis written on the electoral systems the democratic world over, and how the current First-past-the-post voting system we’re using currently is, well, unfair as votes are not proportionally counted.

Instances include a constituency of say, 28K voters returns one rep as would one of 280K (usually urban) and, as such, garnering a 60% popular vote would not equate 60% in representation.

Unfair, ain’t it? Couple that with the mainstream news papers and television networks providing negligible coverage for other than, say, Umno politicians, and you could say it was a surprise that the Opposition Coalition (we were told to use that word the last time around) won the state that they did.

I remember the dreaded apprehension at the Perak MB’s residence the night of the 2008 General Election results.

Had Edgar Allan Poe been alive and present there, he would have be able to write a sequel to his “Tell-Tale Heart” tale of torrid, terrifying terror.

The former MB stayed indoors throughout the countdown as Perak went to the Opposition (until, that is, the defection of the trio of duplicitous creeps. I never did agree with Anwar’s defection game and this one must have hurt him bad, surely).

Anyway, back to Minggu BERSIH.

Even the title alone doesn’t provoke, does it? BERSIH is a clean (pun intended fully) word made dirty by a host of provocative campaigning against it.

You can certainly say the whole thrust of BERSIH 2.0 – for a fair elections – was indeed hijacked by politicians from all three sides (Ibrahim Ali being the third cog in the Pakatan vs Barisan equation) of the Malaysian political divide.

Dr Asri is on to something there, don’t you think?

So how now?

Shauny Shauncy

Blogger Sakmongkol AK47 aka Umno’s Dato' Mohd.Ariff Sabri bin Hj. Abdul Aziz has posed this following question in his latest posting:

That person if one is around has to step up to assume the mantle of leadership to save this country from gross mismanagement, fraudulent management, corruption, widening income disparities, re organize institutions of governance, dispensing justice, stemming corruption and all that. Who can that be?

SM has been asking some hardcore questions to the Umno elites, most of which (or is it EVERYTHING, SM?) are left unanswered.

That he doesn’t believe in Pakatan’s and former Umno-man Anwar Ibrahim is also without a doubt.

His belief in that Anwar is no longer the key equation that Umno needs to tackle is something I agree fully upon.

Anwar is passé. He may be a magnet once, but nowadays, there is a much bigger crowd puller which unfortunately Umno is in too deep a stink to even remotely aspire to.

Ideals.

The country is at a stage where most no longer look up to the politicians as divine, infallible. As it should be, politicians are supposed to be the Rakyat’s servant and not the other around.

Those days of our poor elders waiting patiently for hours at ends for their so-called benefactor of a politician are coming to a forseeable end. Perhaps that particular generation of hand kissing, non questioning, populace is now in a bygone era.

Now we want our politicians to be able to provide answers. To be accountable. To question. To carry our aspirations. To sacrifice with us in bad times and to wait patiently for the rest of us to prosper before they do in good times.

Lofty ideals which requires someone with equally strong principles.

I used to think that leaders need to see the “bigger picture” in coming to decisions. Not anymore. Nothing can justify the trampling of justice and fairness.

We got thing so badly wrong sometime ago. Is there anyone indeed?

Curious too that SM limited his question to Pakatan Rakyat. Perhaps he does think that Umno is beyond saving, something which I think has been the case for quite a far while back.

We need heroes and heroines. Unfortunately they are too few of them around to fight to decadent many.

They need all the help they can get. OUR help.