Stooging Stage

There are moments when not talking can sometime be the best possible option.

For the so-called Obedient Wives Clubs (the now infamous OWC) management, this following excerpt quoted by the Malay Mail is, I think, one such moment.

“When we said that husbands should treat their wives like first-class prostitutes, we were not putting wives on the same level with prostitutes. We are talking about first-class elite types, not street hooker types.”

Goodness gracious. Golly ghee whizz.

Downright degrading words - Prostitutes, street hooker types and a first-class elite types.

Were they said in a single breath, I wonder?

My hope is that it was a statement loosely translated from Bahasa Melayu but I have my doubts.

Seriously, though, maybe it’s just a ploy by OWC to get some prominence in the printed pages and online.

There’s a Time interview waiting too apparently. More publicity and the inanity (insanity?) can now go global.

Superb. Just superb.

Swaggering Humility

Once in a while I will wonder out loud: Just who the hell are we continuing to build and build for when half - in not more – remain literally empty?

Undoubtedly you will see them. Some swanky – the newer ones are, usually – the others relics of bygone times.

If you’re the adventurous types who don’t mind going off from the usual North- South into the inner roads towards Kuala Kubu Baru, you can even witness whole townships, hulking buildings carrying on silently with nary a single rattle or sigh.

My drive to work carries me pass a few such construction husk - empty buildings crying out for tenants.

Usually the strategy of finding a star tenant will do the job, but with so much space to be filled, you’d have to wonder if we’ve reach a saturation point of expanding in this manner.

True, construction is a grand way of pump-priming. It creates instant growth factor through jobs for developers, main contractors, sub and sub-sub contractors, consultants, all those buruh kasars and so on and so on. Very short term kickback to the economy.

You could easily rack up the Quarterly growth points from a few projects alone.

And then? What happens when the project gets completed and the buildings began to open for public, and private audiences?

Unfortunately for the whole world, the new millennium witnessed a huge blip in the global economy.

Otherwise there’d still be foreign companies snapping up cheap (converted rate, of course – ala our ministers’ favoured comparison in Singapore flour, sugar and petrol and Malaysian flour, sugar and petrol prices) space.

The likes most Malaysian could only aspire. At the supposed RM130 rental as imagined by the FT Minister recently, you’d probably be able to get a broom closet in one of the high end residential units.

We build, and build as though the demand will continue forever. What used to be government-or-related-locked plots now "prime land" especially in the City.

The KTM land is out of the picture now, and so too is the Federal Hills. BBGS is only alive in the cyber world. Pudu Jail is also no more. Worse still, even our Parliament House is under threat.

We just have not an iota of respect for heritage, it seems. If the august House is considered creaky has-been, what hope has ghost-domain that is the Pudu jail?

Like another minister say: “..It is not something we can be proud of.”

After all, that hunk of concrete good for nothing is sitting on drool-salivating prime land.

Just like the Parliament House.

And now, we wait with bated breath the next pronouncement of the next “not something we can be proud of”.

Dweebos

The residents lodged a general report to say the parade of a cow's head was not meant to insult Hindus.

The report stated that the cow's head was meant to be a symbol of the "stupidity of the state government" and it was not intended as a religious insult, he said.

He here refers to Shah Alam district police chief Assistant Commissioner Noor Azam Jamaludin.

And that supposedly makes it all better?

They spat, stomp and kick at a poor animal’s head (carcass) and that’s it?

These AHs risk racial/religious flare-up and that’s it?

That’s (blipping) it?

Please don’t bring up arguments in the spirit of Ramadhan and forgiveness.

These AHs insulted this revered month by bringing disrepute to Islam by doing something that has only receive condemnations and brickbats (with some notable exceptions; of course from the usual suspects).

Just because it’s against the PR state government shouldn’t matter.

The AHs could have applied more brain power to their protest and not the stupid route that they end up taking.

(Mengata Dulang Paku Serpih. Mengata Orang Dia Yang Lebih.)

Some of the “What Ifs” scenarios that can be imagined from this episode is disturbing and others downright horrific.

We don’t want that.

So cut the crap, please.

Someone thought up the “cow-head” insult.

That someone should now have also the guts and balls to face the law.

It is not healthy for this country to continue going its two standards in “Us” and “Them”.

Pleaselah.

It’s not a route we wish for the next 52 years or more.