In Thunderous Applause

Quoit, raiment, preclude, loopy, gonzo, rhetoric, coronet, impecunious, empyrean, maudlin.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Chap Goh Mei and Kwanzaa.

There, now that I have given the annual winter greetings, I will proceed to a couple of issues worth the common Malaysian's attention.

Number one on the item is the passing of the Islamic Family Law bill, which if anyone who hasn't just been out shopping, cooking, baking, partying and generally engaging in other holiday activities know, allows Islamic men more freedom in matters of polygamy among others.

Being of a belief (atheism) that doesn't practise polygamy, nor any experience of it, I will not pass judgment on the lifestyles of some people and how they treat the women of their lives.

I do however wish to highlight a certain aspect of the entire episode, which was much more displeasing and disappointing then the actual content of the bill itself.

In a shocking revelation, the nations alleged democracy is revealed to be nothing but a pretentious whimsical farce when a certain minister who was recently in the limelight as a leader of a certain human rights caucus declared he would invoke the Whip to prevent any vote against the bill by women MPs within parliament. All 19 of them.

Invoke the Whip; and it turns out another senior minister of a darker skin tone could also invoke the Whip.

I don't know about you, but my sick, twisted mind has conjured up images of (content not suitable for younger readers) and of merchandising deals - "Invoke the Whip" T-Shirts anyone?

For those precarious easily influenced minds who have not quite reached the maturity to understand what this means... Go to www.disney.com.

For those who do, I'll stress again: the Judicial and Legislative Branches are now ONE! No more checks and balance, because ministers who oppose the bill or any bills for the matter will scream, shout and cry, but in the end, will vote for something that betrays not just their conscience, but that of Muslim women all over Malaysia.

This begets the question - what next?
Answer: Every man in Malaysia is entitled to a free houris from birth.

The second issue I wish to highlight is the increased vigilance of censors in Malaysia.

You know what I mean.

Here I was, watching an episode of The Nanny when I realized the censors working overtime. Here and there, words like jerk and damn not to mention entire phrases and sentences replaced with the Malaysian way of censorship - silence.

Come on! When you remove the word stiff from an innocuous sentence like "I'm not as ~ in the morning..." which was meant as a repartee that Mr. Sheffield was not as strict as Ms. Fine implied was turned into something quite insidious by the censors when they replaced the word with the silence of space.

Those hypocritically parochial morons should have realized that only people with matured minds would have understood the joking reference to sex and only uptight, prim and proper individuals (e.g., the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, religious fundamentalists) wouldn't laugh along.

Kids are of course, excluded if they don't understand. I know, because I watched The Nanny when I was 5 and I still laugh as hard then as I do now, because jokes mean different things at different ages.

For example, the Jack and Jill went up the hill... nursery rhyme. Then, it was just a weird illogical poem. When I first heard this poem, I thought it was pretty odd to be writing poems about a boy and girl fetching water from a well on top of a hill and then falling down from a life threatening height.

Now, I understand that it was an allegorical piece about teenage sex set to nursery rhyme.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there.

The way Malaysian censors work is an interesting case study - they censored the tone of variable frequency and amplitude emanating through the vocal cords of the actors as if they have a grudge against "talkies" but, didn't care to remove the Bahasa Malaysia subtitles of the spoken words.

Hmm... From here I conclude that the censors intend for us to insult one another in Bahasa Malaysia and if we ever need to exchange sexually charge repartee, we should do it in Malay.

Having nothing else to do and nothing else to censor, these morons have also targeted a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Global Edition.

It was the same show, only with some content further removed. Most conspicuous was how Jon's use of the Hindu god Lord Ganesh was removed. Yes my Hindu brothers, the censors are doing religious profiling.

Now, if only there were people out there reading my weekly blog entries then I can count on my fingers, my assessment and views would be more than just wasted Internet storage and bandwidth, people might actually start making a difference.

On that sour note, I end my last blog entry of 2005, see you next year.

Live Long & Prosper,
May The Force Be With You,
Be At Peace With Death.

P.S. If you are wondering about the title, it's a reference to what Senator Padme Amidala said during Revenge of the Sith after Darth Sidious dissolve the Galactic Senate.

Enough said.