the aristocrats (WARNING: extremely crude content)

the aristocrats has been referred to as "the world's funniest joke" and "the world's most vulgar joke." It may be either depending on who's telling it, who's listening and the innumerable variations upon the theme. It is rarely told the same way twice. it is a joke incomparable in terms of shock value, slapstickness or even pure grotesquery depending on the way you see it.

either way, one thing for sure, it's definitely a very popular joke with an entire website dedicated in collecting all known variations of the aristocrat joke. perhaps one of the most popular version might be the southpark version told by eric cartman. you can see the vid clip of the joke being told by cartman here. there's even a documentary dedicated entirely to featuring a 100 variations of this joke. and believe it or not, this film was actually premiered in the 2005 sundance film festival.

the most amazing thing about the joke is that it is a joke with an anti-punchline. so dun worry if you can't get the punchline, cos' i din either. which is why the essence of the humor in the joke lies in the ability for each individual teller to adapt the story. it is perhaps the anti-climatic ending which makes it so different and malleable. the punchline is nothing more than an excuse to embellish the joke with any gross details, limited only by the imagination of the teller.

the ability to appreciate humor is perhaps one of the definining traits that sets humans apart from animals who are non-sentient beings (though one may argue that the line between human and animals is blurred given the grotesque context of this joke at least!). anyway, jokes are a very integral part of every culture and seeing how details from a same joke on a redneck is transformed into one about an ah-beng is perfect example of how beyond the differences in culture, humour is the universal language that binds all of us together. it is probably also why beyond every culturally relative gesture, a smile is always perceived to be a friendly, non-antangonistic gesture.

so without further ado, allow me to present to you, the singapore variation of the aristocrats:
(ahem.)

* DO NOT proceed if gross jokes offend you







____________________________________________________________________
The Singaporean Aristocrats

The NDP organising committee is selecting participants to perform for the next NDP parade. Presiding over the selection commitee is an SAF Colonel. An old 2nd warrant officer walks into the committee hearing with his young pregnant wife, his teenage son and daughter and his maid. The 2WO (2nd warrant officer) salutes the Colonel and says: "Sur! Purmission to take part in the show segment for NDP, SUR!".

The Colonel was rather surprised, and replied: 'Oei! wake up your idea understand! You're an SAF personnel, if you want, you get yourself involved in the parade segment. Where got SAF personnel do show segment one, you tell me?'

The 2WO replied: "Pleaaase, Sur! i old alreadi, going to retire liao. i always wanted to the parade RSM but never every get selected cos' my rank too low and my voice too high, cannot give proper commands. this is my last year in service, so can i perform in the show segment with my family?"

The Colonel thought about it for a while and replied: "Sorry, still cannot, given the sensitive political climate now with a new change in PM, the last thing we need is for one family to run an entire show segement for the NDP. You want us to kenna accused us of being nepotistic issit!!".

The young Thai wife of the 2WO whom the 2WO met when he was posted to the SAF's training base in Thailand (like many other Warrant Officers) pleaded in her Thai-accented English:
"Pleassse Sirrr! My husbond work in SAF long long no chance to perform. He going to retire, so no more monney. we got so many kids. no monney cannot feed. If we get chance perform, and perform well, can get performing contract so no need scared no monney...pleaassee sirrr..."

The Colonel and the 2WO go back a long time ago when they first met went the Colonel was still a PC in the same camp as 2WO. The Colonel suddenly remembered how he was indebted to the 2WO when one night, while he was 'having his way' with one of the recruits in his platoon and got found out by the 2WO who was on BOS duty. It was the 2WO who covered the whole thing up and prevented the Colonel from being charged for 302.

The nostalgia and gratitude overwhelmed the Colonel and he finally relented, and says: 'Ok, you show me your act first, if good enough then can.'

The 2WO was overjoyed, spinned back immediately and did a double clap to signal to his family to get ready to perform. And with lightning speed, stripped his No.4 uniform and underwear down to just his boots and beret. In his shrill voice, he started shouting drill commands at the top of his voice 'Hormat, Senja Ta!'. And amazingly, in a split second after giving that command, he got an erection - one that's at 90 degrees parallel to his body, not unlike a rifle at an arms salute, ostensibly as a salute to the Colonel.

The wife also promptly stripped down and in an amazing feat managed to squeeze the baby out of her womb using the sheer strength of her cheebye in one solid fluid motion. The baby then went flying out and dangled out of the womb with only a umbilical cord holding it and preventing it from flying any further. The 2WO went on the explain the significance of the action in surprisingly perfect english: 'this is the metaphoric display signifying that of the birth of our nation and the attainment of self-governance after 1959 election'.

At this point of time, the daughter started licking the asshole of the 2WO while the son stripped down as well with the 2WO's parade pace stick stuck up his ass the 2WO then went on to push the pace stick in and out of his son's butthole using his right hand while using his left hand, proceed to push the baby in and out of his wife's cheebye.

The 2WO explained it saying "I'm a military man, this is a surrealistic tribute to my life in the SAF, having had to kiss the ass of my superiors as protrayed in the ass licking, and getting fucked up the ass for my mistakes as with the pace stick, and the baby is symbolic of the featherlight used to pull through rifle barrels as symbolised by my wife's birth cannal - one of the most fundamental thing every soldier has to learn".

And after a while, the 2WO started to penetrate the baby's asshole using the pace stick while the son when on to shit all over his mother, and smearing it all over her body, and the baby while moving in and out of the mother's cheebye bit off the umbilical cord and flew out of the mother's cheebye and in an amazing display of strength pushed the pace stick out of his ass. The 2WO then turned back to the Colonel and went to explain: "This bitting off of the umbilical cord symbolises how the decision by our enlightened leaders to break away from the Federation of Malaysia after discovering that our future will be full of shit if didn't."

Then the 2WO went on to swing his wife around and shouted another drill command 'Utuk Depressant Datang Senja Ta!' With arms drill precision, the son and the 2WO went to double penetrate the wife's cheebye doggy style while the daughter went on to give the baby son a blowjob while fisting the asshole of her mother. All these steps done in perfect timing with the 2WO giving signals of '1 check, 1 check, 1 check 1 check 1! And while penetrating and being penetrated, the whole family (except the baby of course) started singing 'Stand up, for Singapore, do it with a smile' with a happy expression on their faces. After finish their rendition of Stand Up for Singapore, the 2WO went on to explain saying "This symbolises the period of rapid industrialisation of the Singapore economy during the 70s to the 80s, as seen with everyone, young and old working hard to get a piece of action."

At this point of time the maid who has been standing away from the action all this while suddenly started stripping and started putting on a strap-on dildo. The son and the 2WO, now visibly tired, stopped penetrating the wife and the maid took over. In an unbeliveable contortionist posture, the maid started to penetrate the wife's cheebye in a reverse missionary style while arching herself 180 degrees backwards to french kiss the wife. While despite being gagged by the maid's tongue, the wife was desperately to shouting and squirming "I'm a stayer! I'm a stayer, not a quitter!!"

Upon doing getting fucked by the strap-on, the wife's cheebye got even wetter and started pouring out torrentially. The daugther then took out a pail to collect her mother's cheebye zup and started bathing herself, the baby and the rest of the family in her mother's 'essence'. While the 2WO and son could only watch on and masturbate themselves.

The 2WO, now clearly trying to fulfill his dual role as both the performer and narrator went on to explain saying "After the golden period of Singapore's industrialisation ended, our esteemed leaders saw the need to bring in foreign talent and we responded to their call. With the expertise from our foreign talent, we are now able to enjoy the riches of our new economy...nevermind the fact that we can only sit back and not join in the action.'

Then, the son and the 2WO went out of the room briefly and returned with one of those huge industrial generators and a gianormous 3 feet long, 20 cm in diameter vibrator which is connected to the generator as its power source. The logo on the industrial generator and vibrator clearly shows that it is being manufactured by Singapore Technologies. The daughter then went on to smear her cheebye with an entire bottle of NTUC brand kaya, seemingly like what people do with Vaseline and started slowly putting the gianormous vibrator into her cheebye. The 2WO then turned on the power source and the torque on the vibrator was so huge that the daugther started rotating round and round with the vibrator still inside her cheebye squirming in pleasure. And with that the entire family started another rendition singing yet another NDP song going 'Deep in my heart, i just know, right from the start, we'll grow, look where we are, we've cum so far, there's still a long long way to go...' while vibrator's loud buzzing in the background clouded their voices.

The 2WO then went to explain saying: "Now that we're into the 21st Century, our esteemed leaders have forsee a need for Singapore to diversify into a new economy based on tertiary industries. My daughter is symbolises the new-economy while the ST manufactured vibrator shows how the GLC led Singaporean economy is able to diversify itself into tertiary industries. Notice how it's a high-tech vibrator not the usual dildo which is a relic from the old economy. The NTUC kaya which bears a distinct local flavour, symbolises how despite efforts to go international with our new-economy, we need a distinctively Singaporean brand to hold us all back to the Singaporean Heartland".

After like a million rounds round the vibrator, the 2WO disconnected the generator and his giddy daughter dismounted the vibrator and just slumped to the ground. At this point, the 2WO his wife, his son and the maid started to climb onto a table placed strategically above his young daughter. The 2WO then said: "And now for a metaphoric display of the recent NKF fiasco involving TT Durai and his golden tap". And with that, the whole family started to pee onto the young daughter below, who seemed to be relishing her bath in the golden shower. Then after the pee subsided, in his shrill voice, the 2WO gave yet another drill command "Lepaskan SPRING!" and with that cue, he and his son went counting '1 check, 1 check, 1 check, 1 check, 1" while pulling at their penises while the maid and the mother went below the table to join the daughter. At the last 'check', both the son and the 2WO came all over the maid, the mother, the daughter and the baby. Upon finishing his ejaculation, the 2WO went to a drill command shouting "Turun Senja Ta!!" And with that, both his and his son's penises went flaccid and dangled down.

With that, the entire family jumped up and ran towards the entire NDP committee and shouted 'Ta-DA!!!' and then gave a bow and skirtsy before going back into Senang Diri position, as if waiting for the affirmation nod from the committee.

The entire NDP organising committee was shell-shocked and they just sat there for the longest time with their jaws wide open but words just couldn't come out. Complete silence engulfing the entire room.

Finally, the Colonel recovers from his shock and managed to say: "Wah lan eh....that's one hell of an act. What do you call that?"

Then the entire family ran forward almost into the face of the Colonel with each posing in a cutsey V-Sign and shouting in glee and in unision: "WE ARE THE ANG MO KIO ARISTOCRATS"

yet another meme

the irony of the study break or holidays is that with more time on my hands, yet still i tend to blog lesser than i would during exam time. blogging was my only catharsis in between exams, now i've got billards and ktv to keep me occupied, heh.

anyway, here's something to fill the space from hiaoauntie.


List three random facts about yourself that your friends might not know.
1) that i had a negative initial impression of them (some army buddies) when i first met them
2) that they're the next most important thing to me after my family
3) that i am less cheerful and optimistic that what i appear to be

7 Things That Scare Me
1) digital clocks/timing (the anticipation of the change of digits rattles me off)
2) the thought of drinking the pink anti-biotic syrup (a fear i had since childhood)
3) not waking up on time for exams/important presentation (my frens pull that prank on me by changing the time on my clock and that freaked me out)
4) fucking up my studies (too much is at stake)
5) not coming up with anything in an impromptu debate
6) public speaking (i can only mitigate but never really eliminate this phobia after all these years)
7) dying lonely and embittered

7 Things I Like The Most
1) my dvd collection
2) travelling to unfamiliar places (be it another country/city/or even suburb)
3) debating/the gong jiao dictators
4) my mp3 collection (took me years to collate what i have now that)
5) playing billards
6) singing karaoke
7) my blog (like i said, it's my catharsis)

7 Important Things In My Room
(by that i would refer to my room here in perth)
1) my queen-sized bed (i could never fit that into my room in singapore)
2) my quilt/quilt cover (love the design)
3) my laptop (my conduit to the outside world and singapore)
4) my couch (makes reading so much more enjoyable)
5) my standing lamp with japanese shades (got it at an awesome bargain from ikea)
6) my 2 pirated LMF figurines
7) my balcony (it's an indescribable feeling just sitting there, smoking and watch the world go by)

7 Random Facts About Me
1) am very ambivalent about my future
2) really am a virgin, unfortunately
3) has never dated nor fallen in love before
4) has no concrete ambition in life other than one that is simply rather unattainable
5) almost got involved in a 3 car pile-up today when my fren leading the 3 car convoy jammed his brakes making me jam mine as well, skidding in the process and fortunately not hitting anything.
6) am saving up for a car
7) can't wait to go home for summer

7 Things I Plan To Do Before I Die
1) find my ess muss sein in life
2) fulfill this ess muss sein
3) make sure that my family is well-taken care of after i'm gone
4) visit europe
5) fall in love at least once
6) watch gong jiao win the JG debating championships
7) having no regrets and retrospecting my life in fondness

7 Celeb Crushes


1) Michelle Yim, 米雪 (super duper lao-chio.)


2) Lin Ching Hsia, 林青霞 (super chio when she was young, plus her charimatic protrayal in various swordfighting movies)


3) Chan Wai 陈炜 (simply cos' she's 瑶池圣母)


4) Wan Yi Wen 万绮雯 ( she's 马小玲, need i say more?)


5) Jane Seymour (doctor quinn and an impeccable MILF, she's 50+ for god's sake!)


6) Celeste Chong (ok, before her current lian-y phase at least. when she was the good o' social worker starring in 如何对你说)


7) Natalie Portman (cos' she's very intelligent, highly charismatic and prolly cos' she's Padme Amidala. but i liked her way back since i first watched The Professional when i was like 13 anyway)


7 Bloggers Whom I Wanna Pass This Thingy to
1) little miss drink(recovering)alot
2) missy jurisfiction
3) c
4) mooiness
5) vamptress
6) blinkymummy
7) knight of pentacles

sinful escapisms

escapism has never felt so good.

it's been a brilliant week since the end of the wretched mid semester exams. and after all the hard mugging, surely there's no harm indulging in a little sinful procrastination does it? not even when i've got a 2000 word law assignment due in 2 weeks or 3 weeks worth of missed lectures to catch up with online. neither would the fact that i'm the only idiot who will be turning up tml to set up the stall for what was 'supposed' to be our club's display for the University Expo open day after the other 2 who supposed to turn up dropped the bombshell on me saying that they have work committments. not even the fact that i have no posters, banners, photos or any paraphernalia to put on display for the open day spoil my holiday mood. and if even the realisation that i barely passed my marcoeconomics exams (keynes failed to answer my prayer) isn't enough to dampen my spirts, i dun see why anything else should! lalalalalalah

spent a smashing wednesday night going to black betty's for the first time. it has to be the most happening club in perth that i've ever been to. in fact, it's probably the only club i've been to here that plays rock. it was backpackers' nite on wednesday so beers were going at $8 per jug. it's tons better than the metro's with its overplayed R&B, hip-hop repertoire. it's such that empathetic atmosphere with everyone in the club jumping in sync, singing to Smells like Teen Spirit that can never be replicated in any R&B club, not even metro. the sense of rock empathy was probably a reason why there was hardly any trouble in a club like black betty's which was just so fucking crowded, apart from one minor catfight. the only other time that night where there any inkling of dai ji ironically happened when we all left the club.

after leaving black betty's, we were just hanging at the exit taking a smoke when we heard some shouting coming from J's car in the carpark. u see, J has a history of being a rather agro drunk having gotten himself thrown out of black betty's the previous week and paramount earlier this sem so adrian and shiwei were there to take care of him. the fact that J is of a considerably small build probably made things worse. from where we were, which was about 50 m from J, we couldn't really figure out what was happening other than the fact that J seemed to be in trouble. so me and J's housemate daniel ran towards them preparing for what could be a rough scenario. so while running towards J, we soon realised that the shouting actually came from adrian who was shouting for J to cool down and stop. it seems J was already in his supra and was driving really fast and it almost seems as though he was trying to run down this other drunk asian guy. the drunk was pretty shocked and jumped out of J's way and started running away, and J barely swerved outta the drunk guy's way within a whisker and drove off. we were fucking shocked lah.

we were told later that apparantly the drunk guy -who's viet by the way- was caught pissing on J's supra when J and gang were on their way to the carpark and that really pissed of J big time. Shiwei tried to calm J down but to no avail so J decided to play punk and try to run down the viet. we were probably quite lucky that the viet was alone. common street sense dictates that one should never fuck around with a vietnamese guy in perth, especially so in northbridge at night. oh well, that ended as that and apart from the piss on his rims, the only other damage of the night it seemed was probably J's carpet after his housemate joel told us how J puked all over his bedroom floor when he got home. it's probably understandable for J to get furious. the supra like is a work of art and to defile it is simply blasphemous. here's a photo of J's supra i ripped from his friendster. it's a beauty.




for the past days or two, i've been watching totally hooked on the Initial D anime. ah, the perils of having friends in college who will provide you with all huge array of videos posted on the college intranet. with the huge shitload of catching up to do during the 2 weeks break, getting hooked on yet another drama/anime series isn't exactly the smartest thing to do. i can't believe i finished almost 25 episodes of initial d stage 1 in about a day. but it's really fucking addictive.

i watched the movie version back in singapore but i'm such a techno idiot when it comes to cars that i couldn't really appreciate what the fuck was going on for the drifting and shit. that's why i really prefer the anime which at least attempts to explain some of the dynamics of racing. at least the one thing which i leart from watching the anime is that the experts drift with 4 wheels while the also-rans can only manage a powerslide with the rear wheels. not that i understand how it is done though...

my favourite race thus far has to be the gumtape deathmatch between takumi's AE 86 and the night kids random's Civic EG6. that was totally out of this world. while initial d seems to be based on real-life street racing, i seriously wonder if anyone's crazy enough to actually take part in a gumtape deathmatch, and even more so on a mountain course.

it's amazing how much publicity initial d did to the cars featured in its story. while the anime ostensibly glorifies the usual japanese sports carmakers like the 2 Madza RX 7 driven by the takahashi brothers or the various Nissan S13, Skyline Silvia driven by iketani and the other randoms, i think it is probably Toyota who's smiling widely considering how the glorification of Takumi's AE 86 has also consequently rendered the car a cult status and implicitly lavishing praises on Toyota's engineering prowess. It's amazing how the popularity of the AE 86 generated from Initidal D has allowed car dealers to charge unbelievable prices for a Toyota Sprinter Trueno (as they call it here down under it seems). i was googling for 2nd hand cars when i realised that some Truenos are priced as much as AUD$10, 000 for an '85 model! to put things in perspective, a 94 Honda Civic VTEC can be bought at about AUD$8000 and a 95 Toyota Corolla CSi which is half as old, costs almost half as much at about AUD$5000-6000. i'll take a Civic or Corolla anyday over the Trueno.

it seems the fever caught on the other cars as well. i've got a fren T who bought this 89 RX-7 sometime ago, ostenisbly imitating the style of Takahashi Ryosuke. even though it wasn't totally the RX-7 FC driven by Ryosuke, he claims it was fully mod for racing with '480 horses' as he claims in his friendster captions. this is interesting cos' just before Ryosuke's race with Takumi, Ryosuke said how his car was just only 350 HP downtuned to 250 HP. nevertheless, here's yet some other pictures which i ripped from T's friendster.




poor T has had rather bad luck with cars. the previous 180 sx which he bought ended up with a overhauled engine in less than a semester. i last heard, T is having some problems with the clutch of his RX-7 as well. Aparantly the clutch has become too sensitive that it's really hard to find the biting point. Rumour has it that there's a challenge at the college T resides in where the challenge is for anyone can try to drive T's RX-7 onto the main road without stalling. apparantly 8 person has tried and none of them could successfully drive out his car without si qia-ing - not even T himself. even if the clutch is fixed, it seems that T's RX-7 consumes petrol like a monster. T said how it took him 1/2 a fuel tank just to go to and forth to the airport. i guess that's probably one factor which most people overlook when purchasing cars - the hidden variable costs in terms of petrol consumption, and in light of soaring petrol prices, this is no joke at all.

despite of the glorification of street racing in initial d, i guess one thing which wasn't really clearly illustrated in the anime was that 'it is actually very possible to crash and die while street racing'. i have never seen a street race in real life, but me and my friends did have a close shave on a roadtrip to margaret river last year. all of us rented 3 vehicles in all, a lancer, a hyundai trajet MPV and a hyundai sonata. somewhere on our way back, the lancer decided to fuck around and overtake the MPV which i was sitting in. robin who was driving our MPV decided to play along and tailgate the lancer in front. u see, the roads between magaret river and bunbury (a mid point stop) are two-laned on each direction with a centre lane in place of a centre divider that allows vehicles on both sides to use it to overtake. so the lancer went into this third overtaking lane on and our MPV followed. soon we found the lancer swerving sharply back into the 2nd lane. we then realised that there was a gianormous trailer truck heading in our opposite direction on the overtaking lane as well. fortunately, robin had time to swerve back in to the 2nd lane a good 5-8 seconds before the trailer truck passed us. that was one hell of a ball-shrinking experience.

for T's sake, i really hope he won't take his imitation of ryosuke that far. i know the hill on king's park across the road is rather tempting for some initial d-ing. but trying to race downhill at kings park is probably a sure way to kill yourself or someone else considering that there's virtually no streelighting at all. not even putting tofu or a cup of water insider your car is likely to help navigate such a treacherous course in this case.

an anthology on swear words beyond hokkien expletives

limegreenspyda made an interesting point:

and *just* sometimes, greetings of cheebye or munjen or pundeh become terms of endearment in themselves. wonderful how we evolve, eh

now considering all the controversy surrounding the blogsphere since the indictment of the 2 alleged cyber-racists and the ephraim episode which raised concerns about the prevalent use of hokkien expletives throughout the singpore blogsphere. the last thing the singapore blogsphere needs is more negative publicity stereotyping it as vulgar websites whose monolinguistical use of hokkien expletives serving to advance some cultural imperialistic, chinese chauvinistic agenda.

so while we probably can change the vulgar bit, (which is perhaps the very thing that makes reading blogs so interesting), perhaps we can at least change the language in which we cyber-curse in. considering our diverse cultural heritage, there's no reason why we shouldn't swear in other languages since there a a gadzillion more interesting way to swear other than the cliched KNNBCCB seen on most blogs.

so here's my little contribution by posting some of the Tamil expletives i learnt during army, courtesy of my 2 awesome bunkmates, Gaya and Murali. hopefully the next time someone else complain about blogs being vulgar, it won't be simply that of the usual hokkien expletives. u'll come to realise that Tamil is an infinitely more colourful language than hokkien with far more sophisticated modes of swearing.

The Basics:

' per-sar-veh ' = crazy/mad

' pan-dee ' = pig/swine

' soo-ter ' = ass

' pu-re-ker ' = asshole

' pun-deh ' = cunt/cheebye

' kun-ji ' = dickhead

' mo-leh ' = tits

'my-ree' = hair

'e-leh' = without/dun have

Nouns and words used to embellish long curses

' na-yee ' = dog

' ama ' = mother

' apa ' = father

' tan-ge-chi ' = sister

'ni' = you

'unn' = your

'nan' = me/mine

Verbs

' or-va-yee-leh ' = inside one's mouth

' or ' = to put inside

and so putting it all together, we get the


swear phrases used in cursing

'ni kunji myree eleh' = you, who is without pubic hair (ie. wuss)

'ni pureker eleh' = you, who is without an asshole

'sooter pandee' = swine ass


and

the thermonuclear swear phrases ala KNNBCCB

'unn tangechi moleh, orvayeeleh' = Your sister's tits are in your mouth

'nayee kunji or ni ama pundeh leh' = A dog's dick is in your mother's cheebye

'nan apa kunji or ama pundeh leh'
= My father's dick is in your mother's cheebye (dun ask me why that is even a curse, but that's what i learnt)

'nayee kunji or unn pureker leh' = A dog's dick is in your asshole

'unn apa kuji or nayee pureker leh' = Your father's dick is in a dog's asshole

just which the verbs and nouns around and you'll get a new swear phrase. you should get the idea.

here comes the really humorous and long swear phrases which i guess can be used either tongue-in-cheek or as a friendly jab at a fren, no unlike the 'cheebye lah' as opposed to the considerably more antagonistic KNNBCCB

humorous long swear phrases

' yee-woo-de-pee, ser-gu-re-ke, e-dom' = You are a toilet bowl.

'yen-va-yee-leh, yee-re-krae. pah-leh-ku-chee ya-wee-leh. wong ko-tek sin-ne-dei '
= Your dick is smaller than the toothpick i have in my mouth

and my personal favourite!

'unn apa soon-ni nan-de, kar-di-chi-chee'
= May your father's balls be pinched by a crab.

I've been told that the most vulgar Tamil word is a certain word that begans with 'T-' which means prostitute and it is a phrase which one should NEVER EVER under any circumstances use without wanting to get beaten up big time, so i'm not putting it up. For that matter, most of the phrases under the thermonuclear swear phrases section should NEVER be used in real life either unless u have a death wish. other than that, revel in your new found multi-lingual ability to curse!

have u had your dosage of cathartic swearing today?

the good news and the bad news for the singapore blogsphere (updated)

it seems two bloggers have been charged for
making racist remarks over the internet

*UPDATE: it appears that the two alleged clowns actually made derogratory remarks which were in fact directed at religion and less of race as described on the Lianhe Zaobao (english tranlation here) this begs the question about why they 2 blogger weren't charged under the Maintanence of Religious Harmony Act Chapter 167A (elaborated in the end of this entry) instead of the Sedition Act? it would seem that the employment of the Maintainence of Religious Harmony Act would be a far more appropriate and less ambiguous legislation that befits the 2 bloggers' transgressions since an insult directed at Muslims, would also be an insult directed at Indian/Chinese Muslims, and not just Malay Muslims. surely the law enforcement agencies would have understood that?

in light of this, one can't help but to wonder if it was the intention for the government to further ambiguate the already ill-defined 'seditious behavior' so as to serve as a warning, as well as using this as an attempt to set up new and timely OB markers upon the blogsphere considering the imminent general elections. if that was indeed the case, the bad news has just gotten worse. *

from my point of view, those two (alleged) clowns deserved it, and the deterrent effect in punishing cyber racists may actually do some good in ridding the blogsphere off morons like the blogger of secondholocaust.blogspot.com who actually had the audacity to adovocate genocide on malay singaporeans. cliched as it may sound, racial harmony is something which we should never take for granted. let's just face it, an undercurrent of racial prejudice is still pretty much alive beneath the facade of racial harmony within the singaporean society. despite all our institutional provisions that ensures a racially-indifferent meritocracy, non-systemic racial prejudices stemming from societal attitudes which sadly cannot be eliminated by legislation alone, if ever at all.

the subtlety of racial prejudice is probably largely unnoticed especially if you happen to belong to the chinese majority. when i was in pri 5, i had a chinese teacher who loved to pick on taswinder, a classmate of mine who's sikh but studying chinese. taswinder wasn't exactly the naughtiest boy around but for some reason the teacher never failed to scold him for even the slightest transgressions. she even went as far as to call him a 黑鬼 (literally translates as 'black ghost'). no one else in class felt that there was anything wrong with that, it was just another scolding by the teacher. and in hindsight, that taswinder must have been terribly awful as an 11 y/o going through that.

i once had a chat with joel, a good friend of mine who's a singaporean indian during our first semester here in perth. we were discussing the apparant lack of social integration between the asian students and the aussies, and somewhere along the line i casually asked joel whether if he had experienced any form racial prejudices at any point of time when he was in singapore. joel replied saying how it's part and parcel of growing up in singapore and how he has learnt to make a distinction between the innocuous jibes by friends like those
who call him pundeh or 'oh-it's-so-dark-that-i-can't-see-you, joel' swipes - which he take to be almost like various terms of endearment, and the offensive slurs which carries connotations of condescension (such as the time he got into a fight outside zouk when someone said 'see, the colour says it all' after he ignored the asshole's initial taunting). he also spoke about how his elder sister who was a fresh graduate had many of her job applications rejected cos she wasn't able to converse in mandarin. it seems likely that her sister probably isn't the only one with the same predicament. what one may perceive to be just an innocuous statement could be intepreted rather differently by the individual it is directed to. the best analogy i can draw, is for a singaporean chinese to be called a chink - something my housemate (who's frens with joel and calls him pundeh too) experienced last sem- and getting all pissed off about it even when perhaps the ang moh making the comment might bear no intention of being racist. the lack of sensitivity of our chinese singaporeans could probably be illustrated in this article i found. hmm...now, so i guess joel will stop calling me cheebye if i stop calling him pundeh first....

while individual racial prejudices cannot be easily eliminated, at least the shutting down of blogs which advocate extreme racial villification can eradicate a false belief that such fringe views shares solidarity with the mainstream public. so that can well be the good news.


Here comes the bad news for the blogsphere. implicit in fact that bloggers are hunted down and indicted for stuff which they post on their blogs, is that there is a possibility that some form of cyber monitoring mechanisms which allows law enforcement agencies to track down the content on the internet. big brother might be watching you. but of course, alternatively and more plausibly, it might be a case where law enforcement agencies reacting to complaints made by irate netsurfers which will at least make the 'big brother-esque' possibility less likely.

yet, this case precedence seem to have reinforced the notion that individuals are accountable for what they propagate using their cyber personas, and more importantly, it delineated the fact that the law does not make a distinction between the a normal website and a weblog which is in some instances are nothing more than a personal diary hosted online.

now bearing in mind that the 2 bloggers were charged under the sedition act , with specific emphasis on the their trangesssion on section 3(e) in which their actions served to ' to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore'. *i must confess that i'm not not well-acquaint with the law and the extent of my knowledge on the law or jurisprudence is woefully limited to the curriculum of an introductory business law unit which i'm taking now.* yet at same time the sedition act states several other forms of actions (other than racist remarks) which may tantamount to propagating views constituting a seditious tendency. behaviour such as 3(a) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the Government; or 3(d) to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the citizens of Singapore or the residents in Singapore. If two latter definitions of a seditious tendency is what an average reasonable man like me interpret it to be, then that would effectively effectively render websites which regularly indulge in government slamming such as rockson, the singapore democrats, singabloodypore and certainly talkingcock.com liable for charges under sections 3(a) and 3(d) of the sedition act.

and given the fact that how the indictment of those 2 alleged racists seem to suggest that there is little distinction made between that of a blog and a normal website, the news seems rather alarming. given the rather wide intepretation of what constitutes a seditious act, the implicit message sent from the indictment seem to be that apart from the morally unequivocal act of propagating racist views, bloggers who indulge in government slamming can be equally liable for an indictment under the sedition act.

the catch-all and wide definition of the sedition act, (as with other laws vaguely defining the OB markers of political expression) can probably be described - as coined by legalist scholar Walter Woon - to be a form of ' driftnet laws ' which 'enable the government to trawl through a whole ocean of eventualities and throw back at whatever it was not interested in'. with the intepretation then falling upon the sole discretion of the government, there arises the possibility of a huge propensity of abuse.

and even if government-slamming happen to fall beyond 'what the government is interested in', the very ambiguity surrounding what-constitutes-a-seditious-act-beyond-racial-villification still has the effect of deterring government slamming by bloggers. this i'm afraid, could well have an effect of fostering a culture of self-censorship among singaporean bloggers, and most lamentably in what's perhaps the last bastion of free political expression. a culture which singaporeans are not too unfamiliar with beyond cyberspace.

as highlighted in my previous post, the timing for the indictment couldn't have come at a better time, considering the imminent elections and the rockson-ephraim saga which demonstrated the reach of blogs to the average singaporeans.

contrary to popular belief, singapore is one of the least regulated counteries in terms of internet filtering .and so, if it was indeed a genuine gesture by the government just to safeguard the freedom of cyberexpression within acceptable limits (ie. no trangression on racial/religious harmony), it is perhaps time to diambiguate the various archaic laws such as sedition act or the internal security act, so as not to allow the safeguarding of stability to come at the cost of stifling freedom of expression. and with this new generation of political leaders, there is good reason to believe this is true. after all, despite all the features such as the 'Annals of the Dragon King', we can be glad to say that talkingcock.com is still around after all these years.

mr miyagi seem to have provided a rather good suggestion to this connundrum. ' Enact an anti-racial vilification law, fellas. Leave the Sedition Act for specific seditious acts against the State. ' he says. and i fully agree with him. racial villification is heinous enough a crime in its own right, so why not render its rightful legal status rather than befuddling it with other less well defined trangressions. moreover, a similar legsliation - the Maintainence of Religious Harmony Act (Chapter 167A) is already in place to punish actions causes '.. feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different religious groups', so there's little no reason why we can't do with a Maintainence of Racial Harmony Act as well.

multiculturalism is and the racial harmony we've painstakingly achieved are the defining traits that makes us so proud to be singaporeans. self-censorhip need not neccessarily be one of them.

What Ephraim Spells For The Singaporean Blogsphere and Political Discourse

this has got to be the most classic moment in the history of the singaporean blogsphere. an amazingly hilarious episode that underscores the power and pervasiveness of blogs as the defining alternative medium in singapore.

it all started when this guy with a weird name ephraim wrote a somewhat ill-conceived and sparsely argued letter to the straits times forum complaining about how he was outraged at the use of expletives on rockson's blog after he decided to check it out upon reading a feature on some teen magazine which described rockson's blog as 'hilarious'. (the very fact that a 20+y/o post NS male would actually still read teen magazines is in my opinion, far more disturbing). *update: it appears that the magazine at question was Lime , i guess that makes it marginally less disturbing than if it was Teens or Teenage.* whether or not his argument was indeed cogent is really beside the point considering what happened later.

rockson then put up a post in response to this ephraim's letter which gave a tinge of suggestion that he might '..not blog so much now, wait kena more people complain'. that pissed the hell outta the teeming legions of rockson's readers and the subsequent furor was phenomenal, and perhaps even unprecedented to say the least.

within a day, there was an overwhelming outpour of comments in support of rockson on his blog either pleading him to continue blogging, flamming that ephraim fellow and it didn't stop at that. it was an amazing case of uncoordinated mass flamming with supporters of rockson like bengue fever setting up a new blog just to flame the ephraim fellow and some others even searching the entire internet just to find out the url of ephraim's blog to post on rockson's comments board, encouraging people to go flame his blog. one guy even went as far as to find out ephraim's friendster profile:

24 SLK said...

ATTENTION EVERYONE!! IVE FOUND EPHRAIM'S FRENSTER!! ITS THIS ADDRESS!! GO KAN HIS NA BEI CHAO CHEE BYE EVERI1!!!

http://www.friendster.com/user.php?uid=2966696

in less than half a day, ephraim's tag board was spammed entirely with rockson's ginna flamming him. the tags are fucking hilarious, and following it throughout the day in the accursed comp lab really cracked me up making my mugging day alot less torturous for me.

the tags ranged from the Rational...

anonymous: ur blog is doing way more damage to young people with its inaneness, its "celebrities are gods" mode of thinking & its utter egoistical & boring writing style & its totla lack of social conscience.

Lalaland: Perhaps it was not wise to write such a holier-than-thou letter to the press was it? We dont begrudge you your views, but perhaps the medium through which you expressed them.

...to the Cryptic

phua bye: u think u sibeh zai, report the blog to ST is sibeh hiong, lim peh tell u, u wrong liao.. u go out arh, really becareful leh, if not better wear a mask, or not confirm sure kana whack by rockson's fanclub de. retard. trust urself to get involve in this.

anonymous you are a dead man, ephraim. Rest in peace...

...to those that question him on his sexuality and NS credentials (it's unbelievable how rockson's fans will go to great lengths, sieving ephraim's entire archive just to find flame fodder)

Ephraim is a Sissy: Hey sissy E-Frame Who kena BMT recourse, when are you going to write to the Straits Times again to complain about people "spamming" your tagboard ? Oooohhh, I'm sooo scared. Whatcha gonna do ? Set your Mediacorpse and PAP friends upon us, call the ISD ?

fucking cheebye: lancheow la fucker. serve NS they dont scold cheebye like puncutations arh? which unit were u in? music and dance company? fuck you ok cheebye kia. self denial, self righteous piece of shit. lancheow face

....and to the downright HILARIOUSLY inane!

24 slk: eh fcuk face.. wah lan eh.. ur face sibeh er xin leh.. if u go out people nvr whack u, sun will rise from ur mothers chee bye. bastard u are.

my personal favourite -

anonymous: your blog is as boring as your stupid articles. U will never be Rockson type blogger because you suck your cock too much. Take $50 put in left hand. Masturbate with right hand. Then pay yourself ok!


somewhere along the line, a certain tagger LeNN went against the flow and defended ephraim using -wait for this- the very vulgarities which ephraim found offensive. a sharp eyed rockson's ginna discovered that the IP addresses of ephraim and LeNN were identical, so it must have been that ephraim fellow defending himself with a pseudonym. to be fair, ephraim might have had a legitimate reason as to why he was so peeved at seeing expletives (maybe the expletives reminded him of a ___ (insert random physical/sexual abuse) he suffered during his traumatic childhood, we'll never know). but the pseudonym tagging was just a blantant act of cowardice and it destroyed whatever credibility in defending his POV. and as i type, the flamming continues.

it seems apparant that ephraim is pretty comfortable and perhaps rejoicing at his new found notoriety. in that aspect at least, Ephraim has made his first giant step towards achieving his dream of becoming some journalist/singer/actor/random celebrity - having subscribed himself to the quinessential media-whore belief that negative publicity, is better than no publicity at all.

********************************************************************************

Yet beyond the sheer humour of the whole shebang, there are some pretty plausible negative repurcussions on the singaporean cyber community.

Firstly, as evident in the militant fanfare surrounding xiaxue and rockson (though unlike the former, i just can't see how anyone can possibly dislike good o' rockson), it makes us wonder if the singaporean blogsphere is moving in a direction that is intolerant to alternative points of views. as described in my previous post, the advent of idiotic and unconstructive anonymous flammers on 武则天 's blog makes the whole point of using blogs as a means of discourse, a much less interesting affair when one is constantly spammed wif ridiculous comments.

Secondly, and more pertinently, i'm rather concerned the demonstration of the media prowess of blogs through the ephraim affair might actually invite unwanted attention or perhaps even intervention upon the singapore cyber community.

in the light of how singapore's media coverage is disproportionately skewed against opposition politic parties, several moderate opposition politicians such as Goh Meng Seng of the Worker's Party or perhaps Malaysia's Lim Kit Siang have been quick to exploit the growing popularity of blogs as an avenue of political expression and jumped on the bandwagon. Bearing in mind that the Singapore General Election is due in less than a year, the advent of political blogs has become a considerably effective tool for political publicity.

moreover, since whether or not an individual's weblog is a 'political website' or more importantly whether the Singapore Broadcasting Authority has jurisdiction over singaporean webpages which are hosted on foreign domains is still essentially a legal grey area. it may even allow opposition politicians to circumvent the various institutional limitations on political discourse over the internet, such as the 2001 amendment to the Parlimentary Elections Act , or the legislation requiring all 'political websites' to register themselves with the SBA.

so how does ephraim fit into the equation? a common theme evident in quite a few pro-rockson flammers tags was that ephraim has almost become a euphemism for the catch-all determinant of discontent brewing in the lives of the flammers. ephraim simply offered himself as a convenient face and name for the singapore's anonynmous bogeyman, a focal point of singaporean subdued frustration. these tags on ephraim's tagboard would give u a good illustration:

Ephraim is a Sissy: Hey sissy E-Frame Who kena BMT recourse, when are you going to write to the Straits Times again to complain about people "spamming" your tagboard ? Oooohhh, I'm sooo scared. Whatcha gonna do ? Set your Mediacorpse and PAP friends upon us, call the ISD ?

jay christ: Confirm liao, Diaphram Loy is a PAP bootlicker and sycophant. Better dun let me see you outside hor...

And of course, the anti-PAP sentiment comes as no surprise considering that some of these flammers were also directed from sammyboy.com. But considering that beyond the bengish language, the content in the majority of Rockson's posts actually bears some political undertone and satirical criticisms on the ruling government, the sheer scale of the demonstration of popular support for the views which Rockson stands for, underlines the fact that the Rockson has become a personification of the heartland discontentment. And for the first time, the teeming Singaporean masses has had not only a folklore anti-hero, but also express issues close to the heart of the average singaporean in a very palatable way. Rockson has certainly come a long way since he was first featured on 武则天's blog . And ironically, the Rockson phenomena is somewhat the creation of the Singaporean Bureaucracy ever since he was featured on the Straits Times during the NKF scandal.

if past records are anything to go by, as evident in the past implementations of legislations such as the Political Films Act. The PAP government has had a rather effective knack at implementing measures that limit political publicity. And should the increasing pervasiveness of political blogging be deemed as threading the periphery of the OB markers, we may be staring at a less optimistic future for political discourse on the Singaporean blogsphere. It is perhaps for this very reason, to avoid the roving eye of the OB patrols, that tomorrow.sg actively chose not to feature the juicy details of the Rockson/Ephraim affair and opting in favour of the mundane, OB friendly tags. no one know how exactly any limitations on political blogging can be done, but with the will, there probably is gonna be a way.

an ode to a fellow blogger

a fellow blogger who was linked to one of the blogs that i frequent has had the link to his blog removed.

apparantly a couple of days back before the link was removed, the blog that i frequent ran a post chastising one of the its linked bloggers for committing some sorta of 'commenting misdemeanor' on the comments board of another linked blog. shortly after that, fellow blogger's link to the blog was removed.

upon visiting fellow blogger's blog, it appears that his recent posts seemed somewhat different from his typical cheerful tone sounding rather forlorn and apologetic regarding some misunderstanding in his recent posts. putting one-and-one together, it seems that fellow blogger was probably the allegedly errant commentor.

it's quite a pity seeing fellow blogger losing his zeal and cheerfulness in blogging all becos' of a considerably minor issue. though i have never really spoke to him before, from the things he posts, fellow blogger comes across as a pretty sincere, friendly, down-to-earth bloke albeit perhaps a little socially awkward in light of the debacle.

in his abscence the commenting boards on the rather insightful blog that i frequent seemed a lot less interesting without fellow blogger's good o' enthusiastic banter, and instead getting ravished by a bunch of annoying, self-righteous and sometimes totally incoherent Anonymous-es .

whatever transpired, i do hope fellow blogger can pick up his zeal and blog with his much-missed enthusiasm. and if fellow blogger happens to be reading this, cheer up dude, 别恢心, 让你的热情再次点燃这个虚拟的星空吧! 我把这首打油诗献给你:


' 虚海拟空获知音
页页牢骚夜夜翻
只因误言一瞬间
惹火再世武则天 '

GP3 com lab

modus operandi: 330 ml Redbull

tio suan siao by the self-styled simon cowell of debating

(debrief after a debate where our first speaker departed from the policy we agreed on and hence opened our entire case to a verbal broadside, and me as the 2nd speaker after attempting to clarify the gist of our policy and eventually having to rush through my whole constructive case in under a minute and eventually sounding like i spoke in tongues)

a-former-singaporean-poly-and-presummably-'experienced'-fresher
who-was adjudicating:

' you had a late advance having bring up your substantive only after the protected minute. so i penalised both your manner and method.....you sounded like a twelve-year old boy getting all excited at presenting what you found out in front of your class. '

simon cowell would have been proud of him.

proudly sponsored by redbull - i heart ah gu

before the start of this horrid three week period of mid semester exams, i had only drank probably 5 cans of redbull in my entire life thus far, and all of which were mixed with vodka and not straight from the can. and within the span of 2 weeks, i had easily quadrupled my bull count. it is my buffer away from insanity, procrastination, and my beloved slumberland.

i had a BMT bunkmate who successfully conned his way out of course and eventually earning himself a PES E downgrade simply by drinking 3 cans of redbull and 3 raw eggs before going for his medical appointment and as such getting himself diagnoised with 'hypertension'. and i've also heard horror stories from seniors in uni who got a little too into redbull binging the night before exams and ended up edgy and shakey during the exam itself.

as u probably can tell, the only reason why i'm blogging away at this hour and not getting my much eluded sleep for my Intro to Finance paper tomorrow (in fact, it's in a few hours time) is the love-hate relationship my tortured brain has with good o' ah gu. it is a lover's tiff, both tired from the an entire night's of tussle, an uneasy truce predicated on a placid pretence of sleep.yet each meticulously guarding their respective ends of the bed ready to start a new fight at the slightest incitement - that of the temptations exerted on my mind from whoreful vixen, Fatigue which evokes the furious torrent of jealousy from ah gu.

fuck, i'm not making any sense anymore. i was told never to drink more than 2 cans a day, i did 1 and took a few mouthful from another just now. it's indeed paying it forward. it will have to be another 2 cans with a double expresso for breakfast -if i do wake up - and possibly another one in the afternoon just before and i hope to live to tell the tale.


fuelled on redbull