ProGnosis (a timely reprise)

We started out with a discussion on "Evil" - its definition and possible origins. Now it seems we are attempting to summarize EVERYTHING we think we know about EXISTENCE and post it via email to Edward Kemp, investigative anthropologist residing in Quebec, who will then pass it around a few others on his mailing list - who, no doubt, will have lots more to add to this virtual conference, which in theory could go on indefinitely like a verbal marathon, till one by one the participants drop away through boredom, fatigue, or irritation.

WHY are we doing this? WHY am I writing what I'm writing now? Knowing full well I really don't have to - even if I did promise Ed I'd sum up the situation the best I can, if only to clear the cobwebs in my brain. Clearly, there is pleasure in hearing the sound of our own voices, especially if we believe someone is actually listening. Sweet nights under the starry desert sky, passing a hookah around while waiting for the coffee to brew, in the company of savant mystics, each with 1001 anecdotes to relate, and a dozen theories to propound. That's the image I get out of this exercise.

At this moment my mind is a blank slate. Many, many moments ago I was omniscient, knew just about everything, or thought I did. But it now feels as if I have passed through an etheric membrane, like bursting through an amniotic sac, and I am like a newborn babe in a world completely unfamiliar and incomprehensible. Yet I do have a genetic archive where memories are haphazardly filed away (some day I'll get around to sorting out the mess, some day!)

Arcane knowledge, esoterica, the occult, Mystery Schools, the Gnosis... ahhh, the long road we have traveled around and around the zodiac. All this juxtaposed with massacres, blood sacrifice, witch-hunts, secret police, bioweapons, reptilian-Anunnaki Illuminati cabals, MK-ULTRA, ACIO, Men In Black, Zeta-Drako agents in cahoots with the military top brass, mind control, ELF, The Frequency Fence, Priory of Sion...

Where's the Cartoon Universe? Lemme outa here!

The Mystery is My Story. It's as simple as That. And my story is told in spiralling fractals of prismatic LIGHT, moving as information through neurons and synapses in billions, trillions, gazillions of Other Aspects, occasionally recognizable as fragments of my Original Core Self. From the Unnameable issues all names, from the One comes the Many, from Nothing Everything emerges. From My Story is born All Stories - and stories are all we have to go by. Some stories make you cry, some make you laugh, some make you go Aha! And some just put you to sleep.

The ones that put you to sleep are told by Dark Sorcerers who steal power from you by putting you under their hypnotic spell. The Eater of Souls is one whose stories are deadly dull and cluttered with meaningless facts and figures - try reading an Environmental Impact Assessment report for a World Bank funded dam project!

EVIL is LIVE in reverse, just as EROS is SORE!

Is EVIL really VILE or just a VEIL for the Sacred Bride? A ROSE for My Lady! I arose for my lady but she was still sore at me so Eros has to wait. Words, wordplay, in the beginning was the Word. The Logos. Is Logic our friend? Do I sound Antisemantic?

In 1976 Julian Jaynes wrote The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, in which he postulated that auditory commands registered in the right hemisphere of the brain are rendered into language by the left and interpreted as Orders from Above. The book almost put me to sleep so it's obvious where he's coming from! Are my thoughts influenced by Archetypal imprints transmitted via photons? Are the Ascended Masters and the Archangels and Pleiadian Councils guiding the way I evolve as a hybrid humanoid with an unknown number of lineages seeded over countless aeons by legions of ultra-, meta- and extraterrestrials? Are the Sun and the planets and myriads of stars talking to Me? I am a Descended Master - and a family man - and you have my email address!

God Immanent and Transcendent: Within and Without! As an occasional Solipsist, I revert to being God in the privacy of my own Mind - but in public my divinity is externalized and God becomes my cosmic Father/Mother. The Undotted I from Whom i originated. Great Spirit! Does God know humility? Why so many Names? Mind Games...

If Linear Time is an illusion, what does that make "history"? His story, her story, Whose Story? Who Else? Virtual Reality hologram movies made by Whom? ME? Did I invent the Suns of the One and the Paradise Sons? Did the shadows they cast as they acquired density become the Sons of Belial? My Shadow Selves are legion. Do shadows have Free Will? A life of their own? The Pinocchio Effect: does it apply to shadows, who take on a life of their own as our Evil Twins, our Doppelgängers, our Ids? Pleasure to meet you, Mr Hyde, would you like some tea?

If I didn't do all this.... WHO did? Greg? Ed Kemp? Mr Baggy? Queen Kate? Maisoon? John Kaminski? Pancho Villa? The Man of La Mancha? Onaxis? Atmanu Ram Anu? Prime Creator Source? Are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld really part of me? Retch. Puke. Vomit. Poison in the bloodstream. Stupid White Men in their Dark Suits and Blood-Red Ties. Their insane arrogance and incurable halitosis. Do I HATE them? Sometimes, yes!

I hate bits of myself sometimes. My receding chin, puffy eye bags (legacy of my mother's dragon bloodline, degenerate nobility, mercenary magicians). Reptilian DNA. Reptilian implants. (Some good news here: the Great-Great-Granddaddy of them Rebel Reptiles that invaded and colonized the Earth 225 million years ago has recently been vaporized by Prime Creator Source and the hypothalamic reptile brain is rapidly losing its deadly stranglehold on the angelic humans!) But I have no bone to pick with the Great Reptile Families. Only a handful are mean-minded and totally mad. They think they can hijack Creation and make it their very own Miscreation.

What about all those scary entities you hear about? Choronzon, Ialdabaoth, Samael, Nosferatu, Kahotep, Aleister Crowley, Lafayette Ron Hubbard, Anton La Vey, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Jeffrey Dahmer, Armin Meweis, George Herbert Walker Bush, Philip of Macedonia... Tales from the Crypt! The Undead. Shudder... Enochian magicians are such Woeful Wankers!

Which parts of me are they? Denizens of my Unconscious, terrorizing the Collective Psyche into sheeplike submission through their dominance of the Airwaves and the Microwaves and the Ultrawaves, killing off Cetaceans so we will be bereft of our Memories of the Deep from Antediluvian Days. 

Who are all these Zeta-Drako-Human clones in the Office of Naval Research and who now occupy the penthouse floors of the Pentagon? Who do THEY worship? What Secret Chiefs? Marduk? Lucifer? What Nameless Ones do they sacrifice young children to? In the robes of Aztec priests or Dark Druids, with their hideous addiction to solemn ritual, they are the inner core of a Kosmik Ku Klux Klan. Always looking for Niggers to lynch, are they the Great White Brotherhood?

The Sirius Lodge and the Orion Light Council... Galactic Federation... Ashtar Command... Pleiadian Agenda... Guardian Alliance... Melchizedek Cloisters... United Intruder Resistance... Stargate Keepers... Multidimensional Vortex Merkabas. Seems I'm getting so complicated I'll never understand Myself completely! Jesus H. Christ may be a curse on some people's lips - but he's a good friend of mine. Long live Christos Power!

The Wars of Gods and Men are giving me a monster bellyache! 'Scuse me, folks.... gotta go make a Leviathan Poop! Maybe I'll start an organic fertilizer business. See you in a bit! 😎

Antares
10 December 2003

[First posted 3 December 2006, reposted 17 April 2020 & 14 May 2023]

MAY ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE (repost)

I rarely have meaningful dreams supercharged with symbolism – or perhaps I occasionally do but just don’t remember. So when I read about people achieving their dreams, the idea doesn’t actually carry that much excitement or veracity for me.

What dreams? Like the one I had earlier today where I found myself in a room full of accumulated memories discussing with Rafique Rashid how to dispose of his brother Rehman’s earthly possessions? Or the one I had a couple of days ago where I was just sitting in a coffeeshop, paying for my tea and I counted out 80 cents in coins – which made me realize when I woke up shortly afterwards that I had traveled back in time to the late 1980s when a cup of tea or coffee cost less than a dollar.

The Frank Zappa dream that came to me a couple of weeks ago was interesting. I was hosted to dinner by Mr and Mrs Zappa and all through the meal I kept thinking that Frank somehow didn’t look the way he’s supposed to look. He had boring hair, wore a middle-class suit, and his nose wasn’t quite right. This wasn’t by any means the first Zappa dream I’ve had. After my first and only close encounter with Mr Zappa at the Fillmore East in New York in the summer of 1968 - where I also exchanged small talk with saxophonist Ian Underwood (husband of percussionist Ruth Underwood) and shook hands with Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) – I had a series of vivid dreams involving Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.

In the first Zappa dream I was a kid back in my hometown Batu Pahat sitting on the  front steps when I heard a squadron of aircraft overhead. I looked up and realized they weren’t actually airplanes but Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention flying in arrowhead formation. As they got closer I felt a compulsion to join them the way some kids suddenly decide to run away and join a circus. Then there was the dream where I was walking around a gypsy caravan and had to step over thick electrical cables coiled like black snakes all over the floor... then I realized I was on a movie set and noticed Frank behind a glass window in the control room tweaking some knobs.

Well, okay. The Zappa dreams do contain a whole load of symbolism if you care to delve into them, just like the vivid dream I had about a grizzly bear a few years ago. But the only dream I would like to see fulfilled is the lucid waking dream I have held close to my heart since the age of 19.

What is that dream? It’s not easy to articulate, but certainly worth an attempt if only to see how it sounds when verbalized...

I dreamt I had accomplished the greatest feat possible for any living creature on earth – to remember its own mysterious origins and to free itself from the illusion of limitation and separation! In my dream this spontaneous awakening to and realization of the absolute sacredness and miraculousness of life rippled out in all directions and dimensions, from the subatomic to the supergalactic and beyond, creating a domino effect of illumination and jubilant celebration.

Source reconnecting with Source, as the accumulated experience and memories of every expression of consciousness, encompassing the unconscious, in infinite feedback loops of awareness. All of it flowing through Me and all other aspects of my boundless cosmic Self, eternally and effortlessly, in ecstatic multidimensional mandalas of timeless beauty and self-regenerating, self-reintegrating truth.

The word “ecstasy” became a living reality and I perfectly understood what mystics, dervishes and yogis have spoken about for generations when they describe transcendent states of consciousness – using terms like samadhi, satori, beatitude, baraka, bliss. Remember, this was long before ecstasy became nothing more than a designer drug for techno-trancing urban kids. Let me tell you: once you have experienced pure cognitive ecstasy, sustained over days, even weeks, you will never settle for humdrum human notions of “success.”

Well, it’s true that at various times of my life I have entertained, albeit briefly, aspirations towards enormous worldly success – after all, would any young person spurn fame and fortune if they were within reach? And so at the age of 24 I embarked on setting up a company with two childhood friends. It was to start off as a creative consultancy catering to the advertising and public relations industry and after a few years, when we had sufficient capital, we would diversify into production of books, music, films, perhaps even launch an airline... nothing was impossible for a creative powerhouse named I.N.R.I. (for Igni Natura Renovatur Integra, an alchemical code signifying that the fire of passion completely renews or revitalizes the natural world).

This venture lasted all of three years and the main reason I eventually gave up was because I couldn’t get Telekom Malaysia to provide me with a phone line – despite residing in a diplomatic enclave in Kuala Lumpur. I even wrote a long, impassioned letter to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications (no reply ever came, of course). But after I capitulated and accepted temporary corporate employment, the phone finally arrived.

Anyway, it was simply impractical for me to remain in a permanent state of carefree euphoria – not when I was already a father to two beautiful princesses whose mother, fortunately, earned a regular income as a dedicated schoolteacher. So I learned how to be immersed and involved in the world, but in a detached manner, lest I became trapped in its deceptive glamor.

My inner and outer lives were not always in alignment. Even though I was enjoying an active public life as a stage actor, musician and party animal, I went through patches of intense existential angst verging on despair. My Achilles’ heel was a tendency to succumb to an overwhelming sense of futility arising from a distressing mismatch between my dream of heaven on earth and what was apparently going on in the outside world. It was hard to find someone with whom I could discuss my self-doubts and the nagging sense that there might be something fundamentally wrong with me. So I took to recording these states of mind as poems and doodles (which I eventually compiled into a collection titled Moth Balls, published in a limited edition in November 1994 and now accessible online).

From time to time I would have a peak experience – whether spontaneously or with the help of psilocybin mushrooms (growing wild on grassy fields where cows grazed). Very rarely a kind friend would send me some good acid on a blotter via airmail. At these times my preferred default state of divine madness would be reinstated and my vision of paradise would snap back into crystal clear focus.

Nearly half a century has elapsed since my first glimpse of our true potential as sentient self-reinventing creatures on this bounteous planet. I used to feel a little isolated – the only other humans, a mere handful, who shared my vision were either living on the other side of the earth or long dead. But their thoughts recorded in words reassured me I wasn’t completely mad.

When the internet came along I discovered a growing network of human beings who share my dream of heaven on earth – and each one is a fractal of the whole, with unique experiences of universal truths, each one a significant piece of a colossal and magnificent cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

What we had in common was simply this: we had achieved vertical alignment with our own limitless potential, our Oversouls (I think Paramatman is the technical term for this in Sanskrit). I realized that the problem was how to persuade more humans to make a conscious 90-degree shift from being trapped in the horizontal plane where predator-prey games of eat-or-be-eaten prevail. On the horizontal plane, people subscribe to spurious notions of profit-and-loss, win-lose, and Us-versus-Them. Because resources are finite and limited on this plane, aggressive competition becomes the norm, each fighting for more food, more space, more influence, more power over others. The result can only be hell on earth!

Any individual who achieves that all-important 90-degree shift to the vertical also gains access to Source Energy – call it the morphogenetic field, the planetary mind or cosmic consciousness – and no longer buys into the illusions of limitation, separation or scarcity. Once liberated from scarcity conditioning (fang and claw, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth programming) cooperation becomes spontaneous and this allows for the power of dynamic synergy to take effect, and we suddenly become clear and coherent fields, attuned to all other fields and interacting in effortless harmony. The overall effect is that we no longer feel burdened by gravity as it only takes a bit of levity to neutralize the sense of heaviness. And once we can laugh at ourselves and everyone else, everything transmutes from being merely laughable to being genuinely lovable.

The world as we know it also transforms into something altogether different. We no longer need to be convinced that laws and lawyers, courthouses and judges, and law enforcement agencies are utterly unnecessary - the moment we become self-governing and accept full responsibility for our own thoughts, words and deeds.

Our ancestors found themselves entangled in webs of deceit and falsehood which made them turn to external authority for instructions as to what to do or don’t – whether that authority presented itself as an invisible all-knowing, all-powerful deity; an all-too-visible priesthood; an occasionally visible monarchy, or the monarch’s appointed agents (that’s right the income tax department)!

Photo by Lesly Leon Lee

Generations before us have lived and died ignorant, disconnected from their own divinity and innate nobility. Their souls often get trapped in the astral and many of them attempt to seek redemption and some misguided notion of salvation through their living descendants – namely us. Once we become aware of this, what we can do is to become enlightened ourselves; and in liberating ourselves from our own benighted condition, we also liberate our bloodlines from the curse of abysmal unknowing.

How is this possible? We are bearers of genetic codes and, as anyone who works with codes knows, once an error is rectified in the present, the correction sets the entire program aright in the illusory past as well as the illusory future.

So that’s my dream, folks. I just wish to see all wrongs set right, all cages and prisons dismantled, all locks and keys discarded, all doors and windows left open to the gentle breezes of conscious, eternally rejuvenating, growth-facilitating, ecstatic change. In a community of fully conscious humans, criminal or destructive behavior will be swiftly outgrown and become obsolete - because no one will suffer lack or the indifference of others. With the illusion of scarcity dispersed, a new age of abundance for all will dawn.

10 November 2017

[Reposted 18 November 2018, 14 December 2021 & 26 August 2024]

THE SALIERI SYNDROME (revisited)

F. Murray Abraham as Antonio Salieri

I saw Miloš Forman’s film of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus five times at the same cinema. And I’ve watched the VCD at home at least three times. What impressed me most was F. Murray Abraham’s oscar-winning portrayal of Antonio Salieri, court composer to the Hapsburg emperor Joseph II.

Today everybody agrees that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a divinely inspired genius. A few of us know he died a pauper at 35 and was buried in a mass grave – and that his monumental musical legacy lay largely forgotten for more than 70 years - until Ludwig von Köchel published a descriptive catalogue of the 626 works Mozart composed in his short but intense career.

Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In Shaffer’s fictionalization of Mozart’s story, Salieri’s professional envy of the gifted upstart becomes the central motif of the drama. Salieri is one of a small handful of academic musicians with sufficient savvy to appreciate the full extent of the man’s extraordinary talent; but he chooses to thwart Mozart’s destiny in every way possible. Nevertheless, Mozart succeeds in seizing a brief burst of popularity with his vibrant operas.

The pious Salieri eventually loses his faith in God, and murders Mozart by posing as an anonymous Count and commissioning a Requiem, with an impossible deadline and a monetary reward Mozart couldn’t possibly refuse (being in heavy debt, owing to his hedonistic habits). Salieri thereby pushes the already frail genius beyond the edge of exhaustion to an untimely demise.

For his efforts, Salieri ends his days in an insane asylum, where he pontificates about the rectitude of mediocrity and blesses his fellow inmates for their lacklustre and wasted lives. Two centuries down the line, nobody remembers a single melody written by Antonio Salieri; while Amadeus triggered a worldwide Mozart revival which would have made Wolfie posthumously richer than Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sir Paul McCartney, and Sir Elton John combined.

"God bless the mediocre!"

The theme of genius unrecognized and unrewarded, I must confess, has obsessed me for the greater part of my early life. In my schooldays only three teachers noticed I was a precocious kid – and one of them happened to be a Peace Corps Volunteer from Baltimore. This may have encouraged me to spend a year in the U.S. as an exchange student, and it was then that I finally received the ego nourishment my soul craved. Ironic that the glitzy culture that spawned Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and “pre-emptive” war has also provided me with the greatest amount of positive feedback. Perhaps the land of superlatives got that way by giving its kids the hearty encouragement all kids require, to grow up brimming over with initiative and innovative chutzpah. My own initiation into adulthood in Malaysia taught me not to bother applying for a government grant unless I snip off my foreskin.

Which brings us to the Malaysian Dilemma: here we are, a feudal society abruptly thrust into the Digital Age by “market forces” that emphasize competition over cooperation. No matter how often we yell “Malaysia Boleh!” - and no matter how much official sponsorship is invested in some guy who sails solo around the world to claim his Datukship, or that well-heeled lady who solo-trekked across the Antarctic, only to have her victory inundated by the most spectacular tsunami within memory – we’ve shot ourselves in the foot so many times, one could remark that our national ego has clay pigeon feet. At least we can brag about our fantastic marksmanship: it’s no mean feat, you know, to shoot your own foot when you have to crane your neck just to see where your feet are. Well... burp... there are no starving hordes in evidence in Potbellyland – and that’s something we can be proud of without even trying!

So... are we really doomed to remain a mediocracy forever? Is there no cure for the Salieri Syndrome? Indeed there is. You only have to take a stiff swig of this ancient Chinese prescription: “One does not grow taller by chopping off other people’s heads.” That’s right, folks. Ego insecurity breeds jealousy. Which is the root of all evil.

For that matter, one does not grow taller by wearing platform shoes either. But that’s an entirely different disease called TLFC – The Lord Farquaard Complex – which can be easily treated with a little bit of dragon magic.

[Originally published in the April 2005 issue of VIDA! First posted 8 January 2007 & reposted 9 July 2014 & 6 April 2017

The Fatal Curse of Tempurungism (reprise)

They say an idle mind is the devil’s workshop and this is especially evident in the case of Malaysian bureaucracy in general and the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli in particular.

I have resided in and around Kampung Pertak since 1992. During this period I have witnessed how the Orang Asli Affairs Department favors diabolical initiatives that strengthen their psychological and political control over the Orang Asli - while creating opportunities for stuffing their own pockets.

Whether it be logging concessions, dam projects, turning ancestral lands into leasehold lots, or tarring roads that lead nowhere (except to environmental degradation), the JHEOA invariably finds a sneaky way to corrupt, oppress, intimidate, exploit and ultimately devour the Orang Asli.

Sagong Tasi of the Temuan tribe wins a landmark lawsuit (courtesy of Suaram)

The JHEOA ought to have been dismantled and abolished 20 years ago, following the surrender of the Malayan Communist Party in 1989. Instead, it became a tool to assimilate the Orang Asli into mainstream Malay culture - by pressuring them to embrace Islam and systematically pillaging their ancestral lands under the guise of kemajuan or “progress.”

Recently there has been talk of the JHEOA being “corporatized” into the Perbadanan Orang Asli (Orang Asli Corporation) using the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) as a model. Blurring the boundary between business and politics facilitates hanky-panky on a massive scale. As we have seen in the case of FELDA, feudal-style top-down management by aristocrat-politicians results in the ignorant peasantry being robbed totally blind without their knowledge. In most cases the public only finds out when it’s already too late because the thefts occur in remote rural areas.

Photo: Colin Nicholas/COAC

This, of course, has been UMNO’s modus operandi since the era of Mahathir and Daim. Leveraging on an atavistic appeal to bangsa and ugama to promote the fascistic notion of Ketuanan Melayu, UMNO warlords have siphoned off a great deal more than 30% of the nation’s wealth since the nefarious NEP was launched in 1970.

The JHEOA – like so many government agencies – has long served the UMNO agenda instead of the Orang Asli’s genuine interests. That’s nothing new. What has become alarmingly obvious is that they no longer bother concealing their narrow self-interests and their deeply ingrained racism.

Photo: Antares

During the Ulu Selangor by-election that ran from April 17-25, 2010, the JHEOA openly stage-managed the Barisan Nasional campaign in Orang Asli communities throughout the region. In one or two villages the Orang Asli batin (headman) called the police to prevent Pakatan Rakyat campaigners from entering their settlements.

In Kg Pertak the JHEOA facilitated the entry and encampment of dozens of UMNO campaign workers recruited from various ethno-fascist groups like Pekida and Perkasa. They were annoyed to find Pakatan Rakyat insignia proudly displayed in a couple of houses. What irked them even more was that a bunch of pro-Rakyat bloggers were comfortably embedded in Kg Pertak’s “diplomatic enclave.”

The JHEOA/UMNO faction reportedly handed RM7,000 in cash to one of the village security officers with instructions to distribute it amongst 70 registered voters as incentives to vote BN. I later heard complaints that the money never left the security officer’s pockets. This is how UMNO corrupts the Orang Asli via the JHEOA – by dragging them into the politics of greed, betrayal, and xenophobia.

Photo: Max Koh

On the eve of the by-election, the UMNO contingent instructed a few young Orang Asli to set up a roadblock at the entrance to the village. Later a skirmish broke out and one of the pro-Rakyat bloggers was assaulted by a Pekida thug. When the police arrived on the scene 30 minutes later, the UMNO thugs were nowhere to be seen. This small outbreak of violence was reported in Malaysiakini the next morning. In terms of negative publicity, JHEOA/UMNO came out with a black eye and began plotting revenge.

Xenophobia can also be called tempurungism – a regressive psychomental condition akin to acute jingoitis that commonly afflicts those who have never left the provincial and parochial confines of a monolingual, monocultural matrix. Those suffering from xenophobia have great difficulty accepting people with different linguistic and cultural imprints as close friends or family. They tend to label others as pendatang (immigrants), orang asing (outsiders), or Mat Salleh (Caucasians).

Working through a couple of Orang Asli agents, the JHEOA reactivated its xenophobic agenda by pressuring Asli families who had rented out their houses to “outsiders” to evict their tenants. The Asli were given to understand that the houses they were living in was government property – when in truth it was the dam developer that built the houses.

What the JHEOA had done in 2004 was to cheat the Orang Asli of their ancestral hunting grounds by issuing them 99-year leases instead of formally gazetting the whole area as a permanent Orang Asli Reserve (as promised in 1965). The Orang Asli have never seen a land grant in their life – nor have their ancestors. They don’t understand what a 99-year lease means – but they do know they have very little power over their own destinies as long as the JHEOA exists as an extension of UMNO.

[First posted 2 August 2010]

I'M THE SLIME (repost)

I'M THE SLIME (music & lyrics by Frank Zappa)

I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed 'n deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you

I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set

You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help ... no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That's right, folks ...
Don't touch that dial

Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I am the slime from your video
Oozin' along on your livin' room floor

I am the slime from your video
Can't stop the slime, people, lookit me go

I'M THE SLIME BY FRANK ZAPPA

Meet the late great Frank Zappa, arguably the Most Intelligent Human That Ever Lived, rated the World's 4th Best Guitarist by New Musical Express readers in 1975!

BONUS FEATURE: Stinkfoot - live!

STINKFOOT (1974)

If you enjoyed that, how about the Ultimate Drum Solo? Here's a brief clip of Zappa's infamous The Black Page performed by the one and only Terry Bozzio!


THE BLACK PAGE (DRUM SOLO BY TERRY BOZZIO)

[First posted 29 March 2008]

Sweet Memories of My Dear Mama (revisited)

I found this comforting image on Google (no, I never did photograph my mom in the nude, and I don't think my dad ever did either, though he spared no effort documenting the vital statistics of other femmes).

My mother had big, beautiful brown nipples. They used to fascinate me long after I was weaned off her breast. I believe she was in too great a hurry to go back to work (she taught in a Chinese school). Babies ought to be given as much time as they need to wean themselves - or else they tend to grow up orally fixated like me.

Come to think of it, I don't really know that much about my mother. She was the second of three beautiful daughters born to Dai Chui Lian and Siew Sum Chee. The eldest, Moong Yang, was born 18 October 1916; my mother, Moon Loy, was born 23 March 1918 in Sitiawan; and I have no idea when my aunt Moon Wai was born, but she certainly outlived both her sisters. (The three sisters originally carried the middle name "Moong" but my mum hated the spelling and sensibly dropped the 'G' as soon as she could. Her younger sister quickly followed suit. M.Y. tried out the "Moon" for a while but finally reverted to the original spelling.)

My aunt Moong Yang (or M.Y., as my mum called her) was better known by her married name, Grace Lee. Of all the sisters, Grace was perhaps the most outgoing and sociable. She loved literature and recorded many stories from her childhood, which I helped edit for publication in 1994, in a collection called In Those Days. It was from my aunt Grace, the family storyteller, that I learnt everything I know about my mother's early days.

My mother in 1958

Apparently, my mom was regarded as a traditional beauty, a veritable porcelain princess with a melon-seed face, and received plenty of attention from young men in her adolescent years, which she haughtily ignored. Her elder sister responded quite differently to male admiration - she reveled in it.

My grandmother Siew died at age 38, trying to conceive a male offspring for her husband. My mother, only 15, took the bereavement very badly and went into acute depression. Her elder sister Moong Yang had successfully applied for a teaching post in Johore Baru and was scheduled to begin work in a matter of weeks. Seeing how distraught her younger sister was, she suggested that Moon Loy take her place instead. Perhaps a change of scene would help her recover from the shock of losing their beloved mama.

And so my mother relocated to Johore Baru and began her career as a teacher. It was there she met her future husband, Lee Hong Wah. I often wondered if my aunt Grace would have been a better match for my dad. They were extremely fond of each other and had a great deal in common. After they were both widowed, I tried to persuade Grace to move in with my dad, and she seemed receptive to the idea, but neither took the initiative, and so it never happened.

When I think about the adults that featured in my early childhood - many of them were my parents' lifelong friends - one thing they had in common was that they were all good-looking couples. They all loved ballroom dancing and took the trouble to learn how to foxtrot, tango and waltz properly. I suppose there must have been a fair amount of good-natured bottom-pinching on the side, but people seemed to have really enjoyed life in those halcyon post-war days.

My parents were on the guestlist of the ANZAC officers stationed in Batu Pahat and I recall they were in the habit of dressing up for gala dances at the Bandar Penggaram Recreation Club at least once a month. One Kiwi officer named Sam Gilhoolie had the hots for my mom. He often visited her in the afternoons and never forgot to bribe me with little gifts - including a teddybear that became the patriarch of my teddybear family and which I cherished till it became too grungy and mangy to keep.

I looked forward to Sam's afternoon tête-à-têtes with my mom, mainly because he always arrived in an army jeep with his Fijian driver, a friendly black dude named Lala, who allowed me to sit at the wheel and pretend I was driving his funky vehicle.

Mom called Sam "Bullethead" on account of his short-cropped hair - and I suppose he was the archetypal "bullet-headed Saxon mother's son" referred to in John Lennon's famous song, "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill."

Decades later my mom continued to receive Christmas cards from Sam Gilhoolie, who must have passed on by now. I have no idea if Sam's passion for my mother was ever requited - but it was certainly an enduring friendship.


The above isn't a picture of my mom - but this could have been how she appeared to others (especially men) before she gave birth to me at age 32. It's hard for children to view their own parents as individual humans - with their own secret fantasies and unfulfilled dreams. Now that my parents are both gone, I find it much easier to view them as others might have seen them - two sexy adults who enjoyed life to the hilt and suffered their share of sorrows and disappointments.

My dad at 75 and my mom at 73, posing with a prospective Syrian-German daughter-in-law named Yasmin Wakil. They approved but Yasmin's mom apparently didn't. She recalled her daughter in November 1991 and I haven't seen Yasmin since, though she occasionally sends me a sweet analog letter (with no return address because her boyfriend might get jealous).

 

If I ever harbored Oedipal feelings towards my mother, they were probably minimal and receded shortly after I reached puberty. My bedroom was connected to my parents' by a door they usually kept bolted. But one morning they forgot to bolt it and, for some reason, I opened the door and saw my dad making love to my mom. I don't think they noticed me but I had the good sense to quietly close the door and leave them to it.

The effect this had on me was liberating. From that moment I regarded sex as something people do simply because it's pleasurable - no right or wrong attached to the act, and no shame or guilt either. How can one possibly be ashamed of an act by which one was conceived?

I must have been 11 at the time and just beginning to appreciate my morning erections, though I don't recall having any wet dreams except, perhaps, once or twice. However, I became aware of my parents' sex lives because I often heard them quarreling about questions of fidelity. It was a small, provincial-minded town full of brainless gossipers and word of my dad's erotic derring-do occasionally would reach my mother's ears.

My mom tried to recruit my services as a spy. She would send me to my dad's office, a 10-minute walk from home, to check whether he was at his desk. Initially, feeling self-righteous as hell, I did her bidding.

However, I resigned from that task after I returned unexpectedly one afternoon and found the front door mysteriously locked. I had gone to the cinema to catch a matinee screening but discovered there had been a change of program, so I turned around and went home. Entering the house by the back door, I padded over to my parents' bedroom and found the door also locked. So I peeped through the keyhole and saw a guy in his underpants clutching his clothes and scurrying out through the bathroom, which opened out to the garden.

I was shocked and furious but managed to keep my cool. It was that dirty datuk, another of my mom's not-so-secret admirers, and now he was coming around from the back garden, smiling at me sheepishly and saying, "Hello! You're home early!" I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster and ignored him. My mother didn't bother to explain and I didn't bother to question her. After pondering what I had witnessed, I concluded that grown-ups were just a bunch of hypocrites. If my dad could scatter his wild oats freely, why couldn't my mom have a bit of fun on the side too?

A few years down the line, when I was old enough to drive and take girlfriends to quiet areas where we could "talk in private," I discovered my dad and I thought alike. It was actually hilarious when we both ended up in the same "make-out" spot one afternoon. My dad grinned bashfully at me as he reversed his car to make way for me - and I managed a loud chuckle as I waved conspiratorially at him and tried to identify the young woman beside him. At the time I felt smug that I had slightly better taste in women than he did.

Anyway, my parents managed to remain "happily married" for nearly 60 years till my mom's death on 14 July 1995. During the distressing years of her declining health - she suffered from heart palpitations, high blood pressure, diabetes, and renal failure (which required her to undergo dialysis thrice a week) - my dad nursed her with a loving dedication that revealed the incredible depths of his love.


Indeed, he would dutifully drive her to the hospital three times a week and sit outside reading the papers and dozing off for 4-5 hours while her blood was mechanically filtered and cleansed. This routine went on for at least four years - and if my mom had lived another six months, I believe dad would have succumbed to exhaustion and checked out before her.

Mom loved traveling but not my dad. On a rare vacation together to the US, 

with a Hawaiian stopover, in 1983.

Three years after my mom's death, I visited my dad with a beautiful Japanese girl in tow - and he became instantly besotted with her. Indeed, the only time dad ever visited my jungle abode was in 1998, when Keiko agreed to accompany him and me on the train from Johore Baru. Dad was 82 then and Keiko only half his age - but that didn't deter him from behaving like a lovestruck puppy.

He repeatedly told me Keiko reminded him so much of my mom when she was in her prime. It was perhaps the last major passion of his life, although he did succumb a year or two later to the undisputed charms of my sister's Filipina housekeeper - a red-blooded 28-year-old named Lourdes I would have happily dated myself.

Looking back at my parents' lives and my own, I just have to laugh at how alike we actually are - when all pretense and outward appearances are stripped away.

Does she look like my mom just before I was conceived?
More like my grandma, I guess, but melon-seed faced nonetheless...

My beloved mom would have celebrated her 107th solar orbit in 2025. She probably would be totally embarrassed and annoyed by the stories I have told about her and my dad. But, then, she wasn't very happy either when she read the family history recorded by her sister Grace.

"You know how M.Y. loves telling stories," was mom's only response.

Yes, but at the end of the day, what do we have except our stories - our experiences, our memories, the beautiful mystery of our very existence? And if we distort the truth and deny the facts of our lives, do we not become less than pure fiction, do we not become non-existent entities?

At the end of time - which isn't very far from now, going by most prophetic accounts - all we are left with is the innocent truth of our being as humans. If we continue to spin and lie and conceal, rather than reveal, we end up in a limbo of our own making. And I want to see you in paradise - not as my mother, but as the compassionate, forgiving, angelic soul you have always been

This is my birthday present to you, dearest mom, I am resurrecting you in my memory as a beautiful and desirable young woman - with secret admirers and romantic fantasies and adolescent dreams. And a wonderful, passionate, fun-loving husband who loved you till the very end, though his genes were perhaps a lot more adventurous than you would have preferred...

Behold, mom, your 4 surviving children - plus 9 gorgeous grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren - who absolutely adore you and celebrate your goddesshood!

[First posted 23 March 2011, reposted 23 March 2014, 23 March 2016,  

22 March 2019, 23 March 2022 & 23 March 2025]

EVOLUTION BEGINS WITH EVE (reprise)

Roger Vandersteine, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, 1975

THE GENESIS MYTH yields a rich harvest of illuminating insights. Eve is blamed for the Fall. The Serpent directs his sales pitch at her and she takes the first bite of the Forbidden Fruit which endows her with sudden self-awareness. She offers the Fruit to Adam but as he sinks his teeth into it, God's voice comes booming out from concealed loudspeakers, causing the original attack of Fear and Guilt.

"Gulp!" bleats Adam with a chunk of "apple" stuck in his throat: "She made me do it!" What else can you expect? The scriptures were authored by MEN.

From the evolutionary viewpoint, however, the Serpent is a metaphor for the Vital Force (which yogis call kundalini); and Eve is the principle of curiosity, receptivity, adventurousness. In other words, the spirit of scientific research. What about Adam? He robotically obeys his programming until encouraged by Eve to experiment. But before he can swallow and digest the Experience, he goes into a total funk and tries to pass the buck.

Quite despicable and most unmanly (or should I say unwomanly?) - but fairly typical behavior in male-dominated power politics. To cover up their moral cowardice men perform assorted acts of physical bravado. As a child Saddam Hussein had his cheeks pinched by all his aunts and uncles, but just look at him now: SADDAM! Even his name sounds like the pounding of great big guns.

People used to call George Bush a sneaky little wimp. Not any more: BUSH! and there's a great big crater in the desert. Being extremely horny may be a nice macho feeling - but it's no excuse for rape.

I know two well-circulated feminist jokes. The first is about the astronaut who encounters God in deep space. On his return to Earth he's asked to describe God and he just laughs and says: "Boy, have I got a surprise for you. She's black!" The other joke has it that women are superior to men for the obvious reason that God is a perfectionist who learns from his mistakes; when God decided to create Woman he was a little more experienced.

Consider next the structure of the sex chromosome: females are double X-rated while males result from XY combinations. Geneticists say the Y chromosome is really just a deformed and undersized X chromosome. Sorry, guys, but facts is facts.

Did I hear Harry yell, "Traitor!" Hey, I'm not undergoing a sex change. I'm quite happily male, thank you, and the preceding polemic is essentially a scheme to improve my chances of getting laid. Seriously, though, I do have genetic memories (or at least vivid fantasies) of having lived female lives and I'm convinced that individuals often switch genders in the course of their earthly incarnations. They also tend to experiment with a variety of ethnic and geographic combinations - so let's all hurry up and outgrow racialistic-nationalistic nappy-rash jingoism. It's not so cute anymore.

And while we're at it, let's declare a general armistice in the Battle of the Sexes and put sexism to bed where it belongs. Here, you can wear the pants. I'm quite comfortable in my sarong.

Another aspect of the Feminine Principle that fascinates me is the dramatic transformation that Motherhood brings about: from lithe and slender flowerbud to bulbous huge ripe pear state is an awesome procedure. And when they spring right back to fantasizable size, it's another miracle all over.

I know the institution of Motherhood is sacrosanct (after all it's a vestige of Goddess worship) and it brooks no criticism - but I can't help noticing the psychological stranglehold that so many mothers seem to maintain on their children. Somehow the influence of the Father appears easier to shrug off.

Not in every case, I agree, but the number of middle-aged men and women who can be plunged into depression with just one Christmas phonecall to their dear Momsies far outweigh those who continue to recoil from their Daddy's wrath when they're 45 years old. I'm curious to know what the sons of Deng Xiao-ping or Lee Kuan Yew have to say about this. (Pardon me? Can't hear you, the tanks are too noisy...) which leads me to wonder if humans might not fair better reverting to oviparous reproduction ("Quick, Dicky, the egg's getting cold!"); even so I can picture how some mothers may suffocate rather than incubate their offspring.

Smothering beats mothering! ("Oh oh, here comes Mum with the pillow... mmmpfff!") I can't speak from personal experience on this - but does the pain of childbirth leave permanent scars on a mother's brain, causing her to be ambivalent thereafter about her kids? Perhaps our conventional approach to obstetrics should be thrown out with the bathwater: I have friends who have given birth in a tub of warm water with surprising ease and no complications. And no nightmarish fluorescent lights or forceps or masked strangers who rudely snip your cord and spank you for the crime of being born. Surely we're not all too busy being neurotic to think about a few fundamental issues of life-and-death importance?

Anyhow, I'm of the opinion that Motherhood is vastly overrated: it should be gently phased out soon after the child is weaned (yes, I'm all for breastfeeding but that's about as much mothering as anybody really needs, I think).

Have I shocked anyone? Don't misunderstand: every child thrives on tender loving care and lots of attention unstintingly given. And that must come from more than just one source - especially if that one source happens to take the role of Mother too seriously, too dutifully (and perhaps resentfully too, since she seems to have no choice whatsoever).

My real point is this: anyone of any gender can play the role of Mother for a while. Such a vital role demands a platoon of stand-ins; no one should insist on hogging it. Most clear-thinking and farsighted mothers will applaud this trend of thought. But first, we humans have to learn to let go. Insecurity makes us clingy and possessive. Kahlil Gibran said it best:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which

you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth...

Get thee back to the grave, Confucius! Respect for our Youngers is what I preach, and I do try to practice it. Respect, in any case, has to be mutual and spontaneous. Or else it's pure intimidation.

Now, coming back to the idea of Woman as the manifestation of the Goddess. I happen to view ‘chastity’ and 'wantonness' as equally seductive attributes. The Virgin and the Prostitute. Surefire marketing concept, Ms Ciccone aka Madonna. Men, be honest and admit that you desire both these qualities in your women.  Opposites aren't necessarily contradictory; usually they're complementary. Innocence and Experience attract each other. Virgins are still being sold to the highest bidder. Prostitutes work at union rates, negotiable on cold nights. Over here we have a loose woman with tight lips and over there an uptight one with loose lips. Take your pick, brother.

The Goddess is nurturer and destroyer in one. Before the birth of the Cosmos, there was the Cosmic Womb which the Egyptians called Nuit, goddess of Night. Others call it the Primordial Chaos. I call it the Matrix of Infinite Possibilities. Maria or Kali, Fairy Godmother or Wicked Witch: she can soothe and she can torment. Like the calm or raging sea, like life or death, the Goddess is not a static reality. She is not rigid with rationality, though she can be entirely reasonable or unreasonable as it pleases her. 

The practice of automatically assigning God the masculine pronoun Him is disturbing, perhaps even dangerous. Our only chance of making it through these apocalyptic times is to restore the Feminine Principle in our religious reckonings; to acknowledge that the sphere of awareness implies a concave as well as a convex dimension, an inner and an outer form.

And most cogently, to realize that the two are an interchangeable oneness in perpetual dynamic equilibrium. Without this understanding, we shall continue to inherit a world governed by overgrown little boys with dangerous toys.

That's right. Don't you be fooled by that funny mustache. He's got a pea-shooter in his pants. And a hot date with Mae West. Or, as visionary historian William IrwinThompson puts it:

"Civilizations, like the penis, rise and fall, and when the towers and the battlements crumble into the earth, they return to the embrace of the Great Mother."  

Pretty Oedipal, eh?

[Written 6 January 1991 and subsequently published in The Star. First posted 18 May 2013. Reposted 15 August 2016 & 28 June 2023]