The Question of 'Daulat' ~ and the Truth shall set you free! (updated & reposted)

M. Bakri Musa

M. Bakri Musa recently posted the first part of an in-depth review of a very significant book by Zaid Ibrahim which candidly and lucidly discusses the tradition of royalty (and the quasi-religious mystique surrounding it) vis-a-vis the Malaysian Constitution.

Zaid's book is titled Ampun Tuanku: A Brief Guide to Constitutional Government and it was published on 25 June 2012 under his own imprint, ZI Publications. Interestingly, the work is 256 pages long, coinciding with its launch date of 25th June. Is there a numerological significance here?

For a start, 2+5+6 = 13 and 13 symbolizes death and rebirth in the Tarot. The Mayan calendar favors the female 13-moon cycle (women menstruate 13 times a year). But before I get carried away on a tangent, let's quote a section of Bakri Musa's latest blogpost, pointedly headlined "The Sultans' Daulat is a Myth":

As a youngster in 1960 I had secured for myself a commanding view high atop a coconut tree to watch the funeral procession of the first King, Tuanku Abdul Rahman. My smug demonstration of my perched position drew the attention of the village elders below. They were none too pleased and immediately ordered me down. “Sultans have daulat,” they admonished, “you cannot be above them.” Apparently even dead sultans maintained their daulat. I did not dare challenge my elders as to what would happen once the king was buried; then we all would be above him. To put things in perspective, this attribution of special or divine powers to rulers is not unique to Malay culture. The ancient Chinese Emperors too had their Tianming, Mandate from Heaven. That however, was not enough to protect them.

Zaid Ibrahim

Even though it has deep roots in Malay society, this daulat thing is a myth. The Japanese, despite their own “Sun Goddess” tradition, had no difficulty disabusing Malay rajas and their subjects of this myth. The surprise was not how quickly the sultans lost their power and prestige, or how quickly they adapted to their new plebeian status during the Japanese Occupation, rather how quickly the Malay masses accepted this new reality of their rajas being ordinary mortals sans daulat.

Only days before the Japanese landed, any Malay peasant who perchance made eye contact with his sultan, may Allah have mercy on him for the sultan certainly would not. When the Japanese took over, those rajas had to scramble with the other villagers for what few fish there were in the river and what scarce mushrooms they could scrape in the jungle. Nobody was bothered with or took heed of the daulat thing. So much for it being deeply entrenched in our culture!

To pursue my point, had the Malayan Union succeeded, our sultans today would have been all tanjak (ceremonial weapon) and desta (headgear); they would have as much status and power as the Sultan of Sulu. 

Across the Strait of Malacca, hitherto Malay sultans are now reduced to ordinary citizens. They and their society are none the worse for that.

Thinkers like Zaid Ibrahim and Bakri Musa represent the cutting edge of the evolving Malay psyche. Having broken free from the totem and taboo of their own upbringing - their cultural and social tempurungs, as it were - they are poised to articulate a rational, more enlightened perspective, thus showing the way forward for their less liberated compatriots.

In effect, Zaid's latest book - and Bakri Musa's learned commentary on it - are valiant attempts to demystify what has long been shrouded in quasi-religious or mystical ritualism, in effect, a residual form of superstitious awe surrounding the concept of royalty itself. They are among a handful of well-educated, clear-headed, eloquent writers who have done the unthinkable by sneaking a peek behind the stage curtains and exposing the elaborate machinery installed by wily wizards to reinforce a deeply entrenched tribal belief that God rules on earth through the ancient institution of monarchy.

For that is literally how monarchs came to be revered and even worshiped in every culture you find on earth. It begins with a visionary leader - it could be a wizard or warlord or both - proclaiming that God rules through him (or, more rarely, her). Over time, this sentiment is restated as "I rule on God's behalf." Fast-forward a few generations, and it is reduced to, simply: "I rule!"

In historical times, the ruler is often confronted with the frightening prospect of being assassinated (as in the case of Julius Caesar and many other emperors), in which event his successor (especially if young and inexperienced) is turned into a puppet king, controlled by grand viziers, senior courtiers and palace officials.

What Mahathir accomplished with his constitutional amendments of 1983 and 1993 was to effectively castrate the monarchy in Malaysia, making it essentially a ceremonial institution - purely symbolic and without political clout. To appease the Sultans, they were encouraged to engage in busyness and offered lucrative contracts which they could then farm out to professional contractors - in the process earning fat commissions to support their extravagant lifestyles. Every so often they would be put on public display as living symbols of national unity; but, over time, their roles were further reduced to "defenders of the faith" and, by extension, emblems of tribal supremacy.

In classifying the Sultans' daulat as "a myth," what Bakri implies is that their hereditary power is not grounded in reality - existing only as an idea in the popular mind. This again suggests that Zaid Ibrahim and Bakri Musa are contemporary thinkers well-versed in logical deduction, analysis, and empiricism. To such minds the word "myth" carries negative connotations: anything mythical, as such, bears greater resemblance to fiction rather than fact.

From the cosmomythological viewpoint, cold facts and bare figures serve only as a reference, as a navigational tool; they are no substitute for the multidimensional complexity of life itself, and the myriad stories that constitute the life of each nation.

It is akin to proclaiming that the divinity of Jesus is a myth. Those who have been raised in a religious tradition that deifies the personality of Jesus the Christ will, most likely, feel offended, if not threatened.

My own take on the question of royalty - in general terms, without limiting the discussion to the constitutional monarchy in Malaysia - is that it certainly helps to zoom out and view the advent of monarchism in a wider historical and mythological framework.

This doesn't take us very far back in time - at most six or seven thousand years. From the Sumerian creation epic Enuma Elish (meaning, literally, "when the gods walked the earth"), we learn that the first monarchs were actually the hybrid offspring of theogamous affairs between gods and human priestesses. Over time, even goddesses were tempted by the heady appeal of mortal flesh: the goddess Ninsun, consort of Lugalbanda, had a fling with an Adapa (a human high priest) named Kullab - and thus Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, was born two-thirds divine and one-third mortal.

But were the Sumerian gods and goddesses truly "divine"? Or were they, in fact, representatives of a more advanced civilization - one among many that had mastered interstellar space and non-linear time - and were embarked on the systematic colonization of remote life-supporting ecosystems?

Even so, what constitutes "divinity" remains unanswered. The word "divine" has its etymology in the Old French (12th century) word devin and perhaps the older Latin term divus - and its origins can be traced to the earlier Sanskrit (1700 BCE) deva (male) and devi (female) - meaning deity. However, in the Buddhist teachings, a deva is defined as "one of many different types of non-human beings who share the characteristics of being more powerful, longer-lived, and, in general, living more contentedly than the average human being."

Jesus and Krishna (courtesy of Arjuna Zbycho)

Most esoteric teachings hint at the distinct possibility that as humans evolve spiritually, they gain access to a vaster range of frequencies. As each soul attains self-mastery. it becomes reintegrated with multidimensional aspects of itself, ultimately attaining to Wholeness (or Holiness). Such Master Souls are said to occasionally volunteer their services in dense, benighted zones wherein they may be perceived as devas and devis offering inspiration and guidance from a safe distance - or else they may opt to physically incarnate as mortals, bravely and voluntarily taking on the trials and tribulations of fleshly existence.

As "heavenly emissaries" or avatars, it is only too easy to succumb to temporary amnesia and begin to get addicted to the euphoria of mass adulation. One doesn't need to incarnate as a god or goddess - even as a pop star or movie queen like Michael Jackson or Marilyn Monroe, the pressures of massive popularity and excessive fame can weigh heavily on the most evolved souls.

Arrogance and, ultimately, contempt for the Great Unwashed inevitably sets in - and even the best of intentions will not insulate us from spiritual entropy - turning dark from despair and succumbing to destructive tendencies. Hence the Fallen Angel metaphor which can be applied to anyone of noble birth who gets ensnared by the density and dimness of the manifest world, and becomes feral, turning predator instead of liberator, tormentor instead of mentor.

Tennyson's classic poem, The Lotos-Eaters, graphically describes a major occupational hazard of adventurism and the empire-building impulse. In Australia this phenomenon is known as "going troppo"... succumbing to the tropical heat and behaving erratically, even self-destructively. One easily gives in to spiritual lassitude and decadence - and this is more or less what happened to the remote descendants of the original Anunnaki bloodlines - those with claim to a bigger proportion of superhuman DNA, inherited from the Sky Gods.

Many of the royal houses in Malaysia (particularly those with Minangkabau roots) claim descent from Alexander the Great (whom they call Iskandar Zulkarnain). Who knows if this is true, but Alexander himself was the offspring of the Macedonian King Philip II and his fourth wife Olympias. His birth was preceded by omens, suggesting that his true father was Zeus, the supreme Olympian god.

My contention is simply this: enlightenment, illumination, nobility, divinity are words that describe software upgrades.

In the very early stages of planetary colonization, the extraterrestrial bloodlines took great pains to maintain genetic purity - and that's why incest was prescribed among those of exalted genealogy. Among ancient Egyptian royals, brother-sister marriages were common; and in more than one instance, mothers were known to marry their own sons, giving rise to the vulgar expression "motherfucker"). Only much later did incest become proscribed, when the "divine" gene pool got too diluted, resulting in too many deformities.

At some juncture, it became apparent that superior intellect and physical prowess were not transmitted exclusively through the chromosomes; that a powerful influence - for example, a new belief system or school of thought - could also replicate itself through empathetic resonance.

In effect, the genetic offspring of an aristocratic marriage will not always inherit the desired traits; often, especially among overly incestuous bloodlines, a dramatic degeneracy occurs. The child of a peasant, if exposed to uplifting influences - say, he or she hears an inspiring story retold by an itinerant troubadour at a tender age - can mutate unpredictably and lay claim to an entirely unexpected destiny, that of a cult hero, perhaps.

In other words, ideas are akin to free-floating cultural memes - and anyone who happens to be paying attention can download these ideas and experience a radical software upgrade. This is completely borne out by the paradigm-shifting discoveries of the late great mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot - who presented the world with fractal geometry, which in turn led to cutting-edge speculation about the holographic nature of all reality.

What this ultimately means is: the traditional notion of hierarchy is entirely illusory. No single entity can legitimately claim to be superior or inferior to any other entity. Each entity is simultaneously unique and universal - just as no two snowflakes or sets of fingerprints are identical.

Indeed, every single one of us is an integral component of the whole in an electromagnetic spectrum of infinite possibilities. The caste system, for instance, was unfairly favorable to an elite Brahmin priesthood - and it was purely in their own self-interest that they conspired to propagate this erroneous view of reality down the generations, effectively exploiting and enslaving billions.

Anyone can, as I did many years ago, stumble upon the realization that each of us has the sacred duty to reclaim our individual sovereignty, dignity, integrity, royalty and divinity. By so doing we attain to self-mastery - which means we regain control of our own destiny as autonomous, free entities in a beautifully and perfectly anarchic universe. (Anarchic actually means "free of judgment and external rules" because the word Archon refers to a judge or ruler).

The true Master is master only of himself or herself - not of other sovereign entities. When this definition of Master is reinstated within our everyday consciousness, the concept of Slavery will be limited to the domain of electrical engineering, wherein the master-slave configuration applies only to current regulation.

Bakri Musa concludes his essay with this bold declaration:

"In a democracy, daulat (sovereignty) resides with the people, not the rajas. Our constitution is clear on that point, as Zaid repeatedly reminds us. We must constantly defend this principle lest it be eroded."

I am in wholehearted agreement, even though we approach the subject from wildly different perspectives.

BAKRI MUSA: THE SULTANS' DAULAT IS A MYTH (PART 1)

BAKRI MUSA: THE SULTANS' DAULAT IS A MYTH (PART 2)

BOOK REVIEW: ZAID IBRAHIM'S AMPUN TUANKU

[First posted 30 August 2012. Reposted 29 November 2014, 25 June 2015, 

23 December 2016, 14 May 2018 & 27 April 2022]

Facebook post (2/5/26) by Hisham Badrul Hashim Spice

AI-enhanced illustration from ADOI!

80S FLASHBACK: WHEN THE JINJANG JOES RULED SUNGAI WANG LIKE UNSANCTIONED EMPERORS OF HAIRSPRAY

There was once a time in Kuala Lumpur—not so long ago in historical terms, yet emotionally approximately three hundred years away—when youth culture came with uniforms, tribes, dialects, hairstyles, and enough aerosol hairspray to weaken the ozone layer over Cheras.

Back then, before Instagram influencers, before everyone became a “content creator,” before teenagers started looking like they had personal skincare consultants and crypto portfolios, the city’s young announced themselves physically, loudly, and without apology. You did not need an algorithm to know who belonged to which tribe. One glance at a shopping mall corridor and the taxonomy of urban youth was immediately clear, like birdwatching, except the birds smoked Benson & Hedges and carried combs.

And among the most legendary of these tribes were the creatures affectionately—and not always neutrally—known as the Jinjang Joes.

Not, of course, in any official sociological sense. No university ever produced a doctoral thesis entitled Subcultural Dynamics of the Permed Cantonese Male in Late Capitalist Kuala Lumpur. But everybody knew who they were.

Or at least believed they did.

CHILDREN OF TVB, CANTONESE, AND PURE CONFIDENCE

The Jinjang Joes emerged from a parallel media universe.

While many of us were learning our English from Knight Rider, The A-Team, and whatever pirated VHS tape happened to circulate through neighbourhood video shops, these boys and girls were marinated instead in the glorious melodrama of TVB serials, Cantopop heartbreak, and Hong Kong cinema where every man wore sunglasses at night and every woman looked as if she could slap you with enough force to alter your bloodline.

Their world was Cantonese-speaking, Chinese-school shaped, and emotionally choreographed by Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, Alan Tam, and enough tragic love ballads to make every bus stop feel like the closing scene of a Wong Kar-Wai film.

This divide was never official. Nobody issued pamphlets.

But it was there—visible in speech, posture, taste, and the subtle but unmistakable swagger of people who believed Hong Kong, not London or Los Angeles, was the centre of civilisation.

FASHION AS PERFORMANCE ART, OR POSSIBLY A CHEMICAL EXPERIMENT

The Jinjang Joe male could be identified from half a kilometre away.

His hair was rarely left in its natural state because naturality was for people without ambition. It was permed, sculpted, puffed, sprayed, and disciplined into shapes that suggested a small weather system had settled permanently above his forehead.

He carried a comb in his back pocket not because he intended to use it discreetly, but because the comb itself was part of the costume. It protruded visibly, like a samurai’s sword—except less lethal and more likely to smell faintly of Brylcreem.

His trousers were baggy enough to shelter a family of four.

He walked not so much like a pedestrian as a man perpetually approaching a nightclub in slow motion, even if he was merely buying Char Kuey Teow.

The girls, meanwhile, dressed as if shoulder pads were a form of military technology. Their silhouettes could enter a room five seconds before the rest of them. Earrings dangled like chandeliers. Makeup was bold. Hair defied gravity. Entire ensembles suggested they had stepped out of a Hong Kong pop video and accidentally landed beside a kopitiam in Pudu.

And it worked.

Absurdly, magnificently, gloriously—it worked.

SUNGAI WANG: THEIR UNOFFICIAL CAPITAL CITY

If Parliament belongs to politicians and Bukit Bintang now belongs to tourists holding overpriced coffee, then in the 80s and early 90s Sungai Wang Plaza belonged to the Jinjang Joes.

Particularly the cinema floor.

Ah, the cinema floor.

Two theatres stood facing each other like ideological embassies of separate civilizations—one screening Chinese films, the other Hollywood. It was less a commercial arrangement than a cultural border crossing.

To walk through that level on a Saturday afternoon was to witness sociology in motion.

There were arcade centres where boys spent enough money on Street Fighter and Double Dragon to finance a small municipal project.

There were roller skating rinks where romance bloomed at the speed of poor balance and public embarrassment.

There were tailor shops where young men commissioned clothes with the seriousness of minor aristocrats.

And hanging over everything was a fog of cigarette smoke so dense the entire mall occasionally resembled a nightclub being fumigated.

The air itself had nicotine.

You could probably get second-hand lung damage simply by buying cassette tapes.

ATTITUDE, POSTURE, PRESENCE

The Jinjang Joes were recognisable not merely by dress, but by aura.

They leaned against railings with operatic commitment.

They stood in packs.

They occupied public space the way house cats occupy sofas—as if by divine right.

There was a particular posture involved: chest slightly forward, chin tilted, expression hovering somewhere between boredom and readiness to fight a man for looking at their girlfriend too long.

And yes, now and then, the theatre of style gave way to actual theatre—meaning the occasional flare-up, scuffle, territorial nonsense, and adolescent violence of the sort that seems idiotic in retrospect but felt gravely important at seventeen.

Every generation of youth, after all, must briefly believe its quarrels are epic.

WHERE DID THEY GO?

Now the term has faded.

History, being rude and unstoppable, has marched on.

The Jinjang Joes of yesterday are now men in their fifties and sixties discussing cholesterol, property values, and whether their grandchildren have become too addicted to screens.

The women who once wore power-shouldered blouses sharp enough to slice bread may now be forwarding family recipes on WhatsApp and reminding everyone to bring containers home after dinner.

Somewhere, in drawers across the Klang Valley, there are old photographs no doubt capable of inducing both nostalgia and immediate denial.

“No lah, that’s not me.”

But it was.

And thank God it was.

Because what remains of the Jinjang Joes is not merely fashion, or slang, or a vanished mall subculture.

What remains is a memory of an analog city—of a Kuala Lumpur before algorithms flattened everyone into the same bland digital aesthetic.

A city where identity was handmade.

Where subcultures were built not by hashtags but by geography, cassette tapes, peer groups, shopping malls, and who you stood beside outside the cinema.

And perhaps that is why we remember them so fondly.

Because beneath the hair gel, the shoulder pads, the cigarette smoke, and the exaggerated swagger, the Jinjang Joes represented something rare now:

A time when youth had to physically gather in order to belong.

No Wi-Fi.

No filters.

No curated feed.

Just attitude, aerosol, and Sungai Wang on a Saturday.

Which, if you ask me, was civilization at its finest.

And now, labies & genitalmen... how about some prehistoric rap? (updated & reposted)

CHUCK THE DUCK

how now laotse maotse cowboy tung taodung
need ye grow olde if you never been jung
why sigh fakeye take a break snakeye
recall being born forget to die
bake a cake stay awake cry for joy
O! blakeye


shout aloud jump about fall on your rump
pigs roast slowest that are most plump
cook a plot write a book rob a crook run riot
keep quiet look tired don't sleep go on diet
smart tart twit her twat now what
don't fart


big ben beats crime pleasemen cheat time
peahen eats grime in the pigpen
bleed greed breed weed feed your mind
go blind grow grass quit the line feel fine
smoke a toke don't choke vat 69's no joke
ice floe nice shmoe g.i. joe gung ho
edgar poe deathrow


now bow say grace meow ratrace great place powwow flatface
tightroped pooped pope wallops trollops in the craptrap
rubin rude rapes bob hope & raps the cape of good dope
grunt grope chomp chow chew bread it's homemade
dull as lead get weighed your shell be shed
your soul be free so flee fly flow fled
go right ahead mister blister my sister
who can resist her she's such a sprightly maid
but don't sue me if you don't get laid


the mayor learned his trade well
the player played the part swell
they made their cellmates burn in hell


blue petulance expels true flatulence propels
your dad poohpoohs smells bad he's a cad
sells your mum to alan ladd
mum's glum dad's sad you're mad we're glad
platypus flatus & oedipus status are to blame
shame shame! captain ahab's bladder's inflamed
and jacob's ladder can't take the strain
it'll crack that's a fact you'll land smack whackthwack
on your backside & spill your brains
what a pain it's insane too much! you'll be crippled & lame
as such you'll need a crutch:


maurice suggests you change your game
horace requests a change of name
but boris professes you'll be the same


everything's done where's the fun? there's none
every song to sing's sung every pun to spin's spun
honkytonky monkspunk anybawdy anynun granny franny
jurisprufrock's earthquacker in hanniballoon crunch
sanny franny petticrockers crisco crackers
for cannibaboon brunch
think of gin sink in gum drink some rum dream of rintintin


all's fair balls square scream in fright uptight delight
in lassie's breath & aleph beth
henry stanley & livingstone's bones
huge rods huger cones buck jones &
being alone with death


flint splinter frog frigger
dread fred be bold don't enrol feel blue
see red lose your head regain control
prayers said so stay in bed
flip flop plip plop gyrotop wobbles
stops & drops down manhole &
polecats tapdance on tiptoe
with pipco tadpoles


click clock bloody cop with hickory cock
goebbels shit hot in the pit of the pot of
the ruddy rotten ruck
fuck ladyluck!
get sucked
get pluck come unstuck
let yourself be struck
dead
chuck the duck


I wrote this bit of doggerel in 1970 - never suspecting that 20 years later, this sort of staccato rhyming by free association would explode into a global artform called rapping or hip-hop. The title was inspired by the late Charles E. Gaunt III, my drama teacher at West Essex High School, whom some of us nicknamed Chuck the Duck.

Of course, I can't lay claim to having invented the rap form. This is what Wikipedia says:

Rapping can be traced back to its African roots. Centuries before hip hop music existed, the griots of West Africa were delivering stories rhythmically, over drums and sparse instrumentation. Such connections have been acknowledged by many modern artists, modern day "griots", spoken word artists, mainstream news sources, and academics.

Anyway, Chuck the Duck was turned into a hip-hop number by the incredibly versatile and talented Rafique Rashid - back in the days when we used to hang out together a great deal. He still has the original 4-track cassette master but he gave me a copy which I recently digitized and uploaded here.

A few years later, the prestigious Australian a capella Song Company, under the baton of Roland Peelman, actually premiered Chuck the Duck as a six-part polyphonic fugue in Kuala Lumpur. How on earth did this happen? Roland Peelman had commissioned Malaysian avant-garde composer Saidah Rastam to contribute an original work to the Song Company repertoire - and, of all things, Saidah decided to use Chuck the Duck as the libretto for her astonishingly witty masterpiece.

Thinking back on the strange history of Chuck the Duck, it strikes me as extremely intriguing that two wonderful musicians I have known and loved for years were inspired to set to music this wacky exercise in wordplay written by me as a 20-year-old - and both subsequently unbefriended me (although one recently began to visit again, I'm happy to report). Could it be some kind of mysterious curse? In view of the tragic outcome of both attempts to musicalize Chuck the Duck, I no longer encourage anyone to do so. Unless, of course, they happen to be machine intelligence - say, Suno, for instance! 

Listen to Chuck the Duck by Rafique Rashid

Listen to Chuck the Duck by the Song Company

Listen to Chuck the Duck by Suno

[First posted 16 May 2012, reposted 29 August 2016 & 23 March 2018]

TERMINAL HIEROPHANTIASIS (revisited)

we bow our heads in unison & listen

to benisons in latin as we

sit on satin cushions

in silence

with violent visions

of serpents & surplices &

sacred bullocks & cassocks & castration

casting lustral pearls

at lugubrious swine

that wallow in goodswill

on the dunghill of time

popping corn & copping porn

pages from hoary wisdom torn:

O HEAVENLY FATHOPE

GRUNT UNTO US

IN THIS THE HOUR OF OUR SORDID GREED

WE PLEAD WITH BEADS OF GRUBBY CREED

IN CHUBBY FINGERS

from the foulpit to the pulpit

of the chosen pew

we send forth solemn nostrums from the rostrum

to our beloved token jew

FORGIVE US OUR FOREFATHERS' FORESKINS

AND GIVE US THIS DAY A DULL RAP ON THE SKULL CAP

OR SOME CLAP TRAP

oh we think we know we see

whom & how & whatsoever we should be

for all is ultimately

part & parson of

immortality

(so help me)

wherefore this common porridge:

this grim & gruelling gravy

in which organisms sink or swim

suspended in acute & minute animation

doomed to drink & be drunk &

perchance be merry or to suffer

indigestion &/or

indigestibility?

BY THE MONAD'S GONADS,

ANSWER ME!


we bow our heads

over supper sipping soup

but does it really matter

if tablemanners are observed

or if slurping sounds delicious?

after all the tiny whiny citizens

aswoon or aswirl in their own dire mansions

in our soupy microcosm

are also busy bowing pious little heads

over teeny weeny bowls of

perfect beans...

And be it so.

Antares © 1969/1985

AND NOW LISTEN TO THE SOUNDTRACK, FOLKS!

[First posted 24 March 2009, reposted 4 December 2014, 27 May 2016 & 10 May 2019]

Prayer of Cleansing Under the Full Moon

I stand under the silver glow of the Wesak Moon

In the cool luminosity of the soul's darkest night:

All one and alone, heart heavy yet light,

Half out of the human cocoon,

Open, beseeching.

Angels and devas and faeries and elves,

Gnomes and goblins and pixies and nymphs,

Dragons and witches and sorcerers and saints,

Mages and sages, paradise birds in cages,

Jugglers and lyrists and fiddlers and pipers,

Drummers and bummers and hummers and humans,

Princesses and debutantes and celebrity queens,

Unicorns and tadpoles and wombats and moles,

Mushrooms and toadstools by mossy banked pools,

Ladies and gentlemen, philosophers and fools!

May the soft splendor of the Wesak Full Moon

Bless us with understanding and insight

And remembrance of this sacred night:

When butterfly and baboon,

When joy and sorrow,

When the magic and the tragic

United to birth a brand-new tomorrow.

May all those happy with the world and those hurt in love,

May those with children and those who are children themselves,

May masters and mistresses meet in the Mystery of Mysteries,

And make merry around the campfire of herstory and history.

May the music take wing and uplift our souls,

May the fountain of youth and the horn of plenty

And the grail of truth lead us home to Amenti.

Behold! The Moon's silver now turns to gold!

Welcome, all ye lunatics with biographies untold!

Come forth, shy maidens, come sing songs of old;

Let's kiss, pretty miss, oh let our passion be bold!

Give us a big hug, Pheona, Ellie, Marina and Troll!

Hey, Brian and Woy and Adi and Pati and Bets!

Have you seen Kate D and Diny and Sophie and Bernadette?

Where's Grant and Patricia and Ananda (how can we forget)?

Oh, there's Elf in the pool, no wonder she's wet!

Who's that sari-clad beauty out of a Bollywood set?

How did she get here? Hand her an epithet!

Her name is Manjula and she's a real dragon cat -

But that doesn't rhyme with the other lines, oh drat!

Hello, Dr Peebles! Nice to see you here too!

Ha! There's Terence McKenna and his magic kazoo!

Bob Wilson, Tim Leary, Lord Greystoke, and Fu Manchu,

Long time no see, Inanna and Enki, how do you do?

Enough patter already, have some of this brew...

When you feel your head spin

Let the moon madness begin:

Form a circle, feel your body sway,

Dance, beloved, as the Photon Band plays!

~ The Lizard Wizard Himself ~

19 May 2000

[First posted 12 April 2025]

Why We Have Come ~ a poem by Troy Skeels (repost)

We have come because
the trees are in blossom
because the wind tugs at our sleeves
we come because the ocean has brought us here
many times

We have come because a man
once held a fresh page to the light
and declared tyranny dead

we have come because a woman
refused to keep to her place

We have come because the planet brought us
on its way around the sun

trees hold onto the sky and breathe the rooted earth
singing deep songs of oxygen

bees roam between flowers and the moon
weaving genetic strands in the ageless spiraling dance

restless elephants push against their diminishing range
tear through fences looking for food
never imagining fences.

We are people
and this is what we do

We have come to say
the planet will not be privatized
the holy ground will not be sanitized
people are not numbers to be erased

we are tired of insider deals cut in rooms
full of plush carpets and air conditioning
while families starve in the sweltering doorways

sick from the sludge of poorly digested dollars
oozing from the sewers and washing the shopping malls
in the stench

development loans that build dictators' palaces
and prison factories
while charging the people
for the chains that enslave them
and the bullets that kill them
plus interest

We have come because we have followed long trails of blood
to this place
and we are asking to see your hands

we have come because we looked in the mirror today
and we saw that you were us
and we are trying to change

we have come because we are here
because we have been taught to stand
because we were born

because an endless river brought us here


- Troy Skeels

[First posted 6 October 2007. Reposted 13 April 2017]

Stick This In Your Ear (repost)

THE BABEL FISH is among Douglas Adams's most inspired inventions. This short clip is from the 1981 BBC TV series, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which established Douglas Adams as the 2nd Funniest Holographic Insert within the Back-Up Google Earth* (the 1st died laughing at his own jokes, and not long afterwards - exactly six years ago to the day - Adams followed suit; now nobody wants to be the 3rd). Oddly enough I found this little gem by "pure chance" - while seeking technical advice on the Blogger forum. A friendly web designer named Nabeel Zeeshan was among those who came to my rescue. I checked out his blog and there it was... the original BBC Babel Fish... exactly what I needed to make sense of these goddam html codes!

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*Remember, the original Earth was destroyed by a Vogon Hyperspace Bypass project.

Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001)

[First posted 11 May 2007. Reposted 30 April 2020]

Tribute to my dear old dad (repost)

My father in 1981, en route to Melbourne for bypass surgery

Lee Hong Wah was born May 1st, 1916, in Johore Baru, the fifth of six siblings. In his youth he played saxophone and drums in a ragtime combo. He also rode around on a BSA motorcycle and kept a pet cockatoo, which perched nightly on his bedstead (and was trained to turn around and shit on a newspaper).

When I was 12 my brother Lanny bought me a cockatoo which I promptly named Kiki, after the cockatoo that often appeared in Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories. In the early 1970s I bought a 1948 BSA from a friend and often rode it to work (although it was a bitch to kickstart). A friend named Arthur Lam gave me his drum kit and I used to bang away on it, driving the neighbors crazy. Another friend donated an ancient alto sax to me and I was able to play avant-garde jazz stylings on it (à la John Coltrane).

Only much later did I realize how much like my dad I actually am. The main difference between us was that I decided to grow a mustache when I was 19 - and he was cleanshaven throughout his life. I also took up smoking (like my mother) when I was 15, while my dad never went anywhere near tobacco (and thus never discovered the dubious delights of potsmoking).

Dad always wore his hair short and greased it down with Brylcreem. As soon as I could, I let my hair grow long and hated the feel of greasy kid stuff.

Like my dad, I can sit in one spot quite contentedly for hours. But unlike him, I'm not particularly handy with tools and household repairs.

And, like my dad, I have always been a keen worshiper of the Sacred Feminine. He enjoyed photographing his girlfriends in the nude (with a Kodak Brownie camera he borrowed from me, taking care to develop and print the negatives himself). When he was in his mid-eighties, he fished out his secret photo album and enjoyed watching me gasp in astonishment at his many "conquests."

"Where did you find the time to date so many women?" was all I could ask, marveling at how my dad had mastered the art of "camwhoring" 50 years before digital cameras became the rage.

I've opted to share a few of the more "discreet" photos here because the girls are probably all grandmothers by now... or a few might even have left the planet. If any of you happen to recognize any of the pretty ladies in these photos, please leave a comment or email me. I would love to know a bit more about them. After all, they all loved my father.

Lee Hong Wah was a simple down-to-earth man who enjoyed life and good food and beautiful women. Even on his deathbed, he was flirting with the nurses - and with one of his nieces-in-law who visited him almost daily in hospital. Yet he managed to stay happily married to my mother for nearly 60 years.

Around dawn on 14 October 2004, whilst he was being sponged by several pretty nurses, my father breathed his last. I'm sure there was a very sweet smile on his face.

[First posted 1 May 2010, reposted 2 May 2014, 1 May 2016 & 1 May 2021]

Pitching for the Swami (Again)

The person I most enjoy promoting when I'm not promoting myself is Swami Beyondananda aka Steve Bhaerman. He never fails to perk me up when I'm feeling blah. Let the good Swami show you how to activate your clown chakra...



Lose Weightiness Now!

"I lost weightiness ... ask me how!" ~ Swami Beyondananda

In these stressful times, it's easy to gain weightiness. Weightiness gain is not your fault!

Work ... the economy ... and now the election season ... and pretty soon ... yes, that's right. You've gained weightiness. Well, if gravity's got you down, let levity lift you up!

Here are just some of the serious problems that can be caused by overweightiness:

* Irregularhilarity.
* Humorrhoids.
* Irony deficiency.
* Truth decay.

Absolutely FREE here is Swami's 5 step program to lose weightiness now!

1. Take a vow of levity! Remember, levity will help you rise above whatever is bringing you down. In a toxic situation? Laughter will keep you from taking it poisonally. Feel the levitational pull uplifting the corners of your mouth into a smile. You want to uplift humankind? Uplift your face first! Here is the levity vow: "All for fun ... and fun for all!"

2. Don't Get Even - Get Odd. Instead of staying stuck in dueling dualities, use your one-of-a-kindness to find the odd solution that beats the heck out of getting even.

3. When You See a Sacred Cow Milk It For All It's Worth. When our sacred cows give the milk of human kindness, we are fortified to take the bull by the horns.

4. Enlighten Your Load. Is your life stuffed with stuff? Unstuff it! Stuff is a major cause of weightiness. You'll be surprised that the more liquid you get, the more solid you will feel.

5. Wake Up Laughing, and Wise Up Loving. Time to wake up. You'll never lose weightiness if you keep hitting snooze. Wake up with a laugh, and end the day with an embrace, and if you are alone ... embrace yourself, and immerse yourself in a warm solution of love.

And in addition to these five steps toward fool-realization, a vital laugh force, and fully opened clown chakra, here are four things you can do every day!

Daily Weightiness Loss Exercise Plan.

1. Wake up laughing. As Swami says, "If you wake up with a funny feeling ... go with it." If you don't immediately laugh upon rising, then rise and start laughing. Nothing funny? Go look in the bathroom mirror. If you're still not laughing, pretend you're looking at someone else. Do that, and you'll laugh.

2. Do Ha-Ha-Ha Breaths. Very important to move the laugh force early in the day to insure regularhilarity. So, we use the vowel sounds, and we put a h- in front of it ... so we begin way up here at the top of our heads with a hee-hee-hee. Then we move down to the throat and we chuckle a heh-heh-heh. Next, down to the heart for some hearty laughter, ha-ha-ha, and now the belly laugh ho-ho-ho. and way down to the bottom hoo-hoo-hoo ... and now move the vowel sounds back up hoo-hoo-hoo, ho-ho-ho, ha-ha-ha, heh-heh-heh, hee-hee-hee ... ah, nothing like a good vowel movement early in the day.

3. Enlighten Up the News. You want to know where most weightiness gain occurs? In the morning, eating breakfast and watching the news or reading the paper. Why? All the studies are conclusive: The news puts on weightiness, and is a major factor in truth decay. That's why we recommend using mental floss after every serving of mainstream media. Just put your thumb and forefinger about six inches from each ear. Ready? Then, with a gentle back and forth motion, dislodge all the illogical logic, all the petrified bullshit, and every dysfunctional belief masquerading as reality. Ahhh ... you will feel so much better. Your synapses will start synapping again.

4. Play at Work, Work at Play. You know what the secret of a happy life is? To be able to answer yes to the question, "From this you make a living?" If you aren't doing what you love - or at least loving what you do - you are slathering on pounds of excess weightiness! So ... if you can't be with the work you love, love the work you're with. And if you hate the work you're with, love hating it. Invent a hilarious character, and use that character to complain loudly about everything you hate. Then laugh.

Note: If you begin feeling lightheaded due to sudden weightiness loss, simply surrender to the levitational pull. If symptoms of ascension continue, consult your metaphysician.

Help Others Lose Weightiness Too!

During this contentious election season where it's hard to escape barking dogmas and dueling dualities - not to mention feud poisoning - it's so very important to maintain regularhilarity. That's why we've extended Swami's Cosmic Comedy Specials throughout our upcoming Wake Up Laughing Wise Up Loving Tour.

First of all, you can order the Fool Enchilada Special for the very special price of just $59 (includes U.S. shipping) and get $112 value! That's more laughs per penny than the high-priced laughsitive!

And ... if you want to go audio only, you can order all four of Swami's hilarious CDs for just $39 (includes U.S. shipping).

If you want to immerse yourself in the what's, how's and why's of creating cosmic comedy, there is the Wake Up Laughing e-book, AND a four hour teleclass A Course In Laughter available for download for just $15.

And ... if you're in a really generous mood, you can be part of our Buddysattva program and get the Wake Up Laughing e-book for a dozen of your friends. Hey, that hole in the Bozone Layer that has compromised our planet's clown chakra can't heal without your help!

And remember, when it comes to laughter what goes around, comes around. The laugh you save may be your own!

Check out Swami Beyondanda's Ompage!

[First posted 1 October 2010, reposted 18 may 2016]

Another Day, Another Dead Girl (reluctantly revisited yet again... and again)

From NST Online, 19 September 2007

"HOW COULD ANYONE DO THIS?" screamed the New Straits Times headline of 19 September 2007. Here we go again, whipping up public outrage over what is undeniably a hideously grotesque and macabre case of child molestation, sexual abuse, and murder. However, I can't help wondering: what's the link between repressed sexuality, false piety, and the erotic underbelly of brute force? This is certainly not the first time something so horrific has occurred. Indeed, there was a period when you couldn't turn the pages of any tabloid without reading about yet another child rape, sex murder, or straightforward case of torture.

Nine years ago, the entire nation was stunned by the audacious abduction, rape and murder of Canny Ong; soon after this a 10-year-old girl named Nurul was molested and strangled by a security guard.

Then there was the outrageous case of a pretty Chinese jogger who was abducted in broad daylight, raped, and killed by a carload of unidentified men. (I'm reminded of a chat I had with popular stand-up comedian Jit Murad who was shocked and depressed by the inane mutterings of the Malay cabbie who had chauffeured him to the theater. The man kept leering at pretty Chinese girls on the street and let slip that he wished he could rape them all. Abolish the religious barriers and that cabbie would probably have fantasized about dating them all.)    

More recently, just over seven years ago, a 28-year-old Mongolian interpreter named Altantuya Shaariibuu was abducted and possibly raped before being shot in the head and blown to smithereens with C4 explosives. Two members of the Unit Tindakan Khas (UTK) - an elite police unit specially trained for "swift response" and mainly assigned as personal bodyguards to ministers - stand accused of this gruesome deed. For sure the crime is far more heinous when the "victim" is a mere child; but, ultimately, violence against women (or for that matter young boys) must be classified as psychopathological, regardless of age.

Wherein lies its origins, this twisted impulse to intimidate, dominate, subjugate, and violate? Is brute force hardwired into our neural circuitry, as an integral part of the survival instinct, and do we all unconsciously play the game of predator and prey? Come to think of it, violence pretty much underlies the whole patriarchal concept of control and power. Strip away the legalistic gobbledygook and you'll see the latent threats woven into every contract - ultimately the State has apparent power over its subjects because it controls the police (secret or otherwise) and military.

If you examine what goes into the training of a policeman or soldier, you'll find that empathy, compassion, sympathy, and understanding are usually NOT part of the curriculum. Are trainee policemen and soldiers encouraged to "try a little tenderness"? On the contrary, the entire training program is designed to "toughen up" the young recruit, transform boys into men, into efficient androids, conditioned to obey authority and carry out orders without engaging the mind or the heart. It's hardly surprising, then, that in the majority of cases, perpetrators of extremely brutal crimes turn out to be rogue policemen or soldiers. Okay, many are security guards - but most security guards come from a police or military background. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that almost all security agencies are owned and operated by former uniformed personnel.

Hell on Earth at Abu Ghraib (photos from antiwar.com

Why do people react with shock and dismay when their own children turn into monsters soon after they enlist in the police force, a covert agency, or some branch of the military? Look at what happened at Abu Ghraib. Clean-cut American kids, shipped off to fight an immoral "war" in Iraq, suddenly turn feral - reveling in unimaginable acts of cruelty and perversity. Here we are, in the 21st Century, and every day we are confronted by the ugly fact that something as diabolically evil as Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo Bay exists, with the tacit approval of American citizens - indeed, of the so-called Civilized World (let's be honest, if we were upset enough about wartime atrocities and violent abuses of human rights we would long have initiated diplomatic and economic boycotts of just about every nation on Earth).

Remember all the official propaganda about Soviet Gulags and Nazi concentration camps? Well, what about the CIA's "rendition" program - outsourcing the interrogation and torture of "suspected terrorists" to less squeamish countries? Deep down, aren't we all quite capable of unnameable acts of savage brutality - especially when carried out in the sanctimonious name of God or King, Race or Religion - or some Great Leader or other? (ISA detainees during the Reformasi Era not so long ago reported that the Special Branch officers "interrogating" them were in the habit of saluting each other with fanatical cries of "Hidup Mahathir!")

Indeed, political expediency has always been the mother of "evil necessities" like May 13 or 9/11 - or for that matter every war ever instigated in Man's bloody history.

Obviously, there are thousands - perhaps even millions - of skeletons waiting to tumble out of humanity's subconscious cupboard. James Joyce wasn't kidding when he wrote: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

Rather than get hysterical and demand the public lynching of guilty parties - or allocate more funds to beef up the forces of law enforcement - it would serve each of us much better to quietly examine the belief systems we grew up with and ask ourselves how these have contributed to our fears, obsessions, and compulsions.

Take the belief in Heaven and Hell, for example: do all those who claim to be Christian (or Muslim) seriously believe that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (or Muhammad as the Last Prophet) will end up burning forever in some sort of Haw Par Villa Hell?

Any "God" who decrees "eternal perdition" and constructs a mega-sized medieval torture chamber to punish infidels and backsliders (and there are bound to be countless multitudes of us) can only be regarded as a demented tyrant - and therefore unworthy of endorsement or worship.

My point is simply this: the basis of all inhuman acts can be found in religious superstition, whether we're dealing with Aztec priests who rip the beating hearts from the cut-open chests of sacrificial victims, or Catholic bishops who preside over witch hunts and burnings at stake, or mad mullahs who forcibly separate "infidel" mothers from their "Muslim" children and condemn to death anyone who decides to try on a different belief system. And if you require concrete evidence of the insanity underpinning all creeds extolling Race and Religion, look no further than the Talmud. Indeed, you don't even have to delve into the obscurantism of the Jewish scriptures; just read Deuteronomy in the Old Testament and you'll be stunned at the bloody-minded jingoism embedded in a supposedly "holy" book!

Here's a pertinent quote from anti-Zionist polemicist David Duke's controversial book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question (published by the Free Speech Press in 2007):

In contrast to the universalism of the New Testament, the Old Testament is extremely ethnocentric. It repeatedly identifies the Israelites as a “special people,” or a “Chosen People," and it painstakingly traces the genealogical descent of the Children of Israel. Many thought-provoking passages forbid the intermarriage of Jews and other tribes. In the book of Exodus, Moses responds to Israelites who had sexual relations with Moabite women by ordering that the Moabites be executed. In Ezra, God commanded those who married non-Israelites to cast off their wives and even the children of such unions. Some of the bloodiest writings I have ever read detailed the Jewish people’s annihilation of their tribal enemies. The massacres of Canaanites, Jacobites, Philistines, Egyptians, and dozens of other peoples are gruesomely recorded in the Bible. In today’s terminology, we describe the slaughter of entire peoples as genocide. Old Testament Jews spared neither men, women, children nor even the animals and pets of their enemies.

What have we here? An Old Testament deity that comes across pretty much as a cruel, ruthless despot and tyrant, more feared than loved by his worshipers. As the gods receded from human memory and were replaced by Kings and Queens, what remained unchanged were the attributes of ruthless cruelty, despotism and tyranny as the hallmarks of strong leadership. And as Kings and Queens began to surrender their authority and power to secular ministers and bureaucrats, the State as a corporate entity arrogated those attributes in the name of maintaining Law and Order.

Nevertheless, the Iron Hand of harsh punishment must, of necessity, be concealed within the Velvet Glove of slick PR. Far easier and more efficient to create a social order wherein people police themselves and one another through ideological imprinting. Hence "the education system" wherein young minds get formatted and have their basic behavioral software installed. Of course, no system is perfect - and every so often the long-repressed feral nature (the Mr Hyde side of our multi-layered personalities, our Gollum selves, if you prefer) will erupt onto the front pages of our daily newspapers. That respected pillar of society and stalwart Rotarian, Dr Jekyll, everyone is shocked to learn, is a closet pedophile, a child molester, perhaps even a cannibal!

How could anyone do this? Sexually abuse a child to death and dispose of the body in a sports bag. Well, C4 explosives would have been real handy but they're rather hard to come by, since only the Defence Ministry has possession of this substance, I'm told.

Outrage is indeed a positive thing. Let's have a little more of it, ladies and gentlemen. But, please, let's be very brave and look in the mirror first and see what murderous Balrogs lurk in the unvisited subterranean depths of our poor, over-indoctrinated psyches.

[First published 19 September 2007. Reposted 19 February 2015]