WE DON’T NEED NO THOUGHT CONTROL (repost)

More than a few have expressed surprise when, in the course of casual conversation, they learn that I “dropped out of school” after sitting my A-Levels examinations as a private candidate at age 18. The A-Levels then were also known as HSC (Higher School Certificate) and were a necessary stepping stone to tertiary education.

“So you never went to university?” they ask incredulously. “I assumed you had a Masters!” To which my half-facetious response would be: “What? Not even a double PhD? Actually, I did spend some time at Universiti Malaya... but only to make out with my girlfriend who was staying on campus."

Among the many outstanding humans who have inspired me one way or another throughout my life, not one has impressed me because of their academic qualifications.

I regarded Bob Dylan as a Dionysian poet, Jewish prophet, and troubadour long before he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard (and later a Nobel Prize) in Literature. Dylan’s urbane sagacity has stood me in good stead over the decades, and two things he said have been indelibly imprinted in my soul: (1) “To live outside the law you have to be honest” and (2) “The best thing you can do for anyone is to inspire them.”

Frank Zappa taught himself music theory as a teenager by religiously reading text books on music notation, composition and arrangement in public libraries. Long after his untimely demise by prostate cancer in December 1993, reputable orchestras and ensembles are performing his symphonic works to universal acclaim.

I regard Frank as the ultimate autodidact. He was also a brilliant electronics and audio engineer, sociopolitical commentator, and a self-taught authority on constitutional and copyright law who heroically upheld the First Amendment by presenting a strong case at Senate hearings for not censoring artistic output.

As an exchange student in New Jersey in the late 1960s, the only rock concert I attended was when Zappa & The Mothers of Invention played at the Fillmore East in New York City. I had a brief conversation with Frank afterwards and he gave me a chocolate teardrop which I ate on the journey home. I became the only Malaysian member of Zappa’s fan club, United Mutations, and often dreamt about him, which prompted me to write several letters to him. Years later, in 1977, Zappa actually responded. It was a bit like hearing back from Santa Claus.

John Lennon, another early mentor, had two collections of his wacky poems and Thurberesque doodles (In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works) published because of his celebrity status as a founding Beatle. His quirky sketches have also been exhibited in posh galleries and oohed and ahed over by the glitterati.

I owe Mr Lennon a serious debt of gratitude for his profound artistic impact and influence on my teenage consciousness. Looking back, I was a full-fledged Marxist (à la Groucho) and Lennonist (à la John) for the greater part of my adult life.

A fourth mentor appeared in my early adulthood in the form of R. Buckminster Fuller, popularizer of concepts like “synergy” and “holistic” - and who has been aptly described as “a genial genius.” Fuller was another university drop-out, whose claim to academic fame was getting expelled twice from Harvard. He regarded himself as a comprehensivist (as opposed to specialist) and that was precisely what I found myself aspiring to become.

Apart from his most famous invention, the geodesic dome, Bucky had a carbon molecule posthumously named after him. Indeed, the Buckminsterfullerene or C-60 has since become an increasingly popular anti-aging agent, owing to its remarkable detoxifying properties.

The most valuable takeaways I was gifted with from my close encounters with R. Buckminster Fuller were (1) The concept of applying minimum effort for maximum gain through leveraging (which, when you think about it, is what kung fu is all about) and (2) What Bucky said to me over dinner at the Equatorial Hotel in 1976 on one of his many visits to Kuala Lumpur:

“Just do what you feel you must do. Do it the best you can and trust that you’ll be looked after. Believe me, it’s true. I’m an old man, and I’m not in the habit of giving irresponsible advice.”

I quit my job in an ad agency a year after that and have remained gainfully unemployed since.

Bucky with a tensegrity sphere

When the results of the A-Levels were released I felt chagrined to have been awarded a pathetic C+ for Modern History, while getting straight A’s for all my other subjects. True, I was cutting it very close by opting for the minimum number of subjects (General Paper, English, Art, and Modern History) and I strongly felt I deserved an A for my Modern History paper.

The exam question, if I recall correctly, was what factors have had the greatest impact on world affairs since 1945. I remember feeling exceptionally inspired, and the words flowed smoothly from my pen as I postulated that, in the post-war years, the fate of nations fell into the hidden hands of covert agencies like the OSS (which subsequently became the CIA), MI6, Mossad, KGB, DARPA, and so on.

My essay concluded with the thesis that these covert agencies had transmogrified into a Frankenstein’s Monster – beyond the control and oversight of elected governments.

In effect their hubristic activities were clandestine, unreported, and unknowable to the public at large. My conclusion was that, unless these covert agencies somehow got their wings clipped by an authority greater than the merely governmental – unless they were effectively declawed and defanged, if not entirely dismantled, the destiny of the world, our collective future, was in grave danger of getting hijacked by criminal elements.

(Back in 1968 I hadn’t begun to research the Occult and knew nothing about weird shit like adrenochrome addiction and Babylonian blood sacrifice cults.)

"Critic of Chaos" by Ross Williams

I finished the essay with at least five minutes to spare, so I could re-read what I had written, and I felt satisfied that I had answered the question to the best of my ability. Now, whoever marked my paper may have felt a tinge of annoyance at my 18-year-old self-confidence and precocity but, even so, I surely deserved at least a B+ for my effort, not a paltry C+… because that would have awarded me a Higher School Certificate, enabling me to proceed with my tertiary education, if I so chose.

The only option I was left with was to re-enrol in school as a Lower Six student and resit the A-Levels in two years. No way, José! I decided it was the Cambridge Examinations Syndicate that had failed, not me. From that moment on, I turned my back on Academia and what I perceived, in later years, as a very cunningly crafted miseducation system, designed to format impressionable young minds in a manner conducive to their being absorbed into the Job Market.

Well, I had heard of a character named Job from dipping my nose into the Old Testament and I wasn’t about to fall into the same trap of being jerked around by some two-bit God-impersonator. After all, it wasn’t Employment I craved, it was a Sense of Meaning and Purpose. I deeply desired to know why I had taken on human embodiment on this planet. What was my mission this time around? Was it all completely pointless?

In any case, these ontological questions were set aside for a while, when approximately two weeks after getting the results of my A-Levels, I received a phone call from my girlfriend informing me she was a month late with her period.

In retrospect, becoming a father at age 19 was perhaps the best fucking education I could have bargained for.

Antares

7 May 2020

[Originally posted 7 May 2020, reposted 24 January 2023, 6 April 2023 & 4 july 2024]

THE ERROR OF YOUR TERROR (revisited)

BOMBS GO OFF. A bunch of people blown to bits. Everybody else terrified. Not a jolly time to be in Baghdad - especially if you tan well, tend to overdress, and look Iraqi. The Dalai Lama says war is already obsolete and every sane soul agrees. Except a cabal of well-connected fraternity bozos hell-bent on establishing a planetary empire founded on perpetual war.

We’re dealing with desperadoes heavily armed with WMDs. No blow too low for this mob. Human sacrifice is standard practice in their warlike cult. The end always justifies any means. If a “better” world calls for a drastic cull, unleash the radioactive weaponry, the earthquake and hurricane machines and laboratory-manufactured epidemics... three thousand casualties or three hundred thousand, what’s the difference? Collateral damage!

Those who wage war, whether by obvious or subtle means, are the true terrorists. After all, what is war if not a crude excuse to eliminate the perceived enemy by brute force. And since when did brute force ever accomplish anything constructive? The only effect of brute force is to intimidate, terrorize, abuse, disempower and enslave.

And the only real enemy is our own unacknowledged and unbefriended shadow selves. Just as the shadow aspect of greed is lack, the shadow side of militant self-righteousness is cruelty, intolerance, and fanaticism.

Fear is a very effective means of mass mind control. Fear as a primary response implanted in the hypothalamus to retard our evolution. My maternal great-grandfather carried a strong negative emotional charge, which passed down the genetic track to my late mother and one of my brothers. Both see the world as dangerous and hostile, and invest a great deal of energy on “security” – arming themselves against bacterial and viral attacks with a huge arsenal of prescription drugs; living within a self-created prison behind steel bars, high fencing, and heavy-duty padlocks; and never trusting strangers (thereby never admitting any fresh data into their stale belief systems).

But all the “security” in the world can’t keep out death when your life contract ends and doesn’t get renewed. My childhood friend, whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade, was viciously murdered in the sanctity of his own home along with his partner in July 2005. Apparently, a psychopath had been stalking them for some time and was driven by drug-induced demons to strike terror into what was once a quiet residential neighborhood. The London bombs went off a couple of days later, prompting me to revisit the origins of fear.

It all starts with the crude concept of “God” as an External Force to be feared, worshiped and appeased. We’ve all heard the phrase “God-fearing” touted as something positive. Well, any “god” that enjoys being feared is more demonic than deific. Where did this “God-fearing” implant come from?

If you travel far enough down your genetic timetrack, you will encounter a blind spot in your deep memory where the universal trauma of abduction and rape occurred. We were violated as a species before our awareness had sufficiently matured to be able transmute and heal the psychic shock. Who raped us? Some wicked “stepfather” creator god or gods whose cold-blooded DNA now flows in our veins (along with a whole stew of strange and familiar bloodlines)? Or maybe, as Gnostic shaman John Lamb Lash suggests, these Archontic ET intervention hypotheses were seeded into the collective psyche as false genetic memories. And the spindoctors are still at - only now these red-herring scenarios are called internet memes.

You can identify this aberrant gene or meme as the aspect of ourselves that is numb to our own feelings - that is incapable of empathy, knows no compassion, and is interested only in its own survival. It raped our planetary biosphere in a desperate attempt to stave off total extinction, caused by an irreversible loss of vital force after too many generations of cloning.

Biological reproduction was deemed too messy and unpredictable, so this criminal reptoid species opted to reinvent itself as a Master Race of Empire-Builders destined to rule over the holographic worlds as the All-Seeing Eye of the Illuminati (Tolkien depicted this as the Eye of Sauron and you can spot this symbol on the back of every dollar bill issued by the Federal Reserve). This bogus deity favors Intellect over Intuition, the Male Principle of Will over the Female Principle of Desire. It installed a corrupt male priesthood to serve as its human agents on Earth, preaching hellfire, brimstone, and planting the fear of God into our hearts (where only Love ought to dwell).

It staked a claim on the dissemination and interpretation of scriptures, labeling as “deviationist” all ideas that liberate rather than entrap. Call it the economics and politics of Monopoly: control the only bridge across the river Styx, set up tolls on every highway to Heaven. Patent everything, make everyone pay royalties and taxes, amass a vast fortune, gain even more power over others, and so the game goes on. When any of us refuses to play, the game is over... it’s as simple as that.

That’s why the “sheeple” must be kept in line through sheer terror. Serve them a daily diet of bad news and mediocrity, let paralysis set in, along with a sense of abject powerlessness – so they always vote in strong leaders to guide them to the Promised Land. Above all, make sure they never reclaim the authentic, primordial, sovereign power within the very atoms of their own cells...

Let eggheads write lengthy tomes about the “Colonized Self.” Let George Lucas churn out blockbusters about the “Evil Empire.” After so many generations of systematic conditioning, most folks are simply too chicken to ever break free of the insidious frequency fence. Here’s a clue for you: The Matrix is a fourth-dimensionally generated 3D illusion (very realistic special effects, folks die gruesome deaths and their bodies stink as they rot).

Speaking of chickens, a shaman colleague recently remarked: “If this Rooster Year transforms itself into a Phoenix, everybody on the planet resurrects and ascends.” So do it NOW, folks, free yourselves from fear conditioning... before another Year of the Dog arrives to find us still barking up the wrong tree.

[Originally published in the August 2005 issue of VIDA! First posted 8 January 2007, reposted 20 November 2017, 16 April 2019 & 11 december 2021]

"Mum... dad... I wanna join the MACC!" (updated & reposted)

This ticket stub carries some pleasurable memories for me. That's why I have immortalized it here on my blog. I first stumbled on the intriguing poster below on Patrick Teoh's Niamah blog...

What phenomenal inspiration, I thought, to present three stand-up comedians - all Chinese, of course - as the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians. I was determined to catch the show, even visited TicketCharge to try and book online... but was put off by the fact that TicketCharge charges an additional RM12 as a "service fee." That's way too much, I thought. I mean, if I were booking a RM600 ticket to see Dua Lipa, I wouldn't blink an eye at a RM12 service fee. Nobody minds paying up to RM5 extra for the convenience of booking a theater ticket online - but RM12? That's 33% of the ticket price! What if I were buying TWO tickets? RM24 could easily buy a very fine dinner for two...


Fast-forward to 24 October. I get to Jaya One around 8:20PM and, after asking a couple of people, manage to locate PJ Live Arts. As I stand in line at the ticket office, I notice a poster for MACC 1st EGM  that has "Sold Out" scrawled over it in black marker. True enough, it was a full house - not even one seat left! But a girl named Lulu was really helpful. She told me to hang around till just before 9PM - in case somebody canceled out. Just then I bumped into Patrick Teoh and his lovely wife Min Chan with heartthrob actor/director/playwright Gavin Yap in tow. They were downing some beers and awaiting the arrival of more friends. We had a quick chat and then I headed back to the ticket office where more friends were assembled - including a few prominent bloggers I had never met in person (Nathaniel Tan and Khoo Kay Peng to name but two). They were waiting around for cancelations too.

But as it turned out there was only ONE cancelation... and since I was alone I got it! I wasn't going to miss MACC 1st EGM after all :-)

Pic courtesy of Grant Corban

The President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Secretary and Supreme Advisor of the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians is a mutant Malaysian Chinese multi-tasker named Douglas Lim (left). I first heard of him when my daughter was assistant director on a successful sitcom called Kopitiam. She told me supporting actor Douglas Lim was incredibly talented but I must admit I was more keen to be introduced to Joanna Bessey, the star of the series. Back then at only 18, Douglas Lim looked rather nerdy - but it was undeniable that he was a natural-born actor, singer and comedian with tremendous promise.

Well, that promise has been totally fulfilled. Douglas Lim at 32 is a world-class act. I never would have believed a Chinaman could do stand-up comedy the way Douglas does it. Back in the mid-1980s my friend Thor Kah Hoong gave it a shot and he did pretty okay - but I still preferred Chris Rush, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, even Robin Williams. Thor was simply too cerebral, too cynical, too dry (and too skinny) and for my taste.

Along came the irresistible Jit Murad and the inimitable Harith Iskandar, followed by the untoppable Alan Pereira and Indi Nadarajah (of Comedy Court fame). Amazing talents - but not Chinese mah, that's why so funny. Before long, Patrick Teoh and Nell Ng joined the luminous cast of The Instant Cafe Theatre and both proved to be extreme hoots on stage and always entertaining - but while Patrick and Nell are fantastic comedians, they don't actually do stand-up stuff. Riveting pub entertainer Rafique Rashid acquired a loyal following as a singing stand-up comedian whose specialty was "Weird Al" Yankovic-style spoof songs - but his only claim to Chineseness was his predilection for Chinese girls with nice legs. And then, of course, there's the supercool Afdlin Shauki - but also not Chinese, so not counted.

Well, I tell you, this fella Douglas Lim can hold his own on the same stage with all the great names in stand-up comedy - including, possibly, the late great George Carlin. You know why? Because if you can do stand-up comedy with a typical Chinaman accent and not make everybody cringe... you've got to be absolutely fantastic!

Douglas Lim in action, giving a TEDx talk... 



Stand-up comedy is perhaps the most challenging form of performance. Apart from your voice, your brain, and your own body - all you've got is a microphone. No fake mustache, no funny hat. The ones who make it in this incredibly challenging medium must also be equipped with brains that can process data at a million times average speed. In short, unless you qualify as a Grade A mutant genius, don't even bother auditioning as a stand-up comedian.

The kind of rapid-fire multi-layered humor he trades in can't really be transcribed as text because one has to see his face and watch his moves. Suffice to say, Douglas Lim found a new fan in me that night.

The MACC 1st EGM poster featured two other board members of the Malaysian Association of Chinese Comedians: Phoon Chi Ho (listed as an "intern") and Kuah Jenhan ("sacked - pending appeal"). Phoon had to cancel out at the last minute because he was down with chicken pox. That put the onus on 22-year-old Jenhan (left) to work doubly hard since it was now a two-man rather than a three-man show. I'm happy to report that Jenhan's performance was truly outstanding, no doubt because he picked the best sifu (guru) in the business - Douglas Lim, whose masterful tutelage Jenhan acknowledged more than once during his routine.

What impressed me most was the sheer sophistication of the material presented at MACC 1st EGM. Douglas and Jenhan effortlessly negotiated the squiggly boundary between heavyweight cutting-edge political satire and lighthearted pop trivia and kept the audience rolling in the aisles without a moment's letup.

The audience, about 75% Chinese I'd venture, left the theater feeling it's actually quite okay to be born yellow instead of black or white. That's really no mean feat - to make being Chinese look funky, funny, sexy and lovable all at once!

Douglas and Jenham fully earned the standing ovation they received that memorable Saturday night.

IS POLITICAL COMEDY SAFE IN MALAYSIA?

[First posted 5 November 2009]

Some funky indie music videos for your weekend viewing (repost)...

That Effing Show Crew (Malaysia)


Swami Baracus (UK)


Bettina D'Mello (Germany)


Airport Radio (Indonesia)


Up Dharma Down (The Philippines)

Thanks to digital tech and YouTube, indie bands the world over (including Malaysia) can now create funky music videos on hardly any budget and still reach a global audience. I found these well crafted music videos produced by the MTV generation invigorating and very watchable. You're doing a great job of claiming your planet, all of you!

[Cheers, Free Malaysia Today, for alerting me to these cool vids! First posted 8 June 2012, reposted 17 April 2015 & 15 August 2019]

Exquisitely Surreal (& Far Funkier Than Dali!)

I extracted these stunning images from a powerpoint presentation forwarded by a friend. I had no idea who painted them - whether it was the work of one or several artists - until someone named Yo left a comment below informing me that these outstanding works were actually by a Russian artist named Vladimir Kush. Thanks, Yo!

[First posted 29 April 2010. Reposted 2 November 2017]