Buy Your Own Crowd Control Gear! (repost)

Getting too popular for comfort? Fans becoming a bloody nuisance? Tired of getting mobbed by autograph hunters every time you step out? Well, that's the price of success. The next time you make a public appearance, be prepared...

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THIS WEEK'S SPECIAL: 

PORTABLE LPG FLAME-THROWER

This will teach all those queers who laugh at you 
behind your back and call you a moron!

[First published 15 November 2007 (5 days after BERSIH). Reposted 22 June 2011]

Proxy War in Ukraine: a capsule explanation

Proxy war in Ukraine (Photo courtesy of CNBC)

Dear Antares, could you please explain your perspective on the war between Russia and Ukraine?

Put simply, it's the Khazarian Mafia's last stand on Earth. In case you never heard of the KM, it's also known as the NWO Cabal or the Corporate Globalist-Transhumanist Agenda which uses covert agencies like Mossad, the CIA, M16 to stir up shit and promote perpetual war (profitable bizniz) and hides behind political institutions like NATO and the EU or the Anglo-American Axis of Evil. 

At least since the end of WW2 the Khazarian-Zionist shill media have waged a propaganda war making people believe there are Good Guys & Bad Guys on the world stage when it's really a psycho-spiritual war between Archontic Intelligence (devoid of empathy and incapable of evolving beyond the 4th Density) and Divine Humans (with unlimited potential to evolve beyond the 4th Density, attain Buddha & Christ consciousness, and reintegrate with Source). 

Unbeknownst to the majority of humans (who have been for countless generations brainwashed through religion, academia, entertainment and news media) the Khazarian Mafia are linked to the Sabbatean-Frankists, latter-day incarnation of an ancient black magic cult practising demon-appeasing blood rites, human sacrifice, BDSM, torture and adrenochrome rituals. They are behind the largely unreported phenomenon of child abduction, human trafficking, sexual enslavement and organ harvesting - and Ukraine, since the CIA-sponsored coup of 2014, has become the biggest house of horrors on earth. Ruling elites with blood ties to the Khazarian Mafia (e.g., the Rothschilds & Rockefellers) have a vested interest in maintaining their stranglehold on the mass psyche via propaganda - and they have thus far succeeded in manipulating the narrative to make Russia and Vladimir Putin (and for that matter, Donald Trump) look like the Bad Guys while the Deep State comprising crime families like the Bush, Clinton, Obama and Biden nexus supposedly stand for democracy! 😃 

You asked politely, that's why I am making an effort to explain (though the situation is way too complex and murky to convey in the context of a Facebook comment). Russia, in this instance, is the only hope we have to ensure that Divine Humans do not become extinct under the soulless juggernaut of "progress" funded by Big Tech and the NWO Cabal - who are loosely labeled "Satanists" (especially by Christians) but that's not a term I personally choose to employ. Anyway, the proxy war between Putin and NATO (which in no way benefits Ukraine, indeed which has destroyed and disrupted the lives of countless innocents) is already at an end. 

NATO is kaput and so is the corporate state known as the USA, Inc (established in 1871).

"KePIMPinan Melalui Tauladan" ~ Who Said That? (repost)

So who's been selling out the country?
Human rights activists? Those who demand clean and fair elections? Those working towards greater accountability, openness, social justice and democracy? 

Or the diehard Mahathirists in our midst?

[I found this old cartoon from 1986 or 1987 which was submitted for a political cartoon competition sponsored by Aliran. One of them won first prize. I believe it was the one reproduced below...]

[First posted 16 October 2012]

A starry portal opened wide today... (repost)

... and two dear friends went home...

Received an SMS this morning that stunned me for several moments. Justin Tan, who last visited me in November 2009 in the company of three gorgeous divas, had a motorcycle accident and died instantly. The crash happened in the vicinity of Ulu Yam Baru, so his body was taken to the Kuala Kubu Bharu hospital morgue.

Justin had recently turned 38 and was planning to formalize his marriage to one of the divas - a magnificent lady and blogging buddy named Janet.

I met this lovable couple more than 10 years ago when they were both active members of Food-Not-Bombs. Janet I kept bumping into at the Sarawak Rainforest World Music Festival and was someone I enjoyed occasional evenings at the theater with, followed by extended teh tarik and roti canai sessions. Justin usually stayed home. He was totally cool about his girlfriend pursuing a career as a singer.

The few times I met Justin he was usually quiet but very pleasant and jolly company. So I can't say I knew Justin very well - but I am profoundly fond of Janet and was glad she had found such a cool, solid guy as her partner.

I first noticed that Justin resembled a samurai during his November 2009 visit to Magick River. Okay, he could also pass for a master chef (just imagine him with a big white hat on). When I saw his lifeless body in the morgue today, he looked even more like a samurai in his full riding regalia, helmet still on. I could sense him hovering around, trying to reassure his friends and family that he was perfectly okay where he was...

It's virtually impossible to comfort anyone who has just experienced a sudden bereavement. Janet had arrived at the crash scene before the ambulance and she told me it was a surreal journey to the hospital, made even weirder when the ambulance had a flat and the driver had to get out and change the tire.

However, Janet was absolutely brave and held up remarkably. And so were Justin's parents whom I met for the first time today. It made me feel a momentary sense of relief that both my own parents have already gone and therefore need never make funeral arrangements for their own children.

There are times when I feel a tiny twinge of envy for those who have already passed through the portal of death and moved on to new adventures. The competitive games humans play to gain petty advantages over each other are ultimately so boring and tedious. Yes, the idea of going to sleep and never waking up again is sometimes a most enticing one...

As I took my leave of Janet, her parents and close friends, I felt a deep sense of gratitude to have been Justin's friend, albeit a casual one. I had no clue he was such a passionate biker. Now that he was on the other side I could clearly see his soul signature - and it was that of a samurai, a Zen master, a very noble, compassionate and wise being, a Jedi no less. Isn't it astonishing that we sometimes have no idea who our friends actually are... until they are no longer with us?

While I was at the the morgue, I received word that a friend from theater days - someone I hadn't seen in years but whom I always thought of with great affection - had left the earth. I didn't even know Dicky Cheah was sick. He hadn't even reached 50. Whenever I saw Dicky he would be all smiles and affability. He was so fond of the stage he'd accept just about any role, whether or not he had any lines. Later he got into mime in a big way and gigged at children's parties and corporate dinners. All this while he was holding a day job in advertising. Apart from this, I knew nothing about Dicky's personal life - but I would say he was probably among the least malicious of all theatre personalities.

What prompted me to blog about the passing of two friends on the same day, both younger than I, neither of whom I can claim to have known intimately, was the serene feeling that accompanied one of the most glorious twilight skies I have seen in weeks. It was as if the spirits of my departed friends now permeated heaven and earth and I was picking up their relief at being unburdened of physical trappings.

I was reminded of the beautiful death of another dear friend more than seven years ago - a guy we called Chief because he saw the profile of a Native American chief while gazing at the rocks around Magick River. Thinking about my friends' sudden departure put me in an emotional zone between joy and sorrow, where celebration feels more appropriate than mourning, for I strongly sensed that these were bright, uncontaminated souls emanating from the Eternal and glad to return thereunto, inevitable though the emptiness their loved ones must feel looking at the physical traces of their brief sojourn in human form...

Justin, Dicky... thank you for blessing me with your friendship and I shall forever cherish your being an integral aspect of my ultimate self.

[First posted 3 October 2010]

WORLD'S WORST JOBS IN SCIENCE (well worth reposting!)

ORANGUTAN-PEE COLLECTOR

Their work is noninvasive — for the apes, that is... "Have I been pissed on? Yes," says anthropologist Cheryl Knott of Harvard University. Knott is a pioneer of "noninvasive monitoring of steroids through urine sampling." Translation: Look out below! For the past 11 years, Knott and her colleagues have trekked into Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo, Indonesia, in search of the endangered primates. Once a subject is spotted, they deploy plastic sheets like a firemen's rescue trampoline and wait for the tree-swinging apes to go see a man about a mule. For more pee-catching precision, they attach bags to poles and follow beneath the animals. "It's kind of gross when you get hit, but this is the best way to figure out what's going on in their bodies," Knott says.

SEMEN WASHER

It's a job that separates the boys from the men. Okay, okay, their real job title is usually something like "cryobiologist" or "laboratory technician" - but at sperm banks around the country, they are known as semen washers. "Every time I interview someone I make sure I ask them, 'Do you know you'll be working with semen?'" says Diana Schillinger, the Los Angeles lab manager at the country's largest sperm bank, California Cryobank.

Let's start at the beginning. Laboriously pre-screened "donors" emerge from a so-called collection room that is stocked with girlie mags and triple-X DVDs. They hand over their deposit, get their $75, and leave. The semen washers take the seminal goo and place a sample under the microscope for a sperm count.

Next comes the washing. The techs spin the sample in a centrifuge to separate the "plasma" from the motile cells. Then they add a preservative, and it's off to the freezer, where it can stay for 20 years. Or not. Thanks to semen washers (and in vitro fertilization), more than 250,000 babies have been delivered in the U.S. since 1995.

"The hardest part is explaining it to friends," Schillinger says. "But we do have stories." Like what? "Like the donor who was in the room for the longest time. We had a big discussion about who was going to check on him. Turns out he thought he had to fill up the entire specimen cup."

MANURE INSPECTOR

The smell is just the start of the nastiness. Almost 1.5 billion tons of manure are produced annually by animals in America — 90 percent of it from cattle. That's the same weight as 14,432 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. You get the point: it's a load of crap.

And it's loaded with nasty contaminants like Campylobacter (the number-one cause of acute gastroenteritis), salmonella (the number-two cause) and E.coli 0157:H7, which can cause kidney failure in children and painful, bloody diarrhea in everybody else.

Farmers fertilize their fields with manure, but if the excrement is rife with E.coli, then so will be the vegetables. Luckily for us, researchers at the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety are knee-deep in figuring out how to eliminate these bacteria from our animals, their poop and our food. But to develop techniques to neutralize the nasty critters, they must go to the source.

"We have to wade through a lot of poop," concedes Michael Doyle, the center's director. "If you want to get the manure, you've got to grab it. Even when you wear gloves, the fecal smell tends to get embedded in your skin." Hog poop smells the worst, Doyle says, but it's chicken poop's chokingly high ammonia content that brings tears to researchers' eyes.

FARTOLOGIST

Odor analysts are common in the research labs of mouthwash companies, where the halitosis-inflicted blow great gusts of breath in their faces to test product efficacy. But Minneapolis gastroenterologist Michael Levitt recently took the job to another level — or, rather, to the other end. Levitt paid two brave souls to indulge repeatedly in the odors of other people's farts. (Levitt refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough.)

Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses (worst-job runners-up, to be sure). After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity. The odor analysts then sat down with at least 100 samples, opened the caps one at a time, and inhaled robustly. As their faces writhed in agony, they rated just how noxious the smell was. The samples were also chemically analyzed, and — eureka! — Levitt determined definitively the most malodorous component of the human flatus: hydrogen sulfide.

DYSENTERY STOOL-SAMPLE ANALYZER

In the early 1980s, Virginia Tech profs Tracy Wilkins and David Lyerly studied the diarrhea-causing microbe Clostridium difficile in sample after sample after sample of loose stool from the disease's victims. They became such crack dysentery docs that they launched a company, Techlab, dedicated to making stool-analysis kits.

Today, Techlab employs 40 people, 19 of whom spend their working hours opening sloppy stool canisters and analyzing their contents in order to test the effectiveness of the company's kits. You'd have to have a pretty good sense of humor, right? Well, fortunately, they do. The Techlab Web site sells T-shirts with cartoons on the front (two flies hover over two blobs of dung; one says to the other, "Pardon me, is this stool taken?") and the company motto on the back: "Techlab: #1 in the #2 Business!"

BARNYARD WANKERS

Researchers who want animal sperm — to study fertility or for artificial insemination — have a suite of attractive options: They can ram an electric probe up an animal's rectum, shove an artificial vagina onto the animal's penis, or simply do it the old-fashioned way — manual stimulation. The first option, electroejaculation, uses a priapic rectal probe to send electricity pulsing through the animal's nether regions.

"All the normal excitatory signals that stimulate ejaculation, like touch, sight, sound and smell, can be replaced with the current from the probe," says Trish Berger, professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis. "It's fascinating. Of course, this is a woman talking."

Electroejaculation generally requires anesthetizing the animal and is typically used on zoo dwellers. The other two methods — the artificial vagina, or AV, and the good old hand — require that animals be trained to the procedure. The AV — a large latex tube coated with warm lubricant — is used primarily to get sperm from dairy bulls (considered the most ornery and dangerous of bovines). The bull gets randy with a steer; when he mounts the steer with his forelegs, a brave technician, AV in hand, insinuates himself between the two aroused beasts and deftly redirects the bull penis into the mock genitalia, which he must then hold tight while the bull orgasms. (Talk about bull riding!) Three additional technicians attempt to ensure this (fool)hardy soul's safety by anchoring themselves to restraining ropes attached to a ring in the bull's nose. Alas, this isn't always absolutely effective: Everyone who's wielded an AV has had at least one close call, and more than a few have been sent to the hospital. The much safer "digital pressure" is used mostly with pigs, who are trained from an early age to mount a small bench while the researcher reaches around with a gloved hand and provides appropriate pleasure — er, pressure.

Photo from Animalize Taxidermy

CARCASS CLEANER

Natural history museums display clean white skeletons or neatly stuffed animals, but what their field biologists drag in are carcasses flush with rotting flesh. Each museum's taxidermist has his own favorite technique for tidying things up. University of California, Berkeley, zoologist Robert Jones swears by his strain of flesh-eating buffalo-hide beetles and has no problem reaching his bare hand into a drawer to pull out a rancid shrew skeleton swarming with thousands of these quarter-inch bugs. Jeppe Møhl at the University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum deposits sperm whales and dolphins into vast empty tanks and lets nature take its course. And then there's the boiling method, useful for chemically preserved samples that bugs won't touch — an approach favored by archaeologist Sandra Olsen, who has done her own skeleton work. She recalls a particularly vivid experience boiling down hyena paws: "It felt like inhaling the gases would literally kill us." Nah. It merely gave her a lung infection.

[First posted 3 December 2007, reposted 15 December 2013 & 14 October 2016]

A LOVE LETTER TO PAS (revisited)

With reference to Malaysiakini's lead story on August 17, 2008:

PAS ABANDONS GAMBLING, ALCOHOL BAN PLANS

Conservative Islamic party PAS has shelved a proposal to ban gambling and restrict alcohol sales in the four states it rules with its political allies.

Dear brothers and sisters in PAS,

Thank you for being so reasonable, so wise, so patient, and so accommodating.

Like most Malaysians, I am determined that differences in beliefs and ethnic origins must not be allowed to cause the disintegration of our beloved nation. Far wiser to encourage open and sincere discussion amongst the various parties in the Pakatan Rakyat coalition - than for the destructive forces of racial and religious polarization to be used as an excuse for the perpetuation of BN-style authoritarian misrule.

A great many of my non-Muslim friends have long held a negative perception of PAS - since the party is founded on Islamic government as a core doctrine. That Anwar Ibrahim has been able to pull DAP and PAS together in a political alliance with PKR is nothing less than a miracle. Since the euphoric results of GE12 which broke BN's two-thirds majority stranglehold, the BN-controlled mass media have gone out of their way to magnify every little disagreement within the fledgling Pakatan Rakyat.

Right after the elections Umno attempted to forge an unholy power-sharing pact with PAS behind closed doors. When PAS rejected Umno's engagement ring, Khir Toyo used these clandestine meetings as a weapon to plant the seeds of doubt, mistrust and fear into the non-Muslim psyche.

Fortunately, Tok Guru Nik Aziz, spiritual leader of PAS and a wise old fox, was able to reassure his partners in Pakatan Rakyat that all was well and that there was no possibility of a PAS-Umno merger. The coalition remains strong, despite the inevitable jostling for power and influence amongst the various component parties. In any marriage, power play is part of the learning process of attaining true harmony and cooperation.

From a personal perspective, I have no fear of PAS and their Islamic agenda - at least they are completely open about it. Ironically, I am aligned with many of their "Islamic values." For example, I detest gambling and generally shun alcohol; to live in a community free of these vices would suit me fine. However, I'm also a hardcore libertarian democrat in that I would defend the right of those addicted to gambling and alcohol to indulge their chosen vices. To my mind what each of us chooses to do for pleasure is nobody's business - unless, of course, these activities come with deleterious side effects that negatively impact on others. And here we enter a fuzzy area where there are no simple formulas and pat answers.

The entire post-industrial model of economic development is largely founded on financial adventurism, speculation and risky investments - euphemisms for gambling. What is the stock market if not a 24/7 gambling den for white-collar punters playing with blue chips? Financial catastrophes are mostly the result of inveterate gambling - whether the game is called derivatives, commodity futures, sub-prime mortgages or treasury bonds. Gambling or gaming run almost as deep as our hunting and gathering instincts. The adrenaline rush of winning a game of high-stakes poker or mahjong, or breaking the bank in roulette, or flogging off a bunch of dead-horse shares in the nick of time - these are "adult" pleasures akin to a night out with the boys at a karaoke club or a pornographic interlude online when your officemates are all out to lunch.

I have never been attracted to gambling, perhaps because I grew up in a household where neither parent was a gambler. As for games, I quickly got bored with Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Checkers, and Scrabble. The last time I played any card game was perhaps 35 years ago. Call me a bore but I would much rather lie in a hammock with a book or a cuddly friend. Never once have I even contemplated the possibility of buying shares in any company or investing my surplus cash in some sort of tontine scheme.

Perhaps I have been saved from getting addicted to gambling by lifelong penury. Having studied the nature of the banking business, I have a pronounced negative bias towards bankers, moneylenders and loansharks - indeed, anybody who uses money to make money, because this is ultimately what widens the gap between haves and have-nots. Alas, this planet is pretty much akin to a giant casino operated by international "banksters" - but it's obvious that time is running out for them, as more humans awaken from their hypnotic trance of powerlessness and reclaim their lives from the corporate enslavers.

Certainly I tend to have a puritanical attitude towards business investors who become entrapped by sheer greed. It's difficult to understand why anyone who already owns millions or billions would continue to "cari makan." How much can anyone eat at one sitting anyhow? Uneaten food is wasteful and shows disrespect towards nature. For me, therefore, Islam's edicts against gambling and usury are eminently sensible and fully in keeping with my own values.

As for alcohol, after a 10-day Mekong binge in Phuket twenty years ago, my body became allergic to the poison. When offered alcoholic drinks at a party, I tend to refuse half the time - and when I do accept I find it difficult to finish an entire can of beer. A champagne toast at a wedding celebration can enhance one's enjoyment - and on cold evenings a shot of Irish coffee is just what the doctor ordered.

Nevertheless, living as I do in an Orang Asli community where 90% of the men are compulsive and terminal alcoholics, I have grown disdainful of drunken behavior and have little patience with the idiotic babblings of the inebriated. In effect, I wouldn't miss alcohol if it simply vanished off the face of the earth. But, please, don't you dare take away my tobacco!

The more puritanical among us, regardless of religious affiliation, will always condemn certain behaviors as "immoral" - while to others these are merely a fun way to kill time. What constitutes "morality" can be debated endlessly and inconclusively - but most of us will agree that the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by, has universal appeal and value. Indeed, once we adhere to that ethical principle, all other rules become redundant.

To my brothers and sisters in PAS I would like to convey this message: I salute your sound moral sense and agree that we would all be better off living in a vice-free environment. However, to use the law to enforce "moral behavior" often leads to abuses far worse than the vices themselves. Look at what happens when agencies like JAIS are given the power to harass courting couples or rudely raid bars and pubs. They turn into uniformed thugs, fascist brownshirts who get their kicks by pretending to be morally superior and throwing their weight around. This sort of loutish behavior is far more dangerous, in my opinion, than allowing a few Muslims the freedom of conscience to imbibe alcohol or experiment with sexual freedom.

The imposition of external discipline has the unfortunate long-term effect of infantilizing the populace, because it treats people like wayward children rather than mature and self-governing, self-improving adults.

Ultimately, the goal of all religious teachings must be to help people attain mastery over themselves (not others!)

And the only way one can become a Master is through the trial-and-error of personal experience, through internal discipline, not through legislation and enforcement. Get the picture, Hasan?

Sincerely,
Antares
~^@^~

Le roi est mort, vive le roi... woof! (repost)

Mr Wong died shortly after noon on 25 August 2010.

We suspect he was at least 13 years old (91 in human years), though that's pure conjecture. Mr Wong's origins remain a mystery even if I'm convinced he was indeed the grandson of the venerable Madam Wu (maiden name Curly-Wurly or Curlington-Wurlington on account of her spitz pedigree), one of the original Magick River dogs.

He was also known as Mr Wong Beng Oi or Golden Boy. His official designation at Magick River was Head of Homeland Security. He was undoubtedly the Dog of Dogs, veritably an ascended canine.

Madam Wu was already at an advanced age when she moved to Ampang Jaya long enough to get impregnated by Mary Maguire's mutt, Deputy Dawg (originally of the Yap clan, judging by the nervous tone of his bark). When Mary relocated to Kuala Kubu Bharu in 1997, Madam Wu returned to her former life as a jungle dog, while her daughter Lulu Yap née Lulu Wu stayed on with Mary in Kuala Kubu Bharu and later Sungai Choh. Lulu was seduced by Milligan (a rakish stray adopted by Mary) and had her first litter when she was still in her teens. Lulu's pups were all given away as soon as they were weaned so I never got to know them well.

Sometime in 1999 I found a compact yellow dog lying weak with hunger under a rambutan tree. He had an ugly sore on his back, the remains of a rope around his neck, and his fur had been ravaged by mange. But his eyes sparkled with soulful intelligence and I was compelled to nurture him back to health. My black bitch Anubis took an immediate shine to the short-legged chap I decided to call Wong. Within a week Wong was looking fine and cheerful again. It dawned on me that he could be one of Lulu's pups, born in that very house more than a year earlier. Perhaps he had been unkindly treated and opted to break loose. His instincts had taken him straight back to his birthplace...

Wong and Anubis truly loved one another. She was fond of grooming him and when she got in heat, was exceedingly patient with him, crouching down to facilitate penetration (Anubis was much taller than her royal consort Mr Wong).

Wong was extremely gentle with humans and showed a great fondness for felines. His first cat buddy was Mira, who loved rubbing herself against her canine protector and purring loudly. In fact, Mr Wong was greatly loved by everybody who had any contact with him. Even the Orang Asli were fond of him, because he never once barked at them, chased their kids or harassed motorcyclists. They kept asking me for Wong's offspring but, truth be told, Orang Asli dogs generally don't live very long.

Barely a month old, Pocahontas discovered that Uncle Wong was a warm and wonderfully bullyable friend. She was undeterred by all the tall tales I told her about Mr Wong's murky past as Chief Inspector Wong of the Special Branch (dishonorably discharged from the Force because of his unorthodox interrogation methods)...

Mr Wong enjoys the cool of the evening with Marie Cocteau - who started a fan club for the Dog of Dogs and appointed herself Purresident. Poor Marie Cocteau vanished within a few days of Baggins and Milly's arrival in Pertak. Baggins and Milly are Mary's cat-chasing mutts who grew up in Puchong (a rough neighborhood overspilling with dog-hating datuks). Baggins got into my bad books almost immediately by biting Mr Wong on the leg in a kurang ajar display of alpha male superiority. This incident broke Mr Wong's indomitable spirit and caused him to feel uneasy in his own territory.

But over the last few years Mr Wong had been showing signs of breathlessness and several times became listless and depressed. After a booster jab of multivitamins and some antibiotics, he would rally and regain his bounce. The thought that Mr Wong was, after all, a mortal being and may one day have to leave us saddened me greatly. So when a pretty female pup with Doberman Pinscher markings spontaneously appeared on the scene one day, I decided to let her stay and named her Lulu (in honor of Wong's mum). Perhaps Wong will take her as his child bride, I figured, and from their union an heir to the canine kingdom would be conceived.

As it turned out, Lulu's first litter consisted of two roly-poly pups I named Rupert and Amrita. Neither resembled Mr Wong in any way. Both had inherited their mother's chicken claw - extra toes on their hind legs that look a bit like rooster spurs.

Rupertino, a Valentino amongst dogs, was an exceedingly handsome fellow. Tragically, he was murdered together with mother Lulu on 25 May 2009 by a gang of demonically possessed Orang Asli (no thanks to the cheap brain-pickling spirits they enjoy guzzling). Another great Malaysian murder mystery that remains unsolved...

About six months before she was killed, Lulu gave birth to a single pup. A fat and feisty furball I decided to name Roger Reginald Putra because he arrived aound the time Raja Petra Kamarudin (Blogger King and webmaster of Malaysia Today) was miraculously released from unlawful detention under the evil ISA. It was a day I shall never forget, when it felt as if the winds of political change would blow away the hoodlums in high office like so much dandruff (although it would take a great deal longer than we thought...)

This little tyke was unmistakably descended from Mr Wong Beng Oi - the extreme cuteness of his being and shortness of his legs were a dead giveaway. Roger inherited his mother's characteristic rooster spur.

Roger Putra enjoyed a supremely happy puppyhood, took endless naps, and was adored by everybody.

On account of his thick coat Roger always seeks out the shadiest spots on hot days. Indeed, as a pup he would disappear from sight for hours - only to be discovered fast asleep behind the dragon jar in the bathroom, the coolest spot in the house.

Roger and his father, Mr Wong, were great buddies and only once had a falling out. The bone of contention was, what else? - a smelly bone Roger had been gnawing but when he abandoned it, his father took over and Roger didn't like that. Thought he was strong enough to stand up to the old man... he never again picked a fight with Wong Beng Oi alias B.O. Wong.

Roger, Wong and Mindy Coots aka Mrs Wong chill out on the veranda with my pet djembe.

Apart from food, sleep is a major preoccupation with Roger Reginald Putra.

I suspect there is some Wookie in Roger's lineage as he often makes Wookie sounds. Remember Chewbacca in Star Wars?

In December 2009 (three days before I was rushed to the Sungai Buloh Hospital by ambulance), Roger Putra failed to come home after chasing monkeys into the forest. I went to the river several times a day, calling for him - but heard no signs of a dog in distress. Then, on 21 December, as I was heading towards the car to be driven to the KKB hospital for a blood test, I saw Roger limping home. The adventurous tyke had been caught in an Orang Asli snare and somehow managed to free himself, though the wire had cut almost right through his right leg. Mary took him to the vet and with some antibiotics, antiseptic cream and a massive dose of TLC, he managed to heal completely.

Roger with Ayita Randhawa (whose mother is from Pertak Village).

Mr Wong used to compete with Roger for my affection. But now that Wong's gone, his beautiful, brave and beloved son will surely miss the wise and noble company of his splendid father, even though he shall relish being the new Dog of Dogs and King of All He Surveys...

Roger Reginald Putra in typical Lion King pose.


[First posted 27 August 2010]