LUNGA THE PYTHONESS

A vivid reminder to us all: flexibility is sooooooo much sexier than rigidity!

Lunga Buthelezi has been a snake girl since the age of 3 months. She recently shot to international fame with her appearance in a musical called Afrika! Afrika!. This video clip was taken off Dutch TV. Thanks, Judy, for forwarding the link! Made my day :-)

A lot of people are irrationally afraid of snakes, but I have always found them extraordinarily fascinating, beautiful and mysterious. One possible explanation for this deeply ingrained ophidiophobia might be found here!



Nokulunga Buthelezi is so naturally flexible that her mother found her asleep one day when she was three - with her legs tucked behind her neck. Nokulunga, whose name has been shortened to Lunga for the stage, achieves seemingly impossible positions with ease, then ratchets up the act with excruciating twists and turns.

The performer, who now financially supports her mother, grandmother, aunts and cousins, said: "There are so many kids out there in Africa with talent, but I had something different. My mum saw someone doing acrobatics and they mentioned that there were auditions for an American circus. She took me along and they were impressed. When I went to America, I did not even speak English and I had no chaperone, just a tutor for my education. It was tough at first but my family supported me because they knew I was following my dreams."

[First posted 8 January 2008]

FROM ROME TO AMERICA (revisited)

Illustration by David Dees

AMERICA is today considered by many the only global superpower in terms of economic and military might. What led a former British colony, with an independent history of just over 200 years, to become “the most powerful nation on Earth” – even if some might view it as a “rogue” nation, feared and loathed by a staggering majority of human beings?

A quote from American Dream, Global Nightmare by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies (Icon Books, UK, 2004):

America’s efforts to rule the world and to see its own history as the destiny of all humanity are intrinsic to its mythology. Its lethal righteousness, its claim that its model of democracy is the only model, and the linking of democracy to free markets are all an integral part of its worldview. In other words, America has turned its mythology into pathology.

On planet Earth, the perception of POWER has long been confused with FORCE. All empires were founded at swordpoint, and ruled with an iron hand through sheer terror. Every empire has risen and fallen with the waxing and waning of the authority and might of a specific ruler or dynasty. Each empire has left a cultural and ideological legacy – first through the spread of a language, then through the spread of a religious belief system - and both of these factors inevitably influence the evolution of civilizations and cultures.

Constantine the Great (Gernot Keller)

From Sumeria to Babylon, and from Phoenicia and Egypt to Greece and, subsequently, Rome – the pattern of earthly power is clearly traceable as it migrates to ever greener pastures, in search of natural resources, more equable climates, and room to expand. With the decline of Egypt, Persia and Greece, Rome became the new center of the imperial drive. But even as its military influence began to fade, Roman law and Latin as a language of the ruling elite became firmly entrenched in Europe and Britain.

A few centuries down the line, the Roman eagle – symbol of the predator from on high – migrated across the Atlantic where it became the American eagle; and the indomitable legions of Roman centurions gave way to the efficient and portable killing machine called the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. The degree of destructivity has grown by quantum leaps – from stone-hurling catapults, arrows and spears, to smart missiles armed with nuclear warheads, and a criminally insane arsenal of biological, chemical, electromagnetic, psychological – even climatological - weapons in less than twenty centuries.

HAARP electromagnetic beam transmitter

THE LUNATIC DREAM of world domination has destroyed billions of lives and our dreams of universal peace and harmony - and brought us to the very brink of ecosystemic collapse. Where does it originate, this mad impulse to rule over all instead of oneself? This gross misunderstanding of the meaning of Mastery – which is authentic only when it takes the form of Self-Mastery, but becomes a travesty when the “master” acquires vampiric power through enslaving less aggressive individuals and other lifeforms. Some erroneously believe it is an intrinsic part of “human nature” – but what we label “human nature” is really just a set of inculcated beliefs, prejudices, and legally sanctioned behaviors genetically and socioculturally instilled in each new generation. In effect, what passes as “human nature” is simply a pre-programmed Operating System chromosomally installed in our biocomputers. As such, it is possible to customize, modify, or enable and disable specific functions once we learn the encoding language.

Whether you call it an aberration in the evolutionary impulse, or a defect in the genome of the species Homo sapiens, the impulse to dominate has certainly become a counter-survival program deeply embedded in the DNA of all territorial organisms. We see it clearly manifest in primate behavior, wherein the mark of an “alpha male” is invariably the length of its fangs, and the capacity and ferocity of its will to subjugate others. And yet these very qualities are held up as the unmistakable signs of “leadership potential” and political power has long been in the hands of those most unfit to rule, their genetics being the most acutely distorted by this violent and aberrant implant.

We call it an “implant” because it certainly was never part of the original blueprint of existence. How do we know this to be so? Simply by entering into the primordial consciousness encoded in our DNA and accessible through our own neurology. From that quintessential perspective, it is impossible to conceive of ever creating any evolutionary program that would ultimately bring about such an intense degree of pain, suffering, and sheer abuse upon one’s own progeny. In other words, the original blueprint of existence is purely Edenic – the quest for ever more intimate and expansive degrees of self-knowledge is always predicated on the pleasure principle – never pain! Whatever interrupted and disrupted the original evolutionary program planted the seed of criminality and miscreation within the primordial genetic thread – which is in itself immortal and indestructible, though highly mutable and thus susceptible to unwholesome modification and mutation.

"There were giants upon the earth in those days..."

Those who have read Zecharia Sitchin’s interpretation of the Sumerian cuneiform tablets conclude that it was indeed the Nibiruan ETs (the Anunnaki or Nefilim) who introduced this “master-slave” dominant-submissive polarity into the nascent human psyche when they manufactured the “Adama” in their Earth-based genetic laboratory. Sitchin’s calculations locate the beginning of Homo sapiens at approximately 240,000 years ago. However, paleoanthropologists have found hominid remains dating back at least a couple million years. In effect, there is no immutable data available that allows us to draw any exact conclusions as regards the origins of the present human species.

Nevertheless, we may safely assume that many counter-survival behaviors were deliberately “hardwired” into our neural circuitry – mainly to prevent us from eventually figuring out how the 3D Matrix works and thereby shortcircuiting the frequency fence that keeps our awareness hemmed in, and our bodies trapped within a prescribed set of limitations. Even the aging program is essentially just a built-in mechanism triggered by a preset endocrinal clock.

THE CONCEPT OF AMERICA itself is an ingenious marketing ploy packaged as an extreme form of “brand loyalty” wherein every child raised in the United States is methodically brainwashed into believing he or she lives in “the world’s greatest country.” This is why the typical American grows up totally insulated from any real understanding or knowledge of the world beyond the U.S.A. There is a huge gap between domestic propaganda about America being “the Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave” and America’s ignoble foreign policy - as implemented through covert CIA activities which destabilize and undermine independent local governments, while installing and propping up political stooges friendly to U.S. capital interests. This strategy of world domination through bribery and quiet coercion constitutes the thrust towards “globalization” – really an euphemism for economic and ideological colonization carried out through the clever manipulation of mass communications, thereby molding “public opinion” via the powerful tools of advertising and public relations.

Five hundred years ago, mastery of the high seas was the key to world domination. The British Empire was founded on the colorful maritime exploits of swashbuckling buccaneers who earned their knighthoods by plundering, pillaging, and planting flags in the ruling monarch’s name. By the second half of the 20th century, however, the key to world domination lay in mastery of the airwaves – control of the mass media, and thereby the power to manipulate perceptions on a global scale.

Photo: Richard Lund

This is where America came into its own in the battle for the hearts and minds of the human population. Through the Hollywood Dream Factory and slickly produced TV entertainment packages, America rose to pre-eminence as the world’s biggest purveyor of canned information. Children in far-flung former British colonies grew up watching American-made movies and television programs, and were painlessly indoctrinated into accepting the American cultural idiom as their own. The U.S.A. advertised its own crass, consumeristic brand of “democracy” as the superior way of life – wherein citizens could vote every four years for Tweedledum (Republican) or Tweedledee (Democrat), while choosing from a bewildering array of TV stations and a dazzling kaleidoscope of detergents and shampoos. The American Dream was sold to the whole world under the guise of globalization. America billed itself as the de facto leader of “the Free World” during the so-called Cold War years that marked the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Third World War – a battle of belief systems, marketing strategies, and corporate propaganda waged by professional “spin doctors” on behalf of their clients, the über-elite Old Boys’ Network that owns 99% of the banks and mass media.

HOWEVER, behind (and beyond) the Great American Marketing Machine – and way below the radar of public perception – lurks an insidious influence that has been called a variety of names, none of which comes anywhere close to describing the disease. Some conveniently label it Zionism, the Illuminati Conspiracy... or the Lucifer Effect, alluding to the allegory of how God’s most brilliant Archangel undertook the onerous task of establishing Free Will by leading a revolt in Heaven, thus creating a deep schism in the Universal Mind, splitting Energy itself into negative and positive poles.

This tragicomic dualism of the embattled and “divided self” generates perpetual conflict between our public and private personas, portrayed so memorably in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smeagol and Gollum. Indeed, it can be said that all drama emerges from the interplay of Light and Dark - from the animated shadows on the wall of Plato’s Cave to the buffalo-hide puppets of Javanese wayang kulit, Magic Lantern shows, and Dreamworks’ 3D digital imaging masterpieces.

When we are fast asleep, life is but a dream (alas, sometimes a hideous nightmare). In German, “dream” is rendered as Traum – just one letter short of Trauma. The tug-of-war between Good and Evil, Angel and Demon, Left and Right, Male and Female, Rich and Poor, Arab and Jew, ceases the moment we reconcile and reconnect our inner and outer selves – thereby redeeming and reinstating Lucifer as “The Light Bringer” to his Heavenly Throne - and rejoining the famous Siamese twins, Yin and Yang who, separated at birth, grew up erroneously believing themselves to be archrivals and sworn enemies.


[First published 17 January 2007, reposted 28 August 2013 & 17 May 2019. Extracted from an unpublished manuscript, THE (UNFINISHED) BOOK OF JOHN ~ Confessions of a former Christian fundamentalist]

The Pornography of Politics Revisited

An exhibition by controversial Thai artist Vasan Sitthiket called 10 Evil Scenes of Thai politics 
opened at the Number 1 Gallery in Bangkok on 11 March 2010. 
The above painting is titled Meeting in Parliament.

Signing Contract for Megaproject

Innocent is Justice!

Begging from the Evil Gangster

Unlimited Happiness of a Minister

Stay Poor and Idiotic Forever

Just a Political Game

Vasan Sitthiket (วสันต์ สิทธิเขตต์), born on October 7, 1957 in Nakhon Sawan Province, Thailand, is a contemporary Thai visual artist. A graduate of the College of Fine Art in Bangkok, he works in many fields, including painting and poetry. He has staged three plays, written more than 10 books of poetry, children’s books and political writings.

Active since the 1970s, Vasan's works are often provocative and political in nature. One of his works was a performance art piece, involving fake rubber breasts and buttocks and a simulated rape of the entire nation of Thailand.

In 2000, an exhibition of a new collection that included 50 paintings featuring Thai politicians and military officers in sexually compromising poses was cancelled by Chulalongkorn University, five days before it was to open.

In 2005, he set up the Artist Party, a political art project that mocked the then-ruling Thai Rak Thai party and prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

At the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, he displayed some large-scale portraits of George W. Bush and other world leaders, created on canvas by using custom-made rubber stamps.

Vasan's media has also included drawings, woodcut prints, ceramic sculpture, installations and performances.

[Source: Wikipedia. First posted 13 September 2012. reposted 4 November 2016]

Stories Old and New... That's Right, Folks... It's Just Stories... Stories Within Stories!

My Family Constellation
(with 3 missing siblings who didn't survive entry)

HIStory is just the story of the Father Principle - which, many thousands of years ago supplanted HERstory, the story of the Mother Principle. When the Father and Mother Principles realign, reattune and reharmonize - we experience the Sacred Union of Sun and Moon, Yang and Yin, Male and Female. 

Then the world - or our collective experience of reality - becomes OURstory (although such a word and such a world does not yet exist, but as soon you have read and understood this sentence, it shall!)... and then I can continue to write MYstory, which has always been, and shall always be, a Mystery.

On the fourth day of the 11th Gate Master Cylinder, Solara got all of us into small groups so we could write the closing chapter of our Old Stories. Then one day after the Activation Ceremony, we got together again to write the first chapter of our New Stories. Every one of us is essentially a Story - either well or badly told but nonetheless a Story. A Story badly told can be rewritten so it becomes readable. A Story well told will eventually be made into a Blockbuster!

LAST CHAPTER OF MY OLD STORY

Blessings upon my Godfather (Dr Peter Tong Kwok Kee) for pointing out the stars to me when I was just a few months old - and for igniting in me the spark of intelligence.

I was pretty normal until my 18th year when I stumbled upon the Book of Tao, read the first verse, and had goosebumps.

A year later I realized - much to my surprise and delight - that I was, in truth, God incarnate.

That got me in the mental asylum for three months. The only way I could secure my release was to renounce my divinity.

The next 20 years of my life were a slow process of reassembling the scattered pieces of the gigantic jjgsaw puzzle of my multidimensional being.

Finally most of the pieces fell into place and I regained access to the whole enchilada.

The problem now was, I was afraid to reveal who I truly was - in case I got put away again.

Just as well, because my 40 years in the desert gave other aspects of myself time to awaken and reclaim their vastness - so it became safe to finally proclaim my Godhood - safety in numbers!

But the greatest joke of all, it was no longer necessary, no longer important nor significant to be "divine" or to even identify with any primordial, deific, or noble lineage.

I was content to simply be a human being.

I still am. And although I'm a little curious about how it might feel to NOT exist, I'm in no hurry to experience the Ultimate Nothingness - since that's where it all began.

End of my old story. Time for tea. And, yes, a cigarette break is always welcome.

Antares Maitreya
(formerly known as the Ancient of Days)
18 November 2012

FIRST CHAPTER OF MY NEW STORY

What next? Who knows and who cares? Well, I do.

I know the meaning and purpose of my life - all Life! And I care for every living atom of it. Why? Simply because all of it is ME.

On a more "personal" level I want nothing - and everything. I know that acceptance, recognition and reward for being what I am and who I am is already flowing in, like the first rush of water from taps that have long been dry (or just dripping).

I know that whatever happens - or doesn't - to the financial system will make no difference to the abundance that I have finally, consciously, learned to receive - and to recirculate freely and universally.

I know that the planetary awakening of which my own has been an integral part will accelerate at the speed of love.

As more souls emerge from their cocoons, they will go in search of guidance and advice - and I will be here to serve in my own unique capacity.

I enjoy teaching and also learning. Aeons of ignorance and misapprehension of what Reality is all about have to be cleared. I happily lend my energies towards this joyful task.

I can't think of any specific desires I wish fulfilled - but whatever I wish for will manifest much more swiftly now that I no longer resist being all that I am and more.

At this juncture, it makes little difference whether I continue using my physical vehicle a little longer and then surrender it to the elements - or if I will be among the ones granted immortality through complete transmutation of my molecular structure.

Immortality is only acceptable in a self-regenerating, self-rejuvenating, non-degrading physical body. In a body subject to constant wear and tear, extreme longevity may not be such a  pleasant prospect - unless the body remains capable of enjoying everything bodies were designed to enjoy.

Antares
~^@^~

2:30PM
23 November 2012
Huayllabamba, Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru

[First posted 6 January 2013, reposted 9 April 2018, 7 November 2018, 

26 October 2019, 25 Aoril 2022 & 31 December 2023]

Beyond Hierarchies and Hierophants... (repost)

THE LOVER HOOD

It has no fabric, only understanding. It has no membership, save those who know they belong. It has no rituals, because it is non-competitive. It has no ambition, it seeks only to serve. It knows no boundaries, for nationalisms are unloving.

It is not defensive of itself, because it seeks to enrich all groups and religions. It acknowledges all good teachers, of all the ages, who have shown the truth of love. Those who participate practice the truth of love in all their being.


There is no walk of life or nationality that is a barrier. Those who are, know, and seek not to teach, but to be. And by being, enrich.

It recognizes that the way we are may be the way of those around us, because we are that way.

It recognizes the whole planet as a being of which we are a part. It recognizes that the time has come for the Supreme Transmutation, the ultimate alchemical act of conscious change, of the ego, into a voluntary return to the Whole.


It does not proclaim itself with a loud voice, but in the subtle realms of loving. It salutes all of those in the past who have blazed the path, but have paid the price.

It admits to no hierarchy or structure, for no one is greater than another. Its members shall know each other by their deeds and being, And by their eyes and by no other outward signs, save the fraternal embrace.

Each one will dedicate their life to the silent loving of their neighbor, their environment and planet, while carrying on their task, however exalted or humble.


It recognizes the supremacy of the great idea which may only be accomplished if the human race practices the supremacy of love.

It has no reward to offer, either here or in the hereafter, save that of the ineffable joy of being and loving.


Each shall seek to advance the cause of understanding, doing good by stealth and teaching only by example. They shall heal their neighbors, their community and our planet.

They shall know no fear and feel no shame, and their witness shall prevail over all the odds.

It has no secrets, no arcanum, no initiations, save that of true understanding of the power of love.

If we want it to be so, the world will change - but only if we change ourselves first.

All those who belong, belong, to the Church of Love.

[Recorded & transmitted by Mitchell “Elijah” Gittoes. First posted 14 January 2011.

Reposted 6 January 2024]

Trapped by their own greed and stupidity! (reprise)

Umno/BN, after 22 years of Mahathirism, has degenerated into a robber baron regime paralyzed by a complete failure of imagination and rendered powerless to adapt to changes in the political terrain by the sheer inertia of its own overweening arrogance and greed.

Najib Razak and his grotesque wife Rosmah Mansor were pushed into power by 191 corrupt and inept Umno division chiefs - just as George W. Bush was muscled into the White House in 2000 - to take the flak and serve as a target of public ridicule, so that the nouveau riche Umnoputra elite could continue to rob the nation with impunity and hide the loot in numbered accounts and property investments abroad.

With their control of the law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, civil service, the armed forces and the tribal monarchies, Umno believes it can continue to misrule - by brute force if necessary - through deliberate aggravation of artificially engendered racial and religious differences.

The majority of urbanites have long woken up to Umno/BN's dirty strategies and will never again be fooled. In the rural areas where the only source of news are the mainstream media, the awakening is slightly more sluggish but inevitable. 

Mahathir and Daim Zainuddin created a financial buffer against political defeat by nurturing an ultra-rich entrepreneurial class to feed the Umno/BN electoral juggernaut (hence the lopsided contracts signed with Independent Power Producers and utility corporations privatized to political cronies). This unwholesome conspiracy between centralized government and capitalist self-interest to bamboozle the public will grind to an abrupt end when Umno/BN is booted out - and that's why we see panic breaking out in the hysterical headlines and perverse spins of crony media like Utusan Malaysia and TV3. 

It's time to draw a clear line in the sand, people. It's time to open your windows, stand on a street corner, and shout...

"We're as mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore!"

[First published 19 June 2011... reposted 5 January 2013... 6 January 2014... now one LAST time!]

"Braided Hair" (from 1 GIANT LEAP) ~ repost

Photo by Richard Ecclestone

In October 1999 Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto embarked on a crazy adventure - going around the world for six months with a couple of DVcams, a Powerbook G3, a digital mixer, a few good mics, and a powerful sense of serendipity - which resulted in a phenomenal DVD and CD called 1 Giant Leap. When I first heard the CD in 2003 I felt it was the perfect album to celebrate the spirit of the new millennium, serving as a cogent artistic and cultural counterforce to the Project for a New American Century.

January 6th is what some folks call Epiphany (according to the official story, it's the day the Three Magi were guided by a flashing star to the 12-day-old infant Christ). It's also the eve of my birthday. So what better way to mark the beginning of a yet another solar orbit than to share a special moment from 1 Giant Leap with whoever lands on this blog.

There's a superb feature on how Duncan and Jamie went about producing 1 Giant Leap. Below is a brief excerpt detailing the technical aspects of Bridgeman and Catto's stupendous accomplishment.

HAVE LAPTOP, WILL TRAVEL: 1 Giant Leap's Portable Studio Setup

The initial work on 1 Giant Leap's tracks was done on Eilean Shona off Scotland in Emagic's Logic Audio running on Duncan's 400MHz G3 Powerbook laptop. A variety of hardware was used, including an Emu sampler and numerous synths, such as a Roland JV2080 and JD800, a Korg Prophecy, Wavestation and Wavestation AD, and an Oberheim Matrix 1000, as well as guitars and basses. These were all recorded into the laptop as audio before Duncan and Jamie left the UK.

The G3 400 laptop running Logic Audio also formed the heart of the 1 Giant Leap portable setup. Two AKG C1000 condenser mics, and Shure SM57 and 58 dynamics, plugged into a compact Roland VM3100 digital mixer, the stereo digital output of which plugged into a Digigram VXPocket PCMCIA soundcard in the G3 Mac (the VXPocket was, for a while, the only PCMCIA I/O card suitable for use with laptops). "I only had a stereo input to the computer, and it meant I had to balance all the mics quite carefully in the mixer, but it wasn't much of a problem, as it was only at the beginning that we attempted to record groups of people — we soon realised that it wasn't really practical."

For monitoring, Duncan took five pairs of Sony headphones, and a Yamaha DJX keyboard with built-in speakers, which he'd had modified. "Whenever I put a jack into it, it killed the internal sounds, and whatever I put in came out of the speakers. So I used the keyboard for monitoring. I'd come straight out of the laptop, into the DJX, and then I'd have my headphones in the back of the DJX. My contributors would all be listening to headphones, and I'd play them a bit of whatever music I had at that moment. I could juggle the mix and control what they had to react to; sometimes I'd only give them one thing, if I particularly wanted them to listen to that."

The Yamaha DJX also doubled as a table, onto which Duncan usually put the G3 laptop. "I had it all worked out. I had a guitar with me in a flightcase, so I could sit on that, and get my legs under the DJX, which had a metal panel on top with velcro for the laptop to sit on so that it wouldn't fall off... the Roland mixer was down at my side, and in the metal box that I took, there was a MIDI interface, so I could play MIDI in from the DJX into Logic, and a half-rack Roland JV1010. There were no proper virtual instruments then, you see, so the JV1010 was my main synth for composing on the road.

"I had 12V battery belts, with 12 elements, like cameramen wear, and I fed that into the metal box. That powered the DJX, the laptop, the mixer, and the JV1010. The power requirements weren't too bad — I could work for about five or six hours before the belt pack was exhausted."

The visual side comprised two cameras (operated by 1 Giant Leap's cameraman Ben Cole and Jamie's girlfriend Jessica Howie), a tripod, and a circular blue screen, so the background could be replaced later at the video-editing stage.

"And that was it! Oh no, it wasn't — there was also a mic stand. That was a bastard to carry around..."

Read the entire story here.

Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman

[First posted 6 January 2008]

Some images to end a dramatic era with...

Beauty and truth serve us better than money and power 

Eternal symbol of the perfection of imperfectness

Life is always mysterious

When the walls crumble...

Hang on to that paddle!

There are beings with much larger brains than humans 

Planetary metamorphosis

The genius of Nature

The sacred geometry of eternal renewal 

The only health warning we need to heed!

TAKE IT EASY, FOLKS!

[First posted 31 December 2012]

Fuck Yourself ~ A birthday tribute to Zappa

FUCK YOURSELF ~ A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO ZAPPA

CLASSIC ZAPPA QUOTES

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.

Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

Music is always a commentary on society.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Without deviation progress is not possible.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

FRANK ZAPPA (21 December 1940 - 4 December 1993) was a massive influence on me. I first heard about Zappa and his band at the time, The Mothers of Invention, in 1967 when I spent a year in New Jersey as an exchange student. In 1968, shortly before I returned to Malaysia, I attended a Zappa concert at Billy Graham's Fillmore East in New York City, and had the singular honor of shaking Frank Zappa's hand and chatting with him for about 3 minutes. I also nodded at Jimmy Carl Black ("the Indian of the group") and crossed the street with Ian Underwood (keyboardist with the Mothers) to buy a few beers. We had a nice little chat, though I can't remember what about.

Before he excused himself to pack his gear, Frank presented me with a chocolate teardrop wrapped in foil. I ate it on the latenight bus heading home - and have never been the same. I realized, over subsequent years, that I had encountered one of the Most Intelligent Humans on Earth. Forty-two years after that initial meeting in New York, that still remains true for me. Thank you, Frank. You live on in my heart and in my neural circuitry.

P.S. Upon my return from the US, I actually wrote several letters to Zappa. Imagine my joy and delight when an envelope arrived on 29 April 1977 bearing Frank Zappa's personal logo. Frank would have been 70 today. I'm sure he won't mind my sharing this letter with you ;-)...

Would you believe I have been meaning to answer your letter since I first received it and just now got around to doing it? Well, you'd better ... anyway, yours was perhaps the most interesting piece of correspondence of the year (was it two or three years ago?)

Who are you? What the fuck are you doing over there? Why are you "almost Chinese"?

Hope to hear from you again.

Your friend,
Frank Zappa

P.S. The photo with the simulated green complexion was most amusing.

[First posted 21 December 2010]

"SELAMAT HARI KOTAK!" (reprise)

My #2 daughter Belle knows I'm never particularly jolly whenever the great annual consumer festival known as Xmas rolls along - so she graciously waited till Boxing Day to leave a greeting on my facebook wall. It made me chuckle, so I'll share that chuckle with you right away. Hari Kotak ought to be Malaysia's most important national holiday - because we're so crazy about packaging, branding and marketing.

[First posted 26 December 2011, reposted 26 December 2023]

The Fig Leaf Syndrome (revisited)

“Is that a gun in your pocket, Big Boy, or are you just happy to see me?”– Mae West

IT’S ALL A COVER-UP, FOLKS!

How often I’ve heard this uttered in connection with financial and political shenanigans of every strain which, disappointingly, always seem to fade from the public memory before anything can be resolved, or anyone brought to book.

And each time I hear about cover-ups, the image of a fig leaf pops unbidden to mind. Is there a connection? Of course there is. In moments of luminous clarity, the universe has always shown itself to me to be essentially one inexhaustibly funny, punny conundrum.

TRANSPARENCY is a much bandied about term these days. I’m not too comfortable with the word “transparent.” It implies invisibility – which, in turn, suggests unaccountability – a hidden hand, someone or something difficult to see. Like the Emperor’s multibillion dollar new suit. So why don’t we use the more organic description: NAKED?

Why do we get so steamed up by the idea of nakedness that we actually have laws against it? Indeed in some countries there are laws to prevent Official Secrets from being exposed. In effect, the Cover-Up is actually a protected form of official behavior, and my thesis is that this inbred fear of public exposure is ultimately linked to our attitude towards sex - whether we view it as a profane or sacred act.

The fig leaf was the preferred form of cover-up in Europe for parts of the human anatomy deemed “private.” You find it in old paintings depicting Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Why the fig leaf? Why the need to conceal this unmentionably delectable portion of our bodies? After all, the human body has been described as a Temple of Divinity, the Sacred Abode of God.

The Old Testament explanation is mind-bogglingly simplistic: having disobeyed God by eating the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve lost their innocence and knew Shame. But why did the Maker set them up for such a Fall? Is God basically a cosmic Peeping Tom masquerading as Scientific Curiosity?

Interestingly, the Malay word for genitalia is kemaluan – from malu which means (what else?) shame. However, the Arabs allude to the female sexual organs with the richly suggestive expression, al ghaib – “the concealed” or “the invisible” – in other words, “the Mystery of Mysteries.” (Male genitals do not enjoy such poetic licence, for obvious reasons. Colloquially, the penis is given names like batang and butoh – the onomatopoeic equivalents of “dong” and “dick” – with all their bluntly bellicose and brutal, yet cute and comical, connotations.)

Famous Nudes

SINCE THE FIG LEAF SYNDROME gained prominence during the Renaissance, we must assume that it was a purely aesthetic choice, reinforced by convenience – for, in Italy, which produced the famous nudes of Raphael, Rubens, Da Vinci and Michelangelo, the fig tree grows ubiquitously. It’s easy to imagine how the first fig leaf cover-up was conceived: here’s Leonardo happily painting his mistress in her garden under a fig tree, but when he reaches below the waistline he suddenly realizes that he can’t go for complete realism without inflaming papal passions and getting hauled up by the Almighty Church of Rome. Just then the fig tree sheds a leaf which flutters lazily down in front of his model – and gets strategically integrated into the final portrait.

In the Middle East such problems did not arise. Patriarchal notions of modesty forbade the realistic depiction of biological forms, so artists confined themselves to the abstractions of sacred geometry - wherein maleness could be represented by lines and angles, and femaleness by arcs and orbs. The dome-and-spire leitmotiv found in Christian and Islamic architecture gained wide popularity, not least because of its potent subliminal reference to forbidden pleasures. And don’t forget the genital worship suggested in the design of all pagan temples: lingams and yonis, phalluses and vulvas, lines and circles, plugs and sockets everywhere one looks.


At the root of the Fig Leaf Syndrome, a primal trauma lies buried beneath countless generations of guilt and resentment. All myths point to the source of our existential angst and collective schizophrenia: SEX! SEX! SEX! Yes, what Adam and Eve discovered after eating the Forbidden Fruit.



Plants have been doing it for aeons – but, really, you can’t get too worked up over the mechanics of pollination. Animals do it but can’t really help it and, then, only seasonally – and therefore they feel neither good nor bad about it. With animals, sex is totally guilt-free and rarely kinky. However, when WE decided to get into the act by sliding down the Timechute into physical space, we externalized our male-female polarities and got titillated by the principles of attraction and repulsion: at last we could experience the hormonal rollercoaster ride of biological necessity and non-specific year-round lust. It was so wonderfully heady and exhilarating. At least for a while…

Then we realized with profound horror that we had traded in our original, immortal, asexual androgyny for the ephemeral delights and infernal agonies of mortal, animal being. We were packaged in meat. We were The Word made Flesh!

Wherever we turned we saw images of ourselves. This Hall of Mirrors was a regular funhouse, but narcissism eventually gets out of hand. As sexually-split entities inhabiting gender-differentiated bodies, we could now enjoy sticking our protruding bits into every inviting orifice and eventually turn SEX into the biggest business of all time – simply by making it illicit unless sanctioned by a secular or religious authority.

Moral Responsibility

I USED TO WAKE UP in a cold sweat, heart pounding, from dreams in which I would find myself attending a grand buffet where everyone was formally attired, and all of a sudden I’d realize I was wearing a T-shirt – and nothing else! Worse still were the episodes in which I would walk through a door and onto a stage, facing a packed hall, with absolutely no idea how to entertain the audience and no memory of any script. Slowly it would dawn on me that my predicament was even more ludicrous than I’d thought: people were squirming in their seats and tittering because I was completely starkers. Classic nightmares, boringly Freudian – but what did they reveal, apart from my modest assets?

Some people are very secretive. I’m the complete opposite. No question of right or wrong: it’s the way we’re horoscopically or psychologically constituted. However, I’ve always felt that one has a moral responsibility to evolve towards greater openness, greater honesty, greater transparency… in other words, NAKEDNESS.

In which case my scary dreams of public exposure weren’t necessarily a bad thing – merely an indication that deep down I was still afraid of getting hurt. To be more precise, my social ego was afraid of losing status. Without the protection of one’s fig leaf or sarong or double-stitched jeans, one is susceptible to malicious attack or ridicule. One is vulnerable – but is it such a healthy thing to be invulnerable? Isn’t it much healthier to be in direct contact with RAW REALITY and the NAKED TRUTH?

I’ve tried it. It doesn’t hurt. And once your reputation is ruined you never have to worry about it again.

All You Gotta Do Is, Act Naturally…

“… for Heaven, just Heaven, sends a fearful religion to cruel souls.” – Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, 1788

THE PATRIARCHAL RELIGIONS - the ones that see God as a father figure - have one thing in common: the misguided notion that the naked human body is an utterly reprehensible, prurient object – a terrible thing that must be covered up from public view. In such a society, it’s okay to exploit the poor and deceive the masses – so long as you keep your trousers on!

How else is it possible that some humans can wander into an old-growth forest with all its splendor and majesty and breath-giving beauty – and whip out their chainsaws? Me, I could only think of whipping off my clothes and jumping into the nearest river with a wild whoop of pure abandon. Call me a pagan. The raw beauty of Mother Nature is the only embodiment of divinity on this Earth that can make me fall to my knees and weep for joy.

A few years ago I was walking with a friend through the jungle towards a magnificent waterfall when I came upon a Land Rover full of forestry officers. I nodded a friendly greeting and one of the men came over, ogled my companion, and asked me point blank: “Have you seen anyone swimming naked around here?” I was taken aback. Was this guy a mind reader or something? I responded evenly: “Why do you ask?” The fat forestry officer with the sleazy aura of a Hollywood-type South American border guard explained conspiratorially: “We don’t want people to come into our state forest reserve and do immoral things.”

If I could beam myself back to that instant in time and space, I would have retorted: “Do immoral things? What, you mean like LOG the place? You don’t wish to see this beautiful country DENUDED, is that right?”

Instead, I merely smiled sardonically and walked on, shaking my head in disbelief. For hours afterward I felt an involuntary shudder whenever the image of that hypocritical sleazebag flashed into my head. Good heavens, the wriggling can of worms some folks have for brains! Perhaps I ought to put up a sign outside every forest reserve: “SNOG, DON’T LOG!” Or “DON’T BE RUDE, COME IN NUDE!”


Is it any wonder, then, that in a patriarchal society, prominent people are often the target of sexual innuendoes and outright scandal? The idea of “immorality” is always applied to sexual indiscretion, but never to breaking the Golden Rule - Do as you would be done by – which is, essentially and ultimately, the only true measure of morality.

[Originally published in JOURNAL ONE, 1996. First posted 1 February 2007. Reposted 7 August 2014, 5 June 2015 & 30 December 2016]