Facts. Of A Sort.

Idle minds are the devil's playground. And it seems my mind is very often idle these days. So, in order to avoid Lucifer, Beelzebub and co moving in, I've taken to reading FACTS. (Facts to be pronounced with raised eyebrows, pulled down lower lip and exaggerated haughty voice. Why? Coz they are FACTS!)

I would describe these facts as useless, except that I'm sure that somewhere out there a sociologist/anthropologist/zoologist or whatever-ologist is creaming his panties over these esoteric grains of knowledge.

Here are said facts - in bold - with my humble opinion - not in bold, since it is supposed to be humble - attached.









The housefly regurgitates its food and eats it again.
A very useful ability. Gross, and bound to ensure a barren love life, but has anybody ever
heard of a housefly that died of hunger?





Some sailors believed that if there is a cat on a ship, it means it is a lucky trip.
Didn't they also believe that having a woman on a ship was considered unlucky? So what if it was a female cat?



Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was named Lew Alcindor when he was born.
Lew Alcindor just doesn't have the same ring to it. Say it after me now. Karrrrreeeeeem Abdoooooool Jabbbbbbbbbarrrrrrr...










Fingernails grow about 3 times faster than toenails.
Chew on that!




Cher wore braces as an adult.
And the Osmonds obviously didn't...




The Poison- Arrow frog can kill about 2,200 people.
May I add a few of my gruesome ex-bosses to your hitlist, Mr. Poison-Arrow Frog, sir?




Notaphily is someone who collects bank notes.
And a necrophilly is?




Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US President whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal". William Jefferson Clinton is the 2nd.
There's really nothing to add to this, is there?







The only insect that can turn its head 360 degrees is the praying mantis.
That ain't nuffink! Linda Blair can do that AND spit out a pint of green pea soup!




At Disneyland they have hundreds of wild domesticated cats running around the park. They never come out during the day because there's too many people, but the reason they're there is to catch the mice.
Okay, this is literally like something out of a...well, Disney cartoon!




An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.
Something tells me the tango never made it big in Bellingham.

When Coca-Cola began to be sold in China, they used characters that would sound like "Coca-Cola" when spoken. Unfortunately, what they turned out to mean was "Bite the wax tadpole".
Is this Chinese code language for "suck my dick"?

The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.
There are more than a hundred billion crayons??? There's a colour called Periwinkle Blue???

Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
And Charlie Brown had, what? Three strands of hair? The irony is beautiful, innit?

In the movie "Toy Story", the carpet designs in Sid's hallway is the same as the carpet designs in "The Shining."

As if the idea of your toys coming alive at night isn't freaky enough by itself...

Clinophobia is the fear of beds.
Well, it could have been worse. Imagine if it was clitophobia.

Sigh...I'm getting neither funnier, nor wittier, am I?

The Column. Uncensored.

On (or is that In?) hindsight, I should have known that my last column for NST would be heavily edited. I mean, what was I thinking? Writing such a risque piece for a stodgy establishment like mine? I don't think I'll live to see the day when talk about condoms, porn and the missionary position will be printed in my paper. And no, I'm not bitching, nor am I angry or bitter about it. I completely understand why the cuts had to happen. Seriously!

But thanks to the blogsphere, the original incarnation of that dirty ditty will see the light of day. So, here it is. Bigger, longer and uncut.

Tun Dr. Mahathir must be sorely disappointed in us. After all, hasn't he for the longest time wished, hoped and aimed for a Malaysian population of 70 million souls?

And instead of heeding the old man's call to be fruitful and multiply, what do we do? We go and reduce our birth rates from an ego-boosting 6.2 to a measly, morale-sapping 2.2. Shameful, really.

I for one, know exactly who is at fault. Ladies and gentlemen, the finger of blame should be pointed at none other than Ananda Krishnan.

Yes, the billionaire industrialist is to blame for the lack of fruit falling from our loins these days. No, this is not the plot for the latest James Bond movie. My reason for blaming him can be summed up in one word: Astro.

Think about it. What do most of us do when we go home these days? Do we rush home, tear off our clothes and jump into bed in a frenzy of lust. I wish.

No. We plop ourselves down in front of our flat-screen plasma TVs, turn on our decoders and gobble up the latest tele-novela on Astro Ria, the newest never-ending drama on Vanaavil, the current soap on Wah Loi Toi and the flavour of the week on American Idol.

And what about Saturdays and Sundays? What used to be date night is now more often becoming a night where we men would rather watch 22 other men sweating it out on a football field a zillion miles away instead of cozying up to our better halves. And don't forget those European football games in the wee hours of weekday mornings. Since we all have to be at work the next morning, what are the only things left to sacrifice? Sleep and sex of course!

But, it's not solely Ananda Krishnan's fault.

U.P.M, I think, had a point when it said men were at fault for the declining number of Pampers consumers in the country.

Think of 1980s fashion. I for one don't believe it's purely coincidental that birth rates plummeted in the 90s. Remember those crotch-hugging jeans of the 80s that all but cut off the blood flow to the nether regions? I don't have scientific evidence to back me on this, but I dare say all that confinement was not good for the unborn children we men had swimming inside us. I mean, how would you feel if you were stuck in a car all day with the windows rolled up? A trifle toasted?

Then there's the issue of underwear. I clearly remember the kind of underwear my grandfather - a fertile fellow if there ever was one - used to wear. They were either the Crocodile/Scuba brand briefs (spectacularly unstylish, very roomy), or striped, baggy boxers.

And what do we wear these days? Tight, 'bikini style' briefs designed to make a cocktail sausage resemble a frankfurter. Very flattering, I'm sure. But all that mashing up is bound to do some damage. No wonder my grandpa had 7 kids while I still don't have any little Marcs scampering around.

Equally culpable are those 7-11 joints out there, with the rows and rows of colourful condoms (some of them are more gaudily packaged than candy!) neatly stacked on the front counter. Where would we (or should I say, wouldn't we) be, if these slimy pieces of rubber had 50 years ago been as widely dispensed in sundry shops? And ended up in the wallets of our forefathers? The next time you find yourself reaching for a condom in 7-11, think of what the wise men of Monty Python told us – every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great.

And what about pornography? Surely there's some blame to be accorded in that direction too. 50 years ago, when 'blue' movies weren't so widely available, most folk were satisfied to 'do it' the good old-fashioned way – missionary style.

But now, after being weaned on years and years of illicit porn viewings, men are under pressure to live up to the skills displayed by all those pony-tailed, mucho-macho dudes with elephant trunks hanging between their legs.

Now, the trusted missionary position is no longer adequate. Instead, we've got ourselves twisting into positions and formations that even contortionists would find difficult to replicate.

Yet, most of these fancy techniques don't have the one crucial thing the missionary position does when it comes to sowing oats – gravity on its side. After all, isn't it easier to walk downhill instead of uphill?

But thinking about it, perhaps it's better to have fewer kids these days. I mean, I certainly don't want to have any while the nation's education system is still – to use a Mahathirism – flip-flopping. Or while the killers of sweet little girls and boys are still walking free. Or while nimrod politicians still tussle for power and prominence.

Maybe it's a good idea to hold back on trying to reclaim our pride until we get these things sorted out first. After all, we still have Astro, sexy underwear, colourful condoms and illicit porn to keep us occupied in the meantime.

A Moment to Cherish

Somebody once said that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
As I was driving to work today, I experienced one such moment. A moment of simple, yet breathtaking beauty that made me just glad to be alive.
I was in my car, making my way along the inner roads of Bangsar to the NST office. It was simply pouring down and visibility was simply terrible.
And then, as I rumbled up a little hillock, the rains began to abate and the skies started to clear. What happened next was surreal, beautiful and strangely hypnotic, all at once. The skies around me were all still a dull grey, but up ahead the evening sun was poking out through the angry clouds.
Shafts of radiant light began pouring out, each one clearly defined and illuminating the city below it an a soft, heavenly glow.
All around me, drops of rain were still pattering down. But, what was just moments ago furious drops of stinging water had wound down to steady drizzle. Water splashed off my windscreen, every drop splattering into smaller and smaller droplets.
It throbbed on my roof, a calming, hypnotic drumbeat, the rhythm much like that of a heart. All around me, the world seemed clean and fresh and magical. The rainwater seemed to have had an almost divine cleansing effect on creation.
The world too seemed to be in a slumber, the roads mostly empty, what cars there were crawling by at half pace and hardly a person to be seen anywhere.
It was in a word, beautiful. And coming as it did on the back of a pretty lousy week, where the ugliness of humanity once more made itself painfully apparent, it was a welcome and appreciated reminder that things are more than just about humans and human relationships.
Sometimes, man can be an isle. Sometimes, it is better to seek solace in the inanimate, or in nature, than it is in your fellow man.
Sometimes, it is better to be alone and cherish the solitude.

The battle of wills

I see you lying there before me, among the many others of your ilk.
Mysterious and magical, your face promises hidden and sultry delights I wouldn’t be able to find in any other.
And so, I decide that you it shall be. I pick you, choose you from all the rest and ask you to be mine.
I approach, my hands hungry to touch you, my eyes wanting to devour your every secret.
I pick you up. You weigh nothing, and I find it almost impossible to believe that under your feather-light weightlessness lies so wondrous a treasure.
I put you down on the cold, flat surface of the table in front of me.
As I run my hands all over your body, taking immense pleasure in the velvety smoothness of your skin, I wonder for a moment whether it is appropriate to do in public what I’m so blatantly doing to you now.
After all, I’ve been told that what we are now doing is the sort of thing that is only usually done in privacy, in solitude and in the closed confines of silent places.
And I tell myself, fuck it. And I continue.
But then, something happens. You turn off. You close yourself to me. I try to coax you to open, to reveal your innermost secrets to me but you don’t listen.
I try holding you in place. I try to keep you steady as I have my way with you. Yet, nothing works. You keep shutting me out. You keep brushing me away. You answer neither the gentle probings of my fingers nor the insistent strength of my sinews.
And I know I am losing you.
Then I realize there’s only one thing I can do. If I am to have you, I must first break you. Only when you lie helpless and unprotected will you obey my commands. Only when you are physically incapable of resisting me, will I be able to do with you as I will.
I know that you will never be the same if I do embark on this gruesome course. You will never be as beautiful again, inside and out. You will eventually come apart at the seams and fall to bits. You will be a shadow of the magnificent thing you are now.
But I don’t care. I must have you now and if having you means breaking you, break you I will.
And, break you I do. Without hesitancy, without doubt, without remorse, I break you.
I pick you and without batting an eyelid, snap your spine.
I hear the crunching and see the unnatural backward bend of your body and I know the deed is done.
I put you down again and note with satisfaction that you now lie open to me and indifferent to your fate.
And so I settle myself down to eat my roti canai and drink my Nescafe while I thumb through your pages.
Ahhh.....a meal and a good book. One of life's simple pleasures..

WHAT IF THEY LIVED?

Elvis
Elvis He would have probably have died sometime in mid-2006. In 2004, he'd have released, That's All Right: 50 Years On, his first album in 20 years. It would have been produced by Rick Rubin, and, like Rubin's work with Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, would have been bare, stripped down and minimal. It would have been hailed as one of the best albums of the year, Elvis best work since his Aloha from Hawaii concert and a shoo-in for a Grammy. It would have been the high point of a career that had gone seriously downhill since he narrowly cheated death in August 1977. Fans around the world watched with sadness as the King of Rock n' Roll's drug-fuelled lifestyle led to a downhill slope he never fully recovered from. His battle against the bulge was as well documented as his various aborted comeback attempts. The newer generations wondered what it was their parents saw in the foolish old man arthritically flailing about the stage, clearly doped up to his eyeballs and struggling to remember the words to his signature numbers. The only things that went worse than his music careers was his film work and his family life. Never the greatest of actors, his releases in the 80s were so bad they couldn't even be called B-grade movies. Bleary-eyed and paunchy, his romantic loverboy roles would have been hilarious if the lecherous pairings of Elvis with women young enough to be his granddaughters were not so paedophilic. Friends said he lost interest in his music, and in life itself, after Priscilla left him, taking Lisa Marie with her. A succession of incresingly vapid and hollow-eyed girlfriends did nothing to bring him out of his funk. At his funeral, his fans - the legion of once screaming teenyboppers now in their dotage - ruefully said said That's All Right was too little too late. They couldn't reconcile the bald and stooped old man, flabby gut hanging obscenely over his belt garter, to their memories of the sleek, gyrating Adonis of their sepia toned memories. They said it would have been better if the 1977 overdose had killed him.


James Dean
James Dean It was ironic that Dean cheated death while driving his Porsche Spyder only to die a few years later in the same car while playing the part of a stock-car driver.The first accident, in 1955, came as he had just burst on to the scene as a devilishly handsome movie star who seemed destined to be Hollywood's torch bearer for the next decade. For a while it seemed as if the car crash had smashed his future as gruesomely as it smashed his legs. But, with a determination that became the stuff of countless articles, anecdotes and stories, Dean fought his way back from the brink.In a coma for two months, and his legs mangled in the wreck, nobody expected him to pull through. But pull through he did. When asked in interviews later how he managed to steel himself for the 9 months of intense physiotherapy, Dean would always have a perplexed look in his eyes."What would you have expected me to do? Lie back and let the accident lick me? Stay an invalid for the rest of my life?" was his stock answer.He did admit that the crash made him reassess his life and throw himself more frenetically behind his work.In the decade that followed, he amassed a body of work that became legendary. Anything and everything he touched immediately turned to gold. The critics loved him, but the audiences loved him more. Drama, action, westerns, epics, comedies, horror - he did them all. Good guys, bad guys, fathers, sons, priests and playboys - he played them all. His romances became the stuff of legend, the most memorable being his courting of young Tina Turner. Their interracial relationship became the talk of the town and played as important a part in ending segregation as did Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on the bus. Even though the relationship eventually ended, Turner always referred to him after that as "the great love of my life".His second accident - this one fatal - occurred in 1967. His directoral debut, the movie was about an aging race car driver who is killed in the race that would have won him his first championship. Poignant and touching, with gripping race squences, the movie won Dean an unprecendented posthumous double Oscar - for best director and best actor. He won a five minute standing ovation at the ceremony. The scene of his crash was used in the movie, as was the actual footage of the desperate attempts to save his life. The tears were real.




Kurt Cobain
Everybody always predicted that Cobain was just crazy enough to one day take a gun to his head. Nobody would have ever, in a million years, thought he would end up as the quintessential suburban dad, complete with the minivan and white picket fence.It was on Oprah, in 2004, a full decade after he had left the music scene once and for all that he revealed how close the predictions came to coming true. He broke down - as everybody but Tom Cruise does on Oprah - and admitted that he had gone so far as to write out his suicide note and point a shotgun at his chin."I hadn't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music, along with really writing for too many years," he said, sobbing like a new-born babe."I was so high on heroin and valium that I had no idea what was going on around me. I just needed to escape. "And then I pulled the trigger. And nothing happened. I pulled the trigger over and over and nothing happened. So, I just went to sleep hoping I would never wake up again."I woke up the next day and found that the only reason my brains were not all over my wall was because I had forgotten to load the gun. It was then that I decided that it was either my music or my life," he said.That same day, Cobain held a press conference to announce his immediate retirement from music. He sold everything he had, bought a mid-sized house in a leafy Atlanta suburb and all but disappeared from the public eye.Rolling Stone called it "music's greatest loss since Lennon was killed". Time magazine put him on the front cover. CNN had an hour-long special report on him and his work with Nirvana. Everbody mourned his exit as leaving the industry so much the poorer, but Cobain himself has no regrets.As he told Oprah - "I'd rather be a live, ordinary man anytime over being a dead legend."