I have read much of the heart-rending testimony of authorities and lawmakers who are working so hard to press the Commission on Pornography to pass a clear guideline that would arrest the growing moral decay of Indonesia. As of yesterday's posting of the Jakarta Post, which was prominently displayed at the front page, Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin said the "country needed a pornography law to "reverse the situation" of an increasingly liberal society.
"We are concerned by the moral liberalization that will lead the nation to the brink of collapse, unless it is stopped as soon as possible," he said."
It is clear to me that the Indonesian Government must be given the power to suppress the words and images which are the causes of sexually motivated insanity and crimes.
I myself make my living with words, and I am now ashamed. There is the word "motherfucker" one time in my published article OUT, as in, "Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker." (Ever since that word was published, way back in 1989, children have been attempting to have intercourse with their mothers. When it will stop no one knows.).
So in view of the terrible damage freely circulated ideas can do to a society, and particularly to innocent children, I beg Indonesian government to delete from my works all thoughts which might be dangerous. I want to help the elected leaders in bringing my thoughts into harmony with their own and thus into harmony with the thoughts of those who elected them.
That is democracy.
Attempting to make amends at this late date, I call to the attention of the lawmakers the fundamental piece of obscenity from which all others spring, the source of all evil, the taproot of the deadly poisonous tree. Kill the taproot and the tree dies, and with it its deadly fruits, which are rape, sodomy, wife-beating, child abuse, divorce, abortion, adultery, gonorrhea, herpes, and AIDS.
I will read this most vile of all pieces of so-called literature aloud, so that those who dare can feel the full force of it.
I recommend that all persons under 14, and all persons under 30 not accompanied by an adult, should leave the room. Those remaining who have heart trouble or respiratory difficulties, or who are prone to commit rape at the slightest provocation, may want to stick their fingers in their ears. And what I ask you to endure so briefly now is what the selfless members of the pornography commission do day after day for the good of the children. I am simply going to dip you in filth, and pull you out of it and wash you off immediately. At terrible risk of infection, they have to wallow in pornography. They are so fearless. We might think of them as sort of sewer astronauts.
All right. Everybody ready? Tighten your G-strings. Here we go:
Article 28E
(1) Every person shall be free to choose and to practice the religion of his/her choice, to choose one's education, to choose one's employment, to choose one's citizenship, and to choose one's place of residence within the state territory, to leave it and to subsequently return to it.
(2) Every person shall have the right to the freedom to believe his/her faith (kepercayaan), and to express his/her views and thoughts, in accordance with his/her conscience.
(3) Every person shall have the right to the freedom to associate, to assemble and to express opinions.
source: The Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia
That Godless loop of disgusting sexuality, friends and neighbors, happens to be a basic law of this country. How could this have happened? Some communistic, pederastic, wife-beating congressman must have attached that when Indonesia was declaring her independence. It should be expunged with all possible haste, in order that innocent children can be safe again.
Adolf Hitler blamed the Jews for inspiring every sort of sexual ugliness in Germany, so he tried to kill them all. Say what you like about him, incidentally, it can't be denied that he led an exceedingly clean life sexually. In the end, he made an honest woman of his only sexual partner, Eva Braun. And lest we forget, the recently dead Slobodan Milosevic likewise expunged Moslems from his country under the guise of moral renewal and nationalism.
Oh dear - have I slipped into pornography yet again? It is so easy to do. Hitler was wrong about the Jews. It is unclean images which are responsible for unclean sexuality.
In order to protect innocent German children, all he had to do was get rid of the First Amendment. In no way can this be interpreted as an anti-Semitic act.
Apparently, it is not enough in Indonesia that sex crimes of every sort are already against the law, and are punished with admirable severity. It is up to the leaders, and particularly to the large Moslem organizations, to persuade a large part of the citizenry that even the most innocent fashion which was once was perfectly legal, and even celebrated in some godless quarters, because of the permissiveness of the Constitution must be prohibited, and arouse the thoroughly misinformed citizenry to rise up in righteous wrath to smash the aforementioned article.
As such, ancient or even old art forms, so long as it involves a naked woman, would no longer be allowed to be viewed in the counry. For instance, how can anyone now appreciate ancient Greece's interpretation of "Leda and the Swan"?
After all, even Michaelangelo's 1530 rendition of such tale is a testament to Zoophilia (from the Greek Zôon, "animal", and Philia, "friendship" or "love"), which is a paraphilia, defined as an affinity or sexual attraction by a human to a (non-human) animal. Such individuals who engage in such acts are called zoophiles. The more recent terms zoosexual and zoosexuality also describe the full spectrum of human/animal attraction. A separate term, bestiality (more common in mainstream usage), refers to human/animal sexual activity. To avoid confusion about the meaning of zoophilia - which may refer to the affinity/attraction, paraphilia, or sexual activity - this article uses zoophilia for the former, and zoosexuality for the sexual act. The two terms are independent: not all sexual acts with animals are performed by zoophiles, neither are all zoophiles interested in being sexual with animals.
And if you may indulge my point, I shall yet again post here another blatant pornography that must immediately be deleted!
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
source: Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the Republic of Indonesia has been a long-standing signatory since 1948.
Full support to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must be immediately withdrawn, as continued participation would subject Indonesians to what Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin referred to as the growing liberalization of the country.
Apparently, the collapse of a nation does not rest on the gross ineptitude of leaders, the infringement of human rights, the blatant corruption of leaders, the loss of faith in morality, and the death of economy. Oh no, you incompetent political scientists, the collapse of a nation depends on one piece of ugly literature called pornography. Continued reading of such materials might somehow cause a person to wind up in a furnace for all eternity, which would be worse (if you consider its duration) than being raped, murdered, and then mutilated by a man maddened by dirty pictures.
I am not here to ridicule Muhammadiyah chairman Din Syamsuddin or any of Indonesia's moral and even elected leaders. He in fact won my sympathy. He may not a be television evangelist, although he probably preached on radio from time to time. (They all do.) He may be a profoundly sincere Moslem and family man, doing a pretty good job no doubt spreading the teachings and life of Mohammed as he understood it, sexually decent, and not pathologically fond of the goods of this Earth and so on. He is merely trying to hold together an extended family, a support system far more dependable than anything the Indonesian Government could put together, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, whose bond is commonly held beliefs and attitudes. (I had studied anthropology, after all, and so knew in my bones that human beings can't like life very much if they don't belong to a clan associated with a specific piece of real estate.)
So the Commission on Pornography, a traveling show about dirty books and pictures put on the road, is a much-needed moral renewal.
This above all should take precedence, instead of the crazy quilt of ideas all its members had to profess put the Council of Trent to shame for mean-spirited, objectively batty fantasias: that it was good that civilians could buy drugs so easily; that anybody doing or thinking acts other than the preferred lifestyle should be called "infidels" at every opportunity; that the contents of wombs were Government property; that people with AIDS, except for those who got it from mousetrapped blood transfusions, had asked for it; that a billion-dollar general's house was well worth the price; and on and on.
Others may find the Commission on Pornography as blatantly show business, a way for the moral groups to draw attention to its piety by means of headlines about sex, and to imply yet again that those in favor of freedom of speech were enthusiasts for sexual exploitation of children and rape and so on.
I have a resigned, world-weariness about much of my writing, as you can so clearly see, for I have accepted the futility of railing against the evils and injustices of life.
To be 'anti-infringement of free speech' makes as much sense to me as being 'anti-earthquakes'. We are at the mercy of our biology: people have chemicals that control their brains, which are sometimes subject to weather.
So it is with grace that I, as a newfound resident of Indonesia, do hereby obey and follow her laws, such as the original form of the Pornography Bill which "allows the imposing of fines on women who refused to cover "sensitive" body parts, such as their hair, shoulders, midriffs and legs.
Violators risk jail terms and fines up to Rp 2 billion (about US$214,000)."
In relation to this, the penalty for killing someone in cold-blood, a little past the strike of midnight of a new year, for no apparent reason other than being served a restaurant bill, in plain sight of all innocent bystanders, the penalty is only Rp 100 million (about US$10,000), plus a two-year suspended sentence.
In deference to the recent issue that has idiotically gained airtime on TV, print publication, current affairs, and my friend's petition, whose identity we shall protect from the authorities and so shall hide under the pseudonym Wusamah Margono Halimun, I am, in case you-eavesdropping-rumor-mongering authorities happen to understand a bit of English and therefore would like to know what my name is, or aliases if any, which is Manda Azhairie ... or Tom Cruise; I am herewith reprinting an article I'd written when the issue first came out.
My ignorance ignited my acquiescence, my moronic belief that such an issue would have died its natural death. Unfortunately, it didn't.
After all, the only way for a bad thing to exist is for the good people to do nothing.
I'm not good. Never was and never will be. But some of the people still are.
Therein lies the hope.
A KISS IS JUST A KISS, A SIGH IS JUST A SIGH By N. Mark V. Castro
You arrive at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport after being away for some time, you see the woman you love patiently waiting for you, and caught between the winds of winter and summer, you kiss her passionately, with much longing in your heart, with much happiness that, at last, you are home ... then they cuff your hands and lock you up in jail for 10 years.
That, in a nutshell, is part of the New Criminal Law.
"The proposed draft includes provisions banning public kissing, unmarried couples from living together and adultery. Offenders caught kissing in the open could be jailed up to 10 years and fined as much as 300 million rupiah (33,000 dollars) under new penalties," according to AFP News, France.
As most expats go, we tend to look for things that we neglected or enjoyed back home in a new place where we insist on it being our new homes. We may have different views about daily living, even belief, but scratch that skin and you will find Malay blood coursing through it. Hence, Indonesia and the Philippines have shared a symbiotic relationship over the years, as neighbors, as trade partners, as allies, as friends, as ASEAN brothers.
But the proposed New Criminal Law range from the almost apologetic to the openly apoplectic. One is positively apocalyptic, invoking the wrath of God to fall on those human creations that do not extol His glory.
But a kiss ... I have meticulously searched all the Holy Books known to man and have not come across a single entry on God's desire to punish any living creature from kissing each other, either in public or in private. And yet, here we have gifted men walking on earth with us who invoke morality and righteousness as though only they were ordained with wisdom by God. Given the chance, I wouldn't be surprised if they chose who got Wind or Sun today. Ironically, sinners or saints both get the same privilege under God.
"This is in response to the wishes of the people," Abdul Ghani Abdullah, Indonesia's director general of legislation, told the Associated Press news agency.
What people? Which people? All 200 million of them? Besides, even if an ordinary kiss gets out of hand in public, there is already an existing law that curtails them. Why add more? It's not like we see young teenagers or even adults kissing in public all the time. I have spent a lot of time in Indonesia's premiere malls and have not come across a couple of kids spending hours on the bench or even standing up kissing each other. I barely see any couple kissing each other inside the theatres.
What people? Which people? Which country?
Mankind is replete with history of people kissing. Artists, poets, singers have all written much about a kiss. And here we are, way into the birth of a new millennium, trying to curtail it? Wait, wait, wait and backtrack a bit. Are we going forward or backward? Do you really have to spend taxpayers' money for two years debating over public kissing? Shouldn't that money be allocated to the poor instead? Besides, I'd rather prefer a couple kissing in public anytime, anywhere than two people fighting.
"Kissing in public is a crime if the people around are not happy and lodge a complaint. But if they think it's all right, then no action will be taken," justice ministry official Abdul Gani Abdullah told AFP as reported by Matthew Moore, Herald Correspondent in Jakarta.
["Well, my officemate stinks and I'm not happy! Shouldn't that be a crime as well?"]
But who decides when it becomes a crime and when it isn't, the public? Therefore anybody can make an accusation. This is a big headache waiting to happen when it could have been avoided to begin with. A kiss? A kiss becomes a crime? What kind of kiss? A French kiss? A peck? Isn't there a law that prohibits acts of lasvisciousness? Must we go to the extreme of deciding which kiss is criminal? It wasn't even a question of whether or not it's immoral. It goes right away to being criminal.
A kiss.
Articles 469 and 473 dictate that anyone may be charged with violating pornography laws --- which carry sentences between 5 and 12 years.
The bill couldn't even pin down what constitutes "lewd" or "pornographic". It almost makes you think their authors spent or plan to spend a great deal of time dwelling on it or are engaged in some kind of acts projecting their fantasies and prescribing punishments for them. I can almost picture their research assistants watching stripshows all over the world intently in dark joings and telling grinning acquaintances who espy them in scornful tones, "In aid of legislation."
But this is the sort of seemingly trivial thing that has not very trivial consequences. You can't afford to dismiss it blithely. I can appreciate how some parents might feel at having the frail sensibilities of their children assaulted by ads in newspapers, TV and billboards that show women (and men) in a state that little improves on the one they got launched into the world in. Though while at this, surely the frail sensibilities of those children stand to be more ravaged by ads that ask them to change the color of their skin through skin whiteners? Yet no MP has thought to protest this. But these bills do not make things better, as decency goes, they make things worse. This is one cure that is patently worse than the affliction.
At the very least, it poses a danger not to pornography but to art. A lesson in caution, how do you decide Leonardo Da Vinci's work on The Man? Further, you likewise cannot invite your Egyptian neighbors for their cultural dance because they show their belly buttons for their belly dancing. And you can now see the decline on traditional dance and music such as Dangdut, Jaipongan, and even Balinese culture. All these cultural values that have been handed down from one generation to another, all these gone, forever erased from the memory, and all because of a legislative act that wanted to be Godly?
Indeed, pornography is not an easy animal to identify. Naked bodies, particularly as those locked in the exchange of body fluids, the thing that particularly stokes the wrath of the authors of these bills, should be interpreted in context.
The five bills themselves, vying with one another to ferret out evil and cast it into eternal fire, are a surefire guarantee of a plunge to an artistic Stone Age, where only "The Sound of Music" can be shown. Maybe not even that, as some idiot can always say there is something ungodly in Julie Andrews' choice of a widower to a nunnery.
More than to art, the bills pose a clear and present danger to freedom of expression. Or indeed to freedom of the press. This is not something only tabloids should be protesting against, all of media should. The bill is especially frightening in that respect.
Can an idea be more insidious, or idiotic?
I remember editing my college newspaper and often getting into arguments with the board of regents simply because I refused to let them touch it. Whenever they would so much as open their lips to declare that ours was a free press, I'd laugh right out in the auditorium and say that it's as ridiculous as having the Church edit Penthouse. You can't have media and preside over it. You have media and you let them polic it themselves. You let it mature. Otherwise, settle for brochures.
And finally, these bills pose a danger to society itself. I don't know if this is part of a plan to shift gears towards authoritarianism or fundamentalism or any other "-ism," but plan or not, it can be used to shift gears toward iron-fisted rule. It is all a piece with the rhetoric and practice of anti-terrorism and with calls for emergency measures to meet all sort of threats, for the most part of government's own making. Anti-smut has always been the Trojan horse of fascism. It was so in Germany, when Nazi youth raided cabarets and Jewish synagogues alike, proclaiming both to be obscenities. Ironically, the cabarets became the last bastion of defense, in the form of satirical revues, against the coming of the night. Yet similarly, what has FPI been doing again as of late?
Give bureaucrats and ass-lickers power and they are not going to stop at pornography, they are not going to stop at anything. The point is not to choose between the five bills, to embrace the one as more reasonable than the other. The point is to reject them altogether. The job of policing the ranks of media belongs to media, however they have often been remiss in it. That is so for all excesses of media, from lack of sensitivity to lack of taste.
The alternative is more than worse, it is disastrous. In a free and democratic state, no one is allowed to enter your house under the name of Allah or the Government, unless they have an arrest warrant or they're with Keannu Reeves playing Constantine.
You start policing the media and you're inviting everyone to polic your house. If so, then it's time to quit calling this a democratic country and start calling this Republic of Coca Cola, which will always be a friend to my country, Republic of Pepsi Cola.
The laws also propose to ban black magic and witchcraft.
Indonesia, in her attempt to rid further Western influences, is ironically moving more and more towards the early mistakes of the West.
"Anyone using black magic to hurt or kill faces five year's jail," but Indriyanto Seno Adji, a member of the Government appointed committee responsible for the laws conceded it was very difficult to define such offences in a criminal code.
Black magic and witchcraft.
One word comes to mind: INQUISITION.
So we may agree to disagree. But we all want to have a better world than the one we found, the question is: at what point do we sacrifice a person's right? A person's right, remember, something that even God would not dare coerce, interfere with, banish or some such. As I've said, come tomorrow, both the sinner and the saint would share under the same sun, breathe the same polluted air and live in the same shrinking planet. Imagine giving that ultimate power to your local priest or Imam.
I'd shake your hands as a gentleman, but then again, I'm afraid it might be against the law.
N. Mark Castro is a Corporate Crisis Management Strategist in the Philippines and US, PR / Media Adviser, and has served in English-based international magazines as former TEE OFF Golf Magazine editor-in-chief, MAN Magazine columnist, MABUHAY Magazine columnist, Filofax columnist for Manila Bulletin; In the business field, he has been an International Business Negotiator, and a Strategic Business Analyst. He specialises in strategic communications planning, media relations and business advocacy. He has likewise been involved in film & TV production in the Philippines. He has broad international experience in organization business structures across Southeast Asia (Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia) and business partnerships in Europe (Italy) and North America.
He has served as a managing consultant to Singapore-based Enaya Management Consultants, Pte. Ltd., and has held positions as Strategic Business Analyst, General Manager, and COO for PT. Bunda Global Indonesia. He is the CEO of media group consulting (mcg), a Makati-based public relations firm in the Philippines which is presently a consultant for several congressmen, mayors, and multinational companies; EVP / Corporate Communications of Titan Brigandine, Inc., a mobile marketing solutions company in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore; and he likewise sits in the board of Hexagon Envirosystems, Inc., a large-scale water-treatment Italian-Philippine company whose main principal is W.T.D. Trattamento Acque, s.r.l. of Italy.
Presently he is the COO of INFINITI Professional Development Centre (a subsidiary of P.T. Bunda Global Pertama), and is a Senior Media Adviser at IDA SUDOYO & ASSOCIATES PR Firm in Indonesia. He also sits as a Corporate Communications Director / Lead International Negotiator for Malaysian-Indonesian mining company P.T. Total Tenaga Prima Persada.
Thief of Baghdad Jakarta By
N. Mark Castro The Jakarta Post
AFTER
3 YEARS of living safely in Jakarta, a thief finally succeeded in
reminding me that her glorious streets are not safe.
Yesterday
in Cik Ditiro, Menteng, a motorcycle-riding thief was able to snatch
away the mobile phone I was using while walking towards another
building. There are several theories behind that walk:
First, it was
better to walk a couple of buildings away going to my destination
instead of taking the car;
Second, I was a moron.
I
heard from my colleagues that this is a common practice in Jakarta.
Not the walk, but the motorcycle-riding thieves that pry mobile
phones away from unsuspecting pedestrians. Initially, I thought of
running after the thief, but then I realized that there weren't any
nearby phone booths where I could rip open my suit, change into my
outfit, and fly up, up and away. Nor was I donning a red suit
equipped with a lightning fast feet.
No.
I wasn't wearing any of those. Instead, I was a mere mortal that
felt helpless looking at the thief as I ate his dust.
I
have mixed emotions until now, actually. Perhaps it's what
psychologists refer to as shock. Or that maybe my subconscious is
simply telling me that I had it coming.
Thieves.
I
would've wanted to be angry, to get back at him, to report it to
cops whom I'm certain could do nothing as they interview me, a
useless witness.
"What
was he wearing?" the cop would probably ask.
"Penguin
suit?" I don't know.
"Did
you get to read the plate number of the motorcycle?"
"Yeah,
satu, tiga, um, ah, how do you say eight in Bahasa Indonesia?"
Case
dismissed. Another idiot in the long lines of idiots they've had so
far.
But
is there a way by which ordinary pedestrians like me can seek
grievance from all these?
Technologically
speaking, the IMEI of mobile phones could be a lifesaver. Cops could
zero in on its location by keying in the IMEI and render the phone
useless; or trace wherever the thief gets to fence the merchandise by
advising distributors of my phone's IMEI, or triangulate via GPS
and catch the thief. You could not only arrest my particular thief,
but you can actually negate the viability of mobile phone thievery,
if can call it as such, by making it financially useless for them to
do so.
Should
I talk to the cops?
Or
should I consider it as payback for my own notorious thievery in the
past. Oh, the many hearts I've stolen from the numerous phones I've
used; the many business deals I've stolen from competitors; the
many infamous ways by which I've stolen opportunities from others,
I suppose.
I
can't recall any specific detail but I'm sure from another
person's mind I may have been a thief in one way or another … the
only difference is such that I'm wearing an Ermenigildo Zegna suit,
driven in a company car, and command my nefarious plans in a
boardroom while my colleague, if you may, covers the streets of
Jakarta.
We're
all thieves, in one way or another, I suppose. Just look at Natural
Geographic's daily show and it's an endless stream of lions
stealing young gazelles, hawks swooping down to snatch another
animal's young, or hyenas racing fast to go for the kill. In
Darfur, the government continues to steal decent lives from its
citizens. In Iraq, the thievery does not stop with the goods … it
begins with people's lives. In Indonesia and the Philippines (both
countries currently exchanging places for the top spot in
corruption), government officials have been known for its own
thieving ways. In America, well, I leave it up to your imagination.
When
will it stop?
When
the citizens complain?
Or
when we do?
A
thief once burglarized a Zen monk meditating in the privacy of his
home. The Zen monk stopped and looked at him and told the thief where
he kept his valuables and continued meditating. The thief left but
was later apprehended by the cops. The cops asked the Zen monk if the
person was the thief and the monk said: "No, I showed him where
they are. I gave it to him. Had he stayed, I could have given him
this bright full moon!"
The
thief at once had an awakening and decided to become a Zen student.
Come
2008, I may not be a Zen monk or student, but I'll be walking the
streets of Jakarta with the same nonchalance and confidence I always
had. The thief may have succeeded in stealing my phone, he deserved
that; but he did not succeed in stealing my faith in people.
Come
2008, perhaps, we could all do our share and stop ourselves from our
own thieving ways … in ways that steal the very smile from others.
Come
2008, perhaps, I could wear that red suit under my shirt.
My
kid brother Ted recently won the Chess Competition held in Las Vegas,
Nevada, where he traveled all the way from his house in San Francisco
to play with a bunch of wooden sticks with a bunch of grown men.
He got paid.
Big time.
Which made me realize about two things:
1) I should kill my guidance counselor for telling me that there wasn't any money to be paid in games;
2) I should have played more games.
So
there, aside from doing a hard-target research as to where my former
guidance counselor is, I would like to congratulate my kid brother Ted
... and all the games we played ... which he learned from me.
Games People Play By N. Mark Castro
What game was ''Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.''
If you
answered, ''Spin the Bottle,'' then I frankly do not want to know any
more about your childhood. What I'm referring to is, of course, the
classic board game ''Clue,'' in which you try to solve a murder by
using a logical process of deduction to narrow down the various
possibilities until your brother has to go to the bathroom, at which
point you cheat by looking at the answer cards. At least that was
always my strategy.
In Monopoly, my strategy was to be the car.
The car was one of the little metal game-board pieces; the other ones,
as I recall, were the hat, the dog, the shoe, the guy on the horse and
the iron.
I never wanted to be the shoe, and I definitely did not want
to be the iron. I wanted to be the car because I could make car noises
by vibrating my lips -- brrrrmmmmm! -- and drive the car around on the
floor to amuse myself while waiting my turn, which is mainly what you
do in Monopoly, which I always considered to be one of the most boring
activities on the planet.
But I had friends who loved it; when we
played, they became insane, money-grasping capitalist pigs. They'd
crouch next to the game board, looking over the tops of their hotels
with greed-crazed eyes, watching me throw the dice, waiting for the
little car to come around the corner, motoring innocently along --
brrrrmmmmm! -- until it stopped on -- Hah! --Boardwalk, and they'd
triumphantly announce that I owed them some huge amount of pretend
money that they knew to the exact pretend cost of landing on Boardwalk
without looking at the cards.
I'm not saying that all of these friends went on to become attorneys, but it was a healthy percentage.
I
will say this about Monopoly: I was better at it than at chess.
My
problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as
soon as possible.
''Let's get this over with!'' was their battle cry.
If the rules had allowed it, my pieces would all have charged out onto
the board simultaneously the instant the game started.
Unfortunately,
this was not legal, so they had to content themselves with charging out
one at a time, pretty much at random, and immediately getting captured.
Here's what it they sounded like:
PAWNS: Oh, no! They got the Knight!
KING: Darn it!
BISHOP: I'll go next!
KING: Good luck!
PAWNS: Oh, no! They got the Bishop!
KING: Darn it!
QUEEN: I'll go next!
KING: Good luck!
PAWNS: Oh, no! They got the Queen!
KING: Good! I mean, Darn it!
Because
of the level of my chess game, I was able -- even against a weak
opponent, such as my younger brothers or the dog -- to get myself
checkmated in under three minutes.
I challenge any computer to do it
faster.
The one board game that I still play is Scrabble. I like
it because, unlike most other board games, which basically are
pointless time-consumers, in Scrabble you can do something mentally
stimulating and worthwhile: like, making naughty words.
There is nothing quite
like the sense of intellectual accomplishment that comes from spelling
out, say, ''b-o-s-o-m,'' knowing that it will be sitting there on the
board for hours, staring up at your opponents.
The problem with Scrabble is that it leads to arguments like this:
FIRST PLAYER: ... e, e, t. There!
SECOND PLAYER: ''gleet?'' What the hell is "gleet''?
FIRST PLAYER: I have no idea, but if you can use ''pood,'' I can use "gleet.''
The
thing is, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, both ''gleet''
and ''pood'' really are words, as are ''kloof,'' ''fremitus'' and
''woomera.''
It turns out that, if you have a big enough dictionary,
just about everything is a word, which means you can put down any old
letters you want and claim it's a legal move.
Of course, you have
to be careful whom you're playing with.
The number of violent
Scrabble-related incidents is on the rise. I have here a news item from
an old news clipping. Here are the first two sentences of
this item, which I am not making up:
"A woman was charged with second-degree assault on Wednesday night after
her husband was struck in the forehead with a Scrabble game board. The incident
happened when the man tried to restrain the woman after she threw the
Thanksgiving turkey into the yard.''
The item does not state why
the woman threw the turkey, but I would not be surprised to learn that
a word like ''gleet'' had something to do with it.
I would also not be
surprised if, next Thanksgiving, this couple leaves the Scrabble board
in the closet and just throws the turkey, which sounds like more fun.
Because you can be a better person.
I bet you know somebody who seems to be perfect -- somebody who always
looks terrific; somebody who manages to devote plenty of time to both
family and career; somebody whose house is spotless, whose children are
well-behaved and whose dog does not smell as if it sleeps on a bed of
decomposing raccoons. You wonder how that person ''does it all,'' don't
you? Well, stop wondering and do something! Start right now! Get up off
the sofa, put on some active sportswear and kill that person with a
crowbar!
No, seriously, you need to make some New Year's resolutions so that
you can become a better you -- a more-attractive you, an organized you,
a you that is ... well, less like you.
At this point, you are saying: "Mark, I would love nothing better
than to be less like myself, but every year I make the same New Year's
resolution, which is that I will lose weight, and currently my thighs
are the diameter of the trans-Alaska pipeline.''
Don't feel bad! Many people have trouble sticking to their
resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In
1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored
the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week, the
psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their
resolutions; after two weeks, we have no idea what happened, because
the psychologists had quit monitoring.
''We just lost our motivation,'' they reported. "Also, we found ourselves eating Twinkies by the case.''
So we see that keeping resolutions can be difficult. But you CAN do it, if you follow these fail-safe practical tips:
1. BE REALISTIC
Many people give up because they ''set their sights too high.'' In
making a New Year's resolution, pick a goal that you can reasonably
expect to attain, as we see in these examples:
Unrealistic Goal: "In the next month, I will lose 25 pounds.''
Realistic Goal: "Over the next year, taking it an ounce or two at a
time, I will gain 25 pounds, and my face will bloat like an Iraqi military
life raft.''
Unrealistic Goal: "I will learn to speak Chinese.''
Realistic Goal: "I will order some Chinese food.''
Unrealistic Goal: "I will read a good book.''
Realistic Goal: "I will go to
Aksara bookstore, check-out English-reading pretty Indonesian girls,
examine the outsides of some good books,
then waddle over to the part where I can say hello to these pretty
Indonesian girls.''
Unrealistic Goal: "I will do volunteer work for a worthy cause.''
Realistic Goal: "I will date Golda
who continues to feed refugees and convince her that if she really
wanted to do something charitable, that she should go out with me
instead.''
2. THINK POSITIVE
To succeed, you must believe in yourself. Write this motivational
statement in large letters on a piece of paper and tape it someplace
where you will see it often, such as on the inside of your eyeglasses: "I can do it, and I will do it! Starting next year!''
3. LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES
Let's say that, like millions of weight-conscious Asians, you
think you eat sensibly: Your diet consists almost exclusively of
mineral water and low-calorie, low-fat foods. And yet you're still
gaining weight. Why? I'll tell you why: You're drinking water with
minerals in it. Minerals are among the heaviest substances in the
universe, second only to guests on the Jerry Springer show. Think about
it: The Appalachian Mountains and most major appliances are essentially
big wads of minerals, and you're putting those things into your body.
No wonder you're gaining weight!
FACT: The word ''Perrier'' is French for "balloon butt.''
I have run out of room here, thank God, so let me say in closing
that I wish you the best of luck with your New Year's resolutions, and
I will do my best to keep my own resolution, which is to give you,
every single week, the most useful, informative and accurate articles I
possibly can.
I
heard from my colleagues that this is a common practice in Jakarta.
Not the walk, but the motorcycle-riding thieves that pry mobile
phones away from unsuspecting pedestrians. Initially, I thought of
running after the thief, but then I realized that there weren't any
nearby phone booths where I could rip open my suit, change into my
outfit, and fly up, up and away. Nor was I donning a red suit
equipped with a lightning fast feet. 