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Royal remarks on rally
Today my post is on two of the Johor Sultanah's comments, in her role as Chancellor of UTM, during the 5th Annual Malaysian Student Leaders Summit at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton yesterday - see Malaysiakini's Johor sultanah: Bersih 2.0 was hijacked.
First comment was on Bersih where she, to summarise, said the movement calling for free and fair elections had been hijacked.
As one of my personal political principles/beliefs, I don't support constitutional royalty making comments on politics. This has been my position way way before the 2008 GE, and most certainly way before a series of unwelcomed royal intervention in the politics of Perlis, Terengganu (against AAB & UMNO then) and Perak (against Pakatan) - I posted on all these events.
I have always said that royalty should only make political comments if they are politicians like Tunku or Ku Li, but never (especially) when they are constitutional Heads of States.
If a Head of State, de jure or acting, makes political comments or acts politically in like fashion as a politician, then he/she must be mindful that in a democracy any political statement or act can be challenged, commented on and criticized. Thus he/she must not/cannot take umbrage nor could his/her supporters claim lèse majesté had been committed. The Perak case springs immediately into mind.
The only way such a Head of State acting politically can get away unquestioned or unchallenged would be when he/she is an absolute monarch (e.g in Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan) as one local (late) royal member thought he was. The Malaccan Sultanh ordering the execution of Hang Tuah on the basis of a mere rumour would be another example.
However, having carefully read the news article in Malaysiakini, I have to say HRH has quite carefully navigated her way around the ambush of a student's difficult question on Bersih. I find it hard to criticise her reasonable response.
She was even handed in stating (as reported) "Of course, you can see from the mainstream media that perhaps Bersih is founded by wrong people and the bad guys, and other groups are the good guys."
"It maybe or may not be, there is no right or wrong answer, but it may indicate that the country is heading for some kind of maturity."
But what did she mean by Bersih being 'hijacked'? Well, Tian Chua flashed across my mental vision wakakaka. That wannabe martyr has been at his usual self – I won't comment any further on this PKR Drama King wakakaka again. Then there was Anwar Ibrahim's pathetic attempt to (take over and) make unauthorised proposal to cancel the Bersih, but which was shot down in flames, thanks to cool sweetie Ambiga.
However, I believe HRH's opinion on vernacular schooling, to abolish it, though fair and logical as it might be (because I once shared it wakakaka), is unfortunately way too late, as a large segment of Malaysian society no longer trusts the dodgy standards and at-times racist governance of national type schooling.
In these lamentable impressions (of not trusting national types but only vernacular schooling) we only have a series of UMNO Educational Ministers to thank, for their treatment of education as a political/nationalistic football, to kick their rotten way up the ranks of UMNO and thus to greater access to the Boleh Land gravy train.
The notorious BTN has played an equally nefarious part in confusing, corroding and corrupting the values of some school heads, who should no longer be fit to 'educate' young Malaysian minds.
Many parents now cling on to vernacular schooling as the only educational salvation for their children's future.
Posted by KTemoc at 10:33 am 11 comments:
Teoh Beng Hock - Murdered?
Read The Malaysian Insider's A sham that deceived Malaysia — by Marcus van Geyzel, taken from the Loyarburuk website, and compare it with my post yesterday titled RCI report on Teoh Beng Hock - the Dark Interregnum.
Marcus wrote the following (concluding extract):
The purpose of the TBH RCI was to reveal the truth. Looking at the chronology of events and the findings of fact made along the way and the sudden and inexplicable conclusion it is obvious that it has failed to reveal the truth behind the death of Teoh Beng Hock.
I am in shock. The five Commissioners are respected experts in their fields and are held in high regard. There seems to be no reason to doubt their integrity. The way the report was written points to only one logical conclusion - murder or at the very least culpable homicide not amounting to murder due to an accident during the interrogation process.
But suddenly without any basis without any evidence and in fact with evidence pointing to the contrary, the TBH RCI turns all its key findings on its head with one fanciful speculative fantastical and fictional paragraph*.
* the paragraph Marcus was referring to was the RCI's finding that Teoh was driven by the interrogations to commit suicide. That paragraph stated "Tormented by this predicament TBH experienced a change in his state of mind. And in a matter of hours this change transformed him from being in the low-risk group for suicide into the high-risk group. The doubts extreme emotional conflict and the immense feeling of guilt were all intolerable. Finally precipitating the irreversible crisis that happened to him ... etc etc ..."
No reasonable person of the calibre of those five Commissioners could possibly have come up with that. It beggars belief.
In the spirit of the TBH RCI report perhaps I should try my hand at a fanciful conclusion. Here we go.
Maybe there was a political intervention - or at least some heavy influence.
Maybe the Government would not have been able to cope with the backlash that would have resulted from a finding of murder.
Perhaps having been pre-informed that the TBH RCI was going to conclude that Teoh was murdered, someone somewhere forced the TBH RCI to invent this "middle ground" - this cop out solution which has cheated Malaysia of the truth.
** above highlighting are kaytee's
Do you find this theory unbelievable?
Well it is no more unbelievable than the ridiculous finding of "driven suicide" that was contained in that report.
Malaysia is going through some interesting times. Our Judiciary is failing us. Our Government is failing us. Our politicians and leaders are failing us. Our police force are failing us. So many of our institutions are failing us.
With their finding of "driven suicide", the TBH RCI has most certainly failed us.
It was supposed to reveal the truth but instead has thrown up even more deception and doubt.
Posted by KTemoc at 6:20 pm 13 comments:
RCI report on Teoh Beng Hock - the Dark Interregnum
Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lies, lies, and damn lies ... which have been why I posted in The missing public trust that no one in Malaysia (other than the most hard core & faithful UMNO supporters) would trust in and rely on the objectivity of public institutions or ministers.
We see more of this in The Malaysian Insider's Bar Council says MACC responsible for Teoh's death.
Far more important, and totally damning for Minister Nazri and the cabinet, has been the Bar Council President, Lim Chee Wee's repudiations of Minister Nazri's untrue assertions. TMI reported:
Lim also rejected the notion that Teoh's "weak character" had led him to suicide, as described by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz when he announced the release of the RCI report.
He pointed out that forensic psychiatrist Professor Paul Mullen had not testified that Teoh had a "weak character" and had not concluded that Teoh had committed suicide.
It's just unbelievable that Minister Nazri had the brazen nerve in believing he could get away with putting words in Professor Paul Mullen's mouth. Obviously Nazri, knowing there is no credible source on the authority's side, had hoped to hitch a stowaway ride on a credible source.
But then, how do we explain the following extract of TMI's report?
On the other findings in the RCI report, Lim said the council had concurred with the royal panel that Teoh had been subjected to "aggressive relentless oppressive and unscrupulous interrogation" and that most of the MACC officers involved in the case were not credible as they "had the inevitable habit of lying"
Lim said the council also agreed that the massive operation launched by the Selangor MACC at the time had been based on a mere belief without proper ground work or verification. The then-Selangor MACC deputy director Hishammuddin Hashim, he said, had been accurately described in the RCI report as "arrogant, given to falsehoods, untruthful and uncompromising" and "just too stubborn to retreat from his mistake in mounting such a massive operation".
We know the answer would be found somewhere in the period between the RCI's submission of its report to the Agong (and thus, effectively the cabinet) and its public release, nearly 3 weeks of unaccountable 'blackout', not unlike a crucial moment at one of the polling station in interior Sarawak in the State's last election, when the creativity of dark forces would be at its zenith wakakaka.
The Bar Council's disagreement has been strictly with Minister Nazri's spin (his attempt to put words in the mouth of credible expert like Prof Mullen). Notwithstanding the implausible finding of 'suicide', now totally demolished by the Bar Council's repudiation of Nazri's pathetic and shameful attempt to 'justify' the finding, there is enough in the RCI's report to show some genuine investigation. But ...
... BUT there is now an increasing* suspicion that in the silent interregnum, there has been some disingenuous 'creativity'.
* 'increasing' means the suspicion was already there way before the public release of the RCI report, but since then, has escalated to humongous dimensions
If so, then it supports the rakyat's perception that in Boleh Land court cases, coronial inquests, police reports, pathological reports and hospital medical checks etc must always support the side of the UMNO-led government and its pro-UMNO public institutions. How it would or could be achieved is irrelevant. It could be a voluntarily case of what Sasterawan Negara (National Laureate) Samad Said termed 'charma' (cari makan), or it could be involuntary.
We also know why, as reported in TMI, that the Teoh family boycotted RCI when, aside from the RCI chairperson being (unusually) a sitting Federal Court judge, the RCI insisted on continuing the inquiry despite a proposed judicial review over the appointment of deputy public prosecutors DPPs (from the AG's Office) as conducting officers.
And the ultimate insult to the Teoh family's wish for at least some (whom they see as) impartial and outstanding citizens sitting as RCI members was when Najib and his cabinet rejected what was a fair and reasonable request.
I wrote on that in one of my earlier (February) posts RCI = Regrettable Conflict of Interest?:
The Teoh family after consulting 126 NGOs had earlier proposed (a) former national police chief Tun Hanif Omar, (b) former Bar Council president Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan, (c) former Court of Appeal judge NH Chan, and (d) former Deputy Prime Minister Tun Musa Hitam. But Najib has failed to appoint even one of them to the RCI. Why?
Surely these four are Malaysian luminaries with impeccable credentials and reputations of integrity, with even an UMNO man in Musa Hitam. The only person, also of exceptional integrity and courage, former Justice NH Chan, may perhaps be seen by the Najib administration as being anti-government. If that is the case, kaytee suggests he be replaced by former Justice Gopal Sri Ram, who is also retired.
But in refusing such a request for outstanding citizens, including even UMNO's Musa Hitam to sit on the RCI, Najib and his cabinet had actually revealed their true colours, their intention and what they had already decided on the outcome, thus the Teoh family's correct boycotting of the RCI at least didn't confer on the inquiry its most desired and most important vestige of credibility.
As Sir Humphrey Appleby advised: 'Minister, two basic rules of government: Never look into anything you don't have to. And never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.' And so it was.
Posted by KTemoc at 9:17 am 8 comments:
Lateral thinking by Mat de Brootal
Story No 1
Once upon a time a man named Edward de Bono explained his theory of 'lateral thinking' with the following story (in kaytee's own words wakakaka):
A bastard of an old loan shark lusted after a sweetie whose father was pathetically poor thus vulnerable to borrowing money from the Ah Long. As the story went, Dad was in deep deep deep, very deep financial shit with the Ah Long when the assh*le decided to pounce and satisfy his evil lust.
He told the sweetie to bet on a 50-50 chance game, for her to pick either a white or black pebble from a bag. Picking up a white pebble would mean she wins, with her father's debt completely cleared, while picking up a black would require her to marry the prick. It was an 'all or nothing' gamble, an offer which Don Vito Corleone would have said that sweetie couldn't refuse.
Coincidentally where Ah Long and the sweetie were standing, the ground was covered with white and black pebbles.
Of course Ah Long intended to win by cheating so he placed two black stones in the bag. Sweetie saw the bastard doing that but knew she was in a fix. If she made noise, Ah Long would make her father's life hell.
So we were told that she employed 'lateral thinking'
She picked a pebble (obviously black) from the bag but ... ooops a daisy ... she dropped it on the ground. She bersandiwara and apologised to Ah Long, but asserted that all was not lost as whatever colour pebble was left in the bag would mean the one she dropped, accidentally of course, would be of the opposite colour (in other words, a winning white).
That's Edward de Bono's explanation of what 'lateral thinking' is, where sweetie won without being confrontational with Ah Long. To kaytee it's just another term for 'creative thinking'.
Once upon a time a man named Macc Mat de Brootal of the Brootal Clan explained his theory of 'lateral thinking' with the following story (in kaytee's own words wakakaka):
A bastard of a sadistic oppressor lusted after a confession from a young man for nefarious purposes. In the interrogation he killed the victim, perhaps accidentally, but nonetheless a crime that would have been classified at least as 'manslaughter', one requiring imprisonment of the Mossad-like assh*le.
To cut the story short, he and backers attempted to pass the death off as suicide but the public did not accept that implausible bullsh*t because facts and logic stood in the bloody way of what he thought would be a convenient escape.
His backers had to think of a way out, one that won't implicate the draconian Shabak-like (Shin Bet like) clone with a crime (this one mana boleh lah), but provide that extra something beyond just a mere statement of 'suicide', though mind you, not too much, just a wee sweetener for the public to punish the prick with a slap or maybe even two on his f* wrist, which was covered with the victim's blood.
So, they thought 'creative thinking' was in order, with a new inquiry. The aim was to win without complete denial of some (light) form of punishment to satisfy the angry crowd.
Coincidentally, the finding came out that death was indeed by suicide due to the weak character of the victim, but, here's what they thought would be the wee sweetener (probably arrived at weeks after the inquiry report was submitted), the cause of the suicide was contributed by incorrect interrogation techniques, deemed as aggressive, inappropriate and therefore in violation of the regulations.
The Aman (Agaf HaModi'in)-like assh*le would then be dealt with by an administrative tribunal for his harsh interrogation techniques since it was just a case of poor judgement and not a 'crime' - perhaps with a small pay deduction or more probably, a promotion sideways. An administrative slap-on-the-wrist was the maximum punishment acceptable for 'The Chosen Ones' who would/must never be ever responsible for any crimes - don't believe me, hey man, ask the Palestinians.
Kow tim.
Recall, I posted yesterday in The missing public trust where I asked "Does anyone (other than UMNO and cronies) trust … [any Malaysian public institution]?"
But praise The Lord, and thank goodness for atheists like me, Story No 2 did not happen in Malaysia, but elsewhere … in B****Land.
The missing public trust
Trust!
Does anyone (other than UMNO and cronies) trust the police, that they would come out with objective findings in their multi-team investigations into accusations of police brutalities against Bersih participants on 09 July 2011?
Does anyone (other than ... wakakaka) trust the Home Affairs Minister and police in their accusation that PSM President Dr Jeyakumar and colleagues are communists?
Does anyone (other than the usual suspects) trust the AG to expedite the court hearing of the PSM President and 5 others being communist, when it suits UMNO to incarcerate them until the 13th GE to frighten the Heartland about a revived communist presence?
Does anyone (.... wakakaka) trust our Judiciary to be fair in hearing the police case against Dr Jeyakumar?
Does anyone (... kekeke) trust Utusan's assertion that the Israelis/Jews have penetrated and subverted Bersih?
5 questions on trust in our public institutions for you to answer 'yes' or 'no'.
I will answer only the last one with a qualified 'yes'.
I believe Utusan's allegation that the Israelis/Jews have penetrated and subverted Malaysian institutions, yes I do wakakaka, though the Malaysian institution is not Bersih, but rather the PM's department and possibly the PDRM, respectively in the form of APCO and, if true, a much talked-about e-contract.
Posted by KTemoc at 11:51 am 7 comments:
Malaysian dinosaurs
Dinosaur.
That's what Star group editor Wong Chun Wai called Ibrahim Ali in his latest column article titled Talk less, listen harder, where he wrote (as advice to BN leaders out of touch with their constituencies):
"We are not interested in 100-storey buildings, stupid political quarrels, whether wives should be obedient to their husbands in bed or racist tirades from political dinosaurs like Ibrahim Ali of Perkasa."
Though Wong referred specifically to Ibrahim Ali as the dinosaur, he was actually including most BN leaders ... mind you, not that he would make that accusation/advice too obvious.
This is particular true for MCA and Gerakan leaders who had the brazen cheek to taunt PAS and DAP for the recent Kedah ban on entertainment outlets during Ramadan, when in fact they have been the very ones who in 1997 supported UMNO in passing that piece of legislation restricting jollying during the holy month - see The Malaysian Insider's PAS: MCA, Gerakan approved nightspot ban in 1997.
In today's information-rich world, political hypocrites and liars like some MCA and Gerakan leaders are so dinosaur-ish, and thus deserving of their eventual extinction.
Kedah Menteri Besar Azizan Abdul Razak is another one. Though the brouhaha he unnecessarily caused has now been resolved, thanks to PAS national leadership, he is known for his outdated approach which would be better placed in the fringe areas of the remote regions of the Pakistani northwest.
Another PAS dinosaur is Dr Hasan in Selangor. He remains potentially a dangerous loose cannon.
Wannabe-Melayu Dr Ridhuan Tee should also be confined to Jurassic Park.
Bersih 2.0 brought fruition to Najib's 1Malaysia
My most dearest BELOVED yang amat berhormat DATUK PM,
No no no, I am not Liow Tiong Lai, wakakaka. So sorry to disappoint you lah.
I write in to thank you for your vision of 1Malaysia and your amazing ability to realize it, though you did so (the latter) unwittingly. As we 1Malaysians would describe, your actions, and not forgetting your non-actions as well, 'kena cannon balik' (ricochet back at you).
By violating your personal promise to Bersih for them to use Stadium Merdeka to express their appeals for a free and fair election, at the eleventh hour, ...
by demonising the organizers of Bersih especially your ad hominem attacks against its chair person Ambiga Sreenevasan, ...
by having your police persecute the peaceful marchers (all Malaysians) with not only tear gas and chemically-laced water jets but with kicks, slaps, walloping and baton strikes, and the most gut wrenching desecration of all, ... assaulting Tung Shin hospital*, ...
you have (unwittingly) brought about the true meaning of 1Malaysia. Syabas.
* oh, may I just put in a kind word for your hamba Liow Tiong Lai - he denied there was any police tear-gassing or water attack on the hospital which showed he'll be what UMNO wants, a well-behaved candidate for the presidency of MCA (assuming the party will still exist after the 13th GE)
I shed tears of joy when I read the personal accounts of various Bersih 2.0 participants in Malaysiakini and The Malaysian Insider, people like my mateys Lucia Lai and Marina Mahathir, ex servicemen like Lt Col (retired) Aw Yeang, Stephen Foong, Kristina Sze, Kashini Krishnamurty and various other peaceful and very courageous Malaysians.
I shed tears of joy because they recounted their sense of 'belonging' amongst other Malaysian participants, where they saw each other as Malaysians, smiling, acknowledging and accepting each other as on a common goal for the better future of Malaysia. 'Twas a very moving insight - utterly priceless. Thank you so much.
Lt Col Aw Yeang's recall was particularly poignant when he related how during the 'run, hide and seek' phases of the rally, young Malay men inquired caringly about him; their "Uncle okay?" gave me goose bumps. And once again, it's all thanks to you, my dearest BELOVED PM (reminding you of course I'm not Liow Tiong Lai wakakaka).
Their considerate sharing of salt, water, toothpaste with those less experienced with the peccadilloes of our world-renowned FRU have been touching, all very 1Malaysians.
My dearest BELOVED PM (now jangan lupa okay? I'm not Liow Tiong Lai wakakaka), isn't it wonderful that your actions against and non-actions for Bersih have brought about that once-believed-to-be elusive semangat bangsa Malaysia? Well, the so-called 'patriots' in your 1st, 2nd and 3rd line of defence may disagree but we have to start somewhere, don't we? Besides, I believe those 'patriots' wakakaka are now in the minority.
My dearest BELOVED PM (ingat, ai bukan your hamba Liow Tiong Lai lah wakakaka), you should give yourself a pat on the back for achieving something no previous Malaysian PM (not even Tunku) could achieve – in persecuting Bersih 2.0, you brought Malaysians together as they never have been.
We'll never forget your remarkable (though unintended) deed. It deserves an entire page in the Boleh Book of Remarkable Malaysian Records.
And not only have you fused Malaysians together on Saturday, you have done what Marina Mahathir succinctly analysed:
"And when they started arresting people wearing yellow T-shirts and put (Sungai Siput MP) Dr (D) Jeyakumar in jail - he is such a good person and has done a lot of good service - people got more angry. It is not fair to accuse him of being a communist."
"I think a lot of ordinary people decided that this is it. This is it and this is not fair, and we are going to out there and participate in the Bersih 2.0 rally."
"There are so many accounts of the aunty types who would not ever do anything or something radical in their life or never march, and these people decided to go, even those from outside Kuala Lumpur."
Yes, thank you also for giving us our aunty types, in particular our icon, Auntie Annie Ooi or Auntie Bersih, the Lady of Malaysian Liberty.
To conclude my letter of thanks to you, may I paraphrase Winston Churchill that:
Never in the field of Malaysian solidarity was so much owed by so many Malaysians to so few (specifically you, your unmentionable cousin, Perkasa).
I am, sir,
Your obedient servant (but not hamba Liow Tiong Lai wakakaka)
King Canute Soi Lek & the tides of Tung Shin Hospital
Some people are great communicators, like Bill Clinton; some are giant bullsh*tters, like ... wakakaka; but some are utterly hopeless, like Chua Soi Lek and Liow Tiong Lai.
Alamak, both from the last group belong to the same political party. Would that (party) be a common denominator of those utterly hopeless communicators? I hope my matey Ti Lian Ker and former MCA president Ong Tee Keat will provide some illumination on this.
Both Liow (who considers Najib as his 'beloved PM') and CSL have come out badly in the Tung Shin Hospital affair.
During the Saturday Bersih event, observers reported Police firing tear gas grenades and directing their chemical-laced water cannons into the grounds of Tung Shin Hospital, raising huge outrage at the desecration of a universally recognized sanctity from violence.
When Israeli gunships attacked Lebanese ambulances in Southern Lebanon, Malaysians including UMNO apparatchiks were correctly outraged; when Israeli jets and artillery attacked Gaza hospitals we fumed and correctly demanded those Israelis be tried for war crimes.
When the PDRM 'attacked' Tung Shin, 'twas not only UMNO but MCA which denied such an occurrence had taken place, in total contradiction to what the Bar Council observers and hospital staff reported.
While it's expected of Raja Bodek II (Liow Tiong Lai) to sycophantically defend the Police (and thus his overlord, UMNO), Chua Soi Lek should have known better.
Couldn't CSL have said one of the following?
• Let's wait for an objective report before I comment, (or)
• I need to check with the hospital authorities before I comment, (or)
• If the feedback has been true, then it's not appropriate for the Police to get carried away to the extent of ........, (or)
• If it has been true, I am disturbed by such an occurrence, (etc etc)
But CSL just couldn't help himself in rushing to defend the Police.
Of course in reality he doesn't give a fig about the police, but he worries about UMNO's feelings because Taikoh sees the police as an extension of its range of political tools.
Of course he doesn't give a fig about UMNO but alas, UMNO is essential to the survival of MCA, himself and his son.
Without UMNO, what good is MCA?
Who would support MCA today? Certainly not the Malays or Indians! And most certainly not the majority of Chinese.
Most frighteningly, the police desecration of Tung Shin has the humongous potential to turn the stomach of most Chinese, even those in Johor still supporting MCA ... but only because CSL and his MCA choose to be identified alongside UMNO with the police.
Yes, his mistake has been in assuming the police is part of the MCA's range of political tools when it is only that of UMNO. CSL should have treated the police like the civil service it is supposed to be, and not assume emotional protection for it.
He should have said: If the tear gassing and water jetting of Tung Shin by the police have been true, then I am deeply disturbed by such occurrences, but let's wait for an objective report before I comment any further.
But he didn't, in fact failed miserably to seize that golden option. Instead he stupidly tried to kill off the veracity of the report - he might as well be King Canute.
And it's now too f* late, CSL! You have effectively kill off MCA for good.
Posted by KTemoc at 9:57 am 25 comments:
The politics of Bersih
Politics, political, politicking, politicised, politically hijacked!
Was Bersih 2.0 any of these?
Bersih is a coalition of NGOs and political parties concerned with the poor pathetic performance of our amazing Bolehland Wonder, the Election Commission and its 'conduct' of both federal and state elections.
Thus Bersih's aim is of course political, though being political doesn't mean it is promoting the agenda of a particular political party or political group.
Unlike another political NGO, Perkasa, Bersih is not promoting the maintenance of special economic privileges on the basis of race, nor is it demanding the dissolution of what Perkasa demands to be continued.
Bersih's goal is free and fair elections in Malaysia.
Bersih's recent rally, commonly known as Bersih 2.0, has the following eight demands:
1. Clean the electoral roll
2. Reform postal ballot voting
3. Use of indelible ink
4. A minimum campaign period of 21 days
5. Free and fair access to media mainstream media
6. Strengthen public institutions
7. Stop corruption
8. Stop dirty politics
... though it may be reduced to only 3 essential, namely:
1. use of indelible ink to ensure that voters may only vote once
2. clean out the electoral rolls to remove entries that are no longer valid such as those of deceased people
3. abolition or at least reforms of postal votes to prevent their abuse
While Bersih also demanded that all candidates and political parties have equal access to print and broadcast media, I personally doubt the EC can do much even if it wants to, given that the BN controls most if not all of the mainstream media.
Thus Bersih's campaign has been only about the issue of '1 vote for 1 person'. On this, I would have thought there should have been one more demand, that boundaries of electoral constituencies be redrawn to support this universal adult suffrage.
As an example, take the blatantly gerrymandered case of Putrajaya constituency (approximately 6600 registered voters) versus that of Kapar constituency (112, 200 registered voters) where 1 vote in the former is worth about 17 in the latter. Obviously some Malaysian citizens are more equal than others.
While of course everyone recognises it's not possible to have absolutely equal number of votes for every constituency, the EC should have ensured that every constituency be as near equal as possible, say, around 50,000 voters per.
Putrajaya with its list of voters less than even that of a typical state assembly seat definitely does not deserve to be a federal constituency on its own. Its creation as a federal constituency on its own is typical of the EC and the reason for its loss of credibility.
Gerrymandering is not new when one looks at sardine-packed constituencies like Kapar, Bukit Bintang, and various other urban districts. But the Putrajaya federal constituency certainly takes the cake, cream and corruption home.
That the BN and its associates like Perkasa have objected to the call for free and fair elections seems to signal that the fears of Bersih has been justified, namely, elections are not as free and fair as it should be. I'm of course merely saying something every Malaysian (even those in BN) already knows, that so-called public institutions like EC, Civil Service, Police, MACC, etc aren't (politically neutral) public services as such but UMNO institutions, though Utusan Malaysia called them 'Malay' institutions.
Has Bersih been politicised?
Yes, because the dictionary tells us 'politicise' means 'to engage in or talk about politics'. In Malaysia, one cannot talk about EC, Civil Service, Police, MACC, and other so-called public institutes without mentioning politics, specifically the political involvement or direction of UMNO in their conduct against the opposition. Another classic example of an organization serving UMNO is the equally amazing Bolehland Wonder, the PDRM.
Was Bersih politically hijacked?
There were attempts but unsuccessful ones. Recall how Anwar Ibrahim attempted to act as if he was the leader of Bersih, declaring that he would call off Bersih 2.0 if the EC ... yadda yadda ... when he didn't even have that authority. But then, that's Anwar. He was correctly, curtly and coldly dismissed by Ambiga Sreenevasan, the real top honcho of Bersih 2.0.
During the rally on Saturday my matey OKM confirmed there were sporadic shouts of reformasi, a call, wakakaka, associated with PKR, but these were too few to change the character of Bersih 2.0 as a rally for free and fair elections (directed at the EC), into one for Anwar Ibrahim as he must have dreamed of, wakakaka again.
Would stirring cries of Allahu Akbar imply PAS' attempts to hijack Bersih? Though normally identified with PAS, the Islamic praise of Allah swt is not exclusively PAS and has been used by UMNO as well. I reckon it's hard to accuse PAS of any hijacking of Bersih on the basis of religious calls of inspiration.
What about the other side? We know that Perkasa, Utusan and UMNO (clumsy clowns like Hishamuddin) have collectively attempted to politicise Bersih in the worst light, with even the police involved in conducting its 'usual investigation', this time into the financial sponsors of Bersih.
And I wonder what Khairy Jamaluddin, an Oxford educated man, would have been thinking when UMNO Youth selected the slogan of 'Patriot' on its red T-shirt?
Surely he would have heard of Samuel Johnson's famous pronouncement "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" when he attacked John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute and his supporters for the false use of the word 'patriotism'. Imagine KJ as the new Earl of Bute wakakaka.
But alas, that Hang Tuah-ish word may find resonance with the Heartland who wouldn't know or give a fig about Samuel Johnson, which no doubt KJ would have already taken into account.
Yes, scoundrels throughout the world love that word as it accords (so they believed) them protection, and respectability and credibility in the eyes of some (or even many). Some even brazenly and shamelessly draped themselves (and their bigoted nastiness) with the national flag.
But in the Bersih 2.0 rally, three non-party sweeties stood out for praises of their amazing courage, dignity and examples – Ambiga Sreenesavan for her leadership and cool courage, Marina Mahathir for, firstly, her courage and sense of fairness in defending Ambiga against the scurrilous ad hominem attacks by the rightwing Bolehland Wonders, and secondly, especially given the particular circumstance of her personal connections, for her walk in Bersih 2.0, and finally but not least, Aunty Bersih, the Lady of Liberty.
I salute you sweeties - you're the real patriots.
Posted by KTemoc at 5:34 pm 8 comments:
Lessons of history unheeded
I wrote the following 2 years ago, on 01 August 2009 in a post titled Anti-ISA protests magnified by FRU suppressions. The protest was not by Bersih on fair elections but about another issue, the ISA.
Very stressful, hasn't it been in today's march against the ISA? Stressful for both the government and the protestors.
However, the organizers of the protest have assessed today's anti-ISA staged rallies as a success, and they are right. They have successfully captured the nation's and international attention that the Malaysian people are against the government's misuse of the ISA.
And the ar$eluck for the governmet is that this would be the general impression even if only 25% of the people supported the anti-ISA movement.
Worse, the attempted police suppression of the protesors has only martyr-ised each and every one of the participants ... exactly the outcome the Pakatan leaders would have wanted.
The government might have wished the protest rallies hadn't ocurred but alas, it did. In my opinion, the ministers (PM, Home and Information) handled the protests abysmally.
Visualize an alternative scenario - what if the government had allowed the peaceful protest to proceed unimpeded?
Yes, there would still be a protest march and ..... [consider an absence of the FRU with all its attention grabbing characteristics like chemical spraying machines, tear gas and praetorian guards and their baton charges] ..... then what???
The political effect would be very much, indeed significantly, reduced.
So why has the government chosen the option that could only aggravate and magnify the public dramas and political consequences of the anti-ISA rallies, unwittingly lending the Pakatan-led protestors far greater attention than would have been the case if there was no police/FRU interference.
Sometimes I wonder how stupid the relevant ministers had been to adopt such a counter-productive (for them) tactic - but more often that that, I wonder whether the Police had sinisterly, sinuously and successfully sold those dumbos the hardline approach ... obviously to enhance their own (police) importance and to suck the (so-called) political masters (or more likely, pundee morons) into total dependence on the men in blue.
And of course the IGP gets another highly undeserved extension to his contract.
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it - George Santayana
Bersih - its casualties
This is no laughing matter; kaytee isn't going to wakakaka in this post, 'coz someone died, or could be said to have been killed in the Bersih rally yesterday.
Baharuddin Ahmad was a fatal casualty of the police attack on the peaceful rally.
Many others were more fortunate, suffering at most injuries unlike poor Baharuddin.
And PM Najib has been a casualty too, where his credibility, prestige and reputation have now been mortally wounded.
Hishamuddin and his police have been notorious casualties as well - they may not even know it but they're now the most hated people in Malaysia, for their evil brutalities.
That eternal question, what if?
What if Najib's offer of a stadium for Bersih to protest, in his very words, "from morning till night" had not been right royally sabo by his cousin and certain 'forces' within UMNO; what if Najib had not been presented with only bad choices, rotten fait accompli to make him backpedalled every step on his so-called 1Malaysia, and his promise of accommodation to Bersih, in the use of Stadium Merdeka for the protest against a badly tainted and seriously damaged EC?
What if Hishamuddin had shown a modicum of respect for HM the Agong, acknowledging HM's meeting with Bersih as indicative of the legitimacy of the NGO instead of disrespectfully and defiantly insisting that the organization headed by a courageous woman whom the King saw fit to grant an audience is illegal?
But alas, Hishamuddin demonstrated that UMNO continues to be the principal and only body in Malaysia in its blatant serial commission of lèse-majesté, lying and betraying the Malays, while in the same breath hypocritically shouting Raja, agama dan bangsa.
The 'what if's' do not absolve Najib from the responsibility of the horrendous outcome where the so-called guardians of the law, the Royal Malaysian police attacked Malaysian citizens, in some case, with brutal glee and vicious delight, where the internationally centuries-old sanctity of a hospital was not even immune to its atrocities - who has heard of police firing tear gas and jets of chemical-laced water into a building housing the sick. Najib was, has been and still is the PM, and the buck stops with him
One man is now dead.
And it didn't require an outrageously Zahidi-politicized military who was made to threaten Malaysians just prior to the Bersih rally that they would shoot to kill, Perkasa (with Ibrahim Ali meekly/cowardly AWOL) or the legion of silat pseudo-warriors to take 'emotional' action – no 1st line of Najib's defence, no 2nd line, no 3rd line was required to kill; only the inhumanity of a callous police force to deliberately leave Baharuddin Ahmad, who was seriously affected by the tear gas, unattended by proper medical people to resuscitate his breathing problems.
Malaysia as a nation has been a casualty too.
But the biggest casualty, as in any war, and war it had been, has been Truth, ...
... the Truth of a dysfunctional UMNO where its leader was not consistently in charge, upstaged every which way by intra-centrifugal forces; the Truth of a pagar-makan-padi police force, and the Truth of a cheating corrupt non-accountable entity whose crimes were disguised and camouflaged by deliberate distracting diversionary ethocentric threats, false alarms and blatant lies issued daily by the very people who blasphemously claim to be defenders of their agama.
And it infuriates me that in the IGP heading the list of honours in the YDP Negeri of Penang's birthday awards, the respectability of the YDP Negeri has become another casualty.
Bersih's message has already spread beyond stadium
So they did throw in the kitchen sink after all, a very heavy yellow-coloured one, wakakaka.
OK, Bersih will now be held in a stadium but really does it matter, because its point (not just message but its brave stand, its courageous preparedness to stand resolutely against the evil force of a dark storm) has already been made, kau kau if I may add.
I've always lamented the stupidity of the police (or more correctly, its boss Hishamuddin) for resorting to use of the sledgehammer to crack mere groundnuts. For example, review past police heavy handed dispersal of candlelight vigils by a few sweeties. What if the police had left those sweeties alone? Would that have made the headlines or a few lines on page 6?
Likewise with Bersih, if the police (and Hisham) had ignored the rally, ask yourself how much impact could it have made, compared to the situation now?
Indeed, the stupidity of Hisham and his police are just unbelievable. By harassing, persecuting and threatening the organizers and supporters of Bersih, a rally as yet to take place, those goons have provided the rally and its organizers with far more credentials, credibility and credit than they could have obtained without the enhancing bullying, internationally too.
But bullies being bullies (like America and Israel), they only know one method, brute force, threats and persecution. They didn't hesitate to use UMNO Youth and scums like Perkasa, silat masters who violated the very ethics of their noble art in threatening Bersih, police, whatnot, to intimidate and harass Bersih. No brain, but the damage to PM Najib is incalculable. Najib should blame his dear cousin.
Yup, Najib, UMNO, the police and alas, Anwar are in the doldrums, shattered by the wake of the storm surrounding Bersih.
Anwar Ibrahim? Why, you may ask?
Poor bloke tried to hijack the Bersih movement (as he did in Bersih I, arriving at the final minute for a grand presidential entrance, though spoilt by the traffic jam which required him to ride pillion on a motorcycle wakakaka), but was abruptly slapped down by Ambiga Sreenevasan.
"Hands off buster" she implied in her cool dismissal of Anwar when he had the brazen cheek to suggest he could call the rally if .... yadda yadda .... Since then, I am glad he hasn't re-attempted to muddy the Bersih water, but alamak, what loss of face for the world's greatest Reformer.
Ambiga Ambiga, she's the person of the moment.
Her reputation has been further enhanced by a moronic threat to strip her of her citizenship, and by those goons in blue who are now investigating her bank accounts for possible financial contributions from .... whom? ... perhaps North Korea, Myanmar, Libya, PRC, Peru's Shining Light, al Qaeda? .... wait, I've the perfect contributor ... The Tamil Tigers of course wakakaka.
Don't be surprised if there should soon arise allegations of her 'lesbianism', 'allegiance' with Singapore or India, stories of her 'sordid affairs', etc.
But f* those goons and their foot soldiers! Question I want to ask is, will MCLM consider her candidature?
I'll vote for the hot babe anytime.


Ferret Friday #39 - Whose steps are these?
IMG_1141, a photo by Michelle on the Edge on Flickr. Just over a year ago, a young ferret, a busy mom, and a laundry basket all landed on these steps at the same time. It was a very chaotic scene that involved blood, anguish, and an emergency trip to the exotic pets veterinarian. It was feared that A E would not be making the return trip home. In fact, it was several days before he made that trip. Now we all are very careful on the stairs (and everywhere else too) because we have learned that ferrets are mighty fast little critters.


text:
Newbie Review Crew Member
Bob (louiscyphre)
Previous Reviews: 2010 | 2009 | 2008
Fright Factory
by louiscyphre (Newbie Review Crew Member) after attending on Friday, October 23, 2009 at about 3 p.m.
Submitted: Sunday, October 25, 2009
An enjoyable all-indoors haunt set at an abandoned factory building on a spooky hill right behind a quiet residential neighborhood, Fright Factory is one of those multiple-floor, dark-maze-and-scene-heavy haunts that tend to have more creative juice and room for acting (Acting!) than the typical walk-through-bleargh!-chainsaw!-heavy-haunts. Boy oh boy, does this place set the scene as you approach it, snaking past all these rusted out fences and up to a yellow-brick factory building looming above you at the top of a short climb through what looks like an abandoned industrial loading area. The ghouls attack from all directions in the haunt proper, including from above (yikes!), but there are also nice opportunities for interaction with actors in their little vignettes, so a full experience all around. A (Severed) Thumbs-up!
Signage / Visibility / Location
Very easy to find, just follow the official directions, we had no problem. It's behind what looks like a residential neighborhood and up on a hill; parking might get pretty dicey when they're really busy, as you park on the street around the haunt and neighborhood, so be prepared for that, and the street is kind of tight and there are all these patrons walking around and clogging up the crosswalks and such (stupid patrons!), so it might be in your best interest to park a little ways away and avoid the crowded streets up close.
Wait Area / Line Entertainment
All indoors, which was really nice, as it was spitting rain on Friday. Pay at a ticket window, then line up in one of those queues like at Great America that snake around and you think your wait is going to be shorter, but it's a trick of the eye (very tricksy, Fright Factory). If you don't want to wait, you can pay an extra $5 and go to the front of the line; this seemed to be worth it, as the wait was about 35 minutes at 8:15 PM and it's all a fund-raiser anyway. As stated previously, the setting is suitably spooky, it's really an abandoned factory with these huge ceilings and industrial detritus all around, and you climb these dirty stairs and wind through all these dusty hallways and it sure smells like something got abandoned somewhere, which just adds to the atmosphere, of course.
Actors' Performance
Some great stuff, from black-robe-clad li'l old ladies sitting at a dining table muttering about how much they'd love to eat you, to a really really menacing executioner who was seriously about seven feet tall (in real life, or maybe he just seemed that way) and quite the intimidating presence; perhaps he executes at his dayjob as well. Also, there's a very friendly butcher and friends who appear to run their own shop, and a great Freddy. Again, they set up some nice scenes and the ghouls can act out a little stuff if they want to, cause they don't rush you through, so feel free to interact at your own discretion.
Sets Scenes / Props / FX
The setting really speaks for itself and allows all kinds of cool opportunities that they take advantage of, from wandering through what seemed like a real meat-locker (no idea what that was originally, possibly just a good set, but the butcher aprons were really wet and sticky, so kudos to you, butcher-apron-preparing-guy), to a really great compression room; this must be the new big thing, every haunt we went to this season had a claustrophobia-inducing scene where you're compressed and crushed by the walls and ceiling and it's pretty intense, and Fright Factory's was very effective. This might be wishful thinking on my part, but they may also have been trying to tell some story that we didn't completely get -- there's a scene labeled "St. Ana's Orphanage," and it seemed to connect visually with some other stuff with Christmas trees and people in black robes or something; we wondered if this was from a movie or if it had some resonance with local residents of the Janesville area, so if they're playing off some local legend, that's cool. There's also a scene recreating one of those famous moments from NOES #1 (That's Nightmare on Elm Street #1 to all you laymen out there) with a real-live working industrial fan and a nicely-sparking knife-glove, and some moments where you're not sure initially how you're going to get out of the room you're in, and some disorienting "Didn't we just make our way through this little corridor with the same paintings and wallpaper?" stuff.
Took about a half hour to get through, more if you want to interact with the ghouls a bit.
Ah, this may have been the problem with not rushing you through, they looked like they tried to take different groups through different paths, but we got bunched up with a group of patrons behind us and in front of us, so it got kind of awkward at some points; there was a great interactive tarot-reading scene, but we ended up with a roomful of people in front of the tarot reader, so the scare got kind of watered down. Good scene, though. To their credit, I think all-indoor haunts have a harder time keeping groups separated, as there's less room for dawdling than there might be at an outdoor, farm/forest/corn maze setting, so let's cut them some slack on this one.
Most Memorable Moment
1) Great Floating Jason Mask Room.
2) There's a point where you have to electrocute a guy to get out of the room; delightful!
3) Mr. Executioner, Could You Just Move A Little Bit to the Right or Left and Let Us Through?
4) Death From Above.
A lot of fun, and makes full use of it's creepy abandoned church pew factory setting. Terrorific atmosphere, scenes move you around in creative ways, and actors are obviously having a good time with the horrifying. Looks like they planned this out in an interesting fashion, and good misdirection and disorientation, along with some enjoyable performances and good special effects. Recommended.
View all Fright Factory reviews
Schuster's Haunted Forest
by louiscyphre (Newbie Review Crew Member) after attending on Saturday, October 17, 2009 at about 4 p.m.
Submitted: Monday, October 19, 2009
Cool with a capital "K," and that stands for "Kick Ass," loyal reader. Schuster's It's-Not-Playtime-After-Dark (tm) Haunted Forest is a first-class outdoor haunt that clearly a lot of time and creativity goes into. From the moment you get to the front of the line and are carted off in a rickety tractor-pulled cattle pen driven by a trembling and crazy "old lady" in a babushka and housedress, to when you finally emerge from the woods and find yourself unexpectedly back in the very same cattle pen and it whisks you off again (!), this place never lets up. Terrific ghouls, mega-misdirections, and unexpected surprises and scenes, and over it all the oppressive incredibly dark forest setting, all adding up to a most enjoyably harrowing evening. I could usually give a sh** about spoilers in haunts, but they asked us specifically not to reveal too much, so I'm kind of constrained in illustrating how cool this haunt really is, but, boy, this is one excellent haunt, boys and ghouls.
Right there on the main highway (12/18? I wasn't the one driving), all lit up and beckoning you in, follow directions from haunted wisconsin. Pretty close to Madison. Park on the lawn near the corn maze, it's a little confusing driving up to the farm, I think we had to kind of circle around something as we left the highway, but it's really quite easy to find.
We had to wait for a while, maybe 25 minutes, because the cattle pen/transport cart broke down while we were there and they had to weld it back together or something (!). When we got on, we found a hole punched out of the mesh, perhaps someone panicked, heh heh heh, or maybe something tried to get in.... We also heard in the line that someone had a heart attack in the haunt, but couldn't get this confirmed. Wait wasn't too awful, though, there's lots of stuff to do; snacks and hot cider and hot kettle korn are sold at either a little trailer or a tent or by people wandering around like the little cigarette girls from the olden times. They also have what looked like a small bakery on premises (!) in the main outbuilding, where they sell little crafts and homemade fudge and cookies. Wait is alongside the building, and they projected the first Children of the Corn movie on a shed wall while we were waiting, so that was pretty cool; that's not as impressive a movie as when it first came out, by the way. No ghouls really roamed around while we were there, but that was fine, I think they saved them all for the forest.
Some really cool characters and actually some little scenes for you to watch, sprinkled out amongst the usual ghouls-emerging-from-unlikely-hiding-places. Tip of the scalp to the "little old lady" who drives your cattle pen at breakneck speed down to the forest and her trembling "little old lady" voice and patter ("and if you're pregnant, well, now, you probably shouldn't have come here anyway") and there's a terrible accident in the middle of the forest but someone called the wrong kind of cop...And, I have to say, they must have some kind of first class training program for teaching some of these ghouls to motionlessly mimic mannequins, because we got to the point where we were all mixed up and thinking mannequins were ghouls and about to jump out at us and then a ghoul would arise from some other area and everyone would start screaming, etc etc I assume you know the drill. There are some other actors (and pairs of actors) I'd like to highlight here, but don't want to give anything away, so, find out for yourselves!
Some really great ideas and sets and excellent use of the wonderfully creepy night-time forest setting, some creative people are obviously involved here. There are little vignettes in some locations, numerous small buildings to make your way through, and even a weird junkyard. They also do things like attack your sense of smell at one point, which makes things even more disconcerting. Again, I don't want to give too much away, so won't go into any further detail...except to say there is an abandoned bus. And there are clowns. Enjoy!
Oh, and I should add that there is one compression scene here in which even I, after all my years of going to haunted houses, started to feel claustrophobic and vulnerable.
Took us more than an hour to get through; you first wait in line to get on the cattle pen, and then they drive you out into the freaking middle of nowhere. I'm not kidding, there was no light, no sense of civilization, nothing; we weren't even sure where the farm or road were compared to our location. Anyways, you're dumped off at the edge of a forest all by yourselves and have to find your way up a forest path in the pitch black, until you run into a slanted cabin, all lit up by a torch, where you wait to be sorted into groups and get let into the haunt proper. This is totally cool -- there are no directions here, you just have to find your way up to the cabin and get in line. Let me tell you, there's nothing like waiting in a pitch black forest with some thing wandering in the woods around you but never really revealing itself.
As above, two waits; you can watch movies during the first wait, and you just have to hope you're not attacked during the second wait in the cold dark of the endless forest with the shivery stars shining down on you as you catch glimpses of the fire-lit cabin up the hill there, right past that grim reaper statue....Also, an excellently-paced haunt, we never ran into another group.
1) One rambunctious companion wandered off the trail in the forest and apparently surprised a ghoul who was "tinkling," with said ghoul literally chasing him down the path and then following us menacingly for the rest of the haunt. We weren't sure if he was actually upset or just really intimidatingly into his character. These bitches don't mess around, folks.
2) Best. Vortex. Ever. Seriously.
This is one of those experiences in which the seasoned members of our group were really excited and energized when we left the haunt; lots of thrills and chills, and you really felt like you had been through something exciting and impressive. Excellent characterizations and scenes at different points, terrific and creative strategies for freaking out the squares, and overall a real sense of menace and darkness and being kind of lost and out there on your own in the middle of the woods where someone might have had a heart attack earlier that night...or maybe something came through the mesh of that cattle pen cart and dragged them away.... Highly recommended.
View all Schuster's Haunted Forest reviews
The Haunted Barn Stoughton (PERMANENTLY CLOSED)
Another nicely scary working-farm haunt, The Haunted Barn consists of a trek through a haunted barn (ironic, no?) and "Blood Shed," followed by a night-time hike through some spooky fields, up and down a moonlit hill, and then over a spooky rutted path. It's a good home-grown haunt, not all overly-fancied-up like the more corporate haunted houses out there, and there are some cool scenes and good characterizations. The ghouls interact and threaten well at times and it has a really nice sense of place and atmosphere, with the stars stretching out above you, and with all the autumnal smells and night time sounds of a rural farm in October. Unfortunately, the final leg of the haunt might need a few more scares, as we found ourselves wandering around a little too much and hoping for something further to happen a little too much. Still, a good haunt fer yer money and definitely worth the trip from Madison.
Very easy to find, just follow directions on Haunted Wisconsin (that's hauntedwisconsin.com, its on the internets, oh, wait, you're probably there right now), there's a big lighted sign pointing you toward the working farm on some rolling hills. You park on the lawn, which looks like it might get out of hand sometimes, so pick a spot on the outskirts where you can get out easily; we saw some cars almost parked in even at such an early hour, I dunno, maybe that's part of the terror.
We got there very early and really had no wait, but by the time we left, a bit after 8 PM, there was a huge line, so get there early. There were some ghouls harassing the crowd (let us praise an excellent Beetlejuice, whom one does not see very often amongst the Freddys and Jasons and Leatherfaces out there in this crazy topsy-turvy haunted-house world of ours), and there are a number of snacks'y things to purchase to keep your spookin' energy up. It's again on a real farm, so there are outbuildings to wander around and there's a pretty cool little giftshop trailer with lots of black-lit halloween/horror-themed stuff going on. There's also a big lit-up tent with picnic tables, which was a good place to rest with the group, quickly hash over the haunt, and enjoy the screams of other patrons gently cascading down the hill.
Quite good. The aformentioned Beetlejuice popped in and out of the haunt, doing a pretty dead-on Michael Keaton, and there are several scenes where the actors really act like they mean it; shout-outs to the little girl in the nursery who apparently is of two minds about what she wants you to do with her doll, and the most excellent little vampire girl toward the beginning, who forced one part of our group to engage in a twisted game of Simon Says. There were also evil children who yelled at you from inside an abandoned schoolbus; yes, that's right, evil children on an abandoned schoolbus, but we weren't sure if they were supposed to be there or were other patrons' nasty little kids, so basically, hat's off to the nasty kids, whoever you may belong to. Oh, and you end up at Camp Crystal Lake at one point and don't make any assumptions....
This haunt set up some of its scenes quite well; there are some interestingly-developed little vignettes which depend on characters, such as the little girl in the f***'ed-up nursery, which always adds a little sumthin' sumthin', and the natural setting of the farm at night, and walking around through fields and up and down hills, is suitably atmospheric. Had some good props, really loved Camp Crystal Lake and it's misdirection. Did think that the Blood Shed lacked a little in the creativity department and seemed a little sparse, at least when we were there, which again, was the very beginning of the night. Apparently another part of our group heard some kids calling out in the Blood Shed that they wanted daddy to get them dinner and they wanted "people meat" tonight, so maybe there was more going on in there than I saw in my group.
Three different areas with no waiting in between: the haunted barn proper, then the "Blood Shed" and its outdoor accoutrements, and then a hike up a haunted hill, through a graveyard and back down again through a spooky field. Took us about 45 minutes, a real value for your dollah.
As stated before, there are multiple waiting areas and stuff to distract you patrons while you wait. You purchase yer tickets and you takes yer chances and then you wait to get in. Groups were spaced out well throughout the haunt, we never ran into another group, and there are some cool moments outside when you see other groups wandering around and can wait and watch them get freaked out by the scares you know are almost right upon them....
1) Camp Crystal Lake and that pneumatic Jason prop.
2) Simon Says with the one little vampire girl.
A good haunted-house value for your eight bucks -- an enjoyable haunt and a great "cold night on a spooky farm" experience, but not as kick-ass as it could be, as it ends with a whimper, not a bang. They might be stretched a little thin or something; the haunted barn and overall setting are quite cool and there are some excellent characters and interactions with ghouls, but, at least in my experience, the "Brand New for 2009 Blood Shed" seemed a little underwhelming, and the haunted hill/field/forest area a little lacking in the scenes. It might be that we were there very early, and perhaps some of the ghouls had not had their din-din yet or were delayed otherwise, I suppose time management can be an issue when one is slaughtering and spooking and terrorizing all day. We may also have missed some stuff in the Blood Shed, as other people in another group seemed to have seen (or heard) more. Whatever the case, the wonderful setting itself really seals the deal, and it's pretty much an evening's worth of entertainment and then some. Recommended.
View all The Haunted Barn Stoughton (PERMANENTLY CLOSED) reviews
The Dark Side Haunted Adventure
Ah, the Dark Side, how we love thee, let us count the ways.
Set at an actual farm, the haunt is spread out over what looks like acres and acres of land, and made up of at least four different segments, an abandoned mine (with one heckuva cool, disorienting spiral staircase/vortex thingie), a hayride with an accompanying soundtrack, a haunted forest with some elaborate setups, and a haunted corn maze that kind of speaks for itself; by the end you may feel almost entertained-out. We loved the mine and the forest, but the hayride was kind of short on ghouls; perhaps H1N1 is hitting the ghoul community hard.
Don't expect an over-arching theme or anything art-y or anything like that, but these guys are serious about what they're doing and they do it well. There's some clever set-ups, for instance, with distracting you into looking at something that's slightly lit (what's that little fire over there about?), and then dazzling you with blazing flames (Fire Bad!), so your little retinas are overwhelmed and non-operational for a minute, and then a ghoul lurches out of the dark and slams his powersaw into the side of your haywagon, sending up sparks (yes, sparks!) and everyone screams, etc etc. Is it wrong to think of this as fun? Whatev.
It does look like a lot of effort goes into this haunt, and it takes a long long time to get through, so give yourself an hour or more, at the very least, and savor the terror. And it's all for just the one reasonable admission fee, so kudos to them.
Well, it's pretty easy to find, but it's more north of Ixonia than one might think for having an Ixonia address; Google worked great, though be aware that if you're coming from the west on 19, there is a detour around Watertown that takes you down to 94 or something and back up. Once you get near the place, they have a lit-up sign off the main county highway that points you in the right direction, and it's pretty clear it's the farm with all the cars parked on the lawn with all the screams and weird lights emanating from it, anyway.
We honestly had very little wait, probably because it was so freaking cold on Saturday night; it looks like they have a covered barn area, and there are multiple outbuildings you could check out and portapotties for the gentlemen to enjoy and the ladies to recoil from.
I think they sold little treats and stuff at the main building, but we were kind of rushing in. Anyways, you line up on a hill and wait to get the high-sign from some ghouls to approach the entrance to the mine; when you reach the entrance, there's a witch who tells you the "Story of Glacier Rock Farms and Its Mad Owner." I think the story has changed a bit since I was last there, but that's how legends grow, I suppose. Actually, the waiting on the hill is kind of cool, with the stars all lit up behind the mine and over the ridge and farm as you look down over the whole place.... Some random ghouls kind of wander around, too, but my favorite part is that you still line up next to a real cow pasture, and so cows wander in and out of the scene, and they're kind of spooky, at least to city slickers like us, but I don't think they're vampire cows like the ones featured in the commercials for that Little Vampire movie (it came out in 2000, god help us, look it up on imdb if you're confused), although that would be interesting, I suppose, as long as I didn't have to have any kind of contact with that horrible gel-haired Jonathan Lipnicki kid. Sorry, accidentally tapped into the decades-old rivalry between me and Jonathan Lipnicki there. Curse you, Lipnicki!
Anyway, the wait is nice and pleasant and suitably atmospheric.
Well, not a lot of characterization here, but that's fine, it doesn't appear to be one of those haunts where one depends on actors acting out scenes and interacting with guests too much, it's more of a scary chase-you-down-and-menace-you kind of thing. I do love the witch at the bonfire at the entrance to the haunted forest, though, who uses the screaming of other guests to time her allowing your group into the forest. She's pretty hilarious, too.
Sets look quite good, there's an impressive cemetery scene and an abandoned cabin, and the mine is quite convincing at points, with it really feeling like you're going down into a mine and now you're underground and the walls are starting to close in. Some cool outdoor fire effects, and love the lights blinking off and on in the cornfield, all it needed was Mel Gibson's kids running around in their little tinfoil hats.
Took us about one hour (or more) to get through all the different areas; this is one thing they do so well, you get a whole lot of hauntin' for your tiny little entrance fee. Also, just so you don't get completely worn out, there are breaks between segments, with each being broken up by a bonfire you can stand around while you wait to be allowed into the next phase; this is a good time to eavesdrop on other guests and then make fun of them later amongst your group. Just sayin'.
Again, we had no wait, so -- terrific! Actually, beyond the initial entrance, they had multiple strategies for spacing groups out, which really worked well; we never ran into anyone else, and felt like we had the haunts to ourselves most of the time. There is some waiting in between different phases of the haunt, as above, but there's always a campfire and some form of ghoul to entertain you or keep the peace.
1) Companion getting beaned in her "nether regions" by a fast-pitched corncob flung from the depths of the corn maze by some unnamed ghoul, who was lucky she didn't catch him, as his ghoulish ass would have been seriously kicked. If one has a goalie or catcher's uniform, one might be advised to wear it; gentlemen, pack your jockstraps or codpieces. (Actually, to be fair, I think the ghoul was aiming for a metal tub and missed; I guess it did add an element of danger to the proceedings in the end).
2) When you enter the abandoned cabin, give the bed a wide berth...that's a pun, sorry.
3) Oh boy, if you can't stand enclosed spaces, you're going to have a hard time in one part of the mine. It felt like we were being forced into a cattle slaughtering pen...seriously disturbing.
The Dark Side is a great "spooky working farm on a crisp fall night" haunt, with a varied approach and a whole lotta heart and energy. The people working (both ghouls and staff) seem to be having a good time, and the whole thing has a very pleasant and chilling Wisconsin atmosphere to it. It's really an evening's entertainment, and if you only have time, inclination, or fundage to go to one haunt this year, this would be well worth your investment. Viva La Dark Side!
View all The Dark Side Haunted Adventure reviews

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Film Fanatic: Jared Leto Joins Cast of 'Blade Runner 2'
by Ryan Beltram | Aug 19, 2016 | Film Fanatic, Firehose, Headline Feed, Latest, Rotator
Jared Leto Joins Cast of 'Blade Runner 2'
When news first broke that a sequel was being made to the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, many eyes (mine included) rolled. Why risk tarnishing the legacy of the original? Just remake it? Why not just leave it alone?
My initial thought was that Harrison Ford was pulling a Vin Diesel and Sylvester Stallone by going back to the well that made him successful (Indiana Jones, Star Wars). But upon further review, this sequel is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated movies of 2017.
Ford is returning as Rick Deckard, but it's the casting around Ford that has turned Blade Runner 2 into a film to be taken seriously. Denis Villeneuve signed on to direct after stellar work on Prisoners, Enemy and Sicario and Ryan Gosling soon joined the cast. Villeneuve is also reuniting with his Sicario and Prisoners cinematographer Roger Deakins who is perhaps the greatest cinematographer working today.
The 'Blade Runner 2' cast is rounding out nicely. | (consequenceofsound.net)
But according to Alcon Entertainment, the studio behind the sequel, Jared Leto has joined the cast in a "key role." Leto has always been quite selective in his acting projects so the fact that he's agreed to join the sequel, as well as Gosling, speaks to the potential quality of the film.
Details on the film are limited, but the story takes place several decades after the events of the original. It's being written by original Blade Runner scribe Hampton Fancher (Yes, that's his real name) and Michael Green.
The sequel is currently untitled, but it will be released on October 6, 2017.
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly Reuniting for Holmes & Watson
Just when you thought there were enough Sherlock Holmes iterations at the moment including the BBC series Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Sheen, CBS' Elementary and the Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law feature film series, get ready because there's another one coming only this one sounds intriguing.
Per Deadline, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly who previously starred together in Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, will reunite once again for the comedy Holmes & Watson. Ferrell will play Holmes, while Reilly will play the loyal doctor James Watson.
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly team up for a third time. | ('Wreck it Ralph' Premiere)
Has there been a little Sherlock Holmes fatigue? Certainly. But with this duo, we are likely to see the most unique take on the British detective series to date.
Ferrell's Get Hard director Etan Cohen has signed on to helm the project and he will write the script. Cohen previously wrote memorable screenplays for Idiocracy and Tropic Thunder.
The film will be rated PG-13 (Sorry, no F-bombs from Ferrell and Reilly) and Sony Pictures is planning to begin production right after Thanksgiving which could mean a late 2017 release.
Bradley Cooper to Direct and Star with Lady Gaga in ' A Star is Born'
Becoming a well-established actor in Hollywood isn't enough these days for young actors. We've seen more and more go behind the camera. From Joseph Gordon-Levitt to Chris Evans to Ryan Gosling to Natalie Portman, who's directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, opens today, more and more seem to love the challenge of learning all aspects of filmmaking.
The next A-lister to join that list will be Bradley Cooper. Warner Bros. has announced that Cooper will be directing a remake of A Star is Born. The story, which follows an aging, self-destructive actor who helps an aspiring actress achieve her dreams of stardom, has been told on the big screen three times already.
Bradley Cooper has found his star. | (aceshowbiz.com)
The original came out in 1937 and other versions were released in 1954 and 1976. The '54 incarnation starred Judy Garland and James Mason and earned six Oscar nominations.
In addition to directing this new version, Cooper will also star and his female co-star is an unlikely choice. Lady Gaga, who's been honing her acting chops on American Horror Story, will play the female lead.
A release date has yet to be set, but Warner Bros. is targeting a 2017 release. Expect this project to go into production fairly soon.


2. What two centuries does the book span?
3. What does the author credit for giving a sense of time in the book in the form of a calendar?
4. What does the author use to distinguish sections within his chapters?
5. How might the order of the first chapter be described?
6. What city are the arcades the author focuses on located?
7. What is the first artistic movement the author discusses in the book?
8. What century does Theodor Adorno work in?
9. What occupation does Theodor Adorno hold?
More summaries and resources for teaching or studying The Arcades Project.
The Arcades Project from BookRags. (c)2019 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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The six weeks of travelling and researching have been exceptional – discovering new places, meeting writers and publishers in Europe, particularly in Budapest, and having intense time to write completely away from work and from my normal environment have enabled me to put lots of creative pressure on the next novel, which follows on from This is the End of the Story. It takes place during the timespan of the first novel, during one month in 1993 (a month we don't hear about within This is the End of the Story even though its last chapter is set in June, 1994). It follows the protagonist of the first novel, Catherine, and is set in the early days of post-Communist Hungary, specifically in Budapest, where Catherine is researching the poet Attila József for a novel based on his life.
It's not a novel about time travel or reincarnation (is Catherine merely dreaming about Selene's life or did she once live it?), but about alternative notions of identity as a metaphor that challenge insularity and the institutions that imagine they can crush people. Running under the narrative is an insistence that governments and power brokers cannot crush the soul of life and humanity and all that connects us. It's also about alternative perspectives on time.
Einstein wrote that the 'past, present and future are only an illusion' and in Greek there are two words for time — Chronos is the everyday, linear sense, the time of clocks, but Kairos has a more qualitative sense — it is the right moment, the Now. In this vein, the existentialist philosopher, Kierkegaard, distinguished between living temporally and finitely and those rare moments when we suspend finite living and become aware of existing so that for an instant we are outside of time and 'stand in relation to the eternal'. And Spinoza similarly talks of 'timeless moments', as John Berger points out in his brilliant book of radical essays, Hold Everything Dear. These are moments when the ordinary is made luminous, not in some showy fireworks-and-flashes way, but by providing a transcendent vision of the everyday so that eternity breaks into the present.
Such moments can be found in mediation, on a walk in a beautiful place, or simply in some unlooked for instant going about routine tasks and they can also be found in art and literature. Proust and Joyce both wrote about epiphany in this way and Proust's notion of an involuntary memory containing the past has this sense of the eternal breaking in, of another kind of time that is qualitative and belongs to an eternal present. The best poetry contains this transcendence — as Berger points out, every pause in an Emily Dickinson poem is redolent with eternity.
The impulse to write something in which the transient and the contingent becomes one with the sublime and numinous, with all that connects us and all that takes us beyond the illusion of past, present and future, occurs constantly — and if anyone achieves it there will be nothing left to say. What more can be added to such epiphany? But, as exquisite and profound as some literature is, no one has yet taken us to this place of silence and so writers keep writing, keep circling the Kairos.
It's something I'm striving to negotiate with in A Remedy for All Things — how do we make the life of poet who despaired enough to kill himself, the lives of those who took on an unwinnable fight in the Hungarian Uprising (many losing their lives), the life of a writer who struggles with personal loss and grief, the lives of anyone who resists living the life handed to them by institutions and powers, matter? One way is perhaps to use fiction and imagination to mess with the notion of linear time, assert with Cervantes' Quixote that 'The unreason of the world is more insane than any fiction' and we will resist the unreasonable, limiting, conventional world in favour of timeless moments.
Writing in an unfamiliar place where the language is impenetrable (I've mastered 'thank you' – kösönöm) is giving me a huge amount to process and making the second draft of the novel much richer in detail and atmosphere. But information is never neutral and it's a difficult and fascinating exercise to sift for particular perspectives in a culture that I'm an outsider to.
A couple of days ago I visited the House of Terror at Andrassy utca, 60. This infamous building was the home of the extreme right-wing Arrow Cross. In power for a relatively short time, this fascist national socialist party with ideals of racial purity benefitted enormously when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944 after losing patience with their allies for being too moderate. In just over a year the death toll and deportation of Jews, Romanies and other 'undesirables' soared, with atrocities mounting. After 1945 and the Soviet regime, the building was taken over by the indigenous arm of the communist secret police, the AVH, and became the nerve centre of purges and terror campaigns against the population.
The Budapest House of Terror is one of the most notorious examples of abusing spectacular new media audiovisual technology to exhibit a politically and ideologically biased historical narrative. … the institution is not only an eloquent example of how the careless use of 'public history' is able to manipulate the 'consumption' of history, (but) … represents another important agenda: many new 'public history' museums call themselves memory museums. Such claims often contain an epistemological distinction between 'object-based history' and 'collective-mentality-based memory.' As the case of the House of Terror demonstrates, it is however a dangerous strategy: the idea of an 'alternative epistemology' based on 'collective memory' is basically a denial of any rational way of obtaining knowledge about the past.
Whilst agreeing that memory is a slippery concept, I wouldn't wholly follow Apor's argument. Memory can be a tricky and fraught concept, but is also 'existentially rich'. Like Christian Karner and Bram Mertens in The Use and Abuse of Memory, I think it possible to find a theoretical position in which memory is neither co-terminus with nor inimical to historical 'fact', not a compromised middle-ground, but a genuine dialogue that allows a new perspective between 'evidence' and 'experience'.
A further problem is that the exhibit not only makes it appear that there was no 'normal, daily life' in Hungary in the Communist era, but also locates the 'evil' as 'other'. Whilst those who collaborated with the two regimes or worked for them are named with photographs on a 'wall of victimisers' (itself controversial given we don't know the level of involvement from names and photographs and given that heritage sites do not normally set themselves up as judge and jury) there is nonetheless an overall sense that 'evil' came from outside the indigenous culture.
I'm glad to have experienced this first hand and been exposed to the controversies and questions, but most of all the visit was 'fruitful' for simply walking through the largely empty basement cells: chilling and inhumane, the atmosphere there was palpably horrifying without need of interpretation boards or video screens.
In the meantime, I've got lots to think about as I write a novel in which terror is not a spectacle, but an everyday fear for at least one of my three main characters, and in which memory and it's slipperiness is central.
In This is the End of the Story, Catherine seems to establish an identity that will, with a measure of flexibility, see her through life. But in A Remedy for All Things, when events unravel, Catherine revisits events in the previous novel and becomes less confident of the 'normalcy' and new relationships she has tried to re-establish as she questions the boundaries between fact and fiction and re-asses issues of perception and identity.
But the internal drama happens in a context. In the first novel the politics and culture of 70s Teesside is as much an omnipresent pressure as Miriam's epilepsy and Cassie's (Catherine's) willingness to believe and be defined by others. So, in this one, questions of meaning and identity are impacted not personal contexts (including mental health issues and neurological conditions such as migraine and aura), but also by political events that sweep individuals along.
I grew up in Teesside in the 70s so the research was heavily reliant on memory backed up with lots of Internet fact checking. (It's amazing what memory invents and interchanges.) I feel like Catherine is someone I know. I've lived with her for a few years now. I dream her dreams. But not only have her problems changed and become more complex, but they are located in an unfamiliar place.
I know of excellent novels that are set in places that the author has never visited. Any historical novel of necessity has an element of this since even if we can visit the historic houses and sites, see artefacts, travel to the places, read the histories, we can't go back in time. But some authors can convince with research alone write novels as though they had lived in Mongolia when what they've actually done is read widely and surf the net endlessly. We live in a world of information – a great deal of it spurious, but much of it rich. In addition to endless travel guides and blogs, books in translation, films with subtitles, websites for even the smallest locations and a plethero of information on cultural mores, we also have Google Earth and Maps to allow us to walk (virtually) around far away cities at the click of a mouse. So why travel?
My current novel has two characters from Budapest – the poet Attila Jozsef in the 30s and a young woman in prison after the 56 Uprising. Before arriving in Budapest I read everything I could find on Attila Jozsef – all the poetry that's translated into English, every website I could find (including those in Hungarian that I could persuade Google to 'translate' for me) and a biography that took some tracking down. I read books about the 1956 Uprising, both novels and non-fiction and others about wartime experiences in Budapest (even though this was background rather than part of the timeline of my novel). I found locations and walked the streets on my computer. I wrote the 55 chapters in outline and then, using the research, expanded each outline into a full chapter. I wrote a great deal on trains in the last week travelling from Paris to Budapest (a journey that both of my Hungarian characters made) and finished a first full draft of the novel not long after arriving here.
It's very much a 'first draft' and as I settle into this unfamiliar place I'm more and more convinced of the need to experience as much as humanly possible as part of creative practice. My research left me in no doubt of the enormity of suffering that Hungary has experienced with the twentieth century seeing atrocities from both the Arrow Cross and the Communist regime. But to see buildings still scarred by bullet holes; to see memorials at the Great Synagogue, bombed by the Arrow Cross, taken over as a German Radio station in WW2 and then hemmed into a ghetto, where thousands died of cold and starvation, their bodies piled in the synagogue garden; to eat the local food; hear the language; begin to feel something of the character of the place and people … all of this can only be done in the flesh.
Troubled, wise and great was the Danube.
The Danube was turbulent, wise and great.
It's a metal statue, but the mixture of melancholy and longing was palpable.
We've been to the photographic museum where the photo-images of Budapest in the 90s (when my character Catherine is visiting to write about Joszef) have dramatically changed my ideas about the place at that time, despite all the reading I'd already done.
We've visited the Orthodox Kazinczy Street Synagoue – so bright and alive, full of folk design and with windows of painted glass – flamboyantly Art Nouveau – Secessionist. And also the Dohány Street Synagogue of the Neolog congregation in the Erzsébetváros district. It's the biggest synagogue in Europe and takes nearly three-thousand people. It looks more like a cathedral with an organ and choir – staffed by non-Jews in a wonderful bit of theological casuistry.
It's beautiful, Moorish-style building full of ochres, deep pinks and dark wood polished like mirrors; the glass opaque and lots of it coloured – mustard and cobalt with flashes of scarlet around the creamy white stars of David. It feels sombre, but it's seen a lot of tragedy. After the war it survived as a prayer house through the Communist era, but wasn't renovated until the early 90s. There's an exquisite memorial in the garden that was erected during the renovations. A weeping tree in silver; each slender leaf has a name inscribed on it – so simple and poignant. A tree of life in the face of death.
I could read about any of this and I'm aware that in tiny, finite lives reading and other ways of accruing information that makes us more empathic is vital. I'm a novelist because I know the power of narratives to inform, to inspire, to get under the skin of what might make us human. But I also know the power of place and Budapest is communicating that powerfully. As a writer, the urge to travel, to be touched by a sense of place, has never felt more urgent and I hope the unfamiliarity will make me push at the boundaries of what I think and write as the work progresses.
2016 has been an extraordinary year. Having celebrated its first decade, Cinnamon Press has published some extraordinary poetry and fiction this year and put gorgeously designed books into the world. We've had a bumper crop of mentoring students making it very hard to choose who we will go on to publish. We've had well-supported competitions with winners whose books we're enthusiastic to develop, publish and promote. We've even been privileged to have some international launches and have enjoyed opportunities to write, think, walk, cook… in between editing and mentoring.
In all these respects, 2016 has been good – very good. And yet it's also been a year of loss and turmoil. The political landscape looks grim: Brexit – an 'advisory' vote has become synonymous with the 'people have spoken' – even whilst many of those people are crying out that they had no idea what they were voting for; the terrifying move to the right in many European countries ;the election of Trump in the US, a sign of the ascendancy of confusion, anger and nihilism and a dearth of political education or hope and horrific humanitarian disasters, especially in Syria.
Politically 2016 has been bad – beyond bad and has instigated decisions that will go on having negative repercussions and sewing divisiveness. And the downsides of this year have not only been political, though the connections between personal and political realms are never absent. It's been a year when great thinkers, actors, singers have died – of course any year might be that, but it's 'felt' more acute in 2016 – the loss of people like Umberto Eco, Ornette Coleman, Alan Rickman, Leonard Cohen, Gene Wilder, George Martin, John Glenn, Elie Wiesel… has gone on and on, whilst I've known at least five close personal friends battling cancers this year, felt helpless for several gifted young people who, despite god degrees and hard work, can't keep up with their rent in minimum wage jobs that squander their talents and leave them exhausted and dispirited. I've celebrated with friends who've had triumphs – a publishing contract, a new relationship, an extraordinary creative project, but more often cried with those who are mourning terrible illness, the end of a long relationship, the loss of a child, one too many rejection.
In the midst of such a strange year, brimming with celebration and loss, but coming to an end in so much political uncertainty and anxiety, I've finished a novel. It's a book that has been simmering slowly in me for over 30 years. The actual writing began much more recently, but some of the events that informed it and later became reshaped and fictionalised have very deep roots. I've finished a novel and of all the books I've written it's the one I feel most passionate about because it's a novel that says the personal and the political are not disparate but intertwined and it's a novel that says when the world is going to hell, when culture is being harried, when divisiveness is on on every corner , then we need other ways of seeing – ways that sometimes only story can provide.
When life seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams – this may be madness … – and maddest of all to see life as it is and not as it should be.
2016 has been the best of times and the worst of times. 2017 might be the same. We can resist madness where we see it, mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice, refuse to be dumbed down; above all make art and literature that will not accept the way things are. This is at least one good reason to write fiction in an insane world.