Rapture!

I would hate to be this guy on May 22.

Nope. Not the Bioshock "Rapture".

If you have been following the international news or, particularly, the news in the US. You would have heard of this news. If you had not, I would suggest that you stop reading and google something along the line of "May 21 Rapture", read any articles by any news media. That would help you understand what's going on.

So a church in the US has been telling everybody that the world is coming to an end on the 22nd of May, this year. The church, led by an old man named Harold Camping (I should add that he is also a multi-millionaire and the host of the most subscribed Christian radiostation in the US), spent enormous amount of money setting up billboards all over (I do not know how far wide are the billboards, but I presume quite a large area across the US). Here are a few examples of the billboards. I have taken the liberty of sharing them with you. ; )

That is right guys. Cry, cry... Be very afraid. Because Bible GUARANTEES it!

Yup, don't want to miss a barbecue session with Jesus.

And all you unbelievers will be tortured until the 21st of October, then the world will end, and you then will get more torture in Hell. 

Here we go "again". Just like many other false prophecies.

Yes, it is really that insane. But what's more insane is that these people genuinely believe in it! They wear sandwich boards in cities, giving fliers, grabbing anyone off the street and yelling at them. If you didn't know, you would have thought that it was a massive publicity campaign for some cheesy product.

That doesn't surprise me though. What surprises me is the level of hypocrisy of these "believers". They preach that the believers will ascend to Heaven comes 21st of May, but they do not live as if they are really going to leave this world.

If you are going to leave this life, why bother saving your money? Why bother keeping all your possessions? Walk what you preach, give it to the poor, you do not need those in heaven anyway (and the poor deserves better).

Still keeping? I don't know what do you call it if not being a hypocrite. Seriously.



As for Harold Camping who made the prediction. Well, he made a prediction a decade earlier, saying that the world is going to end in 1994. Nothing happened.

Personally, I would hate to be this guy on the 22nd of May, when everything is still fine, and Jesus didn't come, and none of these "believers" left for Heaven. But that's just me. Some people love attention so much they believe that bad publicity is still publicity. Don't be surprised if he end up trying to bid for US presidency after this. (Another Christian evangelist, Pat Robertson, made a prediction that the world is going to end in 1982, nothing happened of course. But Pat Robertson went on to run for presidency in 1988.)

Oh well. I am just glad that Christianity in Malaysia hasn't stooped that low yet. But given enough time and with the growing fundamentalism movement, I am sure one of these days something like this may spread to and surface in Malaysia - Land of Anything Also Can. That is when I will totally - and finally - give up hope for this country.

Anyway. Happy Rapture everyone. Hope I will see you around when tomorrow comes.



Till next time, cheers~


p.s. Would someone ask Kanye West to interrupt the Rapture, please?

Don't Understand People Lah...

Probably one of the biggest news in a while, that Osama bin Laden is dead.

I was keeping tab on twitter even before Obama decided to announce the news the other day. Then one of the tweets from CNN news announced that Obama is going on air for a special address to the nation. I remember one tweet saying that Obama decided to go on air at that time to draw peoples' attention from Donald Trump's "Celebrity Apprentice", which was going to be aired at the same time.

For those who didn't know, Obama and Trump got into a little 'feud' about the president's country of birth. Thus the joke tweet.

Anyway, the rest is exactly what you heard from the news. The international news channels rating soared, saturated with all sorts of news and interviews - how it happened, who was involved, did Pakistan know, effects on Middle-East politics, effects on al-Qaeda, etc., even though some people had no business to be there (instant fame on CNN wor, who wouldn't accept?).

There are groups of people who remained skeptical of the news, though. And they believe the US fabricated the whole spectacle, and - to a certain extent - staged the conspiracy from the start of 9/11. What did the US do to deserve such a claim?

  I cry foul as I like. ok?

Um, I don't know what I should make of this. I have in mind to blog about this a long time ago, but was unable due to time constraints. But one issue bothers me - why did they think so?

I think crying foul and saying that the US is conspiring against us is just plain absurd. People have been asking for the US to present the evidence that bin Laden is dead, or else it's a conspiracy. One thing I would ask these people though, where is the proof of conspiracy?

Do not use creative imaginations to link unrelated facts together that do not even pass Ockham's razor, and present it as a fact, claiming that the US is politically motivated to do so. The complex conspiracy theory fails, because in order to explain the whole situation, more baseless theories have to be made to support it. That doesn't work due to the nature of its complexity, and when both explanations are equally viable, the simpler prevails. Simple. Case closed. (I am not a big fan of US, I'm not some unpatriotic "char-siew" who will - on the first chance he/she gets - grab a green card and show Malaysia his/her ass. I'm defending because I think it's unfair and unjustified.)

I would want to return on a later time to lay out all the 9/11-related conspiracies and debunk them one at a time. I really don't understand people who thinks that the US has all the time in the world to stage this bloody show just to spend trillions of dollars into the military to wage a war against no-one (and get the oil which is then used to earn money which is then spent into the military which is used to get the oil in the first place). Come on, the whole plan is just too smart and complicated for Bush to execute (except the military spending - oil money cycle, and the after-effects on the American economy, now that's dumb and typical of him).

Meanwhile, I would like to end with this photo. Bin Laden's photos were not released yet. Look lah. Ok? Good night.

Osama's Las Vegas photo, he got drunk that's all.

Till next time, Cheers.

Of Suicide and (stupid) Peoples

I believe you would had seen in the news a couple of days ago that a guy, 22 years of age, committed suicide because of a failure in a relationship. He jumped off a 14-story building and died due to excessive loss of blood in the next morning. But before he died, he posted a suicide note on his facebook page, and even did a countdown to the time of his suicide.

Well at first his friends and family didn't know what he was up to, except that it was kind of freaking her sister out (try googling, you can probably find the facebook comments exchange between him and his sister). In his text replies in facebook at that time he did sound normal though, or rather, look normal (can't hear written words right?), like most of us would - typing using rojak words, with mandatory smileys at the end of each sentence. No one suspected anything at all, until it happened.

Now, when I heard of the news. I was extremely disturbed; there are a few reasons why and I shall talk about them one by one.

Killing himself because of a broken heart

The only worse way to die is to break your heart, literally.

People does a lot of things to kill themselves everyday, intentionally or otherwise. Suicide, of course, is a way of dying where people consciously choose to end their own lives.

There are a number of good reasons why a person would want to kill him or herself, such as in the case of the kamikaze pilots of Japan, where they fly their fighter airplanes straight into enemy targets, thus ensuring maximum control in hitting the target. The downside was, obviously, the pilot has to die in the collision, but the soldiers say it's a way to show love and patriotism for the country, to die for the country is of the greatest honor. The further justification is that because it is tactically superior (provided you have enough crazy pilots and airplanes of course).

But killing himself because his ex-girlfriend didn't want to accept him again, is that justifiable? How can a person, really, want to die because of broken heart, I do not know.

If he were to die protecting his ex-girlfriend from something, yes, that would be really admirable, in fact I would applaud him for his brave sacrifice. But he did not, he chose to end his own life, for whatever reasons clearly unknown and instead of people benefiting from the situation, it made things worse. Like, 12984798179789758917592858 times worse, for his family, friends, and not to mention, the person who will be feeling the guilt the most - his ex-girlfriend.

What was he trying to do really?

Life is cheap like this

It's okay, I'm free anyway

That was the message he gave (not the sole message however), that life is so cheap, that when a person feels like he don't want to live anymore, he or she can just end his or her life, without really considering the consequences.

And to die for a petty reason such as a failed relationship, it further amplifies the message. 

Many kids in the poorer areas of the world - Africa, Latin America, South Asia, they were born into families that cannot support them in terms of the most basic needs. Everyday life is a struggle for them, and having just clean water and food, to them, is the equivalent of us staying in a luxury 5-star resort for a weekend. A lot of them do not make it to adulthood, and those who do face constant threat of epidemic diseases, with not chance of getting medical treatment. They really want to live, but alas, the world is unfair sometimes, they were just unfortunate to be born in the situation they are in, and dying early is a fated affair, them having almost no control over it.

But this person, born in a beautiful country of Malaysia, with no immediate natural or economical crisis, into a decent family, having more than human basic needs, took everything for granted and chose, I repeat, consciously chose to end his own life, when at the same time the unfortunates all around the world are trying to live, choosing to live, despite facing the prospect of dying in a near future. 

Do you not see the problem with his thinking? 

And if you ask me, this is the reason I will not give him the respect due, because he does not value his own life, which could not had happened had the paths of his parents did not entwine and they did not get married, or had they decided to have sex copulate on another day instead of the day where the embryo destined to mature into him were formed.

Instant celebrity status

It's like Hollywood, except that I'm in heaven

I doubt if this is what he had in mind when he committed suicide (who can be sure, though?), but take a search in facebook, type in his name and see what comes out.

Yes, you are right, fan pages. No, not singular, but the plural "fan pages". And if that does not disturb you, take a look at the number of subscribers of the pages, it goes well over 40 thousand for the more popular ones. But even the lesser ones had amounted thousands of not tens of thousands of facebook "likers".

What is wrong with these people really? What are they trying to do, making a fan page?

Are they trying to glorify this death? Worshiping him as a celebrity? Sorry if this sounds wrong, but I can't think of any other reason a sane person would create or like these pages. You can argue that the pages are used for  commemoration purposes, but doesn't that mean that his death has more value, and therefore, deserves to be noticed by more people?

If anything at all, these pages are telling people that posting suicide notes on facebook and committing suicide is "cool", and can have bad influences on people, especially the younger people (and by young I mean those teenagers less than 18 years of age) who can sometimes be immature enough to follow bad trends.

And as for the people who subscribed to these pages, what are you doing? Are you promoting the same values that these pages are trying to instill? Stop liking the pages. Stop posting R.I.P. notes there. It's none of your fucking business he died. If you are just doing that with good intentions, try justifying why didn't you do the same for the gazillions of people who died for a better reason or a better cause.

There are people who deserve those wishes more than this lad here, many more who were forgotten but contributed to the society more. These are the ones that you should be wishing, not him, not when all he cares about is himself. Of selflessness and selfishness, are we really trying to tell people that the latter deserves more recognition?

p.s. If there's a fan page related to this incident that you should like at all, it is this.



Sigh, I think I should stop here. There are much more things I wanted to say about this incident, but I think I should just keep it to myself. But really, people, be more mature okay? It's okay to be kids sometimes, but not when it shows your infinite stupidity.



That is all for today. For my next post, I think I shall write about something in response to my friend's facebook posts about some conspiracies and new world order. Hopefully I can prepare my materials in time, and have it posted up in a couple of days.

Till next time, cheers.