Friday, March 26, 2010

A Lesson in Minding your Media

I would like to express my deepest gratitude, first of all, to Weng Lum for sharing this article with me: TNB to Sue WWF Over Earth Hour, and then to the blogger at nose4news for entertaining me so well this Friday afternoon.

My initial reaction reading the article was 'OMG. The bastards. Are you sure?' And a bit of googling helped me find out that I was not the only one outraged. Upon closer scrutiny though, the top heading of '' did seem a little bit suspect. Haha.. a fact I proceeded to share with Weng.

After which our gaze diverted to the banner. (this is the point when you do the same for that 'Oh.. i get it' moment)

Anyway, I totally love this website now. nose4news And yes I was tempted into browsing the archives whereby i was simultaneously impressed and disgusted by the Malaysian intellect.
Totally impressed that there's a satirist sophisticated enough to come up with these news articles. Reads really well and is so DARNED funny with the visuals (haha.. Keris Kebenaran is classy) but at the same time SO DEPRESSED that even with the glaring banner, the many comments indicating that it is all a fake, there are still SO MANY IDIOTS in Malaysia.

Post in point is this one:
Sabah & Sarawak to be Relocated
Here are my fave bits of the article (including the marvelously photoshopped map)
Before: Malaysia as it is

After: Malaysia post-cosmetic surgery

“It’s a big project, costing well over RM850 trillion,” said Najib. “The project would take 10 years to complete, since we’d need to move all the soil, water sources, flora, fauna, man-made structures and of course, the people. But it’ll be worth it, since we’ll truly be 1Malaysia.”

“Of course, we might ‘improve’ some things when we rebuild the states. We’re thinking, maybe Mount Kinabalu could be higher than Everest. I mean, why not? It’s not every day that you get to change what nature has given us.

“And if we take the soil from inside Gua Niah and use it to add on Mount Kinabalu’s height, we’d get both a bigger cave and taller mountain, effectively rewriting two Guinness World Records. Now that’s what I call value for money!”


On protests by the Kelantan state government, citing the ‘loss of a coastline’ and ‘off-shore petroleum’, Najib said that this is of national interest, and the opposition-held state administration should not be so selfish.

“These people simply refuse to understand the importance of 1Malaysia. They keep on looking a the small things like the death of their fishing industry or the loss of billions of ringgit of income.

“Serves the Kelantanese people right for voting in such small-minded leaders.”

Okay, so the post, we agree, is superbly well-written so you would suspect it of being genuine. What more because our ministers HAVE said some questionable things before, i.e: "We are not saying that they cannot use Facebook or Twitter but when using such facilities they must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture," but you haven't seen anything til you've read the comments.

Better use these trillions of RM to improve the institutions of learning, give our scholarships to the poor based on merit, build more technical colleges to develop skills of students who are not so academically-inclined ie for skills upgrading so these people can find a job, build better hospitals and look at ways to improve the public healthcare systems, improve the roads and upgrade the computer systems of public offices. Basically, use the money to stimulate the econony and build it, enhance it, grow it for the properity of the Rakyat.

This moronic PM comes up with idea to siphon off the Rakyat’s money. He should do a feasibility study first. To me, this is gonna be a useless project.

Bodoh punya orang.

Bertaubatlah Najib. Insyallah.
Idris.

Okaylah Idris. You posted as soon as the post came up. Forgive your stupidity. Noone told you yet.

Our PM suddenly became God when he talks like this.If God said it I beleive because God can do all the IMPOSSIBLE which humanly think is impossible,for example an earthquake or tsunami can change landscape.So I do not know what God or gods our PM pray to that made him think and want to act like God.If this idea comes then those gods can be very dangerous and we have seen that with the ** incident.We better pray hard for the mind of our PM to stay in good shape.

One day later - still got excuse?

this is simply not feasible because the maintenance just to keep the two new land masses from disappearing due to poor shoddy workmanship would cost 400 quadrillion a year.

This is a classy comment though.

wtf is this ! 850 trillion my S !
Dont talk about the money, think of the citizens condition.. Dont you ever think they will get nightmare when sleeping, been torturing for 10yrs, it is like the earth is not safer anymore !
Can you ensure that no one will die !
Can you ensure that no building will collapse!
Can you ensure that ALL THE CITIZENS want this to be happened ?
Say this is democratic country, do the people have the right to say YES / NO for this project!
Why dont you run a survey to get permission first !

MONEY !!
Our hard earn money !! 10yrs squeezing people money into your ‘pocket’
We are your citizens not your toys !

PM ! cant your just think for us, switching your position as a citizen, dont always be on top! you miss out alot of things. Whatever you think is not the ppl need ! Cmon you have to be more mature !
WHat you spoken, doesnt ever convince the people! WE ARE LIKE LIVING IN HELL SOON ! ” Peepo cross-finger ! we will be tortured soon, enjoy the best for now !

But seriously, after a month?

Anyway, my point being that the government is sometimes really stupid but erm.. when you see how people lap up anything typed in a posh enough font - then you understand why we are where we are, huh?

I for one choose to revel in the few who question and then write hilarious articles. Thanks nose4news! Will be checking back often :)

And to everyone else, check your facts before you believe everything!

(and switch off your lights 8.30pm - 9.30 pm on Saturday the 27th March. Pretty sure TNB employees won't be losing their bonuses)

No comments: