Subtle Subterfuge

While I'm not usually a fan of politics, TalkingCock.com's reactions to being mentioned during PM Lee's National Day Rally Speech really had me going:

The mention during the rally, when PM Lee said that TalkingCock.com was a place where Singaporeans go to find funny things, has caused a lot of anguished soul searching amongst TalkingCock's small staff.

Panic had already set in earlier today, when Mr. Kway made his weekly check of the webzine's email and received the following from a Ms Tan (full identity obscured to protect confidentiality) from MICA (Ministry of Inhibiting and Censoring the Arts):

Dear Sir,

I am [Ms Tan] from the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts. PM Lee is making his address at the annual National Day Rally on 20 August 2006 (Sunday). As part of his address, PM will be sharing some of the interesting things that Singaporeans are doing online, and your blog may be highlighted as an example of one of the many things Singaporeans are doing on the net. We may be using a screenshot of your blog.

If you have any queries, you can call me at [number].

Thanks.

Best regards,
[Ms Tan]

"We thought it might be a joke," said contributing writer Pak Cham Kai. "But then we thought, Gahmen where got sense of humour? Look wha'ppen over the bak chor mee incident!"

"Some more he said that some of the jokes were funny, and some not so funny," thundered Supreme Cock. "But he neh say which, so how we know? If they don'ch have a sense of humour, we need to faster find out which jokes they find funny, so we can change, mah!"

The TalkingCock staff are also deeply upset at the targeting once again of Mr. Brown, of whom they are big fans. "Now people will think, one is approved and the other is not approved... so of course they will go to the not approved one, lah! Habis, lah! We're all one gang, but kena their divide and conquer strategy."


Check out the rest of the hilarious (to me not to them) aftermath of the speech here:
Seow Leow! TalkingCock Suffers Shrinkage, Street Cred Loss, After Rally Mention

SMS moment of the day

Me [reminder to dad]: Buy food for terrapins!


Dad: -
Why not food for papa?
Pa, r u hungry?
Can I get u something nice that u like?

Me (feeling sheepish): har har =p

Not just a simple cold (I wish).

Started coughing on Tuesday night, and have been at it since. That makes it 3 days before I finally took myself to the doctor this morning to get antibiotics, two runny nose tablets, and cough syrup. The flu, he says.

Somehow, the diagnosis is never satisfying enough to merit the amount of pain and discomfort the illness actually causes. At the very least, tell me its like allergy-caused pneumonia type A or something so that I can alleviate the guilt I feel for not having planned my lessons, marked my scripts, and even having an MC for Monday, on top of the angst of being laid up in bed during my longest weekend break ever i.e. from National Day eve til Sunday. Sigh.

Apparently, I will not get well till Tuesday. That's like a week from when I got struck by this wheedle of a virus. I have by now concluded that, if there were a list of one of the most irritating things to get, it's the flu. It's like a passive-aggressive guy who symptomatically leaves you too distraught to get anything done properly and yet not have the balls to knock you over completely till you don't have a clue what's going on and have to go with the flow. Moreoever, being the neurotic closet-control freak that I am, I'm probably going to try to get a grip on things, manhandle it my way, and end up being more unhappy.

To quote another angst-ridden friend, that's "C'est la frickin' vie".