Monday, April 27, 2009

The Internet as Frankenstein



EXCERPT FROM AN ESSAY ON BADANG


The mythical Malay Frankenstein, Badang, has now morphed into "Agent Smiths" of movie The Matrix fame in circa Malaysian 12th general election. If one is to believe in the Last Supper, the next one will see a banquet of a new regime. It might take the 13th general election henceforth to install a good check and balance system, in tune with "the scales" - the symbolism of the current ruling regime.

Badang is a monster created by human imagination—the technocratic fantasy of Man. It is a surrealistic being; meaning that Badang was created by a mad Majapahit scientist in antiquity, to help human beings extend their capability of roaming rudely but justifiably into cyberspace.

The Malays are not poor in Nostradamic ideas of change – the Puteri Buluh Betong was the first test-tube baby, Hang Tuah was a prototype of a Robocop and disguised as an over-glamourised fool, Hang Nadim was actually a clever investment banker who fooled the King of Temasik into importing banana trees to be planted along the shores of Singapura during a pre-meditated swordfish attack, Si Tenggang was a warning to Malays not to venture into frontierland and not challenge autocratic regimes. Raja Bersiong was a warning to modern Malaysians to be aware of blood-sucking leaders who control the oil-rich country's wealth and leave the poor of all races to protest on the streets and get arrested and pepper-sprayed.

As one who grew up in Johor Bahru, perhaps Si Bongkok Tanjung Puteri reminds me of the Malay's Beauty and the Beast—trapped in a dungeon waiting for the right time to come out and runamuck protesting against the rape of Johor through the newly-built corridors with a hegemonizing name "Iskandar Development Region".

5 comments:

T H E . M A L A Y . P R E S S said...

again Sir..i agree with you!

Anonymous said...

It’s so much easier for the mind to dwell on/revisit/hammer on Forging Worldviews than Transforming Mindset!

So, where do one start on such new epic journey, Doc?

Where will it lead to?

& Where shall we end up? Any Hitchikers’ Guide to the Galaxy? Hmmm…:)

Anonymous said...

How would one get out of the same loop if changing a variable in one's equation still bring about/result in the same predictable outcome -- difference is in terms of mere magnitude, ie more or less of yet the same...?

Anonymous said...

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (published in 1979), the characters visit the legendary planet Magrathea, home to the now-collapsed planet-building industry, and meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway.

Through archival recordings, he relates the story of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

When the answer was revealed to be 42, Deep Thought had predicted that another computer, more powerful than itself would be made and designed by it to calculate the question for the answer.

(Later on, referencing this, Adams would create the 42 Puzzle, a puzzle which could be approached in multiple ways, all yielding the answer 42.)

The computer, often mistaken for a planet (because of its size and use of biological components), was the Earth, and was destroyed by Vogons to make way for a hyperspatial express route, five minutes before the conclusion of its 10-million-year program.

Two of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who commissioned the Earth in the first place, disguise themselves as Trillian's mice, and want to dissect Arthur's brain to help reconstruct the question, since he was part of the Earth's matrix moments before it was destroyed, and so he is likely to have part of the question buried in his brain.

Trillian is also human but had left Earth six months previously with Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy.

The protagonists escape, setting course for "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".

The mice, in Arthur's absence, create a phony question since it is too troublesome for them to wait 10 million years again just to cash in on a lucrative deal.

Their new question was "How many roads must a man walk down?"

Tamerlane said...

an approprite movie for the same ol crap of malaysia is Groudhog Day.

Grandma’s Gangsta Chicken Curry and Gangsta Stories from My Hippie Sixties by Azly Rahman

MY MEMOIR IS NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!  https://www.amazon.com/Grandmas-Gangsta-Chicken-Stories-Sixties-ebook/dp/B095SX3X26/ref=sr_1_1?dchild...