In Other Words

Support Tyranny Day

Ah, the enjoyment of an extra free day. Its great sitting around not wearing underwear or pants when you would normally be at work, don’t you agree? Naked butt cheeks to the air, winds ruffling your ass hair, as you stink up the air and make everybody flee the premises. Brilliant! Shame they don’t let you sit around in the company without any pants on. I mean, after all your pants only hold in part of the stink and a good pair of pants are more expensive then a new chair. Alright, I’ll admit that sitting in a brown stained chair does take away from you comfort level slightly, but then so does sitting around with dirty underwear on, or with shit dribbling down your leg and into your shoe.

I hope that conjured a wonderful mental image for all of you. Something that will stick with you throughout the day as you try to enjoy that extra bit of freedom granted to you by this one party democracy. As we sit around here and celebrate the 39th birthday of the Singaporean city-state I’m reminded of two years ago, when prime Minster Goh raised a bottle of NeWater together and basically asked the Singaporean populace to drink shit with him.

Of course that wasn’t much of a problem, seeing as the government often asks the Singaporean populace to take shit from them, so at least this time the Prime Minister was doing it with them, right? ‘Hell, we have to live with government jokes like speaker’s corner, democracy and racial equality, at least this time nobody’s quite sure who the joke is on.’

A Singaporean guy asked me whether it was true that the National day parade was a bit sedated in comparison to other people’s parties. I mumbled something along the lines of ‘well in most countries the government doesn’t actually have to give the people their flags to wave’. I thought of a much better example a couple of days later, though. The best way to measure how good a national party is, is by looking at how many people come from other countries to be there for it.

Mardi Grass draws millions upon millions of people. Queen’s day in Holland draws a good half million at least (probably more). Songkran in Thailand means all the hotels booked while national day in Singapore draws on last count, well, two (and they barely count, as they were deaf, blind, dumb and American). In fact National day sees a major outflux of people into Malaysia ‘Yeah! Our countries another year older! Let’s go to another country, that doesn’t really like ours, to celebrate.’
Nuts.

Interesting fact: We each use about 12,000 gallons of water every year 1/3 of all water is used to flush the toilet (a possible new use for NeWater?)

posted by Symbol @ 9.8.04