Phoebe, Lover of Animals

"Molly Molly Makeout
Any time, any guy oh oh
Just watch your back
You won't know what to do
Molly might make out with you"

Molly Makeout (2009) by The Friday Night Boys

Once upon a time, there's a girl called Phoebe,
And she loooves all creatures, big or bitty.
One day, she decided to go on a looong nature saunter,
To touch every animal she would perchance encounter.

She played with a pussy cat,
And gave its dainty little head a pat.

I know that "petting the kitty" is a euphemistic phrase for something, but I can't seem to remember what it is now.

Next, she diddled a doggy, posh and poised,
"Oh, what a beautiful bitch," she voiced.

Or possibly feeling for the carotid pulse, I don't know.

Then, she preyed upon a pillbug just for kicks,
With glee, she buggered bugged it with a prick stick.

"NO, NO, STOPPIT!!! PLEASE!!! *gasp* I'M COOOMMMINNNGGG!!!"

After that, she came across an untended kid,
And merrily molested the minor, she did.

She did technically grope a kid's backside. So, it's bestiality AND paedophilia, at the same time.

She tried to despoil a simian child but she was resisted,
"Stay away from ouah baybeh!" the monkey parents insisted.

"Snuggle close, honey. Mommy and Daddy will protect you from the big human pervert."

"A puppy!" cried Phoebe, who finally found her favourite item,
"You, tenderest of morsels, shall be my latest victim!"

That look on Phoebe's face says it all.

But the brave little pup would stand for none of it,
And right into her digits it righteously bit.

*om nom nom* "AAAHHH!!! LEGGO LEGGO!!!"

And Phoebe cried wee wee wee,
All the way back to Ooty.

The end.

Tune in next time for my version of the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

The Gruffs! They like it ruff!

Minstrel in a pinch,
k0k s3n w4i

He's Gay and He's Okay... For Now

"If a bullet should go through my head let that bullet go through every closet door."

Harvey Milk

He was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.
He died with two bullets in his head.

Today, one of my consultants asked me conversationally if I celebrate Christmas. I said no, and immediately dreaded his next question. He asked what religion I subscribe to.

"I'm an atheist," I said and I saw that brief 'excusez-moi?' expression flashed across his face in response. Happens every time like clockwork. It's not that I am ashamed of my lack of faith - I merely dislike the social stigma of being godless. Sometimes, I feel that my mere existence is at best an enigma to religious people and at worst, an automatic affront to their beliefs.

"So um, is it because of your parents?" He tried not to miss a beat.

I would have liked to point out that his question seemed bizarre to me and that atheists are usually atheists in spite of their parents, but all I said was, "I make my own decisions about these things."

The subject was immediately dropped after that, natch.

If admitting that one is an atheist can be awkward to a hardcore atheist like me, imagine outing oneself as a homosexual. Now, imagine a guy from a culturally Malay Muslim background recording a YouTube confession that he's gay,

The title "Saya Gay, Saya Okay" means "I'm Gay, I'm Okay" in Malay, for my non-Malaysian readers.

This is Azwan Ismail's submission to the It Gets Better Project, an amazing worldwide campaign started in response to the recent slew of suicides of gay teens who were drove to the edge from bullying - to reach out to homosexual teens and tell them that the torment, ostracism and heartbreak they face now will someday go away. He came out, at great personal cost to his reputation and risk to his life, to give a singular testimonial on being a homosexual in a culturally homophobic and predominantly Islamic country - all to share his experience with teenagers who are in his exact same situation. He gave a face to all the faceless young people who hid away because our society hates they way they love. He gave a voice to the mute gay Malay men and women in our country who are too afraid to speak, and too intimidated to ask to be treated like the human beings they are.

He is my hero. One day, he might be everyone's.

And I'm not making it up when I said he risked his life by recording his three-minute video. He had since received many death threats by Malay Muslims outraged by his confession of the difficulties he faced coming to terms with his own sexuality. That's what too many religious people do, you see - threaten to murder what they don't like. Wait, let me emphasise that: they want to KILL HIM. Yes, gays are depraved animals for falling in love with someone they shouldn't. Atheists are immoral for standing up for equal rights for gay people. But yet hateful religious thugs are apparently the righteous ones beloved by God for clamouring to shed the blood of someone who happens to be different. What the fuck, one wonders, is wrong with our country?

Then, there are the sanctimonious cunts who claim that Azwan is "insulting" Islam by being born a homosexual and having the stones to come out of the closet. The degree of self-entitlement of these self-important jackasses is frankly, quite astounding. If Allah has beef with Azwan, I'm sure the He is more than capable of dealing with him when the time comes - if it ever comes. And did they even ask Azwan if he personally believe in the teachings of Islam? I'm sure they didn't, and in Malaysia where apostasy is both criminalised and demonised, he couldn't renounce his affiliation with the incredible Religion of Peace™ even if he wanted to anyway. If he claims to be an apostate, they can easily take that as an "insult" to Islam too (we know there were precedents for this). From the get go, he was given no freedom of religion and no freedom of sexuality. He's between a rock and a hard place, both promising potential repercussions from our primitive laws. Speaking of our legal system, I'm kind of at risk right now too for violating some stupid blasphemy laws. Welcome, ladies and gents, to Malaysia.

Sure, it's an incredible display of his lack of self-preservation but he what he did were also done out of incredible personal courage. What I fear is that he might be martyred for it. As a member of the medical fraternity, I find that it is my duty to speak out against discrimination of any stripe. No one person's dignity and right to life should be compromised by his ethnicity, creed, social status or sexuality and I urge everyone to help spread word of Azwan's message and of his plight. Tell a friend. Write something.

He had hurt no one by being who he is, and if his only crime is to love, then it's a crime that's not happening as much as the world needs it to. I hope you're right Azwan, for your sake, that it really does get better in Malaysia.

Addendum: it seems that the video had been removed from YouTube. I wonder if the decision was voluntary, indirectly influenced by the backlash of the Muslims or directly insisted upon by the governmental officials.

Some other great blog posts on this:

From a fellow Malaysian atheist: Azwan Ismail is Gay. And He is (Probably Not Going to be) Okay.

From a moderate Malay Muslim's perspective who made a good case that the people are really more outraged by his outing rather than his sexual orientation: Who is Azwan Ismail and why are some people saying terrible things about him?

From an atheist attorney: If Religious Bigots Threaten You Because You’re Gay, You Might Be Eligible For Asylum.




On the side of human rights,
k0k s3n w4i

Church Versus Hospital

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Steven Weinberg

This is an update to this news piece I blogged about in May.

To recapitulate, it was about a young expectant mother facing death from Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH) complicating her 11-week pregnancy. She must either abort the the unborn child or face almost certain death of both herself and her fetus. The ethics committee of the St. Joe Hospital convened and decided on the lesser of the two evils - and Sister Margaret McBride, who was on the committee, was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for her role in the lifesaving decision.

Remember that in a non-Catholic Hospital, there wouldn't be any quibble about whether the pregnancy should be terminated at all. The dictum is if a pregnant woman's life is at peril, the automatic ethical and moral course of action is to jettison the products of pregnancy. This is repeatedly hammered into me in med school. No medieval dogma cooked up by a criminal organisation of cross-dressing wankers should fucking come into the picture.

Now, the Bishop of the Phoenix Diocese (who excommed the nun who happened to have got her head screwed on right) stripped the entire hospital of its Catholic affliliation affliction for doing what hospitals do i.e. save lives.

"I like to wear dresses and make young boys wear dresses too." - Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted.

Here's what the cock-gobbling bishop had to say in this excerpt of the news article,

In a letter written last month to the president of Catholic Healthcare West, the parent company of St. Joseph's Hospital, Olmstead said he wanted more oversight of the hospital to make sure it complies with Catholic healthcare rules. He also wants to educate medical staff about those rules. In addition, he wants acknowledgment that he was right and the hospital was wrong in its interpretation of the church's directive on "indirect abortions."

"There cannot be a tie in this debate," Olmsted wrote. "Until this point in time, you have not acknowledged my authority to settle this question."

This megalomaniacal motherfucker is a nasty piece of work, but he's just a symptom of the greater rotten core of the entire Roman Catholic Church which is pathologically obsessed with being recognised as the authority for morality - when they clearly aren't. No, I'm not buying that simple-minded platitude that religion universally teaches good and that only a few bad apples are stinking up the barrel. Bishop Olmsted is merely carrying out the "directives" of his mother church and the fact that the Pope and the Vatican did not swing its gigantic crosier and smite this disgusting human shit-stain off the face of the earth makes them complicit in this entire sorry debacle - not that I really need any more convincing that Catholicism has no redeeming feature whatsoever.

If I work at St. Joe's, I'd wear the Church's disapproval as a badge of honour, but that's just me. I happen to have a conscience.

I thought the picture was missing some things, so I added them.

Anyway, here's what the hospital had to say in this press release on their website to Bishop Fuckhead,

"Though we are deeply disappointed, we will be steadfast in fulfilling our mission," said Linda Hunt, President of St. Joseph’s. "St. Joseph’s hospital will remain faithful to our mission of care, as we have for the last 115 years. Our caregivers deliver extraordinary medical care and share an unmatched commitment to the wellbeing of the communities they serve. Nothing has or will change in that regard."

"Consistent with our values of dignity and justice, if we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman’s life, our first priority is to save both patients. If that is not possible we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case," said Hunt. "We continue to stand by the decision, which was made in collaboration with the patient, her family, her caregivers, and our Ethics Committee. Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save."

Take that, you dogmatic sons-of-bitches.



Wants religion out of medical ethics,
k0k s3n w4i

The Topography of Tea

"If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty."

Japanese Proverb

I'm incredibly unavailable at present and have not the time to inundate you with my customary volume of words, so I'll just throw out a bunch of pictures your way. But if that old chestnut rings true, then these eight pictures are worth a grand total of eight-thousand words.

An eternity of tea and sky. That's the Coimbatore Plains waaay down there, by the way.

Anyhow, I think I'll still need to fill you in on the context of these photographs - so that's what I'll do.

During our super-relaxing week at Ooty, I decided to yank the Long-Suffering Girlfriend™ out of her blissful vacationer's stupor by convincing her to go on a day trip to the neighboring hamlet of Coonoor. There, we rode a tiny bus 12 kilometres out into the semi-wilderness of the Nilgiri mountains where we got off our ride - just like that - in the middle of nowhere with not even a bus-stop in sight. At this point, she had no choice but to trek uphill all the way back to Coonoor with me. If you thought that that sounds incredibly similar to what I put her through at Maxwell Hill - well, I'm just consistently psychotic that way.

On the upside, these are some of the mind-blowing landscapes we got out of it,

Dig the contours.

It was fortuitous that on our grueling awesome walk, we remained mostly in the midst of mist and under the gargantuan shadows of some seriously low-flying clouds - the combination of which really produced some excellent, otherworldly shots.

This one is my favourite,

It's almost like we're on a floating island. Or a really small planet.

I'll stop writing for now. Enjoy the rest.

Sunshine looks best in little patches.

The Cameron Highlands got nothing on this place, I tell you.

Anyway, the real reason I dragged Phoebe all the way out here was actually to visit a popular view point called the Dolphin's Nose,

Which is a fancy name for this bit of rock which hangs over a precipice.

And here's Phoebe being on the "nose", so to speak.

Look into the photograph below and check out the spectacular Catherine Falls on the far side of the mountain,

The bluish mist is apparently what gave the mountain range its name: Nilgiri. It literally means "Blue Mountain".

So, how do you like them apples?



Chief photographic officer,
k0k s3n w4i

Jesus Christ! On a Stick!

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."

Exodus 20:4

One of the many doodads I keep on my desk (alongside my Rottweiler bobblehead and a framed photograph of the Long-Suffering Girlfriend™ being bitten by a dog) is my graven idol of everyone's favourite Nazerene, Jesus H. Christ,

So, that's how he walked on water! He's made of wood!

I spotted the 13-centimetre-high likeness of the King of Kings a couple of years ago in a souvenir shop in Ooty and something immediately went click in my head. "I MUST HAVE EET," I told the girlfriend in no uncertain terms. There was no deliberation - I was so consumed by pure, undiluted want that I made the purchase on the spot. There were larger versions of the same effigy for sale but regrettably, I couldn't possibly tote a foot-long Jesus wherever I go for the remainder of my backpacking trip. That would be daft, but a pocket-sized figurine of the Saviour? How could I possibly resist?!

For the rest of our sojourn through the Tamil highlands, I installed the Effijesus Holychristick™ in the most prominent spot of every guesthouse or hotel room we checked in so I could properly worship it with the most shamanistic pomp and ceremony imaginable, much to Phoebe's chagrin. Perhaps it had something to do with my insisting that she was beset by demons and made it my career to exorcise her by waving the Lord in her face every chance I got. I have to admit that that can annoy a girl some.

You can see why I call her the Long-Suffering Girlfriend™.

After a while, I started using the phrase "Jesus Christ on a stick!" as an oath - and it stuck.

I have no idea why I like the statuette so much. Maybe it's because of how much Jesus resembles Poseidon. Or maybe it's the halo and crown of thorns combo which looked like a Native American feathered headdress more than anything else. It's terribly cute, for damn sure, especially when you take stock of its endearingly huge and deformed head, barrel torso and stumpy limbs.

All together, it collided into a perfect, serendipitous union of kitsch and abomination. What's not to love? Plus, I'm already an atheist and an inveterate blasphemer. I figure the next logical step for me to take is to be an idolator as well.



P.S. Take your grievances, if you have any, to the artisan who carved this. This is a fan-based parody. Yes, I'm a fan of the Bible (I wouldn't read it so often otherwise). However, I'm not a fan of the religion which thinks it's all real.



An iconolatric infidel,
k0k s3n w4i