Azly's Ode to Bloggers

desiderata.english revived occasionally.

WARNING: Some DDC resorted to, can't resist
'cos Desi is in the mood to tease and thunder, not cease and desist
If a newbie knoweth not what DDC's, go visit allofhelen.blogspot.com, insist
Gift on my behalf a cuplet of Pu-erh
Yes, you can represent Desi, dear

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Lately I have been interacting with A Malaysian resident abroad, Dr Azly Rahman, because of my work at the Centre for Policy Initiatives where Dr Azly also contributes artciles voraciously at www.cpiasia.org. "Voraciously" normally is used to describe a consumer taking in,like food from mamak stall after being rescued from one-week exile in the Zahara Desert, but Desi aSsual, knottily used this word in reverse just to teAse some newbies at My Blue Heaven, temporarily browned a li'l by Pu-erh tea. I don't no whether my Treasurer did receive any donations in cash or kind for my PR-ing the tea from KunMing, but I'm sure my philantrphy is AP by the citizens from China which indirectly had given my bloodline some flow, even if "tainted" by some banana colour. Why banana? Go aRsEk the host resident at allofhelen.blogspot.com, he/she's responsible for my speaking, and writHing in tongue, and chick! The "he or she" is used here because one CANKNOT assume the other party is mail or fe-mail just looking at the nama, like I hear "Niamah" is femail. The boys are more friendly, they yell "NM" followed by a Hi!:)

As one used to rambling aweways, and sometimes in line with training aSs a veteran journalist -- some folks expert-ed in archeology say I'm from Jurassic(K) Fark! -- I find it tremendously stimulating, and timely after March 8, 2008 to lend some media experience to what I deem a pretty exciting civil society initiative headed by Dr Lim Teck Ghee who created a sort of political buzz almost two years ago with a report (during his days at ASLI) on Bumiputra equities ownership under the NEP the details of which I won't reprise here because today's focus is on Azly's writes, not the NEP. (We will discuss the NEP in passing when I write on the New Economic Agenda.)

I have read Azly's pieces pre-CPI encounter, at malaysiakini.com and at RPK's Malaysia-Today. It's only recently I surfed to his personal Weblog -- http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/ -- and ths Sunday, I reprised his Ode for fellow Bloggers' entertainment becasue the Ode was meant for you. For readers here who have not got on board the BBandwagon, please buy a ticket frm Desi immediately. VVe negotiate the price at Lingam's and a newbie generous enough to part with 20million -- yeah, I trut among you maybe that rare billionaire at age 27! -- so that Desi can retire. Yes, set up a tryre shop and re-cycle those old worn-out tyres to help conserve the dwindling environment.

Didn't I tell you I am also a sometimes greenie besides being a socialist most times?
A greenie must also imply I am a re-cyclist, meaning I'm taking my physician's advice seriously as I restore my body shape befitting a teenager's. This long Introduction digressing into a Sunday's walk or cycle in the park -- Seremban Lake Gardens qualifies as one if someone removed the A&W! -- is to work my ER's appetite up for leisurely munch of an Ode, which is a sort of cake made of words -- not oat -- that are flowery -- not flour-y -- because I always have a soft spot for Odes. I too have composed some Odes in my time; maybe if I could recover one, I'd follow it as a PS, or PmyAss. After Azly's, spelt wirth a Zee, knot an Ass:)

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

An Ode to Bloggers

By Azly Rahman

Mar 19, 07 12:41pm



Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Denis Diderot, French Enlightenment thinker

There was non among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.

'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley-Wollstonecraft


Sometime ago, after reading Plato's narration of a conversation between King Thamus and the inventor Theuth concerning the impact of new technologies on society, after reading media guru Neil Postman's work Technopoly, and after deep reflection on the idea of the Luddites (a movement that "raged against the machine" during the Industrial Revolution), I penned verses which I find suitable to honour Malaysian bloggers in their onward march towards creating a spectre that will haunt the state-owned print media.

Here it goes:

P H A E D R U S II The Last Judgement of Thamus
Circa A.D. 2020
Lines composed near the banks of Hudson River, New York city

Background notes: They say that there dwelt at Naucratis in Egypt one of the old gods of that country, to whom the bird they call Ibis was sacred, and the name of the god himself was Theuth. Among his inventions were number and calculation . . . and, above all, writing. . . . To [the king, Thamus] came Theuth and exhibited his inventions . . . when it came to writing, Theuth declared: "There is an accomplishment, my lord the kind, which will improve both the wisdom and the mentory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt for memory and wisdom."
"Theuth, my paragon of inventors," replied the king, "the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practise it. . . . Those who acquire [writing] will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful. . . . What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory . . . ( Phaedrus, 95-96)


And it was in the year 2020
In a not-too-distant cybercity
As Socrates' narratives on cybertechnology
Laments King Thamus's concern for the fate of academies

And Theuth my inventor par excellence
What say you concerning educational excellence?
Of the methods and principles of teaching
Brought about by new technologies of communicating?

O' Thamus, Wise King of Cyberjaya
Indeed our children will undergo Karma
Of one imbued with Dharma
Which will bring us all to Moksha
Karma is Rebirth
Dharma is Devotion and Duty
And Moksha is art of being one with Creation
Of which educational practice will assume a new reality

This invention called blogging
Of which for many ages we have waited so patiently
Will transform the meaning of Reality
and Democracy as it marries Virtuality
More than what print media has guaranteed

O' wise King Thamus
We are witnessing the death of Papyrus
the demise of Gutenberg legacy
As we witness the birth of PERSONACRACY
A deeply personalized form of postmodern democracy
In the brilliance of anarchy
To be cultivated with the media of blogging
By way of this ideology called PERSONACRACY,

O' King
Our children, the true song of democracy they will sing
Of which the teacher will die a slow death
Like the first teacher Socrates
whose fate was a choice he once had
Our children will be Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu
The Creator, Destroyer, and the One who Renews
Our children will make history and create Knowledge
Destroy paradigms
and like Vishnu, preserve what is old and what is new

They will be Renaissance men and women
In their mind neural connections will be made, synapses will be woven
And the boundaries of the Real and the Imagined
we can no longer ascertain
In this onward march towards Virtuality
Classrooms will cease to exist nor too the concept of teaching
The sage of Russia Illich will be singing
In honor of this day when education means deschooling

O' Thamus wise ruler of Cyberjaya
The days wherein authorities rule capital cities
Will be gone with the advent of my invention called blogging
Pedagogy will be replaced with METAPHYSICAL TRANSITION THEORIES

And Plato's academy will be history
Buried underneath the magnificence of blogging
Gone will be the idea of faculties
In their place will emerge knowledge patterned like fractal geometries
And Chaos will be the order of the day
And Complexity will be king of pedagogies

For the sage Mandelbrott did once spoke
Of the patterns inherent in knowledge and wisdom
O' Theuth my kingdom's most honored inventor,
What say you of the blogger's impact on the teacher?
One who holds the key to any civilization's treasure
And who guards the principles of a moral character?

Wise King Thamus,
this is my conjecture: My invention is Frankensteinish in nature
Aren't we already at the end of history?
Wherein the Knower and the Known has no longer a boundary?
This technology will destroy authorities
Including values we guard with jealousy
Slain like the dragon in Beowulf's story
Buried with Socrates and Dante Alighieri

A further elaboration concerning the death of authority:
O' King, I call this an Age of Subalternity
In which we will witness the dawn of PERSONACRACY
Of which with the help of blogging,
the child constructs his customized version of democracy

O' Theuth Master Inventor
Yours is a song of conjectures
For, can you as a creator
Be the judge of what good and bad blogging will bring into our future?

My greatest apologies Wisest of all Kings
Do you not remember that we are in the year 2020?
In which kingdoms have been crushed under the weight of technologies of virtual realities?
And you dear king - are you not already ancient history?

You and your kingdom destroyed by technologies of Virtuality?



Posted by DR. AZLY RAHMAN at 9:45 PM

Labels: media and cybernetics

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After dawn, DESIDERATA pondered on the above piece, and it's timely to recall aweOFhelen's gift of honour to me named "DDC" alias Da Desi Code when she first encountered my write/ride/writHe, see I'm democratic even before my CON BF on Sunday! Normally Sunday sees me put on a CAPitalist front, and as you know -- although I know some of you don't! -- capitalists are seldom democrats... You know Y? They think they can use USD or SIN$ or even AUS$ to kau tim everybody, including the Queensland judge/s. You wanna details -- go ask an ex-MB of RPK's terrortry.

On thing I share in common with the host of MT, we have a GOoD-given SENse of humour and rumour, it's GOoD currency to take a dig/dick at thy enemy/friend/in-between. Especially when I don't have money rolling in via ADsenSE!

So todie, not in Ozland, I want to ask Helen a sensitive/SENsible Q which she can use to answer (not hear!) to raise some fun-D at her own Blog by exchanging wit' some ipoh white kopi dan past&PRESENTries:

Q: Can you grasp 30% of Azli's Ode, like what you initially shared about grasping for breath regarding Desi's writHes?

PS: I reprise here something I wrote when Pak Lah was still the Deputy PM. PM can mean post meridien which implies it's time to go to bed.

Also, I pamper thee todae as there's the Ode I promised ye, yeah! -- hope it's still readable from se7en feet underground. Y 7? Hey, my fave number, now go and buy 7777, 7BIG and 7small, and if you smoke Lucky Strike, buy Desi kambing at Lingam's. Throw in a VK-tion in the LOTR terrortry if thou art that damnedNlucky this wickedend:):):):):):):)


9.2 Toward a Civil Society

Our country aims to become a fully developed, First World nation by 2020 – in materialistic, economic terms, the objective implied by developed nation status can be well defined, as measured in gross domestic product terms and other economic such as per capita figures. But in the intangibles – the character, soul and spirit, and the mindset of the people, that’s where the difficulty lies! We are still far from having attained a mature, civil society. Recently, many quarters, including deputy premier Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, have lamented that while the country can boast of infrastructure that rival the best in First World countries like the US, Britain or Japan. the people’s mindset is still of the Third World. This is evidenced by the people’s general lack of civic consciousness, with daily media reports of common littering, unkempt public toilets and “uncivil” behaviour when motorists take to the highway. Hence, while the country focuses on physical development, the mental and spiritual life of the individual Malaysian must not be neglected. For Vision 2020 to be achieved in the “holistic” sense, then both physical and economic features, and the soul and character of the nation. must progress in unison and tandem. Poetry has a significant role to play in the “civilisation” process of Malaysians. May the day dawn quickly so that while we proudly trumpet the Petronas Twin Towers as the highest such structure in the world, the citizens can also stand tall in terms of their grace, culture and heritage, displaying first World civic behaviour and tastes.

Malaysians may do well to heed this wise observation from Thoughts on Virtue11 by one of history’s great thinkers, Charles Darwin (who propounded the ‘Theory of Evolution’ in his opus, “Origin of Species”):

If I had my life
to live over again,
I would have made a rule
to read some poetry
and listen to some music
at least once a week….
The loss of these tastes
is a loss of happiness,
and may possibly be injurious
to the intellect,
and more probably
to the moral character.

I conclude with Bell’s recall in his Introduction (p.7) to Desiderata that Ehrmann once told an interviewer: “At De Pauw I contracted a disease which I have never shaken off. The disease was idealism. Because of it, I did the thing in life I wanted to do – Writing.”

*******

Ah a rime before the Ode
Cheaper in two, you buy one, get wan free
Gift me a kiss, you ugly toAd
Thou might turn into a Puteri, for Desi


Once upon a crooked...

rime.



There once was a crooked man
He walked a crooked mile
He found a crooked sixpense
in a crooked stile
He returned to his crooked house
Greeted by his wife in a golden blouse

His wife excitedly told how A-men
She had met an ol' lamp salesman
Who traded her a new lamp for olde
She then rubbed on the nu'e lamp
And appeared a smilin' genie
Promise her a nu'e destiny
"I give thee one wish, ma'am,
But there is a price I claim."
She said Yes and asked that their house
be turned into a huge and sately mansion
So the olde man returned to a new abode
A palace in the place of the crooked lot
The price? Ah, not a surprise
He became the first crooked President
and she the first crooked Lady
Of the most developed precinct
The first Couple have attained vision 2020

Desi:

An AP for adaptation of a NURSEry Rime
I learnt in primary school
I hope it's no crime
That my memory is not so cool
I could not recall the rhyme in full
So I added in some shit and bull

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An Odd Ode to Da Wolfe


yes, you read desi rite
i've gone bonkers
like the rest of negaraku
right is left or wrong
the captain obeys the private
who is left to sing his song

the council man is given a royal hug
he didn't get an AP for his small house
he re-APpears with a smile so smug
wearing a lion's s:mile whence he enter'd as a mouse

the ruler orders Come
the commoner says Go
the lamb wears a coat so handsome
on being led to the slaughter so

mary bows her head to the wolf
here's my sacrifice
the Wolfe roars his APproval
opens his orifice
thus mary and her litle lamb
entrance the Big Mouth
who with his loot and boot and moot
is headed South
A PR in hand
And the prettiest lass in the land

NOTE: The above Ode was Composed before the stately State of Selangor fell into Mary's little hands on March 8, 2008 whence the Lambs finally overcame Da Wolfe.