Sit back, folks, relax.... what we could all do with... is some exquisite music!

Thanks again to YouTube for bringing so much fine music to our homes - for free!

Tuck & Patti

Raul Midón

People's Tribunal on GE13: "Every tenet of a free election was violated"

Thank you, Bersih 2.0.

Malaysia's cultural icon P. Ramlee (1929~1973) was indeed a prophet in mufti!

Raja Bomoh Sedunia Nujum VIP (World Shaman King & VIP Oracle) @ Datuk Mahaguru @ Ibrahim Mat Zin performs a magical ritual at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on 11 March 2014 in an attempt to locate MAS Flight 370, missing since 2:40am on 8 March 2014 with 239 on board (including 12 crew). The bamboo binoculars are to aid his inner vision, while the fish trap is to capture "mischievous spirits" who may have stolen the Boeing 777 and hidden it in the astral realms (which explains why nobody has been able to find a single trace of it despite a massive search and rescue operation involving more than 12 countries).



An episode from P. Ramlee's 1973 film Laksamana Do Re Mi  is eerily prophetic of events taking place more than 40 years in Malaysia's future...

Raja Bomoh Sedunia Nujum VIP with his two apprentices board a flying carpet equipped with
young coconuts to do mortal combat with the wicked elves who hijacked Flight MH370.
A Mahathir loyalist, Datuk Mahaguru pledged to save Malaysia from street protests, violent chaos,
Anwar Ibrahim's rise to power, and the demise of feudal traditions.

Watch the short video on facebook (sorry, couldn't embed)!

NATIONAL DICKHEAD DAY (REVISITED)

This is how I look right now, folks, after several weeks' immersion in nothing but dickhead news - all reeking of dead-rat Mamak politics (remember the horrid stench that hung over the nation for 22 years? Well, folks, I can smell it creeping in again, how about that? Guess nobody bothered removing that dead rat from under the floorboards...)

Is it too late? Have we gone past the point of no return? Are you happy now, all you status quoists who kept saying GE12 was really about giving Umno "a wake-up call" - not about removing the vermin completely from power? Well, vermin will be vermin and once they become the govermin, you'll never be completely free of them, since they're pretty good at jumping ship and switching sides.

As long as vile and pernicious politicians continue to promote the absolute nonsense that this land has always been called "Tanah Melayu" (the name "Malaya" actually derives from the Tamil word for mountain, malai; I kid you not, folks, and the Malay Archipelago actually means "archipelago formed from mountains")... as long as those who consider themselves Melayu first - before they consider themselves Manusia (human) - continue to fear dogs, pigs and sultans... we shall remain a failed nation ruled by dickheaded dictators.

BETTER KISS A THOUSAND MANGY DOGS THAN SHAKE NAJIB'S PUDGY HAND!

Are you still hoping to secure that 2-billion-ringgit contract from your Umno or MCA contacts? Well, turn your back on it - if you can! It's blood money and can only bring you and your posterity negative karma. You keep saying you'll stop buying their newspapers. Well, how come I still see The Star and NST on sale in the newsstands?

THE ACCURSED

I've been jotting down the names of The Accursed: all those who self-servingly prop up the corrupt Umno/BN regime for short-term gain. All those half-baked judges hell-bent on serving their own retirement plans rather than justice. All the opportunistic lawyers who do the bidding of Umno; the pathologists and hospital directors and head of medical associations whose public utterances have revealed them as institutional eunuchs. All the tainted police officers with criminal tendencies who lie out of every pore with total impunity... while their men continue to harass, torture and kill without so much as a rebuke. All those who continue to write speeches, design websites, churn out propaganda for the Crude, the Bad and the Ugly in power...

RANDOM SELECTION OF NATIONAL DICKHEADS. THE COMPLETE GALLERY WOULD FILL 1,000 BLOGPOSTS!

While I was wondering what I would do on National Dickhead Day (coming up in only three weeks), a friend forwarded a bunch of photos supposedly from an annual celebration of the phallus in Japan. We ought to take a cue from the Japenis and construct giant effigies of all our national dickheads - what we can do with them I leave to your imagination.


Here's a truly charming video all the way from Israel...

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THE NATIONAL ERECTION (Tel Aviv, 11 June 2007)

[First posted 11 March 2009]

Is the Selangor Dam Running Dry? ~ still waiting for the answer!

Not since 2002, when Gamuda began filling the Selangor Dam, have I seen the water level as low as this. In the wake of the 26 December 2004 Sumatran undersea earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 300,000 - the water level in the dam sank to less than 40% of its capacity. Soil tests were conducted by Gamuda to determine where the water was leaking out. There were fears that huge volumes of fast-flowing subterranean water might eventually cause enormous sinkholes - huge enough to swallow entire towns.


The shifting of the tectonic plates off the Sumatra coast may have moved the dam wall slightly too, since it is located only a few hundred yards from a suspected seismic fault line. Rumors were rife that one of the gigantic turbines in the outlet pipe had been crushed and navy frogmen were engaged to inspect it. Mysteriously, the "leaks" appeared to have repaired themselves and soon the dam lake began filling rapidly again.

There have been no recent earthquakes in the vicinity, not even a tremor... so how come the water level has gone steadily down over the last four or five months? I estimate that the lake is now at least 35 feet lower than capacity.

A muddy column of water thrusts itself into the lake, 
taking on the ominous appearance of a naga (dragon).

Has the federal government been pumping out half the lake to fill police water cannons in anticipation of more street protests? Is Syabas draining the lake so they can sell the Pakatan Rakyat state government an empty reservoir full of silt? Or have more fissures suddenly appeared at the bottom of the lake? After all, the entire area is full of hot springs, the granite bedrock is heavily fragmented, and was indeed classified by geological survey teams in the 1950s and 1970s as a "high erosion risk" zone.

The annual "haze" generated by oil palm cultivators (local as well as Indonesian) 
hangs over the lake like a suffocating mist.

Photography by Antares

THE ORANG ASLI say we cannot destroy them without ourselves being destroyed. To illustrate this, they recount a hoary legend that warns of divine retribution against those who would drive them from their birthplace, their beloved pusat negeri - for they were indeed born in the navel of the nation, in the verdant foothills of Gunung Raja - only a few miles, as the eagle flies, from the site of the proposed Selangor Dam.

And how would "divine retribution" destroy those who seek to displace them from their rightful home? Invariably, the totem naga is invoked. The dragon, guardian of the rivers, would roar in primordial rage and return to the ocean depths, its thrashing tail wreaking havoc all the way. The very earth will quake and fill with swirling floodwaters, tall buildings will shake and crumble into the mud. A deliciously apocalyptic vision, no doubt, but can it be translated into scientific terms?

Quite easily in fact. If you allow that the dragon is how "primitive" folk describe electromagnetic phenomena generated by disturbances in the earth's magnetic field, then the Orang Asli doomsday scenario translates as RIS. That's technical jargon for Reservoir Induced Seismicity - where the sheer weight of a large body of water exerts enough pressure on the tectonic shield or plate boundaries to trigger earth tremors where none have been known to occur.

Not very much is known about these quirky quakes, except that only too often they have been completely ignored or overlooked by overconfident builders of large dams. (Any structure over 15 meters is considered "large" which qualifies the proposed Selangor Dam as "titanic" at 115 meters.)

And, of course, water is a persistent and persuasive agent that works its way over, under, around and through "solid" bedrock in utterly mysterious ways. The notion of solidity or stability, we now know, is purely that - no more than a notion. If a 250-year-old bank can spontaneously collapse as a result of an earthquake 11,000 miles away, what more a 500-million-year-old embankment? Especially when you have irate dragons on the loose...

Antares
6 March 1999

Selangor Dam Lake idyll by Jhueilee

WATER WOES: SELANGOR DAM PROVES TO BE NO SOLUTION
By Sam Hui & Antares
Letters to Malaysiakini | September 23, 2005 | 1:58pm

Seven years ago, the government insisted that the construction of the Selangor Dam was "unavoidable" because of the El-Niño effect. Save Our Sungai (SOS) Selangor and other concerned NGOs advised against it and pointed out that the root causes of the 1998 "water crisis" were:

* inefficient water distribution;
* careless per capita water usage;
* wasteful leakage in the antiquated pipe system; and
* reckless denudation of watershed areas, in turn affecting rainfall patterns.

Concerned civil society groups have emphasized for years that stringent forest and water conservation, replacing leaking pipes, and appreciating the true value of water are how we can ensure sustainability of our water supply.

Obviously, the government did not heed this sound advice and went ahead with the dam construction. The outcome?

A whitewater rafting haven has been sacrificed; one of the world's largest fire-fly colonies is threatened with extinction; an entire Orang Asli village has been relocated to a virtually inaccessible hill; and 600 hectares of lush river valley, once teeming with rare species of flora and fauna, have been inundated.

It now appears that SOS Selangor's warning about the dangers of building a dam near a suspected seismic fault line is being borne out. Since the massive Sumatran earthquake of Dec 26 which spawned the killer tsunami, the water level in the Selangor Dam has steadily fallen to less than 40 percent.

Six months ago, the dam operators commissioned a series of soil tests, worried that underground water will cause disastrous erosion in areas downstream of the dam. Rumors abound that there are serious technical problems with the dam's outlet pipes, and that water has been leaking out at an alarming rate.

And now the Selangor Infrastructure and Public Facilities Permanent Committee (as reported in The Sun and The Star on Sept 16) has acknowledged that the Selangor dam is at the "caution level" of 40 percent after an unseasonal dry spell. This nullifies the 'original' purpose of the dam, which was to offset the hazards of drought.

The Selangor Infrastructure and Public Facilities Permanent Committee is "monitoring" the water level and will implement water rationing when the water level goes lower than 30 percent and is at the "critical" stage. This indicates that the government is just waiting for another 'water crisis' to happen instead of taking early action to plug possible leaks and drastically reduce water consumption.

Committee chairman Abdul Fatah Iskandar concurred that a program to reduce water wastage is needed. However, this would result in a direct conflict of interest, since his committee is working closely with private water supply concessionaires (Splash, Puas and Syabas) whose profits are based on the amount of water they supply.

It is a clear-cut case of corporate versus public interest. As in the case of the Selangor Dam project, corporate interests seem to invariably win.

Will the present 'drought' be used as an excuse to expedite the multi-billion Pahang-Selangor Interstate Water Transfer project, justifying the proposed Kelau Dam in Pahang and a water tunnel across the Titiwangsa Range?

This sort of short-term ‘band-aid solutions’ benefit only the companies awarded construction tenders. It certainly does not address the problem at its source, viz., gross disregard of the ecosystem and criminal mismanagement of our precious natural resources.

[The writers represent SOS Selangor.]


WHY THE SELANGOR DAM?

Destructive Tendencies

20 YEARS DOWN THE LINE

[Originally posted 4 August 2009]

Passing Wind & The Paranormal Music Society ~ featuring Linsey Pollak @ Professor Squealy Deetbum!

One of the most amazing artists I had the privilege of bumping into in 1991 on my first visit to Australia (sponsored by the Department of Cultural Affairs) was a muso named Linsey Pollak, who happened to be creating some music for Doppio Teatro (a trilingual touring theatre company founded by Teresa Crea) .

I knew he was amazing within minutes of our meeting. How so? I showed him my Balinese flutes and he tried one out and instantly was able to coax the sweetest sounds out of it. At the time I didn't know Linsey could coax sweet sounds out of garden hoses and broomsticks. Linsey gave me a cassette of his group - the Paranormal Music Society - had recently released, which featured Linsey playing, among other odd instruments, the kitchen sink and a rubber glove gaida (a miniature bagpipe made from a surgical glove - that's right, another Pollak invention).

Twenty-one years later, I chance upon Linsey Pollak yet again - this time on YouTube. Actually, I was looking for some inspiring music to feature on this blog and did a search for the Paranormals. The original band seems to have disappeared - but Linsey Pollak is just as amazing and musically alive as ever, perhaps even more so. Indeed, I regard this unassuming genius as one of the most masterful musicians I have ever been inspired by. Linsey Pollak certainly gives Didier Malherbe (wind instrumentalist with Gong) and Jan Garbarek a jolly good run for their money... and he's a damn lot funnier!



The Paranormal Music Society consisted of: Professor Crivici (Romano Crivici) on keys and violin; Frank Brutal (Blair Greenberg) on percussion and guitar; and Denis Bland (Linsey Pollak) on winds (of many persuasions). The Paranormals (as they were fondly called) had a cult following in Sydney and were known for channeling the works of dead composers (especially Hidegarde Spumoni, a lesser known Baroque composer) and playing music whose notes were determined by rolls of a giant dice. They improvised requests called out by the audience. Things like: the pinnacle guinea pig races, haddock, Bob Marley goes to Turkey, Rawhide and so on. They recorded two albums (but only released one, Moving On), They were a legend in their own time.



Devised by Linsey, Out of the Frying Pan was commissioned by The Out of The Box Festival in Brisbane, directed by Chris Willems and produced by Performing Lines. It created music from house and garden objects with a cast of musician/actors that included Ceri McCoy, Jorge Rico, Penny Glass, Kari and Linsey. It was a show for 3-8 year olds that created music from bottles, glasses, brooms, mops, chairs, a ladder, rubbish bins, a garden fork, an ironing board, a carrot, inflatable trousers, a hammer, a kettle, a pumpkin, etc, etc.





The Art of Food ~ solo show (1999-2002) directed by Mark Bromilow 

Ivan is a home-styled kitchen-hand with a difference. He's eccentric, hilarious and totally irresistible. And he lives in a musical world where anything is possible. From the moment Ivan walks into the kitchen, everything becomes musical: carrots, potatoes, satay sticks, meat cleavers, and even an electric drill, with which he transforms a carrot into a clarinet before our very eyes. This musical world that Ivan creates is more than a series of clever tricks. It is an aural world of depth, energy and beauty. Although the materials are disconcertingly simple, the music itself is complex, rich and emotive, ranging from energetic and percussive cross-rhythms to haunting and lyrical woodwind (or should we say vegiewind) melodies. As with his previous solo show, Knocking on Kevin's Door, Linsey uses digital technology to record sounds instantaneously so that the audience is able to see each piece being constructed layer by layer, but in this show all the sounds come from the cooking utensils and the food. The Art of Food is an aural feast, an ode to the music of everyday life, which is there for everyone who cares to open their ears.



Linsey live loops voice percussion and melodica, soloing with Rubber Glove bagpipe, Chinese bamboo flute, and kaossilator. From his solo show, Live & Loopy.



Linsey loops balloon, kaossilator and vocals, using TC Helicon VoiceLive Touch.



This piece called "Ghosting 13" (in 13/8) is from Linsey's solo show, Live & Loopy. It features the saxillo and carrot clarinet. Linsey live loops vocal percussion, bubble wrap drum, melodica and kaossilator, with solos on saxillo (a wooden soprano sax-like instrument designed and made by Linsey) plus a carrot clarinet.



Linsey Pollak drills out a carrot and turns it into a clarinet and plays it, live looping with a Boss RC20 to record 3 layers. From his solo show, Making Jam.



How to make a carrot clarinet:
overall length of carrot is 187mm
bore: 12mm. (I use a spade bit)
6 fingerholes and thumbhole are all 7mm diameter
thumbhole is 22mm from top of carrot
fingerholes are: 39mm, 54mm, 74mm, 97mm, 123mm,140mm from top of carrot
I use an alto sax mouthpiece (Yamaha 4C used in this video)
The mouthpiece is connected to the carrot with a 12mm OD tube 35mm long. (Use electrical tape to increase diameter to suit mouthpiece). Bottom of mouthpiece is at top of carrot. This design is by Linsey Pollak and has been developed since 1995.



Linsey Pollak plays "Mr Curly" (a contra bass clarinet made from garden hose) - from his show, Passing Wind, as well as the feather duster clarinet.



Linsey Pollak live loops watering can clarinet - from his solo show, Live & Loopy.



Professor Squealy Deetbum (aka Linsey Pollak) plays the Harmonic Handlebar from his solo show CYCOLOGY.



Professor Squealy Deetbum (aka Linsey Pollak) plays the bicycle seat clarinet...



Professor Squealy Deetbum (aka Linsey Pollak) plays the spokes, frame and gear cable...



Professor Squealy Deetbum (aka Linsey Pollak) plays the bicycle and accessories in the Finale from his solo show, CYCOLOGY.



Two condoms are used (one inside the other) to create the bag for this bagpipe. The chanter and drone are aluminium tubes with a membrane reed at the top of each.

[First posted 14 May 2012]

Paco de Lucia (21 December 1947 ~ 25 February 2014): in loving memory

Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gomes (21 December 1947 - 25 February 2014), known as Paco de Lucía, was a Spanish flamenco composer, guitarist and producer. A leading proponent of the New Flamenco style, he helped legitimize flamenco among the establishment in Spain, and was one of the first flamenco guitarists who has also successfully crossed over into other genres of music such as classical and jazz.

Richard Chapman and Eric Clapton, authors of Guitar: Music, History, Players, describe de Lucía as a "titanic figure in the world of flamenco guitar", and Dennis Koster, author of Guitar Atlas, Flamenco, has referred to de Lucía as "one of history's greatest guitarists." [Source: Wikipedia]

Michael Tellinger, master connector of dots, delivers a highly compressed 2-hour lecture on everything you've never been encouraged to find out...

NOTE: If you have a short attention span I suggest you buffer the video, then start listening at 1:18:00... it gets really juicy!

[Brought to my attention by Cassius Ribkhus via Bullet Murugan]