Days like these that make you ponder

(This is going to be a serious entry, so buckle up your seat belt and don your flak armour).

It is days like these which make you sit down and ponder whether the world has gone mad. Moments like these which make you look around and wonder whether aliens have came down on Earth, body-snatched everyone overnight but somehow missed you (maybe they like dumbasses only) leaving you the only thinking human walking around, wondering why is everyone acting/talking slightly dfferently.

Do you ever have the feeling that you are different from the rest (and I don't mean religion or your sexual preferences for gay cowboys)? It is like the Matrix in which Neo kept walking around, having a feeling that something was wrong but couldn't quite put his finger on it. Everything is normal, everyone is walking about as usual and yet . . . .you know that something is very, very wrong.

Today is one of these days. Go read any newspaper today like the Lianhe Zaobao, the Statesman (India) or CNN.

"Bangkok's primary Hindu deity destroyed by mentally ill man"
"Shrine attacker beaten to death"
"Man lynched for desecrating shrine"

In short, a mentally ill muslim man destroyed the four-faced buddha at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok with a hammer. The mentally ill young man was homeless and broke into the shrine on early Tuesday morning and destroyed the four-faced buddha. A few buddhist followers were so angry that they beat the madman to death. I repeat, they BEAT him to death.

In case you have never been to Bangkok, the four-faced Buddha ("Tao Mahaprom") at Erawan shrine is probably the most famous buddha image in Thailand. Everyone goes there as it is a public shrine. You might have heard of the (in)famous story in which a Thai woman promised to dance naked infront of the Buddha if she struck lottery. She did and therefore got caught in a dilemna since she had no intentions of dancing naked in public. She tried to wriggle out of it but was warned by several famous monks that dire retributions would befall her if she did not fufil her promise. In the end, the government stepped in and arranged for the shrine to be curtained off from the public (the Erawan shrine is just round the corner of the Erawan Hotel, at a busy traffic junction)so that she could dance naked. Thus the four-faced Buddha became famous overnight for being a most "effective" Buddha for fulfilling wishes. Hordes of worshippers visit it everyday hoping to have their wishes for money fufilled. I have been there just to see what the fuss is all about. I basically ended up yawning (and frowned by a few Buddhist followers) and ended up at McDonalds next door.

Some called the Buddha "effective", I just called the Buddha, downright lecherous. I mean, you grant the wishes of dubious woman in return for a naked dance. What about all these poor women who came to you, hoping for some money for food, cures for their sick children or hope that their husband would stop gambling? Tons of people give you flowers everyday and you chose to fulfill the wish of a dubious woman promising a lap dance? Another dumbass god. You are a god, you live in Bangkok, so go visit Patpong or Sukhomvit Soi 21 if you are into gay cowboys already. Stupid.

But what made this whole incident surreal are all the newspaper reports which chose to focus on why this is a bad omen (politically) for the embattled Thai PM Thaksin and how the statue is going to be replaced (made of metal this time). Articles are devoted to what should be the essence of the new building materials (9 types of metal). Some dumbass astrologer said " The Brahma has four faces and now there are apparently four sides in the country. . . Now that the sacred Brahma statue is destroyed, the country's economy may suffer."

Erm, excuse me. Did all these newspapers just miss the big picture, like, let me make a wild guess, that A MAD MAN WAS BEATEN TO DEATH IN PUBLIC FOR SIMPLY HAMMERING A BUDDHA STATUE? Am I the only one who is sad that a mad man got lynched in public simply because he had a mad obsession with beating up a Buddha statue? What is the mad muslim's background? Who knows what went through the mind of a homeless mad man as he decided to take a hammer to the statue? What went through his mad mind the last few minutes of his pained existence as he was beaten to death? I hoped his end was quick and they did not make him suffer.

There is something truly wrong with the media world which choses to brush over the murder of a mad man and focuses on the peripherals such as political omens, astrology and the next building materials. Who cares about the stars signs? I don't care whether the star signs spell "HOLY SHIT" in the sky. What about those guilty of first degree murders? It was hardly mentioned. It is not as if the mad man just killed a child, all he did is to hammer a religious statue. In Singapore, we have child killers popping up left and right and we still let the law run its course even though many of us probably want to stone the murderers. Now, that's the hallmark of a great civilisation. A mad man was murdered today without understanding the crime he committed - that's the real tragedy which the newspapers all missed.