Dean John's Article

Here is a sample of dean john's article. just like the others, as usual, will be talking about the birds and the bees and then finally go to bn bashing mode. something like the theme in old tv3 local sitcom 'pi mai pi mai tang tu'! have fun... an oldie but a goldie...Written in conjunction with valentines' day 2010.

http://deanjohns.wordpress.com/2010/02/11/heres-to-the-birds-and-the-beast/

FEBRUARY 11, 2010...1:15 AM

Here’s to the birds and the beast.
I must confess I’ve always felt somewhat half-hearted about celebrating St Valentine’s Day. Nothing against love or romance, you understand. It’s just that the whole thing seems a tad suspect. Like one of those fake anniversaries people keep inventing – Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and the more recent Secretary’s Day, for example – ostensibly in all sincerity, but actually for the purpose of stimulating us suckers into orgies of spending.

So this year I decided to settle the question for once and for all, beginning with a check on whether there was ever a saint named Valentine. An early Christian florist, perhaps, torn to pieces by a mob of women enraged by his refusal to divulge the names of guys who’d sent them bunches of flowers with anonymous love-notes attached.

And yes, or so my trusty encyclopaedia informs me, there was a Saint Valentine, or even very possibly two of the same name. Both of them Christians put to death during third–century Roman religious persecutions, and both sharing the official Feast Day of February l4.

But – now for the bad news – neither of the two St Valentines is known to have ever said or done anything to warrant the association of his name with a hearts-and-flowers love-fest.

Or, for that matter, with the event in l929 that linked February l4 as strongly with killing as with kissing, the shooting in Chicago of seven associates of George “Bugs” Moran by Al Capone hitmen in what is remembered in the annals of crime as The St Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Which brings me to a thought to which love has tended to blind us: the fact that, for countless living organisms on this planet, every St Valentine’s Day is a massacre. Forests of trees are felled to produce paper for soppy cards. Whole crops of cocoa beans plucked for processing into heart-shaped chocolates. Flowers beheaded by the ton to make bouquets. Whole schools of fish, herds of livestock and who knows how many hectares of vegetables slaughtered, sliced, diced and turned into candle-lit dinners. Millions of bees worked to death to produce all that candlewax. Gargantuan quantities of grapes crushed to make the reds, whites and bubblies required to render the occasion utterly intoxicating. And let’s not forget the latest generation of casualties, those streams of hapless electrons – not living things, I grant you, but neverthelessmoving – that get shot, beamed and streamed into virtual oblivion by the senders of romantic emails and SMS messages.

It’s enough to bring a whole new dimension of meaning to the term “fatal attraction”. And all for what? So that should we get lucky, what with the flowers, chocolates, dinners, mood lighting, romantic sentiments and all, untold squillions of sperm will perish in the ensuing excitement.

If like me you’ve started to think by now that St Valentine’s Day sounds to be pretty much for the birds, you’re absolutely right. Because it’s actually with our feathered friends, or so some historians believe, that the whole thing actually started.

About mid-February, apparently, after the long, cold Northern-Hemisphere winter, all the birds start to feel spring in the air and take to pairing-off, necking, billing, cooing, building nests and so on. In other words, it’s on or around February l4 that, as the old English proverb so succinctly puts it, “birds of a feather flock together”.

Many centuries ago, it seems, humans took a gander at all this amorous avian activity and started thinking it might also be good for the goose. “If birds of a feather can do it”, people of medieval times must have reasoned, “we might as well have some flocking fun too.”

But even in those rude, unsophisticated times it probably wasn’t considered polite to come right out and invite respectable chicks out for a night of flocking around. So ye olde pubic-relations consultants gave the occasion a more soulful and spiritual image by naming it for the Saint(s) whose anniversary it happened to be.

All of which accounts for the fact that, to this day, but only on February l4, it’s considered perfectly proper to ask any flockable person of an appropriate gender to be your “Valentine”.

This year, however, February 14 is an even more special date than usual. A celebration of not just the birds and the bees, but also of the beast, as it happens to be the first day of the Year of the Tiger.

The Metal or Golden Tiger, in fact, according to one of the Chinese horoscope sites I googled by way of research for this column. “This fearless and fiery fighter,” the site declares, “is revered by the ancient Chinese as the sign that wards off the three main disasters of a household: fire, thieves and ghosts.”


The “thieves and ghosts” part of the message immediately put me in mind of the Malaysian Barisan Nasional regime’s kleptocratic activities and its haunting by the shades of Altantuya Shaariibuu, Teoh Boon Hock and countless others who have died in its agencies’ custody.

But then I read on and discovered that “on New Year’s Day itself, it is beneficial to celebrate, to be happy, to have smiling faces, and to refrain from scowling, quarrelling or criticising anyone.”

For the sake of any reader who happens to peruse this column on February 14 itself, therefore, as well as for my own celestial safety, I’d better steer clear of critical political comment and confine myself to the appropriate seasonal greetings.

So here’s wishing everyone save the beastly BN government and its cronies a hearty Gong Xi Fa Cai for the New Year of the Tiger. And to all you love-birds out there, despite ‘religious’ groups in Malaysia that are panting to spoil the fun, here’s to a flocking fabulous St Valentine’s Day.