This Weekend's Time-waster

Have a slogan.


Because--let's face it--you can't resist a semi-random generator that can combine popular (read: annoying) ad slogans with related keywords, such as "feces".

Combination worth quoting:
- "Slavery--Be all you can be."
- "Penis--Don't leave home without it."
- "Diarrhea--It keeps going, and going and going..."

"Effective Use of 60% Government Spending"

Is what the UK's Office of Government Centre (OGC) aims to do.

However, the jury's still out on its own £14,000 spending for the new OGC logo.



The logo appears harmless at first glance. However, when rotated ninety degrees clockwise, it--and I quote--"has generated howls of mirth."

According to the article, a spokesman for OGC said: "...it is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on Government spend."

It does look like the Government has a firm grip on something.

______________________

Thanks to Eko.

Only in West Javanese (Governor Election) #2

Candidates Hermawan and Dede Yusuf were backed by PKS (The Welfare Justice Party). In a surprising turn of events, this underdog pair won the majority of votes. The next day (April 14th, 2008), three guys in motorbikes threw molotov cocktails at PKS's local office.

On this incident, Bandung's Head of Police Ahmad Dofiri said, "It wasn't molotov, only gasoline in bottles thrown into the yard, [followed by] a thrown ignited flour sack."

My first reaction was, "Wow. Let's wait another day. He might say that it wasn't a bombing at all. It was just three guys burning excess gasoline they didn't need."

The insightful comments didn't stop. Head of Bandung Regency's PKS Victory Operation Arifin Sobari said, "...[it was] obvious that it was a professional job."

However, another article noted that one of the suspects were caught because "his Vespa (motorbike) broke down."

If that was a professional job, I'd hate to see the amateurish ones.

The caught suspect's name is Didin Tajudin Bin Marwan. He was reportedly to be, and I'll quote, "in a state of shock."

Professionally, of course.

Only in West Javanese (Governor Election) #1

One of Danny Setiawan and Iwan Sulandjana's campaigners made a slip during an event in Soreang (April 3rd, 2008). The campaigner shouted, "Danny (on) my chest, Iwan (as) my pride. Number two (as) my choice!"

The correct number is one.

It was a simple mistake. The campaigner's name however made it interesting. His name is Bool, which is slang for--guess what?--butt hole.

I don't know about you, but if I want to recruit a political campaigner, I'll want to know his/her name first. A forum member in Detik put it eloquently, "Ngaranna oge Bool, nu kaluarna ..." (With a name like Bool, you just know what'll be coming out.)

We Understand, Venezuela!

The Venezuelan government has stopped the Simpsons from airing on the Televen, a nationwide channel. Their reason? The show, which was aired at Televen's daily 11 AM time slot, was considered "inapproriate for children."

They immediately changed it with something they figured would be more approriate.

Baywatch Hawaii.

What ingeniousness! There's no better way to interests toddlers in numbers and letters than that. What's left would be Stacy Kamano standing at the end of show, with a voice over saying, "This program was brought to you by the number 36 and the letter C."

Thy Name is Irony

Yes, I know that our government showed lack of better judgement by instructing to block Youtube. Obviously, they haven't learned their history of censorship.

Our ISPs followed suit, by reacting out of fear (and the natural ability to shirk responsibilities), blocking five to seven sites. Any site that they thought would risk Indonesians getting their hands on Fitna. Including Multiply, which is basically a social networking site like Friendster or Facebook.

One of their formal announcement is worth quoting:

Dear Customer,

According our Minister Communication and Info Letter No : 84/m.KOMINFO/04/08 April 2nd 2008: about The blockading of the Site and Blog That contained the Fitnah Film, then the site along with this for the time being we were closed until the further notification :

1. Youtube 2. MySpace 3. Metacafe 4. Multiply 5. Rapid-share

Was like this information that could be sent by us as information from our backbone internet Excelcomindo, upper the understood we say thank you.
Warm Regards,

*-Aditya-*
*Customer Service Support**
**Corporate Solution* PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk.
Phone : 021 - 57959817
Email : cs-busol@xl.co.id

People who resort to transtooled messages obviously care much more about following orders blindly instead of consequences.

On April 7th, the Ministry of Information and Communication held a discussion about the electronic information and transaction law. More than seventy people from blogging communities attend. They voiced their concerns about the law having potentials to repress the freedom of expressions. And that the site-filtering decision is like--to borrow a blogger expression--a cannon blast to ward off mosquitoes.

What did the government had to say? Here's a key quote:

"If a husband can only get aroused after watching porn and then have sex with his wife, isn't this some kind of dishonesty?"
--Edmond, Ministry of Information and Communication staff member

As expected, the discussion led nowhere. The blocking continues. Multiply was officially shot down at April 8th. Indonesiaonlineshop, a community of about 1,000 online business owners (50-60% of them use Multiply) are one of the bystanders who suffer the blast.

A lot of Multiply users fought back by posting articles similarly, "How to Fight the Filter and Keep Accessing Multiply."

However, they posted these articles on their Multiply blogs.

I don't know about you. But if we want to show our government a better example of common sense, I don't think this is working.