The Bad Service Award

– that MS MINDY CHEN SHUQING wrote about the bad service she experienced at the famous infamous Holland Village XO Fish Head Bee Hoon stall at Holland Drive. She and her 10 friends were shouted at because only 7 of them ordered from the stall. In fact those who did not order from them were denied a seat. (The bad attitude of this store has gone on for too long. The consumers – in other words, the market – must react. It’s high time to stop patronising them so as to drive these frigging shitheads to bankruptcy to teach them a lesson or two about good service and humility. 今时今日的新加坡，这样的服务态度是应该被制裁的。)

The World This Week

– that the UN Security Council has too often failed to act swiftly and effectively to contain international crises and needs reforming, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog said. “Too often, the Security Council’s engagement is inadequate, selective or after the fact,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. (Ever since Iraq, the UN Security Council has been a joke. And after Darfur, it’s high time that the UN be disbanded.)

– that Donald Rumsfool said after visiting the Pennsylvania site where a hijacked airliner crashed on September 11, 2001 that the U.S. deserves poor marks in how it has waged a ‘battle of ideas’ with groups like al Qaeda. (Rumsfool and his neo-cons must realize that their ‘idea’ of an Americans only utopia isn’t selling.)

– that in 1975, Rumsfool was President Gerald Ford’s secretary of defense when the U.S.S. Mayaguez was seized off Cambodia by the newly empowered Khmer Rouge. The American crew of 38 was captured. Rumsfool shaped the response – which was to ignore diplomacy, begin bombing a Cambodian port city and dispatch a large force of marines to rescue the crew. Bad moves based on bad intelligence. Untold numbers of Cambodian civilians were bombed and 40 American rescuers were killed in an attack on an island where the crew was thought to be held. In fact, the American sailors had already been released unharmed and set adrift on a Thai fishing vessel. The Mayaguez affair was a dress rehearsal for Rumsfool’s war in Iraq. (If experience comes with age, it is definitely not applicable to Rumsfool.)

– that Condom-leezza Lice said the U.S. had probably made thousands of errors in Iraq but defended the overall strategy of removing Saddam Hussein. (They actually have a strategy to start with?)

– that Condom-leezza Lice braved anti-war protestors and hecklers during a friendly visit to the heart of Britain, Washington’s staunch ally. Some 200 opponents of the US-led war in Iraq protested her visit Friday to Blackburn in northwest England, after two dozen anti-war protestors greeted her upon arrival in nearby Liverpool from Paris. (The Brits are such nice people. They should have pelted her with rotten eggs.)

– that during a recent news conference, Warmonger Bush let it be known that the decision to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq will not be his. Instead, according to Bush, it will be for ‘future presidents’ to decide. Barely reliable sources note a possible post-conference follow-up in which Bush plans to leave a number of other decisions to future presidents, preferably Democrats. “As far as the increasing national debt,” said Bush, “future presidents will have to tackle that problem.” (Certainly no one expected Warmonger to be responsible enough to clear his own shit.)

– that although the 14-mile stretch of state-of-the-art fencing separating San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico is seen as a success in cutting illegal immigration, the plan for the bigger barrier is struggling to win further support in Congress. Critics compare it to the Berlin Wall and say it goes against the American spirit of openness, sending the wrong message to the rest of the world about the U.S. (Stop whining before they dust off the old plans for the McNamara Line and put it into effect on the U.S. – Mexico border.)

– that Pope John Paul II died worrying that the world seemed dominated by the powers of evil, according to a sermon he had prepared for the day after his death, his successor Pope Benedict said. (Odd. What is there to worry when God has already said the world is evil and it is inevitable the forces of evil will be ascendant prior to His Second Coming?)

– that Silvio Sicko Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, claimed that communists in China boiled babies. “Read the black book on communism and you’ll find that under Mao’s China they didn’t eat babies, but they boiled them to fertilise the fields,” he said. (Oh right. Was that Shang China this clown’s talking about? Oh yes, they cook the heads of their adversaries and eat in respect of their prowess too. Wanna be the head, Sicko?)

– that whaling has no scientific justification, according to Australia’s environment minister, who cited a new study. Ian Campbell said he would take the results of a ten-year research project in the oceans around Australia’s Antarctic Territory to the next International Whaling Commission meeting in June. “It demonstrates once and for all, if it needed to be demonstrated, that the so-called scientific programmes of the countries like Japan, Norway and Iceland, are a sham,” Mr Campbell said. (It’s high time something is done about the whaling masquerading as some ridiculous ‘scientific’ programmes! Japan, Norway and Island should be made to produce scientific reports of the ‘research’ they have been doing.)

– that Russia’s ambassador in Baghdad gave intelligence on U.S. military movements to Iraq’s gover-min in the opening days of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a Pentagon report stated, quoting from captured Iraqi documents. (Was someone expecting the Russians to just sit back and do nothing?)

– that Iran announced its second major new missile test within days, saying it has successfully fired a high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines. The Iranian-made underwater missile has a speed of 223mph, said Gen. Ali Fadavi, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Navy. That would make it about three or four times faster than a torpedo and as fast as the world’s fastest known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995. It was not immediately known if the Iranian missile, which has not yet been named, was based on the Shkval. (Just one more thing to make me lose sleep over.)

– that Hamas lea-duh-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said the ‘Palestinian’ terrorist group was intentionally being excluded from an Arab summit in Sudan and urged Arab lea-duhs to work with the new gover-min Hamas forms. “Basically Hamas is being excluded. There is interest that the new Hamas gover-min not attend the Arab summit despite our keen desire to attend the meeting,” he told a news conference at Kuwait airport before departing the Gulf Arab state. (No one really wants to be associated with terrorists, even when behind the scenes they are giving them money. It’s just like how rich families do not want to be associated with pariahs in the family but would dispatch a servant to give the pariahs money so they would go away.)

– that Arab foreign ministers dismissed Western explanations for cutting aid to the ‘Palestinian’ Authority but offered no extra money to compensate for a budget shortfall when Hamas terrorists take office. The ministers, meeting in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to prepare for an Arab summit, renewed an old pledge to give the ‘Palestinians’ some $50 million a month and left open the possibility of giving more later if the ‘Palestinians’ need it. (As I said earlier…)

– that Sri Lanka’s Marxists and the main party of Buddhist monks, who both oppose Norwegian-backed peace moves, were routed as the president’s party headed for a landslide victory in local council elections. Official results showed that President Mahinda Rajapakse’s People’s Alliance had won 205 out of the 247 councils declared so far after local gover-min election for 266 councils. (Religious people should stay away from politics and Marxism is dead.)

– that China may fine-tune its anti-secession law to make it criminal for any Taiwanese to advocate independence for the island, Taiwan’s Liberty Times reported. The paper cited Mr Chiu Yi-ren, Taiwan’s security head, as saying that the process was under way in Beijing. Under the revised rules, active and retired Taiwanese soldiers as well as Taiwanese engaged in pro-democracy activities could be arrested upon stepping on Chinese soil, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council suggested. (How they start to lump pro-democracy with pro-independence says a lot about the real intention of this report.)

– that more than 400 fugitive Chinese officials have been arrested in a crackdown on corruption, state media said. More than 4,000 officials accused of graft are believed to be on the run, with about 500 living abroad, the official Xinhua news agency reported. China’s gover-min has punished thousands of officials in its anti-graft efforts. (Corrupted officials have betrayed the people’s trust and should be dealt with mercilessly.)

-that China’s Health Ministry has explicitly banned the sale of human organs in an apparent attempt to clean up the country’s lucrative but laxly regulated transplant business. Mr Mao Qunan, the ministry’s spokesman, said that the new regulations forbid the buying and selling of organs and reiterate the requirement that donors give written permission. (Is anyone selling his penis?)

– that Japanese Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki urged China to introduce more flexibility in its currency regime, arguing that it was in China’s interest to do so. “I welcomed last year’s reforms and told (Chinese Finance Minister Jin Renqin) that reform for further flexibility in its currency regime would be in China’s interest,” Tanigaki was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying. (Whatever gave this Jap the idea that he knows better than the Chinese what’s in China’s interest?)

– that China’s increasing military strength and the possibility of it using force to quash independence movements in Taiwan form a major destabilising factor in East Asia, a think-tank affiliated with Japan’s Defence Agency said. In its closely watched East Asian Strategic Review 2006, the National Institute for Defence Studies said that although China has pursued a policy of ‘neighbouring diplomacy’ in an effort to bolster its regional ties, it has also significantly boosted its military capabilities, in particular its ability to use its military power to control Taiwan. (As if American and Japanese implicit hints at military intervention and support of Taiwan is helping to facilitate a conclusion of the Chinese Civil War and providing a major stabilising factor in East Asia.)

– that Junk-ichiro Junichiro Konkz-umi said that his visits to the Yasukuni shrine – which honours convicted war criminals along with the country’s war dead – should not stand in the way of summit meetings between Tokyo and Beijing. “I visit the shrine out of deep condolences for the war dead and out of a feeling that we must never start a war again. So why do I get criticised by a foreign nation as being a militarist or admiring war?” Mr Koizumi said in parliament. (Simple. Because your war dead mostly died for Duty, Honour, Country: Their duty, the Emperor’s honour, and invading OTHER PEOPLE’S country. Geddit, Konkz?)

– that Japan has protested that China has been ‘ruthless’ after the suicide note of one of its diplomats said he had been blackmailed by Beijing agents to divulge secret codes. Japanese allegations that China had been involved in the death of the Shanghai-based diplomat, who was allegedly wooed by a bar hostess, have aggravated already strained ties between the neighbors. (A deserving fate for another ‘hum sup’ – sex maniac – Japanese.)

– that Japan’s Education Un-Educated Ministry has ordered revisions to school textbooks to reflect the gover-min’s view on disputed territories and wartime history, a report said. The ministry, during its annual textbook screening, called for revisions to most references in senior high school textbooks to two sets of islands disputed with South Korea and China. It said they should be clearly referred to as Japanese territory, Kyodo news agency reported, citing ministry officials. The ministry also requested modifications to passages about World War II sex slaves and the number of victims in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre by Japanese troops in China, the agency said. (So much for ‘deep condolences for the war dead and out of a feeling that we must never start a war again’!)

– that North Korean lea-duh Kim Jong Il visited army units nearly every day last week to instil a ‘burning hatred’ of the US, the North’s official news agency said, in the light of joint military exercises by rival South Korea and the U.S. “Our army and people are turning out as one in the sacred anti-U.S. struggle with burning hatred for the U.S. imperialist aggressors and the unshakable resolution to take revenge upon them,’ Mr Kim was quoted as saying during a visit to KPA Unit 3406. “No force on earth can match the single-mindedly united forces in (North Korea), which no weapon can ever frighten or destroy,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Mr Kim as saying. (As it is common with all dictators, they believed in a heavenly mandate to rule and the invincibility of their forces. Single-mindedness and prep talk is no use against U.S. cruise missiles and smart bombs from stealth aircraft.)

– that Tuan Tuan the panda won’t be following in the footsteps of his mother and grandparents as a goodwill ambassador for China. Taiwan rejected China’s offer of the panda and a female mate, Yuan Yuan, in the latest sign of a hardening attitude toward its communist neighbor. (Blasted politics. It’s high time the Taiwanese do something about that idiots of the Democratic Progressive Regressive Party)

– that the reason given for the rejection by Lee Tao-shen, vice director of the Forestry Bureau – which was in charge of evaluating the panda offer – was “At the current stage we cannot issue an import permit for the two pandas offered by China.” The official said the decision had been made in accordance with ‘wild animal conservation laws’. (Aren’t Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan born in captivity? So much about them being ‘wild animals’.)

– that Myanmar’s military gover-min considers opposition lea-duh Aung San Suu Kyi and her party irrelevant to the democratic process, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister said after a brief visit to that country. Syed Hamid Albar told reporters his visit last week did not convince him that Myanmar is making sufficient progress towards democracy, as claimed by its military rulers. (Megawati and Arroyo would be such fine examples to convince the junta that Suu Kyi is best kept irrelevant. And maybe that’s a good idea too?)

– that the reasons for Myanmar moving the capital are unclear. Some analysts point to a paranoia among senior military figures that they might come under attack, potentially from the U.S., and that a location further from the coast is strategically safer. (Maybe one of the junta’s generals got scared after watching ‘Stealth’.)

– that Mama-thir said that being friendly towards Singapore had failed to build relations and resolve bilateral spats. He admitted that he had been unable to resolve a variety of disputes with Singapore during his 22-year tenure, but blamed the country for making demands that Malaysia would not accede to. (Like what?)

– that negotiations are under way between the two countries over replacing the Causeway linking the two sides with a new bridge, an issue dating back to Mama-thir’s regime. He said Singapore was asking for concessions for agreement to build a new bridge but offered nothing in return. “Now they want sand and permission to use our airspace for their military aircraft to agree to the construction of a bridge to replace the Causeway. But what do they give us in return…nothing…zero,” he said. (Nothing? By agreeing to the bridge, there will be an impact on Singapore’s port and livelihood. It makes life easy for ships to sail between PTP and Pasir Gudang and bypass us! That’s nothing to you, Mama? It’s Malaysia that’s offering us NOTHING because soon, even your water we do not need. Getting to use your airspace is but a small consolation to the longer term economic damage that is done to us! So now, please, f*ck off and die.)

– that police are putting more officers on the street and stepping up patrols, to make Singaporean visitors safer from robberies and car thefts. The New Straits Times quoted state police chief Mohd Amir Sulaiman as saying another 100 men and 45 patrol cars were being rolled out in a move to calm fears of a rise in crime, after concerns were voiced in Singapore. Datuk Amir said police did not distinguish between foreigners and locals when investigating crime reports. (Really? Or is it putting officers on the street to ‘take care’ of Singaporeans along the same line of Darth Vader ‘taking care’ of the Separatists on Mustafar?)

Singapore This Week

– that Lao Goh attempt to lend a lot of weight to the Tali-PAP candidates in the campaign to persuade the people to vote for them. He said he would get the party whip lifted to allow the two Tali-PAP candidates for Hougang and Potong Pasir to perform as ‘opposition MPs’ in Parliament. Lao Goh said, “If you vote for Eric Low, I can tell the Prime Minister to let him be the ‘Opposition’ in the Parliament. We can lift the Whip so that he can speak his mind. Then you can have the best of both worlds,” Mr Goh told an audience of about 500 at the Hougang Community Club. (Why go for the fake thing when you can have the real one?)

– that a day after offering to lift the party whip for the Tali-PAP men in opposition wards, Lao Goh has downplayed the suggestion. Instead, he has another suggestion: for him to be a special ‘resource person’ in Cabinet for Potong Pasir voters. (I have a even better suggestion. Go to Potong Pasir and run yourself. And get perhaps Mabok Tongue or Lim Gay Khiang to run in Hougang.)

– that Goh appeared to back off on this suggestion when speaking to reporters during a visit to Potong Pasir, his first since being charged with the responsibility of winning back the constituency, along with Hougang. “Actually, I was trying to find a way out from a question where somebody said that there are people who want opposition and they also want upgrading,” he said after being briefed by Mr Sitoh on his battle plan. “Let’s be clear. They are Tali-PAP MPs, they are not quite the same as opposition MPs. But what I hope Eric Low and Sitoh Yih Pin will do, regardless of whether the whip is lifted or not, is to speak their minds frankly. Whatever the views they have, even if they disagree with the gover-min and the party, they must voice them in Parliament. That’s important.” (What’s the difference when they voice all sorts of shits to make debate interesting and then yet still vote against what they voiced out?)

– that Yeo Cheow Tong Lam Cheow Kong, Transport Minister says he will step down if asked by Baby Lee. He said: “I have been in politics for 22 years – I have been in Cabinet for 21 years. That is a long time – so sooner or later I must step down to make way for the younger ministers who are coming up. I am very happy to do that at any time.” (Just say you wanna go and be done with.)

– that Baby Lee wants the Tali-PAP to press on with lea-duhship renewal and work hard to have potential successors in place well ahead of time. “When in doubt, we should err on the side of faster, rather than slower, self-renewal,” he said in his first comments since the Tali-PAP began introducing its slate of new faces. (Sounds like there are going to more schemes for the Men-In-White to earn their millions even faster so they can retire earlier. Oh yes. Ministerial pay adjustments are definitely coming. After the elections.)

– that the Tali-PAP wants a strong mandate for a new team led by Baby Lee that will take Singapore into the future, said Wong Wua Kan Seng. “We are not asking Singaporeans to vote for the Tali-PAP at the next general election because of our track record,” Wua said at a media conference to introduce the second batch of Tali-PAP candidates. Rather, the party is asking voters for their support of the third generation of lea-duhs under Baby Lee so that they, together with all Singaporeans, can steer Singapore well through the difficult challenges ahead over the next decade. And so that we can take full advantage of the tremendous great growth opportunities available to us in an Asia with two rising giants, China and India,” Wua said. (As if they never had a strong mandate like that. Please lah, Singapore, 52% is 1% too many leow.)

– that where estate upgrading is concerned, Hougang MP Low Thia Khiang believes he could do ‘as good a job’ as any Tali-PAP MP, if he had the same amount of resources. Speaking to reporters after his Meet-the-People session, Low said pushing for upgrading was an important responsibility of any Singapore MP. But opposition MPs, he added, lacked the same resources as Tali-PAP MPs to maintain and improve the facilities of their constituencies. (Unfortunately that might not be very evident to some of the morons out there.)

– that barely a month after saying it did not have enough candidates to contest even one five-member GRC, the NSP is now singing a different tune. The turnaround in its fortunes is because of defections from the SDP and an influx of candidates from other arms of the four-party SDA, which also includes the PKMS, the SPP and the Singapore Justice Party. (Defections from SDP? Let’s hope it’s none of the charlatans that has turned that party into a pariah.)

– that the SDP wants to contest in Sembawang GRC and plans to raise the NKF issue as part of its strategy to win votes. (Stop wasting everybody’s time. The NKF issue is deader than the Dodo birds.)

– that political debate on the Internet could fuel ‘dangerous discourse’ in Singapore, the gover-min, warning that Singaporeans who post political commentary on Web sites could face prosecution. Speaking in parliament, Balaji Bakaji Sadasivan said anyone using the Internet to ‘persistently propagate, promote or circulate political issues’ about Singapore during election periods was breaking the law. (So if someone can prove he’s been ‘persistently propagate, promote or circulate political issues’ before the election periods is not breaking the law?)

Trivial, Jokes and Thoughts from Discussions

– that in an interview with Fortune, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that not only does he not own an iPod–he’s forbidden the popular music gadget for his family as well. “My children–in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod,” Ballmer told the magazine. Google is out of favor in the Gates household, too. (There are many other portable music players out there anyway. And someone need to do something about the insane share prices of Google, which probably is at that level because some shithead talked it to that level.)

– that the latest patch to the popular online game ‘World of Warcraft’ has led to the game’s servers being down for hours longer than expected. According to Gil Shif, public relations manager for ‘World of Warcraft’ publisher Blizzard Entertainment, the latest major patch to the game – version 1.10, which is designed to adjust the talents of priests – caused some ‘snags’ that have affected the servers going back online as planned. (Maybe it was more than just a software patch they were putting up.)

– that last fall, a group of World of Warcraft players in China committed mass suicide. They wanted to draw attention to the latest restriction on their liberty: The same gover-min agency that censors newspapers and bans books had just mandated a system of disincentives to limit the number of hours per day they spent playing online games. Hardcore Warcrafters decided they would rather pull the plug than, er, pull the plug. In January, in the aftermath of the public outcry (and virtual die-ins), the Chinese gover-min announced that adults could play MMORPGs for as long as they like. (The gover-min should do nothing to curb the irresponsible behaviour of certain people and just let them die by way of natural selection.)

– that when a New Jersey teenager decided to create a fictional story about being hired by one of the Internet’s largest companies, he knew just where to spread the news – with the unwitting help of the company itself. Earlier this month, Thomas Vendetta submitted his fake press release about being hired by Google to Google News, a popular site that automatically trolls 4,500 sources for their latest posts. Sure enough, the release appeared on the world’s most popular website for news. (Well done, Google. Now maybe I can submit a piece of news about the birth of the Sith Empire on Earth, with Darth Grievous as its first Emperor. Address me as the ‘Celestial Wisdom’, you mortals!!)

– that news of Microsoft’s demise is usually exaggerated. (Well, for starters, even if you are a geek who can load up Linux with Open Office using the hair of your ars*hole, and sell it really cheap to your clients, it isn’t going to affect that fact that a big part of the world out there have so much developed stuff riding on Microsoft that’s it not worth the money and effort to re-develop or convert them for use on the new platform. That’s not even talking about the troubleshooting time that comes with it after conversion. Above which, lots of financial products runs on Windows – EBS, Reuters, Bloomberg, PFS etc. Try and guess if these providers will develop one more version, or will they just ask you to use Windows? And by the way, if you need to play World of Warcraft or some other MMORPG and there isn’t a Linux version, what the fiaks are you going to do? Dual boot to Windows so you can play? And then think about the amount of jobs that is there because Windows sucks! Get the point now?)

– that ‘genius’ KOH CHOON LIN went to the HDB website to find out about the new window legislation, and can’t see a video on the website pertaining to the legislation that requires Microsoft Windows Media Player to play. He was running his Linux PC, so he could not play the video. Being curious, he checked out the file formats on all the Singapore gover-min websites and it turned out that the file formats hosted on them are all stored in Microsoft’s formats. Thus, he said that he could not use the gover-min services without first buying a Microsoft product. (So what’s the issue here? Find a Windows computer. They are everywhere. And Windows Media Player comes free with every copy of Windows. Need I say more why Linux never really picked up in spite of the fact that Microsoft sucks?)

– thus, the ‘genius’ urged the Singapore gover-min to consider migrating the state’s documents to the OpenDocument Format, which is the only standard for editable office documents that has been vetted by an independent, recognised standards body, has been implemented by multiple vendors, and can be implemented by anyone without restriction. This format was publicly developed by a variety of organisations and is publicly accessible. The OpenDocument Format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats, including the popular but undocumented DOC, XLS and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. (Word, Excel and PowerPoint reader is also available free from Microsoft, for any Windows PC. And by the way, what has Windows Media Player format got anything to do with the OpenDocument Format?)

– that the ‘genius’ went on to suggest organisations and individuals should store their data in an open format such as OpenDocument avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business, raises its prices, changes its software, or changes its licensing terms to something less favourable. (Sure. Use plain text. Or post script.)

– that ‘genius’ SEAH LEONG KHAI complained that interest rates have risen in the past year because almost daily he read about high interest rates offered by commercial banks. Seah said these banks typically offer more than 3% per annum on fixed deposit, much higher than the 2.5% given by the CPF Board. He also mentioned that before 2000, the board paid 4.4% per annum and thus it must try harder to enhance our CPF assets for our retirement needs. (And so CPF housing loan will be 4.5% and I end up paying more out of my CPF leaving me a smaller sum to earn the ‘higher’ interest. Imagine this, if I pay out $600 instead of $400 due to the higher interest, I will have $200 less to earn the 4.4%. Seah’s idea of asset enhancement must have come from an economic school that defies common sense!!)

– that Google is adding graphical advertisements to maps on its local search site, foreshadowing the use of its pop-up balloons for various types of information and activities, an analyst said. Greg Sterling, managing editor at The Kelsey Group, said Google representatives told him several weeks ago that the company plans to let businesses add advertisements and logos to the mapping balloons that appear on Google Local. (Google is nothing but an advertising company masquerading as an IT company. While it is using novel means to push ads to the Internet community, it makes one wonders just what sustain that kind of share prices.)

– that a wave of religious books is coming to bookstores to cash in on ‘The Da Vinci Code’ movie in May, including a book saying Jesus survived crucifixion and an Evangelical novel with a modern-day Mary Magdalene heroine. Americans are finally able to buy Dan Brown’s best seller in paperback three years after it was first published, and with ‘Da Vinci Code’ fever as strong as ever, it’s never been so profitable to write about Christianity. (Don’t people ever get bored reading about the non-existent ‘Holy Grail’? How about writing about the ‘Spear of Destiny’ for a change?)

– that George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon will star in ‘Ocean’s 13’, the third flick in their franchise about a gang of lovable crooks, distributor Warner Bros. announced. (And everyone thought ‘Ocean’s 12’ was bad enough with Julia Roberts impersonating herself in that one.)

– that Britney Smears’ ex-sweetie reportedly does not approve of her hubby. In fact, Justin Timberlake believes that Kevin Federline is ‘gross’, according to Star magazine. “He thinks Kevin is gross, and there’s not much that would change his mind about that,” a source told the tab. “He says that they [Spears and Timberlake] had a lot of great years together, and he’s pretty sad at how things turned out for her.” (Stick with your Cameron Diaz and just shut the fu*k up, can you? Or do another ‘NippleGate’ – With Diaz this time – if you so crave for attention, you prick.)

– that faded pop superstar Michael Jackson was crowned as America’s most foolish person in 2006, narrowly beating out Dick-head Cheney for the title. The 47-year-old, who is living in exile in Bahrain following his acquittal last June on child sex charges, snatched the dishonour for the fourth year running, according to a survey by a U.S. public relations consultant. (Someone actually beat Warmonger to that?!)

– that Dick-head Cheney tied with Paris Hilton for second place in this seventh annual April Fool’s poll, with 59% of Americans saying that they had done ‘something foolish’ in the past year, down from a high of 64% in last year’s survey. (And Warmonger isn’t even second?)

– that lest some fuggers think I do not love Singapore because of my usual diatribes against the Tali-PAP gover-min and my fellow Singaporeans, wake up now! (Singapore’s all I have got. Like it or not, it’s still HOME to me.)