100 words a day

This is my point of view and if I lose friends and alienate people, I'll live with it. Since the Crackhouse news broke, many of my friends have been asking me if I am worried about getting into trouble for what I say on stage. My short answer is - "Don't worry, I don't joke about those things." The longer answer is, I absolutely would write a joke about religion. I just haven't thought of one good enough to be worth the consequences in this country. Because I know that someone will get offended on the Internet, the whole thing will be taken out of context, some professional police report lodger will rile up an angry mob, the director of Mat Kilau will come and plug his movie, and I'll be spending the next few months explaining a joke. I just don't have a joke worth all that at the moment. I think people should be allowed to joke about any topic, just as I think people should be allowed to talk about any topic, BUT they have to be sensitive to the conte

Changed the title of this blog again - this time to '100 Words A Day'. I realized I have been just doing nothing since things have gone back to some kind of normal and I feel like crap about it. I keep thinking of the times I used to feel positive and I think the most recent was near the beginning of this year, when I decided I wanted to put more effort into being a content creator. Right now, I'm not feeling any positivity at all. Everything just seems so big and overwhelming and I feel so small and helpless, and in the end, I just escape into Youtube videos and Netflix and computer games. These distractions are useful to get me through a rough patch, but I'm kind of stuck in the middle of the rough patch and I need a way to dig myself out. Right now, I feel like all I can handle are small tasks. There are too many things I would like to improve about my life, my self and my habits. Here are my goals: I want to sleep 7 hours each night. Lack of sleep has been making me

The situation is FUBAR now. Some guy by the name of Yusuf Azmi, the leader of some Muslim consumer rights association decided he could gain some mileage from the Crackhouse situation and has been riling up the angry mob. They made a police report on Rizal's jokes and now Rizal is being investigated and he has no income from gigs or his club, and people have vandalised the club and have sent threatening messages to him and his wife, even mentioning the name of their two year old. And to be honest, most of the jokes they are offended by, aren't critical of any religion, but instead laughs at human folly. In one discussion, Mo Sidik showed us this clip of an Indonesian comedian saying Insha Allah, a very habitual saying among Muslims. He was not in trouble. There were no police reports. The video went viral. Indonesians understood that the joke was about how people fall into habits and don't always think the meaning of what they say. It's like that old joke or meme where a

The way comedy open mics are run at Crackhouse Comedy Club is the same as most open mics all around the world. People sign up for a spot, they perform for a few minutes, they’re either funny or not funny, and then we move on to the next act. They don’t get paid. This is the way it has always been since the club’s inception 8 years ago, and since open mics started in Kuala Lumpur 13 years ago. Nobody is there to insult any groups or any religion. Everybody share laughs and they go home. There has never been a problem, until now. A few weeks ago, this lady performed at the open mic at Crackhouse Comedy Club for her first and last time. I can only give you a secondary account, as I was not there that night, but this is what I gather from watching the viral video everyone is talking about and also from friends who were there that night. She was wearing a hijab and a baju kurung. She said she had memorised 15 Juzuk Al Quran and then she removed the hijab and baju kurung to reveal what she w

I realised that my mood lately has been closely linked with productivity. On Monday, I wrote out my new jokes and went to an open mic and did well. I felt good. On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I just watched Youtube and Netflix. I felt bad. Today is Friday. I ran some errands, and wrote a few blog entries and sorted out some of my thoughts. I feel better again. The main pattern here I see here is I have been feeling guilty for being unproductive.

The trial has been over for weeks but I still miss it. The trial taught me something about myself. I was really surprised by how much I hated Amber Heard and yet am drawn to watching her. I think I'm a obsessed with her. And I'm not talking about a sexual attraction or anything like that. It's just I can't get enough of video footage of her obviously lying, body language all wrong, frowning and smirking at the same time, contradicting herself. It drives me nuts but I keep wanting more of it. When I was a kid, my family would watched the TV series Dallas and the star of the show was also the villain character - J.R. Ewing played by Larry Hagman. They would hate him so much but they would tune in every week and get irritated. I didn't understand why they would do that to themselves but now I get it. Amber Heard is my J.R. Ewing.  The Youtube channels that were covering the trial are still milking it for every last drop of newsworthiness it still has. They're still

Disclaimer: I'm a comedian, so my views will be naturally biased. But, so are the views of woke people who make a living writing articles for Jezebel, so keep that in mind also. As a comedian trying to make it today, everything you say has or do has to be done in sort of a humorous way. Every tweet or public statement you make that is not funny is a disservice to yourself because comedians are a dime a dozen and as much as we support each other, we're also competing for attention. It's competitive. You have to be funny pretty much all the time. I used to think woke people and creative people are natural enemies. But now, I think we're often on the same side. We cannot solve problems if we're not allowed to acknowledge them. You have to allow everyone to take part in the conversation, including people who are inclined to talk about it in a humorous way. Change is hard enough. When you start saying this group of people can talk about it, but that group of people canno