baby, what's in that satchel?

read here, then see here.

if you were like me and just read google news without reading the speech, you'd have thought the pope really stepped his red prada boots in it this time. who the hell goes around dissing islam? apologies il papa! i thought you were almost 100% idiot! but now maybe only 50% =P

if you're going to say something with "Mohammed", "evil" and "inhuman" in the same sentence you're just asking for your words to be taken out of context, and i still think JPII wouldn't have made his point in such a, dare i say, sensationalist manner. but if you actually got past that one sentence you'd also see that he was promoting a dialogue of cultures.

so now there's anger spewing all over the place. protests in pakistan, militants in iraq vowing war (enjoy a career as an al qaeda militant! employee turnover rate may be high, but they always have vacancies), marching in indonesia (don't you have jobs?) etcetc .. i particularly like this article where a saudi newspaper purportedly said that the "remarks linking Islam to violence were beating the drum of war for the far right in the United States".

even if his intention was to denounce islam as evil and violent and inhuman (which it wasn't, i think), don't you think he would have been proven right? WE ARE SO TOTALLY NOT VIOLENT AND ANGSTY they cried as they burnt effigies and threatened holy wars.

marina mahathir (the famous dr. m's daughter) who writes a column for the star newspaper wrote this in may. and it's pretty true.

anyway i'm not going to the whole condemning islam thing because i don't, so please don't burn any effigies here. coming from singapore where the only people who smiled back at me during my smile experiment were the old malay aunties and uncles, i know it's only a few crazies who manage to stir the shit up where people have not much to do and don't have access to google news.

if i were the pope, i wouldn't be apologizing that i offended people. i'd be apologizing that the people who are offended are so goddamn stupid. oops. used the Lord's name in vain.