9 Most Pointless Malaysian News (June 2014)

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News stories should inform or disseminate useful information. Hell, we at CILISOS would even be glad to read the not-so-subtle agenda-pushing stories in the news. Once again (yes we’ve done this before), we have logged lots of hours going through Malaysian news sites (and hiking up their competing page counts) to give you the nine most pointless stories that got folded into our news cycle this month.

Click on the pictures to read the actual news story.

Sleep Deprived by the World Cup

Just like not eating will make you hungry, anyone who has had an all-night bender knows this. It is as if upon finishing this pointless news article, in the guise of public service, we would fold up the paper, turn off the game and go to sleep. It is only for a few weeks for god’s sake. The story makes it out to seem like we are being subjected to harsh and prolonged interrogation. Plus, telling us that we may get sick just plants the idea that we should pop over to the clinic for an MC – which is, in itself, another looming problem.

Oogling Pandas

We have pandas now, hurrah! The loaner from the Middle Kingdom was to mend ties and we are happy. To show our gratitude, it would have been fine to report on how excited we are and maybe a photo-op with the bears with PM. But then we got weird. We began to heap on more news on the pandas. We became a little pervy and scary. We installed CCTV cameras to watch the bears with voyeuristic delight wondering when they are going to dust off the jet lag and get down doing the nasty. Are they doing it now? How about now? Now? Now? Alas, nothing happened.

Grower and a Shower

In Malaysia, our frivolous news reports are often about something big. Well, this one is both big, long and thick. As we all know, girth matters. A newbie farmer who has grown a thick and long okra made it to the news. His bendi was so long he proudly posed for pictures with his 18-incher. The farmer said that he believes that there is no record of such length in the record books and his phallic fruit should be in the Guinness Book before it wilts. Aside from the obvious jokes, which we have pretty much exhausted here, what is the point of the story again?

Bad Driving = Accidents

The Sun gave us an important news bit that according to research done by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros) bad driving causes accidents. And here we were thinking that moths or perhaps the Moon God Xanolla caused the congestions and collisions on our roadways. No more virgin offerings to you Xanolla. With such insight on our road conditions, we desperately want to go work for the institute. Perhaps in time we would be able to finally reveal that stepping on the middle paddle in your car causes the brake lights to come on.

The Clone Wars

The “People’s Paper” is under threat, this time not from political pressure. Apparently, someone has made a fake Star Online website. The Star quickly exposed the fakery and brought down the site. Surely, people reading the mock content would have realised that something is amiss with headlines like “Malaysian Dad Makes More Money from Home”. Perhaps the daily just doesn’t want to lose any hits, since achieving its popular news portal status. Perhaps the clone site was spreading misinformation. Perhaps we don’t really care because anyone who has been online would immediately be able to spot fakery. Those that don’t have sent money to Nigeria and bought penile enlargement tools.

Archaic Post

We have continued to issue stamps and first day covers to commemorate special occasions, as if we were living in the early 80s. Hands up anyone who knows how much it costs to send a letter. How about where the nearest post-box is? No? Pos Malaysia has a website that gives you all that information. Perhaps email them if you have more questions, might be faster that way. We suppose it is flattering that we strengthened ties with China and that the Scouts movement is going on strong here. But we suspect that like flattery, philately will get you nowhere.

Varsity Pride

We have more “likes” than Cambridge, said Limkokwing University. “This is something the university is very proud of,” said Limkokwing University of Creative Technology’s artistic director Tiffanee (her real name) Marie Lim. While we believe that varsity pride should be encouraged, one’s Facebook page activity is not national news. A better place would be in one of the glossy, artsy books the university loves producing. Also, and we admit it is pure conjecture here, perhaps, just perhaps, the students at the University of Cambridge in the UK are more focused on learning and studying than going thumbs-up on Facebook. Again, just a guess.

Gambling and the World Cup

Like coffee and Coffee-mate, you cannot separate placing bets during the World Cup. No matter how illegal the authorities say it is or how sternly they say it, the act of letting someone have “two balls” or “half ball” will ever cease. So what is the point of this news bit? Little, aside from reminding us that the police are on the case. Perhaps, this is more for people who go overboard. For the average Malaysian, that is not us. And for public consumption, a news piece like this only serves to push the asinine advice of “gambling, not good”. Which we know.

Name Your Girl Malaysia

This piece of news has been going around. Given that most Americans probably couldn’t find us on the map, this has to be a high honour. Yet, this seems like a non-starter of a story. Reading just the headline you would think that for every ten girls in the US named Tymeera there is a Malaysia. Sadly that is hardly the case. The name Malaysia is not even on the top 20 names from 2000 to 2013. Even if 630 girls were so named in 2013, out of 313million people who live in America (in 2012), that’s about 0.0002% of the population. We did the math to show that the word “popularity” in the news is really quite premature. We can however say that there is an American porn star named Malaysia Blue, go Google it.

Meanwhile, here the star getting pissed off that a fan was hounding her.