Fun, Less Fun, Not Fun At All

A friend recently shared a link on analogies used by high school students in English essays and I couldn't help but chuckled at some of the analogies. It is a damn creative uses of paradoxes, really. I have always regard those people that can fill the entire room with laughter as social geniuses. They're born with the talent for seeing paradoxes in life and deliver them, literally right on the face and survive without receiving punches on their faces.

In written form, however, I could see certain traits that enable the writers to tickle our mind. Apart from deliberate use of paradoxes, parables are often deployed, where two seemingly unrelated situations are fused together, focusing on the similar qualities of subject matters, both are often at the end of the two extremes, which I would identify as parables of joke. The parables used are often tweaked to reflect daily mundane things that are morphed to a whole new level through clever usage of opposite extremes, unlike the other form of parables, which I identify as parables of wisdom, a highly philosophical English parables, which are mostly revolve within the same plane and sanitised. The parables of joke usually contain ironies to further aggravate the surprise element in a particular parable.

Understanding Verbal Irony

Understanding Situational Irony 

However, the good nature of human seems to discount more morally serious paradoxes as no laughing matter. It is a good thing that generally, we don't take it too kindly the degeneration of other people's suffering or outright humiliation and pass it on as jokes. Such jokes are usually frown upon and no one would be sensible enough to laugh at it. There are such parables passed around but it somehow become some sort of barometer of the state of mind. It could even blow up to become a national issue, such as the case when a school teacher from a northern Malaysian state of Kedah (Wikipedia | Kedah Darul Aman), jokingly told the non-Muslims pupils in his school to eat inside the toilet but don't go to the extent of drinking their own urine (Malaysia's The Star | Teacher Allegedly Says Non-Muslim Pupils Can Drink Own Urine) (The Daily Mail UK | Malaysian School Fire-Bombed During Ramadan As Students Told To Drink Own Urine). When it reached the newsstand, the headline reads the teacher asked the pupils to drink their own urine. Nonetheless, not all could stomach this matter as a joke and it brought up a plethora of news reporting imposition of Islamic values on non-Muslims. The Kedah's drink-your-own-urine case is a classic manifestation of an ice breaking game that I played when I entered high school back in 1994, known as Chinese whispers (Wikipedia | Chinese Whispers), played at a grander scale with potential legal and social repercussions. There jokers, you've been warned...!

With passage of time, words could also undergo transformation and carry different connotation. In 2004, a local non-governmental organisation, Pioneer Force of Indian Muslims (APIM) (Bahasa Malaysia | Angkatan Pelopor India Muslim (APIM) filed a legal suit against Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka and 5 others for the inclusion of the word 'keling' in the Third Edition of Kamus Dewan (Wikipedia | Kamus Dewan) as it was deemed derogatory to the Indian community (Kosmo! | Istilah 'Keling' Dibenarkan Dalam Kamus Dewan). The legal suit seek to remove the word from the Kamus Dewan, rendering it officially non-existent.

The word 'keling' has been in use in Malaysia for hundreds of years and there are places in Malaysia where the word 'keling' is in use such as Tanjung Kling in Melaka (Wikipedia | Tanjung Kling) and Kapitan Keling Mosque (Wikipedia | Kapitan Keling Mosque) in Penang. From the horse's mouth itself, i.e. the Kamus Dewan, the word is defined (and loosely translated) as:

keling III 1. An empire of Kalinga and Telingana on the Indian peninsula of Coromandel, well-known for its sailors and merchants who came to Southeast Asia in as early as the third century 2. Traders from Kalinga and Telingana 3. Indian of Islamic faith

Tanjung Kling beach in Melaka, Malaysia (Image Source)

Kapitan Keling Mosque" by Mohammed Al-Naser (Image Source)

It was recorded that beginning 1960 - 1963, the word 'keling' started to be used to refer to Indians generally in a derogatory manner while reference to the Indian Muslims changed to another term, 'mamak". By far, Malaysians have been using the word 'mamak' to refer to the stalls that offers halal food, mostly operating 24 hours. However, this may also go down the way of 'keling' as recently, there have been movements to curb the use of the term 'mamak' as it is considered, yet again, derogatory to the Indian Muslims (Utusan Online | Komuniti India Muslim Bantah Guna Nama 'Mamak'). I was like, seriously? Are they suffering from some sort of identity crisis (The Malaysian Insider | Kami Tidak Masuk Melayu)? It is really a serious issue for the Indian Muslim community as much as it is a serious issue for all Malaysians.

As I write further, it is becoming more stressful to read a host of issues affecting us. I just want to lighten the mood now and have fun with the analogies below. May the Chuckle be with you:

1. When she tried to sing, it sounded like a walrus giving birth to farm equipment.
2. Her eyes twinkled, like the mustache of a man with a cold.
3. She was like a magnet; attractive from the back, repulsive from the front.
4. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
5. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
6. She had him like a toenail stuck in a shag carpet.
7. The lamp just sat there, like an inanimate object.
8. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had two sides gentle compressed by a Thigh Master.
9. Her eyes were like the stars, not because they twinkle, but because they were so far apart.
10. His career was blowing up like a man with a broken metal detector walking through an active minefield.
11. The sun was below the watery horizon, like a diabetic grandma easing into a warm salt bath.
12. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes at 7.00 PM instead of 7.30 PM.
13. It was as easy as taking candy from a diabetic man who no longer wishes to eat candy.
14. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes before it throws up.
15. Their love burned with the fiery intensity of a urinary tract infection.
16. It's basically an illusion and no different than if I were to imagine something else, like Batman riding a flying toaster.
17. If it was any colder. it would be like being in a place that is a little colder than it is here.
18. Joy fills her heart like a silent but deadly fart fills a room with no windows.
19. The bird flew gracefully into the air like a man stepping on a landmine in zero gravity.
20. He felt confused. As confused as a homeless man on house arrest.
21. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
22. His thought tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
23. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
24. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
25. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
26. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
27. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
28. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
29. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
30. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6.36 PM travelling at 55 miles per hour, the other from Topeka at 4.19 PM at a speed of 35 miles per hour.
31. They lived in a typical suburban neighbourhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
32. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
33. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
34. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.
35. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
36. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
37. The younger fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
38. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
39. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
40. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

To access original sources, click here for No. 1 to 21 and click here for No. 22 to 40.

From Faizdickie, a Malaysian Instagrammer (Instagram | @faizdickie)

Memanglah time raya semua orang digalakkan ziarah menziarahi tapi tolonglah peka dengan putaran waktu oi. Contohnya sedara kau sorang ni. Orang lain bila datang beraya, setakat makan, borak kejap then beransur. Tapi diaaaa takk! Siap bermigrasi kat rumah kau! Haha Memula makan kuih, lepas tu disaji pulak ketupat. Lepas abis ketupat dimintak pulak teh panas. Mulut pulak tak henti bercerita daripada kisah gosip Rita Rudaini sampailah skandal 1MDB! Haha Tak reti nak berambus ke oi! Haha #komiksengal #kaklehabunting #cikyam #pakleman. Haha bersedialah time raya nanti mesti akan ada tetamu gini. Tetamu lain dah keluar masuk 17 kali tapi dia still tak reti-reti nak blah. Even bila kau keluar kata-kata keramat 'so lepas ni kau pergi rumah siapa plak?' Tetap dia tak faham hint lalu dia buat bodoh jee! Haha Wahai #villagepeople sekalian jangan buat perangai gini okey. Kalau tuan rumah dah mula jawab 'aah' 'itulah' or 'betul la tu' time kau berborak ngan dia, maknanya dia dah malas nak layan kau lettew! Haha Silalah pepandai bawak diri okey. Jangan masuk dalam selimut dorang plak! Haha

A video posted by Faizdickie (@faizdickievp) on Jul 13, 2015 at 8:27am PDT