Astro - Making my Life Sickening

Warning: Article contains profanity that may not be suitable for fragile minds. If you are one of those fucking morons, kindly read no further.

Astro - Making Your Life Richer

So claims the first, and widest-reaching, pay-TV network. True, National Geographic, Discovery, and many of the education-orientated channels do add depth to ones knowledge. And to that end, I have no complaints about whats shown on those channels.

My beef with Astro is when it comes to entertainment orientated programs in English. Tell me if this sounds familiar:

I was watching "Love Actually" the other night, and throughout the airing, spots of dead air could be heard (or un-heard), some stretching for as long as 5 seconds or more. In dialogue terms, entire sentences were bleeped. And why? Because Malaysia is a moral country and we do not condone foul language, especially foul language that fragile Malay minds can understand. Nevermind that the foul dialog is translated into mandatory Bahasa Malaysia Melayu subtitles (more later).

Gee, thank you for saving my sensitive ears and fragile brain, you fucking morons.

I swear, this stupid country is getting more and more puritanical by the day. 2006 has so far been a really fucked-up year when it comes personal liberties, and its only February. And extra-especially when it comes to entertainment. Goatgate, the forced closure of No Black Tie by the hyper-anal DBKL, and who knows other heinous puritanical crap yet to come.

So, back to Astro, I've noticed two things of late. Two things that fucking annoy me to no end.

First, dialog on the movie channels, and on the variety channels (AXN, StarWorld, etc.) are getting the [BLEEP/dEAD aIR] treatment with reckless abandon these days. There is nothing that irritates me more than having snippets of dialog rudely ripped out of the airwaves, making what's being said unintelligable. It irritates me so much, I've been known to just switch to another channel. Or switch the TV off altogether.

Second, what's with the mandatory Bahasa Malaysia Melayu subtitles on the variety channels? Now, I have no problem with having Bahasa subtitles - if you want or need them (like, for me, when watching something on Wah Lai Toi). The technology to make the subtitles optional is there, and in fact is already used on many of the channels. But no, if a program is in English, you must have it with Bahasa Malaysia Melayu - like it, or fucking leave the country you smart-ass dissident intellectual you hate it. The damn things, when actually translated correctly (which is a disgusting 85% of the time - it should be error-free) get in the way of captions, original subtitles for non-English dialog, and other eye candy.

Love Actually is a wickedly witty and artfully crafted Brit comedy, and having dialog so rudely withheld from me, coupled with the inacurate subtitling, really bites. Abso-fucking-lutely sucks. Looks like I'll have to go look for the pirate DVD now.

As much as I respect Intellectual Property, pirated DVDs are the only source for being able to watch a program (movie or TV series) in its entirety, the way it was intellectually created, in this motherfucking asylum we call Malaysia. The way they were made to be watched/listened. And definitely not via the sensibilities of a third-rate, inbred, self-righteous, bastard-son/daughter-of-a-censor put in charge to [BLEEP/dEAD aIR] with wanton abandon.

And they wonder why people still choose to purchase pirated movies and series on DVD. And you expect me to believe censoring a movie is respecting Intellectual Property? Live in your delusional grandeur all you want, I choose to live in the real world.

Why even bother having a U or 18 rating - oh, wait... Yeah, the "we will sanitize everything to G-rated THEN decide who can watch it" fucking moronic rating system that we have. I'll leave that rant for another day.

For right now, I gotta get back to whatever's left to watch/listen of this movie I have on, er, Astro.