Wordplay Imagery Conjurance Exercise

Technorati tags: Humor, Malaysia, Commentary, Word Play, DEVO, Freedom, Justice

Walski's note: Work beckons, so Walski's on the road - again. But there's time to spare this evening, hence this silly little post to entertain your brain cells...

Walski gets possessed sometimes. Not the head-rotating Exorcist kind, but sometimes certain words and phrases get stuck in the mind, and the various permutations that those words can manifest, plus the varied meanings they imply.

If the above makes absolutely no sense to you, then lets look at an example. This morning, Walski was looking in the refrigerator to see what he wanted to snack on. Unfortunately, all there was in the icebox were bread, butter and cheese. Immediately, the phrase "No Freedom Of Choice" popped up in Walski's mind.

Anybody remember DEVO?
This is the cover of their Freedom of Choice album

For the rest of the morning, No Freedom Of Choice virtually got stuck in the mind, like the annoying song you sometimes absolutely can't get out of your head.

So, this got Walski's analytical juices going. And then the permutations, and their meanings started popping up. Kinda annoying in its own way, but kinda fun, too, sometimes.

No Freedom Of Choice - a situation where you can only have bread, butter and cheese. You may be in the mood for roti canai, but that's not on the menu. So, forget it. It's either bread, butter and cheese, or go hungry till the next meal - but even then, you'll probably only have bread, butter or cheese to choose from.

So what else can we conjure out of these 4 words?
(more word permutations in the full post)

Freedom Of No Choice - a situation where you may choose between bread with butter, or bread with cheese. Kinda like the choices a typical Malaysian has during election time. Whichever party one chooses, what you get at the end of the day is race-based politics, because that's the political environment du jour. Yeah, yeah, some people wanna change that - which is a good thing. But the prevailing powers-that-be with their propaganda mouthpiece juggernauts will probably scare the crap out of you into thinking that race-based politics is the only way forward, and is good for you. OR ELSE. So, you're left in a situation of freedom of no choice when it comes to whom to vote for. At least from a conventional viewpoint, that is.

Choice Of No Freedom - the idiotic ideal that certain segments of Malaysian society seem to crave. Sort of like having bread, butter and cheese, but taking the cheese every and every time, because you think bread and butter are evil. "Freedom is bad" they say. "Freedom makes us sinners" they add. "God gave us Freedom so that we could suppress it" they opine. And given the choice of having a more liberal, self-respecting societal environment, they would prefer living in a moralistic police state. Go find your own desert island and rot there, won't you? In the best, most moral way, of course, and with all the cheese you care to have.

No Choice Of Freedom - a situation where you can have bread, butter, cheese or even roti, but from a specific brand only. And you don't get to decide which brand. Kinda like what Henry Ford supposedly said long ago (referring to the Model T): "The Customer Can Have Any Color He Wants So Long As It's Black".

Of No Choice, Freedom - okay, Walski didn't mention that adding punctuation is allowed. This would be a situation where you're given bread, butter and cheese, but you decide to drive down to the mamak stall for the roti canai instead. Or, in real world terms, given the choice of an increasingly rigid, stifling and self-denying societal environment, or live elsewhere. An elsewhere where freedom is a respected commodity, and individuals are allowed to be individuals.

Walski likes his roti canai, but likes bread, butter and cheese, too. And he does hope that he can continue to live in a Malaysia that allows for all four, depending on what you crave for at a given moment. Hopefully, things don't get so bad that the only way an individual may find personal freedom, and justice, is to find them elsewhere.