You Know I'm No Good

Just when I thought there’s hope in Music and it’s safe to listen to the Radio …

RIP Amy!

Flick Fest

Invited to the Pre-Launch (?) of the 24^th Malaysia Film Festival via SMS yesterday.  Event will be held Monday. Please RSVP by today (23^rd July). Which I duly confirmed attending.

It must be ‘Hantu Kak Limah Balik Rumah’, I thought, which I collaborated with Mamat in doing the music. Do we get nominated again? What about the others? Who are in the running for what? 

Visits to www.finas.gov.my/ and www.sinemamalaysia.com.my/ resulted in this:

There seems to be a problem with the MySQL server, sorry for the inconvenience.

We should be back shortly.

Bummer ...

Death Walks Behind You

Atomic Rooster was an English progressive rock band, composed of former members of the The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

They adopted the name Atomic Rooster in the summer of 1969 (which was the year of the Rooster in the Chinese calendar). Their genre in music is difficult to define, since they went through radical changes in very short times during the life of the band. However, their best-known era represented a more hard rock/progressive rock sound.

This song, from their second album, Death Walks Behind You, was released in September 1970.

Cornerstone

My favourite band when I was with that outfit, 'Random' during the '80s. Tho' we were out-and-out rockers then, all of us were suckers for good ballad it seems.

Gossips!

This is no pre-Friday sermon or anything of that sort. Just fulfilling my obligation as a Muslim, that's all. To my non-Muslim friends. No offence intended.

Abu Dzar (r.a.) once asked the Prophet  Muhammad (s.a.w.): “O Messenger of Allah, what is ghibah?” . He replied: “It is to mention about your brother that which he detests.”

Abu Dzar (r.a.) said: “O Messenger of Allah, what if that which is mentioned of him should actually be in him?”. He (s.a.w.) replied: “Know that when you mention that which is in him, you have committed his ghibah, and when you mention that which is not in him, then you have slandered him.”  (Muslim)

The general character of ghibah is also understandable from a hadith narrated by Aishah herself.  Aishah says: “A woman came to visit us, and when she turned to go away I made a gesture by my hand that she is short of height. “ Thereupon, he (Prophet Muhammad – s.a.w.) said: ‘You have committed her ghibah.’” (Ibnu Abu Dunya and Ibnu Mirdawaih) 

Hence, it is clear from the hadith that ghibah is not limited to linguistic expression but applies to all kind of communication.

The Prophet (s.a.w.) also said, “Do not expose the mistakes of Muslims. For he who follows (searches for) the errors of his brother, Allah will follow his errors, and whom Allah follows his errors, He will expose him even if he was in the middle of his home.” "(Abu Daud/Sahih Al-Jamee)

In Surah Humaza 104:1, Allah s.w.t. says: “Woe to every backbiter, slanderer”.

The above verse refers to those who sting others with their speech, behaviour, mimicry, or sarcasm at their backs or in front of them. They mock them and defame them with evil motives.

One student asked this question to our lecturer then, “Ustad, how are we to go about curing this disease?”. Our Ustad replied,  “Repent and seek the forgiveness from the victim, if this is possible without any chance of vicious consequences; otherwise, you must implore God's mercy for the victim.”

Pray for his well-being after every Solat? Tall order that!

Cinta Muka Buku

That event held Malaysians breathless and on the edge of their seats for a day. Hand clasping the remote, shuffling from channel to channel to keep themselves informed. So many rumours, ambigous SMSs and phone calls from out of town.

I decided to play safe and cancelled all classes for the day. Better be safe than sorry, I presumed. Well, after experiencing TWO horrendous racial riots in this lifetime (one in Singapore and another in Malaysia), I just could not take chances. The symptoms are uncannily similar.

So much for that infamous affair ...

Now, what happened to Facebook? Everybody’s Facebook? Everybody’s LIFE. Prior and subsequent to that, it has become a psy-war battlefield among relatives, colleagues and best of friends. No more what I ate for lunch uploads,  which side of the bed I woke up this morning  and He loves me … He loves me not updates. No one responded to my requests for hardware in my City! Oh no … my Allies are now 'enemies'  in that Empire. They didn’t have time to revive my Electric Roses, too. Gosh ... this social network has become very unsociable!

Profile pictures changed overnight. What colour are you macha? The new badge application came in handy, too. Anybody who can type tried to shove  their ‘doctrines’ down my throat. No statements? It’s REVOLUTION, stupid.

So, ‘happiness is my own responsibility’, fellow Facebookians.  Today, my  list of friends has been reduced to almost half. Thank you!  Always wondered what to do with these hanger-ons who amassed friends just to show numbers -  ‘Wah … you got 1,000 friends lor …’. Yeah, Blessing comes in so many guises.

Here's the hard part. Relatives and long-time friends. Mi Amigo quickly told me, ‘Tweak them settings and you'll end up smiling.’ And that’s what I did.

Confined to very, very close friends, musicians, production people and my students - my Facebook looks neater and I am a lot happier. Mark Zuckerberg designed Facebook to be this way, ain't it? Bye, bye freeloader!

No one else knows the value of democracy? 

No one else cares about this country?

This is surely an elitist we-know-what-is –good-for-you attitude. 

Just shut up, endure the discomfort and we will make things better.  

-  Zainul Ariffin NST.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps

Inspiration for the song came to George Harrison when reading the I Ching, which, as he put it, "seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else...opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental." Taking this idea of relativism to his parents’ home in northern England, Harrison committed to write a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a random book. Those words were “gently weeps”, and he immediately began this song.


The Beatles recorded the song several times, including a version with a backward guitar solo (as Harrison had done for "I'm Only Sleeping" on Revolver), but Harrison was not satisfied. On 6 September, 1968, during a ride from Surrey into London, Harrison asked Eric Clapton to add a lead guitar solo to the song. Clapton was reluctant - he said, "Nobody ever plays on the Beatles' records" - but Harrison convinced him and Clapton's solo was recorded that evening. Harrison later said that in addition to his solo, Clapton's presence had another effect on the band: "It made them all try a bit harder; they were all on their best behaviour."


This masterpiece was re-recorded by Santana via his single "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" featuring Indie.Arie & Yo-Yo Ma.


R.I.P. George!