Showing posts with label pictures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pictures. Show all posts

Monday, May 9, 2016

if harry potter and magic existed in maldives

NOTE: This post is dedicated to everyone who waited for a letter from Hogwarts but never received it because THE STUPID OWL THEY SENT GOT LOST ON THE WAY!

Growing up reading Harry Potter is perhaps the biggest achievement of my life. Okay okay, maybe not the biggest, but it's definitely up there. So, if you're anything like me, you'd have wondered how wonderful it would have been if we lived in a world where fantastic beasts and creatures roamed the world and, last but most importantly: we went to Hogwarts. This morning I gave a lot of thought (the time it takes me to shower) to the subject and I realized  it might not be all that fantastical  to have the magic of the Potterverse in the Maldives.

tu tuuu tu tuuuu tu tuuuuu tuuuuuu tuuuuuu tutututu

1. Number of dark wizards will rise exponentially 

Some argue that the first Maldivians consisted of shipwrecked seafarers, who later ended up making the Maldivian genome. This explains our range of tools when it comes to problem solving: from pretending the problem doesn't exist to doing black magic to kill the other guy.

Let me present 3 real life scenarios and how the person involved solved the problem:
  • Have a problem with your neighbor about who owns the coconut palm, which happens to have his name on it and was owned by his father before him? Answer: Use black magic to kill the dude and claim ownership.
  • Ever wanted to shag your handsome hunk of a colleague who's already married to someone else? Use black magic to seduce the guy into courting you.
  • And most importantly...did your football team ever have a match they really needed to win? USE BLACK FUCKING MAGIC!

good luck porking dhaleyka now!

The point I'm trying to make is that we are sort of dicks to people if we don't get things our way whether we can do magic or not! Makes you reassess whether you really want everyone you know, especially your frenemies, be able to do magic, huh? To be honest, I won't be surprised if Maldives has more dark wizards than the entire population of Slytherins who graduated Hogwarts.

2. From a paradise for tourists to a paradise for stalkers


The modus operandi for most Maldivian men to court prospective females is to harass them. This includes but is not limited to stalking them, stalking their families, calling them on their phones, calling their friends, learning their schedule and popping up everywhere they went, and finally, buying gifts to appeal to their materialistic side. Sad as it may sound, sometimes this works. Now imagine you have a crush on Aisha down the street. You absolutely love everything about her. The way she smiles shyly as she fights to keep her veil in place on a windy day. The way her dark brown eyes are so full of life as she sips her coffee. Her ever so inviting lips as she smiles at her baby sister. The way her bodysuit hugs her curves as she prepares to go to gym. You know, the whole package.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if you had a way of knowing where she was without having to follow her everywhere?

a stalker's dream!

The Maraauder's Map is an excellent tool for every stalker, but what if there was a way you could watch your stalkee without having to follow them around? I'm talking, of course, about polyjuice potion. With polyjuice potion you could just look at your crush's body as bare as the day she was born without any need of actually getting her to date you. Sounds disturbing, doesn't it? It gets worse in two words: Revenge porn! Imagine you're my good friend Ahmed who was caught cheating on his fiance. She could just use some of Ahmed's hair to become Ahmed and make a scandalous video to ruin Ahmed's hard-earned reputation.

dammit, ginny! how many times do i have to tell you that it's cho in that picture?

Here's an even more disturbing caveat to the polyjuice potion brewing business. What if you needed a hair of the person you wanted to turn into and the only hair on his body was his anal pubes?


[I know you Potterheads are thinking I made a goof here. I'm aware that we can use any bit of the person we wanted to turn into when using polyjuice potion. But I really wanted to make you cringe at the thought of drinking the essence of someone's ass hair.]

3. We'll bring more to the supremacist movement


If there's one thing we are good at, it's being pompous assholes. The kindest thing we do for our fellow human is letting them know if the headlight of their cycle is on during the day. That's it! It's because we love to look down on others based on their skin color, family, island, political views, religious views, wealth, and well, anything that we can pull off to show we are superior to them. In fact, I would go as far as to say our xenophobia will make the Malfoys seem like baby unicorns. Factor into this the pure-blood supremacy movement in the Harry Potter world.  Not to mention the way most wizards feel about other magical creatures, and the way they treat their own who are cursed into becoming a werewolf. We all remember the hysteria when the parents of Hogwarts students found out that Lupin was a werewolf. And these are the good guys! So all we need is a dash of our supremacy feuds to fuel this already volatile magical world.

mmm mmmmmmm i can really taste the tears

Let's not forget all the shit the wizards and witches already had to contend with during the Goblin Rebellions of 1612 as a result of the discrimination against our grumpy friends. Add to this all the discrimination we are bringing to this game and I'll go out on a limb and say we'll have nifflers rebelling against us in no time. And they're like at the bottom of the wizard food chain beneath Neville Longbottom's toad Trevor!

4. A know-it-all but not a do-it-all


During our (in)significant life in this world, we all come across at least one person who is a know-it-all. They're pesky at times. They butt in when not invited. Worst of all: they have an answer to everything. Do we know someone like that in Potterverse?


But to be fair to Hermione, she does actually know what the fuck she's talking about. On top of that, she doesn't back down when it comes to practicing what she preached. Still, it doesn't change the fact that she knows everything and makes you feel as useless as nipples on the Batsuit.

Think of how you would feel if everyone around you was like her. That, my kind and unkind readers, is what we offer, albeit with a minute difference; unlike our bushy-haired heroine and the champion of the Muggle feminist movement, we don't know shit! We are all full of hot air and criticize and comment as if we know everything when tragedy strikes, but do nothing to prevent a crisis or to help anyone.

ignorance is truly bliss

5. Say bye bye to the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy


The magical community came up with this law in 1689 in fear of persecution by Muggles, who are notoriously famous for being scared of anything they cannot understand. In this regard, magic meets the criteria right beside math! I bet...all it would take for this 300 plus years old secret to be exposed is a day, give or take a few hours, if we have magical folks in the Maldives.

Why? Because we're second to none at gossiping.

That's correct! We love talking about others. It necessarily doesn't even have to be juicy (the juicier the better though). So yeah, we are big on talking and spreading rumors regardless of consequences. If I am to make a guess, I'll say we'll end up using curses to make sure people who rat us out are stopped or at the least, identifiable.

better get used to this quickly

6. We'll learn about the power of love



For the uninitiated, the above watchful wand wielding warmhearted witty warlock is the Undisputed Flamboyant Wizarding Champion of the World and Defender of Muggles Albus "The Professor" Dumbledore, Headmaster Extraordinaire at Large of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if there's one thing Professor D. insists, it's that the most powerful of magic is love. While I don't know enough magic to counter his point, it's remarkable that he was able to bring about the very end of the baddest of all wizards: Lord Voldemort.

enough power to achieve immortality and voldy was stupid enough to not see this coming back to bite his dark tush??!!

In short, Dumbledore emotionally blackmailed Snape, champ of every one in the friend-zone, to turn on the aforementioned Dark Lord and help a tween, aka the fruit of the loins of Snape's sweetheart and his nemesis, complete the job. Not to mention that Dumbledore was...fight the feels...FIGHT THE FEELS!!...when Dumbledore was...was...dead...for a whole year while Harry Potter took the battle to the big V. If that's not powerful magic, I don't know what is.

7. You can be a complete dick and still be a hero


How nice would it be if we could be ourselves and still be a hero? One of our favorite characters from Harry Potter did just that! In short, Severus Snape pissed on Uncle Ben. He not only duped the Dark Lord, but did it while making a life living hell for the hero who was destined to slay him. Every single reader hated Snape with a vengeance until the very last minute, even more than Lord Voldy. I'd say only Dolores Umbridge could trump Snape.

...and this is the closest i've gotten to boning her

The question is, how is this helpful to us Maldivians? For starters, we wouldn't think twice about befriending an enemy if it would cause the downfall of another. Just look at the alliances in the political arena. Heck, look at your own family for crying out loud. There'll be all those arguments and whatnot, but out of nowhere, everything is forgotten and they suddenly have more affection for each other than Dobby had for mismatched socks!

To sum up, it seems that living in a magical world would be interesting as hell but at the end of all things, it'll only bring out the best and the worst in us. I guess...on second thought, maybe magic might teach us a thing or two about becoming better people; if only we knew where to look.

until then, have fun hexing each other!

Adios...

Monday, December 14, 2015

to kill a cocking roach

Last night I returned home after a night of wandering in the concrete jungle that is our capital. Tired and sweaty from climbing all the stairs because we don't have a lift even though we live on the millionth floor of a building. Anyway, no sooner had I gone into my room and closed the door, I thought I heard a faint twitch. But the sound of my labored breathing was louder and I paid no heed. I went over to the closet to wear something more comfortable and there was the twitching again! Only this time, I heard it. The twitching continued and it was louder. I didn't need to turn around to know what it was lurking in my room. However, I did turn and there it was: all my fears in the form of cockroach! It was huge! 2 inches and on the wall beating its wing. Mocking me.

ello governer, where's joe?

Now..if you've known me, you'd know I have a phobia of cockroaches and it's not something I'm ashamed of admitting. Barely thinking, I did what any brave person would do. After all, one is only brave when one is truly afraid. I dashed out of my room! As the door closed behind me, I heard the behemoth of a cockroach, which was the size of a fist, fly onto the adjacent wall. I ran to check the supplies under the sink to check for any weapon I could use against this uninvited guest. If you've watched any horror movie, you'd know what I would find once I opened the sink cabinet: absolutely nothing. We had run out of insecticide! As luck would have it, I found a stain remover and figured it was better than nothing.

I grabbed a broom with my free hand and went to my room which has become a dungeon of doom where nothing but death awaited. Death for the cockroach..I hoped. I carefully opened the door and the cockroach was flying around the room. Flying from one wall onto the other. As if it could sense the impending battle. I tried to walk to the middle of the room to see if I could get a shot at this pesky roach, but the walls were too faraway as the stain remover had a very short range. I'm pretty sure the roach knew I couldn't kill it without getting close and kept on flying shamelessly over my head but never getting close enough for me to get a clear shot. I did what any sane person would do. I ran out of the room again.

#@!*$&% again???!!

I rechecked all the cabinets in the kitchen to see if I could have missed something. Alas. Luck was not with me this night. I slowly walked to my room and opened the door. And the cockroach, this imbecile of an insect, was on the wall. Watching my every move. It was time for Plan B. I woke up my designated roach killer, The roach killer is normally Plan A but I didn't want to wake the killer. So I made all kinds of noises and cat calls until the roach killer finally awakened. I showed the roach which was now sitting on the wall near the headboard of the bed. The roach killer looked at the cockroach and went back to sleep. Exasperated at how the killer could chose to ignore a cockroach the size of a chicken, I looked up to the heavens and the cockroach was there too! I ran out of the room again and I looked into the next room. I saw a faint light. Could it be? Hope?

I peered inside and I saw my brother in law, probably conversing with his better half on his handheld telephone via text messaging. The following conversation took place between us -

Me: Hello.
Bil: Hey bro!
Me: It's me from the other room.
Bil: What's up?
Me: I was wondering if you were free to kill a roach for me
Bil: Where's the roach killer?
Me: I must have called a thousand times.
Bil: OK Bro! Let me help you.

So together, we went back into my room and I told him the only way to kill the enemy, a giant cockroach the size of a small goat, which was dancing in my room: knock it down and drown it in stain remover. Knock and spray! We repeated. Knock and spray! I slowly backed towards the door and watched. Nervous, I watched Bil face the cockroach. Prepared to abandon ship and runaway should things take a turn for the worse.

Bil tried to hit it and missed! The cockroach was fast! He tried again. Missed again. The third time Bil changed tactic and tried to whack the roach like a baseball, because who could miss hitting a flying cockroach the size of a grown man? Alas! Bil was too slow for the cockroach evaded the attack again. But then, something the cockroach did not intend happened.

It flew into the fan and there, on the sharp blades of my KDK ceiling fan, met its doom. The blade cut the cockroach cleanly in half. I ran to the center of the room and there it was.

not so mighty now, eh??

One half of it was near the bed. I thanked Bil and bade him farewell and went to search for the other half of the roach. I walked along the wall and found the remaining half. One of its legs was moving still. How scary to be cut in half and still be alive! I took the broom and bravely swept the cockroach away. And just like that, my room was free again, all thanks to my ceiling fan and my brave Bil.

Please go to Sun Front (majeedhee magu) and buy a fan if you're afraid of cockroaches like me and want to do all you can to defend against cockroaches. I have the larger model. Costs around 900 Rufiyaa. You can thank me by passing this message.

Until next time. Adios...

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

if maldivian institutions were honest

DISCLAIMER: Please excuse my photo editing skills. I used Powerpoint (read: Excel) to make these images. For a better view, just click on the first picture and you can go through the pictures as a slideshow.

The following post is rated 'H' for Honest!

#1



#2
 #3


#4


#5


#6


Can you think of anymore? Let me know in the comments. Until next time. Adios...

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

the wizard of maldives: an analogy

The following post is rated 'S' for spoilers.

If there is one thing I like as much as cartoons, it is making analogies out of cartoons. You see, analogies are the perfect way to present an idea and...OK OK. I know you know what an analogy is. Let us get on with the post.

gather one, gather all! it's time to give another classic the maldivian treatment

Unlike Alice in Wonderland, for which I did an analogy sometime earlier (have a look), I remember the Wizard of Oz for haunting me the first time I watched the movie as an innocent boy. I have never been the same innocent naive boy since. The Wizard of Oz opened my eyes to the dark side of life: witchcraft, lions, slippers, and finally, flying monkeys! Not to derail from the subject at hand, but let us reminisce the 'dark side of the rainbow' that had avid readers and wannabes everywhere jump with excitement. What I am trying to say here is that the Wizard of Oz literally is the shit! So...now that I am grown up, mature, and flamboyantly handsome, I want to get to the crux of things and see how I can analyze our God-given pearl of a country through the lens of this timeless classic by Frank Baum.

1. I'll start off with the main protagonist: Dorothy Gale. Miss Gale is not your everyday law-abiding citizen. On the contrary, she is in fact one of the most important people in the universe of Oz. Plucked from her home in Kansas, all Dorothy wants is to get back home. However, she is all that stands between good and evil. Furthermore, she is the brains and muscles of her band of misfits. In short, she has big shoes to fill. More on the said shoes later.

eyes on the shoes! she's not some piece of meat for you to ogle at

Throughout the whole book/movie, Dorothy does everything humanly possible to reach home but keeps falling short and ends up having to help the Wizard every single time. In short, she represents each and everyone of us apart from a lucky few. We all have such high hopes and dreams and whatnot, but the majority of us hardly get there. We get hiccups midway, whether it's getting married and popping out a child, or having to settle finances. Either way, in the end we find ourselves quite far from where we wanted to go.

all i wanted was to be a writer who moonlights as a superhero and i have to settle for writing captions!

2. Tin Man

*sigh* i wish!

Apart from not being everyone's superhero from Marvel (and by everyone I mean those who know superheroes through Hollywood), Tin Man represents the service industry of the Maldives. Sure, Tin Man looks all polished and shiny on the outside, but he's as useful as nipples on a breastplate. Likewise, if you have dealt with any place in the Maldives that serves customers, such as Bank of Maldives, IGMH, Dhiraagu, Post Office, and restaurants, to name a few, you'd rue the day you were born. You would not only get piss-poor service, they'll rape your sanity along the way! At a restaurant they'll charge you an arm and a leg despite the shitty service and unwanted 'souvenirs' in your food. At a queue, there'll be one working counter no matter how many people are in line. Despite where you go, one thing they all have in common is that the staff would go out of their way to ensure you have PTSD by the time you are finished.

my face when i get service at *insert any place you want*

3. I don't really have to explain much for this entry, given the name Cowardly Lion. I remember the first time I saw him on TV and literally shat my shorts. He was that scary. However, five minutes later, even my young and very clueless mind was able to grasp the reality of what was unfurling right before my very small eyes. The King of the jungle, the fucking Maharajah of the freaking animal kingdom, was a sissy!

if this clown is the king of the jungle, i'm the goddamned batman!

So what does this closeted cross-dressing (hint hint) Sultan of the wild represent in our country? His hairy majesty represents the unusual tendency of today's youth. Mainly the males' fashion tastes. Even the most bad ass gangster cum drug lord on the streets wears pink shirts and skinny jeans. I know I'm not the one to talk when it comes to fashion and stuff, but hello! At least wear something that does not make us normal folks question your sexuality. What's even grimmer is that many from the up and coming female generation find this abomination manly. Blech!

 imagine fitting your legs and your family jewels in that cone and try not to cringe

4. Scarecrow

be honest with me here and tell me the warner bros logo at the bottom right of the screen didn't remind you of bugs bunny

Scarecrows have only one God-given purpose in their lives: scare the shit out of pests. And, if the Wizard of Oz has given any indication of it thus far, it's that scaring is the one thing our straw-filled friend cannot do. Likewise, we have a fair number of laws in our nation and even though our Constitution fails to match the lengthy prowess of the Constitution of India, we do have a good amount of laws and regulations to govern the state. Furthermore, the legislature keeps enacting new laws every year to empower relevant authorities to make sure people abide laws of the land. I'll tell you one thing this farce has achieved: These laws and whatnot sure have protected the offenders from having to answer in the court of law. Whether it is due to a technical issue or because of lack of evidence, the laws that are enacted to protect the citizens do everything but!

behave!

5. Nothing says the Wizard of Oz like the flying monkeys. They fly, they're sneaky, and they are monkeys! These pesky apes represent the cancer that plagues our nation: the drug addicts, the murderers, the addicts, the rapists, and the thieves. We can argue that we no longer have the very basic right a human should have: feeling secure in our own house. And thanks to the inability of the authorities and lackluster laws (i.e. entry 4), these pests roam free day and night. All the taxpayers are left to do with is to lock their doors and pray it's someone else that gets shagged. There's a loophole though: you are also someone else's someone else. Did that make sense? Never mind.

it's a bird! it's a plane! it's a...bunchofcrazyparteyscomingtofuckingstabyou!

6. Ruby slippers (as promised)

no, it isn't something to ward off foot worshipers

The ruby slippers, though not technically a character, presents the means for our heroine to go to home. If we look at the current state of the country, our biggest target has been establishing democracy. What better way to represent democracy than by a free and fair election? This is what the ruby slippers is to the Maldivians: the very means to establish rule of law and good governance. Oh, did I not mention that even though the ruby slippers have the magic to take us anywhere, us Maldivians always seem to choose an asshole when it comes to decide who to rule us. This is not something that is happening only now. It has been the same throughout our history. And no, I don't mean the past thirty years. Maldives has been around a whole lot longer than that! In the end, even though we know the people who took a dump on us, even though we know they will do it again, we always re-elect them and place them on the pedestal so that we may cower beneath them while they caress our tresses with their poo.

wait a gosh darn minute! are you telling me we've been going round in circles?

7. If you have been reading this post up to this point, you should know we still have a wizard unaccounted for. It would also behoove you to know that the wizard represents the politicians. We fall for their sleazy tricks. Not to mention, politicians are royal dicks who treat their constituents worse than cum rags unless it's time to vote. I'll paraphrase a quote from an incumbent MP who stated that he bought his seats. That it was a business transaction and as businesses go, he had the right to sell his votes, to shift alliances and to you know...be a royal dick. I just cannot fathom how the hell Maldivians not see all this!

i've read harry potter. wizards use brooms to fly. i call shenanigans! 

8. Wicked Witch of the West

No tale is complete without a formidable villain and the Wicked Witch of the West is as villainous as a villain could be.

can i cop a feel...just a little?

No. She does not personify she-hulk wannabe women who like young girls. She stands for something far worse: xenophobia. We have become so insecure in our faith that we have succumbed to identifying everything based on whether it's blasphemous aka laadheenee or accepted in Islam. Whether it's the death of a fellow human being or whether it's simply wishing a new year, we would rather bicker whether the person would go to hell or heaven instead of praying for peace for the departed soul. Or in the case of sending well wishes on an occasion, holier than thou know-it-alls among us would preach non-stop about how wishing someone during their festivities would mean we accept their religion. And don't even get me started on how we see everything as a crucifix or an idol. I mean, it's not like my faith is a snowflake that would melt once the rays from the sun hits it. Or maybe we feel losing our religion is as easy as losing our virginity. I mean, it's not like I'd slip and enter someone and slip out and slip back in again. Is it that easy?

hmm...not sure if this post is laadheenee or not

Until next time. Adios...