The South China Morning Post is especially weighty today – at least in my neighbourhood. First, there is the glossy wraparound, which is pretty much daily now. Today’s is for a ‘desirably Swiss’ women’s shoe no less visually and aesthetically repulsive than a medieval torture instrument or a close-up shot of a cockroach orifice. Second, there is a ‘must-read magazine for the metropolitan male’ inserted within the paper itself. It is a third of an inch thick and weighs around three times as much as the newspaper proper, which explains why the waste bins alongside the Mid-Levels Escalator are crammed with the thing.
Clearly no-one has actually opened this absurd waste of someone’s money; being publicly spirited, I can’t help perusing its contents in case they might be of interest to future archaeologists seeking to know what happened to this civilization.
It has lame articles (judging from the first sentence of one of them) urging the commercial feminization of men through such activities as the facial-spa-rubbing-stuff-into-skin thing. With a large portion of the female population now apparently hooked on pricy, gimmicky lotions marketed with obviously fraudulent claims, the manufacturers are now coming for the guys. Will it work? And if so, where does it stop? Men’s lip gloss? Eyeliner? Bras?
(If only for the sake of those who have to look at us, we should try to keep a youthful face. It is easy and cheap: avoid ultraviolet rays (too much sunlight), and wash using just warm water, not oils-destroying soap. And eat lots of fresh fruit and veg.)
The ‘must-read magazine’ inevitably turns to tacky watches, sports cars and a ‘luxury machine’ belt clasp. Suspecting the latter is a joke sneaked in by a rebellious SCMP staffer, I must check: it indeed exists and works thus. I am trying to think of a more futile application of metalworking technology since the dawn of the Bronze Age. A ‘Vote Henry Tang’ tie-pin perhaps. One of the watches is in all seriousness called the ‘Patrimony Traditionelle 14-day Tourbillon’ and costs a lucky-sounding HK$2.38 million. Is there anyone out there who finds it impressive? I feel so sorry for the product development manager’s parents – he could have been a traffic warden or something socially useful.
After pages of ancient, tradition-preserving, famous luxury brands you’ve never heard of (fancy a Wellendorf, anyone?), we get to perhaps the most fascinating and bizarre part of this ‘must-read’ bundle of consumerist inanity: the pictures of simpering, sexually deviant, mildly retarded people wearing ugly clothes in strange places.
And off to the landfill it goes. Why the SCMP produces this stuff is no secret: they need to eat, and if you have to stoop to the depths of the Tatler, so be it. But how did the sales people manage to con these luxury brands companies into stumping up hard cash for yet more of their tawdry advertising, knowing – I bet – that 99% of readers would toss it straight into the trash, unopened? That takes a rare skill, and I am sure SCMP editorial folk mindful of where their salaries come from join me in being full of admiration and wonder.
The Standard, being free and down-market, leads with retiring Justice Kemal Bokhary’s valedictory warning about former Justice Secretary Elsie Leung’s comments that Hong Kong’s judges don’t understand the city’s relationship with the Mainland. Poor old Elsie is also under attack from the Legislative Council for her remarks. Even the SCMP felt sufficiently alarmed to intone that the old girl ‘may have been unwise’. But it is worth repeating: in a one-party state with no ultimate separation of powers, no independent judiciary (or legislature) may exist, hence the loopholes in our constitution allowing Beijing to overrule our courts and rig the legislature. (This ultimate non-existence should also go for freedom of the media – leading to an anomaly in Hong Kong that must worry the Communist Party in principle.)
Elsie supports a one-party state, and her comments are perfectly logical and consistent. The hypocrites are the moderate pro-Beijing people who defend the rule of law vigorously; unless they are in denial, they must secretly either not be pro-Beijing, or not be pro-rule of law.
It is a bit like Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, the latest Republican to utter horribly embarrassing and inhumane comments about how raped women must not be allowed abortions. He essentially believes that God monitors rapes in progress and, upon completion, pushes one of two buttons marked ‘impregnate’ and ‘do not impregnate’ as per His Plan for all involved. He also believes life is sacred. Hence his unwavering position – perfectly logical and consistent. It is the Mitt Romneys, blathering about being pro-life but OK with abortion in cases of rape and incest, who are kidding themselves and everyone else. Either believe that something evil/crazy is good/normal, or don’t; you can’t pick and choose.
There are no desirable Swiss. I married the last desirably Swiss woman. But she was born in Australia. Behind every beautiful woman, there is a bored stiff husband.
Bokhary got booted upstairs to the Big Big Court after he had whitewashed the Garley Building fire enquiry in favour of the Government.
Pensions are nice. Retirement homes are nice. Money is nice.
Poor Justice Lunn. He will head the enquiry into the Lamma ferry disaster, finely tempered by a dutifully disinforming former Government clone. He is a good sort who stood up to the Aussie douchebags representing the excrescence called Nancy Kissel. Will he resist the lure of the Big Big Court? Probably. But You Never Can Tell.
Cheers!
why do so-called luxury products always have to have a faux-French name ?
The few Frenchmen I had the misfortune of meeting in Hong Kong were almost as detestable as the few Englishmen that crossed my path.
and wtf is a tourbillon ? Its sounds like a broth but I know it isn’t.
I wouldn’t call the NPC’s power over our legal system a “loophole”, but rather a whole missing wall, allowing the storms in when the wind is right. But as you say, the old hag does have a point: the CFA tends to bury its head in the sand on HK-mainland issues, although this may be the most sensible thing to do apart from banging it against one of the walls still left standing.
And here I was all ready to read a roaring sarcastic Big Lychee on HK’s new plague of “glass cancer”, per yesterday’s SCMP.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1068270/sun-hung-kai-replace-windows-more-1000-flats-arch
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1068174/glass-needs-stringent-testing-prevent-it-falling-buildings
Instead he’s making fun of the SCMP’s advertorial fag mag… low hanging fruit in all senses of the phrase.
Joe Beluga,
Tourbillon: whirlwind, and by extension rapid and deep, often deleterious, movement, as in reap the w.
I don’t really care for the PCMP’s “Fag Mag” – Don’t read it or for that matter Richard “Menegele” Mourdock – Don’t live in USA. But as for Comrade Elsie why doesn’t she wake up smell the coffee and shut the f*ck up.
Is she deaf and blind to all the anti-mainlander feelings going around of late ? Rather than let it calm down she wants to pour more petrol on the flames. Who better to pick a fight with than the judiciary who she has plenty of history with. Can’t CY arrange for some of his old comrades to put her to work in the fields in her beloved People’s Republic?
On a side note any one know how Bokhary’s slap happy niece is getting on ?
I’d quite forgotten about Nancy Kissel. What’s she up to these days? Still eating that porridge, or did they let her out?
Amina – Bokhary’s neice, and let’s not forget, Ronald Arculli’s niece as well – been quiet of late, so we may infer that her current medication regimen is working.
She got out of jail in January 2011 after serving 4 weeks of a 6-week sentence, not for assaulting a cop for the 3rd time (she got probation for that), but for later not even pretending to comply with the terms of her probation. Her driving ban was also extended to 3 years.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-23/hong-kong-judge-s-niece-sentenced-to-six-weeks-for-probation-violations.html
I wish Elsie would stop hurting the feelings of the Hong Kong people.
Regarding slap-happy Bokhary, it seems she is, as described in South African psychiatric journals, “not lekker”. This from google:
Bokhary appeared before magistrates court on 23 December 2010 and was sentenced to six weeks in jail for breaking five out of seven conditions of her 2 August probation order – she failed to complete three months’ alcohol rehabilitation in the United States; failed to report to her probation officer or to participate in programs arranged by same as required; did not reside as directed; refused to receive psychiatric and psychological treatment.
Her lawyer said Bokhary had become increasingly paranoid as a result of the media attention and felt that “she had become a target of abuse.” The court rejected her bail application.
Prosecution appealed the sentence – a one-year driving ban and probation order – imposed on Bokhary for failing to provide a breath specimen. The appeal against the probation order was dropped when she was jailed, but at a hearing on 11 January, the Court of Appeal extended Bokhary’s driving ban to three years.
She served four weeks of the sentence, and was released on 22 January 2011.
Elsie Leung has hurt my morale.
But then, what does she really know about life ? Here is an old maiden who has never experienced the thrill of having a rock-hard male appendage -let alone mine- inserted in any of her orifices but who still thinks she knows what is best for us.