Zombiebers. (Chapter 1: Touch Base)

You know who he is. The media saturated all channels with his name 24/7, and he's now the biggest widespread infection since Lady Gaga. The zombies themselves - hordes of soulless, bulbous haired fans - named this new pandemic 'The Bieber Fever'.

Viral cultures like these were nothing new of course. "Baby, one more time" churned thousands of mindless dancing Britney wannabes, painfully oblivious to the song’s deeper referral to “not-a-goddamned-thing”. No one knew under what circumstance would Bruno Mars ever have to catch a grenade for his girlfriend, but he made thousands of guys walk around with a fedora, asking drunk women if they wanted to get married. Lady Gaga inspired legions of zombies, each of them going around asking "Did you know she's Illuminati?" before grinning proudly to themselves over having spotted the "subtle" symbolism in her videos and subsequently going home and masturbating to their self-perceived genius.

I'll give you a hint. I'm Illuminati. Oh wait...

Viral cultures like these spurred me to organize a resistance group called the AMM - Against Mindless Music. Our form of resistance was tweeting to our followers, (all 15 of them) how these songs made no sense, and basically calling fans ‘Fags!’ on fan forums. Our efforts were met with an unenthusiastic, four word reply saying "go die lah you", followed by a prompt banishment or blocked account. If the singers came to Malaysia for a concert, we’d up our game; we'd throw eggs at the cars parked outside.

We always thought we were immune to each new wave of viral culture, until we lost Lim Ju-En, one of our longest members, to Lady Gaga. It happened so fast - one day she was on the internet forums typing "SHE'S JUST A COPYCAT MADONNA YOU FAGS! LOL!" and the next day, she started calling herself 'Lady Juju' and started wanting "the psycho, the vertical stick". What was it anyway? An erect penis? If it was, why would anyone call it psycho?

She wants your psycho.

We mourned her loss, but that made us press on harder. There were going to be others, and we couldn't stop the good fight. After Ju, I set up a website, http://khairie026.livejournal.com/ as a way to keep track and raise awareness about these cultural pandemics, but traffic was like Zouk at closing time: filled with dubious characters you'd rather not talk to.

All these people have Herpes.

Sarah Rostam was my second in command in the AMM. She had this thing about being a black diva – she sang Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder and did the finger raise and the head wave perfectly - and was efficient at spotting viral singers early. If she heard a song on the radio that sounded stupid and catchy, she'd warn us the next day. She correctly predicted that Gaga was going to be the next wave, way back when people thought it was the title of a Freddie Mercury song. But even she misses a couple sometimes.

Sarah and I were both in the car two months ago discussing the egging logistics of an upcoming Bruno Mars' concert, when we heard "Baby" on air for the first time. Our conversation faded into an unearthly silence. I turned the volume up.

"Bayy beh, bayy beh, bayy beh Oooouuuh~! Bayy beh bayy beh, Ooouuuuh yeah~!" the radio blared. Questions popped after every line. Wasn't he 16? What's he doing buying a ring to win his girlfriend back? Was Ludacris eventually arrested for being a 13 year old paedophile?

After the song ended, I turned the radio off. I frowned at Sarah, who looked at me knowingly. "I'll look him up," she said. "What was his name again? Bieber? How did I miss this?" she cringed, as she typed out his name into her phone.

"Okay. Send me whatever information you have, and I'll e-mail the rest of the gang. Let’s be safe - I don't like this..." A shiver rippled through my spine. "...this, Bieber" Something didn't feel quite right about him. There was an unsettling feel to all the viral singers we've heard before, but he felt particularly menacing.

"I support the killing of kittens!"

I sent the email to notify the rest of the AMM, but they had all heard 'Baby'. We agreed to have a meeting soon, but all of them were caught up with work, or life. I couldn’t say the same for myself – AMM was first priority, eating and having sex be damned. I couldn’t be out looking for a job and dating, not when Bieber’s music was out wreaking havoc in the world.

Within the next few weeks, the infection grew exponentially. His songs blared on the radio, and girls started singing his songs in groups while hugging and giggling uncontrollably, luring other girls to join in. #9millionbeliebers became the number one tweeting trend, and girls started changing their facebook last names to 'Bieber', claiming that they were his number one fan, and having cat fights with other people who were also number one fans.

Trailers of his biographical movie, ‘Never say never’, came out in cinemas, to be screened in 3D.

This was fast becoming a 6 on the viral scale, and I knew things couldn’t wait. I called for an AMM emergency meeting at my house, two weeks later.

Sarah was the first to arrive.

"I've got news," she frowned. "Nigga, this guy is big. He done infiltrate mah house. My sisters can't stop playing his shit over and over again." She raised the finger. "I need water."

Jo Yi Au and Melanie Hwa arrived next.

Jo Yi was the fighter of our group. She was a petite girl, but if she didn't like you, she'd tell you to fuck off and tell you that you were as ugly as a deformed, wrinkled chicken skin. She had spunk - so much so in fact, Melanie had to balance her out most times, and keep her calm when shit hit the fan. And shit did hit the fan when I saw her walk in and commented,

"Holy shit it's him," I startled. "Fucking Bieber!"

To be more specific, Jo Yi had his hair. It was the same bulbous hair, with jagged fringes that were close to hiding her eyes, and long enough that she could flick it. Still, I regretted saying it out because the next minute, she'd grabbed me by my balls, with a sort of crazed look and fire in her eyes. I'm not sure if you could get high from being in intense pain, but I was momentarily transported to the insides of my ball sack, where I saw about a million little Jo Yi's simultaneously pounding on my nuts with sledgehammers. I felt nauseous.

"Eh, chill lah, he din know you got a haircut k?" Melanie consoled, coming up beside her and resting an arm on her shoulder.

I felt the vice-like grip loosen, and fell back into my chair, cupping my balls gently, resisting the urge to cry.

"What the hell, Jo Yi," I grunted. I glanced at Melanie, "Is she infected?"

"No lah, she just got her haircut last month. And she din know about Bieber until she did. Now everyone's asking her if she's a Bieber fan, and some even thought she was him."

"And it's fucking pissing me off," Jo Yi glared at me, sitting herself down. She flicked her hair.

Never say ‘Bieber’

I smiled through the pain. Jo Yi wasn't going to be infected anytime soon.

"Alright," I sat up and composed myself, though I was still clutching my balls. "...we're going to suspend our efforts against Bruno and Gaga for the time being. This guy is coming up way too fast. We gotta spread some hate, and quick, before he takes everyone we know. Now I was thinking we could post some photoshopped naked pictures of him on the site-"

"Uh... about that," Sarah interrupted, shifting her eyes. "I just got to know he's coming to Malaysia next month, and I have to bring my sisters to his concert. Sorry nigz, I can't get out of it."

"Yeah, and Jo Yi and I have to go to the premiere of his movie next week too." Melanie cut in.

"What?" I asked, looking at them, feeling a slight pinch of betrayal.

"It's for work. We have to go check it out. Don't worry lah, we won't end up like..." she paused. "...Like Ju. It's just for work."

Right around the time Melanie turned pretty, she started working for a blogging company. Don’t get me wrong, she’d always been easy to look at, but until around 4 months ago it’s like she had an epiphany or something. She started looking like a model wherever she went.

This was her getting ready for paintball.

Part of her responsibilities was to socialize and network people, so I suppose the transformation was part of her job. I once asked her if she’d model for an anti Bruno Mars campaign, but she would always change the subject.

"And why are you tagging along?" I asked, looking at Jo, making sure my hand was firmly protecting my nuts.

"My friend is going to watch some stupid show, I'll have to go make sure she's okay lah..." she shrugged.

We ended the meeting that day, deciding that nothing could be done at least until Jo and Melanie were done with the movie. Again my stomach tied in knots; this Bieber managed to somehow catch AMM off guard. I raised the viral alert to a seven, but I kept it to myself. My instincts yelled at me like transvestite who’s been stared at for too long.

All I could do right now, was wait.

To be continued...

I've moved folks!

I've decided to blog about other stuff too, not just stuff that fails. =P

Come tell me how much I fail at http://whenkhairiewrites.com/.

Toodles!

Why McDonalds fails.

As a kid, I grew up eating McDonalds. My mother was a busy working woman, so I don’t blame her for thinking that those bright yellow and red restaurants with that friendly (albeit slightly freaky) clown was a franchise that designed good food which catered to the nutritional needs of a growing young boy. This, was a mistake.

Much like this film.

Of course this comes to no surprise since McDonald’s have been targeting young kids ever since 1963. They even teamed up with Disney because they knew that the way to get to your parents’ hard earned money was to get you to get it for them, by enticing you with a figure of Winnie the pooh or Power Rangers that comes with a fillet-o-fish.

Sales were so good back then, it made a whole generation of kids fat that even in 2006, Disney was concerned about the rising numbers of childhood obesity so they called it quits and left. As for me, one sexless high school experience a decade later, I realized that my mom should have never gotten me those darned Happy Meals, and should have done what Bruce Lee did to his kid when he asked for one.

No you may not have a Happy Meal. Have a kick to the face instead.

Today McDonald’s stands as the single biggest chain of Hamburger Fast Food franchise in the world, and I’m personally offended that we let it grow that big. In an age where kononnya we take our food seriously, and have tons of blogs dedicated to food pornography, how did we let one of the biggest slackers in the food industry become a mega conglomerate?

Seriously... how?

McDonald’s food is shit. Possibly one of the worst foods you can get in Malaysia, I’m going to rate McDonalds just slightly above an overpriced, badly served mamak meal (and when I say badly, I mean a fried chicken with fly eggs in it – no, really, true story).

This, but only hidden underneath the crispy chicken skin of your drumstick.

Here’s why McDonald’s fails:

1) Mcdonald’s is detestably expensive

Maccas are some of the most overpriced foods in Malaysia. Now I know in places like America where proper, nutritious food is expensive, McDonalds is breakfast, lunch and dinner. But here, there’re literally tons of cheap foods to be found at every corner of every street. Cheap, as in, less than half the price of a McDonalds meal.

For example, the price of a Nasi Goreng Pattaya, or egg coated fried rice which is available at any food stall here averages to about 5 ringgit. To put it in perspective for you, here’s what you can get for 5 ringgit at McDonald’s.

This. And no, you don't get fries or coke with that you poor bastard. Now go and cry in the corner over your pathetic life.

While 5 ringgit at a mamak stall could get you any of these;

But why is McDonalds considered cheaper in other countries? Well because in most of these countries, the standard of living is higher. Agricultural produce is sold at higher prices which make food in general, expensive. But because McD gets their raw supplies in bulk, they can afford to undercut all these other restaurants and sell you your McDiet for cheaper (though ‘cheaper’ really means trading your liver, heart, and self respect over the next 5 years).

Same thing here really, except in Malaysia, we have plenty of independent food operators that sell food for next to nothing, because they’re not out looking for large profit margins like big greedy franchise dicks. So sure, in America, McD’s is the only thing Americans can afford, but here we can have a whole range of better value-for-money food, and sometimes with a side of greens too, if you know where to look. Walk into any McDonald’s store with 5 ringgit, and I bet the workers are going to be wondering if this is the first time you’ve begged enough money to enjoy their food while you squint and do mental calculations of what you can get, while holding up a long line of fat angry customers behind you.

Pictured: Where you can go if you don’t have the money for McDonalds, but still want all the prestige associated with it.

But maybe it’s not really about the money and maybe you’re just the kind of douche that needs some sort of social validation from going to ‘classy’ places like starbucks. Which brings me to my next point,

2: Mcdonalds isn’t classy, and the quality of food is crap.

Now I get how some places are trying to come up with a branding strategy that tells people what kind of person you are when you buy their products. Buying Starbucks for example earns you a social status that says, “I am a proud, money making member of urban society” whenever you go around asking for a ‘tall’ or ‘venti’ and paying more than 10 ringgit for one SMALL cup of coffee.

To everyone else, you’re this.

But despite this fail, Starbucks does take the quality of their coffee seriously, which warrants the charge of the extra ringgit for quality of product and service. Aspiring baristas are trained to know how to make all sorts of coffee blends, operate machinery and I have to give them credit; most of their Starbucks personnel look like they are estatic to see you, although you know they’ve been spitting and putting crap in your coffee.

Bullshit. You are not this happy if you’re sober and earning 5 ringgit an hour.

But with McDonalds, the quality of food is really the stain on your toilet paper after you’re done wiping. They’re making food fast enough to meet rush hour volume, so there is no way that they can ensure the quality of the food individually. In fact what happens is that every component of your McValue Meal goes through an assembly line food production that is made by at least 3 different people, which is why sometimes the burger flipper just really doesn’t give a crap whether the cheese he tossed onto the bun landed, or whether the burger looks good enough to be edible after everything has been said and done.

Added with the fact that they throw out any food that’s been left out for more than 10 minutes because you know, afterwards it just morphs into this.

Now all this would be fine, if we accepted the premise that whether you’re eating crap food at a mamak, or eating crap food at a franchised restaurant, you’re still eating crap food, but the fact is there are people who think that eating McDonalds is a step above going to the local gerai or food stalls and visit these places every day, just because other urbanites eat at these places.

Speaking of crap food...

3. McDonalds food is crap (part deux)

See what I did there? I just made a title redundant and added a French word just to be more of an asshole. But you knew that already, so we’re moving on.

You probably already know this, but McDonalds food really has about as much nutritional value as a Hollywood starlet has confidence in the size of her tits.

No, not this one, I meant Tara Reid.

For example, let’s take my favourite meal as a kid from McDonalds. Typically, this would be

1 x Large Fries,

1 x Large Coke,

2 x Fillet-o-Fish. (Those burgers are tiny as hell)

Added up together, a normal satisfying meal for me would amount to 1470 calories, with 61 grams of fat. To give you an added perspective to this (and to not make me look like a dieting pussy) I would have to run twenty five kilometres in two and a half hours to completely burn all of that off.

25 kilometres. 2.5 hours. For about 20 minutes worth of half-assed satisfaction of a McDonalds meal.

Oh Fuck that.

Even if half of the rumours of McDonalds are untrue, like how McDonalds uses cow eyeballs and mutant laboratory meat as part of their beef, (McDonalds actually has one of the most stringent security checks for their raw products) it’s a fact that kids everywhere are turning fat because of their McDiet, so much so in fact that some of them even sued McD’s for the reason they’re not getting laid in high school. While I believe suing a company because of the way you look and your eating habits has about as much logic as you creating an awareness about breast cancer by putting on a sexual innuendo as a status update, it still doesn’t change the fact that McDonalds is kryptonite for your health.

Sure, McDonalds is convenient in a lot of ways, like home delivery, having an internet connection at most of their restaurants and being open 24/7; but being expensive and providing nutritionally deficient food that fills you with regret like a night out with some floozy from Zouk is definitely not enough to make up for it.

And plus,

What would happen to us if we switched from McDonalds to Subway. We turn blue and can run around naked and people would think you’re awesome. Oh, and we have superpowers.

So does McDonalds fail? Yes, it does, with the exception of curly fries and Prosperity burger. Damn that shit is good.

Fail rating: 5/10