In Asia, cops don’t rely merely on human skills
AFTER A CRIME WAVE swept through their district, police launched a unique new crime-fighting method. They smashed a pumpkin on their doorstep.
They believed that this action, accompanied by suitable chants, would call down the gods to their side.
But officers at Gudiyattam police station in Vellore, India, were sneered at by journalists last week, who thought this showed “desperation”.
I see nothing wrong with what the police did, which is common throughout Asia.
Even in ultra-hi-tech Hong Kong, you’ll find statues of Guan Yu in every police station.
That arrangement ran into problems when police noticed robber gangs also adopted Guan Yu as their patron saint.
The dispute has now been sorted.
Temples issue police stations with right-handed Guan Yu statues said to enhance law enforcement skills.
Robbers are issued left-handed Guan Yu statues which aid criminality. (Asian gods are very flexible, not like Western ones.)
On a practical front, any religious ceremony that involves smashing pumpkins has definite visual appeal and should be encouraged.
Even better, someone should organize a ceremony based around the Holy Dropping of a Watermelon Off a Building (pic at top). That I’d sign up for.
*** TALKING OF crime, I can’t help but feel a nagging admiration for the masked raider who robbed a shop in the UK last week while holding a mug of coffee. He marched into the Manchester store with the steaming drink in his right hand, terrorized the shopkeeper into filling a sack with goods, and then strolled off, still sipping. A cop at the scene described the man as “nonchalant”. Imagine how efficient this robber would be AFTER his coffee.
***
A TOP ASIAN economist proposed a “hotness” tax for men. Good-looking guys would be heavily taxed, while ugly ones would get deep tax reductions on a sliding scale of hideousness, said Takuro Morinaga of Tokyo.
The result would be to make all men equally attractive, boosting the rate of marriages, births, economic activity, etc.
The report was forwarded to me by reader Chris Huber of Hong Kong, who said: “I know some guys who would be totally exempted from paying any tax at all.”
Thanks a lot, Chris. I thought you were my friend.
***
AN ANTARCTIC explorer was shocked to see male penguins having sex with dead female penguins who had died a year earlier, according to a century-old journal finally published last week by a museum in the UK. So what? Guys are guys, we’re not observant enough to notice minor details.
*** I’M FED up of reading “shock” reports about small children who are addicted to chain-smoking cigarettes or eating only junk food. There is a little known but very powerful parenting technique which can be used to cure such cravings. It’s called Not Giving Them Any.
***
A MAN TRIED to sell an aircraft engine for US$2 million on eBay, but he failed to get a single bid, the UK press reported recently.
Why are UK reporters surprised at this?
Is this how aviation people normally make planes in that country?
“Hey, I got a cheap fuselage off eBay, we can add some new routes for British Airways.”
***
MY SISTER sent me this great video trick.
You go to a certain link and see a video (below) of a hunter and a bear. The nice thing is that you can change the end of the story by altering the title.
Have a great weekend.
***
Illustrations: Pic of Indian police near top
© Jorge Royan / http://www.royan.com.ar / CC-BY-SA-3.0]
