Riddle me this...

Gulf Weekly, that free thing that comes with the GDN and is found kicking about coffee shops and waiting rooms, claims to be 'Bahrain's favourite community newspaper'. How many other 'community newspapers' in Bahrain can you name?

Take your time...

There's no rush....

This brainteaser wouldn't have been possible without the arrogance of the Al Hilal Group.

Beep Beep Arghhh.

Alright. I am fed up. If I get one more f$%!ing text message ad courtesy of Batelco I will kill something. I never subscribed to anything. I never gave them permission to include my number in a database of numbers that they could sell to clients for SMS broadcasts. I have no recourse, no option to opt out of the 'service'. So I am stuck.

I don't care about the latest SALE at CENTERPOINT. I don't even know what Centerpoint is. I don't want to order Franks a lot. I have no desire to give BisB my money, even if they claim I can win loads of prizes. I will never, ever go to the SkyW@lk cafe in the Marriot apartments, so the two identical back-to-back messages they sent me were a double waste. This is harassment.

And then I get messages in Arabic. My phone doesn't support Arabic, so the messages read

shoe mart

oooooooo oooo oooooo oooooo

What utter bullshit. Why would anyone want a text message from shoe mart? I don't care how lonely someone is... getting a text message from shoe mart is just pathetic, plain and simple.

And who the hell wants not one, but three text messages from RAMEZ? Surely this is harassment. I'm going to start sending Batelco some harassing emails. I'd text them back, but I don't have their mobile number. I don't care how self-defeating that'd be... if I could annoy a handful of Batelco management with messages like -

'SPECIAL OFFER HAPPY TIME. FREE ONE FOR TWO, only TODAY. SEEF!!!!'

it'd be worth it. Totally worth it. Some Batelconians claim there is no way that our beloved Telecom would ever do something like sell broadcast messages to random clients. But that's a lie. Who the hell has ever given RAMEZ their phone number? And other Batelconians, some of whom were directly involved in the whole broadcast message thing, have made it clear that they'd sell anyone's number to anything. If a sheep wanted to tell the world that it was feeling slightly horny, Batelco would facilitate as long as it had some cash.

I'd ask the TRA to help me but I have a thing against flushing my time and energy down the toilet. I'd call Batelco and demand a free text message for each and every ad that they enable the godforsaken advertiser to annoy me with, but can you imagine how frustrating that conversation with customer care would be?

Fuck this. I just got another message, from Ramez. While I've been typing this rant I've received FOUR text messages from RAMEZ. No lie. Not one, not two, not three... but four. And they're all the same.

They discovered a new medium with which to harass the public, and true to form, they've abused it to the point that it is no longer even slightly effective. Just like they did with billboards. Just like they did with those goddamn streetlight ads. I remember, not long ago, the Ministry of Transport and the Municipality were arguing over who was entitled to the revenue from those lamppost ads. One Ministry took them down and the other put them back up. Maybe if I call the Ministry and tell them that Batelco is taking all the revenue from broadcast messages.... Telecoms fall under the domain of the Ministry of Transport, or at least they once did, for some reason I'll never quite understand... That might be fun. Although, has anyone ever managed to get a Ministry to answer a phone. I've heard stories, from the days of old... but I think they're lies.

I don't care if they send me four thousand messages. I'm not going anywhere near Ramez. Even if I really, really wanted to wander around a dirty warehouse full of reject Chinese merchandise, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Please, boycott every business that sends you stupid, annoying, harassing messages. And then, maybe, someone will learn something. It's doubtful. There's far, far too much stupidity going around these days, but it cant hurt to try.

The Great Swine Strategy 2: The Rethink

It just keeps getting better, but only in a sarcastic way.

So there was the great rethink of our wonderfully bright Kingdom's swine flu strategy. Where all the decision makers got themselves together in a one-off attempt to do their jobs. Bravo. Pause for applause. And it was at this meeting of the 'minds' that it was decided to stagger the opening of schools. According to the GDN:

All secondary schools will stay closed until October 4, intermediate until October 11, primary until October 18 and kindergartens and special needs centres until November 1.

This new schedule of brain-numbing stupidity comes after a senior WHO (not the band) representative declared that keeping schools closed 'is not an option'. In fact, instead of doing any good, it would seem that delaying the inevitable until a season where oink-cough will spread more rapidly is irresponsible in the extreme. Let not this bother our decision makers though, for they have decided. God forbid we, y'know, listen to some advice. Naah. We know better. All the other countries are doing it wrong. They're stupid. They probably don't even know what a full-option S-class looks like. We on the other hand, we know our shit.

And it gets better (again, sarcastically). Much, much better. Apparently, this latest 'step' was taken to "safeguard the return of pupils to classes, particularly vulnerable groups such as young children and to alleviate pressure on the country's health services". Allegedly. But the Ministry of Health, the people charged with cleaning up the messy pandemic, have made it clear that they disagree with this decision. So, I wonder, aloud: who made this decision? Neither the WHO nor the Ministry of Health. In fact, both of these organizations, the very same institutions that logic would dictate have the most qualified opinions on this matter, disagree with our latest 'strategy'.

Now, if there was a meeting that was attended by the ministries of Health and Education and had some input from the WHO, and two of the aforementioned parties are against the new 'plan', logic dictates that the one remaining party is the party responsible. So, by using regression analysis and a bit of coin tossing, we come to the conclusion that the Ministry of Education is now Bahrain's foremost authority on health matters. And pandemics. Who would have guessed?

Whatever. This is getting old, quickly. It's clear that we have no idea, not even a faint sniff of a clue, how to handle anything that resembles a problem. Who cares who gets the blame? WHO doesn't. They offered us their advice and we roundly dismissed it. But to tell us that this plan is somehow in the best interests of the children and a responsible approach to alleviating pressure on health services when it clearly is not, well thats just a cheap lie.

Apparently the logic is that its better to be safe than sorry. Seriously, these were the words that were uttered to the GDN by an unnamed Ministry of Health official who, like anyone else with sense, thinks this plan is stupid. But is it better to be safe than sorry now and a whole bunch sorrier later because we were stupid before in a pathetic, ill-advised attempt to be safe?

The strategy, and I use the term in it's loosest form, seems to involve nothing more that thumb-twiddling until the great western vaccination is so kindly sold to us for a brutal profit. Some people, myself included, assumed that the first batch of vaccinations would be used to immunize the little kiddies before they got sent into their educational petri dishes, because of how they're high-risk, and, well, little kiddies. Perhaps then we would be able to find a nugget of logic in this series of absurdities. But no. Not a chance.

It seems that the first batch, all 40,000 doses of this entirely unproven elixir of hope, have been allocated for the pilgrims. Two doses each (even though from what I've read , only one is required) for 15,000 haaj-goers. My math is a little rusty, but what happens to the other 10,000? Mmm. I wonder. Vaccinate Important Persons perhaps?

Let it be. If someone wants to be my guinea pig, hooray for me.

If we're still playing the prevention game lets stop people entering the country. That'll help a bit. And while we're at it, close the malls. We should've cancelled eid, but it's too late now. Cinemas are a bit tight, so they're gone. Cafes too. And eateries. And public transport, because that's rather popular. And gyms. And supermarkets. Let's not let a silly thing like logic get in the way. Hell, why not just close Bahrain 'until further notice'.

The Great Swine Strategy

Idiots.

We've all heard about Bahrain's incredibly retarded swine flu strategy. Y'know, the one with the schools. If a student goes and gets all infected, the whole school will be shut down for one whole week. And if ten percent of students get sniffly, the school will be shut down for a week.

How the hell could this 'plan' feasibly work? Seriously... think about for a minute or two. What the flu that has barely anything to do with swine lacks in severity it more than makes up for in virulence. The statistics that are spewed about with reckless abandon in our media lead us to believe that a fairly respectable percentage of Bahrain will end up being part of this annoyance of a pandemic. I reckon, had they thought about it and, y'know, consulted with anyone who reads, they would have come to the conclusion that the probability of at least one student from every school in Bahrain contracting oink-sniffles is very close to 1.

And now, after five schools have been shut down in about four days, they're discussing a 'rethink' of their strategy. A rethink implies they thought about this strategy in the first place. Which begs the question: How utterly stupid are they?

Perhaps, if anyone really cared about the oink-cough, we would have pretended to give a shit beforehand. Nah. It was inevitable. We can whine and moan and bitch and scream and wear utterly pointless masks that allegedly increase the chance you'll get something, but instead of really doing anything about anything the only thing our government managed to accomplish was, well nothing. Unless you count parliaments attempt to ban the import of pork. That would've saved us all. Muppets.

I cant wait for the new 'strategy'. Maybe they'll make everyone who gets sick huddle in the corner while the healthy point and them and make pig noises. The shame will banish the illness to less proud parts of the world. Maybe the police will roam about the streets, impounding everyone who sniffles. Maybe, just maybe, they'll say that it is illegal for expats to leave their homes, because this disease is a foreign, expat disease. Bahrainis would never play a part in spreading something so unfashionable. Never. It is worthy of note that all five schools that have been closed are international, private schools. Bahrain's public institutions would never be host to a disease named after a filthy animal. Never.

Morons. Bahrain has hosted its fair share of nasty flu in the past. We, as a nation, are demographically prone to get whatever illness is annoying the planet and there is nothing we can really do about it. Sit back, relax and when the sniffles arrive, blame parliament. Why? Because they're probably blaming you. And because they honestly believed that banning pork imports would save us all.

The sound of sunshine

I haven't complained in a while. It might be because summer makes me lazier than usual, or perhaps because nothing has agitated me enough to get the drivel flowing. The lack of complaining is also, undoubtedly, directly related to Parliament's summer break. But it was only a matter of time.

A lot has happened since I last posted. Gulf Air got themselves a new chief, Bahrain beat Saudi at the kicking competition and Swine flu is the new black. Come to think of it, not much has happened at all. Ramadan arrived with a whimper and will disappear with a sigh of indifference. More on Ramadan later. For now, I'll complain about the mundane.

Radio Bahrain. The sunshine sound. The gulf's 'number one'. The worthless exercise in public media who's shameless profiteering has turned it into a veritable parody of a real radio station. The headache inducing pointlessness that suffers from a cavernous deficit of vision, ambition or logic.

Despite being government funded, Radio Bahrain have sold every last nugget of air time to anybody and everybody. Advertising on Radio is necessary, particularly in a country like Bahrain where it is essentially the only public media that is ever actually entertained by the populace.

I don't mind ads, but when the news bulletins are sponsored by something I couldn't care about, and when the weather is brought to me by something I don't know what is, and best of all, when the TIME is sponsored, I get annoyed. It's silly. And pointless. And clearly, demonstrably over-saturated with constantly repetitive drivel.

Furthermore, has anyone ever noticed how a fair chunk of the ads broadcast feature the voices of Radio Bahrain's very own 'DJs'? If Krazy bloody Kevin provides the voice for an ad during his torturous show, shouldn't it be considered an endorsement? If so, does the Ministry of Information and Culturification not mind that the people that it is paying to annoy us are also blatantly recommending a whole host of products, services and events to Bahrain's impressionable public? Probably not. It was probably their idea.

Fire some people. Hire some new people. Figure out how to develop some local talent who can a.) read, and b.)speak. Preferably someone who does not play house music at 3pm. Put Ian Fisher on a plane and send him far, far away. I don't care what they do or how they do it, but they've got to do something.

Why does Radio Bahrain even have news bulletins? They must be aware that if we need news, we've got BBC radio. I might not like BBC all that much, but they're a Bentley next to Radio Bahrain's beat-up Skoda. Old Skoda, before they were owned by VW. The news we hear on 96.5 is regurgitated tripe. There is no local news, save for the occasional message informing us of some 'cable' of good wishes sent to somewhere by someone. Surely email would be more efficient? How does one go about sending a 'cable'? Is it like a telegram or something?

They don't entertain. They certainly don't inform. So what do they do? They exploit their captive audience. They milk us by assaulting our senses with a barrage of useless, ill conceived, amateur adverts. They annoy us by employing the least qualified, most irritating, verbally challenged DJs'.

They're building a new studio, or something to that effect. A new studio wont fix the problem. It's beyond institutional. Radio Bahrain is a problem. It creates the closest thing Bahrain has to celebrity, which in turns stifles innovation. Krazy Kevin is your example. I know Kevin. He's a nice guy. But he belongs in a bar in middle England or some holiday resort or cruise ship. He was brought here by JJ's back in the day and stayed, because the tacky appeal that is lost on those with taste somehow worked on Bahrain. And now we cant go a day without hearing his wheeze, listening to his latest annoyance of choice or pretending to ignore today's mildly racist remark. But he'll stay, as long as he wants to stay. And he'll hum the same old tune, because that's what seems to work. It gets him a nice villa, a sponsored car, a host of personal appearance events and countless pseudo-endorsements. All because the powers that be that lurk somewhere in a ministry building just don't care.

And compared to Ian Fisher, Krazy Kevin is awesome. The 'Fish' is a personality free hack who seems to be in radio by virtue of being able to speak in English. With no charm, nothing interesting to say and the most repetitive show in the history of existence, nowhere else in the world would even consider employing him as a DJ for the one and only national radio station. Yet here he is a veteran. A (god help us all) trendsetter. A regular presence on our airwaves with whom a generation of Bahrain has grown up. It's just plain wrong.

The only way it could be worse is if Roy (the racist) Silverthorne were to return.

Yes, this is nothing more that an unstructured rant and for that I apologise. Now I'm going to bang my head against the wall for entertainment. It's better than listening to the radio.