One one things

Unsatisfied with the insightful discourse following the incident of the man, the well and the fire brigade, the DM boys struck again. The article describing the recent lightning attack on the police was an obvious target. Unfortunately a cop had passed away when lightning struck a police post in Buttala. Naturally the cops retaliated with small arms fire causing heavy casualties amongst the retreating lightning. Here’s what they had to say.

“What’s happening in Sri Lanka.. Even the nature is against the Sri Lanka Authorities. Do you all thing what am thinking ? Tamil Tigers, Green tiger, white tiger UN tigers and now Nature Tiger. Am curious who did they opened fire at ? Wind or Rain or Lightning itself? It makes me feel so nice.” - Nature tiger? Never! And they probably opened fire at this. Fecking Thalaivar and his scientologists.

“This is the type of Police we have. They cannot differentiate lightning from LTTE. God save us and our country.”

“Yes, I have experienced this type of reaction from my motherland on my visits in the past several years. It is now getting from bad to worse. Those in ” POWER” not to mention the highest in charge of the beautiful very small country should open their eyes, ears & rectify the situation before it is too oo late!!!!” - Damn that motherland and her dubious reactions. But seriously, what can Mahinda do? take his sarong and hold it over the chaps under threat of lightning?

“Unitl now only the LTTE, JVP and the politicians were striking the police. Now Lightning also striking the police. Strike back the lightning police.” - That’s right.

“When lightning strucks (sic) someone, that person just falls on the ground dead. so no one would know unless they are experts that it was lightning that struck. Other police officers must have thought it was a sniper shot or something so they opened fire.” - Wisdom. I suspect it would be pretty cool to be a lightning death expert.

“My friends,dont blame or laugh at any body.we shouldn’t do that and that is not the feedback what we supposed to do here.” - Exactly, there’s plenty of others to do the laughing.

“Sri Lankan government and other institutions like university of Moratuwa, university of Colombo (Dept. of Science) and research Institutions such as IFS must take the initiative to educate ordinary citizens.Especially govt.institutions have a duty to carry on because they are paid by the tax payers of the country. That means this people who die due to lack of information and knowledge.I know that we cannot avoid the natural disasters,but we can minimize the devastating effects by educating people.Because Sri Lanka is a small country!” - Damn straight. If on the other hand SL was a big country it would be ok. Despite the pretensions of intelligence, this chap is clearly insane. I mean he’s talking nonsense about govt institutions having to carry out duties bc they are paid by tax payers? What cock. Traitor! pass the J.

“There should be adequate protection for the people who are working outside. Nature doesn’t have done any thing but authorities have not adopted the proper precautions against the nature where applicable.” - Ah. Eloquence. Love it.

It must be said, the Buttala cops are a delightful bunch. They were nice enough to let me keep my license despite clocking me at 72. They are clearly not deserving of such ungenerous comments by these dubious chaps. For shame.

The Daily Mirror has been superb in being the first to attempt real time news delivery to the internet loving Ceylonese. But the real value of this has not been timely access to news - it’s the comedic value of the comments. In the past we were confined to that small batallion of retired chaps who engaged in skirmishes in the letters to the editor of the respective dailys. Grappling weighty topics such as “Buddhism and meat eating: a response in 16 parts”, “The menace of stray dogs in Dehiwala”, “The deteriorating relationship between youth and crocodiles in Ratnapura” ad nauseum. Fair enough too, retired chaps need to let of steam somewhere. But now with online commenting, a whole new can of worms has been opened. Chaps don’t have to retire till they can air their most profound statements, this can be done in a matter of clicks while sipping that tea with 14 spoons of sugar. Para bellum.

So today I was running through the DM looking to see if we’re winning the war, when a couple of stories down there’s a rather sad passage about a chap who has fallen into a well in Kirulopane and passed away before the fire department could save him. Bad form. But what was intriguing was the 14 comments about this story - so much sympathy, so little time? curiosity got the better of me and I clicked. I really didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Our buggers one thing.

Here are a few excerpts.

“While feeling sorry for the person, must say that our opposition has fallen into a much deeper well. How can we bring them up?”

“Shame on you fire brigade, Indian FB rescued a child from a much deeper and a narrow well, Good reason to create some scholarships to India for the FB guys!!!!”

“The people should have called FD and informed them Dr.(Mervin) Silva is in the well and not just the FD but even the PSD will come to rescue him in no time.” - it’s superb how in the past 4 months there has not been one story on the DM that has not had a comment referring to our favourite parliamentarian.

“Our people are finding an AXE to cut thing that you can remove with the finger nail. There was a small boy who rescued his mother who fell in the well without any fire brigade. Hope our country people open their brain and do sensible things in general.” - good policies for a better ceylon.

“Fire brigade happy new year”

“”Well” done!”

Oh dear. (oh well, even).