The Yamaha Yahoo

Along with other pestilent lifeforms such as the Suzuki Samseng, the Honda Hantu, and the Kawasaki Koboi, the Yamaha Yahoo forms part of a noisy and noisome phenomenon known as the Nyamuk Nuisance. This has nothing to do with the health hazards of living in glorified swamps like Lower Ampang and the Pantai Valley where a totally different species of nyamuk (mosquito) proliferates. Still, the mechanised variety of nyamuk constitutes a definite mental health hazard to peace-loving members of the public. It can give senior citizens instantaneous heart attacks; cause decent folk to use indecent language; make even the most highly evolved souls experience temporary loss of wisdom and go berserk.*

Who are these Yamaha Yahoos, these Suzuki Samsengs, these Honda Hantus, these Kawasaki Kobois? By day they masquerade as innocent despatch riders, mechanics, store clerks, and junior civil servants. By night - particularly Fridays and Saturdays - they swarm out upon the highways by the hundreds, by the thousands, buzzing through the concrete jungle like a barbarian horde of runaway chainsaws... like a plague of motorised locusts.

Nobody knows what these virulent creatures really look like because they keep their faces well concealed beneath their crash helmets. But everybody knows why they do what they do: a bunch of small farts trying to feel big through massive mechanical flatulence. They're nyamuks... listen to that high-pitched whine produced by puny pistons firing away into the atmosphere without mufflers and exhaust silencers. Where's the bug spray? Ffffft!

I like bikes, especially big bikes. Owners of big bikes tend to cruise along as silently as possible - testimony to the vast reserves of power between their legs. But these pygmy hell riders bring out the genocidal urge in me. They even make me applaud the forces of Law & Order. As far as I'm concerned, that's about the only redeeming feature of the Nyamuk Nuisance: they give the cops a chance to look like Good Guys.

When I grow old I want to be a totalitarian leader and legislate a programme of scientific rehabilitation for these fiends-on-two-wheels. I'll have them all rounded up and put in a detention camp where every morning for 60 days at 6 a.m. these malefactors will be awakened by a chorus of lawnmowers and chainsaws operating at full pitch outside their cell windows. They will have no access to earplugs and their hands will be bound.

Could it be true after all that self-righteous rightists have more fun?


GLOSSARY
samseng - hooligan, ruffian
hantu - goblin, ghost, evil spirit
koboi - vernacular for 'cowboy'
yahoo - excrement-slinging ape-like creature with hairy anus (described by Jonathan
Swift in Gulliver's Travels)
nyamuk - mosquito

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*The Nyamuk Nuisance is quite indestructible, it would appear. Twenty years later, their descendants continue to wreak havoc on weekends - in big cities, small towns, even remote villages. However, they now go by the name Mat Rempit and the majority are rumoured to be on the Umno Youth payroll. Their secret mission is to harass women audacious enough to move around without male chaperones. Occasionally they'll snatch a purse or two. Well, at least they're contributing to nation-building by helping redistribute wealth and keeping the weaker sex in line.