Read This and Die

Metro Manila Film Fest, I Want My Brain Back!

2012-01-25T05:09:00.025+08:00

Every year, I bemoan the Metro Manila Film Fest and what I believe is the shoddy quality of its films. And hey, it's fine if you want to make shit films. But to block out all other films for 2 weeks so we have no choice but to watch your crap - annoying.

But then I thought, when was the last time I actually sat through an entire film fest? Sure, I've caught one or two movies over the years, but I've never actually tried to watch all of the films they show in a particular year at one go. Maybe I was wrong all this time. Maybe there's a treasure trove of mind-blowing classics waiting to be discovered and I was just being a bourgeois snob. So I decided 2011 would be the year I was going to watch ALL the film fest movies.

Which I failed, but not from lack of trying. I managed to catch five out of seven, which is probably more than most, so I'm still proud. In the same way that a woman who went through a caesarean section without anesthesia would be proud of herself. So let's get through this minefield of horror. Bear with me, this will be long. And rather unpleasant.

First off, Ang Panday 2. I didn't watch the first movie, but it's not exactly rocket science. Basically, this chap called Lizardo attacks all these villages, and Panday uses his magic sword to fuck him up real good. So he dies in the first movie and peace returns to the land. The second movie starts, I kid you not, with a fucking witch on a broom flying through the air, cackling. As in, the generic Western witch with a hook nose, wild hair, warts, green skin and a pointy hat. Why this should be in a Filipino movie, God knows. She then proceeds to... resurrect Lizardo. So he can attack a bunch of villages until Panday uses his magic sword to fuck him up real good. See where I'm going here? They're basically telling the exact same story they did in the first movie. Because we moviegoers are apparently so stupid, we won't notice. God.

Anyway, Panday returns to his village from his first adventure, where everyone keeps talking about his sword, which he seems to have become too dependent on, to the consternation of his lolo. Lolo, who always looks like he's either going to burst into tears or have an aneurysm, tells Panday off about this, especially during a scene where Panday yells at these kids who live with him for playing with his sword. Let me break this down for you: Three dumb kids are playing with a sharp, dangerous, magic sword, which could kill them or others, and Panday gets in trouble for telling them off. This scene is apparently a big deal, because they spend about ten minutes going on about it. I thought this would actually develop into an interesting subplot where Panday realizes he needs to depend on himself, not his sword, for power, but it completely disappears midway into the film.

This is a movie where things happen just because. A band of men attack Panday's village because, somehow their village has run out of women. So they decide to take the women in the next village because, what the hell. Panday and his men set out to track down Lizardo after he attacks their village and kidnaps their women, after which they promptly desert him after some of them die during an attack. They blame him instead of, you know, the villain who sent the actual man-killing beasties after them. A former ally appears, aids him, then inexplicably turns evil and tries to steal the sword, just because. These are things we're supposed to just accept, because to think too much about them would cause the movie to fall apart.

One can't help but notice the phallic imagery surrounding Panday and his sword. A woman passing him wipes her hanky on his sword, a la the Black Nazarene, while it's sheathed periliously close to his penis, to apparently pick up some of its power. When the aforementioned bandits attack his village, Panday brandishes his big sword, which becomes erect, I mean extends to a long length, thereby striking fear in the hearts of the bandits, whose (ahem) swords are so much smaller than his. Sigh. This is a 45-year-old Senator of the Republic, acting in scenes like this. Panday then declares to the bandits, "Ang babae, hindi ninanakaw, minamahal." I'll wait for you while you contemplate the condescending sexism of that line.

Done? Ok. Later on, Panday's pet dragon is revealed to actually be a woman, Marian Rivera, from a race of beings called ragona with the ability to transform into dragons. This freaks me out because apparently, in the first movie, the dragon is just a dragon throughout, with no sign of anything special. It's like finding out your beloved dog of many years who you've played with, cuddled, and cleaned up after is actually a super-fine woman who then comes on to you. Would you pounce? Really?

Meanwhile, Lizardo has his hands on Iza Calzado, Panday's girlfriend, who he scooped up with all the other women he kidnapped during his attacks. Apparently, he has it bad for her, leading him to declare, "Maaaring kay Flavio (Panday) ang iyong puso, pero akin ang katawan mo!" or words to that effect. He then throws her on a bed, licks her with a snake tongue and the scene fades to black. But wait! He only needed her blood, because as a fairy, Iza's blood can apparently rejuvenate him. That's good because I thought he was, you know, going to rape her. The scene certainly implied as much initially.

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice a disturbing theme. The women are basically in this movie to be kidnapped, while the men fight over them like things. You'd think that at least Marian is a badass dragon who'll be spared this indignity, but even she gets kidnapped in the end as bait for Panday.

But first, Marian takes them to her village of ragonas, who had previously cast her out for being aggressive. You see, these are huge motherfucking, ferocious, fire-breathing, pacifist dragons. They allow them to stay, but Marian's sister gets jealous of the attention she's getting and decides to steal Panday's sword and hand it over to Lizardo, to get back at her.

It's around this point that I... fell asleep. I kid you not. This movie was getting so boring I couldn't will myself awake anymore. When I woke up a few minutes later, Iza Calzado had somehow already been killed, conveniently opening the way for Panday to be able to have dragon-sex with Marian if he so chooses.

Lizardo shows up with the sword and, just as you think, "Oh no, how will he fight now?" Panday simply calls to it and it flies out of Lizardo's hand. Problem solved. Dramatic tension murdered. Lizardo then kills Marian's mother and sister and (sigh) kidnaps her. This motivates the ragonas to throw aside years of pacifism to join in the dramatic final fight.

The ragonas are joined by Panday's villagers, who just reappear without explanation after having deserted him. Panday drops down in a random desert and yells at the sky for Lizardo to fight him, instead of, I don't know, storming his stronghold or something. Lizardo then appears and sucks him into another dimension, transforming into a Clash-of-the-Titans-rip-off giant (and I'm sure you saw this picture on Facebook):

Panday somehow manages to get him to let go of Marian, who transforms into a dragon, which he then rides into Lizardo's mouth and drives his sword through his head, killing him. This fight lasted all of five minutes. I don't know who was more bored, Panday or myself.

Panday and Marian acknowledge their feelings for each other, but then state they can't act on them. Why? I thought Iza was dead. But wait, her dead body is shown with the belly suddenly swelling. Ergo, Panday reveals himself to be a true Revilla, managing to get the dragon-girl to fall for him while simultaneously knocking up a dead chick. All class.

Panday ends the movie by standing atop a hill and announcing how he would sacrifice his personal life all for the sake of God and country. I can't help but think, is this a declaration you want to run for the presidency in 2016 Senator Revilla? Has this entire movie been one big propaganda spiel? I suddenly want to take a shower and scrub myself hard; I feel used and dirty.

The effects are not terrible, but the sight of Bong Revilla dressed up in skin-tight outfits is disturbing. If I wanted to see the baktong and bilbil of a middle-aged man, I'd go stand outside a jeepney terminal and look for some drivers. This I did not need to see. Philip Salvador's over-the-top, lecherous, making-faces, constantly-cackling acting as Lizardo was also quite laughable. I didn't actually realize it was him until the movie started. I thought, from the poster, it was this guy:

Damn Philip. You got fat.

Throughout the movie, the witch from the beginning appears, watching events, but not helping Lizardo and basically doing nothing of any consequence, except to announce how she finds killing fun. When Lizardo bites it, she cackles loudly and transforms into Lorna Tolentino. And this, my friends, is the true horror. Because this happened at the end, it is obvious set up for... Panday 3. Fuck.

We leave this horror and move on to an actual horror movie, Segunda Mano. This latest gasp at relevance for Kris Aquino is about how she, a dowdy, boring, manang type suddenly enters into a relationship with single-dad-stud Dingdong (God, that name is hilarious) Dantes, only to be haunted by his wife, who apparently left him, but might actually be dead and a vengeful ghost out to keep them from boinking.

Kris lives with her mom, a bitter old woman still traumatized over the drowning death of Kris' younger sister years ago (which Kris inadvertently caused herself). This screwed-up dynamic has transformed Kris into The Most Boring Person on Earth, whose days consist of running her antique shop (inexplicably located in Westgate Alabang), then going home to have silent dinners with her mom, when they're not visiting the shore where her sister drowned, or consulting a psychic to contact her spirit. The only color in her life is her slutty friend who (1) talks at the top of her voice, (2) dresses like a hooker and (3) encourages her to buy expensive, unnecessary crap like designer clothes and bags. How these two are friends, God knows, but the friend serves a specific purpose: to show everyone how good Kris is (because the friend is so bad).

One day, walking through the rain, Kris gets splashed with water by Dingdong's car. He feels bad, and gives her a ride home. For some bizarre reason, he finds himself drawn to this manang and starts to date her. I think it's implied that he's always dealt wth sluts, so Kris, in full-on old-maid mode, appeals to him. Meanwhile, more and more sightings of the wife, Angelica Panganiban, occur in Kris' vicinity, leading her to ask if she really just left, as Dingdong says, or is actually dead and trying to kill her.

Eventually, Kris decides to vamp it up, buying a new dress and bag, which turn out to be Angelica's. Apparently this ghost leaves designer things for you, which makes her the best ghost ever! People around Kris soon start dropping dead and, when she confronts Dingdong, he reveals some childhood trauma about losing his dad to suicide over a cheating stepmom, as well as him not liking her new duds. When she tries to leave him, he kidnaps her mom, forcing her into a final showdown, which she drives to in (get this) Angelica's ghost car. Somehow, Angelica gets this car to Kris' slutty friend as some sort of warning to her. I kid you not, the car flickers in and out of existence as Kris drives it; I wanted to burst out laughing.

Anyone with half a brain would by now have spotted the twist: Dingdong is the psycho killing everyone because he's damaged and jealous, and his wife's ghost has simply been trying to warn Kris. Inexplicably, she also turns out to be Kris' presumed dead younger sister. How convenient. Anyway, Kris and Dingdong then engage in a knock-out, drag-out brawl, with Angelica helping to finally put him down. Which begs the question of why her ghost didn't kill him immediately after he'd offed her. But yes, I know, that's pulling at strings and all. But this scene was fun if only because it helped me indulge my fantasy of beating the crap out of Kris Aquino. I dare you to watch this part and not cheer.

Kris spends most of the movie looking constipated and about to burst into tears, while doing her damndest to look as meek and unassertive as possible. It's fucking annoying and makes it very hard to sympathize with her. Meanwhile, poor Angelica is reduced to a prop, as just the scary thing that grabs at people. She must have had less than ten lines in the whole movie. Surely she deserves more than this. Dingdong is the only one who turns out a halfway decent performance in the movie, but then I can't really be sure. Maybe he just seems good in comparison to everyone else, because they were all deadly dull. All in all, this movie was the definition of a snoozefest.

Next up, My Househusband (Ikaw Na!), which I though had potential, from the concept, but even this turned out to be disappointing. Ryan Agoncillo is married to Judy Ann Santos and has two kids. They live an idyllic upper-middle-class life until he quits his job as a bank manager, rather than accept a lower position after his bank merges with another. Juday is forced to pick up the slack and accept a full time position in an insurance company, which she previously only worked for part time. This creates tension in the emascualated male (aw, kawawa naman) while also providing many "hilarious" opportunities to show the man doing "housewife" chores. I'm so thrilled.

First off, none of the characters or their settings are sympathetic. I expected a regular middle-class family, with Juday taking a mid-level job that most of the moviegoers are probably in and will be able to relate to. Instead, the two are both executives and own a house in this bizarre American-style suburban development that looks like nothing I've seen in Manila. They own two cars and, when they're not in their super-posh house, they seem to wander entirely around the super-posh Westgate Alabang, hardly representative of Manila. Tension is set off, not because Ryan has to take over from Juday while she works, but because their maid has to go on leave. Aw, your servant has gone and now you have to clean? However will you survive?

Eventually, everything is neatly resolved. Just before Ryan decides to migrate to Canada, a friend offers him a big job. Some fake tension ensues when Juday refuses to give up her job (where she's already a top executive after just a few short months, good golly), but this is conveniently resolved when the maid returns, allowing them both the freedom to work. Is this even an issue? How many couples manage to both work at the same time? I imagine a number of them watching laughed at the inanity of this scene.

The movie was even duller than Segunda Mano, saved only by the presence of Eugene Domingo. Eugene, as the nosy neighbor who is shunned by everyone except Ryan for being the kabit of an old man, is, as usual, hilarious. But I think this has more to do with her being a superb comedian rather than anything to do with the movie's script. A surprising part of the movie was Francine Prieto, in a completely unremarkable bit role as a chismosa neighbor. Didn't she used to be the star in movies before? Why is she doing stuff like this? She is joined by two other nosy neighbors, who always seem to be on the verge of fumbling their lines. One of them actually does, and this is kept onscreen, instead of being edited out. Hello? Did no one notice this? Did no one order a take two? How sloppy. Annoying as well are the musical cues that come on throughout the movie, as if to remind the viewers, "O, this is a funny scene, laugh na" or "Drama naman to, be sad for Juday and Ryan". This was a movie that didn't know what it wanted to be, being neither funny enough to be called a comedy, nor serious enough to be called a drama. Entirely forgettable.

I actually watched two other movies before I watched these three, but I wanted to save the best (worst) for the last. And lest you think I coughed up hundreds of pesos to watch these horrors, I was saved from doing so by a good friend who scored us these honeys:

Free tickets! You know who you are. Thanks for saving my wallet and my soul from having to live with actually paying for all these movies. If I'd had to pay for all five, instead of just the three that I did, I don't know if I'd manage to look myself in the mirror.

Up next, Enteng ng Ina Mo. And if you think the title is witty, well that's all that is. The concept of this movie is shameless, coming on the heels of last year's Si Agimat at Si Enteng. Basically, instead of coming up with something new and fresh, the people behind the waning franchise of Enteng Kabisote have decided to just combine their movie with whatever other franchise is willing to take them. Lazy lazy lazy. Tsk.

While Ai Ai bemoans the death of her latest husband, Enteng is apparently pissed with Faye because she decides to stay in Encantasya to deal with her evil aunt Satana (oooh, subtle), who's kidnapped her mother. Exactly why Enteng would be pissed that his wife wants to fight off a great evil and save her people from death, I have no idea. Personally, if I were him, I would have supported her very brave actions.

He leaves in a huff and Satana, seeing an opportunity, possesses a stunning-looking Pauleen Luna and uses her to drug Enteng with a love potion, to make him forget Faye and fall in love with the next person he sees. And who else would that be but Ai Ai?

A series of cheesy date montages ensue, while tension between Ai Ai's kids and Enteng increases. Meanwhile, Enteng's kids realize he's magically addled and sort him out. When he reveals he's married and apologizes to Ai Ai, she breaks down, especially since she thought he was going to propose. Now, in a world that isn't mad, everything could have just ended there and we would have been spared further crap. But somehow, Ai Ai turns out to be the key to bringing down Satana, so she has her kidnapped. Enteng, his kids and Ai Ai's kids then band together to rescue their respective moms (Faye has, by this time, also been kidnapped by Satana), and bring the bitch down. I forget how they do this exactly. Like, I literally cannot remember how they defeated Satana and her henchmen. This latter part of the movie is that forgettable.

This movie makes me sad, because I remember watching the first Tanging Ina, and thinking it was both genuinely funny and heart-warming. To see it reduced to this crap is depressing. Eugene Domingo is also in this movie and, again, is a bright spot in this morass, but even she can't save it. At the very least, the encantadas had nice costumes. But Ai Ai's bizarre outfits throughout were incredibly distracting. The final straw for me was her magical battle gear, where she was transformed into a warrior fighting with a... pot cover as a shield and a soup ladle as a sword. This pointless slapstick is representative of the entire movie, a waste of time.

And finally, we get to the big one, the grand master of the film fest, the one everyone has been talking about, whether in delight, or in horror, or in delight over how horrifying it was (that would be me) - Manila Kingpin: The Untold Story of Asiong Salonga.

Now, let's establish a few facts: Asiong Salonga's life has been made into a movie four times. The last one also starred Jorge Estregan, who produces and stars in this latest remake. Jorge Estregan is the governor of Laguna and is 48 years old. Got that? Good.

It's important to establish these facts because Asiong Salonga, during the events depicted in the film, is supposed to be only 27 years old. And since this movie has been done three times before, why make a fourth? It becomes apparent then that this movie is entirely a vanity project designed to make the honorable governor, who probably no one wants to use as the star of a film anymore, look cool and allow him to mack on some (much) younger girls. Which is a fucking unsettling sight to behold, I kid you not.

Asiong is a new gang leader, who sets about to establish himself as the new siga in Tondo. This mainly involves him getting into a lot of poorly choreographed fights with other gang leaders. Now the movie made a big deal of pointing out they'd hired a choreographer from Thailand to do the fights, so I take it they're actually proud of these poorly executed scenes. But I don't know how much of it is the choreographer's fault; when you're working with 40+ year old guys trying to act like they're 20+, there's only so much serviceable fighting you can wring out of them, I guess.

Eventually, Asiong ends up in jail, where he meets Jay Manalo, the jail mayor, who I know is much younger than him. So for me to hear Jay call him "bata", and for him to respond "po" sent me into fits of laughter. But even that did not prepare me and my friends for the knife fight scene that followed. Imagine your lolo and another lolo in a knife fight, uncoordinated, clumsy, and laughably so. This is what the scene looked like. I really can't do it justice, except to say that, by this time, me and my friends gave up trying to suppress our giggling and just burst out laughing for about ten minutes. Tears were streaming down my face, I was laughing that hard. This one scene illustrates the absurdity of the entire movie, and how one should react to it.

Asiong manages to get out of jail and almost immediately goes back to his gangster ways, despite the fact that he now has two kids with his long-suffering wife. This leads to his eventual assassination by a member of his own crew selling him out, played by Baron Geisler, of course. I mean, who else would you get to play an asshole? Baron does in the movie what he does best - look like he's either about to get into a fight or rape someone.

And speaking of rape, how about the maltreatment of the women characters here? Carla Abellana is completely useless as Asiong's wife, there to just whine and look worried, and mind his home while he has a string of affairs. I'd say she was a bad actress, but then she managed to keep from shuddering while the 48 year old Jorge Estregan planted many, many, many kisses on her cheeks, lips, neck... God. In one flashback to their wedding, when he's about to kiss her, he's already opening his mouth wide as he leans in, looking quite excited. Imagine those old men you see in the girly bars feeling up poor, young things working there. This is what it feels like watching Jorge and Carla. When she's not being mauled by the lecher, she's quietly serving him and his friends drinks, before leaving the room (as is her place, you know), or threatening his kabit instead of him when she finds out he's cheating. Valerie Concepcion also makes an appearance as another Asiong girl, where she gets the thrill of having him slurp all over her neck while she appears super-sweaty. The aforementioned kabit, played by someone I've never seen before, has the honor of being the first one Asiong visits out of jail, instead of, you know, his frickking wife and kids, because he wants to get laid. This movie is a paen to sexism of the worst kind. It's 2011/12 na, come on. At least be subtle if you're going to be this sexist.

Asiong's funeral procession (which includes all his women, God) is then set upon by other gangsters. His remaining crew and his policeman brother, played by Philip Salvador, then engage in a shoot out to the tune of Mad World. Philip is not as over-the-top here as he was in Panday 2 but, come on, he just turns on his policeman duties to shoot it out for his lawbreaker brother? I don't know Asiong Salonga's real story, but did this really happen?

The movie does get points for effort. Thought was obviously put into sets, locations and costumes (although it escapes me why Asiong's gang were all wearing very modern Chuck Taylors). And John Regala as the big bad of the movie was very good, so good, in fact, that he deserved to be in an entirely different movie, instead of suffering through this one. And there are two creative and unintentionally hilarious shoot-out scenes, one involving a kalesa chase (yes, frickking kalesas), and another involving Ketchup Eusebio trying to shoot while riding a bike in the rain. But everything else was terrible. Hearing that Jorge Estregan was upset he didn't win best actor was hilarious. He has only one expression throughout the movie - looking entirely bewildered. He must be on something if he thinks that merits an award.

To read a more in depth, not to mention hilarious review, check this one out, written by the other friend with me who braved this movie.

You'd think I wouldn't recommend this film, but you'd be wrong. Please, watch it. Buy a fake DVD. Or a real one, if they bother to release it. Torrent it. Whatever. People must see this. I know it was billed as some sort of action-drama, but it is a comedy, I insist. Watch it as such, you will be entertained by the absurdity. Besides, I refuse to have suffered alone. I must inflict this movie on you all. For being the worst film fest movie, I must paradoxically declare it the best movie. It's so bad, it's good. But it's really bad.

Now, after braving those five, can you really blame me for missing the last two? I did try, but I missed the showing times when I went to catch them on the last day. And that day also being my birthday, I decided to spend it with people I love, instead of making an effort to endure more horror.

All in all, the film fest has confirmed everything that I believed about it from before. Either the movies are entirely forgettable or are actively horrible. Not to mention, the number of politicians in film roles throughout makes me think they just use this film fest to promote themselves. And speaking of promotion, there was an inordinate (not to mention shameless) amount of product placement throughout, from Enteng ng Ina Mo, which had Ai Ai out of the blue experiencing joint pain and reaching for a brand of painkiller she endorses, to her kids conspicuously passing around a brand of cheese spread during breakfast, to My Househusband, which sees Ryan and some others drinking a brand of brandy and even working its tagline into their dialogue.

Furthermore, this year's movies seem to carry on a conspicuous theme of pairing over-the-hill actors with pretty young things and expecting the audience to believe it. From Bong Revilla and Iza Calzado plus Marian Rivera, to the gross sight of Jorge Estregan slobbering over a succession of young girls, to Vic Sotto and whoever that young actress was who played Faye, to even Kris Aquino getting with Dingdong Dantes, it's all a bit too much. How about you pair these people with actors and actresses their age? Or use actually young actors if the character is meant to be young? It didn't help that, in Asiong Salonga, Asiong's crew were all played by actually young actors. Being surrounded by them all the time made Jorge Estregan look even older. Why pander to the vanity of these stars, telling them they're really not that old, instead of catering to what the paying audience would like to see?

I read that the MMFF was started to breathe new life into local cinema, and apparently it did for a time. But now it seems to have been hijacked by washed-up old actors and actresses and repetitive fantasy franchises. Please, please, give it back to the movie people who started it all those years ago. If 2011's Cinemalaya winners (and the positive mainstream reaction to them) have shown us anything, it's that there is room for innovative, fresh story-telling in the country, that is both entertaining and intellectually challenging. Let's see films like this taking part in the MMFF. Because, my God, if we have to spend the next few years seeing more Enteng and Panday and Kris Aquino horror movies and whatever the hell else these film studios half-heartedly churn out, I may decide to finally bomb the MMFF parade of floats one day.

Tama na. Sobra na. Palitan na.

A Top Ten List of Crap

2011-12-30T19:10:00.008+08:00

I was browsing through a magazine, admittedly a year old, and I came across one of these end-of-the-year lists of so-called movers and shakers, and I was struck by a particular question:

Who the fuck are these people?

Obviously, they were the rich and glamorous denizens of the heavily fortified and heavily security-guarded ivory tower enclaves of Metro Manila. BUT, the question is, why should they even be on a list? Why are they relevant? Why should I care?

Sure, lists like these are alright in first-world countries, where there's a larger middle- and upper-class. So "movers and shakers", whose moving and shaking basically seems to consist of the ability to buy things, are not so unrelatable or irrelevant, I guess. But here, where the average person is probably thinking of the price of rice or whether they can afford to see all seven entries to the Mother-Mother-Fucker-Fucker Metro Manila Film Fest this year? If I were to show them one of these lists, the only reaction I bet they'd have to these people is: Hu u?

One of the people on the list I saw was not even a Pinoy, but a Fil-Am who had been in town for three weeks, and is probably related to some old-rich fart, hence meriting a place in a "young upstarts" section. How the fuck is someone who, until a few weeks before the list, had probably never even been to Manila, and who probably left a few days after the magazine took her picture, never to return, a young upstart for this nation? My point being the pointlessness of this entire exercise.

These lists are like masturbating, "high" society types editing lists of other "high" society types, so they can give each other a collective pat on the back; it's good for you, but what does it do for the rest of us? The truth is, outside their small pond of a couple of hundred or so people who can afford to wine and dine at Greenbelt or The Fort, the average person on the street doesn't know who the hell they are. Vice Ganda is more relevant. Sarah Geronimo is more relevant. Those are the true movers and shakers, if you will, because when they do or say something, the public reacts. When society farts posing for pictures in Republiq and wherever else do something, nobody outside of a few society-watchers bats an eyelash.

And that's what annoys me about these lists. Mayaman na nga kayo, kailangan niyo pang magpapansin. Why not just be content you can throw money at LV and Hermes stores? Why do you have to scream for attention from the public?

How about actually meaningful lists, like the top ten independent movie directors of 2011? Or the top ten underrated visual artists of 2011? Or the top ten unsigned music acts of 2011? Something that would actually contribute to our collective consciousness. Instead of another list of top ten "movers and shakers" whose most relevant contribution to society this year is wearing expensive clothes. Tangina this.

Money doesn't make you relevant. But it CAN make you an asshole.

Tinawag nyang puta ang nanay mo

2011-10-18T02:13:00.002+08:00

At um-agree ka? Leche.

Pero parang ganun na nga ang nangyari kung ni-repost mo si Awfully Disappointed British Guy, si American Ambassador with Unverified Statistics, sabay sabi ng, oo nga, nakakahiya, wag tayong sensitive.

Isa pa tong mokong, Pinoy na to ha.

Ay sows. Kaya hindi umaasenso ang Pinas, dahil wala na ngang ginagawa kundi magreklamo ang middle-class bourgeois, a-agree pa pag binalahura ang bansa. So agree ka talaga? Na "smarmy" at "sneering" ang mga Pinoy? Na drab and dreary ang BUONG Maynila? Na pawala na ang bansa natin? Na pugad ng puta ang bansa natin? Surely not.

Ganito kasi yan: Kahit kunwari wasak ang bahay mo, gago lahat ng kapamilya mo, at gusto mo silang awayin ng awayin araw-araw, pag may dayo na biglang pumasok sa inyo at sinabing oo, tarantado nga silang lahat kumpara sa mga ibang kakilala nya, hindi ba babayagan mo sya agad? Kahit na galit ka sa pamilya mo? Dahil walang may karapatan na manghimasok sa bahay mo at husgahan ang lahat, nang hindi naiintindihan ang sitwayson sa likod ng kilos, at hindi nararanasan ang mga dinanas ninyo. IKAW lang ang pwedeng gumawa nun. Ganun din to.

At sino pa nga ba ang um-agree? Ang usual suspects: ang middle-class bourgeois slacktivists, na complain ng complain tungkol sa corruption at buwis nila, pero wala naman talagang pakialam sa pag-unlad ng bansa, na walang alam sa sariling kultura, na ayaw mag-Tagalog, na handang-handa na para pumila sa embahada ng ibang bansa, magka-visa man lang. Sakit kayo sa ulo.

Ang development ay dapat para sa sarili nating bayan, bago ang lahat. Kung bumilis ba ang wifi sa Pilipinas at umayos ang NAIA at magka-ham on foccacia si minamahal na British sir, e ano naman to sa kalahati ng populasyon ng bansa natin na nabubuhay sa singkwenta piso kada araw? Malalasap ba nila to? Magagamit? Ma-e-enjoy? Aayos ba buhay nila?

Agree ka ba kasi gusto mo talaga ng development sa bansa? O gusto mo lang ma-impress si foreigner?

At yan ang tanong, para kanino ba talaga ang development? Yan ang dapat mong pagkaabalahan, kung aangat ba ang buhay ng mga sarili mong kababayan, bago mo isipin kung may maayos na amenities ang mga dayo sa bansa natin. At narinig ko na ang "tourism will bring jobs and development" argument. Oo naman, di ko naman sinasabing i-abandon ito. Pero hindi ito dapat ang priority. Dahil "investing in agriculture and fisheries and healthcare and universal primary education for our people FIRST will also bring development", hindi ba? And much faster too. So siguro naman dapat sikmurahin muna natin pansamantala ang pangit na NAIA at i-prioritize ang investing in our people, ano?

Hindi ba kahit kunwari pangit ang bahay natin, inaasahan nating mag-behave ang mga bisita natin? So hindi ba dapat asahan din natin ito sa mga bisita sa bansa natin? Problema na natin ang kahirapan natin, at MARAMING tao ang nagsusumikap para umunlad ang Maynila at ang Pilipinas, sa harap ng korupsyon at walang kakwentahan ng mga opisyales natin. So since hindi nila alam ito, at ang surface lamang ang nakikita nila bilang mga dayuhan, fair ba ang mga sweeping statements at generalizations nila?

Hindi.

Pero lalong hindi fair kung ikaw na Pinoy, um-agree ka rin. Umayos ka gago. Binabastos yung nanay mo, huy.

How Not to Get Robbed

2011-07-02T18:13:00.003+08:00

Simple. Don't show off your shit. Dumbasses.

I hear all these stories of people who've had their phones snatched, their iPods taken out of their bags, and so on around the metro and I realized, in all the many years I've been fanning around this "dangerous" city, not once have I ever lost anything.

And I know why: Because I never have my stuff out. Ever. And yes, I do ride all the jeeps and trains that everyone else rides, so I'm exposed to the same thieving scum that you all are.

Now I'm not talking about people who've lost stuff in an out-and-out hold-up. That's not preventable. A dude pulls a knife out in a jeepney and you will have to turn your stuff over, whether you've been flashing it around like a d-bag or have it buried deep in your backpack. I'm talking about that fool who's waving his iPod Touch in your face on the jeep that starts at Pasay Rotonda, or the doof trying to pick up wifi on his smartphone in the middle of a crowded mall. Those idiots.

I had a sort of friend who was constantly losing (or almost losing) his, as he called them, "pinakamamahal na gadgets". Why? Because they were always exploding out of his pockets. He'd have his iPod half-out of one pocket, a PSP half-out of another, while he was qwerty-texting on a new smartphone in both hands. And, of course, earphones on meant he was oblivious to any approaching thieves. Now you'd think he was rich, what with all this shit, but he wasn't. So he'd be riding jeeps and buses like normal folks and, surprise surprise, make himself a target for snatchers. Or he'd lose a cellphone after he set it down somewhere because he was fiddling with all his other stuff.

This is obvious show-off-y behavior, people trying to call attention to themselves by trying to look rich. Only, when they get snatched from, you'll find out they're still paying off that iPad on their credit card, or paying their friend off who sold them that smartphone second-hand, and so on. Now I have nothing against people who aren't well off, but if you can't afford to lose your shit, you have to be more careful with it, ano?

You've gotten onto jeepneys with dumbasses like this, surely, who'll be qwerty-texting the whole ride, practically waving their phones in everyone's faces. Then they make a call and talk about inane things with some other dumbass forever. I almost never take my phone out in jeepneys, and I always have it on silent. I figure, if it's really important, whoever it is won't text, they'll call. So it can wait. And if I do get a call, I whisper very furtively and try to get it over as quickly as possible.

I mean, is it really necessary to have your PSP out on the commute through Malibay? Surely you can just sit in public transport for thirty minutes or so without going insane that you're not creating explosions on a small screen. Do you really need an iPad to sit in the middle of Glorietta waiting for someone? Because if you were so rich and classy, you'd be sitting in an overpriced coffee shop, downing their overpriced swill and using their wifi there, not piggy-backing on free mall-wide wifi. Tsk.

I don't get this burning desire to show off when we know, we know, that Manila is crawling with snatchers. Why? It defies logic. I could go into our propensity for buying stuff we can't really afford, but I think I've already been on about Manila materialism in some previous post.

Thieves are a fact of life, in the developed and developing world. So let's not point to the West and say it's Manila's fault it's so dangerous. My dad's gotten almost robbed in Paris. I was in London hearing stories of how kids just pull your iPod off you on the buses, because they can tell from the earphones what it is. So given that the world in general, and Manila in particular, is full of assholes jonesing for your gadgets, it behooves you to be more careful, ano? So hows about this little bit of advice:

Leave some of that shit at home. You are not the electronics section of SM. You do not need to be walking around town with all that stuff falling out of your pockets.

Fellow comic geeks, a word if you will

2011-06-15T02:14:00.007+08:00

And that word is: chill.

I refer to X-Men: First Class, a slick, fast-paced movie chockful of action and story, a rare combination amidst the crap Hollywood subjects us to these days. Sure, it's not going to change the world or anything, but it was good. So what's the beef?

Well I've been hearing chatter here and there, ostensibly from other comic fanboys, about how they were so disappointed in the movie, how we must never speak of it again, etc. Really? Come on. What's not to like? The emotional window into Magneto's past, someone who is, arguably, a terrorist? The humanizing of Charles Xavier, always otherwise portrayed as a telepathic Mahatma Gandhi? The grounding of the fantastic world of mutants in the Cuban Missile Crisis? What?

Apparently, there were a lot of inconsistencies. And again I say: come on. The X-Men comics started in 1963. That's almost fifty years of stories there. How exactly is anyone going to fit all that continuity into a two hour movie? What's important is you maintain the spirit of the comic books without alienating mainstream audiences, which I think the movie did very well.

And I think this is a typical fanboy reaction, to get so lost in minutae that you forget the point of the comics: the stories. Maybe the comics had Jean Grey, Cyclops, etc. as first class instead of Havok and Darwin. So? The question to ask is: was the movie's story good? I'm going to say yes.

This is our chance to share this "hobby" of ours, pedestrian as that word may sound, with the rest of the world, and show them the depth and grandeur of comic book stories. In a world where most of us have very little power to shape things around us, such stories can be inspirational, no?

What annoys me is that the so-called fanboys bitching about the movie here in Manila seem, at least to me, to be occasional ones at best, people who maybe watched the 90s X-Men cartoon and maybe own a few trade paperbacks. I've been buying comics from Marvel, DC and small presses every month in a largely unbroken stretch since I was 16 (I'm 27 now). So if I found this movie awesome, surely you lot have no right to bitch about inconsistencies.

What annoys me even more is that this is even more likely just some hipster reflex to shit on everyone else's parade. You know, you're such a connoisseur if you dump on something everyone else likes, because your taste is so much better than everyone else's. We all want to be the one to scream that the emperor has no clothes, even if, in this case, he does. And this cynicism is not exclusive to comic-dom as well.

So fanboys, the highlight of the movie for you may have been pointing out that Havok's plasma blasts should have been yellow, not red, but most of the rest of us don't care. So reel it in. And shut the hell up. I'm trying to enjoy the movie.

Excuse My Political Incorrectness

2011-04-30T17:53:00.009+08:00

You can do it. You are, after all, Filipino.

Isn't this what ads in our country ask us to do every damn day?

Think about it. If you're a woman, for example, ads today tell you to brush your teeth so you can flash a "winning" smile at a host of men and get them to do your heavy lifting. After which you can choose the hottest one at the end to flirt with. Ergo, the point of your white teeth is so you can be a manipulative bitch who will use a man, then discard him for the next hot guy to come along.

Or how about that "feminine hygiene" product ad? And gawd, we're so quesy to say "vagina" on TV no? It's basically a vaginal wash, but this is the country where the "sex" in "same-sex marriage" will still be bleeped out even though its used there to mean gender, not intercourse, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Anyway, the girl drops some papers and all the guys drop to their knees around her to help pick them up. And the voiceover says, "Aren't you glad you washed?" with whatever brand. Why? Because these men might be sniffing your vag while they're down there? Freaks.

My point being that all these ads, from the ones above, to the whitening products where the dude only notices the girl after she's used it, to the hair products where the girl gets her way because guys were entranced by her luscious locks, all of these tell women that the end of all their beautifying is not for themselves, but to get men. Aren't women insulted by all this?

Or how about that line of male face products where they get Sam YG, an Indian himself, to make fun of his own race and portray a stereotypical funny-accent Bumbay who points out all the facial flaws in a bunch of guys? Then in walks Derek Ramsey, who, by his entrance, we are meant to acknowledge as such a hunk. Anyway, for the dark-skinned guy, he goes, "There's nothing wrong with being dark." Then he turns to the camera and gives us an "I'm a god coming down to your level" look and says, "I mean, look at me." Oh wow. Derek likes being dark-skinned like us mere mortals? Such an honor. Well if there's nothing wrong with it, why are you trying to sell us this shit Derek? "But it's not for everyone," he clarifies. Ahhhh. The skin we're born with. That's not for everyone. Right. Got it.

At least gays don't seem to be getting the short end of the stick as much nowadays. I can only think of that one ice cream commercial, with that queeny guy who throws himself at the guy singing his love to a girl, even if the guy has shown no interest in him (because, you know, gays are so desperate like that, no? Tsk.). I don't know why. Maybe there are more gay ad execs putting their feet down. Well good for them then, if that's the case.

But other than that, some things stay the same, no? "Masa" items like coffee, seasoning mix, and so on are sold in Tagalog ads, while ads for banks, beauty products, malls, and other "elite" products are in English, reinforcing the whole rejection of our own language as something not to be used in polite, "educated" company. Mestizo, foreign-looking types dominate all the ads and are celebrated as the standard of beauty we should aspire to even if they look nothing like the average Pinoy. "Pweh-deyng mah-kee-tha-whug?" the obvious Brazilian asks the Pinoy dude in that phone ad, and we're supposed to be thrilled, because the foreigner has (1) deigned to speak to a Pinoy, and (2) deigned to speak in our language. He has gotten the attention of a foreigner! He has reached the pinnacle of existence!

That's not to say that there aren't any good ads, but these holdouts from a less tolerant time continue to persist, no? It's 2011. You'd think we'd step up to broader ways of thinking.

It's insidious when you realize that the Philippines is apparently the largest market for advertising in Asia. I read this in some Wall Street Journal article on (wait for it...) Willie Revilliame (I know, I was shocked too), talking about his influence because of his ad-drawing power, and what the tussle between channel 2 and channel 5 over him was really about (moolah from advertising). But you don't have to have read that to know the massive airtime ads get. You only need to, you know, actually watch local TV to see the shameless glut of ads we get. For every 5 minutes of a show, you get probably 10 minutes of ads. And anyone who's watched a Pacquiao fight on free TV has surely reached a point where they wanted to slit their wrists from the number of ads, not just inbetween rounds but even during them, at the bottom of the screen. I'd point out that this is fostering a shameless level of consumerism in this, a developing country with a large wealth disparity between people, but that's a whole other issue.

So given the frequency of ads we're assaulted with on TV everyday, and in the form a lot of them come in, what are we being told? That only the fair, straight-haired girl will get the guy, and that's all a girl should aim for anyway? That the tall, mestizo guy who looks nothing like us is the standard of beauty we should aspire to? That English is the only language to use if you want to be taken seriously? That it's okay to poke fun at (non-Caucasian) foreigners, anyway, joke lang naman, we didn't mean to be racist? But we should cream our pants and bow down whenever in the presence of white people?

In some ways, ads have more influence than TV shows, because they have about 15 seconds to pack in a powerful compulsion to buy. And I know that ad agencies' and product manufacturers' aim is really to sell, not to educate or whatever. But given the extent of their influence, it'd be nice if they exercised some restraint and actually thought about what messages they're sending across no?

Just a thought.

Panalo Ka Talaga Ping!

2011-03-30T03:53:00.007+08:00

Psst. You're back na pala? Congrats! Napatunayan mo na ang matagal na naming alam - na joke time talaga ang kakayanan ng NBI at PNP.

Teka, galing ka sa PNP di ba...?

At nagpa-presscon ka agad! Showbizzzzz! Pero sabagay, kelangan mo nga rin naman magpaliwanag kung bakit ka tumakbo, nagtago, lumabag sa batas na syang dapat pinagtatanggol mo bilang dating police chief at current lawmaker, and so on. Pero in furness, may time ka para magkwento ng natutunang mga putahe sa Google, i-confirm ang bagay na gustong malaman ng sambayanan (na really and truly nang break si Jodi at Pampi), at mag-guesting sa Umagang Kay Ganda para magluto. Ibang klase ka Ping!

So whazza plan man? Balik lang sa Senate? Like nothing happened? There's so much to choose from: pwede kang makigulo sa nagiging kalokohan nang hearings sa "alleged" (according to ANC, alleged pa rin) corruption sa AFP. Oo nga pala, ma-i-impeach ang ombudsman ng favorite ex-president mo! Handa na ba ang toga mo Ping? Chance mo na tong makabawi, tutal na screw-over ka nung huling nagka-impeachment, kay Pareng Erap, at brinaso ka tuloy na magbitiw sa PNP at mag-withdraw ng support. Gantihan blues na! Go go go!

Pero yun na yun, tapos na? Hindi naman siguro precedent-setting ang ginawa mo, no? Wala sigurong mga ibang akusado na mag-iisip na, kung senador na nga, na gumagawa ng batas, walang tiwala sa legal system, ako pa? Di naman. Di naman siguro magkakaroon ng mass disappearances ng mga suspect sa iba't ibang mga kaso, na pinatapang ng ginawa mo at ng katotohanang di ka naman talaga paparusahan sa paglabag mo sa isang lehitimong arrest warrant. Ang arrest warrant naman kasi, di naman proof of guilt. Ibig sabihin lang, may probable cause. E ikaw, takbo agad. Mukhang guilty tuloy.

Gets ko naman na wala kang tiwala kay GMA noon. Pero hello, ilang buwan nang nakaupo si PNoy. Excuses ka talaga! Nagmukha pa tuloy ngayon na suportado ni Presidente yung pagtatago mo, tsk.

Pero baka naman talagang di maka-influence sa ibang mga may kaso ang ginawa mo. Kasi feeling ko, ang ginawa mo ay patunay lang na dalawa ang hustisya sa Pilipinas. Ang una, para sa katulad mong mayaman at makapangyarihan, na pagkatapos bastusin ang due process at pasakitin ang ulo ng iba't ibang ahensiya ng gobyerno, e pwedeng lumantad na lang at magpa-presscon with matching life lessons at mga recipes na nakuha sa Google. Ang pangalawa, para sa mga akusadong snatcher, holdaper, etc., na dadalhin na lang sa Asuncion community precinct sa Tondo para hila-hilahin ang bayag habang nakahubad, tapos mawawala na lang.

But whatchagonnado di ba? Ganyan talaga sa Pinas no? Although, pag inisip mo, sana yung mga lawmaker na katulad mo e nag-ko-contribute sa pagbasag ng double standard na ito, imbis sa pag-reinforce sa kanya. Whatchuthink?

Well since alam naman namin na hindi ka naman talaga paparusahan, at since ikaw na ang nagsabi na ayaw mo nang tumakbo ulit, anong next move ni Ping? Pwede kang mag-TV! Mag cooking show ka ala Jamie Oliver! At Home with Ping! O kaya mag-host ka ng reality show! Mala-Amazing Race! Ang gimik ng show mo, hinahabol ang mga contestants! So maliban sa nagpapaunahan sila at may mga challenge, may mga kukunin yung show mo na ha-hunting sa kanila. Kelangan di magpahuli! Wag lang sana mga ex-NBI yung kunin mong hahabol ha?

Winner di ba? May future ka talaga Ping! Pwede ka rin maging Queen, este King of All Media!

Pero totohanin mo ha, wag ka nang tumakbo sa sunod na election, k? Mahirap kasing makita sa Senado ang katulad mong binastos na nga ang legal process, self-righteous pa. Inis.

Let Me Tell You a Story

2011-03-26T03:19:00.009+08:00

Once upon a time, my family lived in India. And though, during this time, my parents probably made less than 10,000 rupees a month and lived with all of us kids in a two-bedroom flat, they always got us books. Always.

Because reading is supposed to be a hobby within the reach of everyone. You may not have electricity or paved roads or transportation, but books... Ah. Easy to carry, easy to pass along, rustling pages transporting you to places you'll probably never see in life. And cheap!

So why is it that here, books have been appropriated by the upper-class as tools for exclusion? "Have you read Book X?" he asks, in that sneering tone that implies he knows you haven't, and thinks less of you for it. "Why no, I haven't. And fuck you sir."

Because books here are expensive, imported things, sold in the ivory towers of bookstores in posh, upscale malls. National Bookstore has become, for all intents and purposes, just that place moms go to for school supplies for their kids. Sure it still has a book section, but it's gotten smaller over the years. Now, you have to buy your books in Fully Booked or Powerbooks, braving snooty stares and English speaking in voices accented just so to get to the stacks.

I used to wonder why Pinoys, in general, don't seem to like to read. It seemed to me, at first, that a lot of people actually reveled in their distaste for the written word. Now I'm coming to think that perhaps it's a backlash against the intellectual snobbery and elitism of People Who Read here. Books are things we hold like talismans no? We brandish them before us, talking loudly about them as if to say, "Look at me, I bought a P700 book so I am not poor. Take note."

In other countries, publishers are encouraged to print cheaper versions of foreign books that can only legally be sold locally, which makes them accessible to the masa. I suppose this lack of government support here is why only imported books come in, and thus, become appropriated as bourgeois symbols. How sad.

It doesn't help that the local writing scene isn't a particularly thriving one. Have you been to a Filipiniana section lately? It's depressing. Fully Booked only had coffee table books. The clerk looked at me dumbly when I asked her if they had any Pinoy books with words in them. The fact that we have so few we need to gather them in one section, instead of having a wealth of local books we can stack with all the foreign stuff, speaks for itself.

Because the upper-class, which can afford to support reading, just doesn't want anything local. No, we want Western stuff. We want English stuff. Which is not bad in itself, except that it's the only stuff we want. And no demand means no supply, so very little Filipino stuff gets printed. So the masa, seeing only snooty English stuff in the bookstores, flips us off and walks away.

But we need a mass base to develop a culture of reading. So we need local, relatable books that can speak to the experiences of our people, in our language. Aside from the fact that we also need them because they, oh I don't know, enrich our sense of identity and history and culture. And for these books to be printed, we need to support local writers and publishers.

I recently found a book I'd been hunting down for a while now, a Palanca Award winner. I paged through it looking for publishing details and found... nothing. This guy who won the top literary award in our country had to self-publish. And why? I'm going to guess it was because his story, aside from being about the communist insurgency and, thus, probably offensive to upper-class sensibilities, was written in Tagalog. So there.

Sure you have your Bob Ong books, but that's just the exception that proves the rule. And Bob Ong, good as he is, mostly just tells stories about Pinoy life in the city. How many thousands of stories across our archipelago remain untold because the only market for books here is the richies who will only read Western (or Western-ish) stuff written in English?

In so peeing around the domain of reading like that, we keep out local stories, local writers, local language and local publishers. And they can do a hell of a lot more for our culture than your trying to sound smart by extolling the virtues of The Fountainhead, methinks.

And don't tell me there's no money in writing here and that's why no one much does. Some of the best authors in history have been published in, by and, most importantly, for third-world countries. And they've found success. But see, Paolo Coelho and Co. weren't writing so they could inspire pa-deep, whiny, pseudo-intellectuals from another country; they were writing for their own people, in their own language. And in so doing, they created something unique the rest of the world wanted to see too.

I also point to the lack of even public libraries in the country. Where have you seen a large, credible library here that's accessible to all? If people who can't afford books can't even borrow them, that's just going to add to them thinking reading is just an unrelatable rich-person thing.

Besides, reading is a fad even amongst the middle- and upper-class. What exactly are people reading? Twilight? Harry Potter? Whatever tween/yuppy-shit Hollywood has mined for movie source material? How often do people here who can afford books buy them just because they actually want to read? Instead of because some hip, new book everyone is talking about is out and they want in on it?

A few months ago there was a furor when someone suggested we tax books. Normally, I'd be affronted by any attempt to impede the flow of knowledge. But think about it. If reading has become yet another elitist hobby that only the rich can truly indulge in here, I think they should tax away. Why should middle/upper-class types get to appropriate what, in other countries, is the only real thing that rich and poor share, as yet another means to create a class divide? Why shouldn't the poor get something out of it too?

That expensive hardbound copy of Eat Pray Love you got at Fully Booked High Street you talk loudly about in public so people will think you have depth and class could have been taxed to support a public school in the boondocks of Samar. That, I think, would have put it to actually good use. Instead of just being a tool for you to impress people with your pseudo-intellectuality.

White Power?

2011-03-03T00:03:00.029+08:00

1915

1930s

2000s

2008

2009

2010

Don't you think there's something inherently racist about skin-whitening products? I do.

Why do this to your skin? Why hate who you are?

Tsk.

Your Blog Sux

2011-02-20T19:12:00.018+08:00

Come now, admit it: You've read blogs and thought this. I only said it.

Before we go on, a disclaimer: if you're on my blog roll, dear friends and countrymen, obviously this post doesn't refer to you. I wouldn't have linked my blog to yours if I thought your posts were shit. Obviously I think you're witty, or I get some perverse thrill from reading about your life, or something.

But the large majority of blogs we read cannot be described in such charitable terms, and you know it. Many are the WTF moments we have as we encounter the rambling, witless or just plain uninteresting whinings of people who vomit their feelings out onto the internet, without a care as to who may be reading their blogs, or the impression others may now have of them, as a result (that they are, in fact, slightly pathetic).

So in the interest of offering unsolicited advice (which describes most of the advice I hand out, to be honest), I present a list of dos and don'ts for blogging. And yes, I know many are the types who've come out with such rules. So how is mine different, you ask? Well, my list is nastier. And if you follow it, you'll avoid pissing me off. Not being a target of my bile should be incentive enough.

Off we go.

1. Admit first, even just to yourself, that you are writing for others. I will. I'm not writing here just for myself, just for all those nebulous deep-kuno conceits we throw around like "catharsis." Otherwise I'd just maintain a secret journal I'd hide in my underwear drawer. I like people reading my posts. I like the comments. I like knowing somewhere, someone is being agitated for or against what I just wrote, which is why I still publish comments that say I'm full of shit (go through some of my posts, they're there). This is a public forum, and I'm fully aware (and approving of the fact) that I'm writing for others.

2. That said, actually write for others. Be interesting. And no tweetums shit about "Ooooh, my day was so bad, I got caught in traffic, my boss yelled at me, manang ran out of java rice in the carinderia during lunch, oh well, tomorrow's a new day, good night readers." Nobody cares about your personal life. Unless you relate it to some sort of universal experience, for example: "I was in line at the sex shop buying some lube and I realized, we spend a lot of our lives in lines, ano?" Sure, not everyone lines up at the sex shop (maybe you get your lube at the 7-11, I don't know). But everyone has lined up sometime, and can relate to the realization of lots of time wasted in lines. People need a hook so they can relate what you're writing about to themselves. Unless you're Britney Spears or PNoy, we really couldn't care less about posts talking about your lunch or your shopping trip or whatever. Save that shit for Twitter.

3. Write as yourself. As in, in the language you speak in. If you're not some konyo inglisero in real life, don't try to be one on your blog. We're not impressed. PS, if you think I'm a konyo inglisero on my blog, why yes, it's because I'm also one in real life. See. I'm being true to myself.

4. Don't try to be witty-to-the-Westerners. I highly doubt that your blog about the musings of a single yuppy living in Metro Manila has a high following in, I don't know, Pennsylvania or Munich or wherever. That said, if you're trying (emphasis on "trying") to be witty, be Pinoy about it, ha? I read some person's blog one time where, I suppose, he/she was trying to be witty + fill space so he/she posted a list of things he/she is wondering about daw, chief among them this question, obviously taken from an American website/forwarded e-mail: "Does God hate poor people? Is that why tornadoes hit trailer parks?" Ano daw? Where have you seen a trailer park in the Philippines? I think the poor people living in absolute squalor around the country would love to live in a trailer park. And the only time I hear about ipu-ipos hitting the country is when they hit ricefields. Annoying ang pag-ta-trying-hard na ganito. Wag tularan.

5. Relating to the above example, don't try to fill space using stuff you've found in a forwarded e-mail or some other website. No one's expecting you to maintain a quota of posts ano? So if you really have nothing to say on your blog right now, say nothing. This also includes people who put up Youtube videos as posts on their blogs: "Check out this funny video of a dude getting hit in the nuts while rollerblading hahaha!" Since we have Facebook now, shit like this should go there. But I think the most annoying Youtube video blog posts I've seen are the ones where the person uploads a song he/she likes, then posts the lyrics underneath it. What's the point of this? How is this post useful? Don't waste space people. Someone with something actually witty to say could have been edged off Blogspot or Wordpress or wherever because they didn't have enough (bandwidth? Is that the techie term?) to accomodate him because of your lame song reposting.

6. And God, don't talk about your emotional trauma in your blog. See a therapist. Oversharing emo crap in public is really gross. Do I really need to know that you were crying in a fetal position yesterday because you found out your boyfriend has a boyfriend? Do you really want me to have that mental image of you? Do we need to see your embarrassing rants online? Tsk tsk. Carry yourself with dignity; some things should remain private.

I do have one friend who seems to have mastered the fine art of blogging about emo stuff while remaining appropriately vague, talking about feelings, realizations, etc. while not describing in detail the initiating event. This is the only way to go about it. Unless you set up an anonymous blog. Otherwise, you're just embarrassing yourself.

7. And last, and really, my pet peeve to see on blogs: don't blog about the shit you've bought. This is just tacky. Unless you're in PR, or being paid to promote something, or you really just bought something great and you want to spread the news so others buy it too, don't. Just don't. And don't fucking take pics of the stuff and post them on your blog too. Nobody cares. It just makes you appear superficial and KSP.

I don't know if following all this will result in better blog-posting; frankly, there are blogs that, while inoffensive, are just plain boring. I suppose you need to at least be born with a quantum of wit or sarcasm if you're going to be able to write anything worth a damn. But yeah, if you follow all this, at least your blog will just be boring. Instead of being actively annoying.

I suppose, in the end, you have to ask yourself this: "Do people really give a shit about what I'm writing? Really?" If you can say yes, why, blog away. Otherwise, stick to your status updates. They're shorter and will probably be less intellectually taxing for you. And only people on your friend list will have to see them.

The Road to Hell is Paved by the DPWH

2011-02-11T19:26:00.014+08:00

"God be with us," said the sticker in the tricycle I sat in. "Indeed," I thought as I viewed the snarl of traffic before me.

I'm beginning to think that some satanic ritual was performed during the groundbreaking of all the roads leading to and from where I live, Merville Park. Hence, the hellish experience getting to and leaving it.

If you exit from Gate 1 of the subdivision, you are led to the access road directly in front, which is in Pasay. Gets? My subdivision is in Paranaque City. Immediately after you leave its main gate, you are in Pasay.

Now I don't want to disparage Pasay but, except for a few parts, most of the access road is bounded by what is pretty much a shanty town. Apparently, when the area was declared Pasay property, these informal settlers appeared within days and set up. Which means that you have to trundle along at a certain (slow) speed, lest you ram into tricycles/jeeps/cars parked on both sides of the road, or somebody's turo-turo stand, or some kanto boy fanning around the street in just boxers and a towel, or whatever. Or you have to suddenly break like a motherfucker because someone has decided to stop his car/jeep/canter/sidecar in the middle of the street to unload paninda. I know this sounds insufferably konyo, but you try being on this road when you're just trying to get home because you're tired and it's late, and the trike you're in has to suddenly slow down so it can go around a crowd of tambays furiously betting at an OTB.

Of course now there's a new access road, what was supposed to be the start of the C-5 extension (hello Money Villar!), but it's accessible only if you have a car. Which I don't. Hence, if I'm commuting, I have to go through the chaos.

Once you're on the West Service Road itself, this is when the true horror starts. What should be a 3-5 minute drive down it to Nichols regularly turns into a 30 minute to one hour wait. You sit in the jeep/taxi/car wondering what the hell is going on. Is there a horrible accident holding everyone up? More road repairs? Has Jesus Himself come down from heaven to sign autographs in the middle of the road? And then you finally make it to Nichols and find... nothing. Absolutely nothing. No fucking reason for the horrendous snarl of traffic. Other than a bizarrely designed intersection and motorists with no road courtesy. Of course, sometimes, the traffic is caused by those spawns of Satan himself, the MMDA enforcers, whose very attempts at directing traffic are what cause the jams.

And finally, you come down to the SLEX, where you are greeted with... incessant roadwork! Just when one project wraps up, why the DPWH, or Maynilad, or who knows who the hell this month start up a new project! And so the idea that you may die of old age in a traffic jam becomes an increasing possibility.

Of course, you may decide to cut through the back of Merville, exit through Gate 4, and avoid all this shit. But that means cutting through a succession of other subdivisions, with so many gates and guards, you'd think they were hiding the Holy Grail inside. If you're in a car, that means you'll need at least three different subdivision stickers to get through. Perahan blues! And once you finally hit the road that runs alongside the airport runway, you are caught in another jam, as you reach the intersection between the Multinational road and the rest of the C-5 extension (which has no intervening connection between this and the new access road that's supposed to be its beginning, mind. Again, thank you Money Villar!) This is not an exciting prospect say, if you're desperately trying not to miss a flight at Terminal 1 or 2, and praying to Jesus, Allah, Buddha or whichever deity gives a fig that the airport gate won't close. Wouldn't you agree?

Finally, you make it out onto the main road, and you hit Roxas Boulevard thinking it's all clear to Makati or Manila. Hells no! You forget... Baclaran Church! The prayles who situated it there centuries ago must have had a prescient sense of humor. Trundling along Roxas trying to get past the stream of devotees really makes you appreciate the meaning of the word kalbaryo. You'll see for yourself if you're ever stupid enough to pass there on a Wednesday morning.

To think we moved here because it's 15 minutes away daw from the Makati CBD in ideal conditions. Ideal being if, by some miracle, every vehicle in your way vanishes into thin air, allowing you to cruise along at your leisure.

Somewhere right now, some sadistic devil-worshipper working for the DPWH has his feet up on his desk and is laughing an evil laugh. Le sigh.

Good God!

2011-02-09T15:57:00.005+08:00

I'm not a particularly religious person anymore. I honestly cannot remember the last time I went to church. But sometimes, things get so horrible, even the most agnostic/athiestic person can do nothing else but say, "Good God!"

Good God, I exclaim, listening to the unfolding horror that is the Garcia probe, listening to the huge amounts being listed out. Good God, we have that much money available to the military? And that much of it is being stolen?

Good God, I say, as I watch Lingot blatantly lie on national television. You have no idea your wife owns eight houses in the US? That she's made over forty trips to various countries in the past twenty years? Are you even aware sir that you are married? You seem to have no idea what this woman who's supposed to be your wife is doing.

Good God, I say, as I watch the shocking news that Angelo Reyes has committed suicide. Good God, look at his credentials. Harvard, Ateneo, AIM, etcetera. What a waste. To have done all that and then ended up tarred by the corruption within this government. I had no idea you had all these academic credentials. There is no doubt, however, that you were heavily involved in all these corrupt activities. And I say why? How did someone who apparently started so bright end up mired in all this shit? And we will forever remember you now for your suicide. What a shame. What a shame.

Good God, I say, as I listen to how AFP generals manipulated United Nations funds for their benefit. Is no institution sacred to you all? Will you steal money even from the governments of the world? That you sent a uniformed general to personally pick up a UN check in New York so you could steal from it leaves me aghast. There are apparently no depths you will not sink to.

Good God, I think, as I watch that hotbed of corruption and criminality (a.k.a. the House of Representatives) conduct an inquiry into stealing in the AFP. As Mike Enriquez would say, "Excusemepo?!" How dare you people conduct such inquiries while wholesale stealing of the pork barrel has become a permanent fixture of your lives! The shamelessness! Clean your house first!

Good God, I say, as I watch Merci Gutierrez defend the horror that is her plea bargain with Garcia. How do you look yourself in the mirror? How do you go to office everyday? How can you call yourself the Ombudsman of the Filipino People? You've sat on the most number of cases as compared to the past three Ombudsmen! Sat on, I reiterate, not even dismissed. Meaning, she has done nothing about them. Meanwhile, you have a larger budget than the past three Ombudsmen combined! Shame! Shame!

But most of all, good God, I scream, everytime I see the face of Major General Carlos Garcia. Good God, that you have stolen so much from this country's military, and you can still even consider bargaining! You have no soul sir, that much is clear. Your entire family is under investigation for criminal activities here and abroad! Your wife and all your children! Your guilt is clear as day! You are the FACE of stealing in the military! You are a pox on this nation! If God truly watches over all of us, if He is truly just, He would see to it that you and all your benefactors burn for the things you have done.

I have no eloquence for this post, no witty, biting putdowns. I only have a seemingly unending sense of horror as I follow these proceedings daily. There are no curses in English or Tagalog that could do justice to the revulsion, the outrage I feel as these so-called leaders of my government parade themselves on TV, showing themselves to be thieves of the highest order.

All I can say is, "Good God!" And if God is indeed good, then these men and women are the direct, polar opposite, the antithesis of that word.

And God have mercy on us, the Filipino people, for these men and women are our leaders.

Your super-bitter single friend (and how she REALLY feels about being single)

2011-01-27T21:46:00.022+08:00

You know Valentine's is coming up when your super-bitter single "friend" barfs nega vibes all over your Facebook feed.

Now, now, admit it. We all have a friend like this. The super-bitter single friend is different from the single-friend-who-wants-a-boyfriend. That friend is ok. She believes in love, is putting herself out there, wants to meet someone nice, maybe goes on sometimes about the lack of quality men in the metro. Like that girl who was the lead character in "He's Just Not That Into You." That's fine. That's healthy.

No, the super-bitter single friend is the one loudly and constantly declaring that she's happy on her own, that she's a confident career woman, that she doesn't need a man to make her feel good (maybe just a vibrator), that she pities people tied down in relationships, and so on, like the lyrics of a bad Destiny's Child song. Which is all well and good. I don't discount the truth that there really are strong, confident career women who are happy being single and don't need men. Except this one feels the need to declare such things so frequently, you have to wonder if she's telling you or convincing herself.

You'll notice I've been using "her" and "she" a lot. At the risk of sounding incredibly sexist, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that everyone's super-bitter single friend is usually a woman. Now, before you pillory me, think: do you know any straight, single guy who ever even cares to comment for or against relationships, unless asked? No? I thought not. Even a lot of gay guys probably don't. Because, and there are guys who are the exception, but unless we're actually in one, we usually don't give a shit about relationships in general. We don't spend time thinking about them, talking amongst ourselves about them, commenting about them online, etc. Unless we're with female friends and get asked those "let's get a man's perspective" type questions. I don't know if that makes us shallow and dead inside (it probably does), but my point is that, yes, your super-bitter single friend is most probably a chick.

Back then, ignoring her would be easy. You just had to make an effort to not see her. But in this day and age of social networking, why she's free to rain bile on your feed every damn day. So you get her status updates proclaiming nausea over love, cynicism over couples, or the "Valentine's is so commercialized!" rants that you know really mean that she's dying inside. Come on.

If you really don't care about being single, and if you're really "Single and HAPPY!" as you say, you wouldn't feel the need to even say anything. I don't.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not a real holiday if you don't get the day off. So Valentine's doesn't really count eh? It's just another excuse for me to maybe get together with some friends, get drunk, and poke fun at people, which we do at other times we hang out anyway. But that's just me. If other people feel it's important to them, that's their business. I'm not going to get all riled up about it. And I'm certainly not going to bitch about them online.

You see, even if I'm not much for relationships, I have friends who are, and for whom having a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife is something that makes them very happy. And who am I to say they're wrong? We're all different people. What I'm happy with may not necessarily be what makes them happy. So I can respect what they want even if it's not what I want right now.

And this is how you can tell your single friend is really your super-bitter single friend: she feels the need to excessively, loudly, publicly dump on the idea of marriage, love, being in a relationship, etc. But what she's really saying is, "I'm lonely. I want a boyfriend."

And this is really my long, winding way of saying: dear super-bitter single friends of the world, Valentine's Day may secretly get you down, though you refuse to admit it, even to yourself. But mercy me, hide in your room for a week if you need to. Don't post shit online, don't walk around in public scowling and griping at the couples you secretly envy, and (most importantly) don't get drunk. You might start crying and expose all those feelings you hide deep down inside. And that'd just be embarrassing.

Spare us your bile. Stew in private.

Things I Want to Die a Fiery Death Before 2011

2010-12-27T19:48:00.016+08:00

Or at least go away and stop happening.

- Metrosexual dressing. No offense to gay dudes, I love you all and I'm all for you getting married and adopting and such, but the next time I see a fat gay dude sausage-casing-squeezed into a super-tight polo and above-the-knee short shorts like he was dressed up by a drunken Gossip Girl stylist, I may cut someone.

- Kris Aquino game shows. Kris Aquino horror movies. Kris Aquino hawking stock cubes and powdered milk every time I switch on a TV. Exposure to Kris Aquino in general. And that bratty toddler of hers.

- Ruffa Gutierrez and Gretchen Baretto using the words "Goyard," "Louis Vuitton," "Hermes" and similar names in a sentence. Mah bitches, this link's for you!

- People putting their feet in their mouth via Twitter: Mai Mislang. Kris Aquino (Nyeta, ikaw na naman?!). Tim Yap.

- And speaking of him, Tim Yap in general. Not that I want him to die a fiery death. But maybe he can go the route of Celine Lopez, who we haven't seen hair or hide of in a while. I'm sure she's out there editing or writing some elitist shit, but thankfully, we haven't heard of it. And that's as it should be.

- Twelve different pictures from twelve different angles of the same "yummy treat" you've been craving for from Starfucks or wherever on your Facebook. If you're craving for it, for God's sake, go buy it and eat it. But spare us the nth photo album of Inane Shit from a Coffee House you're desperately trying to upload by piggy-backing on the free WiFi.

- People with super-expensive smartphones and Blackberries and no load. Who then ask you if you have a Sun SIM. If you can't afford the load, you shouldn't waste the money on the phone.

- The Mother-Mother-Fucker-Fucker MMFF. Seriously. We have great indie and mainstream local movies throughout every year but this all has to grind to a halt in December so we can be assaulted by the latest piece of crap from Bong Revilla, the nth Enteng Kabisote installment, Kris Aquino's latest attempt at relevance, the eternal Shake, Rattle and Roll, and so on. Though at least this year we didn't have Mano Po 200, or whatever number it's up to now. The fact that you need to halt the showing of foreign movies to force people to watch all this should tell you something.

- Manny V. Pangilinan's face/name everywhere. Why can't you be like the other rich businessmen who just take over companies and jack up prices and remain anonymous? Must I see a philanthropy kuno clip of you at the end of every newscast of Aksyon on TV5? Did I have to see your face for weeks on end on those PLDT SME contest tarps along the SLEX, where you were one of the winners of your own contest? (And PS, the Burger King Philippine franchise you own is neither a small nor a medium enterprise. It's kinda fucking big, no?) Did we need all those full page newspaper ads of you and that movie you're making on your lola's life? And so on. And what's with that movie anyway? Are you trying to create some long, distinguised family history for yourself a la the old rich in this country? Not that there's anything distinguished about those farts, mind.

- Those nearly-naked self-portrait profile pics on Facebook. Seriously guys. You have on your friend lists high school and college friends, possibly teachers from all across your academic history, aunts, uncles, parents, maybe even grandparents, current and former workmates, and so on. Is this really what you want us to see, your pubes peeking out of low-rise briefs/pants while you're flexing? Ewww.

- People saying "j'adore" and "PAKK!" a lot. Unless you magically turn into Carrie Bradshaw or Angelica Panganiban, it's just going to make me want to kill you.

This is all I really ask for in the new year. Give me this and I promise my bile will be at an all-time low in 2011. Cheers bitches! Happy holiday boozing!

The Great Shit Sale

2010-12-14T22:00:00.012+08:00

The internet lends itself to over-sharing no? But now I find, among the pictures of drunken nights out, bad grammer masquerading as deep thoughts in status updates, sleazy shirtless/pants-less self-portraits, etcetera, this strange new(?) thing: friends neatly lining up things they've bought, taking pictures of them, and then splaying them all over Facebook and other places.

Come on. Who doesn't have a friend who's posted a picture of:

- their new Mac/iPad/iWhatever
- their collection of shoes, all neatly in a row
- their latest cellphone, with that one extra (read: useless) feature your current phone doesn't have
- their video game console/s
- paper bags/boxes from stores that sell expensive things
- books they've been "meaning to get to reading," if they're the intellectual-kuno type. Hence, the showing off is in the guise of self-deprecation, because they're so bad for letting those (expensive) unread books pile up.
- my personal favorite, a picture of their fancy camera. Taking a picture of something you use to take a picture. Haha.
- if your friend is really That Fancy, his/her car

And so on. We all have one. Some of us even have friends who pose with their shit in their pictures.

Now, despite showing all this off, when you do ask them if they're rich, they'll react all flabbergasted, swearing up and down that they're not. So why show it off? Why buy all that shit for that matter?

I do believe this isn't just some superficiality or materialism manifesting itself in our call center-youth (and other rising industries, lest I be pilloried for singling them out), suddenly all flush with cash. Maybe it has to do with the fact that, indeed, we are a poor nation. And so we hoard. We must buy new things now, because, in our heads, (1) we don't know if they'll still be there tomorrow, and (2) we don't know if we'll be able to afford them tomorrow. And just like our ninunos who, I'm told, would equate being fat with not being hungry and poor (and so, you had to show you were fat to show you were well off), we post pictures to assure ourselves, and show others, that we have, indeed, staved off the encrouching specter of poverty for one more day.

I suppose we aren't helped along by the loudspeaker of capitalism, blasting us with ads of how we must have the latest piece of shit nownowNOW!!! I don't think any generation before now has been as assailed with media come-ons about having to buy the next big gadget, the latest piece of clothing, and so on as ours has.

I claim no Buddha-like knowledge of how to live in this day and age of buy-me-buy-me. I myself have no savings and terrible spending habits. But the things I do tend to spend on, I realize, are things that make ME happy, irregardless of whether they impress people or not. I spend on booze a lot, but because I like being with friends, and the booze comes with that. I spend a lot on books and comics, but because I love reading. I don't really talk about my "collections" of such with other people, unless they themselves like comics, or I think they'd enjoy reading a particular book I got.

I think that's the thing about all this consumerism. Imposed on a poor country like ours, and the insecurity that comes with poverty, we are taught to buy the latest piece of shit so we fit in, or look better than our peers. We are not taught to spend on things simply because they make us happy. We live in fear of being poor, of looking poor, and we are taught to hoard, because in surrounding ourselves with junk, we find the security we lack.

Or maybe I'm just over-intellectualizing. Maybe some people really are just show-off-y douchebags. Tsk.

Damn unli-load crap making me want to cut my ears off

2010-11-25T03:09:00.017+08:00

Dear you, the pa-kolehiyala girl I was trapped next to for about thirty minutes in the shuttle from Ayala terminal to the new Merville access road on November 24, 2010 at around past 8 in the evening (I'm being very specific so that, if you ever read this, you'll know I'm talking about you):

Do you really think any of the complete strangers sharing the cramped quarters of that van wanted to listen in on the inanities of your humdrum twenty-something life, in the line, during the thirty-or-so minutes it took to get to my stop, and probably continuing even after I got off? Do you really think we wanted to hear about how you want to hang in Starbucks? Or your trip to Davao? Or you relating details of a conversation with... someone about... something? Do you think we enjoyed listening to you slurring each word you said because, in the minds of many middle-class, sort-of educated, twenty-something Pinoys, this conveys competence in English and, thus, intelligence? When it really just makes you sound ditzy and pretentious? And stupid?

Wait, what's that? Did you say you're from UP? Then why the pa-kolehiyala ere?

Let's be honest: people who yap incessantly on cellphones in public are, unconsciously or not, convinced that every detail of their lives is of the most interesting, absorbing, mind-boggling quality that must be discussed at length. Which is why they'd make a phone call instead of waiting to chat with a friend over a beer or a coffee, like normal people. Because their lives are Just That Important. Everything needs to be discussed now.

And these people do it in public because they want to be overheard. They want people to hear about the stupid things they buy, the meaningless discussions they've had, the crap they had for lunch, and so on. Why? Because, in their minds, what they're doing is so much better than what you are, and so, overhearing it, you are expected to look on, eyes shining in admiration or envy at the gloriously konyo-yuppy lives they lead. And PS, you are also meant to be impressed at the kolehiyala slurring-of-speech.

But when you think about it, you, the girl who is the object of this post (and others of your ilk), shouldn't you be embarrassed at the amount of meaningless, not to mention, personal information you're loudly divulging in public, in the presence of complete strangers? Your life may be important to you and the people who know you, but do you really think we give a flying fuck? And think about the crap flowing from your mouth. Is any of it really impressive? Really? Do you think anyone's opinion of you has been elevated from overhearing you say, "Yeeaaahhh, I'm on my way home naaaahhh," five times in that oh-so-pa-konyo accent?

And if you think this is a bit too much rant over a short (though it didn't feel like it) encounter with a randomer, well let me explain: I spent many months sharing a... space with someone like this, who yapped on about the inanities of his/her/its lovelife and his/her/its out-of-town-trips to god-knows-who on a cellphone all the livelong day, every damn day. Which was a big fucking distraction when we were supposed to be doing... something important. So maybe it's just me displacing several months worth of irritation. And I'm being deliberately vague because, you never know, this person may read this some time, and I'm more likely to come in contact with him/her/it than with the twit from the shuttle.

And you know who's fault this is? Cellphone service providers. Yes, them, for making all these unlimited load promos that give insecure bozos the ability to telebabad in public, thereby boring everyone within earshot witless with incessant yammering on their mundane existences. Nobody cares if you went to Bora and it was so cool! Shut the fuck up! Cellphones are for emergencies!

So the next time you load up with whatever unli-load crap promo you usually do, don't forget your dignity. And always remember: if you were really as rich and as konyo as you're trying to sound, you would have a line.

Escape from Douche-ville

2010-09-29T23:15:00.003+08:00

I never let pass the opportunity to listen to a good band in a new place. So when my friend suggested we check out Radioactive Sago Project and Noel Cabangon at The Collective in Makati I thought, "Why the hell not?"

Now there was nothing douchey about the music, the part of The Collective they were at (this gallery called OuterSpace), or the event (a launch of some documentaries on the jail system by RockEd Philippines). In fact, that was all for a good cause, and as someone who used to work in an organization heavily involved in jail work, I laud any event that attempts to shine a light on our overburdened, congested, human rights violation of a jail system. But let's step outside for a bit...

It wasn't really the place so much as the crowd. You know how the konyo Makati crowd is at the Fort? Well all the pa-cool Makati kids are here. If you're a pseudo-Bohemian and you own (1) a Bob Marley shirt, (2) a Che Guevarra shirt, (3) a Star Wars shirt (or some geeky equivalent), or (4) a shirt referencing marijuana or stoner culture, you'll fit right in (and thank you Maan S. for pointing out the shirt categories to me). Plus points if you're some skinny kid in shorts who has a tattoo that looks like an ink spill in the dark on your shin/forearm. If you're a girl, it's even easier. You can doll up in whatever club gear you'd usually be in above the waist. Just make sure that, below the waist, you're in flats and pekpek shorts. And you have one of the douchey guys dressed up as I laid out above on your arm.

Everyone was milling around in the center of a courtyard, bobbing their heads and shoulders to some generic house music, but no one was really dancing. It was like a rave that wouldn't start. As the night slogged on, more generic-looking Makati-ites started showing up, as did your usual slew of over-dressed thirty-something expat males, no doubt looking for where all the cool-kid-locals hang out (or for hookers, you can never tell with them). Though in fairness to them, even I looked overdressed in that crowd. And I was in I-can't-give-a-fig-about-dressing-mode, in cargo pants, a t-shirt and rubber shoes.

It had that feel to it, like it was trying to be Cubao X but it was still too... carefully put together. Like the whole bohemian, dressed-down air it was trying to go for was deliberate. You know how celebrities and rich kids go to pseudo-grungy places so they can say they slummed it in a not-so-safe place? This place was kinda like that. Except, with the number of bouncers walking around, and the police station right across the street from it, this place was incredibly safe.

That's not to say there weren't any cool stores there. But it seems more like a place you'd make an afternoon of, go there with a friend, check out some alternative clothing places, have an oh-so-quirky lunch at an oh-so-quirky cafe, then leave. And leave fast, before the sun sets and the doucheyness invades.

If you're looking to slum it with rich kids trying not to look like rich kids, hit this place up. But if you just want to get a beer in a normal place with normal people, keep on looking. Me and my friend (the aforementioned Maan S.) just got the hell out of there.

Dear Max

2010-07-19T14:57:00.001+08:00

Whenever I have feelings I need to deal with, I find I work through them best by writing. So I shall write to you.

It has been a few days since you died and I find the pain, while not lessened, is something I can live with. It is not the excruciating, paralyzing, wracking pain it was when you had just left. It is perhaps something like losing an arm; you eventually learn to live life without it. But you always feel the loss. You always feel less. You always feel like you will never be complete.

I remember how I felt when I realized you were gone. It was like my mind knew, but my heart still hadn’t registered. I remember talking to the doctor and asking questions. I remember touching you a last time, giving you a kiss. I think back and wonder why I did not just fall to the ground and fall apart then and there, how I was able to keep it together until I could lock myself in my room and hide in my grief. I guess, even in the horrific pain I felt, some things prevail. I have always felt that I should never let anyone see me cry, and even on that day, I managed to hold on to that. It is not machismo, mind you. You see, when you let others see you cry, you let them see who you are. You give them a window into your heart, and I have trusted very few people enough to let them see who I really am.

And you were one of those exceptions Max. With your charm and your heart and your zest for life, how could I not fall in love with you? How could any of us? You never changed. I can remember no day when you did not greet the rising sun with excitement, when you did not burst into my room happy, when you did not run to the door to show me how thrilled you were that I was home. I was always proud of my cynicism, my so-called pragmatism, how I had a wry quip for every situation, but you showed me different. You taught me that I didn’t have to be so hard all the time, that I didn’t have to hide who I was and how I felt every day of my life.

Those first few days without you were unending agony to me. I was so distraught, so angry; I felt like my pain would never end, like I would drown forever in my grief and my fury over how you had been taken from me. Every moment I walked around the house, seeing your things, seeing where you would sit, where you would sleep, was a knife in my heart. I wanted to hide everything that belonged to you so I wouldn’t think of you. I wanted to lock my room and never go in because I remember how you would often fall asleep there. How, once your little snores would fill the room, I would carry you to Mama and Papa’s room so you could sleep there properly. Curled up in the dark, gritting my teeth so hard they hurt, my sobs wracking my whole body, I wondered how I could ever be happy again, how I could ever get over this.

I watched you die before my eyes. All the life drained out of you so fast and suddenly, you were just a thing. I still cannot believe how I managed to function then, how we still managed to get your body into the doctor’s office, how I still managed to turn off the car engine because we had left it on rushing to get you in. How you lay on the doctor’s table, becoming cold while he tried to explain what had happened. That I was not destroyed right then and there still amazes me. Somehow, I managed to remote-control myself through that situation.

And now I think back on all the things we did, and all the things I could have done with you in those last few months. I regret being out so late so many nights, and not having spent enough time with you. I regret that I went to sleep on your last night, thinking you would be fine and there for me in the morning, when you would not. I rage at the pain you felt in those last few hours, that someone as wonderful and loving and gentle as you should have had to suffer like that, while the monsters in the world around me live long and healthy lives and die quietly even after having caused so much pain to so many people.

I know that some people will not understand the depth of my feelings. They will say, “Oh, Max was just a dog. You should wait until you lose a person.” But do you need to lose a person to feel true loss? I don’t think so. You only need to lose someone you love. And you Max, I loved you so much.

You were not just some animal to me Max. You were not just some plaything, some pet that amused me. You were my friend. You were my family. You were not a person, but you taught me so much about what it takes to be a person. How to not just exist, but mean something to people around you. These so-called “human” traits - love, caring, loyalty - which so few actual humans will demonstrate nowadays, you had in abundance. And you shared them with me everyday. My life is less because you are not in it anymore.

Every morning that I wake up now, I have to remind myself that it was not a dream. That you are really not here anymore. That you really were taken away from me. I know that people say it will recede in time, that, while I will miss you always, the pain will not be so great one day. But right now, it does not feel that way. Right now it feels like I will cry forever, like I will always be broken inside. Everyday I have to stop looking at the things you played with, the parts of the house you loved, and force myself to get ready and go to work. I have to stop thinking of you becoming cold in the ground, the rain soaking the soil that has taken you, because however and wherever you were buried, whether you could have been buried nearer to the house, or cremated, or whatever, you will still be gone.

I do not have any wise words to end this with, no deep realizations, no philosophical anecdotes. I only have my love for you, and this pain that seems to have no end. There is no logic to grief, no beauty in having someone so wonderful wrenched from your heart, so I will not even attempt to end this on some hopeful, looking-onwards note. People say there is a lesson in everything, an upside to every situation in life. I think people should sometimes stop analyzing everything and allow themselves to feel. To grieve. And so I grieve you Max. And I will keep grieving you, until maybe one day I feel I can stop. I do not know when that day is, if it is near or far. But know this: I will always love you, and I will always miss you. If the pain should ever subside, those feelings never will.

Goodbye my friend.

For me, there shall be no Eclipse, no Twilight

2010-06-25T11:29:00.004+08:00

This is a solemn vow I make, and shall do my best to keep. Why?

Because I am not a fifteen year old girl. Or a thirty-something girl who thinks she's fifteen.

Because getting in line to see Twilight with thirty-something girls wearing jackets saying "Edward's girl" on the back, and fifteen year old girls squealing like piglets next to a cut-out of the movie's stars, was traumatizing.

Because the act of watching Twilight left me scarred for life. And watching New Moon with my equally-bitchy sister, where we both loudly mocked the laughable lines and plot, left us in danger of being hacked to pieces by the many adolescent and pa-adolescent fans in the movie house with us.

Because I require more plot than "girl torn between two hunky guys" and "girl and hunky guys against the world." Seriously. The last movie must have killed a couple of my brain cells.

Because seeing Edward Cullen sparkle in the sunlight on-screen for the first time had me suppressing violent spasms of laughter.

Because movies are expensive and time, apparently, is gold. Thus, I will not waste two hours and P150 on a movie whose innanity I shall bitch about for weeks after. This will save me adding to the store of tension in my chest that will lead to an impending heart attack in maybe 20 years, and save my friends and family from having to listen to me rant forever.

Now I know almost every literate female and gay male is having orgasms over this franchise (because let's be honest, that's what it is. This isn't fine literary fare; this is a cash cow for Hollywood execs.) In fact, I have good friends and family who really, really, really like it. So who am I to judge? If you wanna watch it and read it, go for it. It's your pesos (and brain cells). It takes all kinds to make a world, after all. I'm sure there are also people who look at my literary and cinematic pursuits and go: what the fuck?

But do NOT ask me to join you. Even if you're paying. Ask your dog, or your witless boyfriend who has no choice in the matter anyway (and make him pay for the tickets). But not for me. No no no. I shall skip this (ahem) "cultural phenomenon."

Call me when the next Eugene Domingo movie comes out. And not before.

Kung stupid ang status mo...

2010-04-20T09:34:00.004+08:00

...pakitago na lang.

I don't need to know sa Facebook status mo kung:

• patulog ka na. Pakialam ko?

• kumain ka ng sundae na may halong mustard, ketchup at corn kernels. Your eating habits are your business. Don't share.

• may kagalit ka. Lalo na yung mga nag-aamok na status tulad ng, "Fuck you, you fucking bitch, feeler ka, may araw ka rin, blah blah blah." Sabi nga ng fan page, kung matapang ka talaga, i-wall-to-wall mo. Wag magpaka-anonymous. Di ka bad-ass. At di kami impressed.

• depressed ka. Lalo na kung araw-araw ang mga "Why am I so alooooooone?" na status mo. Nakakaawa at first pero kung sa bawat araw na ginawa ng Diyos ganyan ka, baka tulungan kitang magpakamatay. Euthanasia ba.

• ayaw mo sa trabaho mo. Lalo na kung araw-araw kang nag-bi-bitch. Kung wala kang balls na mag-resign, tiisin mo na yan dahil mukhang you need the money naman.

• marami kang bansang napuntahan. Good for you. E middle-class lang ako so hanggang domestic lang mga byahe ko sa ngayon. PS, wag kang pupunta dito, baka pa-kidnap kita tapos gamitin ko yung ransom para ako naman makagala at maka-show-off sa Facebook. Related nga pala dito ang mga post ng post ng pics katulad ng "Me in Central Park," "Me in Dracula's crypt in Transylvania," "Me in Michelle Obama's ob-gyne clinic," atbp. I don't fucking care. Stop it.

• marami ang iyong magarbong bag, kotse, condo, gadgets, atbp. Kung na-fi-feel mo na kelangan mo tong ibandera sa mundo, malamang ikaw ay (1) insecure at walang class, kaya dinadaan sa pag-sho-show-off ang buhay, at (2) may matinding pagnanasang makasalamuha ang mga grupong katulad ng Abu Sayyaf. Good for you. Ipagpatuloy mo yan. Not.

Keri ba? Para di naman ako ma-harass sa tuwing magbubukas ako ng account at makakakita ng mga status na ganyan. Wag mag-word-vomit. Hindi kelangan malaman ng buong mundo ang lahat ng detalye ng buhay mo. Hold something back naman, para may mystique kuno ka raw (kahit wala talaga). I thank you.

My Sad Song List

2010-04-12T11:59:00.005+08:00

I know I should be writing about the election, or other things similarly politically-charged, but... events have overtaken me. So later with that.

Instead, I share my sad song list! Here I give you a list of songs guaranteed to keep you wallowing in the depths of self-pity, cursing your ability to feel, and railing at the cracks in your emotional armor! Be forewarned!

1. Endless, A Silent Whisper and Frailty, both from Urbandub (hence why I put them together). All you emo kids out there know what I'm talking about. Listening to these songs makes you want to find an open field under a night sky for those dramatic screaming-at-the-wind moments you see in movies. Unsolicited advice: Ban airplay around the suicidal.

2. The Only Exception by Paramore. Now I'm not a Paramore fan, but I did hear this song at a low point and voila! It's on my list. Slow, slow tune and sad, sad singing = that she-knows-how-I-feel feeling! Unsolicited advice: Don't drink while listening to this, tsk.

3. Ah but the kicker is... Smile by the Glee gang. Of course, as I sat in a stupor in my room, what should waft out of my TV screen but the words smile though your heart is breaking... smile even though it's aching... Nice, very nice. Just what I needed to hear. Unsolicited advice: Do not listen to this while operating heavy machinery/handling bladed instruments.

So what else ya got, media juggernaut? Any other ditties to pluck at my heart strings? Come on, I dare ya!

Tsk. Yet another reason to remain stoic and unemotional: so that songs can't exploit all your mushy, gooey feelings post-emotional trauma. Personally, I'm starting to get annoyed that even songs are starting to set me off.

TV is good again

2010-02-16T04:51:00.006+08:00

Of late, it seemed like I'd lost all interest in pretty much everything on TV. Sure, I'd come across a couple of intelligent, potentially fun new shows, but my philosophy with TV is now what it is with relationships: they take you investing time and attention, sitting down, listening to someone go on and on. And right now, I just can't be bothered.

Until, (and I can't believe I'm saying this)...

I guess if you wait long enough, something good does come along. Salamat naman.

Ten Fashion Rules, and Other Bullshit

2010-02-02T09:28:00.002+08:00

Don't you just hate going through a fashion mag, seeing the pages and pages of dos and don'ts, what's hot and what's not, wear-this-with-that, and OMG-WTF-is-she/he-wearing sections, after which you come to some pithy article where someone says something to the effect of: But never let anyone tell you what to wear! Fashion rules are meant to be broken! Wear what YOU want! Clothes are just clothes!

Hello? You just spent a hundred plus pages telling me exactly what to wear, why to wear it, never-mix-this-with-that, and that basically, being seen in the right outfit is the be-all and end-all of life.

So let's not pretend you give a fig about my opinion and self-esteem. The multi-billion dollar industry of fashion is not founded on letting people think for themselves. Or you would never, EVER be able to get away with charging people P150,000 for a frikking bag.

An Open Letter to Manila's Taxi Drivers

2010-01-03T11:44:00.005+08:00

I realize I've been spewing bile about taxi drivers often and with increasing intensity on Facebook. So why don't we coalesce the venom into a well-worded(?) entry on this here blog?

***
Dear manong taxi driver, what you do is your job. You're not doing a free public service or an act of great humanitarian kindness. I. Am. Paying. You. Ergo, it behooves you to: Do. Your. Job.

***
Just as I do not get to demand an additional fifty or hundred or (holy shiyet) the doubling of my pay from my boss for doing what I've been hired to do, so do I not see the logic of you getting to do the same from me when I get in your taxi. You are not doing me a favor. Again: You are doing your job. So I see no reason for me to have to pay you more.

***
The meter is not a suggestion. It is an integral part of your taxi. If you are averse to using it, feel free to inform me, upon which time I shall rip it out of your dashboard and beat you to death with it.

***
It is not my fault if (a) there is a traffic jam, (b) I live far away, or (c) I live inside a subdivision. Driving through traffic jams to get to farwaway subdivisions is part of your job as a taxi DRIVER. If you do not like driving, I suggest you commence a bit of soul-searching on what you want to do in life. If you want to drive people to nearby places where there isn't any traffic, I suggest you become a pedicab driver. Alternatively, I could just walk if I wanted to go somewhere nearby. Alternatively, I could just knee you in the groin instead of having to suffer through the pain of your mouth-flapping.

***
Your taxi is not a toilet on wheels. I do not like smelling your piss on the doors the whole ride when I am about to pay you anywhere between P100-300 to take me somewhere.

***
Your taxi is not a shuttle service. I am riding it specifically because I do not want to cram into a bus/jeepney/FX with one-fourth of the world's adults. So do not ask me if I want to share a cab with someone because I am going somewhere far and you lose on fare if it's just me riding. If you're losing on fare, then petition the LTFRB. I do not set meter rates.

***
If you are a colorum (read: illegal) taxi, then do not dare ask me for twice the normal rate. You are breaking the law and should be getting fined heavily/molested by a bald, burly man in a city jail. The fact that you are not, and hence, are able to ply your illegal trade should make you grateful. Hence, don't push your luck.

***
If you have no intention of approaching the taxi line at malls, do not idle nearby hoping someone will leave the line, in full view of everyone who has been patiently waiting, to come to you and agree to your illegal kontrata rate. We may instead leave the line en masse and burn your taxi down.

***
And do not, DO NOT assume that my small bit of change is yours to keep. If I wanted to tip you, I would say so. Usually, I don't tip purveyors of bad service. Usually, I want to dismember them.

***
Yes, I know the boundary system for fares is unfair. But jeepney drivers have to suffer through it too, and they get to charge far, far less than you. Yet they wouldn't for a second consider asking for additional fare, and they would probably get the shit kicked out of them if they did. So I fail to understand why you think you can.

I didn't invent this weird system. So I shouldn't be punished for it eh?

***
Of late, your thievery has become even more brazen. I cannot remember the last time I got in a cab and just had the driver turn on the meter and not ask me for anything additional. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I didn't have to give an additional P50 to one of you thieves. And hey, now I hear that, in addition to cheating passengers on fare, you now particpate in hold-ups and full-on robberies of passengers. Nice.

***
I think the more people that get screwed over by you guys, the higher the levels of homicidal rage in Manila will grow. It is useless to petition the LTFRB, which, from what I gather, is as corrupt/inept as any license-granting/regulatory agency in the government.

***
Maybe it will take one of you taxi drivers getting hacked to pieces by a fed-up passenger before you realize this truth: commuting in Manila is hell. And you do NOT want to piss off us poor sods who are forced to trudge down these infernal streets.

The only way Gibo is going to take this election

2009-09-26T13:26:00.004+08:00

... is if he takes his cue from the Joker's campaign strategy:

Ay wait. I shouldn't give the corrupt administration juggernaut supporting him any ideas ano? Baka totohanin. Si (gulp) Ronnie Puno pa naman running mate niya hehe.

Kung gusto ko ng kwentong barbero...

2009-09-13T13:39:00.010+08:00

... aba, magpapagupit ako!

***

Mula sa SONA - Bumaba daw ang inflation? Ang unemployment? In fact, this is the best time daw for the economy in five presidencies? Ano daw? Hello? Saang Pilipinas yan Gloria? I don't think it's the Philippines I'm living in. Baka alternate reality yan kasi yung Pilipinas na ginagalawan ko ay mahirap. At patuloy na naghihirap dahil ikaw ang nakaupo. 'Wag tayo maggaguhan ha?

***

Mula sa New York at Washington - "I didn't pay for those dinners!" Talaga lang ha? Well, according to this columnist I read, aba, graft pa rin daw ang tumanggap ng gifts over a certain amount. And I think a P1 million dinner is WAY over that amount.

Aba, at dapat daw magpasalamat tayo dahil limpak-limpak na investments daw ang dinudulot ng pagje-jet-setting ni Madam President. Ows. E bakit according to a recent report I read, one of the ten hardest places in the world to set up a business daw ang Pilipinas? At according to yet another recent business-investment-ranking-survey thingy, the Global Competitiveness Index na ginagawa ng World Economic Forum, e lalong bumaba ang ranking ng Pilipinas dahil sa (guess what?) CORRUPTION! How surprising. Number 87 daw tayo down from 71 last year. Nag-drop. Again. As usual.

At kung totoo man na maraming nag-i-invest dito dahil sa paggagala ni Madam President, bakit, nakakakain ba ang investor confidence hmmm? I believe we have one of the highest hunger incidences in the history of the country now. So, kung totoo man na dumadagsa ang mga dayuhan dito para magpatayo ng pabrika at kung anu-ano pa, e wala pa rin ito sa mga nagugutom nating mga kapatid.

***

Mula sa California at New York - Aber! At may bahay ang magkapatid na Arroyo sa Istates-side! At hindi ma-explain ni Mikey Arroyo kung bakit! In fairness kay Mikey, matapang siya. Ayaw niya ng phone patch. Gusto niya talaga live, in-studio, with (wait for it...) Winnie Monsod! O baka bobo lang talaga siya...

Kasi naman hijo, don't lie about money to an economist! Bobo! At least yung nanay mo magaling magsinungaling kaya di nahuhuli. E ikaw, mana ka ata sa ama mo. Tsk tsk. I can just see Gloria slapping her forehead in frustration while watching that interview.

Hindi mo napanood? Dahil mahal ko kayo, etong sa 'yo!

***

Segue muna - Hindi ba na-pi-piss off ang mga Kano na palaging nadadawit ang pangalan ng bansa nila sa mga iskandalo ng Presidente? Mukhang mahilig ata talagang magkalat sa States ang Pamilyang Arroyo. Curious lang.

***

Meanwhile, hindi daw makahanap ng candidate ang administrasyon for next year. Si Gibo lang at si Bayani ang pagpipiliin na, if we go by surveys, e hindi ata alam ng mayorya ng taumbayan na nag-e-exist sila. At ilang pa raw si Kabayan na sumali sa kanila. Edi good! Kung suswertehin tayo, mangyayari sa kanila ang nangyari sa oposisyon last elections, na natalo dahil watak-watak at walang ma-put forward na isang kandidato lang.

Sana nga mangyari yun, para hindi na natin kakailanganin na pakinggan pang muli ang mga kwentong barbero ng Pamilyang Arroyo. Leche.

Gone

2009-08-06T13:28:00.005+08:00

I was going to write a bitchy column about the SONA. But that can wait for now.

***

You know how you never really realize someone was there, protecting you, protecting your freedoms, until they're gone?

And when they're gone, then you realize how big they were, how important, how much you needed them.

And now you're alone.

That's how I feel about Cory.

***

I was barely around for her presidency. My family left the Philippines after EDSA 1. When we came back, it was almost 1992. But I have seen her since, speaking when the nation needed her to, but always retreating to her private life after, so unlike the attention-hungry toads that populate the government now.

She may not have been a brilliant economist or a whipcracker of men, but she was an example of restraint, of selfless service, an example none of our presidents since her has taken.

And now she's gone.

***

Over the years, I've read the criticism of her, that she didn't do enough economically, that her CARP was half-baked, that her family's own lands got away from under it. And maybe this is all valid.

But I think, first and foremost, Cory had it in her head to restore democracy and democratic institutions to this country, so that the next president could get on with the economic stuff. And that was a big job, especially after the shambles twenty years of dictatorship had left the country in.

And she did it.

***

And always, always, people say: she stepped down. She gave up her power, and did not cling to it like it would kill her to give up, like so many of our self-serving politicians now.

Power, I think, is like water. When you cup it gently in your hands, you are able to hold it for a while. But when you try to grab it, grasp it, it slips through your fingers and flows away.

To get power, I think, you must not want it in the first place. You must hold it gently and, when you pass it along to the next person, it doesn't hurt to do so. But when you greedily grasp for it, you will spend your whole life fighting to hold on to it, and you'll lose it anyway.

***

Cory held her power gently like water. And when she gave it away, she gave it with gladness in her heart. But she never really lost it, not the power she had in our hearts. The power she showed us we all had.

***

I joke that one of the few times I cry is when political leaders die. It's not some macho thing; my whole family, girls and boys, was not brought up to be particularly emotional or affectionate, so crying isn't really something we do. But I really do cry sometimes when leaders die. I cried when John Paul II died, and I cried when Yasser Arafat died.

I cry because they stand for something and are now gone. I cry for the orphaned people they leave behind who have no leaders to look up to.

And I cried yesterday, watching that mass on the last morning. For all of the above reasons and more. But I don't think I've cried like that in a while.

***

I'm not a religious person. I'm not even a Catholic. But I sat through a beautiful homily during that mass by a Father Arevalo, scribbled on pieces of yellow pad paper, I noted, amused.

And he said something I will not forget. He said, "There is darkness in our land because you are gone. But we know, we have enough light within us because you have shared with us your fire."

***

So light the fire. And never forget what she gave us.

Because she is gone.

Because now we are alone. And we only have ourselves, each other, to find our way through the darkness now.

I love my country

2009-07-19T15:25:00.007+08:00

You know why? Because of signs like this:

And I love whoever invented the camera phone.

I hope no one saw me taking pictures of the sign in the toilet though (not the best place to be snapping away). I wouldn't want people to think I was up to something pervy...

Mga Bobo sa Senado

2009-05-16T13:12:00.008+08:00

My Senate is such a hive of idiots...

Hello?! Pay attention fools! Congress is trying to destroy you with Cha-cha, but you idiots are so busy fighting with each other, you haven't even noticed. By this time next year, you probably won't exist anymore.

***

I didn't realize that whole ethics committee investigation is trying to expel Villar from the Senate. Ganun? First you ass-kick him from the Senate presidency (and replace him with that corpse Enrile. And seriously, who are the fools repeatedly electing him and people like Gordon into office? Gawd.) Now you're trying to remove him completely from the Senate? This is clearly the work of threatened presidential aspirants.

Not that I'm a big Villar fan, mind, but I take any accusation of corruption against already-previously wealthy (as in prior to his entry into politics) senators, who stand a good chance of taking the presidency next year (and away from a horde of other salivating aspirants in the Upper House too) with a block of salt. Maybe he's guilty, maybe he isn't. But isn't this a question for the Ombudsman and Sandiganbayan to investigate? Him being investigated by his fellow senators, who make barely any attempts to disguise their rivalry with him, is suspect, to say the least.

***

And who filed this complaint? Jamby Madrigal? Sus! I've always had the impression that lady wasn't playing with a full deck of cards. Have you seen her talk? I have, and in person. And it was weird. And hello? What has she done ba in all her time in the Senate? If she wasn't ferociously contesting her dead aunt's will, she wouldn't be in the news at all.

***

Meanwhile, Congress has come up with (how many now? three? four?) new ways to railroad Cha-cha. Melo is talking about a possible no-election scenario. Lorelei Fajardo, one of President Bitch's six (count 'em: six!) spokespersons has said words to the effect of: Prime Minister Arroyo? Why not? She's been a good president (and that last bit I most definitely take issue with). Pay attention senators! If Cha-cha passes, there won't be an Upper House for you people to fight in anymore! And I highly doubt you fools will be able to get any seats in a Parliament if our government system goes there.

Mga tanga! Mga bobo! Get your acts together! Stop investigating shit! You're not the bloody courts. Kaya nga may judiciary e.

Rape me! Romantic naman daw e...

2009-05-08T16:15:00.009+08:00

Ahem. Ano daw? Acquittal ba kamo? Truly? Siryusly? Nakaka-bad trip 'di ba?

If the law can't protect you from being taking advantage off by foreigners in your own country (in this case, from rape), then where are you safe?

Na-acquit nga si Daniel Smith, and take note, mga gehls po ang nag-acquit sa kanya. Yung mga inaasahan na makaka-simpatiya sa isang rape victim na babae pa ang naglahad ng mga super-archaic and bizarre na conclusions leading to an acquittal. Such as:

1. “No evidence was introduced to show force, threat and intimidation applied by the accused (Smith) upon Nicole, even as the prosecution vainly tried to highlight her supposed intoxication and alleged unconsciousness at the time of the sexual act.”

Ganun? So wala nang saysay ang "no means no" and "you can say no at ANY time" na tinuturo natin sa mga gehls? Basta kung walang force, hindi na rape? So kung i-roofie ka sa bar, hindi ka makapalag kasi unconscious ka, at dalhin ka sa kung saan para gamitin ang katawan mo, edi hindi ka na-rape? Kasi walang force? WOW! Ang galing-galing talaga ng ating mga hurado! Why don't they return the previous classification of rape na rin, na crime against chastity, while they're at it.

2. “When a woman is drunk, she can hardly rise, much more stand up and dance, or she would just drop. This is a common experience among Filipino girls.”

Avah! Nag-generalize ang mga hurado! Common experience pala ito sa mga Pinoy gehls! Any girls reading this, chime in if this is a "common experience" for you when you drink. I know I've danced with lots of girls while they were drunk/tipsy, and they were all excellent dancers.

3. "The curious thing is that she danced non-stop to the urgent beat of rock and hip-hop music in an inebriated state for 15 minutes without stumbling clumsily on the floor.”

Ito, maliban sa lame argument, funny lang na statement. I'm imagining three old ladies sitting around a table talking about the (ahem) "urgent" beat of rock and hip-hop...

Anyway, THIS is their evidence she wasn't raped? She was dancing, ergo, she wasn't drunk, ergo, she couldn't have not consented? Jesus H. Christ! Clearly, these old biddies have never been on a bender. I've managed to get home stone-cold drunk without knowing how. Apparently, I was able to give the taxi driver directions on how to navigate the complicated route through our subdivision to our house. And our house is WAY inside the subdivision, so you're not just going to happen upon it basta-basta. But I'd be hard-pressed to explain how, seeing as the next thing I remember after leaving the club is being in the taxi pulling up at our gate. Lots of us are perfectly capable of remote-controlling ourselves through certain situations while drunk, even if we're not totally conscious how.

4. Ay, but the worst: The court concluded that Nicole’s portrayal of herself as a “demure provinciana lass going on a first-time vacation to Subic” as mere “deceptive posturing.”

Attack the victim! Man, ano sila, defense ni Smith? So kung hindi ka "demure," edi hindi ka p'wedeng ma-rape! Anything that happens to you is surely consensual, anyway, slutty ka naman! Delightful!

I don't know where these judges read up on rape (and surely they have extensively, they're CA justices for god's sake), but I was always told that a girl has the right to say no at ANY time, even if she's just about to have sex with a guy. If, at this time, she changes her mind, it's her right, and the guy must stop. None of that she's-leading-me-on bullshit. And if you're drunk and unconscious/semi-conscious, can you really give consent? I thought the Makati RTC judge had conclusively stated you cannot. Rape is rape, whether the woman clawed and bit at the rapist to fight him off, or lay there because she was frozen in fear or drunk. If she didn't say YES, then it's not consensual. Simple.

Maybe forty years was a bit much, but Smith did rape and he should have been punished. And now, after getting fat in "detention" at the US Embassy (Have you seen the pics? Magpakulong na rin kaya ako sa US Embassy, mukhang mabubusog ako...), he's off and free? Gawd, this is the country I have sisters in? Where female judges will let men get away with rape? Holy shit.

Spontaneous romantic encounter lang daw? Kelan pa naging romantic ang rape? Aba, kung gan'un, magpa-rape na tayong lahat next Valentine's. Tutal malaya na rin naman si Smith, I'm sure he'll be willing to help.

Ang dami talagang hayop sa Pilipinas tsk tsk. I lab my gobyerno talaga...

Morning Surprise!

2009-02-16T22:42:00.002+08:00

Don't you just love weekend benders? Palaging may surprise awaiting you in the morning.

Like: looking for your watch the next day and hoping you didn't leave it somewhere.

Like: wondering how the hell you managed to get home when you can't really remember how you left the club, or what happened to the people hitting on you.

Like: finding strange numbers saved on your phone, of people you have decidedly unreliable recollections of.

Like: finding receipts for drinks you don't remember paying for when you open your wallet to buy lunch workday Monday. And you realize YOU were buying the drinks that night, not the honeys hitting on you. Tsk. Poor form.

Like: hurriedly checking your bank account to see how much you have left after the bender. And being a bit horrified.

Like: finding a condom in your coin purse when you pull it out to pay Manong Tricycle Driver at 7:30 in the morning workday Monday, and having to hurriedly stuff it back, wondering how the hell it got in there. Don't worry prudes, pro-lifers, parents and friends of parents. I didn't shag anyone last Sabado. I have no idea how that bit got in my wallet.

I solemnly swear to leave all my cards home and go out with just a set amount of cash on my next booze trip. That way I don't find myself financially fucked over the next week.

Oh and P.S., why the hell is there such a buzz over Jagermeister? It tastes like blinking mouthwash with a bit of booze swished in.

What I Hate on Planes

2009-01-23T20:14:00.004+08:00

I hate noise. So a little kid singing "'Di Ko Kayang Tanggapin" or whatever the hell April Boy song that was at the top of her lungs the whole flight long while her parents blithely ignore her will piss me off.

I hate people who don't follow safety rules. They're there for a reason jackasses! So people who refuse to shut their phones off until the plane is bloody taxiing already, and dive for them to turn them on literally as the plane hits the ground landing will also piss me off. Of course, people who don't shut their phones off because they're (good god) taking bloody pictures of themselves on the plane will piss me off even more. God, we're so pathetic sometimes; people will use any excuse to show off their stupid 3G phones. Nobody cares asswipes! We ALL have 3G phones!

Waiting in line not knowing what's going on where at a small airport will also piss me off. Note to PAL ground staff: if something went wrong earlier with your check-in computers, and you have some weird emergency check-in procedure going on as a result, please, explain to the people who arrived AFTER the fuck-up eh? Me standing in line while you ignore me, call the names of people who AREN"T in line, and don't explain anything until I snap at one of you helps not my mood. Or my headache.

I love how my job allows me to go around the Pinas. However, the bozo moments I seem to be getting in spades on domestic flights does take something away from the experience.

Oh and P.S., people asking for fragile stickers in fake American accents will also piss me off. Or asking their sister in said accent, "Was that you singing?" Yes, that was her. The whole bloody plane knows it was her. And she was singing a bloody April Boy Regino song so stop trying to pass yourself off as some konyo, moron.

Though, in fairness to planes, fake American accents piss me off in the air and on the ground.

Batman is Stalking Me

2008-12-26T10:44:00.006+08:00

He is.

I'm quite enjoying it though. I love Batman.

The concept of him is superb. He has no powers. He just trains like hell and plans for any eventuality. And he didn't come from another planet or magically gain abilities. His parents were gunned down in front of him. So he decided to do something about it.

In the hands of a good writer, Batman has unbelievable story-telling power.

Which is not always the case. Fortunately for me, my recent exposures to him have been of the good kind.

First off, the Batman RIP story-arc running through his main comic, written by my favorite scribe Grant Morrison. Grant is a mad Scottish guy who's like the indie film-maker of the comic world. He can take any old, cheesy comic character and thrust him into a real world setting, psychologically deconstruct him, and entertain the holy hell out of the reader, all at the same time. Those who scoff at the comic book medium have obviously never read anything he's written. Grant Morrison is comic books on crack. I quite love his work.

And he's a bit of a comic book character himself, practicing chaos magick or some such thing. Whatever, if it keeps him pumping out stellar renditions of the Joker and stories about occult terrorists and cyborg house pets, I'll still be here.

But I digress. Back to the Bat. So yeah, Batman RIP sort of kills the character, but not like you think. First, his entire history was compressed throughout Grant Morrison's run, so one can make sense of why we had Angry Batman, Campy Batman, Grim-and-Gritty Batman, all the various renditions of him throughout the years that didn't really make sense toegther. Grant shows how it is possible for one person to be all this. Then he shows how this can totally fuck up someone's head. And we see Batman pushed to the limit by the only baddies who can take him on: baddies who attack him in the way he thinks. Baddies as smart as him. That's what "kills" him.

Cryptic much? But why should I spoil a good story here for lazy bastards. Go read it.

Of course, once I was done with that, the Bat started turning up everywhere. First HBO has been showing my favorite Batman movie on a loop, Batman Returns. You gotta love Tim Burton; his scenes may be unbelievably camp, but they manage to be unbelievably goth and crazy at the same time. I love his anarchic, fucked-up villains. None of them want to steal or take over the world or such shit. They just want to Blow Things Up Real Good. Danny DeVito's eloquent monster of a Penguin was super-entertaining. And until Heath Ledger's Joker, Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman was my hands-down favorite, and I still like her just as much as Heath's Joker. Come on, she was off the scale! She managed to be sexy, funny and dangerous, all while her head was out to lunch. I loved the part where she becomes Catwoman and makes her suit. So disturbing. It kills me that people will remember the super-shit Halle Berry Catwoman and not this one.

This movie shows you why the Bat-baddies are so dangerous. Not because they have powers (most of them don't), or because they have cool tech. It's because they're fried. And the only way Batman can keep up with them is if he's fried a little too.

And how do you follow that up? Why with Batman graphic novels of course!

My dad didn't want to buy me Christmas gifts he wasn't sure I'd like. So he took me to Fully Booked to pick my own out. Now I'm not really much for sappy Christmas gestures. I like to think I'm pragmatic and efficient. So this gift-buying technique appeals to me.

Anyway, I was wondering what to get when they suddenly glowed at me, calling to me: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller (he of Sin City and 300), and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (by Grant Morrison, of course). Both written in the '80s, both highly acclaimed. The Dark Knight Returns was what returned credibility to the Bat-books in the '80s and started the movie franchise (and by extension, all other superhero movies of the '90s and the 2000s.) Of course, the god-awful Batman and Robin killed the franchise, but then I suppose we wouldn't have gotten Christopher Nolan's stellar opuses if that first franchise hadn't died. I haven't started it yet; I went for Grant's book first.

Arkham Asylum was written in 1989 and is the best-selling American graphic novel of all time (and written by a Scottish writer at that). It follows Batman having to enter Arkham after all the prisoners have escaped and rioted, in exchange for them releasing their hostages. This isn't some ass-kicking, gadget-throwing she-bang. This is Batman being taken apart by a psychiatrist, running through mazes, crazy stuff. My favorite line so far? One inmate demands that they take Batman's mask off. "I want to see his real face," he declares. "That is his real face!" declares the Joker, "And I want to go so much deeper than than!"

And that's the thing about Batman. His enemies and him have a special relationship. Even they understand him. He kind of is the mask, the bat. And that's his appeal. We all go to a place where we're strong, where we can do things, help people. We project masks and capes that let us move around and give us strength.

But we're never sure if its healthy. If we're normal. We could be just as mad as all the other people around us.

Alcohol-free

2008-11-13T18:52:00.007+08:00

Not.

I don't know what to do with people who don't drink. It's like meeting a kid who doesn't like chocolates or video games or cartoons.

What do they do for fun? Oh I'm sure there's a whole list of fun, wholesome things to do like doing math and going to mass, but alcohol is FUN. Like fun-fun, real-fun. And it makes you fun. Even if you're the most uptight, repressed character around, beer loosens the tongue (and body) and pretty soon, you're dancing on a table or stroking someone's thigh inappropriately or something.

I met someone some time back who told me he didn't drink or go out on gimiks. So what am I expected to do with such people? Suffice it to say our interaction since hasn't been substantial.

Booze, I find, is a universal thing. No matter how different the people I meet are, once I find out they're boozehounds too, we get along fine. Many of my longest friendships have been forged in the furnace that is the hours-long drinking session.

I started crazily, of course, like any newbie teenage drinker. There were the gimiks where I went nuts and ordered lots of different drinks, and ended up laughing at my reflection in the bathroom, or talking loudly at scared bartenders, or passing out, or spewing chunks. Eventually, as I approached my current age, I settled on beer. Tequila and vodka are fine, gin a big no-no (hate the peppery taste), cocktails are alright, I suppose, when clubbing. But beer... ah. Beer's the drink that settles on you like a warm haze and tells you that everything's going to be alright. And even when you feel like throwing up, it's still telling you that. Gotta love something that lies to you so well.

And my love for beer has increased over the past few months. Before, I just had Red Horse. Then my dear, dear GX friends introduced me to the wonders of Carling and Fosters (and cider, but that's a whole other hangover). And since I got back, my dad's showed me the awesomeness that comes from a can of German beer. My faves right now are Kapuziner and Oettinger.

'Course now, I seem to have less opportunities for drink, which makes my liver sad. Everyone's off doing their own thing, and getting all my friends together in one place needs committee-level planning nowadays. 'Tis not good for me, coming off a volunteering experience where I was boozed up and clubbing with some awesome people half the time.

So if you don't drink, don't tell me about it. And if you do, let's get me good and wasted! Me needs a good pub crawl soon.

I have a "friend" on Friendster

2008-11-01T16:52:00.002+08:00

I know her in real life, but I only see her on Friendster nowadays. Besides, we weren't close naman even back then.

Anyway, she keeps posting links to her pictures or messages to just one person in particular on the bulletin board, so that everyone on her friend list sees. Who cares ba? Is this some pathetic cry for attention?

Nobody cares people. Stop mass-posting your crap on the Internet. People are still not going to give a fig about you if you do.

Burning Questions That Must Be Answered Now

2008-10-11T23:34:00.009+08:00

1. Shouldn't they put subtitles on every time Sam Milby says something on TV in Tagalog? So people can understand what the hell he's saying? Yes, I admit, I watch Dyosa. But only because I can't stand Richard Gutierrez (and, thus, won't watch Codename: Asero). But scenes with Sam on just piss me off. What the fuck is he saying? They should get him a seriously good language coach.

2. Is that taxpayers money being used for the massive PR blitz that is President Bitch's "Ramdam ang Kaunlaran" campaign? Ramdam niyo ba talaga? Ako hindi. I'd much rather be seeing tax money being put to use in schools, housing, etc., than for putting up man-sized posters of Madam Gloria telling us that yes, there is prosperity and we should be feeling it. And I find the latest ad on TV, from the DENR and her, imploring us to take care of the environment laughable. Isn't this the same department under fire for going against its own mandate and being very anti-environment by granting questionable mining concessions to multinationals in Mindanao (among them ZTE)?

3. When the hell are they going to give us something on Lost? The pa-misteryoso effect of this show is just wearing thin now. Seriously, what has it been, like four years na? And we still know nothing about anything going on on that stupid island. If anything, I'm even more confused now. This show has the annoying habit of throwing us a tantalizing clue, then cutting to several episodes of annoying flashbacks into the personal lives of the cast. I don't give a fig about what happened to them in the past anymore. What the hell is going on on the island? Honestly, I'm not sure my interest can sustain itself in the face of my mounting annoyance.

4. Um, why the hell is Raul Gonzales still in government? He's like our answer to Dick Cheney. Honestly. His latest jaw-dropper: He told reporters that people can still appeal to one more person if they're not happy with the presidential pardons for rich criminals being thrown around. Si Jesus Christ daw. Powtah. Pwede bang itali na 'tong demonyong matanda na 'to at (more importantly) i-gag?

5. Um, who told channel 2 it could make comedy shows? I've about given up on I Love Betty La Fea. I DON'T love Betty La Fea ha? And now they have a new one: Banana Split. I sat through the entire first episode, just to be able to say that when I bitch-slap it, I do so with the authority of someone who knows. Tedious kung tedious ang mga sketch nila. After ten minutes of them going through a sketch, a (ahem) "punchline" is trotted out. Minus the punch. Dear channel 2, baka hindi niyo alam: a comedy show is supposed to actually be funny. Not corny. Bubble Gang this is NOT. Bubble Gang IS funny. But the people behind Banana Split do seem to know they're not really funny, which is probably why they didn't go up against Bubble Gang's timeslot (or day). Also why they seem to be using sexy actresses not known for comedy. Up the tits-and-ass quotient eh, para kung hindi bumenta ang jokes, at least manonood ang sang-kalalakihan. They even have 30-second-or-so dance routines in between each sketch and a commercial break. Akala ko joke din yung mga sayaw, as in may punchline, but it really is just the sexy actresses doing I'm-almost-a-stripper-but-I'm-really-not dance routines. Who wants to take bets on how long this show will last?

6. Who the hell is Hannah Montana? Nawala lang ako ng six months sa Maynila and the Disney superstar-making machine spits another one out. Hopefully she doesn't go the way of the other Disney Bitches (though if she does, it'll make for lots of fun reports on TMZ, I bet).

7. Why am I still unemployed? I'm educated, intelligent, and have unique qualifications/experiences naman (and obviously I'm supremely over-confident). Naka-tatlong interview na ako sa... (ahem). 'Wag na nating i-mention, baka ma-jinx. Pero naninigurado talaga sila ha? Meanwhile, I'm hanging around home like a twat, waiting to find out if I'm in or out, and doing sweet fuck-all. I really miss buying comics, and paying for my beers with money I've earned, instead of been given by my dad. Kaasar. Bored na bored na talaga ako, promise.

FYI: Hindi Ako Religious

2008-10-07T11:52:00.009+08:00

Mga anak, 'wag akong padalhan ng mga religious messages sa aking inbox, mapa-Friendster pa 'yan, Facebook, o kung anu-ano pang mga site na may kinalaman sa faces at friends. Not unless na super-confident kayo na super-interesting 'yan at ma-o-override nito ang aking religious apathy.

'Wag din kayo magsabog ng mga "Jesus Loves You, Pass This To a Million People If You Love Him" messages sa bulletin board. Not unless na sigurado kayo na (a) Kristyano ang lahat ng mga nasa friend list ninyo, at (b) interesado silang lahat.

I doubt na interesado ang diyos ninyo na pinag-po-post ninyo ang kung anu-ano tungkol sa kanya across cyberspace. Bakit, may Friendster na ba si Hesus?

'Wag maging assuming. Annoying.

When I'm Bored, I Drink

2008-09-27T14:31:00.008+08:00

So obviously I've been drinking a lot lately.

Don't worry, I'm not an alcoholic yet. The German beer I've been mooching off of my dad is just that good. Seriously, if you ever get your hands on a Kapuziner, go for it. It's the one beer I've had that tastes better as it gets warmer.

So what else am I doing?

***

(Nagbalik ang mga asterisk...) Anyway, I just finished reading a superb book called The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.

If you like your fiction steeped in Victorian-era-shooting-jumping-across-roofs-repressed-erotica-behind-closed-doors-freaky-alchemical-shit, go for it. The book starts off normally enough, and then gets weird within the span of ten pages. And you're never sure what genre the book is aiming for, historical suspense, fantasy, whatever, until you're well into it, which was a plus for me. I quite enjoyed it. See more here.

The author seems to be a bit of a nut though. Methinks he should stick to writing, which is a much more credible field than positing conspiracy theories.

Of course, this now means my literary tastes have shifted once again. I think I was back in serious SF territory just before this book. Now I'm looking for more gothic supernatural fiction. My next project is The Looking Glass Wars, which I came across on (where else) Wikipedia. Hopefully it'll be just as bizarre as the one I just finished (especially since the sequel to The Glass Books is coming out in January 2009 pa. Piss-off talaga).

***

Meanwhile, Wikipedia's been taking up a lot of my time. I think I've officially run out of things to look up on it. How sad.

***

Living in Iligan, where, if you don't have cable you only get channel 2 and channel 7, has only increased my fascination with local TV shows. Fuck all that elitist shit about Western shows being more intelligent and edgy and socially-relevant. We all like junk food and your local telenovelas are the TV equivalent of that.

***

I've been watching a lot of (gasp!) Iisa Pa Lamang of late. Man, I love our brand of cackling villainy (I'm looking at you Cherry Pie and Angelica). Angelica's acting and lines are so over-the-top and cheesy so as to be incredibly entertaining. What was her latest? Oh yes: "Kung miserable ako, damay-damay tayong lahat!" I love it! She's the sort of fabulously over-the-top baddie that I'm sure is attracting a massive gay fanbase as we speak. Of course, it helps that she's always in skimpy wear. I'm now very aware that a child star she no longer is (and I appreciate this very much). More scenes with her top falling off I say!

***

I Love Betty La Fea, on the other hand, is wearing thin a bit. I liked it initially but it seems to be getting a bit formulaic. Betty goes to work, gets made fun of, has a pretty co-worker screw her over, gets yelled at by one of her pretty superiors, then manages to win somehow by the end of the episode. There seems to be no progression to the story. Obviously, comedy isn't channel 2's forte. And the one-dimensional cackling villains are not on par with their Iisa Pa Lamang counterparts. Ruffa and Wendy are getting really boring and annoying, I must say. That black guy playing the gay fashion director or whatever is still amusing though. I'm sure that's why he's there, to provide an over-the-top comic relief buffer for when everyone else gets boring.

***

Seriously, you can see Ruffa's painful attempts to knock off Wilhemina from Ugly Betty and Miranda from The Devil Wears Prada. She even has a signature line a la Miranda's "That's all": "Now go!" Of course, Ruffa delivers it with far less style and punch than Meryll Streep. Tsk tsk.

Although she was an inspired casting choice though. She's very believable as a bitchy, superficial drama queen. After the entire nation being subjected to the public unfolding of her sordid family life, methinks this character is very close to her real-life persona. Maybe it's not so much acting for her as it is just being herself hehe.

***

Seriously, I have no idea why the Gutierrezes have so many projects. Neither her nor her brother can act, honestly. Have you seen Richard? He's the same character in all his shows, just with a different premise for the special effects. If just being good-looking was reason enough to give people roles on TV, we should have lots more pretty young things clogging our sets. Though I suppose it has something to do with their taklesa mother who's prepared to shout down anyone who even breathes a wrong word about her kids. Histrionics palengkera-style! Honestly, can she hear herself when she's talking all that shit during interviews? I think the last bizarre interview of her I saw was when she was raising shit about Dingdong Dantes getting more attention at some underwear show while her son didn't get a proper AVP daw. Simple lang 'yan mare: Mas sikat si Dingdong sa anak mo ngayon. So why should he not get more attention than Richard? It's simple business.

***

Man. Obviously, I've been watching too much TV hehe. I need to get work, if only to keep me from getting fat from sitting in front of the TV drinking beer all day.

The Bitch is Back

2008-09-14T17:44:00.009+08:00

So what's next?

I've been back from my volunteer program for about a week now. I'm not going to go into emotional paroxysms just yet. There shall be time for incessant emote-ing about missing friends in future entries. Meanwhile:

1. I am now unemployed.
2. I have about P20,000 worth of comic books waiting for me at my suking tindahan.
3. I have no money to get them (Obviously. Saving has never been one of my strong points.)
4. I want to move out because, after living without parental rules for six months, I can't just come home and settle in like before. I suddenly realized I'm 24 and still at home with the folks.
5. I'm not really sure what I want to do, honestly.
6. I haven't unpacked yet.

So much has happened to me over the past half year, and I've got a lot on my mind in terms of the things I want to be involved in now, the kind of work I want to do. I definitely still want to do development work, but something a mite more high profile than what I was doing before my volunteer program, something that allows me to interact with a wider range of people.

And let's be honest, something that pays more. Don't get me wrong, I loved my first job, it was great experience, and my co-staff and the kids I worked with were great, but I was pretty much making minimum wage. Doesn't make for a lot of moving-out money. Or picking-up-P20,000-in-comic-books money.

Working in Iligan definitely made a huge impact on me. I definitely want to do peace work now, and if there's a chance, I'm there. Of course, that's not really a big thing here in Imperial Manila, and I really don't know where to start looking.

I've felt old for a while now, but looking at requirements for jobs in big international organizations is making me realize how young and inexperienced I am. Having a masters wouldn't hurt too, apparently. But I'm not ready just yet to go back to school. I'm afraid I'll binge-drink every night and fuck up my thesis, as I am wont to do with most paperwork. And I definitely want to do it on my own; I am not asking my parents to pay for it. Breaking out of my propensity for parental dependence is paramount to my self-esteem right now.

I have been toying with the idea of (don't judge me) a call center, temporarily, just so I can make enough to move out, buy what I need to buy and get out on my own. But then after all my experiences with all the NGOs we managed to work with over this past half year... I suppose it wouldn't exactly be putting my learnings to good use. And for what, a fat paycheck?

But man, I am stewing in the house. And if there's one thing I've learned over this program, it's that I need to grow up and get out on my own, and no job is too undo-able if it'll allow me to do that. Let's just say I'm keeping my options open.

It is kind of fun, though, having everything open and undefined before me right now. That uncertainty means I can pretty much go into anything I want to right now. And it's nice not having to be responsible for anything for a bit. I know it'll end soon enough, but I'm sort of enjoying it while I can.

Helping Out Lanao del Norte

2008-08-29T11:08:00.002+08:00

I’m currently on Global Xchange, a volunteer exchange program funded and managed by the British Council, the international cultural arm of the British government, and Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), a British volunteer-sending organization with offices worldwide. Global Xchange gives young people from different countries a unique opportunity to work together, to develop and share valuable skills and to make a practical contribution where it is needed in local communities.

Global Xchange works with teams of 18 young people with equal numbers coming from the UK and the Philippines. The participants are recruited, and the teams are formed to reflect diversity in terms of geography, ethnicity, ability, education and gender. Together, in cross-cultural counterpart pairs, they live with host families and work in host communities for up to 3 months in the UK and 3 months in the Philippines.

But now that that spiel’s out of the way, let me talk about Iligan. Iligan was our host community for the Philippines phase of our exchange. We’d already spent over two months there doing work in various peace-building organizations before we were forced to evacuate due to the fighting. It was very hard for us; none of us wanted to leave. In the time we’d been there, Iligan had become very special to us. We’d lived with some amazing families and worked with some very dedicated people.

I know leaving my host family so abruptly was one of the things that upset me. These were total strangers who’d nevertheless taken me in without hesitation. They’d spent time with me, tried to teach me Bisaya, treated me as one of them. At my volunteer work placement at the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, I interacted with all sorts of people who were experts in their fields, people who’d been educated abroad, who’d been on government peace panels, done research in MILF bases, but still took time out to talk to me, explain Mindanao’s history to me, the peace process, and so much more. I learned so much from my time here, about the place, and most especially about the people.

In Manila, fighting in Mindanao was always far away, since I’d never been here, since I didn’t know anyone who lived here. Today, as I watch the news and see soldiers in Iligan, tanks rumbling down the streets I used to walk down, houses on fire in towns so near to the city that had taken us in, taught us, shared with us, it all seems very real, and I feel connected and responsible somehow.

Our team has been evacuated to a safe, nearby location, and we have not been allowed to return, so we shall be finishing our exchange where we are right now. But we all still miss Iligan and feel we have to do something to help it even from here. We have been going to classes at a local university talking to students about the conflict. We’ve sent out letters and articles to our newspapers here and in Britain, trying to get the news and our sentiments out there. But what the people of Iligan and Lanao de Norte really need is material help, which, unfortunately, since we are volunteers, are unable to give them.

Which is why I am asking all of you for any help you can give. You may be far away from the conflict, but you can still be connected. I know I feel very strongly about this now because I lived in Iligan, but you needn’t have lived here or have come here to feel the need to do something, to be connected, to be involved.

If you do want to help out with the relief effort in Lanao del Norte, the Philippine office of VSO, VSO Bahaginan has a donation link up on its website, www.vsobahaginan.org.ph. I’m sure any amount would be of great help. If you’re trying to donate and having trouble with the website though, get in touch with me via e-mail, darksaber41@yahoo.com, or my mobile: 0920-9095988. If you do e-mail, put "Helping Out Lanao del Norte" in the subject field so I don't accidentally spamguard you away. Even if you are unable to give but can talk about this to others who can, that would be of great help.

Thanks a lot everyone. Everything we can give counts, every effort to stay connected matters.

Go! Go! Go!

2008-08-19T17:33:00.002+08:00

And go we did. And I'm feeling a bit angry and frustrated and guilty about it.

I'm technically still on my exchange. But it's also kind of over.

If you're in the Philippines, and you're not dead or living under a rock, then you know that all sorts of crap has been happening in Lanao del Norte, including in Iligan City, where my exchange has been based. Which inevitably meant that, as volunteers on an international exhange program, and especially since we have ten British citizens with us, we had to be evacuated.

I didn't think it would get that serious. We'd heard that bombs had gone off at a local mall, so I was expecting a temporary evacuation until things settled, but just that. I packed things for one week, as we'd been told, said my see-you-soons to my host family, and waited to be picked up. But as we got to Cagayan de Oro, and as we watched the MILF moving in on Iligan and nearby towns on the news, the possibility of not going back became more and more distinct.

Today we were told we would definitely not be going back.

I said yesterday that I was frustrated because I didn't get to say proper goodbyes and thank-yous to all the people, especially my host family and volunteer supervisors, who'd been so good to me during my time there. I also said I was angry, because I'd felt involved in peace-building, being at MSU-IIT, doing the work we'd been doing there, speaking to all these people who had actually been personally involved in the peace process and peace work, and I'd been happy when I first heard about the MOA, and to see all that deteriorate in the space of days was... I don't know. It made me just feel angry. I feel that I'd gotten so much out of being in Iligan, personally, and it deserved more than for me to just up and leave at the first sign of trouble.

If I'd known yesterday was going to be my last day at my host home, that last Thursday was going to be my last day at my volunteer placement, I would have done... something. More. I would at least have said proper good-byes.

I'm not sure why I feel so strongly about this. I usually don't feel much about anything in general. I don't know. Maybe being in another part of my own country, and learning how different and challenging life is for many there, plus all the learning I've gotten from being at MSU-IIT, has given me more of an emotional connection to the place than I expected.

Then there's the thought of tanks and armed men rumbling down the streets that I'd walked everyday, past people I'd interacted with regularly. It's easy to emotionally distance yourself from conflict when you're physically distant. When it's happening in a place you've lived in, to people you know, it feels different.

I was supposed to eventually get around to writing quirky posts on my time in Newham and Iligan, peppered with my usual cynicism and such. But I don't feel like that right now. Maybe I'll get to it eventually.

Right now I just feel bad. I'm still with the other volunteers, we still have two-and-a-half weeks left together. But in my mind, whatever we do here in Cagayan de Oro is just going to be for us. The volunteering bit is pretty much over.

I'm not angry with anyone in particular. I'm just angry with the situation.

But, I suppose, this is the country I live in. You'd think I'd have gotten used to it after almost seventeen years here.

Where the Hell Are You?

2008-06-02T22:27:00.005+08:00

I feel slightly bad about having been in Newham for almost 3 months without actually having blogged about any of it. But then I've been having too much fun to be bothered about actually writing about any of the fun I've been having hehe.

Maybe I'll write something melodramatic just as I'm leaving here. Maybe not. Meanwhile, we have two sites up so you can all check those. Of course, it's all g-rated; no pictures of my pub crawls here. We were told in Manila the exchange might be dry. But me with no alcohol? Ha. I think not.

The older one.

The newer site, now with less sugar and more pictures!

Gorge yourself. Then maybe I'll write about what I've really been doing here outside office hours hehe.

That is if I'm not overcome by the usual unrelenting wave of laziness that periodically washes over me.

Kindness Revolution Act 1

2008-05-20T18:46:00.002+08:00

As I write this, I'm sitting in an office in Newham, in London. Don't ask. Explanations will follow. Maybe.

This is Lara.

Lara is a good friend from Kule and, aside from her many talents, skills, presitigious qualifications, etcetera, she also spends her time with a group called ONE. ONE stands for One Nation Empowered, and her group envisions vibrant, thriving communities that are able to vision their own ideal goals for themselves and put them in place. Rather than having people just receive help, ONE seems to be part of a growing way of thought in developmental work (which I subscribe to) that we need to empower people to help themselves. Only then is change truly sustainable and fulfulling.

Just before I left Manila, it appeared my attempts at fund-raising had gotten to Lara and she asked me if I could help their group with an activity, and she'd in turn help me with my own *ahem* activities.

ONE was in a barangay in Diliman. They had conducted a visioning exercise wherein kids from around the community had drawn up posters of their ideal community. A winner would be announced but, more importantly, their group would be around to help that community put these plans into place. I was late, naturally, so I wasn't much help, but Lara was still kind enought to buy two Kindness Revolution tickets off me (and I have the picture to prove it haha!)

It's nice to see groups like this around, put together by young professionals taking time out to do something for their community. Apathy and incessant complaining while not being involved in the mainstream of society seems to be the hallmark of the Pinoy yuppies of our generation. Seeing a group like this in action, even if they're just starting out, is nice; it cuts through the layers and layers of cynicism living in Manila has built up in me. Kaya salamat Lara. And not just for the help with my fund-raising.

ONE has a bunch of other activities planned, if I'm not mistaken. They didn't have a website up yet when I left, but maybe they do now (Kaya Lara, mag-comment ka, and post a link. I'm ensuring at least one comment to this post LOL!)

And maybe you're tired of just reading about other people working to change the community. It may not be with ONE, or with the programme I'm on (more on that another time), but there are tons of volunteering opportunities out there and these days, all you have to do is type stuff into a search engine. So get off your ass and do something!

Save The Cheerleader!

2008-03-19T06:06:00.001+08:00

(Wala kasing pumansin sa Friendster bulletin board) *grumbles*

I just saw a guy wearing a "save the cheerleader, save the world" t-shirt, and the "s" in "save" was the helix symbol they use on Heroes. I WANT IT! If anyone could tell me where to get one, I'd be eternally grateful :-)

Be The Change!

2008-03-06T08:08:00.015+08:00

"I just got tired of feeling sorry," she said as I stood nearby. So I stopped to think.

I was at training for the Global Xchange Programme (which I'll talk about later) and some of us were talking about why we'd applied for it. One of my fellow volunteers had been talking about a beggar she would pass everyday on her way to work and how she would feel bad every time but how she felt like she couldn't do anything. Which is why, when the opportunity presented itself, she decided to quit her work in media relations and take a big step into the world of volunteering.

I thought about what she said later. It was pretty much the reason why I decided to do the work I do now, why I moved to Social Work (after flunking out of Public Health), why I kept at it until I got work at the Virlanie Foundation, which works with street-children, and why, now that the opportunity to volunteer has presented itself, I applied to the Global Xchange Programme.

But I know I'm terribly lucky to be able to do the work I do, living in a country as poor as the Philippines. To be frank, I can afford to be a social worker, with our minimum wage salary, no over-time pay and what-not. Because my family isn't exactly poor, I have the opportunity to do this. I'm no do-gooder; I know most young people my age have to fight everyday to stem the rising tide of poverty threatening to drown them. They have to look for work that pays, because they have people they need to support. Because if they don't make a certain amount every month, living in the Philippines will kill them. Those are the real heroes.

I do the work I do partly because, I guess, of guilt. Because I know I've not worked for any of the opportunities I have in life. Because I know, everyday, I can step from one opportunity to the next simply because my parents will open doors for me, while other people who work a hundred times harder than me will not get even a fraction of a fraction of what I have. I do the work I do because I know that what I have is an accident of birth. My parents worked hard for what we have now, but not me. I have all I have simply because the universe saw fit to have me born into this family, and not into a depressed community in Payatas or Tondo.

I know I'm one of very few in this country who can afford to be a social worker. Because most people have real problems and real responsibilities. Even my fellow social workers at Virlanie, after spending the day working with our kids, go home to help their own families, helping out parents, putting siblings through school, real responsibilities, in short. But, thanks to what my co-volunteer said, I know that I'm not the only young person who thinks these thoughts. And I know, you've opened a newspaper, or passed a beggar on the street, or heard about a landslide in Payatas and though, "I'm just tired of feeling sorry." I know you've felt like helping but not known what you could do. Or had the luxury to go out and help, because you have real responsibilities closer to home.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." Gandhi said that, or so I'm told. We don't have to sit by and watch the world go to hell. But we don't have to pack our bags and move to refugee camps in Palestine or Africa and leave our families either. Sitting where you are, you can make a difference.

So let's get down to the bare bones of this entry: I'm asking for money from people. Why? Let me talk about Global Xchange first.

The Global Xchange Programme (GXP) is a project of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), an international volunteer organization, VSO Bahaginan, its local counterpart, and the British Council. Basically, GXP is a yearly exchange wherein nine Filipinos and nine British are brought together in a team and placed in two communities, one in

England

and one in Mindanao, for three months each. The teams work in pairs of one Filipino and one British, are placed in host families within the community, and are given the opportunity to work in diverse organizations tackling a variety of social and economic issues. Previous volunteers have worked with newly-arrived Somali refugees to Britain, or in environment conservation programs in Davao, or in after-school programs to keep kids away from gangs and drugs on the streets. This year, our exchange will be held in Newham in London, and in Iligan in Mindanao.

Now part of our work is our commitment to raise twenty thousand pesos each. But this money isn't going to us; it's going to be used for our projects in Mindanao, and as seed money for future exchanges, so that other young people can get active and go out into the world and volunteer.

Fund-raising is really something I want to do, because so many organizations and people have put work into sending us on this exchange, and I feel coming up with the money is one way of contributing. And asking others to help with funds allows me to go into the exchange, not just on my own, but with the support and spirit of everyone who contributed to the fund. I go into this exchange with the one hundred pesos my friend gave me, or the one thousand pesos my dad gave me, or the five hundred pesos a random stranger gave me, carrying with me, not just their money, but their hopes for change in the world, their spirit of wanting to make a difference, made real and physical in what they contribute to our fund-raising. I go into this exchange not just with my own goals and aspirations, but carrying with me the hopes and idealism of everyone who contributed.

And that's what this post is about: I'm asking for your money, long and short. It can be any amount as long as you give it in the spirit of wanting to make a difference. Are you tired of feeling sorry? Then be the change you wish for! You don't have to quit your job and move to a poor(er) country and help people there. But you can support programs that do work to end world poverty, such as our exchange.

I know, of course, you have reservations. I don't usually ask people for money. Okay, I never ask people for money, unless said person is my dad. So if someone comes up to me asking for cash, I'd definitely take time out to think about it (and double- and triple-check). So the only way I can convince you I'm legit... is to direct you to these fine pages. The British Council in the Philippines has a page about us here, and so does VSO Bahaginan here. You can also go here to find out more about VSO and VSO Bahaginan.

And just to make things fun (and to give you more bang for your buck, if that's what you're after), you can ask me to do a good deed for whatever amount you give. We call it the Kindness Revolution. You can ask me to do your groceries, arrange your bookshelf, sing a song to your crush, feed someone on the street, whatever (as long as it isn't too degrading hehe). This was a fund-raising activity started by previous GXP volunteers, and you can check out their site here for more explanations. Our team doesn't have a site up, but I can post updates and pictures on my blogs so you can see what I've been up to.

What you do and give now, no matter how big or small, will affect others. You don't have to watch the world go by, wondering what you could do. Even by just contributing to a fund, you can start changing the world around you. So help us help others, and be the change you're looking for!

If anything in this entry has tugged a heart-string, or sparked a fire, or even made you stop and think for a bit, and you want to contribute, please contact me. I'm taking a chance putting my contact details online so please, please don't spam me hehe.

http://ajeetvictor.multiply.com

http://profiles.friendster.com/kingajeet

darksaber41@yahoo.com (and if you e-mail, please put "re: GXP fund-raising" or "re: Kindness Revolution" in your message field so I don't accidently spamguard you away).

I finally whored myself out to Multiply...

2008-03-05T20:08:00.003+08:00

So add me or die mofos!

My contact list is actually looking kinda sad right now tsk tsk tsk (two friends pa lang *cries*).

Go. Now. http://ajeetvictor.multiply.com/

And if someone could explain to me why this site is better than Friendster, I'd be much obliged.

Broadband ba ka mo? Plug in na!

2008-02-10T17:48:00.001+08:00

Plug in sa National Broadband Network!

Nababagalan ka ba sa internet mo? Dinaanan mo na ba lahat, from dial-up to MyDestiny to Smart Bro, to Globe Whatever, pero kulang pa rin? Edi i-try mo 'to!

***
Some satisfied customers:

Ben A. - Super kumita ako dito! Nawalan nga ako ng posisyon (and I maintain that I resigned and was not fired) pero so what? Mayaman naman ako hahaha!

Gloria A. - Nang dahil sa NBN, na-consolidate ko ang hawak ko sa Congres- I mean, my business. Ako na ang unrivaled head sa aking field! Salamat sa NBN, nararamdaman ko na ang pag-asenso! *cue TV commercial/propaganda*

Mike A. - Shet! Salamat talaga sa NBN! Kumita na naman ako! After making kurako- I mean money sa iba't ibang fields, from rice importation to *ahem* games of chance, sa telecommunications naman ako kikita! At hindi ako matitibag! Wala akong posisyon kaya hindi ko kailangan mag-resign! Pero protektado naman ako ng mga nasa posisyon! Mwahaha! I cannot be defeated! Give in to the Dark Side Luke!

Prospero N. - Talagang prosperous ako ngayon! Mukhang lucky talaga ako this Chinese New Year kaya super-duper Kung Hei Fat Choi sa inyong lahat! Nang dahil sa NBN, na-promote ako sa trabaho! Kick-ass hindi ba? Kahapon regional chu-chu lang ako, ngayon national na! Sa'n ka pa? But I'm my own man, promise! Hindi ako tuta ng kahit sino! Woof! Woof!

O, kitams! Super-successful sila! Kaya mo rin, kaya apply na!

***
... Ay teka, oo nga pala. Sabi nga nila: "Only 0.03% and 16.2% of public elementary and secondary schools, respectively, have computers." At "81% of schools have no access to the Internet." So siguro marami sa ating mga kiddie-kid-kids ay computer-illiterate at hindi makakagamit ng Internet.

... Ay teka, sabi nga nila: "very few teachers have adequate training and access to computers." So siguro, maliit ang chance na maturuan ang mga kabataan kasi mismong teachers ay kailangan din ng training.

... Ay teka, sabi nga nila: "The teachers can avail of computers and other information technology facilities in a few public schools and elite private schools." Ay, few lang. Tsaka "elite" private schools lang, na naaabot ng kakarampot na porsiyento lang ng populasyon. So it looks malabo talaga mga friendships.

... Ay teka, sabi nga nila: "This allocation (of the government for procurement of computer hardware, software and courseware for teacher-training) amounted to P155 million (in 2002)." Yun lang daw ang in-allocate ng gobyerno for computer-related educational investments in 2002, at doubtful na nag-increase 'yan in 5 years. Pero magkano nga pala ang NBN deal? $329 million nga pala. Dollars yan mga friendships ha, hindi pesos. At how overpriced daw? $67 million po. Again, dollars po 'yan.

Meanwhile, ilang Pinoy daw ang nabubuhay sa less than singkwento pesos everyday? Around half our population daw, or around 45 million people. So habang nagpapalipad ng milyones ang gobyerno at sari-saring accusations and counter-accusations, walang pang-kain ang kalahati ng mga tao sa ating bansa, much less pang-Internet. Tsk tsk.

***
So ano? Dial-up ka pa rin ba? Broadband na!

That is, kung afford mo lang.

At kung afford mo pang mabuhay sa bansa nating pinapatakbo ng mga puta'ng ina.

Both

2008-01-26T17:11:00.000+08:00

I've always defined myself as being half-Indian, sort of. But recently, I've had the opportunity to think a lot about what my being Filipino is all about.

I've been selected to be part of, shall we say... a programme. I won't talk about it in detail until I've super-super-confirmed that there's no way I'm not going, but if you'll notice how I've spelt programme, that's a clue to what I'm going to be doing. Or at the very least, where I'll be going.

Anyway, I've been selected to be a part of the Philippine team of said programme. And suddenly, I'm going to be representing this country I've always described as being only half of what I am. People are going to see me and talk to me and say, "Oh, you're Filipino." And they're most probably not ever going to be able to tell I'm half-anything else. Maybe for the first time in my life, I'm going to be known as a Filipino. Completely.

Recently, I went away for a week to attend a workshop where I was going to get to know more about this programme. And I only realized it later, but I seemed to be talking a lot about my Indian experience. I was even super-excited to learn there were a lot of Indians where I was going, and I kept asking about and reacting to stuff related to that. Our supervisor even pointed out that, being Filipino-Indian, my experience was definitely not fully Filipino, but that wasn't a bad thing and that I was even a celebration of two cultures, and no one expected me to be waving the flag for Filipino nationalism.

But later on, when I was going on about bringing a kurta with me, which is an Indian outfit for guys, another participant jokingly pointed out that I was representing Filipino culture and that I should think more about bringing a barong.

Now I've kind of been thinking about why I feel more Indian. I've lived here longer, and all my adult experiences, opinions, basically all I know and the way I think have been formed in the Philippines. I only really lived in India for six years and, while those were my formative years, I was still pretty young when we moved to Manila. And anyway, the India I knew back then and the India of today are vastly different places. All I really truly know now is the Philippines. This place is and always will be home.

This kind of cultural schizophrenia may seem unrelatable to people who've either been born and raised in the country of their parents, or who've spent their whole lives in just one country, regardless of their ethnicity. But it's different for someone like me, who not only has parents from two different countries, but whose spent a significant amount of time growing up in both. Answering the question "Who are you" isn't so simple for me.

But I guess it's one thing for other people to treat you foreign, and a whole different thing for you to feel foreign about yourself. You don't have to.

Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about boxing my experiences into which one is Indian and which one is Filipino. Maybe instead of defining my experiences, I should just let my experiences define me.

My Filipino experience will always be different, simply because I've had to actually learn huge parts of it, formally, as well as share it with another culture I grew up in too. But at the end of the day, it is a Filipino experience. And I am a Filipino.

I read an article a long time ago about a British man who was living in Japan, and whose wife, I think, was Japanese. Anyway, the point is that they were going to have a child there. So someone pointed out to him that, "Oh, your child is going to be a half." He thought about that for a while and then replied, "No, she's going to be a both."

I'm not half-anything, I realize now. You can't measure and quantify your life, your culture, who you are. And if I'm an Indian, then I'm most definitely a Filipino too.

I'm a both.

I'll Tell You Where I Work Babe

2008-01-09T18:21:00.000+08:00

"Where do you work," I got asked at a recent get-together with old classmates I don't see a lot of. Then she answered her own question: "Let me guess, nasa call center ka 'no?"

Excuse me?

I studied several years, and then managed to graduate in the face of a bitch who all but sat on my grades to keep me from leaving school successfully. And then I placed eighth in the national board exam for social workers.

That's eighth place. In the entire country.

So no honey, I don't work in a call center. I'm a social worker. And I work in a foundation. With former street-children.

And even if I did work in a call center, I'd still be offended. Saying "Let me guess, nasa call center ka 'no?" implies a certain disdain for people who work in call centers, as if they're settling for something less. It's kind of rude, don't you think?

I'm sure no offense was meant, but offense I did take. Sort of. And when I'm (semi-)pissed, I blog.

I should get some credit eh, and not still be defined by the fact that English is my first language.

I don't know if anyone's noticed, but I have some kick-ass brains to go along with my mastery of the language of Western imperialists.

Being Culturally Malnourished

2007-12-22T15:53:00.000+08:00

"Don't speak to me in straight Hindi," I said to the French guy, laughing.

In retrospect, I realize that was a dumb thing to do, probably because I felt dumb afterwards.

I was at a despedida for a French guy from work, and I overheard another French guy talking to what I assume was an American girl about his travels in India.

"Say something in Hindi," she said to him. Naturally, being half-Indian, I felt the need to assert myself, and inserted myself into their conversation, until I realized he spoke more Hindi than me.

Later on, I was chatting with a French woman, who was telling me all about her travels to Palawan. "Beautiful place, and wonderful people," she told me. Grasping in the air for a relatable hook, I told her how my sister had been there and told me it was a paradise, and not crawling with tourists and yuppies. Of course, I myself had never been there.

Later, she told me how some of them were going to Puerto Galera for the New Year's. "You're welcome to join," she said. But the idea of being the only Asian amongst a bunch of white people, not all of whom are as sociable as this particular lady, wasn't exactly thrilling. So I gave her the classic Pinoy "I'll see if I'm free," which translates to "Titignan ko," which really means, "I'm not coming."

And there's another part of my country she's going to see that I haven't.

Later on, I thought about why white people were seeing more of both my countries and experiencing more of my cultures.

I've lived in the Philippines for sixteen years and I've never been outside Luzon.

And to be honest, even after all this time here, I still feel very, very Indian. Maybe it's because I lived there as a child, and so all my formative memories are from there. Or maybe because I just don't look or sound Filipino. People can go on and on about how you aren't defined by the exterior, but when I look in the mirror, I see an Indian face. And when people ask me my name, I give them an Indian name.

I will always feel more Indian.

So you can see why it would feel almost... degrading to have a white person say something to me I couldn't understand, in what's supposed to be my language.

Just being able to say maderchod isn't what makes you a true Indian, I guess.

And I suppose being able to say "Puta'ng ina mo, marunong akong mag-Tagalog," when you've never even been past Luzon doesn't make you a true Filipino either.

I've never really understood this drive I've had to immerse myself in both my cultures. None of my other siblings seem to have it. But I suppose I won't ever really be content until I've been around both my countries, and have learned to speak to my people in our languages.

But I suppose Westerners in general will always be able to see more of our own countries than us, for the simple fact that their currency goes further. That's not their fault. Or a fault, for that matter.

But, somehow, it still doesn't feel right.

But you know what they say about a will and a way, all that shit. And as I left that party, my head full of the fact that foreigners were learning more about both my countries than I was, and how demeaned I felt everytime I had to explain why English, the language of foreigners, is my first language, I had one thought:

I will not allow this to continue.

It's that time of the year...

2007-12-11T12:32:00.000+08:00

...when sappy, crappy Christmas songs fill the air, and blood pours out of my ears.

I mean, come on! Is Jo Mari Chan even still alive anymore? Someone come up with some new songs fast.

And by new, I don't mean the Christmas remixes of "Itaktak Mo" or whatever crap Willie Revilliame is polluting the airwaves with this month.

"Why don't you give love on Christmas day?" Love?

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather get a PSP.

Leave This City!

2007-11-08T00:27:00.002+08:00

"Why don't you leave town?"

Like most of what my dad says, that question made sense. So I took his advice, borrowed money from him (which in my world means take, with little to no intention of returning it) and packed off for the last four days of my leave from work.

I was planning on taking surfing lessons at this resort in Zambales. I was not, however, planning on paying an arm and a leg for it, which was what would have happened. So I found myself heading for Option Number Two: La Union.

I'm guessing in English, La Union means "The Union." I have no idea what big union happened there, and I never got around to asking, but I did learn some other things.

1. There are no beach resorts in the main city, San Fernando. None. This I found out after walking around the city and it's surroundings for about two hours, carrying a backpack about the same weight as my kid brother (come on, I never pack light).

2. There is surfing in La Union, in a place just beyond San Fernando called San Juan. Thus, there are white people around. And this apparently gives (ahem) "resort" owners the right to jack up their prices to monstrous rates. I found this out after being shown a room about the size of my bathroom at home, with two bunkbeds and an electric fan. And just that. Then I was told it would cost me P1000 a night to stay there. Right... Calling that place a crappy dump would have elevated it a hundred points. Naturally, I came up with an excuse and scampered.

3. There are a lot of old white men around too, looking for tight young Pinays. This I found out after ending up on the other side of San Fernando, in a place called Bauang. I'd given up hunting for a nice, cheap, non-fully booked place and just stopped at this one resort. After taking a room there, I noticed what was apparently a nightclub, the seedily-named Butterfly Club, in the resort. Looked more like a closet to me. Anyway, the door swung open long enough for me to see an old white man sitting and watching a not-so-pretty girl dancing not-so-very-well on a raised platform. Naturally I scampered off to the room, locked it, and stayed in for a while watching Mystic Force Power Rangers. I only stepped out after the raucous Caucasian laughter had died down outside my room and I was sure I could go out and get dinner without seeing anything sleazy. Well, anything more. I really don't need to see one more sign that sex tourism is alive and well in our country.

The day after I checked into Resorto El Sleazo, I checked out, and headed next door, to a much cheaper, nicer and family-/barkada-friendly resort. The room I got was way cheaper, bigger, and though it didn't have a TV, it didn't have a girly club next door too, and that's always a good thing.

Besides, I didn't drag my ass across five provinces just so I could sit in front of a TV making sure that Marimar is still busy bitch-slapping Sergio, like 47.9% of Mega Manila (or so Wikipedia claims. Yes, I looked it up.)

So what did I do? I read Wintersmith. I sat around watching the scenery. I realized that La Union really is a surfing place, which dawned on me as I was being tossed and flung around by waves stronger than even the crowds of shoppers surging through an SM during a three day sale.

La Union isn't exactly one of those stunning beach paradises, but it's not a bad place to get away. If you find a decent place, you can tune everything out, be alone with your thoughts, and there won't be a lot of people around to bug you. And believe me, living in Manila and doing the work that I do, not being around a lot of people for a few days ain't a bad thing, lets me tells ya.

There were a bunch of groups coming and going while I was there. Barkadas I take it, and buying a lot of booze. Bauang, La Union, I guess, is also good for if you and your friends want to sit by the sea and get hammered like Lindsay Lohan during New Years' Eve.

Oh and it's pronounced "Bu-wung". This I learned after I said Bauang as in "Bawang", and a jeepney driver turned around and pronounced it properly for my benefit. Thank you manong. I promise not to mangle the name of your city/municipality/barangay/whatever-the-hell-Bu-wung-is again.

I was wandering around San Fernando looking for a Chinese temple I'd read about. It's apparently a Taoist temple to a woman-turned-goddess called Ma-Cho. During the Spanish colonial period, the Filipino-Chinese in the area apparently decided the Taoist goddess also corresponds to Our Lady of Something-or-the-Other in Taal. Taoism is apparently, after all, a philosophy, not a religion, which explaines why they felt like equating a Chinese goddess with Mary.

Neat. I always say, If you're going to convert to an invading religion, subvert it with something from your old one. Or philosophy, whatever, if you want to play semantic games.

Take that Padre Damaso.

But being away from It All makes you appreciate It All even more after some time. And that's the point of leaving the city, methinks: to get away so that you go back home with a better appreciation of your bed, your family, your internet connection, your cable TV, your overpriced mocha crappucino, and mindless consumerism in general.

You know what else makes you appreciate home more? Being squeezed into a chair the size of a laundry hamper for eight hours on a bus.

And, of course, I Learned A Lesson From My Trip, as all people who go on trips do: Never, before setting out, buy a pair of "quirky" tsinelas just because they're a hundred bucks. Or you'll get what you paid for.

And what I got was my feet cut up while I walked around for two hours looking for a room in the "quirky" but murderously painful tsinelas. Damn you Bench. I'm never wearing those again.

I suppose if you can't afford ridiculously-overpriced konyo crap tsinelas made in Brazil, stick to the trusty Made-in-Pinas Islanders-types. Don't get anything in between. So there.

Motherfuck! Teri said what?!

2007-10-06T18:10:00.000+08:00

"Oh no she di'in'!"

Unless you've been living under a rock, then you know that the latest bit of racism that has everyone in a pseudo-nationalistic uproar is Teri Hatcher bad-mouthing Filipino doctors on an episode of Desperate Housewives.

But before we call for the castration/mutilation of the man/woman who wrote that line, let's take a good, hard look at our own penchant for intolerance. I'm not saying it wasn't wrong, because it was, and I have a lot of former classmates studying medicine, but we're not exactly the most politically-correct race around eh?

Being half-Indian in this country, sometimes I feel like a racial slur waiting to happen. One of my earliest memories after moving back to the Philippines, and one of the first statements I understood as I was learning Tagalog, was swimming in a public pool at around age 8 and seeing a girl about my age drag her two brothers away from me while saying, in a voice dripping with revulsion, "'Wag tayo lalapit d'yan, mga bumbay 'yan, ang baho-baho." Sweet ano? I guess it's never too early to inculcate racism in your little girl.

I can't remember how many times I've been asked if my parents are 5-6, if they sell arinola and payong, why I don't have a scooter, why all Indians smell bad, etc. The worst is when people tell me I'm fair or handsome, then say, "Buti na lang, you don't look like other Indians." Why thank you for managing to simultaneously complement me while insulting the more than one billion other people of my race. It takes a very skilled asshole to pull off something like that.

One time, a nanny pointed at my dad while trying to shush her young charge, stating that if he didn't stop crying, "Papakuha kita sa bumbay." My dad turned around and asked her what she would do if he really took her kid. Naturally, the yaya was dumbstruck. Holy shit, the "monster" doesn't like being used to scare babies pala? What a shocker.

And hey, this isn't just on the street. How many times are Indians made objects of ridicule on local TV shows, radio, etc.? How many songs has Michael V. put out making fun of Indians? My boys at the home I work in sing one particular song all the time around me and think it's funny. I grin and bear it, but I'm pretty fucking pissed inside. Not at my boys, but at a media that would condone such offensiveness. At the institutionalizing of such racism. I tell my boys that while your average Filipino delights in making fun of Indians, your average Indian doesn't even know the Philippines exists. And it's true.

Oh and our word for ourselves is not bumbay. I have only ever heard that word here, in the Philippines. Bombay is one city in a country of dozens and dozens of cities. As my sister once said, that would be like calling all Filipinos Manilas. And we do not like that word, seeing as, and I say this from personal experience, that word is only ever used when Filipinos express disdain, revulsion, or some other negative feeling for Indians. The word itself has racist connotations; using it and saying, "Oh that's just the Filipino word for Indians," is like telling a black person, "Oh, 'negro' is just our word for people of African descent." It's beyond offensive, to say the least.

But c'mon, our country doesn't just confine itself to Indians. I heard that the common word used by Pinoys for Chinese-Filipinos, "intsik," is racist to them. My boys at the home think it's perfectly alright to go up to a black person and say, "What's up nigger?" because they hear it in rap songs. I excuse that and chalk it up to a lack of education. But even educated people torment anyone dark-skinned, calling them "negro," "ita" and "nog-nog." My brother couldn't stand his last school because the kids made fun of him for being dark. He was even cast as a (fuck me!) terrorist in some UN day presentation at school. Apparently, he was supposed to hug a fair-skinned kid, showing the West and the Terrorist making peace. I guess your average terrorist is a dark-skinned South Asian/Arab eh? Lovely. And this was his teacher's fucking idea, P.S.

I find it sad that, in this country, my brother has only found friendship and acceptance in an international school, among foreigners. I make fun of how he can speak French but not Tagalog and how he knows next to nothing about this country we live in, but I can't blame him for his disinterest. Given how actively hostile his former Filipino classmates appeared to be to him, this country has given him no reason to love it.

And hey, we call any fixed game "lutong Macau" even though your average Pinoy can't even point to Macau on a map. We say "amoy Arabo" for anyone who smells bad, and since 9/11, any Arab is automatically a terrorist. Before 9/11, people would automatically call me bumbay and make fun of my smell. Now, people automatically assume I'm Arab and make terrorist-flavored jokes. I don't know which is worse.

We even make fun of our own people. Anyone with a Bisayan accent is to be tormented. Aetas, or anyone with similar features, are to be relentlessly ridiculed. Anyone from Mindanao, or any Muslim, is to be feared because he'll probably go "amok" or is probably a terrorist. In a survey my group did for our college research paper, a Muslim man we interviewed in Baseco told us that Robinsons malls have an unofficial no-hire policy for any Muslim, which is why none of them ever get hired there.

I could go on and on but you get the picture.

And sure, everyone will forward angry e-mails and repost crap on their Friendster bulletin boards, but tomorrow, the same people will be lining up at the US embassy, desperately trying to get a green card. As what? As doctors and nurses in the US. If you're really so pissed, you'd all boycott that country's health industry.

So you'll excuse me if I roll my eyes and say "whatever" at this latest burst of "righteous" indignation. Before we crucify Teri, let's make sure we're not racists ourselves eh?

Otherwise, we're just being fucking hypocrites.

What Absolute Garbage

2007-09-29T14:32:00.000+08:00

"Push it. Make the beats go harder."

It's been almost ten years since Shirley Manson first whispered those words in my ear, and I've been part of a captive audience since.

I can't remember if I saw the video for Push It first, or heard it after borrowing Version 2.0 from one of my rock goddesses. I call the three girls who got me into rock music back in high school my rock goddesses. You see, girls got me into rock because most of the boys I went to school with were pretty much pussies, music-wise. But I digress.

But whichever it was, after I first heard Push It, I was hooked.

And now, around fifteen years after they first got together, Garbage has finally released a greatest hits CD!

It's all here people! Only Happy When It Rains, I Think I'm Paranoid, Bleed Like Me, and bunches more. And can you believe I only heard Vow now? Their first single, and me, a HUGE Garbage fan, has only heard it now. Tsk tsk. But I always say better late than never. Unless you're late because you're knocked up and not ready hehe...

And of course, Push It is here. That is, and always will be, my favorite, favorite Garbage song. The angry energy, Shirley's segues from a scream to a whisper... It always gets me.

And The World is Not Enough and #1 Crush are here too. I don't think they've ever been released on a Garbage CD before so that's an added bonus.

Of course, this is the Philippines, and no one listens to Garbage here, so they didn't have the limited edition Absolute Garbage. Mofos... I was willing to cough up ANY amount for that edition, since it had a disc two full of kickass remixes. Guess I'll have to buy it online. But first, me needs a credit card.

I wish some of my favorites from Version 2.0 were in here too, though: The Trick is to Keep Breathing, Dumb, Wicked Ways, and Hammering in My Head. Obviously, they weren't there since this is all just singles, but I still wish they were. My Version 2.0 is a tape, seeing as I got it in 1999. Unfortunately, I've worn it down playing it over and over again and now it won't play anymore. I guess that's another thing I'll have to buy online. And Garbage's eponymous first album while I'm at it.

But now a greatest hits album is out, and considering that Garbage has had some, shall we say, trouble over the past few years (a spat between the members seriously delayed Bleed Like Me, and they actually split up for a bit), it begs the question, are they still continuing? Because God I hope so. Too many good bands, favorites of mine, have disbanded over the past few years, or are rumored to be disbanding. I'll have a serious motherfucking fit if my favorite band follows suit.

So here's hoping Garbage will continue to put out beautiful music Till the Day That I Die (hehe, song reference). And I'll be playing Push It on a loop while offering human sacrifices to the gods of rock just to make sure they do.

You Look Like Hell

2007-09-09T20:45:00.000+08:00

Really? Well it's been one of those weeks. Le'see...

This week I've...

... had to deal with my boys going drinking... again! Now I'm usually a big supporter of alcohol consumption. Except when it involves minors. Minors I'm responsible for, specifically. And, really, they didn't care. They only really reacted when I threatened serious action (as in I'm going to kick you the hell out). Thoughtless, remorseless little *&^%^$#! And I only used symbols because I don't want to actually cuss at my boys. Yet.

... had to deal with endless accounting bullshit. Gawd, I shifted to Social Work to avoid numbers, not immerse myself in them. This is not something a social worker should have to deal with. And while I'm taking care of all this center management crap, I'm not able to do any frickking social work! What the hell was I hired for, to manage the home or the boys?

... not had a whole day off... again! Come to think of it, I haven't had a whole day off in a couple of weeks. Just the half day off (or hours off, if you want to count) I get on Saturdays. Then it's back to work on Sundays. Yes people, I work frickking Sundays.

... had to file a blotter for my "favorite" (those quotation marks indicate sarcasm, in case you're super-dense) boy... again! Only to have him waltz in an hour later as if he didn't disappear a whole day. This is bullshit. You try and you try with some people and they just refuse your help. Then you end up being the bad guy. I'm starting to understand how my parents felt about me when I was a stupid, self-centered fucking teenager. Except my parents had to put up with me, being their flesh and blood, and I can kick this boy out of the home. God knows I'm super-tempted. As I said one time when I was extra-pissed, kung ginago ka nung bata ka, and you have issues, that's valid, and you have a right to be angry. Pero kung ngayon, ginagawa mong gago ang sarili mo at ayaw mong magpatulong, ayaw mong umusad ang buhay mo, that's your fucking fault.

...Well I didn't exactly phrase it that way, but that was the spirit of what I said.

... and oh yeah, I had my parents tell me to shave of my "Muslim" beard... again! Though I'll take that over my work crap anyday.

Jeezus. What the hell am I doing? I feel like a hundred years old and I'm not even twenty-five yet. My family has, between them, lived, worked and studied in more countries than I can count on all my fingers and toes. They each make in a month what I wouldn't be able to make in years working where I work.

And what am I doing? Telling grown teenagers to please, for God's sake, take a frickking bath, and justifying why I paid twenty pesos instead of fourteen for a tricycle ride, as if I'm sitting in my office thinking of ways to skim off a few pesos from a foundation. Please. My family is not poor. If I wanted money, I'd just ask my father for it.

I want to help people. That's the only reason I chose this profession. But if people don't want my help, then I'm just wasting my time, hindi ba?

I'm still young and pretty damn smart, and I can still do something for myself, instead of working with kids who don't give a shit. And my father's voice in my head telling me to leave this damn country and get a masters in some decadent Western city is getting louder everyday.

I love those fuckers on Youtube...

2007-08-19T14:09:00.000+08:00

Remember in a previous post when I was wondering if they'd have a clip of Miss USA falling on her ass on Youtube? Well...

Hahaha! Man, I love teknolohiya!

Strange Sounds

2007-06-30T19:41:00.000+08:00

Today, I lay off the politics for a bit.

One of the odd things I like to do is watch the BBC Food channel a lot. Of course, I can't turn on a stove, let alone cook, but I still like to watch. It's very relaxing.

Anyway, I discovered that from 6 am to 12 nn on the same channel, BBC Food is off the air and they show this MTV channel. I don't know if it's MTV Kano or MTV Europe but I've found some surprisingly good songs that I otherwise wouldn't have seen/heard on our local music channels, heavily saturated as they are with hip hop and R'n'B videos. For some reason, your average young Pinoy identifies heavily with the thuggin-pimpin-chillin-at-the-Holiday-Inn African-American subculture. Please clue me in.

Two of my favorite songs I've found there are strangely by bands fronted by the most unexpected actors. Check 'em out.

That was Juliette and the Licks' Hot Kiss. And yes, that was Juliette Lewis. I first saw that video early in the morning. Seeing Juliette Lewis being a crazy dancing lady in a leotard woke me up real fast.

They've had Dave Grohl play for them and played alongside his group (and if you don't know what his group is, you're a lame ass). Neat huh?

And that was 30 Seconds From Mars' From Yesterday. I didn't even realize anyone I knew was on the band till I looked them up on Wikipedia. Yes, that is Jared Leto singing. Who knew huh? I thought he was just that guy who managed to make out with both Claire Danes and Colin Farell (and how many people can say that?).

The video's based on The Last Emperor, which I think I watched as a child. I'm not sure... Anyway, the band's opened for Linkin Park and The Used, though, personally, I think they sound a little too edgy to be opening for those two bands, who've gotten pretty tame and generic over time.

A note to Jared though. Avoid gratuitous abs exposures in your videos, unless you're being weird at the same time, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. You risk being labeled a pretty boy by the rock crowd, and then you'll end up like Maroon 5, who seem to be going to the same people that George Michael and Enrique Iglesias go to for their videos. I mean seriously, and no offense to gay guys, but their latest video was the gayest thing I've ever seen. At one point, that plane they were on was even shooting out pink smoke. Is Adam Levine trying to come out or something? But that's fodder for a whole other blog entry.

P.S. While looking up the band I found out Jared Leto is like 37 na pala.

Jeez, how long ago was My So-Called Life? I feel old.

I saw Prospero Pichay the other day...

2007-06-10T11:23:00.001+08:00

I feel soiled.

***
I was leaving a building the other day and boom! There he was, entering that very same building. I recognized him instantly, as he had on that same dopey expression he has on all his posters and TV ads. I belatedly realized I should have yelled "Loser!" as I passed him, and then run like hell. Damn.

***
Pichay isn't conceding. My mom told me he said, "There's honor in losing." Well, Prospy, prepare to get really honorable.

***
So what else is happening in my world?

***
It's been almost a month and they haven't completed counting our votes! Fuck that, they haven't even completed administering the elections! I hear they're planning to redo it in Maguindanao...

Meanwhile, President Bitch is gallivanting around the world. She was just in China, after having been to Australia, New Zealand and Italy. And selling us to Australia, let me add. We now have an agreement with their armed forces that's the same as the VFA we have with America. Whoop-dee-doo. Now we're going to have Aussie soldiers running around our country, turning it into their personal military base. Jeezus.

I hope we don't have another Nicole incident. Whatever happened to that Daniel Smith anyway? I bet he's now running free in the US. So much for justice...

***
My dad says she's just trying to get away from her stunning defeat in the Senate race. Don't worry Ate Glo, you still have Congress. So you'll still be able to hold on to the presidency like the leech that you are for the next three years.

***
And on to less substantial matters...

***
I have these pants from this British brand we shall leave unnamed. I noticed a tag on it the other day that said "Keep away from fire." Hmmm. Well I try to keep all my things away from fire.

It's like this sign I saw one time, "Residential houses for sale." Well duh. Is there any other kind of house?

***
I've been taking a bunch of my boys to the National Center for Mental Health. No, none of them are mad. I've just been getting psychological evalutions for them, which the DSWD requires us to get for all our wards. Anyway, as you enter the NCMH, there's a big statue of... Sisa. Yes, the nutty "Crispin! Basilio!" mother from Rizal's Noli.

Now there's an encouraging sight to greet the relatives of anyone being admitted there. Really now.

***
I'm a little sad. I've gone back to watching just white-people shows now. Not that they're bad, mind you. My faves right now are Heroes, Ugly Betty and 30 Rock (and man, those are some good shows). But I kinda miss the days when my nights would come to a stand-still because Encantadia and Darna were on. Now those were some great shows and, in a way, they helped me to understand the Philippines a little more. I felt kinda good that for the first time in the fifteen years I'd been living here, I was watching something Pinoy on TV, and thoroughly enjoying myself.

***
But Channel Seven hasn't put out anything as good since those two. I mean, come on, after hearing a character on one of their new shows yell out "Super Duper Sword!" while summoning a weapon, do you really expect me to stick with them?

***
And the crying drama-fest that are Channel Two's shows was never for me, even when I was super-into Encantadia. So I guess it's back to the American shows for me...

At least Lost is back.

***
So who watched Miss Universe 2007? Come on, admit it.

***
Now I, unlike 90% of this country, stopped watching beauty pageants a long time ago. People, these are not internationally-significant events. People are still not going to give a flying fuck that we exist just because our candidate wins.

But after my mom excitedly texted me that (1) Miss USA fell on her butt during the evening gown competition, and (2) Miss USA got booed to the high heavens during the question-and-answer portion, you just know I had to watch.

Come on! No offense to Americans (and to Rachel Smith) , but your government is such a global bully, I get a little thrill when any American gets humiliated in public. It's the only time we in the rest of the world can get anything in against all of you.

***
So what's changed in the world of Miss Universe?

Well, they've decided to go high fashion now, playing Nelly Furtado and Sean Paul songs while their candidates make rampa, instead of those old boring instrumental bits.

And they had this bikini fashion shoot portion. I guess the pretense at social relevance has been dropped in favor of swimsuits eh? Good. At least that's more honest.

***
To be fair, we had some variety in the top 15. There was this really hot (and bald) Tanzanian, with legs uptohere. It's good to know you don't have to (a) be white, (b) have generic wavy, flowing hair to get picked anymore. Maybe we're developing a more real standard of beauty huh?

***
I loved Miss India. And not just because I'm half-Indian. I loved her because, throughout the pageant, she had on this bored, I'm-too-classy-for-this-crap expression. She didn't make it to the top 5 but I would have liked to see her win, if only to see if she would have given a fuck.

***
Miss Japan won, and she deserved to. She had presence and personality, and she got that across without even being able to speak in English. Top that.

***
Of course, Miss Philippines won Miss Photogenic. Why? Because she was actually photogenic? No. Because one thousand gay Pinoys got on NBC.com and voted for her furiously. Whatever.

***
But come on, Dave Navarro as judge? His question to one of the contestants: Would you rather be with a wild and sponstaneous man, or a safe and predictable man? Please. Why didn't you just ask her, "Would you rather be with me, or everyone else?" What a transparent, macho question.

Luckily, the candidate answered it in such a roundabout fashion that she really didn't answer the question at all. And I think she did it on purpose, because it was such a dumb question. Good for her.

Which braniac picked him as a judge anyway? I still can't believe the Chili Peppers though he could replace John Frusciante...

***
And give it up for the Mexican crowd! All each candidate had to do was say something in Spanish, like "Hola" or "Mehico" (yes, with an "H"), and they'd go into frenzied cheering. You better believe each candidate hammed it up for the crowd. And you better believe Mario Lopez over-emphasized the pronunciation of every Spanish word that came out of his mouth. Yes. We get it. You're ethnically Latino. Give it a rest.

***
So did I watch it again and again (three channels showed it here)? O yes. You can't watch Miss USA falling on her butt too many times. I wonder if they have that clip on Youtube...?

***
But, all in all, watching this year's pageant convinced me of the irrelevance of beauty pageants. We Pinoys cheer outrageously and give our candidates who win these things parades and such. We don't realize that the rest of the world still doesn't care about us (or know we exist).

Even if Anna Maria whatshername won, there'd still be guys out there naming biscuits after Filipinos and arguing that we're Pacific Islanders, not Asians. Maybe we shouldn't care so much what the world thinks of our beauties, and start caring more about what we think about ourselves, huh? Self-esteem starts with yourself. Kaya nga SELF-esteem.

***
And maybe we should pay as much attention to that Pinoy director who had his movie shown at Cannes, or those Pinoy kids who won that international science contest eh? I think those are even more worthy achievements than being pretty.

***
It has been SO LONG since I got good and drunk. I miss having Saturdays and Sundays off, and going out at nights boozing, then crawling in at 4 am, hoping my dad isn't awake. I haven't behaved myself like this since forever...

Work's fun and all, but I could really use the weekends off eh? I get half of Saturday and Tuesdays off. I spend five and a half days behaving myself for the kids. I'd really like to be able to misbehave on the weekends.

Now that's one of the things about college I miss...

***
My dad is really set on packing me off for a masters abroad REAL SOON. I haven't been able to properly tell him that I plan on spending at least two years where I'm working.

He's taken to strategically placing ads for masters and scholarships around my room, and dropping statements like "You should work for a year, then study again, as the mind gets dull if you stay in work for too long."

I would have agreed a year ago. But, after working where I am for eight months, I don't think I can just pack up and leave my boys just yet.

Besides, all the job openings I've looked at for international aid agencies ask for people with at least 2 years work experience, so my plan's good.

***
I guess Papa's just concerned about my future, given that my position isn't particularly prestigious, and my pay is kinda chump change compared to what everyone else in the family is making. He's hoping I don't die hungry or something.

But I've kinda conditioned myself to a life of obscurity and low pay. People who help other people are usually not famous and well-paid. Unless you're a celebrity giving away money and that's good and all, but someone once said it's always easy to practice charity from a distance, and that's just not me.

***
So, the point is, I do have plans for myself beyond my current work. But right now, I'm happy where I am, and I'm staying put.

But I appreciate the concern.

***
But enough of this. A Makati mall's cinema and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 await. Later.

Grand Total: 5 Minutes

2007-05-14T21:04:00.001+08:00

That's how long it took me to vote.

I walked into the precinct (right next door to my house), in shorts and a t-shirt, no less, found my name on the list, did the thumbmark-here-sign-there routine and was given my ballot. Where was I told to write? Against a fucking wall, behind a blackboard. I didn't even get a folder for privacy, much less a frigging table. I picked out my nation's leaders up against a wall while people milled around me, counting stuff and asking each other what partylist to pick.

"Banat ba o Buhay?" asked one guy to his kasama. Ha. Just what we need: more ultra-conservatives in power. And what the hell is that bald plastic surgeon doing with a partylist group anyway? What marginalized sector does he represent? Oh and P.S. Mendez, I'm no Erap fan but those ads of yours were fucking annoying.

***
Oh and did I mention, I did all this without a voter's ID. That's right, it's three years after I registered and I still don't have a voter's ID. Ain't the Comelec grand?

***
Our precinct was a sight. All day we had a succession of vehicles blockading our house, people walking into the precinct dressed to kill, complete with sunglasses and over-large bags for women. Twangy, accented voices floated through the air demanding to know, in English, why their names weren't on the list.

Guess we're part of the 3.8 million middle to upper class voters huh?

Which is probably why my indelible ink is still on while people on TV have shown theirs coming off after a little alcohol application. We got the good stuff because, you see, we have lawyers. So we can make a big fuss if someone fiddles with our name or if we see something fishy with the ink. Meanwhile, I saw these poor sods on TV whose names weren't on the list even though they'd registered. What were they going to do? Nothing. You can't do anything.

Even during elections, the poor get screwed in the Philippines. Who says everyone's equal during elections? Lahat daw tayo pantay-pantay dahil tig-isa lang tayo ng boto? Ha! Pa'no yung mga hayop na sampung beses nang bumoto sa iba-ibang presinto? O yung mga nawala yung pangalan sa listahan? Does this happen in the "gated" subdivisions? Nope, it happens in Caloocan and Tondo, where the people really need the good leaders.

It was surreal seeing the elitist bozos from my subdivision participating in national affairs though. I'm usually used to shocking apathy from my social class.

***
I got a text message from someone I deeply respect urging me to vote for some anti-communist partylist group. Hehe. What is this, McCarthyist America? Sorry ma'm but I'm the last person to expect to vote for ultra-conservative Rightist groups.

And that's the problem with our politics: no defined Right and Left. Instead we have bozos with no platforms putting on song-and-dance routines to dazzle the masa. But the only difference between Administration and Opposition is whether their leader is president.

***
I voted for four senators, a congressman, a mayor and a partylist group. I wonder if there'll ever be a day when I trust enough people to fill out my entire ballot.

Don't worry, I didn't leave my blank spaces unmarked. I'm not stupid. I drew in enough lines in each blank space so that no one can try to write in some idiot candidate's name during the counting. If they're willing to shoot and kill to win, I wouldn't put something like writing in a voter's ballot past our cheating politicians and their goons.

***
I was explaining to one of the French guys at work why our elections are so screwed up. "It's our counting," I told him, "It's manually done." "But our counting is manual too," he told me. Oh. Okay. I guess we really suck then.

***
But let's talk about the candidates. 'Di ba bawal mag-endorse ng product yung mga kandidato? Then why is Vic Magsaysay endorsing Arthro? Hehehe.

***
Seriously Vic. Taralets as your campaign jingle? Batang Barangay? You haven't been a bata in like a hundred years. Act your age. It's creeping a bit.

***
Oh and someone tell me who the hell Sultan Jamalul Kiram is? Other than a transparent attempt by the Administration to secure the Muslim Vote. "Vote for us, we have one of your sultans on our slate." Pwede ba? And is he really a sultan? I'm all for more Muslim lawmakers but there's something fishy about this unknown guy turning up on Gloria's slate, the word "sultan" prominently displayed. Smells like a PR stunt. Sultan ng kapayapaan? Never heard of him.

***
And have you noticed, all the Adminsitration stooges who were trying to railroad charter change, which would have killed the Senate, are now trying to get into the Senate? That's enough reason not to vote for Zubiri, Defensor and that fool Pichay. "Pichay, itanim sa semento," one of my boys at the home I work in said. Oo nga. Oh and Mike, braces aren't cute on a thirty-something. Trust me.

***
So another election's come and gone. Will we have at least some change? God I hope so. What we're going to have a lot of for sure is cheating, and a lot of it before the counting's over. Hopefully after all that's done, we'll have a more capable and relatively Erap-free Opposition to stem President Bitch's abuses of power. God knows we can't kick her out; she's more tenacious than a tick on a dog.

Then maybe in three years, we can replace all of them with actually good leaders...

Ha. Right. That's going to happen. Insert eye-roll here.

Walking Troll

2007-03-06T11:18:00.001+08:00

Dear Kuya Mike. I doubt much of the voting public has seen the movie Walking Tall. So that movie reference is probably going to go over a lot of people's heads.

And P.S. You look like a total ass in your posters.

***
If dumb posters and jingles were reason enough not to vote for people, we'd have a lot less candidates.

Take Pareng Ed for example. We have a completely unremarkable mugshot of him above which is printed "Ang Gara ng Buhay." Um... and?

I know the reference being made to your surname but what does it say about you and your platform? Magiging magara ba buhay 'pag nahalal ka sa Senado? If that's what you mean, then say it. Otherwise all you have is a pretty dumb-looking poster gaping at thousands of commuters on their way to work.

Of course, he has Sarah Geronimo on TV so that should get him some pogi points with any Kapamilya fans.

***
But the absolute worse has to be... Mike Zubiri's. I swear I'm going to hunt down the fool who wrote that Boom Tarat Tarat bit and disembowel him. Jesus, I hate Wowowee...

***
I have to admit though, I like Joker Arroyo's ad. "'Pag bad ka, lagot ka." And his little cartoon picture is cute.

"So you're voting for him?," you ask. Of course not. Administrasyon? Pwede fucking ba?

***
"So who are you voting for?" Anyone who isn't running under President Bitch. And anyone who isn't running under Erap Corrupt. That leaves about... three people. Sigh.

I haven't gotten my voter's ID yet. And I must say I'm not particularly motivated to get it. But I'll do my damnest to vote, if only to keep some slimy sonofabitch from using my name to vote for some festering toad who should be looking down the barrel of a sniper's rifle instead of at a term in public office.

So if you're a citizen, and of legal age, get out and vote! Before some motherfucker misuses your name!

Supermodel kapatid ko! E ikaw?

2007-01-17T01:45:00.000+08:00

Hehehe. Mawawalan ba ng kaangasan blog ko? I don't think so :-P

My sister is in New York, representing the Philippines for the Ford Supermodel of the World contest! So if you have Youtube, get on it, subscribe to her videos, comment, whatever. Go here.

Here's a couple of her videos:

At ito, ayaw mag-display ng video sa blog, click this link na lang.

Bongga ano? Now go get on Youtube!

Natamaan ka na ba ng lumilipad na billboard?

2006-10-17T11:16:00.001+08:00

Only in the fucking Philippines...

It's been a hell of a past two weeks for moi.

***
Of course, we were all gang-raped by Super-typhoon Milenyo, 'di ba? Ngunit ang kuryente ay bumalik sa amin five days later. If I'm not mistaken, Merville was one of the last areas to get power back.

The winds also knocked over two trees in our garden, which wrecked our water pipes, so wala din kaming water for a while. Ang saya-saya.

***
I was thinking how this storm reduced everyone to the same level, walang mayaman, walang mahirap. There was something almost nice about that, in this deeply-divided, status-discriminating country of ours. We all had no power, no gadgets, no water, and we all had to find non-technological ways of amusing ourselves. In my house, we spent time:

- reading by candlelight,

- dusting off board games and playing them,

- rediscovering the joys of Uno and Pusoy Dos,

- and listening to mindless DJ prattle inbetween songs on the battery-powered radio.

***
But if you've been reading the Inquirer, then you'll know my above statement is not entirely true. They had an article about how the "rich" hied off to hotels and such to wait out the blackout. I should know, some of my neighbors did just that. And some of my other neighbors had noisy generators going relentlessly. Meanwhile, we sat in darkness, tsk tsk.

My parents didn't have to suffer as much though; my mom was in Thailand during the storm, and my dad met her there a few days later. Then the two headed off to Paris, business daw. My dad caught a few days of the blackout but then he escaped na rin. So they were cooling off in the City of Lights while I was melting away in the City of Darkness. Exciting, hindi ba?

***
This just shows you what Meralco is doing to our money. My dad pays at least P12,000 a month for electricity, and I'm sure everyone in Merville pays around that much. And I'm also sure everyone in Metro Manila pays something approaching that. Meanwhile, we've now seen how weak the material they use for their posts are, and the fact that they've invested no money in an emergency response system. Hello? What's the first thing that goes out during storms? Power, 'di ba? You'd think that a power company in a country that gets hit by at least twenty typhoons a year would have some kind of contingency plan. Meralco obviously doesn't. So where's all our money going? Fucking thieves.

I feel an angry letter coming on...

***
And ah yes, the billboards. The country recoils in horror, but only after people get killed. Belated response, as usual. When did we consider a total log ban? After all those people got killed in that landslide. When are we taking action against billboards? Again, after people have been killed. How sad.

***
Some genius suggested we locate billboards at street level and use them to hide slum areas. It's just like what my subdivision is doing, building high white walls to hide the, shall we say, less affluent community right outside, on the access road heading into Merville. Even the tricycle area has been hidden behind a wall. Apparently hindi dapat makita ang sasakyan ng mga walang kotse. How Marcosian. Imelda used to build walls to hide slums back in Martial Law days, because we had to promote only "the good, the true and the beautiful," or some such crap. You want slums to disappear? Feed the poor. Give them access to dignified employment and education. Don't fucking hide them and hope they go away.

***
I saw this article in the Super!-shitty Inquirer Super! condemning billboards. I didn't waste time reading the whole thing but the gist was (what else?) that billboards are ugly and dangerous and should come down. Hello? E sino kaya ang laman ng mga billboard na 'yan? Edi the writers and models and pretty-kuno see-and-be-seen people who appear in the Inquirer Super!, hindi ba? Mga hipokrito. You all shouldn't be condemning billboards. You should be apologizing to us for them.

***
And of course, even though the power's back, I'm still not fully connected to my world. The blackout meant I had to keep my phone off most of the time, to save on battery power. The few times I had it on, it was useless. Down ang Smart. The day the power came back, my phone line was cut (and as of this entry, it still is. Papa is kind of pissed over my P2,500+ bill hehe). So, if you also count the days of no power and signal, my cellphone has been handicapped for more than two weeks now. When the power came back, wala naman cable at internet. Although even if we had internet access, it would have been useless. I believe the computer had an allergic reaction to the blackout and crashed, tsk tsk. We had to wait for the parental units to return before we got it fixed.

And did I mention I had to start work in the midst of this hellstorm?

***
Yes, ang lolo mo ay gainfully employed na. I'm one of the new residential social workers at the Virlanie Foundation. Though my work's been pretty fun so I'll save my kwentos for a more cheerful post.

Now bugger off.

Drugs are so good, they're addictive

2006-09-25T15:57:00.000+08:00

You know how we can get the country out of the economic doldrums? Legalize marijuana.

I got this bit from Mike, a dear Kule friend. Now this isn't drunk talk; we were chatting before we started drinking hehe.

I'm not sure if he read it somewhere or if it was his idea but basically, it centers around marijuana being a cash crop. As in, if you plant it, people will buy it. So if it's legal, imagine the influx of cash.

I mean, we're already not planting rice anymore. Yes people, forget that rice central of the world shit. People from India, Thailand and Vietnam come to the IRRI here to learn about planting rice. Then they go back to their countries and we import from them. How sad.

But if we forget about all that, legalize pot, then get our farmers to plant it, people will come in droves. And I'm not just talking about Pinoys. Tourism will sky-rocket. Just look at Holland.

And the Philippines, being a hot and wet country, apparently has the perfect weather for marijuana cultivation. So it'll take a minimum of effort, 'di ba?

And considering how much of our country still relies on farming as livelihood, we'd be helping a lot of people make a living. Yes, people, the cities may have more call centers and nursing schools than you can shake a stick at, but the kanayunan still looks to the soil for sustenance. And I still think we should focus on that, instead of factories and outsourcing, if we're to prosper as a nation.

"But what about it's harmful side effects?" the moralists say, "It's a drug! Make hulos-dili!"

Well the moralists are all rich and boring. Ergo, the country's economic doldrums mean less to them than to our country's farmers. And they're too boring to try out anything like pot. Well here's a myth/fact link to allay your fears. I used it in a Myspace post a while back. See, I've been blogging about pot for a while hehe.

Marijuana isn't actually addictive. I just used that line as the title because I thought it was catchy. It's from this show I watch on channel 9, Good Girls Don't..., check it out, Tuesdays at 9. Of course, channel 9 keeps bleeping out any swearing or sex words (even the word "sex") so you have to be a little creative with your imagination if you're to get any of the fun. Why even broadcast a show like that if you're going to bleep half of it, I ask. You should see what they've done to Sex and the City... "Mangled" comes to mind. But I digress.

So see, i-legalize na. Aasenso ang bansa. If I ever run for public office, that'd make a great platform, no?

Of course, everyone reading this now thinks I use pot. And I haven't ever, really. So, dealers, and friends with dealers out there, get in touch with me. I have funds (or I will have funds). And I'm not afraid to use them. Mwahaha!

Me = Silly

2006-09-20T14:08:00.001+08:00

So all my emoting in my previous post was for naught. The foundation I was talking about called me back for a final interview. So I guess they weren't thinking I was too hoity-toity to be a social worker.

***
Of course, now I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not doing enough to get hired. Aside from this one, there's Bantay Bata, and I know if I'm kulit enough, I'll be able to pass a resume there. Then there's an opening for a social worker at a school, and one of my classmates is actually willing to send my resume along if I get it to her. As in, I don't have to go there myself. It is, on the one hand, That Konyo School, but on the other hand, they'll probably pay well.

Then I'm being offered a job by Agency X (we shall leave it unnamed). Of course, they want to hire me, not because I'm a licensed social worker or Top 8 (though those are pluses), but because I'm familiar with them. Religiously. And it probably helps that they know my parents. And for that very reason, I can't work with them. I need to work someplace where no one knows me, so no one will cut me any slack because of who I am or who my parents are. I need to be trusted for my professional competencies, which I actually worked for, not anything else.

Then there's the Philippine office of the UNHCR. My dad is friends with the director. And again, the acquaintance is religious. And the director's number is in my address book. Ergo, he's a call away. But what am I supposed to say? Hello, I'm Mr. Panemanglor's son. Do you have any jobs?

I love my folks but I'm a very dependent person, and I've been depending on them for everything up until this point. I need to be able to start doing things by myself, for myself (such as getting work), or I might just become comfortable with them pulling strings and ringing people for me and never do anything on my own.

Then there's also a friend, my dear high school prom date (hehe), who knows someone working at another agency and might be able to get me in touch there. There's the added bonus that the work isn't parent-related. Of course, I think a church friend, who saw, and was rather shocked at an (ahem) incriminating photo of me, works there, so seeing her might be awkward.

Hay, ang trabaho woes talaga, ano? Maybe I'm just getting used to slacking off.

***
People have the most depressing blogs, ano?

I've been reading some of my "friends'" blogs on Friendster. Good God, you'd think pinagsakluban sila ng langit at lupa. And most of their problems all boil down to them being single. But their blogs are full of it, entry after entry, whining and moaning, dripping with depression and desperation. I hope you all are medicated. Clinical depression can lead to suicide. You'd think they were pushing forty and living with a bunch of cats, the prospect of dying alone looming ever larger.

Or candles. Oo nga pala, Samantha says women with candles have replaced women with cats as the new sad thing. So stop buying those stupid aromatherapy candles people. It's not cute.

Love is not something you look for, methinks. It just comes. So stop looking and have fun people! We're in our twenties. We'll have plenty of time to be depressed and morose when we turn forty. Meanwhile, we should take advantage of the fact that we aren't wrinkly or sagging yet and go out and party.

And P.S., dignidad naman. Total strangers could be reading your blog as you go on and on about how depressing your life is. It's okay if you have a few bummed-out entries, but just a few. Hold some stuff back eh? It's not even as if I actively went after their blogs. It's just that all these depressing blurbs were turning up again and again on the Blogs and Reviews section of my Friendster mainpage, so I just had to check them out.

***
And while we're on the subject of silly things people put on their Friendster pages, have you ever gone through profiles of people who look like absolute mice, or you know for a fact are absolute mice, only they're declaring, "People think I'm maangas or suplado at first, but I'm really not"? Then they go on to say things like "I don't take shit from anyone" and "If you do something bad to me, I'll call you out on it." Only you're looking at their super-meek pictures and going "Really? You will?" Because it looks more like if you give them one good, loud bark, they'll scamper off into a hole. Or burst out in loud palengkera histrionics before bursting into tears.

People, if you're shy and quiet in person, that's okay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You don't have to try to appear badass on your profile. And if you really think you appear suplado and maangas, and you really don't take shit from anyone, and you're a (ahem) "fierce fighter," you better be prepared to back that up, because I will call you out on it if I ever meet you. Because, you see, people's first impression of me is that I'm suplado and maangas and bitchy specifically because I am suplado and maangas and bitchy. Hehehe.

***
If you've read this far, then you know what's been taking up a lot of my time of late: Friendster. Argh.

Let the fire inside you burn like I do

2006-08-30T19:27:00.001+08:00

Now. Right now.

1000 pogi points to the person who gets that song reference.

Hay naku. I have all this pent-up energy and nowhere to expend it. And no, that isn't a thinly-veiled reference to sex.

***
I'm still unemployed, this two months after finding out I placed eighth in the national social worker board exams.

Yes, I know my course is a somewhat more obscure one than others so I doubt people are monitoring our top ten for potential employees like board passers from say, nursing or pharmacy or medicine. But aside from that, I think something else is cutting into my potential employment.

I think that, and just like it was back in school, I'm being judged for the fact that I don't come from a particularly poor background. At least that's the feeling I have over my last interview and not being called back. Initially anyway, the impression I got from school was that people felt that since I was well-off, I couldn't empathize with the poor completely/couldn't handle the situations or clients we would be facing/wouldn't be able to take the lack of monetary benefits that comes with social work. My profs would look at me out of the corner of their eyes when they would say, even into my batch's last year, that if you weren't sure about the course, shift.

See, all the things that would normally qualify me for any job in any other profession are all the things that can be counted against me in this one: my grades, my background, my confidence, my competence with speaking and writing, etc., etc. Because it gives the impression that I would be unrelatable/intimidating to clients. But those are all superficial qualities. They don't say anything about who I am, what I believe in, what I want to do.

And what I want to do is something directly beneficial and meaningful to others. Something that will get me out of the office and out on the streets making a difference in people's lives. I think you can truly want to be of service whether or not you're well-off.

Most social work students are either beneficiares of foundations or have relatives who are social workers, so they're in the social work "network," so to speak, and have no trouble hearing about job openings. So if one doesn't pan out, they hear about other openings pretty quick. Me, not so. I'm the only one in my family not doing something business-related, and my parents are my only benefactors. So I'm at a dead end right now.

You'd think after doing well in a board exam, everything would just fall into place. Hmph.

***
So what's keeping me busy in the interim?

Well I'm fending off a fool on my cellphone who wants to be "textmates." God.

Apparently some jackass sent my number to him. "Tripper ka ba?" he asked. What the fuck is a tripper? Sounds pervy.

Well after he couldn't/wouldn't give me any details on the mofo who gave him my number, I stopped replying. But that hasn't stopped him from sending me like twenty text messages everyday. He's one of those people who has to send every message twice, just to be sure. He even asked me for load. Kapal!

Why would anyone want to be "friends" with someone over a cellphone? I prefer my friendships in person.

Loser.

***
I have like two and a half months worth of comics piled up at my store. I miss them so. But I'll need around five thousand bucks to get them and the lack of a salary precludes that happy event. I hope the five or six years of business and thousands and thousands of pesos I've given my store is incentive enough for them to keep storing my comics till I can get them. May diversion lie pa ako na I'm out of town so I can't get them. Ala nga naman I'll tell them I'm cashless, 'di ba? Yes I called them. How sad.

***
I caught Donnie Darko the other day on cable. Man, that's some freaky shit. But that's how I like my movies. There's all this time travel/tangent universe shit but at the same time, you never know if it's all just in Donnie's head (he's kinda nuts). Tinatamad ako mag-explain, read here.

***
I love Youtube. I've been finding videos of all these songs I don't usually get to hear on it.

***
I labs 'd inumans talaga. Salami ng marami Amelia and happy beerday! God bless the camera. My hazy memories were completely unreliable the morning after. Fortunately, there were enough snapshots to show just how plastered I was the night before.

***
My dad says I should just volunteer if I can't get a paying job, anyway I plan on packing off to... elsewhere for my masters in a year's time. He'll give me an allowance equal to whatever a social worker makes daw. But see, the paycheck is more than money to me. It's a validation of my adulthood, of me being respected as a professional and not having to mooch off of my parents anymore. Hay.

But it's better than getting fat at home, I suppose. I was interested in Gawad Kalinga and wondering if they had openings, but I hear they're even more enthusiastic about volunteers. We'll see.

***
I need to get out of the house and do something useful soon or I might explode.

Now. Right now.

It's 12 o'clock. Do you know what your media is printing?

2006-08-23T17:25:00.000+08:00

This is the Inquirer.

This is the Inquirer on crack.

In case you don't click on the link, it's a stunning study in homophobia, written by no less than Inquirer columnist and, apparently, retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz. Some choice excerpts:

Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were “queer.” - Apparently, to like the Queer Eye guys makes you "impressionable."

Queer people -- that’s the sarcastic term for them -- have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. - Take note: "carefully concealed" their "condition." As in, sakit ito, at dapat itago.

Cruz states that, in the 1930s, there was only one gay boy in their school, and one peddling on their street, who "provided diversion" for people. Ergo, entertainment daw siya. Anyway, dalawa lang daw ang bading sa area nila n'ung araw. Ows. Maybe the others were in the closet. He adds: The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the “sagalas” instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. - Ahem. An association of "homos" "dirtied" the procession and people should have been outraged by the "fairies'" "blasphemy." I can't believe I'm reading intolerant shit like this in 2006.

He then talks about bumping into some gay students and listening in on their conversation, which put him off. Says he about one of them: That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. - Wow. All macho huh? And you say all the students were certifiably masculine? I suppose you watched all of them having sex with women eh? To certify them? And an incitement to gay-bashing? Better and better.

Of course, Cruz is careful to state: The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. - So Cruz is okay with gay people, as long as they "behave" themselves, act "manly," and hide what they are, conforming to his standards. Anything less is "vulgar," "degrading" and "scandalous." How magnanimous. Though personally, I believe that if gay people want to wear loud pink-and-red-and-purple dresses with strings and strings of flashing lightbulbs, scream at the top of their voices, flip their wrists for all the world to see, and dance up and down the street from 12 am to 12 pm, that is their goddamn right. Because no one should be able to tell anyone how they should act or dress or live.

Our educated retired Supreme Court Justice then goes on to talk about "the third sex": The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there. - From what I've heard, gay and lesbian men and women simply consider themselves men and women, who just happen to be attracted to the same sex. Therefore, they should be afforded the rights they should have had since birth in the first place. And transgendered people consider themselves to be people who should have been born as the opposite sex. And should therefore be afforded the rights of that particular sex (which should be the rights of all sexes). So there is no "illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there."

I suggest you click on the link and read the whole article for full effect.

This is Manuel L. Quezon III's response to the article. Good for him.

And this is Cruz's response to Quezon's. I guess when you're a bigot, you need to get in the last word eh?

This is the Inquirer doing damage control. Which is basically just them listing out a bunch of gay statistics and then ending by quoting "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Which is just pandering and patronizing, really.

Heh. Reminds me of a classmate of mine in high school who immortalized himself in our yearbook by declaring he hates gay people and for them to "watch out." Though this guy wasn't particularly bright. Certainly, he wasn't a retired Supreme Court Justice and columnist for a respected daily.

Now I normally would send an angry letter to the Inquirer, but I've already done that twice in the past, and gotten responses both times. A third time and they might think I have a personal vendetta against them. Which I don't. I just have one against Tim Yap's Super!-shitty columns in the Inquirer's Super! section. But there's nothing stopping anyone else, especially if you're actually gay. Shit like this shouldn't see print in major dailies. I once said that when you're given space in a daily, you're given the opportunity to reach out and influence thousands, maybe millions. Bigots like this shouldn't be handed that power.

Firebomb him people.

Well, the gods must be crazy and the stars must be blind

2006-07-22T16:12:00.000+08:00

If Paris Hilton has been given the chance to start a singing career.

So let's break down her attempt at singing: the song Stars are Blind, and the accompanying video.

Now we all know Paris Hilton makes great (ahem) videos, and to all you porno fans out there, this one is no exception. Though personally, if I'd wanted to watch Paris Hilton rolling around nearly naked with a dude, I'd have gotten the 1 Night in Paris DVD. Besides, the frolicking-on-a-beach bit has been done before, by Britney, and I think, Mariah. Minus 1000 pogi points for a lack of originality.

Now, the singing, which sounds like a cheap knock-off of Gwen Stefani. I mean, come on. Still, plus 1000 pogi points for her vocal coach. Unless there's some Milli Vanilli shit going on here (read: someone else is singing and she's just lip-synching).

And the lyrics. I thought I'd seen inane crap after reading bunches of Tim Yap articles in the super-crappy Inquirer Super!, but this takes the cake. A sample:

Even though the gods are crazy
Even though the stars are blind
If you show me real love baby
I'll show you mine

I can make you nice and naughty
Be the devil and angel too
Got a heart and soul and body
Let's see what this love can do
Baby I'm perfect for you

Wahaha! My gawd! Minus 1000 pogi points for shit lyrics. And P.S. Paris, anyone who's seen 1 Night in Paris has seen "yours," which, according to wikipedia.org is "one of the most explicit celebrity sex videos, showing clear vaginal penetration, fellatio, and ejaculation — as well as Hilton interrupting sex to answer her mobile phone, which led to a number of parodies." So you needn't offer to "show us yours" anymore hehe.

So let's add 'em all up: -1000 pogi points + 1000 pogi points... Oh wait, yeah, we gave that to her vocal coach. So, -1000 pogi points - 1000 pogi points = -2000 pogi points! Woohoo!

Hay naku. Abyssmal, to say the least. But you know people are stupid enough to eat this crap up. Smart already has some kind of ringtone/call back tone promo going on for this song. Corporations are gods talaga. They can turn even the most talent-less ditzes into superstars.

If I'd known making a sex video would get one this famous, I might have tried it.

Top Eight Ito!!!

2006-07-03T02:59:00.000+08:00

You'll just have to allow me this moment of obnoxious self-indulgence. After clawing my way through seven years of college, to have this waiting for me at the end is just wonderful.

Yes, I'm talking about my board exam. As in I am number eight in the entire frickking country!!! I am the eighth highest social work board passer in the entire Philippines!

Man, and after the horrible first exam (of four), I would've been happy to just have passed the gods-damned exam. I never, ever expected to get anywhere in the Top Ten.

P.S. Yes, to be a social worker, you have to take a four-year B.S. in Social Work and pass a national board exam. You aren't a social worker just because you're working/you've worked in an NGO :-P.

Hay, of course, I owe this to many, many other people. My parents and their infinite patience and support, financial and otherwise. My profs (except one) and my classmates, for the knowledge and moral support. And all my friends from even before I transferred to Social Work (halloo Kule pips!), who know all about the math-and-chem-singko ickiness I went through to get here, and who've helped me to carry on. And I'd like to think that, despite whatever issues we may have, Someone Else was watching over me. I guess it is true: Even the most un-religious person needs to call out to... Someone, in their hour of need. Many thanks.

Yes, I know this is all very incredible. Super-singko, Hari ng Incomplete, perenially-late/absent, incredibly delayed, delinkwente Ajeet is Top Eight? But it's true hehe. Of course, the PRC website is (still) down, and the lists on newspaper websites are just of the board passers, not of the Top Ten, so you're just going to have to take my word for it. Unless you can scrounge up the Saturday edition of the Manila Bulletin. My mom has already stowed our copy away.

I'd chime in with a "Haven't you people ever heard of closing a goddamn door?!"

2006-06-15T04:40:00.001+08:00

I hope I'm one day given the opportunity to use that line on someone.

So, Panic at the Disco's I Write Sins Not Tragedies (where that line is from) and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Gold Lion are running wild in my head right now. If this doesn't abate soon, I'm going to (yet again) buy entire CDs for just one song. Hopefully this doesn't turn out like bunches of my other buys, and I actually like the other songs on the CD.

In other Ajeet news... (and thanks sa blog ni Amelia, gagayahin ko ang asterisks mo)

***
So I want to start buying magazines and I tried out Pulp. Big mistake, it would appear. Around 104 pages but after like 48 full-page ads, that comes around to only about half of the magazine having any actual content. And most of it was taken up by Awit Awards articles. Giving one each to nominees is okay but giving one each to the judges? Who cares about them? I have one word: filler.

The rest (what little remained) was given over to the obligatory CD and movie reviews and little blurbs like this one about some place in Makati where konyos play poker. There was a rather dull photo-spread accompanying the poker article so I had the wonderful opportunity to look at the detestably-konyo VJ John Joe's face splashed prominently all over it with his generic I'm-such-a-teen-rebel get-up. Blech. How old is he ba?

Avoid like the plague kiddos.

***
And speaking of poker, it seems to be becoming some kind of middle-class Pinoy fad. After turning up at two parties with people playing away at a table, I have to assume such. I half-expected to see visors and cigars.

Heh. I remember going to one of the parties and hitching a ride with someone. He warned me NOT to step on this metal case on the floor of his car. I can wreck anything daw, just not that. I later found out that was where he stores his (ta-da) poker stuff. How OC.

We Pinoys are such fad whores talaga. We'll go for anything that's uso. Though at least poorer people are more up-front about doing something because everyone else is. Middle-/Upper-middle-class types try to be nonchalant about it. Insert eye-roll here.

***
Those call-center bozos need to stop calling me. Seriously. I don't want to answer phones for a living. I don't even answer my own.

***
I watched The Omen the other day. My opinion? Meh. Still, it was nice seeing Julia Stiles get thrown off the second floor. But the original was better. Now the kid from that one, there was a creepy bastard.

Also caught X-Men 3 before that. Twice. Ako pa? Comic fan 'ata ito. Man, I love how they cut out the celestial goddess bit with Phoenix and just amped up her psychotic bitch quotient. That scene where Baldy and the Magnet walk into the room and she's holding on to the chair she's sitting on and just glaring at them? Priceless. Famke is a babe. All she does is stand and glower at people but it works. Though I wish we could have seen just one firebird and her bursting out of the lake shouting "I-A! Am-A! PhoeNIX!"

As for Storm, well the larger bit for her was kind of forced. I mean, they killed *bleep* and *bleep* just so they'd be out of the way and she'd get a chance to lead. And she's the only one who had a baddie specifically going for her, that Callisto chick. Siguro Halle's bitch fits paid off and the writers wrote Ms. Academy Award a bigger part. Still, that tornado-lightning-whirl bit was very cool.

By the by, if you wait till the end credits finish, you'll find there's a little suprise scene there. We comic fans hear these things.

***
I have not bought comics in more than a month 'ata. Ganyan talaga 'pag cashless tsk tsk. My stack at the store is growing ever higher. I'm withdrawing.

***
I miss Encantadia. Dearly. But that's for another blog entry. Related though, I've been trying to watch Captain Barbell, for Sunshine Dizon. But her character is nowhere in sight, and everything I've seen so far reeks of Smallville. Rip-off, seems. I even think Teng-Teng has a freaking barn he goes off to like Clark. As for Mahika, well I tried it for Angel but I had to give up. Corny talaga. Ang costumes pa lang... Diyos ko.

***
I should be reviewing for my board exam, which is in less than two weeks... Why am I typing here?

***
I've been doing some work with Bantay Bata. The person who asked me to come on board made it clear it was pro bono pero okay lang. Fodder for my resume, 'di ba? You use me, I'll use you. They first made us (there are a bunch of us) design a service booklet for them. But then they also made us come up with an ad for them. If they'd gotten an ad agency to come up with a concept, they'd probably have had to cough up big bucks. And this artist who's also part of the group is designing tarpulins and streamers pa. Mukhang nakatipid sila sa 'min a.

I was asked to apply for a job there, while I was at it. Resource Mobilization Officer 'ata. Basically you hob-knob with snobs and trick them into giving money to a worthy cause. Sounds interesting. We'll see after I pass the board.

***
Tower has an electronica section na pala. I know I'm going back when I get my first paycheck.

***
I had the displeasure of sitting next to two konyos at Nomads while I was catching the Spain-Ukraine World Cup match. So I had their relentless monkey-chatter in my right ear the whole time. Bwisit. The ditzy chick was going on and on like a machine gun about the inanities of her adolescent lovelife. The guy naman was boasting about how he's such a boozer and a druggie. "I've tried everything" daw. Si girl naman: "That's SO cool! I've never done that in college!" Of course, there was the obligatory "My car, my Motorazr, my trip abroad, my expensive this-and-that" talk too. Konyos nga, 'di ba? Where would a konyo be if he wasn't broadcasting about all his stuff?

It's hilarious listening to teenagers try to pull off been-there-done-that. They're so needy and desperate to impress. I wanted to lean over and tell them to give it a rest till they turn twenty. Anyone with money and ambiguous morals can do drugs and walk into class drunk. You want to come off like a badass? Rob a bank or something. I can't believe I was ever their age.

They're certainly not doing their school any favors, which already has a rep (undeserved or not) for having a high number of ditzy, self-absorbed konyos among it's student body. I'll give you one guess where they're from.

***
Ah, 'tis light that breaks in yonder formerly dark sky. Which means I've been here much too long. So I'm off to pretend to sleep. Later.

I got my transcript today...

2006-06-01T20:21:00.000+08:00

Which means I am officially a graduate!

I think it also means I'm officially unemployed, but whatever.

Booyah! Take that fuckahs! Mwahaha! I am unleashed into the world!

And P.S., to the bitch who drove my average down from what could probably have been a 1.8 or a 1.9 to a 2.1, for no other reason than petty, spiteful vindictiveness, I have this to say:

One day, I'm going to be more important and powerful than you could ever imagine.

Then I'm going to have you killed.

Slowly.

Pointlessness and the Celebrity "Writer"

2006-03-05T01:29:00.000+08:00

Since when did celebrity, instead of actual writing ability, become a reason to give someone a column? Do we really need to read about the self-indulgences of the elite?

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Back in my writing days, I was taught that what you put out must always be relevant. The reader must not go through it and think, "Now there's fifteen minutes of my life I'm never getting back."

I don't see how a newspaper that puts out what is, in my opinion, the best news and opinion section in the country, can have such a self-absorbed lifestyle section.

KC honey, iba ang blog sa article. You cannot get all vague and philosophical in your column without stating a reason. You have to state a specific event that triggered all your deep realizations, or you're just going to bore people. And really, no one's going to care about your existential angst unless they can relate to it. You can't go on and on about theater and theater classes unless you can bring it to a universal level. Otherwise, you're just being self-indulgent, and we don't have time for that. We actually had to pay good money to read this paper. I could have gotten a Coke litro instead. A really good Inquirer columnist calls it MEGO syndrome, Mine-Eyes-Glaze-Over, for when you're reading something and it just goes over your head, or bores you silly. See if you can make heads or tails of it. I couldn't. KC's blog that I paid 19 pesos for.

Ah but Tim Yap always, always takes the cake. Inquirer had a great section on the youth's reaction to Pakshet Procalamation 1017 and I tip my hat to them. But somehow, this piece of crap got lost in it.

Para daw kasing walang nangyari sabi ni Mama Tim. Nagpunta daw kasi siyang Fort at tuloy ang party d'un. Nagpunta daw siyang salon sa Rustans at tuloy ang pagpapa-beauty d'un. Kasi naman Tim, as I said in another entry (and this should occur to any Filipino with half a brain): those are not the places to look if you want to bump into people who give a shit about the country. “This is a state of emergency—to party!” yelled some MC at his club. *vomits* People like this should be taken out front and shot loudly. Some American friend of his wanted to join the rally and came back with pictures, relating how he was "called Joe, like 20,000 times." Our nation's fight against a corrupt, raving-mad, power-hungry tyrant is not, like a tourist attraction.

Being at EDSA Dos, Tim "totally felt the spirit that makes us Filipinos proud." About the current protests, he says: "Except for the people in the front lines who hopefully still really care genuinely for what they’re fighting for, the rest of the hoi polloi who pollute the streets were there for other reasons. Thus, the spirit of 'fighting in the streets' has been lost." Naku Tim. The "hoi polloi"? That "pollute" the streets? Did you really just write that? Really? Do I really need any more reasons to have this man shot?

And what a sweeping statement to make. Maybe you feel better about EDSA Dos because you were there. Because everyone else was, so it was the "in" thing to do. And you feel less about the current protests because you aren't there. Because, honestly, you couldn't give a damn naman talaga. You ascribe more relevance to the one rally you were a part of so you can feel all socially-relevant. And you put down the current protests so you can rationalize away your non-participation and apathy. Don't use "fighting in the streets" in a sentence. You might burst a blood vessel.

Being able to use big words in a sentence isn't the only thing that makes a good writer good. And what the hell is hazelnut milk anyway? Plus, it doesn't hurt to actually be knowledgeable about the topic you're writing about too, 'di ba Mama Tim?

When you're given space in a daily, you're given the opportunity to reach out and influence thousands, maybe millions. It's a significant gift. And you have to be worthy of it. Being a celebrity isn't reason enough to give someone that power.

L

2006-02-27T01:24:00.000+08:00

Ginang:

Noong una kang dumating, wala akong masyadong naramdaman para sa iyo. Natuwa lamang ako sa paglisan ng nauna sa iyo. At katulad ng marami, umasa ako na magbabago ang lahat. Na aalalahanin mo ang mga taong naging dahilan sa pagdating mo. Na tatandaan mo ang naging dahilan ng pagkakapalit sa nauna.

Ako'y nagkamali.

Hindi ako nagkamali sa pagkilos upang mawala ang nauna. Nagkamali ako, kaming lahat, dahil nagtiwala kami sa iyo. Noon pa man, hindi ka pala dapat naming binigyan ng pagkakataon.

Sa pangalawang pagkakataon, sinigurado ko na hindi kita pipiliin. Mas pinili ko pa ang tao na wala pa sa kalahati ng karanasan mo. Na wala pa sa kalahati ng kalahati ng pinag-aralan mo. Dahil siya lamang ang may kakayahang tumapat sa iyo. Dahil naisip ko na mas mabuti pa ang taong walang alam. Kaysa sa taong maraming alam, na gagamitin lamang ito sa kasamaan.

Dahil masama ang kutob ko sa iyo. Dahil marami na akong narinig sa unang pagkakataon mo. Marami nang nakita. Maraming tanong na 'di nasagot. Maraming pangakong 'di natupad. At umasa ako na hindi ka mabibigyan ng pagkakataon muli.

Ako'y nagkamali muli.

Minaliit ko ang kakayahan mong magsinungaling. Magnakaw. Gumamit ng panloloko at dahas. Wala sa hitsura mo, ngunit isa ka palang mabangis at marahas na nilalang. Nakakatakot.

Hindi mo na sinayang ang pangalawang pagkakataon. Ang mga bagay na masasasabi nating ginawa mo ng patago noon, naging lantaran ngayon. Pinahirapan mo kami ng husto, habang nagpasarap ka at ang mga malapit sa iyo. At nang kwestyunin ka sa mga bagay na ito, minanipula mo ang batas upang maging pabor sa iyo. At hindi sa amin. Kami na tunay na nangangailangan nito. Dahil ito lang ang kalasag namin sa mga katulad mong hayok sa kapangyarihan.

Sukdulan na ang paglalapastangan mo sa amin. Tunay na ngang isinusuka ka na ng lahat. Ikaw at ang mga kasama mo.

Ngunit hindi ka pa rin umalis. Nagmatigas ka. At ngayon, dahas at armas na ang inihaharap mo sa lahat ng magtangkang tumutol sa pagmamalabis mo. Ipinahuli mo ang mga pinuno na nagtangkang alisin ka, sa ligal na pamamaraan. Na naiharang mo naman dahil marami ka palang tuta na kabilang sa institusyon nila. Ipinasara mo na rin ang isang pahayagang naging kritikal sa panunungkulan mo. At binantaan mo na ang lahat. Na kanyon ng tubig, baston, at bala ang ihaharap mo sa lahat ng hindi sumang-ayon sa iyo.

Akala mo ba tatahimik kami?

Ang mga kritiko mo ay hindi lamang nasa pahayagan. Hindi lamang nasa mga magagarang gusali kung saan walang tigil ang bangayan, habang ang mga dapat pinagsisilbihan ay namamatay sa gutom.

Narito pa kami: Sa mga kalsada. Sa mga paaralan at pamantasan. Sa mga pabrika. Sa mga malalawak na lupain na pinagtatamnan namin ngunit hindi namin pag-aari. Narito kami. Nakikinig. Nagbabasa. Pinagmamasdan ka.

Kung away ang hanap mo, away ang ibibigay namin sa iyo.

Away na hinding-hindi mo makakalimutan.

Ikaw ang humamon. At ngayon, sasagot na kami.

Sige. Laban.

Serious relationships are for serious people

2006-02-25T00:48:00.000+08:00

Which, I realize, I am not.

Move along now.

You must buy...

2006-02-20T11:03:00.000+08:00

This

Why? Because it has Camille Prats on the cover. Frickking Princess Sarah. She's twenty na pala? Who knew? This must be seen to be believed.

'Course it has a pa-tweetums article attached (c'mon, she's not gonna go all the way into adult-ness). But if you wanted to read, you wouldn't be getting FHM now, would you?

Haha. I was reading it in my dorm room in Angeles when my ex-seminarian roommate walks in with his friend who's a priest. I hurriedly shoved it under a pillow and made like I was really reading a newspaper.

Also

Great, great loud stuff. I especially like Perfect Situation, We Are All On Drugs, Peace, and Haunt You Every Day. Haunt You Every Day kinda reminds me of Only In Dreams, from their first album. Very neat.

I was reading something that said that this album kinda brings the group back to the strength and honesty of their first few albums. I have to agree. I also heard rumors that this will be their last album. And now they're on hiatus. I hope it isn't true...

Haha. We Are All On Drugs is We Are All In Love on MTV. 'Cause we have to stay family-friendly huh? Whatever.

After all the crap I've been hearing on the radio, this CD's like a good cup of tea clearing through the haze of a hangover. Get it. Seriously.

Ang mga walang alam, hindi dapat magsalita

2005-12-29T15:12:00.000+08:00

Why does every other person I meet, upon hearing I'm half-Indian, think it's appropriate to declare, "India is full of poor people"?

Or words to that effect. I don't know if people don't realize this is rude. It's like when foreigners say na ang 'Pinas ay bansa ng maids/prostitutes (na kabastusan din at hindi rin naman totoo). Maybe they think they're just stating a fact. Well, yeah, India would have a lot of poor people, because India has a lot of people, period. About 1/6 of the world's population. As this minister once put it, "India may have a lot of poor, but India is not a poor country." The problem here is the distribution of wealth, not the existence of wealth (or lack thereof). Not counting Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, who have always been well-off, India and China are pretty much the powerhouse Asian economies right now. Western nations are lining up to kiss their asses (and flood their markets with Starbucks and Big Macs).

The latest one was this jackass, who, after telling me India was poor, went on to ask me, "'Di ba they're in crisis like us?" and "'Di ba they're a Muslim nation?" Hmmm. How do I respond to that...?

India is not in political crisis like us, because Indian politicians are not allowed to jump from party to party like our politicians (Aptly described by that PNP guy as "political prostitution." Hi Mama Loren!). They actually have laws compelling a politician to stick with his party for three years before he considers a change. Besides, people lose trust in (and won't vote for) someone who appears balimbing there, so it would be considered stupid for anyone to switch, even after the three years. Unlike here, where it happens so often, we're used to it na. Weird ka kung pulitikong Pinoy ka na hindi nagpalipat-lipat ng partido, 'di ba? Remember Miriam na namuno sa pagsugod sa Malacañang n'ung Edsa 3 at ngayon, staunch supporter na ni Gloria? 'Nuff said.

India is not in economic crisis like us. See my second paragraph. India, in fact, has significant investments in the Philippines.

And though it has a significant Muslim minority, India is not a Muslim nation (though there would be nothing wrong with that). Clearly, this guy was unconscious during whatever Asian history classes he must have take in high school if he isn't aware of the existence of Hinduism, one of the world's major religions.

And to think he works in a call center daw, at hindi siya aware of India, na chief rival natin sa outsourcing market. Mga diyaryong Pinoy nga ang nagpapaalam sa akin na lumilipat na raw sa India ang mga outsourcing firms dahil better-educated/better English speakers daw ang mga graduates doon.

Haha. Naalala ko tuloy ang prof ko. I walk into his class, and he looks up from this Libre he's reading, glares at me, and yells, "Unfair!" Bakit daw? The article he was reading says pretty much what I wrote above, that outsourcing firms are choosing India over the Philippines because of the more stable political/economic climate and the better-educated applicants. O, ang Inquirer na ang nagsabi n'yan, hindi ako. Tsaka, as if naman kasalanan ko 'yun at ako ang nasabihan ng unfair. Ang may kasalanan d'yan ay ang gobyerno natin, na hindi naman nagi-invest sa edukasyon.

Hay naku, I'm quite tired of having to defend India to people who jump to conclusions without even knowing anything about it. Honestly, I know more about the Philippines than I know about India. I haven't even been there in eight years. I'm half-Filipino too, you know.

Kaya bago magsalita, magbasa. Para hindi ka nagmumukhang tanga.

The sang'gres are back!

2005-12-18T03:43:00.000+08:00

And they've brought Francine Prieto! Man I love GMA...

GMA7, not President Bitch, mind you.

Three words: Airbrushing is good.

Armored chicks kicking ass... Gotta love it.

I'm what?

2005-10-29T11:19:00.000+08:00

So I was reading this review for a comic, Drax the Destroyer. Anyway, the reviewer was describing a character that sounded almost exactly like me: aloof, bright, bored, looking for entertainment, even manipulative. The exact text was:

What really sets this story apart is Cammi. She's not your typical kid who befriends an alien. Nothing fazes her, and she's not looking to make a friend or save the world. She just wants to be entertained. She's devoid of fear, of sadness and of conscience. She's too smart for her own good, and her new connection with Drax is like giving Cro Magnon man the A-bomb.

If you know me, you'll know that's almost exactly like me.

Now I'm a very vain person, and I have a somewhat different view on positive qualities. As in, I'd usually look at the above as strengths. Except the reviewer says that the above makes the character a...

Borderline sociopath.

So my personality is verging on sociopathic? And just the other day, my professor told me that I'm too cerebral, that I'm lacking in the sensorial, which is important if I want to be a good social worker. What she meant was that I think too much, but I don't really seem to feel a lot. Which does seem true, honestly speaking.

So I'm potentially/already a dangerous, conscience-less person focused solely on his own entertainment? Should I be concerned?

Maybe.

Am I actually concerned?

Not really.

Muy Sacrilegious

2005-10-09T13:32:00.000+08:00

So I was going through one of the comic websites I frequent, and I came across this article on a Bible-inspired series from Vertigo (the makers of Sandman and Constantine). Suffice it to say said series won't be Vatican-recommended anytime soon. Or recommended by any other church for that matter. A choice excerpt:

“And there’s tons of sex magick in there, too, (in the Bible, that is) that no one likes to talk about but is completely apparent to anyone who bothers to read the words on the page. Abraham’s wife is a Temple Prostitute. Lot has sex with his daughters—and every messianic character comes from the offspring of that union. Moses has man-to-man sex up on Mount Sinai. God has fights with other Gods. There are monsters and giants praying to Astarte (basically Kali). There’s aliens having sex with the human women. I mean, you actually read the stuff and your jaw just drops. Abraham did what? And he’s a hero?!”

For those who wonder what Biblical passages Rushkoff (the series's writer) is referring to, he offers a few citations. “God of the Bible battles the other gods in some of the Psalms. Mordechai and Ester are based on the Persian Marduk and Astarte. Joshua was Moses’s apprentice, and the Bible talks of their encounters ‘face to face’—which, as any Greek knows, is the sexual position reserved for man-to-man sacred sex - women are to be done from behind.

“Lot has sex with his daughters because they fear his seed won’t continue. They get him drunk and lay with him. This incest actually leads all the way down to Christ.

“The Anakim giants pray to the goddess Astarte. Do a Bible search online for Anakim – they’re all over the place. The Horites are big giants, too.”

Sex magick eh? I don't know about Moses and Joshua; the Jews were as virulently anti-gay as any modern-day Christian church. But most of the rest of the stuff is true. Trust me, after spending the first eighteen years of my life blindly devoted to a church, I would know these things.

Read the rest. And you better believe I'm getting #1.

X&Y is G-O-O-D

2005-09-24T17:28:00.000+08:00

Damn boys. Well done. If you haven't gotten it yet, you should:

And my 12-year old brother gets 1000 coolness points for buying it (and lending it to me).

Electronica Destructa

2005-09-17T12:53:00.000+08:00

So, my phone freaks out first, deleting my entire gallery. All my pictures, videos, themes, tones, even the ones that came with the phone. Apparently, I must have picked up a virus from some ass's MMS.

I could still take pictures, but only portrait ones. My phone was refusing to save anything big (or connect to GPRS, or receive anything vaguely MMS-y).

So I go to Neil Gaiman's book signing with the defective phone. After waiting nine hours (yes that's nine [9] hours, from 10:45 am till about 8 pm), I get to him, and the stupid Sketchbooks staff guy that's supposed to take the pictures, takes Neil's. With my arm. Just the arm. You're supposed to get me in there too ass.

Later, I take one of the people I made friends with in the line. Of course, when I finally get the phone fixed, everything gets deleted again. All my Neil pictures. And the ones I took at the Fete de la Musique. Sad.

But there's this of course.

Of course I took a picture (once the phone was fixed). And of course I'd put it up here. I want to show it off. I waited nine fricking hours for it. I had to withstand the din of conyo weirdo accents floating through the air exclaiming loudly, "Oh, I loooove Neil Gaiman! Have you read this? Have you read that?" I had to withstand the sight of one of the conyo girls dressed in this porno schoolgirl outfit who kept blowing bubbles in the air. I suppose she thought it was cute. Fortunately the people I was chatting with were normal. 'Course, their picture was deleted too.

Also, I wanted to finally use the Upload Picture option on Blogger.

Later, my stupid blog on Enemyster freaks out, for the second time, thereby screwing with all my posts there. This is my third attempt at maintaining a blog there. Also my last.

Clearly, this is not a good time for me and technology. Tsk tsk.

Musings of a Pot-Smoking Man

2005-08-23T00:32:00.000+08:00

Come on, that was just a title. I don't really smoke pot. Really.

So, the TV show Angel: They've been fighting demons, vampires and the like all this time. But I've realized that basically, the main baddies have always been just really evil lawyers. Well, more evil than the usual kind.

So, I got Love.Angel.Music.Baby. the other day. It isn't the least bit rock, but it's great fun. Naughty, quirky stuff. What have I learned about Gwen from her CD? She really likes Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano. And she really wants you to "get your hands on L.A.M.B.", which, besides being the CD's name, is either a line of sneakers, or a line of clothes, or both. 'Course, there was this song about racism that was kinda out of place with everything else on the CD. Maybe Gwen realized there was a bit too much cleaning out Vivienne Westwood and rolling in cashmere, so she threw in a little Martin Luther King. Gwenny Gwen Gwen, if I wanted social relevance, I would've gotten a book, not your CD. Otherwise, pretty cool. I kept mishearing lyrics though. I'd hear something naughty, which, when I'd check on the CD jacket, would turn out to be something completely innocent. Shows where my head is at... :-P

Late, but it needs mentioning: I missed Batman Begins in the theaters for War of the Worlds. What crap. At least my dad got me a Batman Begins DVD so I still got to see it. But I'd known it was on its way for about a year and I really wanted to catch it in the theaters. But War was ending its cinema run before Batman, and I was with my sister, who wanted to watch it first, so there we went. Needless to say, we both regreted it. The Martians get ass-kicked by germs? Meanwhile, Mr. Scientology does fuck all. And after her killer "I am no man" scene in The Return of the King, Miranda Otto is pretty much useless here. Yawn. I sincerely hope the original was nothing like this one.

Alias is back! Me am thrilled silly! And while we're on TV shows, I've been watching a lot of Darna and Encantadia. Don't ask. I barely understand it myself. It all started with me reading in a Libre that Darna had been killed. I knew she'd be back but it was pretty daring for a Pinoy TV show to even temporarily kill of the bida. So I started watching it, and I gave the shows after it a try too. Sugo is boring (and it had this pretty badly choreographed sex scene when I watched). But Encantadia is great; I daresay better than Darna. I love the malalim na Tagalog, and the costumes are pretty kickass. There's only the smallest resemblance to the elves from Lord of the Rings but otherwise, it's all orig. The engkantada is part of Philippine folklore after all, so there you go. Also: Angel, Izza and Cindy are great eye candy.

"Tired of overcrowding and pollution?," asks this Studio 23 ad for a news special. "Do you want to move to Mars?" What, and export our unique brand of world-killing to yet another planet? We've already trashed this one. We should keep it to just that eh?

So there's an Aeon Flux movie in the works. But before that, it'll come out as a Dark Horse comics (the people behind Hellboy) miniseries. I don't remember much of the show, except that channel 5 showed it really late on Sundays/Mondays when I was in high school (depending on whether you consider 12 midnight night or the next day), that MTV made it, and that it was kinda naughty. As in something my folks wouldn't have appreciated their high school teen watching. And Charlize Theron's in the movie version. I'll be waiting.

AXN is watched by the elite of Asia, "including the affluent", or so there latest ad spot claims. The "affluent"? Is that an official statistical term? Do they realize how obnoxious and elitist that sounds? Elitist... Well they did say the elite were watching... And here I thought that, among Asians, only we Pinoys were incredibly status-hungry. Ugh.

I finally got my copy of At The Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror. Man, when Powerbooks said 3-5 weeks, they weren't kidding. I think I now have a new favorite writer. Though he's probably dead. These stories were written in the 1930s after all.

And I'm done. Later.

Like Erap Condemning Infidelity

2005-07-16T17:32:00.000+08:00

Haha. May nabasa akong funny na article. I don't think it was meant to be funny but, nevertheless, ganun ang effect.

"Do you care?" asks Tim Yap the *ahem* "eventologist", about our nation's current political crisis. Riiiight... You are asking? Some other choice statements:

"People seem to care less and less."

"There seems to be a widening gap between activism and apathy." Well, seeing as the two concepts are diametrically opposed Tim, I would say na matagal nang may gap ang dalawa. From the meaning of the words pa lang: Apathy (indifference; lethargy). Activism (from "active"). Don't make me draw a picture.

"They (people in Embassy, the newest ivory tower for the see and be seen set) failed to discuss their opinions on how they felt about the matter, their moral stand, if they were pro or against the President on this "Gloriagate" situation. It all boiled down to how it affected them. Me, me and me. That's how everybody seems to operate these days." Naturalmente. Naghahanap ka ng socially-relevant conversation sa Embassy? Why don't you look for millionaires in Baseco and Payatas while you're at it.

And my favorite: "We are too busy with our own lives that to even stop and think about how we feel about our country and its leaders leaves us a feeling of resignation. We care more about acquiring the latest gadgets or getting load for our text messages." And where can one usually read about the latest gadgets, trends, events, etc., that consume the mind and keep us "too busy with our own lives"? In Inquirer's Super, in the columns of Mr. Tim Yap.

Priceless din ang kanyang pahahalintulad ng Edsa Dos sa (get this)... Desperate Housewives. Only someone who calls himself an "eventologist" would see any such similarity. "...with the Van De Camps handing out sandwiches, the Gabriel Solises showing everyone that they have a heart for charity and the future of the country, and so on." Talaga? Are you sure Tim? Are you really comparing Edsa Dos to Desperate Housewives? Words fail me...

Also, he talks about getting a call from Borgy Manotoc about the Ayala rally last Friday as he "looked out from (his) window at Gold's Gym." If my eyes rolled back any further, they would disengage from the sockets and roll back into my head. Anyway, Borgy tells him he's going to join his mom at the rally. Borgy says, "My mom was a child of the sixties, so whenever they felt something had to be done, they would rally to the streets and speak out." Tim asks, "So what's the color theme?" Seriously? A rally to get a corrupt leader to resign and you ask about a color theme? My gawd. At FYI kay Borgy, your mom is Imee Marcos. Whose dad was Ferdinand Marcos. The people rallying in the sixties were probably rallying against him. So, unless your mom was rallying against her own dad, I doubt she spent a lot of time on the streets.

Tsk, tsk Tim. You writing about social relevance and not being self-absorbed and elitist is like Erap writing an article condemning infidelity and corruption. Stick to writing such gems of journalism as "How To Stay Blonde Forever" or whatever the title of that article was, where you get to name-drop places and people in big bold letters. Leave the social relevance to people who are actually involved in the mainstream of society, and not cloistered away in The Fort and Greenbelt 3, being "hip and cool", seeing and being seen at only the most "exclusive" of society events.

The Inquirer is the only newspaper worth your time in this country. And their Opinion page is one of the most insightful around. But, I have to say, their Super! section is usually just full of crap. Skip over it. Here's an article actually worth reading. Nakakatawa, at kailangan kong aminin na ako man ay guilty nito many times over. Read away pipol.

Is Reality Real?

2005-05-25T15:45:00.000+08:00

So I caught this movie the other day, the Attic Expeditions. Really, really freaky stuff. My dinky suburbs-catering cable actually turns out to be good for the occasional indie movie. Anyway, I missed the first few minutes so I had to look up the movie's name online, where it's described as really Lovecraftian. More on that later. Anyway, the movie begins in a looney bin (or sanitarium, for the politically-correct prisses). The lead character, Trevor, awakes from a four-year coma. The Doctor in charge, Eck, informs him that he killed his fiance while performing a magickal ritual and was sent there. While undergoing lobotomy-type surgery, he had an allergic reaction to the anaesthesia and slipped into a coma. Seeing as he seems fine now, he's sent to a half-way house, to complete his therapy. Inbetween all this, he keeps getting flashes of what really happened to his fiance: her coming at him naked with a knife, him ducking out of the way, her ending up dead with a knife in her side, him dialling 9-1-1.

At the house, he encounters a bunch of nutters: a girl who hooks up with men then cries rape after they've gotten it on, a woman who types unceasingly, believing that her typing creates the world, a man who thinks he has another person trapped inside him, with this person expressing himself through an alligator hand-puppet, and another guy, played by Seth Green, who seems normal, but really, something must be wrong with him if he's there, right? And the house: suspiciously similar to Trevor's own, where his fiance was killed.

Anyway, the house's attic is declared off-limits, and therapy commences. Meanwhile, Eck is watching all this, as he's wired the whole house with cameras. A guest doctor watches on, getting more and more horrified at the ethical implications. For all is not as it seems.

So, Trevor keeps dreaming of the attic, and a trunk in it. On his first dream-trip there, he finds it is shut. He knocks twice, something within knocks back twice. He knocks thrice. Something knocks back thrice. He opens it, and is grabbed and pulled in by bloody hands.

Meanwhile, alligator hand-puppet guy turns up dead. Trevor, being the only convicted murderer there, is the immediate suspect.

He has another dream, wherein the trunk leads down to a secret room. There he meets his dead fiance, who tells him that the house is a set-up, that the other patients aren't really patients, and that her soul is stuck, because their ritual wasn't completed. She tells him she's going to possess one of the "patients" and kill him, so they can be together. And he wakes up... at the sanitarium.

It's the first scene again, Eck explains to him why he's there, and he's taken to the half-way house again. Yet he knows all this has happened before. He confronts Rape Girl, who explains that they're all actors. He freaks out and kills her. Meanwhile, his fiance has already possessed Seth Green, who goes on to kill everyone, finally coming after Trevor. He runs into the attic, into the trunk, and down into the secret room, where a book falls before him. "There," says Eck, who's still watching. This was never about treating Trevor; he's been after the book all along, a book Trevor and his fiance were using for their ritual. Trevor, meanwhile, kills Seth Green and hides the book away. But it is too late. Eck knows where it is. Eck leaves the sanitarium to get the book, and as he's leaving, we see Trevor, still in a coma, still at the sanitarium. So how can he be in the house? Is that really happening?

We cut to the final scene, Trevor ascending the stairs leading back to the trunk, back to the attic. But the trunk is locked and he's trapped. There is, suddenly, two knocks. He knocks back twice. Three knocks. He knocks back thrice. The trunk opens, and, with bloody hands, he reaches up, grabs, and pulls the one who was knocking into the trunk with him. Just like in his dream.

What was real? The sanitarium? The house? Did Trevor really kill his fiance? Was all this just in his head, and is he just in a coma? So why was Eck heading out, to go after the book? Nothing is explained, which is the freaky part. Me likee.

There were a couple of sexually-explicit scenes, but if you're too squeamish, you can always pretend to cover your eyes with your hands while peeking through your fingers. My cable "helpfully" blanked the screen during these scenes. Man, even cable is censored in our country. Ever hear of a child-lock people?

Lovecraftian, they say, because of the many HP Lovecraft conventions in the movie: the ambiguity between dreams and reality, and the Necronomicon-ish book that destroys all who come into contact with it. I've heard his name before, being a comic fan, so I look it up on Wikipedia. As it turns out, Neil Gaiman wrote a short story using some of Lovecraft's characters, which is why some of them seemed overly familiar to me. I have now decided to track down his books, which will take some doing. His work is from a very, very long time ago, and we're hardly literature central after all. Looking for eclectic authors here is going to take a while.

Ah, the blurring between what is real and what is in the mind. It's been used before: in the Invisibles (a comic), in the Matrix (That Damn Movie), in 1984 (a book). Reality is what we think it is. Is it our physical environment? How are we sure, then, that what is around us now was there in the past? Because of memory? History? History is written down from the memory of man. Yet how do we know that what is written down has actually happened? Are we not at the mercy of historians? Is there any way to return to the past to compare? No. How do we know our environment is real? Because we sense it? But, as was said in That Damn Movie, sensation is just a series of nerve impulses. Which can be controlled. Manipulated. Is our reality real then? Our memory? How can we be sure?

Man, I love all this creepy shit.

I'm not going to die under a stack of comics

2005-05-18T14:55:00.000+08:00

I'm not. And I'm not an overweight, socially-deficient thirty-something living in a basement. I'm a hot twenty-one year old who's going to be a refugee aid worker in a few years. So there.

Defensive much? Maybe a little. But I can't help but be mildly miffed at being cast into a stereotype. We don't do it to gays, to women, to different races, to whoever (at least we're not supposed to). So I don't see why it should be done to me.

Comics are popculture artifacts. They're fun. They're street-level art and literature, reflections of the times they were created in, of the hopes and aspirations of their writers and readers. To, at the very least, be witness to a world where evildoers do pay for their crimes. Where good does win over all. Where one man can have the power to change an entire world. Which doesn't happen enough in the "real world", let me tell you that.

So I defy society's conventions, its attempts to classify everyone and everything into boxes: cool and uncool, geek and non-geek. The sheep can let GQ and Cosmo tell them what This Month's Cool New Acceptable Hobby is. But I'm going to do whatever the bleeding hell I want to. Like read comics. And I'm going to have fun doing it. So there.

And yes. I'm still going to watch Six Feet Under next week. I'm not that miffed.

Go West

2005-05-06T14:01:00.000+08:00

No, this is not about migration.

For some odd reason, I've been coming across a lot of stuff about the old USSR on TV, on the History Channel and BBC. So, of course, I pull out an encyclopedia and read about it.

Westerners. When they're not fighting with each other, they're carving up the world. Which, by the by, happens to include people who aren't westerners. The Spanish and Portuguese were doing it in the 1500's. And the Americans and Russians were doing it not so long ago.

So, after World War II, the Russians didn't disarm, and began developing nukes. So started theirs and the Americans' arms race. Stockpiling weapons, threatening world peace, endangering other nations in their quest to be more powerful than each other. The US was only slightly better than the USSR. Slightly. At least they afforded their citizens civil rights. In Russia, Big Brother was probably always watching. But their governments were surprisingly similar in their treatment of the world beyond their borders: The US funding and training contras in some parts of South America, using the CIA to destabilize governments in others, intervening in Africa, and who can forget Vietnam? The USSR, on the other hand, was insidiously annexing-but-not-annexing large sections of Europe, invading Afghanistan (and hey, the Americans did that too a few years later), funding and arming other communist nations. The Cold War was only cold in the US and Russia. It was hot everywhere else. The two of them were fighting in other countries, turning other countries into their battlefields.

Capitalism, communism. In the end, they were doing the same thing, fighting to dominate the world. Repulsive little buggers.

Sure, the West is to be admired for its technological advancements and its liberal attitudes and emphasis on the individual. But they sure could take a few lessons from us non-westerners on respecting the rights of others. Asian nations have never sought to dominate each other. With the exception of the Mongols, Japan and, to some extent, China, our history as a continent has always been one of developing, each in his own way, and respect for one another. Our relations with each other have been mostly through trade, as equals. We never sought to invade and annex vast swaths of territory. We knew what was ours and what wasn't. The world would probably be much better and less poorer if we'd been allowed to continue developing this way. It's no coincidence that some of the poorest nations on Earth are former colonies of Western nations.

The West may not be annexing territories not theirs anymore or fighting their Cold Wars, but they still continue to fight to dominate the world, economically, politically, diplomatically, and whatever other -allys you can think of. You see that in the free trade agreements being forced down poor countries throats. You see that in the American quest to force its version of democracy on the Arab world. You see that in their businesses forcing their way into our countries, flooding our markets with Big Macs and Mocha Fraps and rubber shoes.

In the quest to assert oneself and ensure that you and your people are taken care of, one must take care he does not destroy others. One must remember that one can dominate, but that domination is a lonely place. That true strength is found in diversity, in coexistence, in respecting the space and needs of others. It is something we learned a long time ago. It is something that, for all its resources and education and technology, the West has yet to realize.

Boredom Kills

2005-04-30T19:04:00.000+08:00

I'm sure it does. And I'm not just bored today. I exist in an unrelenting state of boredom.

So what does Inquirer's Super tell me to do? Clean up my room! Throw away things that don't fit my definition of beauty and being useful! Move twenty-seven things around my house! And that, apparently, will unblock my qi (which is apparently how chi is really spelt) and make me less bored. *rolls eyes*

Next page. I'm bored because I'm go-with-the-flow, unlike all the great people found in the pages of Super! You mean the generic pretty people making sure their abs are well-focused on in the who's-in-Bora photo section? Or their columnist who calls himself an *ahem* "eventologist"? Yeah. Real envelope-pushing types. The only thing more annoying than the see-and-be-seen set is the see-and-be-seen-pseudo-intellectuals. Please. Using British slang instead of American does not a better person make. You can practically hear the thesaurus pages flipping while these goofs search for big, self-important words to use.

But what to do? We live in a boring country, no ifs or buts about it. And so long as individuality and assertiveness remain qualities frowned upon by society in general, we're going to stay that way. Social and cultural development will continue catering to the group instead of the individual, and we will remain stuck in the office/school-mall-bahay-'di-ako-pinayagan-ni-mommy routine.

So, till society falls, and a more interesting one is born, bring on the mind-altering chemicals.

Why in Hell Do I Watch Six Feet Under?

2005-04-30T18:56:00.000+08:00

More reprinting. Para may laman naman ang blog.

From Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Now don't get me wrong. It's a fantastic show. But as I was watching the new season premiere, I couldn't help noticing what complete whack jobs they all are. Let's break it down:

And before anything, to set the weird mood, they run a funeral home.

Nate Jr. Just lost his wife. Who drowned. Whom he married because he'd knocked up. Who, while his wife was still missing, and not declared dead, went around screwing random women, including the daughter of a serial killer. Who, before the marriage, had just ended a most toxic relationship with Brenda (we'll get to her later).

Claire. First boyfriend - druggie, knocks over 7-11's, gets killed violently. Second boyfriend- knocks her up, has sex with her (male) professor. She aborts the child, of course.

David. Doormat. In a completely toxic relationship with Keith, who is eternally grumpy. Breaks up with him after "coming out" to his family. Comes out to the world in general. Dates a bunch of guys who are into him, but who he isn't into. Gets arrested with a male hooker. Has his ex bail him out. Gets back together with his ex and immediately begins to squabble with him over inane things. Gets into a fistfight with him, after which they promptly screw. Has a three-way with him and this guy I totally didn't think was gay. Has a big fight with him at Keith's family's place. Leaves in a huff. Screws someone else. Is now broken up(?) with Keith.

Ruth. Missed her sexual twenties because she got knocked up by Nate Sr. and had to marry him. Has now spent most of the time since his death shagging. She actually seems to have the most active sexlife of the four... Her hitlist includes: her hairdresser, whom she was having an affair with when Nate Sr. was alive and began seeing openly upon his death. She shagged him once while (mistakenly) high on E. That's over. Nikolai, her old boss at the flower shop she worked at. That seems to have just been sex. Also over. The freaky mortician they just hired. No sex there though. Also over. She's now married to George, a guy she hasn't known for very long. Their "honeymoon night" kept the whole house up.

Brenda. My favorite. A genius. Completely damaged by her psychologist parents who spent her whole childhood studying her and passing her on to other friends to study. Had her and her brother's childhood bandied around in a book for all the world to see. Had to miss college to take care of her bipolar brother who only listens to her. Her brother, incidently is in love with her. Not loves her. Is in love with her. Has parents who were openly having affairs till the dad died. Had a sex addiction and went around shagging anything with a dick and a pulse. As she's recovering from that and finally meeting a decent guy, Nate re-enters her life and it looks like they're on the verge of restarting their toxic relationship.

Federico. Employee and now partner. Seemed the most normal. Till we see his family: his wife, depressed over her mom's death and post-partuming. His big macho married cousin, whom he thinks is shagging his wife while renovating their house. Till he catches him shagging another man in the house. Having a non-affair with a stripper, whom he got a blowjob from, whom he confessed to a priest about, and whom he's now seeing and getting gifts for, even though he doesn't want to shag anymore.

Nate Sr. Dies in the first episode. Appears as a ghost/imaginary whatever to everyone. Accepted favors from clients who couldn't pay including a rent-free room in the back of a store where he'd have pot sessions, with his family none the wiser. Currently torments Nate on the meaninglessness of life, David on the morality of being gay, Claire... well he likes her, and Ruth, for shagging other men.

Now why would I watch this? Everyone seems rife with emotionally masochistic tendencies, constantly seeking out relationships and situations that will hurt themselves. I suppose there's an element of morbid fascination and voyeurism here, akin to watching a car accident. Its awful but you can't tear yourself away. Plus, the thrill of seeing if they can possibly manage to screw their lives up more than they already have. Oh wait. They can.

But I watch. Because as extreme as the situations they are in, I know they're just extreme versions of what happens to a lot of us. Because just like them, everyone seems completely normal on the surface, and is completely abnormal just beneath. Because there is no normal. Abnormal is normal. Because watching them is like watching yourself, I suppose.

But mostly I watch because its real. And fun. And completely insane. Go catch it.

Random-ities v1.0

2005-04-30T18:38:00.000+08:00

Actually Che, ang real blog ko nasa myspace. Pero ililpat ko siya sa actual blog site. Wais 'di ba?

Tinatamad akong mag-post ng bago so magre-reprint ako a la isang dating colleague na tinamad magsulat ng article kaya nag-reprint din.

From Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Note to my neighbors: Wreaths or parols around your house - okay Christmas decor. Outlining a huge star in Christmas lights on your wall - vaguely satanic. Unless you really are going for a pentagram effect. In which case, I should probably be careful passing your house...

Yes, Christmas is but a few weeks away. I'm up to my neck in sappy Christmas songs. The other day, I passed a bunch of people dressed in (ugh) green and red, one of them armed with a guitar. Obviously carolers. And we're getting empty envelopes from total strangers expecting money. You know its the holidays when total strangers try to mooch off of you. No wonder the grinch stole Christmas. I wonder if he does Manila...?

And oh yes! I'm freezing my balls off. My sister would probably tell me this is nothing, but then again, she actually spent a year studying in the frozen West. I, on the other hand, haven't spent a day outside Asia, and have spent the past thirteen years in Manila, one of the hottest and most humid cities this side of hell. Any temperature dip below 20 degrees C is freezing for me.

So, more on the floods. Apparently, 1200 are feared dead, not just 600. And apparently, we already have had a selective log ban in place for years, obviously not much help. So I guess I'm leaning towards a total log ban. We may have to import wood but that's better than having loads of people dying, eh? And there's always tree farming. On the up side, a bunch of people were pulled out alive from a house that'd been buried in landslide mud for ten days. May we hear more such stories.

On the more self-centered side, thanks to the storms, I missed the NU Rock Awards. My friend had free VIP tickets, one of them with my name on it. Free. VIP. Tickets. God damn. Why'd those morons go on with the show anyway? At the height of a supertyphoon at that. People could've had electric poles dropped on them getting there.

I finally got my Queen of the Damned CD after many, many years. Now that's the best collection of seduce-me rock songs I've ever heard. I especially liked "System" by that Linkin Park guy Chester Bennington, "Before I'm Dead" by this group called the kidneythieves, and Deftones' "Change (In the House of Flies)" which, by the by, also got used in this really neat gunfight scene on Alias. Gets me all hot and bothered listening to them LOL.

So, what I thought was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 actually turns out to be a good show. My other sister was watching Third Watch in my room the other day. So I sat down and watched it and it was pretty neat. And I watched it this week too. We'll see where this is going.

Later.