In the Hands of Death

I was still in fifth grade back then and attending school felt like a coerced responsibility. I had to sleep earlier than usual since I had to be fully awake by five in the morning. Of course, "fully awake" for me meant being stirred to life by a cold shower and the rants spewing out of the radio on weekdays. What can I say? Back in our place, we start our day with a full serving of diabolic sermons from radio commentators first thing for breakfast. Or at least that is as far as I can remember if my memory won't fail me. Suffice it to say, though, that Mondays through Fridays were days of burden for a young learner, and to this day I still have the eye bags to prove my point.

Come Saturday and my siesta would stretch from dawn until dusk, and sometimes from dusk until the next evening. Either way, my body would willingly submit itself to a full stretch of rest on weekends that oftentimes I forget to eat. If anorexia was a fad back then, and somehow I felt it was, I could easily pass for a popular restaurant commodity otherwise known as toothpick, but that's another story. Going back, I could very well recall one lazy afternoon when I touched the freezing hands of death, which is the only way I can literally justify a horrifying experience with an understatement.

The room seemed dark, the dim flourescent light barely illuminating the small space. I was lying in bed close to its edge and there was silence. From where I was, I could somehow see the kitchen table for the door was open. Eyes partly closed, eyelids blinking in slow motion, I leaned on my left side. My hands were clasped gently as they protrude from the left side of the bed as if ready to drop and fall on the floor had they been severed from my wrists. I wanted to get up and take a brisk walk across the living room and back. But I felt the combination of weakness and stupor cling hard to me like a leech.

No one was around. Or so I thought.

The next moment I opened my eyes, somebody was already holding the palm of my hands. The object, very black and appeared like a lady, stood then knelt before the edge of the bed, still holding my seemingly lifeless hands. From what I saw, I could tell the black image was a woman, completely veiled by a dark thin cloth that stretched downwards. Her ebony hair was slowly swaying even if the windows were shut and the room was devoid of breeze. She was faceless, the contour and details of her face barely recognizable. As she held my hands, I felt a searing chill run across my spine. Her hands were freezingly cold. The warmth of my body seemed to have escaped through the pores of my skin, the coldness being channeled by her hands straight into the thin frame of my body. I swear if my bones had a life of their own, they would have already instinctively escaped from the flesh that held them back and venture away from that ghastly apparition.

I was not able to move a muscle. I was nailed from my position. I was helpless. From deep within the tubes of my lungs, I knew an explosive scream was waiting to erupt any time. But I felt very dead right in front of that veiled black ghost. Almost the entire duration of that frightening ordeal, she was kneeling, holding my hands with her own and speaking words I had no idea what dimension in this vast universe they were from. My stare was locked onto her as I lay immobile throughout. She kept on repeating unfamiliar words, phrases that echo like a Gregorian chant, reminiscent of mantras, the meanings of which only the dead could reveal.

And then she was gone.

I could not recall now if I pissed on my pants while I was at the mercy of that terrifying sight. I was scared as shit for the next few weeks I had to sleep at night beside my brother who's four years younger. For years I kept mum about that experience knowing how others might see me. Insane? Maybe. But insanity has its own saneness that even the most rational person in this world could hardly summon enough of his wits and begin to explain what it was that I saw. I never believed in ghosts all the while as I only manage to get a hearty laugh upon hearing ghost stories of other people; of how they were able to flee from a floating coffin that chased them in the middle of the night; of how women leave half of their bodies and fly in the night sky, wings flapping and eyeing for their next victim; of how abysmal creatures rise from the gorges of the earth during the most unholy hour only to disturb unwary passersby—and how disturbed they truly transform themselves at the end of the day.

But, truly, that ordeal changed the way I look at the world. Though half of my brain still tells me I might have been asleep that time, the other half simply won't refuse to abandon the idea that that was evidence enough to believe in the existence of other beings.

I was in fifth grade back then, and I was as thin as a G-string. I am now a college graduate with a beer-belly to boot, trying to earn my daily bread with a freelance work just enough to feed myself and meet the bare essentials of life. I do not know why in the world that experience happened to me, but it sure did struck me quite hard. To this day, a recollection of that ordeal gives me slight goosebumps, even while typing down this trip from memory lane.

The life of an eleven-year-old boy was once literally frozen in time in the hands of death. Lucky me, I was the boy.

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Wikipediaphile

Information should be shared, plain and simple. Selfishness in spreading knowledge has no place in this world. At least that is what I believe in. Quite apart from that, those who want to look like geniuses by deliberately making others grovel in the darkness of ignorance should take their egocentric and elitist delusions to the underworld where they can rot without the world being informed. One way or another, the distribution and access to information should take the form of a socialist's greatest dream, or one that is close to being just that: enlightenment without borders and bias, without restrictions set forth by no one, not even Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, the developers of Wikipedia dubbed as a "free online encyclopedia" that anyone can edit.

Anyone can edit. There you go. In its early years, Wikipedia has been home to a number of contributors who post "open" articles, which means any sane and insane web browser can freely retouch the original content of these entries. No wonder a deluge of cyber vandals were able to penetrate and corrupt the thousands of pages of articles, thereby polluting the brainchild of Wales and Sanger with mines of deceptive words and phrases.

And no wonder, too, that scholars and teachers frown upon those who seriously take Wikipedia as a credible reference or a firm source of information. Which goes without saying that they have developed an allergic response to the millions of articles in the website's database. They see it as anything but credible. They see it as an infirm well of misleading scraps of data. They see it as volatile enough to break down into pieces with the first swing of the copyreader's pen, sullied by streaks of red ink that litter the pages like the gore of bloodbath.

One widely-held remedy is, of course, to entirely abandon the wild wired world and return to the ancient practice of sifting through the hundreds of leaves of tangible books. Tomes of printed texts in libraries should occupy the hands and mind of those who dig for accurate and reliable information. And dig not elsewhere, your local librarian and senile professor might add. Return to the books like what the prodigal son did; he it was who wandered aimlessly in the epic journey of life only to retrace his steps after reaping a bitter harvest. That story of biblical proportions aside, it is enough to say that conservatives urge you to throw the towel at Wikipedia and stick to the tried and tested formula of scholarly research.

But apparently, the death of open-content online encyclopedia is nowhere near in sight. Even with the uproar of critics and the surge of cyber vandals, several prototypes of virtual databases have risen and come forth to level the playing field. At least two recent websites come to mind: one is Citizendium and the other is Knol. The former is the offspring of Larry Sanger's protest against Wale's Wikipedia. The latter, dubbed as "an authoritative article about a specific topic," is Google's response to the immense popularity of online content written either by your average joe or your doctorate-degree holder neighbor. Others say these websites have their differences, but I say it's the "same difference." These two things indicate that the expansion of online databases is yet to grind to a searing halt. Or maybe they won't cease to evolve through time, part of the reason to it being the internet going nowhere. Not surprisingly, it's here to stay for the best and worst of times. Well, to have the best of times is one thing. To have the worst of times is quite another.

Simson L. Garfinkel, in his article Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth, argues that "objective truth isn't all that important" in Wikipedia since it depends merely on verifiability—which Garfinkel sees as "an appeal to [the] authority" of other publications—as one of its core "epistemological standards." The obvious danger to that method, of course, is that the veracity of the articles found in Wikipedia depends on outside articles used as references, preferably with the aid of hyperlinks, regardless of whether or not the facts they presume to present are in fact facts. Misinformation becomes the greatest sin. A hyperlink is the messiah.

But Wikipedia is not without its own preventive measures to boot. Learning perhaps from the likes of Knol and Citizendium and a larger part from its own infiltrated articles, it has now sought its "internet editors" to verify their credentials. For all we know, Wikipedia's contributors can also serve as its stronghold of defense instead of being solely the reason for several of its malicious contents. Which is why the website would not have been possible in the first place had there been no perfectly sane and perfectly mad individuals ploughing its pages regardless of intent. Here you have a community of online editors who can help filter the system and cleanse it from the dregs inflicted by cyber vandals. Apparently, Wikipedia begs its readers to help fix the problems by daubing some "tender loving care" on the articles they read. What other way to police the polis of knowledge and rid it of false information than to allow the "netizens" to thrive in numbers and guard the database.

Yet it might lead to what others suggest as mob rule, with shades of Maoist tendencies lurking in the background. You have a group of people setting the standards for the public to follow, controlling who can do what and what one can do, and you have a seemingly perfect mix for mob rule.

But you can't deny Wikipedia a bit of credit for doing its own share of making information available to people even those in the most remote regions of the planet—so long as they have an internet connection and a functional computer. The website is not as selfish as it looks although, of course, there's a big catch to that.

It remains vulnerable to corruption, like this nation's presidency, the latter being more open to the vileness the world can offer than what its predecessors did. But that's another story.

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Uranus is a Planet

The military has been in hot pursuit of Commander Bravo these past few months, to no avail. And then here comes ABS-CBN with an exclusive interview of the rogue commander, fully armed and with his vigorous subordinates behind him in mirthful cheer. The only thing that comes to mind is that you can not get any starker contrast than this. You can not get any better proof of how brains do better than brawns other than this. You have a military aided by rifles and tanks and yet you have the same military unable to apprehend a loose rebel. On the other side of the fence, you have journalists aided solely by cameras and the desire to broadcast a side rarely seen and known in full public view, which is the side of a man always on the run but is yet to flinch before the grip of the law.

I can only think of one insane reason why the DOJ, under the leadership of Secretary Raul Gonzalez, is more than willing to file a complaint against ABS-CBN before the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas or KBP. The fact that the media outfit was able to conduct a personal interview of MILF leader Abdullah Macapaar is reason enough to say that there's something terribly wrong with the way the AFP, not least the government, conducts its military operations. The very fact that there's an interview of a rogue bandit, one who is supposed be behind bars as we speak, in the midst of a chase highlights the gross failure of the military, not least the government, in living up to its name. It does sound sane to say that having an armed force is never enough. More to that, having an armed force without knowing exactly what it is armed with—brains and brawns, or brains or brawns, or none at all—is just as good as punching air, or shooting the moon.

The DOJ Secretary has grown an infamous reputation of chasing after those he sees as easy prey. And instead of running after the real enemies of the state with fervent desire and with heightened sense of responsibility, it seems that he lives his days by pawning small fry. That's not to say that ABS-CBN is as microscopic as his brain, although we certainly hear distant echoes of it. That's just to say that shunning the media for doing its role of giving the viewing public the larger picture is an acknowledgment of the greater force that the government is unable to bend. Which is the force of the rebels, MILF and others. You can't put down your bigger enemies, you steer away from them for a moment and focus your energies on those who provide the people with information that is unavailable elsewhere. You can't beat a renegade with a few handful of militia, you fold your tail between your legs and you start biting the hands that give instead.

I cannot help but agree with ABS-CBN News and Current Affairs head Maria Ressa. Being a media agency, it is in their immediate duty to "report on people and events that affect public interest." Hell, no sane person would dare say that this rogue MILF commander is not part of the things that affect our interests. Nobody wants a man with a gun running amok and wandering aimlessly in your backyard, one who has earned an ill reputation for extinguishing lives with bullets.

It seems, too, that Gonzalez is yet again proving before us that he does have a distorted perception of reality. He points out that "the interview created an impact that [Commander Bravo] is greater than life with his followers cheering at his back." For Jesus H. Christ's sake, isn't Bravo already greater than life? For Adolf Hitler's sake, isn't Bravo already a full blown threat to the public? For Beelzebub's sake, isn't Bravo already a menace even without the interview? But who am I to know, anyway? Only the likes of Paris Hilton and with similar minds can ever begin to explain why the interview would create that massive impact—with strong emphasis on the ass.

Would the interview create the impression to the people that the MILF will launch more attacks, thereby causing more fear instead of bringing more sense of security as Gonzalez proclaims? Apparently, that question is, in the words of some of the prostitutes of the law in black robes, moot and academic. Worse, it might just as well be less than that. For one, it won't be of any surprise if the MILF continues to hurl daggers and fling bullets in the bushy mountains of Mindanao. Two, the fact that the military continues its offensive strikes against the rebels is reason enough to sustain fear and more of it. You do not need an interview of the rogue commander to hammer those things all the more. The people of Mindanao have already reaped fear from fields that are supposed to give them a bountiful harvest of grains, which are now being sown with the seeds of terror, watered by the blood of men and women, of fighters and civilians and all the casualties of war, and raised in the premise that no time is safe enough to plough these patches of land.

Well, I suspect at the same time that the MILF is more than willing to allocate a portion of their time for the interview because it brings their propaganda closer to public scrutiny. Which is to say that the interview is no less seen by the rogues as a means to propagate their propaganda. "Magkakaubusan ng lahi," Bravo succinctly puts it before the camera's lens. The way the DOJ secretary reacted to this recitation from the rogue rebel goes to show how this government fears these bandits like mice to cat. But of course, who wouldn't begin to fear these cabals of terror, these armed men who rage with adrenaline at the first sight of potential combat? But to have men who are sworn to protect this country tremble and shake in fear at the sight of villains and terrorists, now that is certainly another matter, especially so if your department tasked to pursue nothing but justice is doing more injustice and harm than these renegades of the law.

The day when we begin to put a cap on the duty of old mainstream media from fulfilling its role of revealing facets of life that are rarely seen and heard is the day when we lose one arm of the public in knowing the truth, or at least in searching for the truth. The day when we finally bar the media from trekking loads less travelled by even by the surrogates of the law and the elements of the government is the day when we have less instances of journalists being kidnapped and killed in broad daylight or in the dead of the night while losing more chances of getting the bigger picture of the events that affect public interest. Being a DOJ secretary might truly make you develop an allergic response against the presence and existence of the print and broadcast industry.

You do not want the media to offer a larger view of the events that really matter, go and be a DOJ secretary. And if you're a secretary of an unjust justice department as we speak, Uranus is a planet.

Asshole.

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Idiocy

They sport rusty guns or none at all. In the provinces where insurgency is nothing but normal or has become an average part of the people's lives, they patrol the streets with deadly cars, the cogs and metal frames of which can kill the unknowing rebel with tetanus than with bullets. They huddle in their nipa huts which, for all we know, have come to be known as outposts and stations. Their high ranking officials splurge millions on distant trips to foreign shores to meet with their counterparts from other countries while the files of their subordinates down to the lowest of their comrade in the hierarchy endures the daily crusade of serving and protecting the public. We call them our police officers.

To begin with, the name "police" might easily conjure images of an alligator munching on innocent prey, preferably motorists halted at the sides of the streets for a traffic violation that only the predator and the likes of Paris Hilton can begin to explain. Or it might easily stimulate the mind into imagining the image of a man with bellies that protrude as far as the buttons of the blue uniform permit, one whose right hand wields the pen atop the table while the left hand reaches for the envelope stuffed with cash as bribe beneath the desk, preferably in the dead of the night. One can even stretch the argument further by saying that these things do not belong to the realm of fairy tales and nightmares. They happen, rather, in the real world, especially so in this wretched patch of the earth. To think otherwise, one might supplant, is utter folly. That is so for several reasons.

One is that the concept of a policeman in this country has already eroded to the deepest gullies. What with all the police abuses that have caused more alarm to the public than having the instinct to fear the bandits on the other side of the legal fence. What with all the circumstances when the ranks and files of these men in uniform in cahoots with the perpetrators of unspeakable injustice—sometimes two ways of ostensively referring to the same thing. What with all the narratives about these men drinking away their time in some urban bar, beer in hand and gun on the other, singing tunes reminiscent of Frank Sinatra and his way with the aid of a machine that spits songs in exchange of five peso coins. What with all these and some other untold stories that only the unwilling eye witnesses can reveal.

Two is that the incompetence of some of our police authorities have brought more reasons for criminals to thrive with little regard for the iron fists of the law. Or maybe not iron fists but butter fingers. Which reminds me of that ubiquitous oxymoron "police intelligence". Legend has it that the faintest sign of intelligence that one can discover from these men is their capacity to at least respond to the scene of the crime when all is said and done, or when all is dead and gone, dead being the civilians, and gone being the crooks. Legend has it, too, that the phrase itself has become closely associated with everything dubious—with emphasis on the ass. You hear them publicly announcing that their intelligence division has led them to apprehend the bandit with that unmistakable missing left arm. The next day, you hear them in a fit of rage proclaiming that the real villain is one who has a missing right arm. That's police intelligence for you.

I do not know now if anything worse can happen other than a battalion of your officers committing harakiri at the first light of day for some trivial reason. But what I do know is that PNP Director Eliseo dela Paz and his cold millions aren't worthy of our applause. Here you have a man who is destined to retire and yet is still able to fiddle with the treasury. Here you have a man who travels far and wide with his companions in the office together with their wives—legitimate or otherwise—confusing the call of duty with the call of the life of milk and honey abroad. Here you have a man who spends luxury with the swift swipe of the police pen while the rest of his subordinates in the provinces are defending towns with anorexic supplies of ammunition and firearms that are ready to retire with the first pull of the trigger, weighing themselves down the scales of scrap metal shops at the end of the day. Here you have a man who by no means is a real man. If that is what a real man does in real life, then God or Allah or Bathala forbid, we must be gay, not that I have anything against homosexuals.

Which brings me to the point where I have to ask why in the world would they need a contingency fund that could have that built concrete police outposts instead, or tools needed in police operations perhaps? Indeed, why? Why do you have to bring your wives—again, legitimate or otherwise—with you on what is supposed to be an official business in Kremlin territory? What kind of police intelligence do they have anyway, assuming there is such a phrase for argument's sake? The rest of the public can certainly pitch more questions at them, and while at that they certainly ought to demand for an explanation, if not an intelligent alibi, or at least a sane excuse.

When you have superiors like these, it won't be surprising if the entire hierarchy becomes tarnished, warts and all. When you have heads of delicate departments like these, it won't be mind-boggling if a portion of our legal enforcers end up enduring their days and nights at work inside a shack short of being a poultry house for a police detachment. With obsolete weapons at their disposal, it isn't shocking at all if lives and limbs do really become disposed off. And it won't be the life and limbs of the rogue.

Sort of makes you wonder anyhow. Where's police intelligence when you badly need it?

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Sound of Silence

What can I say? BBC isn't deaf and mute after all. After portraying in Harry and Paul a Filipina domestic worker wearing a maid's uniform dancing before a man in an attempt to seduce the guy, the British media company has issued an apology. The apology came after several protests were made against the British sketch, most of which—if not all—were lodged by Filipinos from home and from abroad. I do not know now if BBC will decide to keep itself away from offending public sensitivity, racist remarks under the guise of humor being the most of it, in the coming days and months. I do not know now if BBC has learned its own fork in the road, respecting other cultures for the sake of decency being the least of it. But what I do know is that there's still a portion of this nation willing to trumpet its voice to distant ears in distant lands just so to defend what little dignity is left of us.

Which makes me think. Whatever has happened to the other half of this country in the face of BBC's cheap shot at humor, I cannot help but mull over. You hear of the news of Filipinos being put down by foreign hands and you shun yourself in silence. You say, who cares anyway? Or if not, you say instead, we tolerate watching our own women dancing in skimpy clothes before national television or in some obscure bar where drunk men frequent in the most unholy hours of the night, why bother ourselves with something that simply reflects the reality right in our backyard? Or still, you say for the sake of argument, sure that Harry and Paul episode has denigrated and degraded the Filipina with a loud and rude thud, but that will certainly pass like a whimper, or a fleeting whisper in the wind, and long before you know it we've already forgotten that it happened.

I cannot agree any less. I can only agree more. Things like these happen and you begin to wonder why this nation hasn't yet been erased from the face of the earth. Things like these happen and you begin to wonder how and why in the world we call ourselves citizens of a nation in the first place. Some say we are a forgetful race, and we have the reasons to become so. Parts and parcels of it have something to do with the hundreds of years we've been held captive by foreign hands. Shards of it have something to do, too, with the turbulent times decades before today that saw how a country can be literally at the mercy of the hands of a dictator. The need to forget is certainly there. But to turn your back against your own nation and forget that a petty crime that hides unspeakable montrosities in hindsight, the folly of gutter humor against your own kind notwithstanding, now that is certainly the most that one can expect from an apathetic organism, one that deserves inexistence, one that ought to give way for another being waiting to be born who's more worthy of the oxygen in this planet. Or better still, one that ought to fall with a thud and pass like a whimper. But that's certainly stretching the imagination to great lengths.

I cannot agree any less. I can only agree more. Sure, women dancing and prancing and contorting with very minimal clothing in noontime shows are reasons enough to bring heart attacks to old conservatives waiting to see the last light of their days. They certainly fill the tubes at lunch time. But that does not mean we ought to abandon altogether the need to strive for better entertainment, which is to rid these shows of perversion. While at that, it does not call upon us to let humiliation inflicted on our domestic workers be forgotten or abandoned either. Quite on the contrary, both of these things call upon us to take notice and care of what little we have left, which is the little dignity that remains in us. We have an economy swiftly sinking to the depths of the abyss. Worse, we have a butcher and a thief for a fake president. And yet we are more than willing to grovel before the plank and take the dive headfirst by closing our eyes and ears and mouth against foreigners who laugh at the thought of humiliating a race with so little riches or none at all. You let these things happen now, God or Allah forbid, there's no chance in hell it won't happen again. You let these things happen, Buddha or Bathala forbid, there's no chance in purgatory it won't stand as a precedent for future generations to imitate.

Which brings me to that unforgivable question: who cares anyway? It's unforgivable. Jesus Christ might forgive you. But unfortunately, I'm no Jesus. I'm just a private citizen who cares enough for what other nations would think of this wretched archipelago. We're already fanning the flames in Mindanao. We already have mad citizens who laugh and cry at the same time, committing harakiri by burning themselves to ashes and causing damage to anything in its proximity. We already have drug pushers who nest right smack in the backyard of police authorities. We already have a confused leader who is no less than a fake president proudly proclaiming that this nation is still strong while America is fumbling and mumbling. And the best that we can do is to ask, who cares anyway?

Imagine that.

But of course, we all have our own lives to live. We have better things to do. We still have to put food on the table. Or we still have to earn our wages. We are a deprived country anyway, we shit problems for breakfast. Thinking about what other nations think of us goes second to everything else.

Well, who cares anyway? The sound of silence is so loud you can hear its emptiness.

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You Never Know

Having been able to watch several Filipino movies in my life, I've learned quite a lot of things. Although I'm not an avid viewer, I've plucked several grains of ideas and lessons out of these films and willfully accepted them as facts of life. It's not that original Filipino movies—though some people say it's an oxymoron—are the only sources of virtues and vices in this side of the world for there are streams of information running elsewhere. It's that these movies can sometimes make you laugh and cry at the same time; some of them are so good at causing you a moment of madness it's ridiculous.

For starters, the main protagonists in action films are always either handsome or beautiful, making their sidekicks look more sorry than they actually do. They wear leather jackets and tight jeans, or anything that has long sleeves, creating the impression that they're such an enigma. Short hair lathered with pomade and long ones washed in oil, they look good even when they're shot in the chest by the villain who looks like a replica of Jorge Estregan or Paquito Diaz. And these cinematic heroes do get laid by a damsel in distress just before a bunch of hoodlums stage an attack with long rifles.

And, as always, the police arrive at the scene of the crime too late, maybe because they come in groups riding tattered and torn automobiles. In the 80s and 90s, they sport a white headband as a fashion statement and they are known to the people as "parak". Today, they no longer wear that for some reason, and we do not even miss it. Strangely enough, it is hard to expect a police authority or a government official in cahoots with the antagonists. It always is the unexpected and trivial twist in the plot of the this type of movie. And then a relative or a friend dies at the hands of the enemy. The revenge for the death of a loved one engulfs the protagonist so bad, whose mustache has grown long for all the days of waiting, that he can no longer live another day if he can't shoot the balls off of the jack-ass with the use of his pistol that never runs out of bullets. These things are entirely original we should be making statues in commemoration of this ingenious technique.

On the other hand, comedy films never run out of actors and actresses hurting one another in the nape or forehead, beating one another like douchebags. Sometimes, a plastic piece of wood or a styrofoam hammer can make the job easier and more hilarious viewers are expected to burst into tears and laughter while they roll back and forth on the floor. If that isn't funny enough, then perhaps the residence of the comic characters—preferably a shanty that looks lost in the midst of the concrete urban jungles—will tickle your bones. Or maybe beside the railroad tracks where the heavy chugging of the train is certain to cause earthly tremors enough to shake the foundations of the house to its knees, sending the kitchen utencils crashing to the wooden floor and enough to awaken the actors and actresses in deep morning slumber.

These comedy films, too, aren't comedy films if they do not have beach outings to begin with. If there are no scenes where almost all of the characters dance in sync to an upbeat song sung by whoelse but the characters themselves, then it isn't comedy, especially if the dancing isn't done with colorful costumes. It will be just another film with no sense of direction, like a a president of a third-world country in the Pacific.

As for romantic flicks, they've got cheese written all over them rats can't be mistaken for attempting to cause pestilence, a bubonic plague if you will, over stocks of films gathering dust in the movie shelves. Sometimes the lead female character is a lesbian who'll inescapably fall for a boy she'll meet by accident. And then she becomes a girl again. Sometimes she's a corporate subordinate with a rich boss driving a Mercedez, or the likes thereof, who's also to become her lover at the end of the story. More often than not, the story revolves around a girl torn between two lovers, or more. The guys get into a brawl soon, only to end-up as friends later.

Another thing. The dining table of rich people in the movies, usually hacienderos or corporate owners, are littered with bananas. And they eat hotdog and fried eggs with a small serving of rice for breakfast. It's always a pitcher of orange juice, never water, that's served by the housemaid. There's always a sort of commotion in the breakfast table. That's how people should start the morning.

And one more thing about Pinoy films. Rich families always have a black sheep whereas poor familes always have at least one industrious child toiling the day in some factory or in the streets peddling wares of varying kinds while the parents are struck by some trivial disease, usually with the symptom of excessive coughing in the middle of a conversation.

As for indie Pinoy films, they never fail to touch on human sexuality. Son or daughter works as a prostitute, a sex worker, a dancer in an obscure bar in the city, or shades of it, in order to earn a living for his or her unfortunate siblings. Someone dies in the family and life turns from worse to worst before better days come in—that is, before another character lifts him or her up back to his or her knees and begins life anew. Sometimes these films cover homosexuality in the guise of awakening the society to the realities of life and—what do you know—world peace. Either way, it's the same difference.

Put all these things together and I do hope you're getting a clear picture of what I am referring to. One asks, where has all the artistry gone? Has there ever been any at all?

And yet, who knows? Things in the local movie industry might not really be turning into a low after all. The sparks of hope are there. You have two Pinoy films bagging the awards in the Pusan film fest quite recently and you feel a sense of relief, no matter how short it may be.

But you never know.

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Notes from Cyberspace

"Is Stupid Making Us Google?" writes James Bowman in response to another article written by Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Apparently, we are led to two polar sides of the same coin. One is that we Google because we know not. And two is that we know not because we Google. Of course, Google here should not be taken tightly in its literal meaning, which is no less than that almighty search engine. More than that, the term itself stands as an iconic symbol for all things that have something to do with the digital age, or the point-and-click generation, especially the gadgets which seem to make life easier for the people they only need to flex the bones in their fingers.

In this country where the penetration of the internet is still in its infancy—although some will suggest that penetration happens almost everywhere we no longer have to wonder why we have a swollen population, but that's another story—you might begin to think how the digital revolution will affect us. Well, the good news is that the signs are already here. We no longer need to search any farther. You open the tainted glass doors of local internet shops and you see squads of high school students filling the seats, teary red eyes patrolling the corners of and across the monitors, attention lost in the pace of the game, seizing the mouse by the hand and calling forth his allies in the virtual war to make the kill. Or, you open the sliding door of computer cafes and you bear witness to a bunch of people, old and young, socializing through Friendster or Multiply with the rest of the world right inside that small cold hub.

I recall a time when I read a blog post dehumanizing Filipinos with silly profiles and with, well—what's the term? Ah, there it is—several ungodly profile photos on Friendster, the types that remind you that a thick slab of lipstick and powder isn't enough to make you look appealing, or tasty for that matter. But hey, life's a bitch and so is Leona Helmsley's dog. Nobody can't strip anyone off of the right to open their own profiles in these sites and upload their digitized images, no matter how unpleasant they appear to others, or how easily they could scale the lengths of extreme Narcissism. That's the ideal. On the ground, it's an entirely different world. Some even go to greater lengths by posting other people's photos in their profile, ashamed perhaps of their own face. Some others call them posers, pretending to be who they are not in the hopes of fooling the browsing public to nail their attention unto them. And some take that word quite literally.

But going back, you open the poster-filled doors of the shop and you see innocent faces humbly sweating it out with their research papers because you notice how cascading browsers of Wikipedia and other search results occupy more than half of the screen. You witness how some of them pluck information right out of webpages and transfer them straight into their Word document; a veritable sign of the copy-and-paste disease, which a close relative of the cut-and-paste mentality. You stealthily investigate, only to find out a little later after a quick and uninterrupted glance that, lo and behold, deep within the tiles of Firefox and Internet Explorer therein lies a porn site waiting in the background for the user to unpause the video and continue the Kama Sutra of rabbits.

And more.

At the busy cubicles in one of the many outsourcing firms in the sprawling concrete jungles of the metropolis, a few call boys and call girls—call center agents from both sexes—swing the pressure of having to attend to phone calls in an unhouly hour. But while at that, some of them are typing away in the chat rooms, which isn't illegal in the corporate world to begin with, unless of course their superiors catch their hands inside the cookie jar. Or while at that, some of them have learned to master the art of making faces and cursing in the air and lifting a middle finger while their clients at the other end of the line barrage them with their own pile of curses for bad credit. It's one of those rarely seen talents.

As for other talents in dealing with cyberspace, you also need not to gaze upon distant shores. Skills as in "hacking" skills flourish in the local underground, barely noticed most of the time. The only time they gain public attention is after these hackers have already done their deed, as in the infamous case of Onel de Guzman. Daffy Roderick writes in his article "Hacker's Paradise" that "the 23-year-old Manila resident [was] blamed for allegedly unleashing last year's Love Bug virus, which wiped out files and paralyzed Internet access from Pakistan to the Pentagon." Imagine that. Who would have thought that in a country like ours we have our own underrated Silicon Valley in the undergrounds? More recently, Andrei Navarro flew 8,000 miles to the real Silicon Valley in California to participate in Yahoo's Open Hack Day. He is a Filipino and sees the potential of Filipinos in web development. I couldn't agree any less. I could only agree more.

But we still have a long way to go. That being said, stupid can make us Google some more, or less. Google can make us more stupid, or less, too.

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Bloody Brits

From the looks of it, you might probably wonder how and why in the world it continues to happen that way. A few months ago, it was Terry "Susan" Hatcher in Desperate Housewives who gave foul remarks on Filipino medical practitioners that swept a portion of this nation into a state of rage. Now, Harry and Paul, purporting to be a "British sketch," has joined the bandwagon. In one of its recent episodes, "a Filipino domestic worker in a maid's uniform danc[es] provocatively in front of a man in an attempt to seduce him," reports an article from ABS-CBN News. Apparently, moves to demand for an apology from BBC are being pushed. How and why are these things happening, for Jesus H. Christ's sake?

Quite frankly, it's not hard to see why. For one, foreigners might have derived their impression of Filipinos working abroad as, in the words of Conrado De Quiros, "toilet bowl cleaners of the world" from doing just that. With the diaspora of our countrymen towards pastures that they see as greener than elsewhere, it makes you think if all else that is left in this country can't truly give us a better life. Which is perhaps why some of us are more than willing to be servants to masters in a foreign soil, or laborers in some distant land where money is plenty only that you have to sweat it out yourself in exchange for a lifetime of milk and honey. You have thousands if not millions of us substituting a wretched life here for yet another wretched life far from home, or perhaps a lesser one at that, it's not hard to see why. Some of us are willing to work as domestic helpers in a foreign household for personal reasons, to which I cannot see anything wrong.

Of course, it's not that each OFW is toiling her or his day cleaning a foreign house, or looking after the kids and the grandparents of a British or an American family. We cannot simply discount the fact that we also have professionals working abroad, lured in no small way by a fat paycheck. Some of them even go to great heights of notable esteem, which is reason enough for us to take pride with what they have done. But whether we like it or not, it's not the only image that we are getting. I recall the time when the entry from a certain dictionary for the term Filipina was referred to as maid, a house helper. I recall the many incidents about our women abroad being harassed, mauled and raped in both flesh and soul out of the gluttony for the body of their employers. I recall the many reports that tell the story of how some of our fellowmen and women abroad have struggled to break free from the bondage of their corrupt masters and to return home. There are countless other stories to tell, but drawing upon all of these, one cannot help but spare an ounce of thought and declare that, unfortunately, foreigners are painting us a sorry picture of who we are.

And it should not surprising at all if the likes of BBC and other foreign media companies are trying to haul that image into their shows just so to rake ratings and live up to the shows' reputation for humor, albeit a cheap one at that. Others have made a laughing stock out of us, it isn't surprising at all if these media outlets seize that image by the hand and shove it straight into their money-making machineries. Anything that's oddly familiar and familiarly odd is sure enough to land a spot in the TV shows of these media organizations.

But that is not to say that they have all the right to do so. That is not to say that they have all the right in the world to add insult to injury, or supplant more injury to insult, to rub more salt on wound and gyrate the scarred limbs all the more. That is not to say that they have all the right in the world to poke our sensibilities further as though we can't see and feel for our selves all these madness from a distance. That is not to say that they were bestowed with the authority to humiliate a race that's already ailing and down on its knees, grovelling before the plank and willing to take the first dive. That is not to say that Brits can safely debase Filipinos out of being servile to the comic needs of their British crowd. That is not to say that BBC can simply tolerate all these by turning its back on a public seeking redress at the least and the necks of this ill media outfit at the most. That is not to say that Brits can easily tread on us, piss on us like smiling urinals and spit on our mouths as a way of showing that they live in a first-world country and we don't. They do. We don't. But that is not to say that they can do all the bloody hell they want to do.

It's only fitting and proper to demand for an apology. But more than that, the best thing that can be done is to make this country more breathable than we can begin to imagine. Breathable in the sense that we no longer have to pluck Dollars and Euros from the wallets of Uncle Sam and Dick; we only have to stay within the borders of this nation and earn a decent pay and life. But looking at the way things are running on this side of the globe, one cannot help but heave a heavy sigh. From the looks of it, we're in a vicious cycle of sending our countrymen and women abroad just to ship back wages other than the occassional shipment of lifeless bodies in wooden containers. To put an end to this insanity, we have to be sane enough to build a stronger home for ourselves, right here, right now. But how can we when more promising foreign baits continue to feed the brain drain? How can we when instinct tells us to go forth the United States or the United Kingdom or the United Arab of Emirates and catch the bigger fish?

Some others say that several years ago, BBC was entirely different. Several years ago, the company never resorted to—borrowing the phrase of Philippine Ambassador Edgardo Espiritu—"gutter humor." Several years ago, the company never resorted to racist remarks no matter how subtle or stark just to grab a commanding lead in the airwaves. But that was eons ago. What can I say? Never has media evolution been so backward than this.

I'd like to raise my middle finger as a grand salute to BBC for a job well-done of giving us humor. French is my second language. I don't need to ask for pardon.

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Blind Item

I am confirming the news: MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando's posters have already invaded this little town in Laguna. Those lifesize posters bearing a face which is the farthest semblance to aesthetics and proper governance harass—emphasis on ass—the mind and eyes, doing just that as it reeks with political agenda every way you look at it, literally and figuratively. On the face of it, the poster is guised with the idea of reminding the people about the law and the need to align ourselves with proper etiquette. But that's all there is to it, the face of it. Now if that isn't horrendous enough, imagine stamping the forbidding, ominous countenance of a presidentiable on each of the hundreds, if not thousands, of posters scattered along the roads. The horrendous thought is multiplied by an infinite depression of beauty and all that has something to do with the exact opposite of a sound government.

As for the blind item...

Several days ago, my better half and I were on our way home. We managed to walk along the sidewalk on that warm and relaxing afternoon, like the ones you often see in movies. All was well and good like a fairytale when lo and behold an appalling image came before our sight, striking our cord of bewilderment the first instance our eyes set themselves on the pink poster hanging on one of the street posts. A few meters ahead, a couple of men were still busy nailing the edges of another poster on the next street post, done with the help of a truck from one of the offices in the Metro with the authority for developing what it wants to develop. We thought, how and when in the world did we become a part of Metro Manila? The last time I checked, not even Calamba, the city sitting between Los Baños and the Metro, is under the jurisdiction of this development authority. So what in Barabbas' name is happening here? A fairytale-turned-nightmare?

Well, the sane brain can only deduct one thing, which is that this government official is trying to extend his arms around Luzon, in the hopes of gaining political advantage over his would-be contenders in 2010. The worst part of it is that he—no, not he but it, given that this isn't what a sane human being will do—can bend the limits of the law to further its vile ends. The worst part of it is that it can funnel government funds to its personal political flask even under the brightness of the day. What more in the darkness of the night, under the tables, when every watchful eye is resting after another day of heavy scrutinizing? What more under the veil of executive privilege?

This abominable pseudo-human being is infamous for castigating the wretched lives of street vendors and almost anybody else attempting to occupy the sides of the streets for a decent living. But that's beside the point. The iron fist of this ogre knows little to no mercy, save for a thirst for self-preservation that can only be quenched by a deluge of support from its minions. Its unspeakable gluttony, its unfathomable narcissism that goes deeper than the deepest gullies of the universe, all of these can add only to no more than half of its deranged identity. Its name reminds us not of what heroes do. It reminds us of everything farcical, everything sullied by the hands that pulverize all the goodness within.

I am deeply sorry for this bacteria, but genuflect we will not. This organism has reduced itself to an obscure piece of aggregated cells. We will not bow down to this irresponsible creature whose reputation speaks the entire opposite of development and authority. This organism pretending to be a godhead, or wanting to be one beyond 2010, is plating us a terrible foresight: if it can do this now, this fiddling with the people's treasury all for the sake of personal political ambition, there's no chance in 13th hell it can't and won't be doing the same, if not more than that in the coming days, especially when it is already able to screw and bolt its gluteus maximus on the presidential seat. This barong-clad parasite has a blatant disregard for the public, pissing on our faces while it sports a serious and ghastly countenance that is anything but cute, and yet it does more by poking our eyes with its cryptic face.

I've said this before and I'm saying it again. This fluke isn't a hero, or is the least in the history of human civilization to ever become one. This trematoda can't be trusted; its parasitic ways of fiddling with the government's resources to fatten its ambitions, churning out whatever excuse it sees fit to defend its maneuvers, aren't worthy of our trust. The only trust this demented organism can be of any worth is the one you see sold in cashiers or store counters, that rubbery and oily material of assorted flavors that seeks to stop the flourishing of life in literal ways. That's one way of putting it.

And quite another. This crab with a thick carapace for a face is no more than a quasi-Nazi authoritarian hiding beneath corrupted wool. Yet it is adamant at proclaiming that all its troubles and efforts have nothing to do with its political hallucinations, swearing before the public that, yes, this organism is running for public office in 2010 and, no, its narcissistic deeds have nothing to do with its ambition. It must be talking to its hand.

How can this monster not see the trouble it has caused not only unto itself but to us? How can this serpent not see the monumental grotesqueness of his deeds? How in sensibility's name can this malevolent being not see the obviousness of its ploy?

But this is a blind item. Literally, this organism is no more and no less than that, a blind item, perhaps the blindest of them all.

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None to Wear

In "The Afterlife of American Clothes," Joanne McNeil cites a report from The New York Times in 2002. Of the estimate of "2.5 billion pounds of clothes donated to charity in America each year, as much as 80 percent is shipped globally." I bet a portion of that estimate finds its way to our shores, eventually filling the shelves and display windows of ubiquitous local shops popularly known as ukay-ukay. From the frigid city of Baguio to the more temperate regions of Bicol and elsewhere in this country, these clothing shops litter the archipelago like wild fungi sprouting in abundance, their shopkeepers and merchants notwithstanding. And what can I say? I've bought a couple of my shirts in the shops of these merchants.

I'm still alive. There's this fear that the clothes being sold in these shops were previously owned by men and women who are already in their graves, probably worn until the last shovel of soil has covered their wooden caskets six feet below. You wear what they wore, whatever disease it is that punctuated their lives is passed on to you. Like a curse; a hex that can only be prevented by dry-cleaning your newly bought old polo from "UK," as some TV ad would have it.

Apparently, the garments there are cheap. With 40 pesos a piece down to 20, this could well be the place where you can bang the most out of your bucks, more literally than figuratively. With a bit of luck or—for those who do not believe in serendipituous moments—with a bit of perseverance and perspiration, you might even find yourself a "signature" item hidden beneath the heaps of textiles exuding that unmistakable scent of aging cotton, or wool, or nylon, whichever your nostrils pick first or last. For those with meager budget, secondhand clothes—or third, fourth even—are rarely excluded from their options for a reason so obvious stating it here would make a tautology more ridiculous.

But financial constraints aside, there are also those who earn more than they spend who take trips to districts engulfed by these shops. Always, always on the prowl for the unseen piece of branded fabric waiting to be discovered, buried deep in the Everest of apparels, some wealthy individuals splurge on these small worldly luxuries which, for all their worth, come cheaper by the dozen. Hell, it might even be cheapest by the boxes and crates. You're well-off, go forth and sack secondhand clothes all you want. You're not that well-off, go forth and sack secondhand clothes all your budget can meet. It's not that nobody can't stop you, although there may be quite a few exceptions to that. It's that the thought of owning clothes to give your body a shard of decency and a spoonful of civility is tempting it can hardly be resisted, especially so in this country where the wanton disregard for decency and civility is compensated by wearing dresses that clothe the corporeal husk that hides a perverted soul or spirit from within. But that's another story.

Disposing clothes and shipping them to this side of the world for yet another use is not the most damning thing you may know of. In fact, it's all well and good on the face of it, except for a few things.

For starters, a large fraction of these clothes were donated to charities, or so we are made to believe. But given the former, it doesn't require Einstein's brain to figure-out that these items are not meant to be sold for corporate greed or for personal profit. Whatever way you look at it, cross-eyed, wall-eyed—name it, optometrists are certain to have a diagnosis for it—you don't sell something which was meant to be given for free in the first place, for Jesus H. Christ's sake. Unless of course you have a legitimate claim for saying that the garments you're selling in your shop aren't from the Salvation Army or perhaps some other obscure charitable organization, you're not guilty of further depriving the poor, of ripping them off of the trickles of clothes that should have been theirs to shield their emaciated bodies from the tricks of the weather.

And yet even with that thought, I was still tempted to buy a few pieces for myself, some plain clothes and old, rugged jeans to wear. I don't know what to make of it other than the frailty of my convictions at times, a case reminiscent of how the left hand isn't quite aware of what the right hand is doing. Or worse, lip service. But is it a moral offense to not have the ample money to buy new clothes and jeans in department stores? Is it a moral crime, so to speak, to opt instead to purchase those secondhand garments for a fairly reasonable price? I'm sure enough to myself that there's a strand of guilt inside me of doing so, one way or another. But what choice do I have? What better alternatives are there, given the monstrous ways in which not only those in the poverty lines and way below it but also just a hair above it are struggling to make ends meet? To these things, I simply cannot state the exact response. I can only see gray shades between the black and white. Like what others say, you don't need to go too far or look any farther to witness a nation of seemingly surreal circumstances of epic proportions. You only have to open your eyes.

You also have those who say that wearing sufficient clothes is the least of the worries of the modern-day Filipina, whatever that exactly means, for one reason: you don't need too much clothing to be in skimpy dresses. Of course. The proverbial dictum for that by the Magdalenes trotting around during the most unholy hours in the city is less is more, or something to that effect. But that's a terrain too vast to cover on a single discussion. I can already sense a mounting force from the people you'll most likely see defend or damn the subject. I think they call themselves feminists. Some others, still, call themselves freedom fighters.

If McNeil's article is accurate enough, it does speak a lot about the stark differences among nations. For one, the contrast between America and the Philippines is glaring enough. On one side of the globe, you have a massive country almost never running out of used clothes to give despite having an economy tumbling to the abyss. On the other, you have a massive country—with emphasis on the ass—almost never running out of citizens who stand in line at the receiving end for the boxed goods while having an economy tumbling to the gorges of the earth. Worse, here you have a country almost never running out of ukay-ukay standing in utmost patience at the receiving end of the donations, awed by the sight of secondhand garments imagined and realized as opportunities to profit. Quite on the contrary, their numbers might just as well be on the continued rise, which goes without saying that, truly, the profits are there to reap.

As for our poverty-stricken brethren, I won't be surprised at all if I hear them one day come forth and break their silence, chanting in unison "clothes, clothes everywhere but none to wear!"

Everywhere. But none to wear.

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