Insomnia, Insanity

I am awake when half of the world is asleep, "half" being this side of the planet. I have lost my sense of time; my biological clock has been completely altered. Night has become day and day is when the moon and the stars blanket the velvet sky. Whoever or whatever changed it, I am quite certain I did not miss the memo. I owe it all to the countless nights when I have to sit down in front of a computer monitor for several hours until the sun begins to explode in the eastern end of the horizon lines. I owe it all to this freelance writing job that I have to willingly enslave myself into if only to feed myself for the time being. The future is nowhere near, and my fate depends on whether or not I would be able to crush the entrance exam for law school which I took several months back. Otherwise, it is my future that is going to be mercilessly crushed. Devoured. Incinerated. Decapitated. Debowled. Take your pick.

The radiation coming from the computer screen must have already surged past through the pores of my skin. Flesh is weak; a deluge of gamma rays can easily penetrate our soft human casing. Which reminds me of genetic mutation caused by too much radiation. Bathala forbid, let not a third leg grow on my forehead, or a nose suddenly pop between the crack of my ass. The lines on my face are the most that I have to worry at the moment. Sleep deprivation and excessive exposure to the LCD have their ways of taking people faster trip to senility than one can begin to think. I do not know now if I look like those who are the same age as mine. What I do know is that I am two decades and two years young, or old, whichever you prefer.

I am no longer a rookie when it comes to freelance writing, more so with its online version. Or so I think. It's not that I have already mastered the trade; experiences have their own ways of letting people know that much is yet to be learned. It's that I know now the unspoken rules and the unwritten tactics at the least. For more than two years and still counting, I have been living independently, free from the hands that once fed me back when I was still a child. Oftentimes, I send home a few of the fruits of my labor, which is spare change from the spare change I get from the tormenting hours and sleepless nights of typing my life and brains away for the sake of those from foreign soils who are either lazy enough to do their job or just too filthy rich. Maybe both. But either way, I thank them for their immeasurable indolence, their pregnant wallets that breed cash like rabbits, and their, well, what's the term...Paris Hilton genes? That's French for "Lito Lapid", which is Italian for "the impossible brain".

That has got to be the Brown Man's Burden, a monumental one at that, which is also one Great Depression, in all senses of the phrase.

The battlefield where I spend the nights behind enemy lines is a room that is no bigger than your average sty. Fortunately, no swine is raised here. As for the room, we have these wide windows opposite the door. They provide the open space where the evening land breeze can push its way gently into this meager cavity inside what seems to be a decaying behemoth tooth. Beside the windows, the gray wooden table meet the corner of the white walls of plywood. Atop the desk, assorted things scatter about—an improvised ash tray filled with cigarette butts, a mug of pencils that need sharpening and inkless pens that haven't been touched for quite a while now, a petite mintgreen digital alarm clock, and a pair of speakers which I turn to onslaught levels whenever the Desperate Dormers are sacrificing themselves before the altar of liver cirrhosis and philandering with the opposite gender—or maybe even with their own kind; life's full of surprises, quite apart from shit—during the most unholy hours.

A black plastic shoe rack flanks the brown door. Used clothes and towels hang faithfully on an anorexic metal bar just beside the closet. There are no homosexuals inside it; no reason for one to come out of the closet, not that I have anything against gay people or Barbara Streissand concert attendees. In fact, I have gay friends here and there. I know how they tremble at the sight of a herculean, knees almost jerking off of their sockets. As for some other things that jerk off of their bodies, I leave your imagination to fill.

I've digressed again, a mannerism which I find disturbing. But that aside, the TV is settled at the corner opposite the gray table, or desk. It's turned on, as we speak, and nobody's watching History Channel. Two wooden chests, which also happen to be chairs, stand side-by-side on the floor where tiles of mats cover more than half of its concrete space. Adjacent to the door is another door which leads shortly to the confession room, which is how I call the john. And still, adjacent to it is the lone bed, yet another one of the wooden fixtures that practically litter this room three floors above the ground.

This is the room where I have spent the last six months or so of my agnostic life. It's a Lilliputian chamber where great things have happened. It isn't a majestic palace, but the view from the ledge is priceless, especially so during the break of dawn when the inhabitants of this small town are beginning to awake while my eyes start to drowse themselves to sleep. The windows offer a panoramic view of the eastern horizon where mountains hid the sun before it rises. Trees abound as far as the eyes can see, save for the great lake at the northeastern end from where I am looking. The roofs below and further ahead are barely visible as light from the sun's orange explosion is yet to stream across town.

The cocks are crowing—no pun intended—at this time of the morning. I can hear several passersby below traipsing the narrow path that leads to the main artery that connects the home of the Maroons with the rest of Los Baños. I can hear their footsteps and the distant voices of some who, I reckon, are on their way to do their ritual jogging. I have to sleep now, but goodluck with that.

I can feel something wanting to stick out of my forehead.

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The Day the World Stood Still

There was a deluge of humanity in Washington a few hours ago, and just by watching things happen on CNN I further realized that this ocean of human beings is by far the largest I have seen in my life, so large indeed that they seemed to leap out of my television screen. The inauguration of President Barack Obama is perhaps the most watched spectacle across the globe since the invention of the TV or since the rise of the internet. Here is a man who has been bestowed upon by the American Constitution one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all, positions in the land. And who would have thought that the slaves who built the most coveted throne in contemporary times would have one of their descendants occupy the glorious seat almost a full century ahead? Or who would have thought that some of the figures of the Civil Rights Movement would live to see this day when someone of their kind would see himself in Washington being sworn into office before millions of people?

I could only imagine how infinitely jubilant and triumphant they must have felt.

There were hearts consumed by the fires of hope despite the chilling breeze of that Tuesday American noon, and the warmth of that moment seemed to have enveloped the entire world. It was a gathering of the powerful and of the ordinary, bearing witness to a historical event that could very well be one of the summit points of a hundred years of struggle, maybe even more. And I could not help but envy the United States for the kind of president, let alone a leader, that it has today. They have a charismatic president to begin with; we have a cursed leader who intends to be so until the end. Theirs is a president who inspires lives; ours is a leader who makes lives expire. Theirs is a president who is legitimately elected and put into office; ours is, well, you know what. Theirs is a president who is full of optimism despite the monumental task ahead of him; ours is just full of shit.

But going back to Obama's shining moment, there were tons of celebrities who attended for obvious reasons. Aside from the fact that Obama was a celebrity himself, someone who could be larger than life, he too made America celebrate to great heights, uplifting souls who could have lost hope all along. Oprah was there. John Cusack was there. Denzel Washington was there. Muhammad Ali was there. Stephen Spielberg was there. Magic Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio were there. Stevie Wonder was there. And countless others.

The only first lady there who I would loved to have stayed for as long as she wanted to was Aretha Franklin, the first lady of soul.

Apparently, Dick Chaney was there as he ended his eight years in office. And he ended it in a wheel chair, which perhaps best sums up his service to his country. The older Bush struggled walking through the hallways of Capitol Building; he struggled to walk and he walked like a penguin. Time has caught-up with him. The younger Bush must have felt swords piercing right through the thick walls of his heart, or whatever is left of it, as Obama let his sharp but poignant words fall where they should, even bearding the Republicans, I surmise. In any case, the only consolation that the younger Bush is going to have is that he is finally going back to Texas to live the remaining portions of his life in the embrace of his ranch. Ah, a Texan will always be a Texan.

John McCain and his wife, Cindy McCain, were there, too. Which is perhaps one thing I liked about McCain at the end of the day. Losing mercilessly at the hands of Obama must have been a bitter-sweet moment. Bitter because he lost. Sweet because his agony has ended. Which reminds me of a few comparisons.

You lose in American elections, you get to be invited to the inauguration of your former opponent. Unfortunately for us, you lose in Philippine elections, you get to be invited to the courts of law. Such is the stark contrast that makes you wallow in pity and annoyance in this wretched part of the world. Of course, cheating is entirely another matter. You cheat in American politics, the sheer weight of disgrace will compel you to leave your office, vacate it as soon as possible and let somebody else take the position. Unfortunately for us, you cheat in Philippine politics, you still get to be president, or at least pretend to be one; the sheer weight of disgrace will compel you to say sorry before the millions of Filipinos watching you on national television, and at the end of the drama you cling to the throne even tighter than before.

Which reminds me of one of the phrases in Obama's speech which struck me hard. Obama says the United States remains "a young nation, but the time has come to set aside childish things." As for us, well, we remain a childish nation, or our politicians continue to be so; will the time ever come when we begin to set aside immature things? I do not know the answer to that. What I do know is that Congress is a house full of babies.

Will we have our own version of Obama in the coming elections? Some say Jejomar Binay is the one. Others say Reynato Puno is the one. Whoever she or he is, we badly need someone who can inspire this country up on its knees. I doubt there is no one here who can do so. We may just as well be looking at all the wrong places. Like the Senate. Like the Lower House.

Today is the day when the world stood still. And today we watched in awe at the bright spectacle that unfolded before our eyes.

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Desperate Dormers

As of this writing, they are talking about boys and love and everything that has something to do with Alice in wonderland. They are a bunch of college girls who toil the night away with beer in hand and a mouthful of stories that never seem to end until you wake-up the next morning only to realize that, lo and behold, another one of their endless nights is yet to begin a few hours after. They chatter as if Mount Makiling is standing between their lines of sight, as if their male companions are coddling them like grumbling babies in wanton need of attention. They are hungry for a man's fiddle, and I call them the Desperate Dormers.

They live right next door. Four of them, I think. Tonight they are attempting to reach the heights of drunken nirvana, and somewhere inside that room a guy is strumming his guitar to tunes that remind one of eye liners, razor blades, dangling hair bangs and all the sadness and frustration the world has to offer. That's French for Emo music, one of the worst oxymorons since dinosaurs roamed the planet. At half an hour past one in this unholy morning, their voices can stir the dead back to life or, worse, can raise the sleep to a fit of rage. One of them tells the tale of how she is far too confused to give the boy the answer he deserves. Another speaks of the pang of being left single in this Earth where men are supposed to thrive in shapes and sizes. The same girl proclaims just as well that, push comes to shove, she won't be kissing a frog in the hopes of the toad turning into a prince. Better single than having warts and all. Still, another recounts how her lesbian days are far from over contrary to popular belief—ah, but the intoxicating powers of alcohol, when taken in excess, can truly make your brain think sideways.

One girl in particular appears to have been totally deprived of the chance to live her life with a man by her side. She thinks of how that golden opportunity melts in her hands and slips through her fingers like water each time her luck of finding a boyfriend would materialize in the form of a, well, classmate. She thinks and she lets a behemoth laugh escape across the palates of her mouth and through the spaces of her teeth. She imagines herself in the arms of her man in the winter chills of December, or the other way around which, God knows, may unwittingly lead to the strangulation of her beloved in the breadth of her limbs. She fantasizes about a man somewhere out there who is waiting for destiny to roll down its carpet and direct his footsteps to her door, whatever that door may stand for considering that she seems to be at the height of puberty, raging hormones and all.

What can I say? You get to feel the weight of desperation the moment you realize the unrecognized need to float in sheer weightlessness. But that is another chapter.

All these spoken in coño tongue—the one thing in this vast universe that makes me cringe and cry and laugh all at the same time; partly because of the insanity meshed in the thickness of the conversation, partly because of the way the beer has trickled its way down to their last vein, causing them more insanity than a few hours before.

Tolerance is gold, but I'd rather prefer tin. The most I can do is to bear witness to this unbearable nightly ritual of theirs. While I let them be, I can't help but write about them, not because I've run out of topics to write about. Quite on the contrary, there are tons out there worth deserving the space I dedicate here in my small virtual space. I can't help but write about them because I simply can't help it, and for several good reasons.

For the most part, the last few weeks have been gruelling, or excruciating, if you will. Right smack at the time when I am busy writing for my freelance work in the dead of the night, the Desperate Dormers never fail to rise to the occasion by banging the walls with ice which apparently signals the start of yet another beer fest. Thereafter, their male companion would play songs with his acoustic guitar loud enough to be heard three floors below. And the Maalaala Mo Kaya moments would soon follow. Those moments, as I've observed, are not without tears and laughter that, put altogether, sum-up the essence of disturbia. I swear had I only been less kind enough, I would have easily wielded my pen—my fork even—storm them in their room, and may God have mercy on my soul, assuming I have one, of course. But cleaver in hand or screwdriver on the other, it didn't matter. Vengeance could have easily been mine to take.

But I'm not a hazard to women. Neither do I bite. That makes me powerless to confront them and splice and dice them to chunks and tidbits, preferably with their intestines shooting out of their bellies. The gore would have been pleasant enough to watch. The visual presence of blood painting the tiled floors in full crimson is a sight to behold. The macabre of throats cut wide open and gut sinking down the drain is a magnum opus. But that's just not who I am. Or at least that's not what I think I am.

As of this writing, the Desperate Dormers are still killing time by killing their livers and killing their neighbors with their killer noise. This is desperation at its peak.

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Cold

Hell must have frozen over by now. The cold weather has lately been, well, colder than usual. It feels like we're transported back to the yuletide season. I live three floors above, in a building that looks as though it is waiting to be condemned and, worse, to be demolished. From up here, it feels like the unforgiving coldness of the breeze is exponentially raised. I am even tempted to wear a thick jacket while inside the room, the ones that you see in the polar episodes of National Geographic. I may look like an eskimo—or, as the eternally perverted Joey de Leon puts it, es es ki...never mind—lost in the Pacific but that isn't really an exaggeration. I do not know what's causing this arctic sweep in this tropical country, but I'm quite certain this is a good time to indulge yourself in a nice warm cup of coffee. Those with fecal incontinence should beware though. Too much caffeine and your ass muscles can loosen and blow that other end of yours, the lonely spot where the sun never shines, to smithereens.

Just last night, Los Baños was littered with passersby and bystanders clad in jackets and sweaters and clothes that remind you of winter wonderland. Or something to that effect. The same thing happened weeks before. I presume people will still be wearing the same stuff until the first week of February, assuming the weather forecast is accurate enough.

So there I was in front of a small stall that sold warm food on that cold dinner time. Too busy scanning the display window where a comprehensive list of dishes looked like a festive gathering of meals, it was only a few minutes later when I realized that I was the only one around wearing shirt and shorts. As for everybody else, they had fluffy garments wrapped around their bodies that some of them looked surprisingly huge from where I stood. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I could use a few thick clothing myself. Not only were my knees jerking, my jaws were also trembling like a minor tremor that would register faint signals on the scales. It was the first time in my six years of being an adopted child of this town that I felt such unkind days and nights. It boggles the mind. It's so mystifying it's ridiculous.

As I'm typing this—and perhaps while you're reading what I have thus written—the breeze is still doing its rounds, calling forth the mighty Amihan from the horizon. It's a fine time to sleep, or to cave yourself inside the sheets of your bed and hybernate until summer time like a bear, unless you have work to do of course. Otherwise, you can turn incognito in broad daylight, away from the torment and troubles of the outside world. You can tango with your dreams while lost in the utter silence of sleep except when you snore like a mad lion. You can rest your body—and maybe even your soul, who knows if you have one—and get a good day's worth of nirvana. You can choose to eat and drink before you sleep and replicate the same feat that snuff the life out of Rico Yan and countless others who were never to see the light of day again. But that's the morbid part to it. Other than that, sleep if you can.

I can. I do. I did. Napoleon Bonaparte should envy me.

In frigid countries where snowfall is as normal and ordinary and common as air to lungs, this weather condition isn't something to mull over and fuss about. People living in those regions could only care less. Hell, this may even stand at par with their summer sunshine, notwithstanding to those who dwell in the most desolate corners of Siberia or Tibet. I could barely begin to imagine how it is to live in those icy territories where the warmth of the sun from above and the fiery pits of the earth's core cannot seem to penetrate the glaciers. Maybe they haven't seen a bathing suit for centuries.

Back home, sages say Filipinos have a favorite pastime when the weather is cold and the night is young. That form of amusement, still they say, stands at the very heart of the increasing mortality and fertility rate among couples in the country, legal or otherwise. Those who experience orgasmic catatonia—in bed or otherwise—reach staggering heights, so much so that they could barely come back down from the heavens, or deciding not to come back down from their libidinous skies, which accounts for their early meeting with God. This does not exclude the frequent case of heart attack or stroke among senile and youthful fuckers. That's French for sexually active people. That's the case for mortality.

As for fertility, well, it doesn't take the mind of a Hugh Hefner to fully comprehend this part. It's freezing cold in the dead of the night. You and your legally recognized partner—or otherwise—meet in the eye, recognizing the lack of heat in your crampy room and the need for friction—which is the jurassic way of making fire—and the next thing you know, fireworks are blasting from everywhere in your shack. By the following morning, she's positive. I do not know exactly how many thousands of stories contain more or less the same plot, but you get the idea. There's no need to say it in French.

I was born October, which is reason enough to suspect that it must have been utterly cold one January evening in 1986 and my father and mother must have had all the time in their hands. My two younger siblings—I'm the eldest among our band of brothers—were born in August, which is also reason enough to suspect that it must have been cold and rainy one November evening or morning in 1990 and 2000, respectively, and my father and mother must have had all the time in their hands. Perhaps, everything was wet those days. The ground, the leaves, the twigs, name it.

It's still a cold season here, there and everywhere maybe. Protect yourself. Wear a jacket, whichever way you think of it.

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Wondering

Sometimes it does make you wonder who the menaces in the society truly are. On one hand, you have people damning the poor for causing more wretchedness to an already wretched society. On the other, you have those who tag the wealthy as the propagators of mischief. Petty crimes for the poor and behemoth crimes for the rich, some would even say. Still on one hand, you have thieves living in shacks in some obscure part of the urban metropolis, waiting for the night to settle before they knife the life out of their next unsuspecting victim, probably in one of the dim alleys of the city. And still on the other, you have golfers whacking one another's gut, drunk with power and money and believing that nobody can bully them around, even their own kind; and Alabang boys in a state of drug-induced nirvana, their families in cahoots with the authorities to liberate their children from the hands of the law, to name a few.

Sometimes it does make you wonder who the menaces in the society truly are. On one hand, you have government agents whose primary task is to run after drug peddlers and users and to put them behind bars. Some of these law enforcers fail miserably in fulfilling their duties while some of them do so at will in exchange for a handsome reward beneath the table. Still on the other, you have illustrious families that luster with stench for coddling drug addicts in their circle, even pushing them to the extent of making a living out of it by selling it like a commodity. But I will not dwell too long on these. Tons have already been written about their gross gluttony and greed.

Whoever the real menaces are, it's discomforting to know that we are no longer able to confidently say that the law enforcers truly enforce the law and that the crooks get to spend their time in jail. Or maybe they never did anyway. It's as if we know that we do not know. Or probably worse, which is that we do not know that we know. Either way, the more we know, the more we know that the more we know, the less we know. The more we know about the thugs and thieves in our midst, the less our understanding becomes of how large a bastion of thugs and thieves are truly out there.

I recall a time when I was in second year college. It was summer break and I decided to do a part-time job. My uncle had a pet shop and all I had to do was to tend to the purchases of the costumers in exchange for "beer" money, as I call it. The amount was not too handsome, but it was enough to get by at a time when there's nothing to do but to wallow in sleep. One afternoon a man dropped by at the shop as I sat behind the desk overlooking the street just in front of the small store. I was alone manning the shop. He approached me, asked a few things, reached for his mobile phone in his pocket, dialled a certain number and said that he is calling my uncle. The man said my uncle already approved about the payment for one of the dogs he ordered recently, and so without thinking I handed the man a sum of money, the value of which still escapes my memory today. Needless to say, the man was a fraud and it was hours thereafter when I realized how Icarus came swooping down to the seas from the skies; either I was stupid enough to have forgotten not to trust strangers or I was stupid enough to have forgotten not to trust strangers. He was a big man and I swear he could have easily taken me down or knifed my stomach into two until my intestines bleed and blurt out had he only willed to do so.

Budol budol gang, they call them.

That was a bitter-sweet moment in my life. Bitter because, apparently, my charitable deed to the total stranger was not the kind which Jesus Christ and nuns and priest and monks would have approved of entirely. Worse, so would my uncle. Or something to that effect. And sweet because, alas, for the first time in my life I was able to prove to myself that such a thing does not only happen in the movies and in the evening news. It's one thing to watch these things happen from the comfort of your television set. It's quite another to feel and see and smell these things happen right before your eyes and nose and ears and skin without you even noticing that the deed is already being done. It struck me hard and deep. For sure, I'll be carrying that memory to the grave. Who knows? Maybe even beyond. But that's something else.

It also made me realize one more poignant thing, which comes in the form of a question: how much could the victims of heinous crimes have felt as they submit to the pangs of wallowing in misery? A mother's son is mugged to his last breath by a group of bandits in a dark alley, a father's wife is crippled by the iron fists of her employer somewhere in a distant land where milk and money are supposed to thrive, a brother's sister is raped and, turning lifeless, is dumped in an obscure landfill where flies and garbage litter the area—from where I sit, I can only begin to imagine the scale of angst and anger, of pain and suffering that suck the happiness out of their lives. I can only begin to imagine how it feels to lose a loved one in the merciless hands of those who see through death and stare at it without guilt or being pricked—no, hammered—in the conscience.

I can only begin to imagine because little do I know about how it feels to be there. I can hardly empathize, I can only sympathize. Heaven forbid, I would not know where and how to pick myself up if the same thing would happen to me or to my family.

Which brings us back to how we sometimes wonder who the real menaces in the society truly are. Policemen going berserk and firing at anyone within range is old news. So are madmen and robbers who carry bags of money or bags of human flesh, whichever they prefer, and repeating the same offense many times over. Politicians doing the dirty job beneath the desk is old news. So are drug lords and syndicates of petty and behemoth crimes doing their dirty laundry atop the table, in plain sight for everyone to see. There's no telling who is who, or which is which. If this is how our society has become, who are we to turn to when all hell breaks loose, assuming it still hasn't?

No wonder ours is a deeply religious country; only the God can save us now.

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When the Minds of a Plunderer's Son and a TV Gameshow Host Connive

Jinggoy Estrada and Edu Manzano are attempting to do the impossible, which is to prohibit free downloads through the internet in the hopes of putting an end to piracy. I don't know about them, but it's like trying to download the internet for Jesus H. Christ's sake. What cosmic radiation could have inflicted such massive testicular retardation, so much so that what they are intending to do in the coming days has come to boggle the mind to abyssmal depths? There are paw prints of brain deformation there, and one need only to look at the face of it for that's all there is to it—the face of it.

On the face of it—which is really all there is to it—proscribing internet users from downloading whatever they desire for free won't make piracy a thing of the past. Quite on the contrary, it will only make piracy turn into a more malignant tumor that swells like a massive phallus. It doesn't take a rocket scientist's mind to simply understand that the internet is a vast galaxy where regulating its expanse with the filters of the law can hardly make this country all the wiser and none the wretched. You can't put a legal fence around cyberspace or bend it according to a politician's will. At the very least, you can hardly dictate what people can and cannot do with it. You can only wallow in your pitiful way of giving people a better life by quashing one of their few remaining sources of joy, which is to download content from the internet for free.

This folly will only compel you to laugh and cry at the same, the thing infamous about how lunatics thrive on this side of the world, quite apart from the fanciful and imaginative ways in which they end their lives. Prohibiting free downloads is more or less mad, or equally insane. I do not entirely know whose idea it was to do so, but whoever that bigot may be, the internet is far bigger than an untamed jungle where rules are just fart in the wind. How on earth are you going to put an arm to that legal arsenal anyway? How on earth are you going to enforce that law when you don't even have the capability to censor or ban, whichever they prefer, a few or a thousand websites to begin with? How in Bathala's name are you going to pack a bite to your toothless legal remedy when you don't even understand the limitless boundaries of the internet to begin with? How in Liliput's name can you strap down a Gulliver that grows faster than the rate that your mind could even begin to imagine?

You want to put an end to piracy? You can't. It's here to stay, for the best and worst of times, probably the latter especially so in this country. You want to put an end to piracy? By all means do so, but spare shareware from your unsolicited plot. Pirates do not share—they steal and sell, they rip you off of your fat and skim you in your own oil like what Congress is best at doing although that's another story. You want to put an end to piracy? Good luck to that, if at all you believe in luck, which I do not.

But don't get me wrong. I'm not pro-piracy. I'm for shareware. In fact, you can even share what I've been writing down here to anybody you fancy so long as proper attribution is given. Else, that's plagiarism for you, which I totally frown and slither at. Sharing what you have through the internet is a very beautiful thing. It is entirely beautiful it is mystifying, considering that virtual sharing used to be beyond the scope of our imagination in the past. But piracy, now that is something else, something abominable in the eyes of actors and actresses, Edu Manzano notwithstanding. I admit, though, that I am a patron of pirated DVDs and other wares that need no skulls and crossbones, things peddled on sidewalks and unforgiving stalls in the market. What can I say? Things do not come cheap these days. The next thing you know, even sellers of pirated copies of movies are already thrown at the pits of this global financial crisis. But give me bread and I'll buy the original stuff, the movies which I perfectly understand as the summations of the sweat and tears and blood of casts of actors and directors down to the last lights man. But as the axiom goes, life is difficult to get by with in this archipelago.

There are reasons to suspect that they need to analyze—emphasis on anal—their method for madness. For one, we don't have the logistics. Sure, we have a national budget, but how much more are you going to slice away from the few chunks left for the hundreds if not thousands of government programs that need resources if only to survive? How many more mouths are you willing to starve and sacrifice before the altar of, say, flimsy political posturing? Two, you don't understand the internet, pure and basic as that. Jesus, I bet my ass you don't even know what Friendster is, or maybe you think PayPal is a sort of a bribing partner lurking in the shadows of the Palace. Three, it won't stall piracy. It will only make it worse for one reason—it will invite more people to sell stuff that they don't even have the permission to distribute. It is an open invitation to hoarding more prying capitalists and crooks. There's a whole range of litanies that can be siphoned from that. And four, which is the most basic of all, there's no chance in kingdom come that you will be able to veil the internet with pieces of paper with words written on them and sealed with the executive signature.

The time this country is finally rid of sites that offer free virtual downloads is the same time when the government is finally able to hold the internet in its fists, gripping it hard enough so that no escape is possible. The time this country eventually becomes devoid and deprived of Pirate Bay and Limewire is the time when the government does the clicking for you, whether you like it or yes. The time free download sites get wiped away from the face of this country is the time when your government is freely able at will to incarcerate you for accidentally browsing through an illegal blot in cyberspace, more so if you did voluntarily. But these things are certainly lightyears away. Typewriters still occupy a large majority of desks in government offices anyhow. Maybe.

So is Jinggoy Estrada really serious with his spineless proposition? You bet he is. He once had the gall to run as a senator, never mind to run directly into the arms of a straight jacket, what would drafting a resolution be to him or to his staff anyway? Edu Manzano, too, is itching to scratch piracy off his scalp even in the name of cutting off our umbilical source of joy, which is free download. All those serious antics put together can truly tell you how some of us are more than willing to build a bridge across the skylines for the sake of taking us to a boring cyber life.

Or maybe some of us are better left in the silverscreens than being allowed to parade themselves in the government like naked kings. Jinggoy, the son of a womanizer and a plunderer, certainly made me laugh and cry at the same time. What can I say? Like father, like son. They're both good at entertaining us, albeit in weird and wacky ways.

When the minds of a plunderer's son and a TV gameshow host connive, they redefine our concept of folly.

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