< oh man >

   A few days ago, I wrote about the sad state of what passes for "investigative journalism" in this country.  Especially those "undercover sting operations" shown on Saturday evening "news exposé" programs.

   I came home last night to the tune of Julius Babao in "XXX" narrating this "surveillance video" from a strip joint somewhere in Quezon City, where the floor show highlights a woman smoking a cigarette through her genitals.  This is what passes for "crime" in the Philippines nowadays: again, there's a strip joint somewhere in Quezon City, where the floor show highlights a woman smoking a cigarette through her genitals.

   This might be one of them "talent night" things in strip joints.  I don't frequent nightclubs as much as I should given my age and my marital status (22 and single), but handstands, splits, and maybe a rendition of an Aegis song while doing the handstand or the splits can get a bit stale around the third Saturday of the month.  "Shower shows," or those nights where you pay to watch a dancer take a bath onstage (and pay extra to soap and lather the dancer), can get a bit boring at times.  The novelty of stripping wears off quite quickly, considering that 99% of the time, you'll end up with a naked woman onstage.

   But smoking through your genitals?  I've read more than my fair share of the works of the Marquis de Sade, and I don't recall anything that strange even in something already as perverse as the 120 Days of Sodom.  I don't even have an idea of how you can smoke a cigarette through your genitals: it's nowhere near possible with men, but I have a faint idea of how it's possible with women.

   With this faint idea in mind, let me explain what smoking is: smoking is to inhale potentially toxic substances found in plant leaves suitable for smoking (the verb is not limited to tobacco, but I'm not condoning anything here) through organs of respiration.  For all I care, you can smoke a cigarette through your nose, after you get around the initial irritation.  Unless your fallopian tubes are connected to your windpipe, there's just no way you can smoke through your vagina.  It's not smoking, by its strictest definition: basically, you're just holding smoke in.

   I'm no feminist, but I don't see anything particularly wrong with stripping: it's still a living.  Stripping routines are things I leave to the subjectivity of men (by "men" I mean the engendered sense of the word): it's all a matter of preference, or to use the term loosely, a matter of différance.  I'm not at liberty to judge how erotic such an act of smoking is.

   But if anything, this is the state of Philippine "investigative journalism" today.  To those of you who smoke cigarettes through any other orifice in your body (like your ear, for example), I suggest you quit now before the "investigative journalists" of this decrepit nation bust you in an undercover sting.