< my take on rotc >

   Because I do all my activism right now from the proverbial dumpster, I think that a dissenting opinion is at hand: I think we should reconsider the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

   I don't necessarily buy into the reasons behind reviving ROTC: I don't think that serving on the Reserve Command boosts your patriotism.  Patriotism doesn't come out of the barrel of a gun, even if said gun doesn't even have a barrel and is just a rifle-shaped plank of wood.  I don't think that marching on the parade grounds of some decrepit grandstand in the noon sun is healthy for you, much less teaches you discipline.  I don't see the sense in having to commit one's self to "military traditions" like boodle fights, rifle drills, or saluting an intellectual peon with a shiny sword.

   But we should definitely reconsider ROTC: the way I see it, while everyone else is saying that there's no good reason to bring back ROTC, there's really no good reason why it shouldn't be around.  The National Service Training Program (NSTP) is so limited in scope: the promise of "nationalism" is fulfilled through giving the adopted barangay a painted can of Exora Cooking Oil to serve as a trash can.  Besides, Senator Miguel Zubiri authored the NSTP law because, and I quote: "For two years, Thea, I'm marching under the sun.  Lumabas na lang 'yung freckles ko. Hindi ako nangingitim eh.  Namumula ako.  Tapos lumalabas 'yung freckles ko.  So ang nangyari d'yan was a lot of sunburn and a lot of wasted Saturday mornings."  I sourced that from the Inquirer's Podcast transcript of Sen. Zubiri's interview, but even the simplest of exegesis would point out a fear of freckles was a reason for the NSTP law.

   Often, the only valid reason in abolishing ROTC is because students don't like to do things they don't want to do.  The best recourse to doing something you don't want to do in college is to fill out a dropping form and pay the fee.  But if there's anything I learned in over five years of being in college, it's that you have to do things whether you like them or not.  Nobody died and made you king or queen: you don't call the shots.

   ROTC doesn't "militarize" anything: what's so "military" about a piece of wood?  "Militarization" is an extreme case of a process, where our institutions (like educational institutions) are under the direct and total control of armed military forces.  ROTC doesn't represent or actualize this extreme: in fact, we would lose a war in having to send ROTC cadets into the battlefield.

   The way I see it, there is merit in reconsidering ROTC.  The point is to "consider," and not to implement it at once.  It's not to go to the streets and rally against "militarization" either.  You don't call the shots by jumping the gun.

< a reply to shari cruz >

   Why do we overanalyze things, you ask?  Here's a question: what do you call the stray particles of feces found in many an anus of a street dog?

   I admit to overanalyzing things to the point of annoyance: if I push myself really hard, I can make a paper on the sociology of light bulbs.  Sometimes I think that I've taken too much of a liking to C. Wright Mills' concept of the "sociological imagination" to its logical extreme, but that's just me.  While there's nothing wrong with a simple explanation, the social anthropologist in me demands these overwrought, overintellectualized, verbose explanations to anything and everything under the sun, why they're under the sun, and I'll go so far to even question the sun itself.

   Now pushing the proverbial envelope of explanation can only get you so far: if anything, this is the curse of Thomas Kuhn's "route to (normal) science."  Science is a party-pooper and an intellectual killjoy: not only does it leave no stone unturned, it also has an explanation to why stones turn (laws of inertia).  Arriving at truths is not as simple as it sounds: subjectivity is precluded by a subjective understanding of the context of objective realities.

   I'm not one to say that everything is discourse (read your Derrida) or that we are doomed to not knowing any probable cause for why we exist and why things happen to us (read your Kafka)... but at this point, I am overanalyzing.

< hmmm... >

   Somewhere in the blogosphere, I just heard that the controversial Malu Fernandez resigned from the Manila Standard because of that article about OFW's.  Needless to say, though, I don't share the same sympathy for Ms. Fernandez with that of Miles Levin, the cancer patient who blogged about his battle with cancer and recently, has just died.

   Believe me, I like ridiculing people.  One of the things I like best about living is to call people names and to insult them for the hell of it.  Often, this ridicule is passed off as "satire," "social criticism" and "commentary."  You can take any chump in the street and make a Conrado de Quiros out of him.  Go read any tabloid, read the opinion columns, and you'll see what I mean.

   I think what made Malu Fernandez the almost-Antichrist of the Filipino blogosphere (although I wouldn't take too lightly to that, because I have this deluded belief that I'm that almost-Antichrist) is her unrepentant dislike for OFW's, her elitism, and for all intents and purposes, her weight.  The way I see it, if you're going to go about your business discriminating people, you might as well say it outright, disclose the fact that you're a bigot, and we're even.  But if you do that very same thing and pass it off as "journalism," "creative writing" or "satire," or if you're going to create this "character" as a venue to vent out your prejudice, I suggest you wrap razor wire around your neck, hang yourself on the tallest tree you can find, and do the "Du-du-du Da-da-da."

   I don't think that it's right to single out a Malu Fernandez, or a Tim Yap for that matter: I think that there's enough razor wire and tall trees in the Philippines for us to have a mass execution to rid ourselves of journalistic ineptitude once and for all (let's start with "investigative reporters").  The way I see it, there's nothing wrong with being a prejudiced and discriminating bigot for so long as you admit to being one, and you do your prejudgment, discriminating and bigotry as what it is and not pass it off as an exercise in "journalism."

   This, I think, is the whole lesson in the Malu Fernandez controversy.  There is room for all sorts of bigotry and prejudice in this world: nobody denies anyone a chance to laugh at a farting man who ate his fill of sarciadong kamote.  We really can't tie ourselves down to a frame of ethics that prevents us from mocking people, from discriminating, from drinking deep from the bottle of Hate-a-rade.  But the least we expect from all of this discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, and hatred is honest disclosure.

   I'm no rapper, but if you're gonna have to hate a playa, the playa run game on ya, buck wild with the trigger.  You know what, I heard that from somewhere...

< for heaven's sake, marocharim >

   So I have a hyperactive sociological imagination.  I tend to follow in the footsteps of an extremist reading of Durkheim: anything that has anything to do with human beings is eminently social, and since everything has to do with humans, everything is a social fact.  Like this apple-flavored C2 I'm drinking, although it's kind of hard to think of a social implication to C2... oh, here's one.

   "Taken-for-grantedness" is something that defined an epoché in social-scientific theorizing, but I don't suggest that you start reading Alfred Schutz at this point (heck, my photocopied books of Schutz at home still smell like they were photocopied yesterday, even if I had them for a couple of years now).  The mundane things in our lives often have manifold implications: take the Micromatic.

   Micromatic is, of course, a brand name for those big multicolored umbrellas used by many sidewalk vendors to sell their wares.  Micromatic is synonymous with much of illegal vending in the Philippines: it protects vendors from the elements of nature (like sun and rain) and the elements of law (it makes for a good weapon for whacking urban development authorities from confiscating your wares).

   If anything, Micromatic to me serves as a signifier for the signified concept (so that class on Saussure was valuable after all) of ambulant vending: I take it that the original intent for Micromatic umbrellas was for yard tables and gazebos, but somehow the Micromatic best concretizes the abstract concept of illegal vending.  Rich people who can afford to make awnings for their outdoor furniture would dare not use something as garish as a rainbow-colored Micromatic, but it works just fine for vendors who peddle corn snacks like Japanese sweet corn or binatog.

   Yet I prefer to stretch the semiotic a bit: red, blue and yellow Micromatic umbrellas sort of speak to how Filipino it is to appropriate pedestrian space to participate in capitalism.  In other nations, there's hawking and the traveling salesman, but in the Philippines, nothing speaks more of the right to earn a living in capitalist society than to invest in a Micromatic umbrella.  Under that umbrella, we see everything that makes our capitalism so interesting to the point of humorousness: all this talk about "industrialization" and "information economies" still can't get rid of our needs to indulge in affordable, simple treats like samalamig and odoks.  If anything, the Micromatic to me is a symbol of Filipiñana: something that peppers our urban landscape as significations of how we view laissez-faire, and how we as a nation interpret Adam Smith.

   Sensible enough, if you asked me.  Often, the most mundane of objects have the most implications to our lives.  So here's a hoo-hah for Micromatic, and a hoo-hah for the sociological imagination.

< romantic experiment >

   I was talking to my old Philosophy teacher a few days ago, and what I expected to be a droning conversation on Charles Taylor's philosophy of language ended up in a pretty valuable lesson in life: some of the best experiences in life are often those situations where we are vulnerable, when we are not in control.  "There's a reason why the expression is 'falling' in love," he said, "and why the game is called 'trust-fall.'  You put yourself on the line."

   I can be a control freak at times, especially when it comes to romance.  Whenever I'm in love, I start to live my life in clockwork: weeksaries, monthsaries (I only got so far as a monthsary), dates arranged so that absolutely nothing will go wrong, conversations that won't end up in arguments.  I always took charge of the course of the relationship.  It works: I don't miss the weeksary or the monthsary, nothing goes wrong in the date, we never argue.  Often, I end up the one being hurt the most from a relationship lived like clockwork.  I take the plunge down to love, but instead of free falling with the girl, I use the convenient parachute midway through the fall.  The only argument comes with the big split-up: the clock doesn't break, it explodes.

   Somehow, if I get another shot at romance, I should be able to have the confidence to do the falling on my own.  All too often, I rely on a "bridge" to do my initial courting for me, and then I become extremely tentative and predictable when I do the courting myself after the first two weeks of proxy courtship.  By the time I'm in the relationship, I start to take control of everything: often, I'm too afraid of getting hurt or hurting my significant other.  My relationship takes the character of a general's war-room: if Plan A doesn't work, I go to Plan B, then Plan C, and so on.  In my first relationship, I worked from Plan A to Plan G: seven plans that went bust in my face by the time we split up.

   The way I see it, the most successful and longest-lasting romantic relationships don't take the character of the way I did mine: no plans, no premeditated conferences with friends and possible allies, no strategy by romantic design.  The most blissful moments of love is when you're tethered to nothing, throwing the lifeline of trust, knowing that someone will catch it for you in the 70 or so years you are suspended in free fall.

   Take it from me: you don't plan for love.  Love plans for you.  Dammit, I hate clichés.

< well then, kind of late >

   I was walking to school yesterday when I saw this huge streamer crying out the same slogan I've heard in UP for six years: "Fight for Higher State Subsidy."  Being a "traitor" to the ideals of militant activism, I sometimes think that this whole issue surrounding UP's recent tuition fee increases is something we should rethink.

   To be honest, I find more reasons to agree with a tuition fee increase than to disagree with it.  I don't agree with how the increase was implemented: I would rather have it that the Administration increased fees incrementally over the course of a well ironed-out medium-term plan.  UP should have structured a more relevant socialized tuition fee assistance program before jacking up the price of education to rather alarming five-digit figures.  Other than that, along with issues of transparency, I'm going out on a limb: yes, I agree that the current UP Administration was right in increasing tuition fees.

   The way I see it, UP is not the only state educational institution that needs funds from the government.  It is obvious that we are not the absolute priority of the government: in fact, UP is a distant priority of the government.  It is obvious that the government prioritizes debt servicing and dubious wars against equally dubious insurgents over social programs like education.  That's the way the cookie crumbles: we get the crumbs.

   Now we have every right to assert our right to more than the crumbs we get, but we must also be aware that we're dealing with a measly cookie that is the education and social services budget.  Giving UP more means taking away from other educational institutions that end up with less.  UP is not the only educational institution in a dire need of a higher budget, and UP is definitely not the only educational institution in the Philippines.  To say that "UP is a state university" must also come to acknowledge that it's not the only state university in the country.  If we deserve more, the rest should also deserve more.

   I agree: the government should spend more on education.  If we stand any chance to holistically develop our country beyond stock market economics, we must invest in the economics of intelligence.  A smart workforce is at the core of a smart economy.  But it is obvious that the government has other more pressing needs to attend to: after all, we put them there, regardless of if they cheated their way to victory or not.  If the public's mistrust in them is so blatant and obvious as so many "tibak's" claim, we should all now be in EDSA and overthrowing Presidents and high-ranking government officials every week.  Pardon me for being simplistic, but I think I have a very good point: now is not the time to talk about political science, though.

   To me, UP President Ermelinda Roman's move to increase tuition fees is a better move than to go to Congress and to the Senate to ask for higher subsidies from a government that will obviously not add a few more digits to the UP subsidy.  To lease out UP's idle lands and assets to generate much-needed revenue is a better solution than to keep these lands and assets idle to pacify a fear of "commercialization."  To associate with mega-corporations is a better solution than to churn out UP graduates who end up underemployed for the lack of bridges between the promise of UP and the promise of wealth.

   Beyond the idealisms of "higher state subsidy" lies the pragmatics and practicalities of good fiscal management: it makes more sense to improve on basic public education than to splurge on higher education.  If we can get our high school students to get the kind of learning attainments required for a smart workforce, we can get our smart economy.  With a properly and justly structured Socialized Tuition Fee Assistance Program (STFAP) that does not define assistance and stipends along the lines of a presence of a cellphone, we can get these kids the kind of initiative and opportunity to go to UP.

   This may sound shallow, but it makes perfect sense to me: poor parents who realize the potential of their child to succeed and to make better lives for themselves will not hesitate to sell the family cow for that opportunity.  They will run into onerous debts just to see to it that their smart kid will get the education and the opportunities they never had.  A kid bent on getting that education and the opportunity that comes with it is the same kid you'll see mopping the floor of a Jollibee, clearing the tables of a McDonald's, or working the cash registers of a 7-Eleven.  Can you blame them?  No: Filipinos value education, diplomas occupy central spaces in the home.  Can you blame the government?  No: parental love and personal sacrifice are things you cannot legislate.

   I'm all for a higher budget for UP, but I cannot expect that from the government.  If anything, those who drafted the primer on the tuition fee increases have a very good point: UP's needs cannot wait for the outcome of Congressional debates where the vast majority of them are disgraces for UP alumni.  Had UP continued to fight for higher state subsidy, UP would have starved and bled to death.  That, I think, is a good thinking point.

< vice city stories, anyone? >

   The concept of "vice" is relative.  As a smoker, I consider myself to be in good health with cigarettes, but non-smokers look down on me like I'm a pariah.  The consumption of alcohol is a vice in itself, but it's socially acceptable to drink at a social event, or to drink highballs if you're not buying.  There is such a thing as medical marijuana, and heroin was once used as a painkiller.  A kid addicted to computer games would say that the games sharpen the mind better than long division.

   I don't chew betel nuts, though.  Here in the Cordilleras, to "mama" (mild stress on the second syllable), or to chew betel nuts, is considered a "better vice" than smoking.  Apparently, the betel nut serves as an appetizer and as a dessert, as a source of strength, and to while away boredom.  These are the same reasons why most people smoke: but like I said before, there's really no good reason for anyone to smoke.

   Back in an NGO I volunteered for a few years back, some full-blooded Cordillerans who saw me chain-smoking offered me an alternative in betel nuts.  I was curious, but quite tentative: there is some effort in having to peel a nut and to chew on it.  Being lazy, I find it quite laborious.  Smoking is basically respiration: if you know how to breathe through a straw, you already know how to smoke.  Betel nuts are an acquired taste: I never developed a taste for its rather pungent taste.

   I know that smoking is gross: I don't even want to take a look at my lungs if I have the chance to do so.  I know I shouldn't be ethnocentric considering that I'm an anthropology major, but even my own pretensions of "objectivity" are tested whenever I see old people spitting out the chewed-up nuts.  I've vomited blood before, and I'm sure that the reddish-orange spit is no more grotesque than bloody vomit.  But I'm not so sure about the aesthetic value of red spit and chewed-up betel nuts beside a park bench.  It's not that I'm squeamish, it's just that my stomach gets all knotted up whenever I see the spitwads.

   Different strokes for different folks, I remind myself, and I take a deep drag off my cigarette.  Don't get me started on chewing tobacco, though.

< hmmm... >

   When confronted with writer's block while blogging, you write about blogging.

   There was a time that the blog was heralded as the "alternative" to newspapers, and that bloggers are "alternative journalists."  "Herald" (OK, the past tense) is an understatement: I've been a blogger long enough to know that this was part of the hype that surrounded the promise of blogging.  Which is a nicer way of putting into words what's really on my mind: "alternative newspaper," my ass.

   Since I mentioned the human ass, I'm not saying that newspapers are substitutes for toilet paper: but if you crumple it just so to soften it enough and run it quickly through running water, it works fine (after all, you have to heat a banana leaf to make it soft and pliable).  Paper has been around for centuries: there's no substitute for it.  The e-book and the Adobe PDF didn't replace the book as much as blogs didn't replace newspapers.  The Philippine Daily Inquirer is still there (and the past month's issues piling up again under the space where the aquarium is at home) even with Inquirer.net.

   In the 1960s, Alvin Toffler wrote "Future Shock," and laid down the foundations of the "sociology of the future."  Toffler's work spawned so many ideas about the "futuristic" world: we went back to Jules Verne, and we nerds gamble on the accuracy of Arthur C. Clarke's futuristic predictions.  We're still not at that point where we mastered artificial intelligence, artificially created non-carbon based life forms or created a race of sentient cyborgs with sophisticated sentience ready to destroy us all.  Even the antihumanistic "postmodern world" has yet to materialize: to echo Lyotard, at most and definitely not the very least, we are living in a "postmodern condition."

   Even the way we make sliced bread never changed: we still use this sharp edged steel object called a "knife," or some variant thereof.  Those who watch "Spongebob Squarepants" would probably know that "canned bread" is health food that Squidward Tentacles likes, but I doubt that will even kick off a revolution in the sale and consumption of bread.  Bread Stix is not "bread" per se, but a powdered form of "bread."

   I sometimes delude myself into thinking that in order to change the world, we don't really have to change politics and culture, nor do we have to engage in lengthy debates (particularly with French academics) about the foundations of (Western) metaphysics.  It all begins with finding something better than sliced bread, in the literal sense.  I'm not talking about gourmet baguettes or if Mr. del Rosario of Sunshine Supermarket here in Baguio spreads the gospel of Sunshine Raisin Bread all throughout the four corners of the globe (using a Mercator projection), but even that is sliced.  If anyone makes an exceptionally successful way to eat bread without using a knife or any other edge, we changed the world.

   Really, the "revolution" in eating bread consists of only one step: from breaking bread, we sliced it.  Obsessing ourselves with these "revolutionary" narratives of changing the way we perceive the world has led us to believe in the grand narrative of "changing the system."  We get a lot of our news in pretty much the same way it has been done since the invention of the printing press: by reading a newspaper.  The same is true with society: with all this talk of "resistance" and "revolution," we always seek the green grass on the other side.  But if Ginger Foutley (the main character in "As Told By Ginger") is right, from where I'm standing, my grass is green.

   I'm not saying that we can't change the world: all I'm saying is that "changing the world" means to get at the very root, at the very axis, at the very foundations of what makes up our world.  Sliced bread is a good place to start.  Call me delusional, but if we get around finding something better than sliced bread, we are all on our way to solving global warming and preventing the extinction of our species.

   As far as the blog being the "alternative newspaper" is concerned, we still haven't got a better material to wrap tinapa with.

< i'm such a sap >

   People usually know me to be a "writer" of essay-like pseudo-articles, but there was a time I dabbled in theater.  Seven years ago today, I made my first "major theatrical production:" a (cough) high school musical, a rendition of Aeschylus' classical Greek drama, "Prometheus Bound."

   Most of my high school classmates remember the "West Side Story" production more than "Prometheus Bound:" if anything, there's more fun in watching the dance routines of the Jets and the Sharks than to watch a rehashed version of the most overused story in Greek literature.  I can't say that I'm very proud of "Prometheus Bound," but I can't say that I'm ashamed of it either.  It was, after all, my very first play.

   The idea for "Prometheus Bound" came when our junior English teacher, Mrs. Raquel Luna, offered our class (III-Silver) a "special project" to capitalize on our "talents."  At that time, I was just kicked out of the Special Science sections for calling my Biology teacher a "horse," and I was really not accepted into the inner circles of my new class.  An idea of a play was raised: the only question was that nobody really knew how to go about it.

   My friend Andrew Santos, who was also a new student, offered the idea of a Japanese-themed play based on the "Lord of the Five Rings" trading card game.  It didn't really click, though: it was not a bad story, but it takes someone raised on animé and "Dungeons and Dragons" to understand the fable of Yoritomo.  In all my timidity, I raised the idea of a Greek-themed play: the story of a Greek god who stole fire from the heavens to give to the mortals.  Everyone liked it, but I didn't: after all, since it was my idea, I had to write the script.

   Andrew handled the art direction and the props: being an excellent artist, he really did a very good job with the background and the other stuff needed to make the play possible.  I was tasked with the unenviable task of writing the script from scratch and at the same time, I was also to direct the play.  I was dealing with 68 people I barely knew: 68 people who all had to be in the play because everyone had to have a grade.  I had the feeling they didn't like me either: after all, who would take directions from a reject from those uppity, privileged students in the advanced curriculum?

   Not being liked by 68 people is one thing, but when you have them memorize their lines and ask them to put a bit of effort in the play for the grade that's in it, "not being liked" becomes an underestimation.  I gave in around the second week of practice: people started complaining that it was "useless," that that play was "nonsense," and that despite all my efforts, I was not doing a good job.

   I would have quit right then and there, but then I realized where they were coming from.  I realized that some of them can't practice until the early evening because they had chores to do, that they had to help out with their families, that they really had problems of their own outside of a school play.  I realized that their negativity with the play came with life being negative towards them: that the way things are going, they'd always be rejected, that they will always be second best.  I thought I had problems when I got kicked out of the Science sections, but boy, was I wrong.

   Somehow, I realized that if anything, I was going to have to be a Prometheus to this bunch of second-best rejects: to steal the proverbial fire from the proverbial gods.  Students from the Regular sections don't get to perform in school plays, much less in crowded city auditoriums.  Nobody was letting anyone down: this was a shot at showing the world, and letting the world see.

   No, play date didn't turn out like the "Mr. Holland's Opus" thing we were all expecting: we played to a cold, indifferent crowd, our performance deemed half-assed by self-styled Siskel's and Ebert's.  I didn't care, Andrew didn't care, and 68 people in that stage didn't care either.  In the end, this bunch of second-best rejects welcomed me into their inner circle.

   We don't talk about "Prometheus Bound" whenever we come together for a reunion: it's something best left on the shelf in favor of mocking our teachers, of truths-or-dares, of laughing our hearts out whenever we think of those days gone by.  I think the lot of them even forgot about it... nah, I don't think so.

   But every time I meet an old classmate, I remember exactly what role they played in "Prometheus Bound:" whether they were Muses, a Greek deity, Prometheus, or vulture.  Often, whenever I see them, I get reminded of the real message of the Prometheus legend: not even the gods can take back the fire when it starts burning from within.

< oh please oh please oh please >

   Guys and gals, I never asked you for anything that cost you.  Nobody pays for a reading of The Marocharim Experiment save for your Internet expenses (prepaid cards, electricity, rental fees).  I never asked for anything from you other than a few minutes of your time to read what I have to write, to listen to what I have to say.  I don't get paid for writing here: in fact, I pay for writing here.  I choose to forego the niceties of eating out at a nice place or to add to my mounting bill of vices to write for you: to hypothesize, to test, to conclude.

   Some of my friends say that I could do a lot more than to write on free blog-hosting services.  The truth is, I can't really afford it: I still get my allowance from my parents, and like I said earlier, I never earned a single solitary cent from what I've written here.  I quit trying to "cash in:" somehow, the best thing I could give the world is what I can give it for free.  I can't afford Marocharim.com.

   Marocharim.com is not my dream: the Marochaholics have clamored for me to make Marocharim.com a reality.  The idea is to buy my own domain and spread the cybernetic gospel to the world, freed from the constraints of free blog hosting services.  However, as with everything, this costs money: I'm not about to plop down a thousand pesos of my parents' money to realize the project of Marocharim.com.

   Here's where YOU come in.  Join the cause for Marocharim.com.

   The other day, I wrote an entry called "Pista ng Wikang Filipino/The Spectacle of the Filipino Language," an entry for the Wika2007 Blog Writing Contest.  The prize for winning this contest is a few thousand pesos and a one year free domain registration and a one year 100 MB hosting.  If my entry wins, we all get the chance to realize the dream of Marocharim.com.  Forget the money: this is a free website we're talking about.  It's not just mine, it is also yours.

   So why am I groveling here on my figurative hands and knees?  It's rather simple, really: I need YOUR help.  I could get around blogging for free for the rest of my life, but free blog hosting services don't last forever.  The truth is, I can't afford to buy my own domain: there are just so many things in life that need more financial attention to than a website.  This is a chance for me to give the world a simple gift of words and ideas beyond what I can already do here.

   Join the cause: simply go to the PinoyBlogoSphere.com website and follow the link to the Wika2007 Blog Writing Contest.  There, among so many entries to this contest, you will find the single Marocharim experiment that took me a full week to write (against TMX rules, where you should write everything under an hour), entitled "Pista ng Wikang Filipino/The Spectacle of the Filipino Language."  From there, follow the links to read the entry, and if you think that I've done enough to merit a vote from you (or if you're a compassionate heart who would like to help a struggling writer in a dream of giving the world a simple gift of words and ideas), vote for the entry.  Don't forget to register, though.  It's as simple as that.

   Tell your blogging friends.  Spread the word, that they may also join in the cause.  Time is against us: we only have until August 25, 2007 to vote.  What's in it for you?  I can't make promises of giving you money or include your name in TMXSix the e-book or whatnot, but this I swear upon my name: I will continue to give you what you came here for.

   Join the cause.  Let me stand on your shoulders (or at least vote for my entry), that we may see further: that indeed, this is the science behind The Marocharim Experiment, and if it does happen, Marocharim.com.