< i'm in a spoofing mood >

   I don't mind listening to the ocassional Tom Jones song, as long as Tom Jones is singing it.  But if I hear another drunk guy singing "Delilah" in a karaoke bar, I swear upon heaven... music please, Maestro:

*      *      *

I saw the light on the night that I passed by that window
I saw the flickering shadow of men and their wine
He was that singer
As he was singing I listened and went out of my mind

My, my, my, "Delilah"
Why, why, why, "Delilah"
I could hear, that song while I drink my beer
It's one of those songs that I don't really want to hear

At break of day when that man drove away I was waiting
I crossed the street to the bar and I opened the door
He stood there singing
I took the knife from the table and he sang no more

My, my, my, "Delilah"
Why, why, why, "Delilah"
So before I come to break down the door
Your singing "Delilah" is one I can't take anymore
Your singing "Delilah" is one I can't take anymore!

< i'm complaining >

   I called UP Diliman today over the issue of a request of grades, and because the phone line at home has been disabled for outgoing long-distance calls, I went on over to the RCPI at Session Road to make a call.  The whole thing cost me P67.00.

   The rational recourse would have been to make my call via my cellphone and saved myself fifty bucks or so, but I'm a cheapskate when it comes to cellphone load.  Since I don't do a lot of texting, I get load only on those periodic ocassions that I have P30 that I don't want to spend on a can of Coke and ten pesos worth of Marlboro Lights.  My godmother's birthday gifts of a couple of hundred pesos' worth of load credits goes to the alerts and services I activate in order for me to consume all my load while having enough for extremely important text messages.  Yup, I'm kuripot.

   But for all the P67.00 I spent on two calls, I kind of feel gypped.  Who pays that amount of money for two calls, each under a minute long?  For that amount of money, I should have had positive results, but their fax machine was broken, so I would get my ROG by Friday, or until such time that they get the machine fixed.  For all the tuition fee increase is worth, they should consider buying another one.

   My dad, who is a self-styled expert on office equipment, says that fax machines are jurassic.  It's not that I believe everything my dad says, but this is coming from a guy who has actually seen and operated teleprinters and once had a Telex number in his calling card.  In my home computer, I've given up on the Post-It's I stick on the case of my monitor and I'm now using the "Notes" function in Windows Vista's Sidebar applet.  Say what you will about Vista, but I'm not about to buy myself a box of Post-It Notes to remind myself how fucked up my life is.

< from the entertainment world >

   This afternoon, Willie Revillame spent the first 15 minutes or so of his noontime game show "Wowowee" proclaiming his innocence, preempting the usual "Iyugyog Mo" song-and-dance routine/game segment.  I can't blame the guy: the difference between guilt and innocence is to have people listen to your side of the story for at least 15 minutes.  After all, Willie has again become the target of the immature pilyong pasaring of a sanctimonious stoop-sitting holier-than-thou has-been in Joey de Leon (it's a matter of personal opinion).  As far as Joey is concerned, I'll wait until "Startalk."  But the question remains: did Willie cheat?

   If we are talking about the "Wilyonaryo" fiasco, then we might as well talk about all game shows.  If by "cheating" we mean that the format and machinations of the game show are structured so that the house would get a better odds of winning, then all game shows cheat.  Singling out Willie for such a concept of "cheating" (or in any other similar concept) is not only wrong, it is also the height of hypocrisy.

   But if by "cheating" we mean that we deny people a chance at dignified and honest labor, and have them depend on the goodwill of dollar-waving overseas subscribers and skip work just to humiliate themselves on live television for a quick peso, then there was cheating going on.  "Fun" has nothing to do with cheating people out of the promise of hard work in society, and there's nothing "funny" about indolence, either.  How many times have we heard that story of the jobless "Wowowee" viewer who makes a career out of the queues in the ABS-CBN audience entrance trying to make it into their contests?

   I won't lie about it: I watch "Wowowee."  I do not question the sincerity of Willie Revillame in helping the poor and the downtrodden: I question how that sincerity is practiced.  There's really something questionable with a "Du Du Du Da Da Da" segment.

< a something-something >

   It's been a while since my last visit to the psychiatrist, and I really think I should consider going back there for treatment.  Like I said in Project Hallucinosis, I'm hanging on by a thread.  Right now, I can feel the proverbial rug being pulled from right under my feet.

   I made a very stupid decision in deluding myself that I am already on the straight-and-narrow, that I don't need my medications anymore.  The least I want is to contribute to the financial burden of my family by having to be on therapy.  The other thing is that I don't like to deal with the side-effects of medication: I can't afford the drowsiness and the lethargy that comes with antipsychotics.  But if anything, I don't like what I'm becoming either: I don't like the kind of self-abuse I'm putting myself through just to distract myself from my paranoia.

   My parents are particularly worried, since I've been working myself off for the past few days, staying up until 3 AM working on my thesis.  I don't operate on the eight hours of sleep necessary for overall good health.  It's not conscientious industry or a compulsive drivenness that drives me to whip myself with the proverbial cat-o'-nine-tails: I need to distract myself.  I won't lie about it anymore than the last two months I skipped the trip to the psychiatrist: I need help.

   I thought I could distract myself in work, but I'm distracted by work.  I'm starting to count down things in terms of the number of days left until I'm supposed to be done with my thesis (around a month), the number of days I have left to toast my first year of my career as a mental patient (14 days), you get the idea.

   If anything, the least I can afford right now is a catastrophic failure or an insurmountable obstacle.  I know I've climbed a lot of mountains in my life before, but I don't know if I have enough left in me.  Of course I have, but every mountain you climb takes a mountain out of you.

< continuing the anthology >

   I was working on my thesis a few hours ago when an epiphany hit me: I'm working too hard.

   I'm spending hours in the faculty room consulting faculty members who are friendly and amicable enough to help me understand what I'm doing (seriously, I don't have the faintest idea of what I'm doing anymore).  I'm spending too much time in the Library building (all sections, including the newly-opened Special Collections section), impoverishing myself of the sanity and money needed to withstand the long lines at the photocopying machines.  I've been working in front of my computer for so long that I start dreaming about being in front of a computer.  Yup, I'm a poster boy for alienation.

   All this comes from my adviser telling me not to break my tables.  I was fine, until I had to make my summary results for color themes used in Friendster.  I ended up with this extremely long table that cut across two pages.  In my frustration, I saved the document (I'm not that stupid) and tried to figure out a way to make an unbroken table.  I'm still at it (the thinking process), but I'm down to two options: I can "Frankenstein" a very complex one-page table with the paper on landscape, or I can "Frankenstein" the table I already made by joining the broken printouts with Scotch tape, glue, paste, cooked rice, or if I'm really pissed off, semen.  (I'm planning to give new meaning to the term "intellectual masturbation," but that's just me).

< 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.