< oh boy >

   I write this as Marck, not Marocharim.

   To be honest, I kind of miss the old Outcrop newsroom.  Granted that I left because I let my backbone take the better of me, but I sometimes think I should not have grown a spine, and that I should have accepted the politics as they are.  But on the other hand, at least I found out that leaving Outcrop was good for me, in that it allowed me to grow.

   Outcrop was definitely not a room with a glass ceiling: it had made for so many great opportunities for other people.  But somehow, the "higher calling" never really reached my ears: it was, to me, a constant affirmation of my own unhappiness.  Somehow, I felt like whatever the "calling" was, it wasn't meant for me.  More and more, I felt the calling of doing what Outcrop wanted me to do, instead of the calling of doing what I can do for Outcrop.

   Somehow, I didn't belong in the newsroom.  My 11-year "career" in campus journalism only brought me to the realization that I wasn't being molded into the image of a journalist, but that of a writer, of being my own man.  Yet it was, for me, an almost Oedipal fixation of being a "journalist," something that only became a consequence of writing.  Good journalists all, the people in Outcrop, but not me.

   Then, and only then, did I realize how important Marocharim is to me.  Marocharim did what I've struggled to do for 11 years: to write because he felt like it.  For so long, I wrote because I was told to do so, or because I was paid to do so.  Marocharim, on the other hand, writes because he can.  He doesn't care about what other people think, as long as they think.  For all his arrogance, his self-centered egomaniacal bravado, his lapses in logic, his paranoia, and for every failing and shortcoming he has of being a lovable and likeable human being, he's perfectly OK with that.  I wish I am just like Marocharim in real life, but somehow, he will always be a part of me.  I think there's a little bit of Marocharim in all of us.

   Thank you, Marocharim.

*      *      *

   Five minutes later, Marocharim sends a message for Marck.  It reads:

   "That sounded... gay.  You keep your distance from me from now on."

< hmmm... >

   I don't know why people get so offended over matters that concern "race."  In anthropology (I'm an anthropologist by training), "race" is no longer used: the tripartite classification of "Negroid," "Caucasoid" and "Mongoloid" are, for all intents and purposes, obsolete.  The concept of "race" is more political: it is a means of establishing identity by skin color, common ancestry, and physical features.

   With all the Al Sharptons, Claire Daneses and Don Imuses of this world, it sometimes becomes bothering that every remark that's made at "another race" always has to be construed as "offensive."  I was bloghopping today when I read all these Filipino blogs saying that Teri Hatcher of "Desperate Housewives" was "racist."  In the show, her character Susan Mayer remarked, "OK, so before we go further, can I check those diplomas?  'Coz I would just like to make sure they are not from some med school in the Philippines."

   Surely, we Filipinos have had it up to here with being synonyms for "househelp" and for having Hollywood actresses like Claire Danes complain that the Philippines is full of cockroaches and reek of the smell of unwashed feet.  But "racist?"  I don't think so.

   I think we're taking "political correctness" to its illogical extreme.  I can't even use the word "gay" anymore without having to anticipate the (very near) possibility of gay-rights groups accusing me of homophobia, while comedy bar hosts use the term "bakla" so many times in their routines.  While hip-hop artists blurt out "nigger" at least a half-dozen times in every song, a person who says "nigger" in public is likely to be the poster boy of "backwardness" in America.  Back when I worked for the school paper, I can't use the word "ass" (be it donkeys or the general anatomy of the buttocks) because "it's offensive," but the same thing does not apply for genuinely offensive "kabaklaan" in blind items.  The word "prostitute" has given way to the more "gender-sensitive" term, "commercial sex worker."  But mention the possibility of common non-engendered bathrooms and you'll be cruisin' for a bruisin'.  Girls shriek at the sight of a Sikh in a turban, and we flee at the sight of a "Bombay" riding a scooter come payday.  Get my point?

   The same holds true for "racism:" it's as if we should always find ourselves in the privileged position that we are and should be beyond reproach.  As it seems, "political correctness" is relative to whose politics, and who is correct.  Look at it this way: other people cast stones, other people cast bread, and we all cry in shame and indignation as if our whole lives depended on casting bread and stones.  You have an entire school of American political science that calls Islam a "bloody religion," you have entire nations that proclaim "Death to America," and they both consider each other "racist."  What more for an American daytime drama actress?

   I'm not condoning truly offensive comments, nor am I coddling genuinely offensive people.  But one remark made in a TV show is another thing: it's not as if Teri Hatcher genuinely intended to give another black eye to the Philippine medical profession.  I won't call that "racist" at all: I would see undertones and explications of colloquial "racism" in hospitals that refuse to treat indigenous indigent patients.  I would see undertones and explications of colloquial "racism" in Korean-owned Internet cafés that overcharge, or refuse to serve, Filipinos.  One very brief remark from a TV show that not too many Filipinos watch (owing to the crap that is "Zaido:" there, I said it) and people call for a boycott.

   Besides, we all fall into the common ethical tar-pit of judging people by the color of their skin or from where they came from, as if it made all the difference in the world.  In effect, we all have been "racist" at one point in our lives.  In this day and age, if the world pays heed to an elementary school student who says that the "Filipino race" descended from "waves of migration" and the "Filipino blood" is a mixture of "foreign blood" (Pygmy Negroid, Indonesian, Malay, Chinese, Arab, Indian, Spanish, American, Japanese... I hope I got it right), said student is "racist."

   I say, let's get to the more important things in our lives.  After all, if our whole future as a nation will rest upon the comments of a Teri Hatcher, we do deserve every "racist" comment we could get.

< fourteen >

   Since this is "Death by (Friendster) Degrees," I'm going to start complaining.  We all complain about death: figurative and literal death.  I'm doing these entries for the sake of letting off steam.  If I don't, I'd end up being more of a lunatic than what I already am.  Bear with me.

*      *      *

   "So, how's your thesis coming along?"

   Everytime someone asks me how I'm doing with my thesis, I feel the urge to flick out my middle finger, shove said finger in said person's nostril, and poke around looking for brain matter.  I've eaten brains before - cow brains, pig brains, goat brains - and if I could only have a bit of an incompassionate human brain, I would prepare dinakdakan.  Usually, "How's your thesis?" comes from persons who have already submitted their second draft.  Not so me: I do my thesis submissions chapter by godforsaken chapter.  Thick chapters, I might add: lately I've been submitting half of a full chapter every week, the second half being discussions.  This afternoon was Chapter Nine's discussion: "Color as Myth."

   My claim is rather simple: the color is a sign.  There is no ontological reality behind a sign: it is an arbitrary association.  There is nothing "in" the color pink, for example, that allows it to have the "universal meaning" of "pink = girl."  Fundamentally, its ontology is not of presence or of unity, but of difference.  So technically, your Friendster profile is not yours: it's something in the structure you appropriated for and as yourself.  As such, your Self, if only to use the example of colors, is a connotation of the signifier that is the Self: you are, in fact, not a "unity of selfhood," but a "difference of selfhoods."  You are fragmented: the signs you think "are yours" are actually not yours.  For all intents and purposes, you are Dr. Frankenstein, and your profile is your monster.

   That is a one-paragraph summation of a nine-page discussion composed of at least a dozen paragraphs, a diagram, and a table.  The thing is, one-paragraph discussions are not allowed in my discipline.  You have to elucidate.  You have to be "scholarly."  One-paragraph diatribes don't cut it.

   Steamy.

< hmmm... >

   No, I'm not joining "Pinoy Big Brother," but I've just been invited by no less than one of "Kuya's" "siblings" (BigBad) to join the Celebrity Pinoy Big Brother Fantasy Game.  From what I heard, this spin on "Pinoy Big Brother" involves "celebrity Pinoy bloggers."  I don't know if I'm a "celebrity," much less a "celebrated blogger," but I'm still considering if I'm going to be trapped inside a "Bahay ni Kuya" in cyberspace, interact with people (I'm shuddering right now thinking of that), and perhaps be the next Gerald Anderson.  Or Rustom Padilla, if I realize that I'm actually gay.  Or Wendy Valdez, if I turn into a man-bitch.

   I wrote before (but I can't place exactly where... it's not like I memorized everything I've written) that one of my more perverse thoughts is to be a Housemate.  I can only imagine what would happen to me if I were ever in a reality show.  I could only imagine how much moral corruption I will sow upon the minds of the youth.

   Anyway, I'm still considering the offer.

< more nausea >

   With all the talk surrounding US Senator Larry Craig's gay sex scandal in a public restroom in an airport, I'm kind of rethinking the whole idea of urinating altogether.  The urinal trough is not the most meaningful thing in the world: we men are quite content with just standing there, flicking out our penises, and start doing our business.  All too often, it's just fifteen seconds or so of assuming one's most comfortable stance and staring at the wall.  Men don't look sideways or down-ways to admire a penis aside from his own, but looks forward admiring the tile grout.

   Of course, unless in your in the dirty bathrooms of cheap cinemas showing dated local porn flicks, some guy will tap you in the back and whisper his rates.  It is then that we straight and homophobic men risk physical damage to our prostates to squeeze out the remaining ounces of urine left in our bladders, lest that gentle tap becomes a vise-like nerve hold that will knock you out and have you risking even more physical damage in the prostate by the time you wake up (you know what I'm talking about).

   I don't know about female comfort rooms: last time I checked, the stalls are enclosed.  But for male comfort rooms, the amenities are dependent on design: you either have solo urinals with dividers, or a long trough where men can line up shoulder-to-shoulder and heed the call of nature.

   While both sexes of the human species can theoretically do their business anywhere, the man has the advantage.  It's all a matter of standing facing some wall or a tree and pretend to do stuff, like have a phone call.  The other day, I saw a smartly-dressed banker-type in a neck of the woods, looking like he was answering some call.  I'm no fool: if you're stopping by that woods on a clear sunset, you've got miles to go before you get a clear signal to make a call.  The steady stream of urine was the next thing that caught my eye.

   It's all a matter of performance.  To paraphrase Shakespeare, all the world's a stage, and all men and women merely players.  They have their exits and their entrances.  But one man, in his time, has many pisses... his acts being seven ages.

< hmmm... >

   I feel so out of place whenever I'm in a beach.  There I am, in a t-shirt and beach shorts showing off a skin tone and a figure that many girls would kill for (nix the boobs), feeling the wind in my hair, the sand between my toes, staring at the horizon.  Somehow, I feel the urge to go a'la Nicholas Cage in City of Angels and catch the big wave, but I can't: I don't know how to swim.

   I did by own fair bit of "swimming" before: wading on the shore is more like it.  The last time my dad taught me how to swim when I was a kid, I almost drowned.  My fear of swimming became quite severe that I became more content walking along the shoreline, or in a beach hut peeling shrimp or shucking oysters.  It doesn't get me hunk points, but I'm not going to do a David Hasselhoff on the beach.  The fabric of the universe must be preserved: besides, I don't have his body.

   The nauseating color of blue sea is only compounded by the nausea I get watching the kinds of people in the beach.  It's the kind of nausea that only Sartre was able to articulate in No Exit, in the famous quotation, "Hell is other people."  It's the existential nausea that comes with that initial belief that the sands will be dotted by voluptuous, sexy women in two-piece bikinis, but you see some potbellied fat guy with nipples you can barely make out from his flabby pectorals.

   Such nausea.

< going to change some lyrics >

   I'm a bit lazy to write an Experiment today: coffee and thinking don't mix.  Here's a modified version of "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones, a tribute to the monks of Burma.

*      *      *

Everywhere I hear the sounds of marching, charging feet, boy
'Cause freedom's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy
But what can a poor monk do
Except to march for a free land
'Cause in sleepy Rangoon town
There's just no place for a street fighting monk
No...

Hey!  I think it's time for Pagoda Revolution
'Cause where he lives the game to play is the violent solution
Well then, what can a poor monk do
Except to march with a clenched hand
'Cause in sleepy Rangoon town
There's just no place for a street fighting monk
No...

Hey!  Said my name is called Myanmar
I'll shout and scream, for my rights taken away by all these soldiers
Well, what can a poor monk do
Except to march for a free land
'Cause in sleepy Rangoon town
There's just no place for a street fighting monk
No...

< number 13 >

   Shoutouts to Krissa and Camille, who have just submitted their final thesis draft.  They're working on something pertaining to juvenile delinquency, and here I am still on draft mode.  My thesis is far from complete.  Owing to the way I'm writing my thesis, my adviser takes things chapter-by-chapter: some corrections, explanations and elaborations here and there, and then I stop.  It's the kind of mercy I have to accord myself if I'm going to finish, graduate, and get the hell out of school.

   But every so often there's that nagging thought of committing some mistake where I re-read and rewrite entire passages in some chapter.  It's the kind of paranoia that comes with the thought of delivering my thesis in a colloquium next semester or worse, an academic conference.  It's the kind of paranoia that comes with your thesis being the subject of some talk in the faculty room.  My framework is synthetic, not analytical: it is extremely fragile.  One wrong move and I'll be in hot water... my friends know how much I dislike hot drinks.

   My parents don't understand why I subject myself to such extremes of working late into the wee hours of the morning to the point of overexertion, but I do understand their concern.  Like my framework, I am extremely fragile: physically, mentally, emotionally.  I can't count how many times I found myself in the verge of tears in front of my computer looking over profile after profile, poring over book after book, making sense of it all.  Whatever shred of sanity is left in me is something I put into my work as if it meant life and death for me.

   My dad, in particular, is getting angrier every weekend he comes home, every time he sees me working under self-imposed pressure.  I always thought I'd see some pride in his eyes when he sees me exerting some degree of diligence, but I have to listen to his angry rantings at 1:00 AM Sunday.  I don't know what it takes to regain my dad's respect and good favor, but I've long reminded myself that this thesis is not that which will make my father proud.

   I look upon my work as something special: a ticket to the train of opportunity.  I work my ass off because I haven't really worked a single day in my undergraduate career.  I want to establish myself in my field: it's not that I look down on call center agents or what, but because I believe I am capable of being more than a failure.  My thesis is my penance for the grievous sin of not looking after my family when ideally, I should be in a position right now to do so.  It is an act of contrition for underestimating myself for so long, not doing what I can do, limiting myself to what I considered "actual" about myself.

   I find myself in one of the strangest positions imaginable for a "delinquent:" the chance to be a legitimate social scientist.  The chance to put the name my father gave me into the annals of history.  I won't accept that I'm at the losing end, and I refuse to have my hands on the short sword on the draw.

   Right now, my work is paying small dividends: not in me being called a scholar, but my adviser just nominated my work for "Best Thesis" awards for qualitative analysis, which is the hardest thing you could do in my discipline.  If I really am what I write, I just, in my friend Mhik's words, "rocked" CSS.

   The time is now... for me to start working on the most tedious part of my thesis so far: Chapter Ten.

< hmmm... >

   I thought that the Chinese had enough problems with toys containing lead, buns filled with cardboard, and a Beijing food stall selling horse meat.  Now, one of the luminaries of the Philippine academe claimed - and apologized for - China "inventing" corruption.

   That luminary is no less than Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago.  Say what you will about Miriam's average rating (78%) in the 1968 Bar, but she is one of the greatest minds of her generation (noting that she was Elly "Spike" Pamatong's classmate).  Miriam is also known for her mercurial temper: following the annoying debating debacle in the Senate regarding the ZTE deal, she said: "China invented civilization in the East, but as well it invented corruption for all human civilization."

   Like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Christian Bautista, and Vanessa Hudgens before her, she apologized.  These days are ripe for mea culpa's of all sorts: the President apologizing for calling "a COMELEC commissioner," Christian apologizing for missing a few phrases of the National Anthem, and Vanessa apologizing for those nude shots that spread like meningococcemia all over the Internet.  The common denominator is that they were all caused by a "lapse in judgment."  "Lapses in judgment" are made by plebeians: not a Miriam Santiago.

   I have Chinese blood in me: my maternal grandfather is Chinese.  I should be outraged, but Miriam has a point.  In Miriam's defense, if you invent civilization, you would effectively have invented corruption.  It's basic anthropology: when bands of hunter-gatherers come together in a more complex form that is agriculture, the power relations become more sophisticated.  Society is now divided between "haves" and "have nots."  As agricultural societies started to develop politics, barbarism gave way to an ordering of society based on slavery, fiefdoms, and having social inequalities compared to the relative equality of barbarism.  Any anthropologist worth his or her salt would know this: it's a banal reading of Lewis Henry Morgan.  Or perhaps the Civilization games.

   I say, hooray for corruption.  Civilization is built around corruption.  Without corruption, we would still be stuck picking berries.  Let us rejoice and bask in the light of being corrupt, sing the "Kumbaya," and shoot ourselves on New Year's Day.

< hmmm... >

   I grew up on "Thomas the Tank Engine," so I'm definitely not surprised that toy companies are recalling toy trains that contain lead paint.  It's a syllogistic fallacy: toy trains are made of metal, lead is a metal, so toy trains contain lead.

   To be honest, I'm getting quite annoyed with toy recalls: maybe the elves from the International Standards Organization have done a quality check on Santa's Workshop, denied him an ISO-9000 certification because of lead paint in his inventory, and there will be no new toys for kids these days.  Too bad, kids: Santa has a longer subpoena than his Christmas list.

   I was even more flabbergasted when "Tickle Me Elmo" was recalled from toy stores because of lead content.  Do plush dolls of some potential murdering Muppet contain lead?  What exactly do you paint in an Elmo doll?

   Now if toy companies start selling Lego bricks made purely out of lead, that's a different story altogether.  Because of these toy-recall things, I'm starting to believe that we should blame stupid kids themselves for licking their toys.  I mean, my nieces and nephews don't lick their toy cars, dolls, action figures, or Disney DVD's.  Sure, I've seen them get gashes from riding small bikes on a rocky backyard.  Not that I'm anti-American or anything, but is there something uniquely American about toy-licking?

   Heck, I grew up around completely unsafe toys: spiders in an empty box of matches, tops made out of guava wood and a roofing nail, plastic "Dinosaur Eggs" that catch grime and cobwebs when thrown onto a classroom ceiling, "Magic Capsules" made out of pharmaceutical gelatin and a small steel ball.  I played with toys that apparently "corrupt my morals:" rubber cigarettes, toy fetuses, fake vomit, plastic cow dung.  An entire tower of Zaks and Legos collapsed on me in the Guidance Office, and I cried because three hours of building went to waste.  And no, I didn't lick a single toy.

   But for all the apparent joy that there is in licking toys, I think that protecting our children from every danger there is in the world is not only impossible, but futile.  Kids will be kids: they will always be in danger.  The bubble we surround our children in will only serve to make them devalue the kind of fun that is in dangerous territory.  The reality of the world is that it is fraught with more dangerous things than lead: kidnapping murdering pedophiles, for example.  The safety of our children lies in them discovering how dangerous life can be.  A kid will get sick not only because of licking a lead toy, but also by eating too much sweets, horseplay, inhaling pollution, and even living life.

   Risk, if I may say so myself, makes for a really useful engine.  Dammit, watch your "Thomas and Friends."