< short one... writer's block >

   The other day, I saw a friend of mine in a turtleneck sweater.  "Higad," she says, showing me the raised patches of skin that came with her encounter with a woolly bear.  Her neck was pink and puffy like a turkey's, even made more rosy by a liberal swathing of Caladryl.

   Itches have a great power for suggestion.  I felt the urge to scratch like hell, feeling a bit itchy seeing her irritated skin.  Because this is Baguio and it's the rainy season, the time is ripe for woolly bears crawling over everything.  Just awhile ago, I accidentally stepped on a woolly bear, not heeding the admonishments of old fogeys that the critter's soul will exact its revenge by giving me one bad itch.  I say, bring it on: it's not the first time I've scratched like crazy because of a woolly bear.

   Then I saw another friend whose kid had a bonnet.  Cute, I thought, until my friend said that her little girl had just come from a dermatologist after she had her hair treated for hair lice.  Since itches have a great power of suggestion, I started to unconsciously scratch my head.  I know what Kwell shampoo feels like: I bet that the kid would rather scratch her head like crazy than to burst to tears with caustic shampoo burning through your scalp to liberate your hair from six-legged biological terrorists.

   So the saying goes: I thought I had it bad when I had no shoes, then I saw a man with no feet... nah, he kept on scratching too.

< desperate housewives... again >

   It is the Tao of the schoolyard: the best way to deal with the bully is not to stand up to him, but to walk away.  It is not cowardice or self-preservation, but a matter of denying the bully his power.  It is a matter of being bigger than the bully, of being more capable than he will ever be in letting it go.

   "It," to the Filipino nation today, is the "Desperate Housewives" issue.  As of this writing, a troop of Filipino healthcare professionals are protesting outside the ABC Studios in New York demanding more than an apology for how they were "demeaned."  It's just like a schoolyard: only the game is played in cyberspace.  Everywhere from YouTube and online petition services, we see some Filipinos rising up in indignation... or maybe something to that degree.

   Master Yoda says that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.  We have now come to that point where anger over Teri Hatcher is slowly metamorphosing into hatred, and in many cases, sheer anti-Americanism.  One need only see a protester outside the ABC Studios bearing a placard with the word "bigot" in it.

   I cannot blame the Filipino: 300 years of being considered second-class human beings by colonizers have led us to believe that we should also extract our pound of flesh.  Restitution in the Philippines has always been equated with retribution, and justice is put at the same level as revenge.  It's the same everyday story of the schoolyard bully: a man murdering his father's killer, the demand that Joseph Estrada go to jail, Joey de Leon demanding that Willie Revillame apologize for the umpteenth time.  The "Desperate Housewives" protest is just another one of those things where the blinding flash of anger becomes a heavy burden.  The only way to get rid of a burden is to let it go.

   As long as we keep weeping - and weeping - and dwelling - and dwelling - over the "racist remark" made in "Desperate Housewives," we will never leave the schoolyard.  The boy who stands up for his manhood in the schoolyard stands up to the actuality of a busted nose, a bloodied lip, and a black eye.  It is not cowardice to walk away and let go: it is cowardice to stay in the schoolyard trying to pick a fight when you only win in the schoolyard of your dreams.

   Any person who has had an experience with a bully in the schoolyard will know that you cannot expect an apology or anything more when you stand up to him.  To be above the bully, though, means to do something a bully can never do: walk away and let it go.  As long as you're in the schoolyard, you can never defeat the bully.  To deny the bully his power means to fight him where he can't fight back: where the strength of your character far surpasses the strength of his fist.

< hmmm... >

   It's been raining hard the other day, and I was about to go on my way to SLU to find some Philosophy teacher my friends recommended to me.  Because the wind was strong, I decided to find shelter under the awning of a cellphone shop.  I was about to light a cigarette when I realized that my position was rather inconvenient: not only was the rain strong, but there were so many elementary school kids present.

   A little girl, dressed in the school uniform I was very familiar with (I came from the same school when I was a kid: I'm not a cross-dresser), then tugged my arm and very politely asked, "Kuya, puwedeng pahiram po ng cell phone mo?  Tatawagan ko po sana si Mommy eh."

   I always considered myself to be a very kid-unfriendly person: my own nephews run away whenever they see me, and I've made my niece cry when I walked too slow for her obligatory piggy-back ride.  But this is no time to be kid-unfriendly: it was rainy, and believe it or not, some shock of compassion defibrillated my black heart, knowing that this kid will be here all night because her Mommy wouldn't know where she is.  I don't know if it was her pigtails or her perfect teeth.  So I decided to be nice and lent my phone to the little girl.

   After she was done with her call, she smiled and said a rather sugar-coated "Thank you."  It was all the niceness I could possibly take in three minutes of waiting for the torrent to die down.

   So I asked the girl (in the nicest, kid-friendliest way I can muster), "Bakit, di ka ba sinusundo ng Mommy mo?  Kasi nung bata ako, sinusundo ako eh."

   "Ang baby niyo naman noon, kuya!" she exclaimed, in a voice that even a deaf man within earshot could hear.  Almost every single eye in the little world of the awning looked at me like I was a burnt cat, or a 22-year-old infantilist who still was fetched by my Mommy.  Suddenly, the little angel turned into the Succubus.  It was a good thing the rain died down, so I walked as quickly as I can away from the awning, walked far and away, and smoked.  Every puff counted, knowing that the world is safe from Marocharim, thanks to Cell Phone Girl.

< hmmm... >

   I can't believe I'm editing.

   I can't believe that I just apologized to the entire nation for a blog entry that wasn't even in the blogosphere for two minutes before I pulled it out.  It's a cry and shame that here we are, in this day of "free speech," that some of us bloggers are editing our entries for fear of international backlash.

   Granted, I didn't have to apologize.  There's just nothing in that entry that would make me do a Malu Fernandez.  I didn't even do anything wrong there.  Yet the reason why I pulled out that entry at the very last minute is because of fear: I was afraid that some loony out there would demand that I "resign," even if I'm conveniently unemployed.  I was afraid that someone would start branding me names and make me part of the headlines.  I can't believe I even have to be afraid nowadays, even if I'm supposed to be protected by the Constitution, and even if I write through a very thinly-disguised pseudonym.

   It's not that I pander to people, it's just that there are people out there who'd make an enemy out of you because they happen to disagree with you.  Healthy disagreement is one thing, but for people to start frantically commenting and calling you names is another.  Is this the state of the "new digital democracy," that the exercise of free speech is delimited by fear?

   Some "democracy" we live in, even in digital form.  Even I never thought I'd see the day when I'd start pulling out an entry that I worked hard on (even if that qualifier is basically 15 minutes).  Why?  Because you just can't survive a lawsuit that comes from people who feel "offended:" the rich.  The associated.  The protected.  We bloggers don't enjoy the same protection, the same wealth, the same laws that protect journalists, even those who run and write for sex tabloids.

   I can't believe I'm editing.  What am I supposed to write about that wouldn't have me in the clutches of fear?  I mean, it could happen to you, too: while I'm not about to hang my keyboard up because I'm afraid, I am also in a position to speak my mind because I can.  My blog isn't a newsroom, it isn't a court, it isn't a place where I should censure and censor myself.  But not so the blogosphere: not so a place where people can damn you to hell because you have something to say.

   I can't believe I'm editing.  In here, of all places.  It's a cry and shame.

< oh yeah >

   Everyone has an idea of "revolution."  Lately, "revolution" in the Philippines has been for people who clamor for Teri Hatcher's head on a bamboo stake.  But our neighbor to the west, Burma, is in a real revolution: their freedom.

   How much do we know of Burma?  To be honest, my knowledge of Burma can be contained in the two days I spent on that semester where I took Southeast Asian politics.  The reason why I'm writing this single post for Burma is because I am for Burma: I am for a people who have really been repressed for so long, for a people who have a genuine cause to go to the streets of Rangoon and fight for their freedom.  I am for tens and thousands of people who have been truncheoned, gassed, arrested, beaten up and rounded up like cattle because they want to be free.

   For nearly 20 years, Burma has been on the actual, real end of what we complain about here in the Philippines: militarization, political repression, fascism, dictatorship.  What we have here in our own country is nothing compared to what Burma had to go through: a land of golden pagodas silenced by a barrel of a gun.

   I urge you all who read this to write about Burma.  They need us now more than ever.  Just one graphic posted on your site will go a long way.

   Show your support for freedom.  Show your support for Burma.

< 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.