< hmmm... >

   Big things come in small packages: that is, if you can't afford the big thing.  Almost everything nowadays comes in "economy-size" packages, which says a lot about the state of the economy.  Laundry detergent, toothpaste, and shampoo come in economical packages where you get "more."  It's not really "more," as it is another way by the elite to further humiliate lumpens.  In this day and age, you are worth what you buy: your own sense of self-worth can now be conveniently packed in a sachet.

   A few months ago, much to my amusement, my friend Jay showed me a souvenir he got from a recent trip to Abra: a sachet of Ginebra San Miguel.  Apparently, the Philippines has already descended into so much poverty that drunkards can no longer buy a small bottle of Ginebra.  I don't know how you drink gin from sachets, but I can surmise the kind of abject personal humiliation that comes with partaking vice from small sachets that evoke "Downy Fabric Softener" or "Joy Dishwashing Liquid."  I can keep on surmising: Marlboro 5's - five cigarettes that come in a foil pouch - are not yet sold here.  They're only available in Metro Manila.

   I was reading The Philippine Star today when I came across a full-page ad for Marlboro 5's.  A friend of mine, way back, once thought that Marlboro 10's are a disgrace, but now I figure that he'll be staging a revolution against Marlboro 5's.  To me, though, the idea is pointless: don't we already sell cigarettes by the stick here?  Can't you just do what we common plebian smokers do, in approaching a takatak vendor and buy a few sticks of cigarettes to get by?

   Reading the ad, I realized some salient points I've been missing out on smoking: the pouch is meant to preserve flavor.  It is a way to keep cigarettes from getting stale.  I don't get it: I don't fall into the immediate rubric of people who smoke because of the flavor that's in it (because I'm a common plebian smoker, I don't smoke DJ Mix).  No smoker out there would savor the taste of the cigarette.  Marlboro 5's also aren't a way for smokers to control their habits: they sell vice.

   But like I said earlier, these are times when your own sense of self-worth can be packed into a sachet.  Connect the dots.

< hmmm... >

   I don't usually do "blog reviews..." no, wait, I have never done a single blog review.  The least I want to do is to come across as an "expert" on blogging.  Besides, I'm extremely subjective, and I admit to it.  The way I see it, I should be the last person to write about other people's blogs.  Besides, the word "review" strikes me as playing to the role of a Roger Ebert or an Alfie Lorenzo.

   I managed to access four new blogs from Marifi Villegas' class on Online Journalism (Journ 113), which are class requirements.  I'm not a Journalism student, but I have been blogging for close to three years now that I feel the need - no, the urge - to write about other people's blogs.  By any means, these are not "reviews," but my thoughts on the J113 group blogs.

   To be honest, I've lost touch with my roots in campus journalism, and even if I didn't, I used to be a particularly difficult editor to please.  But beyond that, I decided to let go of my journalistic wedgie and I'm here to present you with the J113 group blogs.

*      *      *

Enviro-Net
Authored by "D'Others"

   To be perfectly honest, I'm not an environmentalist, and while this blog didn't make one out of me (be it a tree-hugger or a Chin-Chin Gutierrez), I like the way the articles are written.  Granted that I didn't expect such style from people trained to be journalists (as "high-schoolish" as the articles may seem), but it speaks of a kind of nostalgia that is much lacking in reporting today: the honest, no-pretenses innocence of the first-person.

   The potentials of reporting about the environment are very much evident with D'Others' choice of topics: trees, the mining situation in the Cordillera, plastic bags, urbanization, and so on and so forth.  While I wouldn't suggest that you get research material from here (or from any other blog for that matter), Enviro-Net offers readers the first-hand look on the experience of the report, which, in a way, humanizes environmental reporting outside of scientific garbles and press releases.

*      *      *

Foodster
Authored by "The RavMo Bloggers"

   My idea of "gastronomic delights" involves a hundred pesos, a trip to the Slaughterhouse Compound, and an order of dinuguan and pinapaitan on any table with a full view of the spires of the Iglesia ni Cristo just around the corner (no offense).  But deep-fried Coke, pinakbet pizza, santol sisig and assorted recipes for beetles may appeal to some other people.  Foodster is just for you.

   This site appeals to "weird food" lovers everywhere, and actually provides recipes.  Think of this site as a Del Monte Kitchenomics free recipe booklet (it even looks like it).  Conventional eaters may find themselves repelled at the thought of "tuna shake," but this site appeals to the non-conventional, those who experiment in their kitchens raiding fridge ingredients and garden snails.  You know what they say: If it looks good, eat it.  I would pass on kalabasa chips, though.

*      *      *

Misadventures of RED
Authored by "Red"

   This site, like my own blog, is written under an assumed character.  In this case, it's "Red," who writes about life away from home.  Red writes about boarding house experiences, love, mathematics, and even experiments in his kitchen with ice-box raids (although it's a bit sosyal for a college student to use beef chunks, but that's just me: here I am nursing a stomachache from pancit canton).

   While there aren't too many thoughts of Red to go around, Red will talk about anything that has something to do with college life, offering snippets of his own experiences to save the average freshman from a skinning from neurotic boarding-house ladies and bad eggs hanging around in the egg carton in need of a good scrambling.  I'm looking to see more Red in the future.

*      *      *

YrocK
Authored by "The Playmates"

   While I'll be the first one to (healthily) disagree with many ideas in YrocK, in the sense that Japanese rock belongs in the immediate category where Britney Spears' rendition of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock N' Roll" can be found.  But if you disagree with me and you believe in "rock" as multicultural, subject-referring, and beyond things you would hear in backmasked vinyl records of Sepultura, this site offers a fresh perspective on rock as something that crosses mullets, big hair, and stage pyrotechnics.

   This site also offers links to videos, Multiply playlists, and pictures.  While it's an easy way to hitch free multimedia (not that I'm telling you to do it), it's also a way for us to understand other contending issues on rock, to read a new perspective on what makes rock "rock."

*      *      *

   Read 'em all, course your tags and comments to the sites of these new bloggers, and make them feel welcome in the blogosphere.

< 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.