< this will be a cute one >

   While I'm still on the topic of my friends' newborn babies, I'm thinking about baby names as well in the remote chance that I would get married and have kids of my own.

   While I don't buy into nomenclatural pamahiin (superstitions surrounding names), a nephew of mine got sick a year ago: the village quack said that the sudden illness was caused by him not liking his name.  After all, "Gervic" is not exactly a good name in my book.  When my cousin and her husband decided to change their son's name to "Lander," the sickness then went away.  So whenever they visit, we have to take special precautions into not calling the boy "Gervic," lest we see the toddler in bed again with a high fever.

   I'm partial to cool names, not necessarily long ones.  Me and my brother are both Warhammer fans, and names like "Grothor," "Aekold Hellbrass," "Louen Leoncoeur" and "Sigmar Heldenhammer" are right up there with the short list of cool-sounding names.  We share in the opinion that if Don LaFontaine (the voice of the guy in movie trailers) makes the name sound cool, it must be cool.  Think about Antonio Banderas, Joaquin Phoenix, Lou Diamond Philips, Richard Dean Anderson, Benicio del Toro, and of course, Jeremy Irons.

   Yet I'm not one to name my boy "Antonio Banderas:" if living up to the name of the guy who played Zorro and the dance instructor in "Take The Lead" is bad enough, those who have a good memory for movies will note that it was the Latin Lover who played Tom Hanks' lover in "Philadelphia."  As sexily as "Antonio Banderas" rolls off the tongue every time you say it (either in climax or to train yourself for a golf swing), it just doesn't work for people who are not Antonio Banderas.

   Maybe "Keanu Reeves" will work (now try saying that with a movie-trailer voice), but it must occur to anyone who thinks of that name that your offspring must at least look like Keanu Reeves.  But if celebrity names don't work for you, I once had a classmate in elementary school named "Harley David," and in my dossier of Friendster profiles needed for my thesis, there's a girl named "Hresikesa."

   Marocharim, Jr.?  Or maybe I should just name my boy "Marocharim."  Nah: the little twerp, by the time he becomes aware of the world, has a lot to live up to in the name "Marocharim."  Maybe names that come off a game of Warcraft III or DoTA will work: "Kel Stonebull?"  "Luna Moonfang?"  "Lina Inverse (OK, name came from "Slayers")?"  Perhaps spite the priest in Baptism and call the little angels and bundles of joy "God," perhaps even "Satan?"  What's in a name, when I can take my cues from Prince and give my baby, boy or girl, an unpronounceable symbol as a name?

   But I still like how "Antonio Banderas" rolls off the tongue.  I mean, compare that to "Chuck Norris" or "Gerard Depardieu."  But if anything, "Arnold Schwarzenegger" is cool: especially if it's preceded by those movie trailers that begin with "In a world..."

< politics >

   I could only breathe a sigh of relief that I wasn't one of those who voted for Antonio Trillanes IV as Senator.  But that doesn't change the fact that someone who obviously suffers from cabin fever is in the august halls of the Senate.

   Following the tragedy at Glorietta II, Trillanes was the first person to come up with the theory that the government - in the way of General Hermogenes Esperon and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales - was behind the explosion that claimed the lives of nearly a dozen people and injured nearly a hundred.  Yet as much as I don't like the government, I have to take Trillanes' theory with more than a grain of salt: it's something that comes off the pages of "V for Vendetta."  The only thing is that Trillanes is more of a Creedy than a V in my book.

   I'm not saying that Trillanes' claim is way out of line: there is a very, very, very small and slim chance that the government is behind the explosion.  The thing is, there are a few things wrong with Trillanes' theory:

• It is based on a personal claim that he has yet to back up with concrete and solid (maybe leading and damning) evidence;
• Trillanes himself has an ax to grind against the government, which makes him the least credible source for this particular incident, and;
• Trillanes isn't exactly credible or above suspicion, in that the accusation comes from a guy who was part of the core leadership of the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny.

   Just what exactly is going on behind the mind of Trillanes, I do not know.

< hmmm... >

   Some of my reader-friends ask: in all the years that I have been blogging, did I ever get paid?

   To be honest, no.  I haven't made a single centavo from any one of my 1,263 entries so far (1,264 if you count this one).  I thought that getting paid to blog is something that only happens in America, or that AdSense is just part of blogosphere folklore.  It's only now that I realized how many Filipino bloggers have made money out of blogging.

   Am I a "noble" blogger who remains faithful to free information, or am I just so blissfully oblivious in not even having the good sense to have AdSense?

   It kind of hurts the pocket to know that 1,263 entries written in the approximate span of one hour have amounted to a good amount of money.  If the commercial rate goes at 20 bucks an hour, that would amount to... (gasp) P25,260.00.  That's almost a month's wages for a fairly decent prospect in the job market.

   As much as you can't put a price on the number of readers you have (I have no idea how many people read my blog), I don't understand how I could have spent so much for absolutely nothing.  For all intents and purposes, I love money: to not have made a single solitary peso in blogging not only baffles me, but it makes me love and desire money made out of blogging even more.  Heck, I haven't received a single job offer for writing here.

   Before I started blogging, I had a relatively stable "job" in the school paper, where my monthly pittance of P450 (when I was in an editorial capacity) is a gold mine compared to the economic absolute zero I get for writing here.  Technically, this is "vanity publishing:" I pay to get my stuff published online.  Yet I don't regret that decision: the prospect of a few hundred bucks at the end of the month is tantalizing, but not enough to keep me there for all it's worth.

   Yet there's always the ideal of "public service" that I can fall back on whenever my hands itch for the feel of money: to get some respect in both the local and global blogosphere is one of those things that money can't buy, but for everything else, there's MasterCard.  I figure that in the future, I may get the Nobel Prize for Literature for writing for free.

   Of course, I don't write for the money: I've long since conceded to the fact that I'm doing something for free.  Some people think that I deserve more than nothing: money, fame, money, a book deal, money... but you simply can't buy the pleasure of writing.  If only by a wild dream, I think that my wheelbarrows and dumptrucks full of money will come in due time.  All I have to do is to keep this "writing for money" thing on the back burner, and cook up some more stuff - for free - for now.

< sexperiment >

   Damn you, Vince McMahon, and your infectious catchphrases.

   Anyway, my good friends Gehlo and Jhet, recently married, had a baby boy last October 19, christened Cian Aston.  This is a year ripe for new babies: last time I counted, six of my friends had newborns this year.  It makes me think... what if I had a kid?

   Many times, either in jest or in a serious mood, my parents have asked me when I would give them the gift of a grandchild.  They're kind of worried that because I haven't dated in three years, they wouldn't have an apo that came from my loins.  Compared to my other friends, my sperm cells are like pearls thrown before swine: I'm wasting precious semen by not depositing it in any female orifice (this definitely includes a girl's ears and nostrils).  After all, I won't impregnate my pants, or the hand I masturbate with (even if I have the hands of a woman).

   I remember another sexual factoid from Anthropology class: for the Hindus, there is a 40-day cycle for the production of semen, as it descends from the brain of a man.  It is akin to menstruation, that men should use their 40-day semen cycles wisely and prudently.  Urologists would definitely dispute this: a female friend of mine, who is not a urologist but is open about her sexual escapades, makes distinctions between "fresh semen" and "stale semen."  Usually, I would probe further, but I'm not going to be the 22-year-old male virgin who discusses the taste of semen with a 22-year-old girl who has already participated in more than three orgies.  I would rather take "freshness" and "staleness" in terms of cigarettes: as curious as I am, I'm not interested in tasting semen, even my own (no, wait: especially my own).

   The lot of straight men who deposit their semen on everyone from their wives to their concubines to inner-city prostitutes do so in hopes that they bought the right-sized condom, or that it didn't linger too long in their left back pocket.  The other hope is that if Leonidas the Sperm did make it through the Pass of Thermopylae, his 300 men wouldn't follow.  A-whoo, a-whoo!

   I think I'm going to stop here, now that I'm thinking about Napoleon.

< hmmm... >

   I was watching the last round of the Formula One World Championship - the Brazilian Grand Prix - last night (technically, early this morning) expecting that Lewis Hamilton of McLaren Mercedes would win.  Instead, I had to see him choke: by a twist of fate that I am very appreciative and grateful for (I am very partial to Scuderia Ferrari), Kimi Raikkonen won the 2007 Drivers' Championship.

   Interlagos is one of my favorite circuits watching F1, because it has my favorite feature: the "Senna S," named after the late racing great Ayrton Senna.  In many a simulation game where Interlagos is faithfully rendered, I enjoy ricocheting through this curve.  But outside of that, Interlagos is a challenging circuit where the full-throttle straights of Sectors 1 and 3 are interrupted by the twisty curves of Sector 2.

   Now I'm not a racing analyst, but it was obvious that Hamilton was having problems with his car at the eighth lap, in that he was having gearshift problems.  Hats off to Hamilton for having great racing skills, but it was a plain and simple case of choking.  I don't know what really happened, but if you're racing for the championship, you just can't afford to choke.  This is a choke that comes from arguably the best team this season.

   My guess is that if McLaren took extra precautions (that doesn't involve espionage) to ensure that nothing will go wrong with Lewis' car, he could have won the Driver's Championship and saved face for a team that has been stripped of all its constructor's points.  Next season, McLaren would not only be at the bottom of the pecking order, but because they left Interlagos with absolutely nothing but Fernando Alonso's third-place finish, they'd have a badly-positioned garage as well... and you thought the Spyker team had it bad.

   On another choke-related incident, Kazuki Nakajima of Williams Toyota accidentally "crashed" on some of his mechanics in the pit garage.  Now that's drama.

< oooh, angry >

   Quite a few people are quite peeved at the new "no smoking" policy at UP Baguio.  If anything, I'm not peeved: I'm livid.  So a couple of weeks ago, I sent the Chancellor a letter: I was very respectful, but I made it clear to her that I wasn't going to accept a policy that refuses to address the issue of smoking, but instead diverts it to smokers.  Because I was very respectful, she sent me a memo.  She said she sent the ideas in that letter over to the UP Administration and the Board of Regents.

   Livid as I am, it's only now that I learned that I was about the only person in UP Baguio with zero institutional support who did something about it.  This makes me even more livid: for all this rhetoric of "standing up for democratic rights," nobody does anything in UP anymore.  Now I'm convinced that UP has become a dog-eat-dog world where you couldn't care less about anything anymore because "you're not affected."  Or if you are or if you feel that you are, you wouldn't have your ideas tested in the crucible that is the proper venue.

   It's not that I'm disappointed in the UP student today: "disappointed" is an understatement.  The only reason why the "studentry is silent" is because nobody speaks in the first place.  The last argument I heard on the matter of the smoking ban was, "What if it rains?"  The last argument I heard on the matter of regulating room use pertains to "fascism."  The last argument I heard on the matter of tuition fee increases was, "Tertiary education may not be a right, but this is still UP."  And then I get asked and pressured when I will circulate the signature campaign (I'll do it next semester because nobody even bothered to study the law).  It makes me think if I should hang myself on the Oblation's arms, with the thought that I was once part of that core group who stood up for the students' rights three years ago.  It makes me want to enter UP with a sack of donkey feces and lay out a challenge for a pillow fight.

   And they ask what's up with the UP system.  Lest people forget, UP is nothing more and nothing less than the people in it: everyone from the administration to the regents to the students.  If you ask for your freedom, be prepared to fight for it: be prepared to debate, to be humbled, to explore other possibilities than having to destroy barricades in march rallies whenever the Regents are in town having a meeting and booing the UP President when she has something to say.

   And so, I am very prepared to ask one question from every UP student who complains of a "violation of academic freedom" over a smoking ban or anything else while not doing anything about it: if only that question is not so profane, so insulting and so demeaning that I will not post it here.

< romantic experiment >

   The Little Prince is not exactly my favorite book, but it brings to mind a question: "The thorns... what use are they?"

   I'm no biologist or botanist or anything, but last time I checked, the thorns are there to either protect the rose, or to prevent the loss of water during particularly dry spells.  But in my reading of The Little Prince, you can only as much appreciate the flower for its whole: not just for its petals or its blooms, but for its thorns as well.  If you like the flower, you might as well like its thorns.  Never mind that the thorn is useless in your eyes, but it's part of the flower.  As a matter of consequence, the thorn is important.  It is useful.  Deal with it.

   Basically, what I'm saying is that if you want to fuck the flower, fuck the thorns.

   Many times, I've played the role of the romantic therapist.  Far too many of my "patients" have this problem of wanting too much change, as if the relationship itself is a venue for committing changes.  Change is good, but to a certain extent: a stable relationship, in my view, is the consequence of stable personalities.  To be in a romantic relationship assumes that you accept that person for being just that: never mind if that person is the offspring of a bestial union between dog and man.  Or if that person has the redeeming value of stray bits of dried feces that hang stubbornly on the hair surrounding the anus of a cat.

   Well, that's not a very tasteful metaphor, but you get the point.

   Too often, the reason behind a failed relationship is a failure to accept one's thorns.  Acceptance is one of romance's biggest and most important commitments: if you cannot accept the person for who he or she is, you will be better off not pursuing the relationship in the first place.  Even if that hot guy is beetle saliva.

< hmmm... >

   This is Entry #1259.  To be honest, I'm quite flabbergasted that the next entry will be Entry #1300.  And in 18 days, it will be the third year anniversary of The Marocharim Experiment.

   Maybe it's time to open up a few Photoshop windows and make the new headers for the seventh volume of TMX.  But what to name it?  What color scheme?  Should I keep writing the same way as I did over the past six volumes of 1,259 entries?  Or should I write in l33t sp34k?

   See you all in The Marocharim Experiment: Volume Seven.  Thank you for your continued support and your reading.  As always, the experiment continues.

< hmmm... >

   By some fluke, my hard drive running Windows Vista went bust, which means that I can't run Office 2007.  While I run WinXP in Service Pack 2, I don't have the installer for Office 2007.  The only home office suite that I have at home is a free copy of OpenOffice.org that came with my brother's Ubuntu CD's... and I feel a bit, well, powerless.  I have to admit that the only reason why my thesis looks so good is because of stuff that came with Office 2007.  Yes, content matters, but there's also aesthetic value: the looks, the sexiness, the general impression of being a good text because of good fontwork and design.

   It's not that I look down upon free software, it's just that for all intents and purposes, I'm a Microsoft slave.  Yes, it's the content that counts, but I find myself lost navigating OpenOffice (nowadays, even I'm lost navigating Office 2003).  Don't get me wrong: I happened to compile the first TMX e-books using OpenOffice (it came with free PDF conversion that came with embedded fonts), and for a while, I even touted its superiority over Microsoft Office.  But you can't blame me for being wowed by Office 2007.

   Now free software is good, but there's a lot to be desired.  It would be perfectly OK if open-source caters to people like me who are quite adept at computers, but the time is still not nigh for it to "take over" the software market.  The bulk of people out there still think of operating systems in terms of blue bars, green "Start" buttons, and everything Windows.  Present them with a Linux OS that doesn't respond to the "Windows" key between Ctrl and Alt, and they'll take about a full day to figure out by themselves that the same can be accomplished by Alt+F1.

   When I started seriously learning photo-editing, I found myself in a quandary when it came to things that aren't Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw: Paint.net, GIMP and Paint Shop Pro struck me as the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter (read: butter substitute/margarine) of graphic design.  But the same does not hold true for free games: obsolete DOS games from the 1990s that are already released as free in the Web rock.

   You know what they say about stuff that come for free.  Not that I have a problem with Linux or anything open-source, it's just that when I look at the "bigger picture," it's not really something that would catch on to plebians who think they're "techies" in sipping mocha frappés in front of their laptops.  I'm more of the Coke-drinking black T-shirt-wearing techno-nerd, although I don't use l33t sp34k (my computer hacking skills pale in comparison to my brother).

< at the risk of being called "racist" >

   The Korean grocery at Porta Vaga has become an informal embassy for many South Korean expatriates: if only for the bulletin board filled with what I assume to be job opportunities, all written in Hanggul.  Many establishments in Porta Vaga - and beyond - have become sort of an analogue to Seoul.  Almost every place in Baguio screams of Korean-ness: Internet cafés, churches, coffee shops, bars, restaurants, the works.

   As a Baguio resident, I find myself in a quandary whether or not I should accept the "Korean invasion."  I consider myself a multiculturalist, but even the tolerance multiculturalism provides has its limits.  Suffice to say, multiculturalism is not a denial of cultural identity: it is the assertion of cultural identity.  It goes beyond mere recognition: it means respect.  It means a place.  The late scholar Edward Said explicates this in his seminal work, Orientalism: a misrepresentation towards misrepresentation.  Prejudice is a matter of place.

   In today's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Baguio evangelists have mounted a "Love Baguio or Leave Baguio" campaign, directed towards migrants who have started "changing the rules" by disobeying City ordinances, by establishing businesses, purchasing properties, and basically becoming the "new blood" threatening to displace the resident hemoglobin of Baguio City.  At first, it comes across as an exercise in "bigotry," but you only need to hear of stories of sexual harassment by Koreans, dubious titles and business permits acquired by Koreans (from what I've heard, it's against the law for a foreigner to establish a business in sovereign Philippine territory), underpaid tutors in unaccredited Korean tutorial schools, and shoplifting cases.

   To be honest, I have yet to experience "discrimination" from a Korean, but I can't help but feel discriminated reading a bulletin board for job offerings or housing opportunities written only in Hanggul.  Yet all this talk of "discrimination" doesn't deny the fact that the term itself is nuanced: there will definitely be Koreans out there who will feel "discriminated" against by the likes of abusive taxi drivers and business establishments that cheat them out of fair prices.  A Filipino's disdain for kimchi only leads to a Korean's disdain for dinuguan, if you catch my drift.

   Perhaps I can take a cue from my activist roots and call this "imperialism," but I would opt against it: even that term is nuanced, on who is on what side of the fence.  Who isn't a "victim" nowadays?  This "Korean invasion" thing could have easily been remedied with a sound, non-corrupt immigration bureau that would have kept checks on foreigners, but just where exactly do you draw the line when you're the friendliest country in Asia?

   Then again, why even bother?