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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
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Bibliography
The Great Little Hunter
Pinspired Philippines, 2022
The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018
Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018
Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018
Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017
Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017
First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014
Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013
Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012
Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
Follow the Spy
Recent Crumbs
Blogs I Read
© 2002-2021
IAN ROSALES CASOCOT
Saturday, April 09, 2005
11:50 PM |
There Goes the Fairy Tale
[Sitting down, clicks TV on for
The Tonight Show]
I get such great satisfaction from breathing in the air of a newly-cleaned apartment. I like the smell of Lysol and roses everywhere. I feel so clean, it's almost sinful to feel this way, because it somehow approximates -- for a lack of a better comparison -- a huge
orgasm. I cleaned the pad from five o'clock in the afternoon till now, and it's almost midnight. Watched the whole Royal Wedding all throughout.
Which made me think: why is it that the media crucifies Camilla Parker-Bowles -- now Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall -- too much?
Two things, I think:
First, Princess Diana, who had a master's degree in public relations savvy, had publicly decried Parker-Bowles as The Other Woman, the breaker of everyone's favorite fairy tale marriage. People still imagine that iconic 1980s wedding (with Diana in her cake of a gown) and they sigh, because Diana as Princess of Wales fulfilled some kind of unfulfillable longing in their souls, perhaps brought about by too much Grimm Brother tales. That Diana died a tragic death makes her the martyr, transcending even the reality of her. Who can compete with a legend? As Sidney Pollack's version of Sabrina once put it: "Illusions are dangerous things, because they are always perfect."
Second, Camilla Parker-Bowles does not exactly have the face of a princess. Jay Leno and the rest of the world even enjoys calling her a horse. A favorite joke goes this way, that Charles first met her in Ascot, for the horse races.
Where else? (Cue laughter.) And we indeed laugh, because our idea of a princess has always been someone with the sweet-faced demeanor of a Snow White, or a Cinderella -- the Walt Disney versions.
While cleaning, however, I thought: Camilla has always been Prince Charles's first love. She was there before Diana was even there. In a sense, Diana was...
[Hey, they just let Paul Newman car-race with Leno! Now that's something you don't see everyday.]
... Diana was
the interloper, the bride of an
arranged marriage. So now, Charles and Camilla have somehow demonstrated to all of us that icky concept of "love conquering all," of "love being triumphant in the end."
Isn't that the more regular kind of fairy tale?
Oh, bollocks. I don't know why I am even talking about this.
[Signs off. Settles down to read a book.]
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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