Thursday, March 02, 2006
"I don't understand why the religious right fears homosexuality. They say it's an abomination. The Bible says that shellfish are also an abomination. They who oppose sodomy must also oppose scallops."
--
Jon Stewart,
The Daily ShowLabels: queer, quotes
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Yes, I'm still here. Will be back very, very soon.
Labels: blogging
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Thursday, February 23, 2006
4:09 PM |
Twenty Years Later
In 1986, I was ten-years-old, and we lived in a ramshackle downstairs apartment somewhere in the bowels of Tubod. Dumaguete in those days was officially a city despite itself. It was verily a small town, and like all small towns, things moved slowly and people were gentler than usual.
I remember most the quiet that seemed to seep into our very blood. There was countryside softness to things, which were much simpler then. I had only started to go to school around that time, and foremost in my recollection of those days is the fog that used to embrace Dumaguete in the early mornings. I would also ride the
tartanilla to school, because that was how you went around town with if you had no car. The now ubiquitous tricycle was only just appearing on our streets then, and there were so few of them we had yet to know the rough vocabulary of traffic.
Our landlord and his family -- the Mongcopas -- occupied the upper floor of that two-storey wooden house. We rented out, for a mere P300 a month, the lower floor which must have been a glorified basement then. It was sunken two feet to the ground, was mostly dark, and what passed for a CR was a separate hut only a few feet away. The apartment had no ceiling rafters to speak of, and so my older brothers were kept busy in the early days of the move power-stapling with precision and grace several packing cardboards, their plain brown side turned to us, upon the ceiling, to banish away unwanted sight of the upper floor occupants who were only too visible through the gaps of their wooden floor. That also kept away the dust from their inconstant cleaning. My mother was an irrepressible woman who could make do with anything and turn even the shittiest of circumstances into livable comfort. She was Martha Stewart of the downtrodden then.
Those were simpler times, and while those were
certainly and paradoxically happier times, the family was very poor -- so poor that my mother reminds me now and then that there were nights, when I was a little boy, when I would wake her up and ask her to pray with me so that we could ask God for good meals the following day. We were a very close family, and I think it was that brush with extreme poverty that defined us, and made us better people. Where would we be now if we didn't know what it was like not to eat?
Fortunes had changed drastically those days. While my older brothers still remembered the gilded age as the scions of
hacenderos in Bayawan, all I knew of childhood was a dearth of blessed things. It must have been more difficult for my brothers because they had tasted what it was like to be very rich -- the old house flowing with visitors, the car always on the go, the refrigerator constantly stocked with all imaginable food, the lives they led attended to by countless housemaids and houseboys. In the early 1980s, however, the sugar prices came down like an earthquake and Negros became a ghost of itself. My family was one of the seriously affected ones, and mother told us they had to sell everything to survive.
That unacknowledged bitterness probably made the family critical of what went on in the country. We were anti-Marcos as far as I can remember.
The landlord's family, however, were pro-Marcos -- by virtue, I think, of the father having been once a
barangay captain. I remember Mr. Mongcopa as a stern but very respectable old man with gray hair. He was slightly-built, at least in my memories, and wore plain buttoned shirts and slacks every single day. And every single day, he was out in his porch, drinking coffee and reading the newspapers. When the snap elections of February 1986 came, he brought out the red and blue posters with Marcos's and Arturo Tolentino's faces on them, and tacked them to his porch walls.
One afternoon, I decided to skip classes in West City Elementary School, and walked all the way to the Boulevard, to an old wooden building -- painted yellow -- in what is now Sol y Mar, where Globelines is. It used to be known by various names then, including both Rainbow Lodge and The Office -- unassuming names for establishments that were rumored to be hang-outs of the city's prostitutes and drunkards. The Boulevard in the old days was not the gentrified version you have now: it was an ugly strip of asphalt and concrete that everybody nicknamed "the boulevard of broken dreams," and perhaps for very good reasons. I still remember the fluorescent lights that lined the Boulevard, their eerie whiteness as scabs of light that sucked at your soul, all of them curiously dim in the swallowing darkness of sea and night sky. The street was littered by countless tocino and beer stands, making the whole stretch of the Boulevard a haven for the drunks -- and the prostitutes. Nobody decent went to the Boulevard those days; it was the very underbelly of the city's lowlifes.
It was in that very place, however, where Cory Aquino's Laban Headquarters was located, in a small dark office that jutted out one side of the old Rainbow Lodge. I was only ten-years-old, and I wanted Cory to win because I had seen my mother and my brothers' faces flushed with excitement knowing that they were living through a special moment in history. In my young age, I had no idea what they were excited about; I knew Marcos only as a distant figure that did not affect my day-to-day play-making, and the specter of Martial Law was completely lost to me. What I knew for sure was the concrete conviction in my family's passion for change. It was an embracing conviction, and I succumbed to it.
That afternoon when I skipped school to go to the Boulevard, I asked the volunteers in the Laban headquarters if I could have some campaign materials -- perhaps a poster I could tack somewhere, but most of all, if I could have copies of the
komiks they were giving out for free. That special graphic literature -- patterned to suit the reading taste of most Filipinos -- basically educated potential voters, in crisp illustrations and talk balloons, how to vote in the coming elections, and how to be certain that their efforts to battle Marcos would not be in vain. I still remember some passages from those campaign
komiks, exhorting voters to make sure they wore yellow on election day, to make sure they practiced spelling "C-O-R-Y A-Q-U-I-N-O" if they happened to be illiterate, and to make sure they were vigilant in observing how ballot boxes were being transferred from precinct to vote-count venue. Most of my older brothers volunteered for NAMFREL, and my mother, my brother Rey, and I (because we were younger) monitored our radio to find out what was going on everywhere. Manong Rey was especially voluble in his Yellow loyalty, excoriating the evils of Marcos, and praying out loud that Cory would win. Meanwhile, old Mr. Mongcopa, upstairs, monitored his radio, too, to find out how Marcos was faring.
That was a strange parallel: one house, two floors, each cheering for either Marcos or Aquino. And yet what was even stranger was the cordiality that emanated from both families. Politics is always polarizing, but we each kept to our own niches, respecting the other family's political passions. I don't know how that happened, but the good graces were there. Until we left the Tubod house after six years of living there (to move on to a better life ahead), the Mongcopas remained good friends for the family.
And then the inevitable drama of EDSA came. The COMELEC had proclaimed Marcos the winner, the NAMFREL volunteers had then walked out, Cory was sworn-in as President in Club Filipino, and the crowd in EDSA grew by the tens of thousands. We were riveted, and while there was much rejoicing in the lower floor of the Tubod house, the upper floor slowly went quiet. When the news finally broke that Marcos had fled the country,
we all cried -- it was like the biggest emotional fiesta there ever was.
I think that was the very spirit of the first EDSA: there was that consuming hunger for freedom, that teary conviction of righting wrongs. It was everywhere, that spirit. Not even just in Manila where all the significant action took place. It was there even in the countryside silences of the Dumaguete of 1986. It was
there, even a ten-year-old kid could be swept away by it.
But how we murdered those joys, those hopes of 1986.
Twenty years later, and much has been said about how we squandered that singular chance to seize greatness for the Filipino nation. The Marcoses are back and living it up in grand style, EDSA -- with its permutations -- is now a parody of itself, the nation is forever on the brink of every kind of disasters, and there is no more respect for the Aquinos -- not Cory, the new Erap ally, nor Kris, the VD Queen of Television.
In the end, the glory of 1986 has been reduced to this picture (taken by
Vernon Totanes) on this page.
The picture captures the sight of billboards of Kris Aquino and Borgy Manotoc -- offspring of both sides of the EDSA struggle -- both rendered plastic, inconsequential, and commercial. That both billboards should stand side by side is the epitome of the irony of all that we have struggled for and lost.
To be sure, EDSA was real. It was something to be proud of. Twenty years later, it has become a rebuke for our failures.
Labels: history, memories, politics
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
From
Juice, an independent magazine, which ran
an article about gay marriage by Cavan Reagan, where Reagan said:
I know there are people who will argue that two men being in love is not normal, that nothing we do will make us normal, that our wedding threatens the sanctity of marriage and the American way.
It's OK -- those people are not invited.
Besides, in a world where Britney Spears goes on a bender in Las Vegas and winds up accidentally married and divorced days later and no one bats an eye because -- thank goodness -- at least it was a drunken marriage, not a gay one, I do not seek the acceptance of the public voice.
[via
i live on avenue p]
Labels: queer, quotes
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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
7:28 AM |
Blogging's Pornography of Opinion
A great, intelligent look at the blogging phenomenon from
Trevor Butterworth in
The Financial Times. He writes:
Blogging -- if you will forgive the cartoon philosophising -- brought the European Enlightenment to the US. Each blogger was his, or her, own printing press, spontaneously exercising their freedom to criticise. Which is great. But along the way, opinion became the new pornography on the internet.
Read more
here.
[via
kottke]
Labels: blogging, quotes
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6:16 AM |
It's Good to Be Beautiful
Beautiful people don't grow up criminals. Ugly people do.[via
kottke]
Labels: issues
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006
4:09 PM |
Under Ground, It's Too Late to Think of Trees
A grotesquely untoward thing happened in the aftermath of the
Guinsaugon mudslide over the weekend, and the
Zamboanga parallel that occurred right after. First, there was the outpouring of genuine shock, concern, and dread which zapped through every Filipino's heart,
all over the world.
The Wily Filipino, for example, reacted to the headlines that rendered our Saturday mornings fraught with a new taste of tragedy: "Nothing more chilling than the words 'No survivors had been found'," he wrote. Nothing more chilling, indeed.
Barely were we finished commiserating over the
"Wowowee" Ultra stampede tragedy, when we had
this on our hands again. The frustration that soon comes is an earthquake of mind-numbing questions:
Will we Filipinos ever be free of constant, unrelenting tragedy? What attracts the fates to our islands to play such gruesome tricks on us?Of course, there was sorrowful pity from all of us. There was dread, most of all.
And then, just as suddenly, there was the avalanche of apathy. No,
not exactly apathy, for that would make us a cruel people. It was a sense of being
unsurprised, one might suppose. It was a feeling that came with these words: "Here we go again," almost as if we were admitting that tragedy was our middle name, and its death-hold our home. Had we become so inured from this constancy of death and destruction, that all we could muster now was a show of brief grief, and then a shucking of the shoulders?
I was chatting over MSN Messenger with my Sydney-based best friend
Kristyn, for example. Below is the transcript of part of that conversation:
KRISTYN: Am I heartless to not be surprised, and almost not care, about the mudslide in Leyte? I mean, people here [in Australia] seems to be shocked by it -- but for me, it's just another Pilipinas nature-shock that has been repeated over the years.
ME: Ay, tell them nobody is shocked in the Philippines. This is so Ormoc all over again. If you don't take care of your own environment, bad things really happen to you. Now, if that was a volcanic eruption, I would have felt something.
KRISTYN: I know! It was weird when I just went "Oh, yeah, okay," and they were all surprised. Even mama [who is currently in Australia] wasn't that fussed.
ME: Tell them we eat tragedies for breakfast.
KRISTYN: Yeah, but I think they know that already. [Yesterday], you know, when I was online? Justin's [her husband] mum said she thought I was checking the news about the mudslide online. I was almost going to say, "What for?"
ME: Ahahaha! I bet she thinks we are such a heartless people.
KRISTYN: Mao gyud, hehehe.
Forgive Kristyn and I our "irreverence," if you can call it that. Something bordering "flippancy" may be another description. Deaths, we know, are not something to joke about. Tragedies much more so.
And yet -- there is certainly that undeniable welling of resigned knowingness that seems to be everywhere.
The tales to tell are certainly macabre, but we cannot seem to help ourselves to mixing everything with irony.
Sketches of the Village Idiot Savant has this to say: "The news carried stories of a schoolteacher buried in the mudslide sending text messages calling for help. The messages finally stopped at Friday 7PM. It's a poignant story, but I'm wondering:
is it possible? I would have thought that under all that mud, about 30 feet of it,
you couldn't get a signal. Just thinking."
But of course, there is also an informed, frustrated anger.
ExpectoRants gives up: "This blog is on leave for at least two days, or one week at most. I am in mourning, mourning the death of hundreds or thousands. (Isn't big-scale logging through the years to blame in the landslides in Leyte? It's clear as day to me. It's not overpopulation, it's not the rain or La Nina, it's not the minor earthquake, it's not the arrangement of the stars. It's wanton logging, legal or illegal.)"
All I can do is nod to all of that.Perhaps because we have seen this happen before, in the very same province no less, that to have a another tragedy coming from the said thread just strikes most of us as bizarre, and even stupid. On 5 November 1991, if you care to remember,
a flash flood struck Ormoc City in Leyte, killing approximately 8,000 people and leaving an additional 50,000 homeless. The number of people who died -- a larger number than those who perished in the World Trade Center in September 11 -- was so huge that bulldozers had to be used to fill the mass graves.
The picture above -- of drowned bodies gripped in fatal panic -- is a testament to that senseless catastrophe. (More
here, if you can take it.) In 1991, we did mourn. And we did promise that these things will never
ever happen again: we knew, from the flood of postmortem analyses made, that the waters rose because there were no trees to stop the gush, to absorb the danger.
The environment must be cared for, we vowed.
But our tragedy as Filipinos is that we are a forgetful lot -- and a largely uncaring one, too. Our promises soon faded, and one hundred years after the fact of Spanish colonization, we have reduced the rainforest that was the blanket we call our country to a bald-headed archipelago. According to the
Center for International Forestry Research, the remaining forest cover in the Philippines is a shadow of its former self. It has steadily decreased, from 34% in the 1970s to 22% in 1987 -- and what remains is concentrated around Palawan, Mindanao, and the uplands of Luzon.
The Visayas is a virtual desert devoid of green. And finally, according to the CIFR, the greatest danger lies in severe erosion problems that spring from "vegetation removal."
Most Filipinos do not care about the environment. That's why we should never ever be surprised if the environment strikes back to kill, or maim, us.
In Dumaguete, for example, you can only rant silently as you witness countless
tricycles and cars emitting noxious black smoke into the air. Sometimes you wish the DENR, or even perhaps the LTO (
or City Hall!), has a cellphone number you can report the plate numbers of these toxic vehicles to. But then again government people are rather notorious for just sitting on their asses and wait for the official day to finish so that they can go home to their stupid telenovelas. (If
you are a government bureaucrat, and you are offended by this generalization -- shouldn't it be time
you to do something in the name of the people?)
In Dumaguete, stores and restaurants are still fond of wrapping everything in plastic or styrofoam, rather than paper bags or other perishable materials. For the longest time, I always take it as a
duty to decline having my newly-bought goods wrapped in plastic bags (in VideoCity, for example). But I don't see anybody doing the same thing. If you go to the local landfill, you will see that the mountains of trash over there are largely a freaky collection of Lee Super Plaza shopping bags.
That should make you think. In Manila, it must be the same: their mountains of trash the blue color of SM bags.
In Dumaguete, it's not a surprise to note that most people have forgotten there
is a river called
Banica dying from the city's refuse and squatters.
In Dumaguete, the corners are littered with unbelievable amounts of trash from people (like
you) who think they're just giving MetroAides the opportunity to sweep the streets. Sometimes, you want to shout to these ignoramuses:
"Baga mo ug nawong!" But, of course, you don't.
In Dumaguete, the night streets are home to swarms of cockroaches and unbelievably fat rats, subtly telling us that underneath our pavements and feet, the city's sewers have become breeding grounds for untold diseases.
In Dumaguete, it is too easy to build
a stupid overpass over a street where it's easier to cross the normal way than to climb the steep path of the new infrastructure project. And worse still:
the sacrifice of an old acacia tree for such a white elephant. They're still finishing the construction now, but every time I see that overpass over Hibbard Avenue, it becomes my paragon for the stupidity of people. Trust me, if ever they do the usual political game of painting politicians' names on the newly-painted walls of that overpass, I know some good people who can earnestly throw buckets of red paint.
I will repeat what I told Kristyn in our chat:
if you don't take care of your own environment, bad things really happen to you. Guinsaugon is not a freak accident. Guinsaugon can be us. Guinsaugon
is us.
Labels: environment, issues
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Monday, February 20, 2006
8:55 PM |
I Am Sad. Therefore: I Am.
We are biologically hardwired for unhappiness. This is the theory laid out by Jonathan Haidt in
The Happiness Hypothesis, and Darrin McMahon in
Happiness: A History. The
New Yorker reviews:
People who have scant control over their lives are bound to place tremendous importance on luck and fate. As McMahon points out, "In virtually every Indo-European language, the modern word for happiness is cognate with luck, fortune or fate." In a sense, the oldest and most deeply rooted philosophical idea in the world and in our natures is "Shit happens." Happ was the Middle English word for "chance, fortune, what happens in the world," McMahon writes, "giving us such words as 'happenstance,' 'haphazard,' 'hapless,' and 'perhaps.'" This view of happiness is essentially tragic: it sees life as consisting of the things that happen to you; if more good things than bad happen, you are happy.
I don't know how to react to this. Am I supposed to say, heck,
I'm unhappy. I'm being true to the heritage that is my evolution?
Labels: psychology
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Sunday, February 19, 2006
Here's
some information if you want to help the Red Cross in its race to help the
Leyte mudslide victims.
[via
manuel l. queson III]
Labels: environment
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
9:06 AM |
Something Out of the Blue
When I was in college,
my best friend gave me a rabbit for Christmas --
a cute little critter, all black.
I decided to name it
Rabbit Stew.
My mother, aghast, decided to nickname it Bibit.
I so love animals.Labels: pets
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Saturday, February 18, 2006
6:36 PM |
Mother of Lies
Wanggo Gallaga has some dish on
the witcheries of Mother Lily.
Labels: blogging, celebrity
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12:10 AM |
Forgive Me For This Early Saturday Morning Perversion...
... but I just came from a birthday party in Luyo sa Payag, where we consumed Coke Light, chicken cordon bleu, some kind of macaroni soup, a chocolate cake shaped like a teddy bear, and
binakhaw, and I am currently (and gloriously) procrastinating: I have to write two articles and design a poster for
Usapang Puki before I go to bed, and it's already midnight.
I frankly need this jarring (and strangely amusing) image to keep me awake (and sane):
How delightful.
Where can we order that contraption?[courtesy of
dennis diclaudio]
Labels: humor, life
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Friday, February 17, 2006
10:43 PM |
There is a Reason Why His Initials Spell N.U.T.
This is Nestor U. Torre's "review" of
Brokeback Mountain: a pastiche of sorts, where no actual review is made, only a collage of movie trivia and stolen items from movie magazines. This guy --
supposedly the foremost film critic in the Philippines -- should retire and plant camote.
Labels: film
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This is the best of the
Brokeback Mountain parodies. Even better than the
geriatric love in
Back to the Future III. Then again, I've always told my students in Literary Criticism (when we start delving into Queer Theory) that
Top Gun has got to be
the most homoerotic film ever made. And not just because it stars a
paranoid closet queen. 'Nuff said.
[via
the goluboy chronicles]
*and if that doesn't say anything, I don't know what willLabels: film, queer
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Thursday, February 16, 2006
11:19 PM |
You Know You Want to Race...
Then you are ready to join ...
You know you want to. Read the guidelines and download the application
here.
Deadline is 15 March 2006.Labels: television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Taylor Hicks, Mandisa, Ace Young, David Radford, Sway Penala, Ayla Brown, Chris Daughtry... Go, go, go! Rickey has more on American Idol's Top 24. I'm just so glad the Brittenum divas didn't get in. (Although I would have loved to see their hissy asses kicked by America.) Then again, they're felons.
Labels: television
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
10:01 PM |
Weekly Grocery Lists for Ennis Del Mar & Jack Twist, Summer 1963, Brokeback Mountain
WEEK ONE
Beans
Bacon
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK TWO
Beans
Ham
Coffee
Whiskey
WEEK THREE
Beans al fresca
Thin-sliced Bacon
Hazelnut Coffee
Sky vodka & Tanqueray gin
K-Y gel
WEEK FOUR
Beans en salade
Pancetta
Coffee (espresso grind)
5-6 bottles best Chardonnay
2 tubes K-Y gel
WEEK FIVE
Fresh fava beans
Jasmine rice
Prosciutto, approx. 8 ounces, thinly sliced Medallions of veal Porcini
mushrooms
1/2 pint of heavy whipping cream
1 Cub Scout uniform, size 42 long
5-6 bottles French Bordeaux (Estate Reserve)
1 extra large bottle Astro-glide
WEEK SIX
Yukon Gold potatoes
Heavy whipping cream
Asparagus (very thin)
Organic Eggs
Spanish Lemons
Gruyere cheese (well aged)
Crushed Walnuts
Arugula
Clarified Butter
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Pure Balsamic vinegar
6 yards white silk organdy
6 yards pale ivory taffeta
3 Cases of Dom Perignon Masters Reserve Large tin Crisco
[from
the goluboy chronicles]
Labels: film, humor, queer
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Never usually succumb to the usual this-is-who-you-are quizzes flooding many blogs, but
this one -- from
banzai cat,
sundialgirl, and
notes from the peanut gallery -- looks and sounds interesting...
If we can reduce
Eating the Sun to a flood of words, it will be...
I notice the prominence of "sex" somewhere in this box.
I am such a pervert.Labels: blogging
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
1:18 PM |
Cleaning Away the Thursday Morning
Fell asleep last night, so I had to postpone my regular nighttime house cleaning to this morning. Which is as well. It's a new experience, doing your dusting and sweeping with the light of day. And singing along with my playlist as well. I love my playlist. Arranged and played alphabetically, it goes from ABBA's "Dancing Queen" to the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields's rendition of Pachelbel's "Canon," with Sir Neville Marriner conducting. You can never get bored with the variety of music. And that's all for now. Back to the dust, and the mildew from last night's merry rain.
Tada!Labels: life, music
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Wednesday, February 15, 2006
7:49 PM |
American Divas
"My heart has been broken."
Are Derrell and Terrell Brittenum for real?Hissy bitches.Labels: television
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