December 31, 2007

   As much as you say how much I have been part of your life, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how much you have been a part of mine.

   In the three years that I’ve sat here to write, I always think of you.  You who come here regularly - some of you every day - to end your day on a better note.  I’ve heard some of your stories over the years.  There was one who got an administrative notice for wiring a proxy server to read what I have to write.  There was one who, after splitting up from her boyfriend, looked here to find some words of inspiration.  There are many others: a poignant one being that of the OFW who comes here every so often to read stories from home while talking to her family on a webcam.

   It hits me - hard - to think about the responsibility that has weighed down on my shoulders for these past three years that this blog is no longer just “mine,” but also yours as well.  Every so often, I think about the word “I,” and am tempted to replace it with “we.”  After all, every time I write about a “unique experience,” everyone else experiences it.  You, more than anyone else, experiences it.

   I enjoy - and continue to enjoy - writing.  Not because it’s therapeutic or anything, but because you make all this effort worthwhile.  And in 2008, you will most probably come back here and read what I have to say and end your days in a better note.

   From the get-go, there were always naysayers who told me that I would never amount to anything, that my writing style sucks, and that anyone can do what I do - even better.  I paid heed to those words, knowing that I can prove them wrong.  Needless to say, I didn’t: you proved them wrong.  You stayed here and you took me on.  You stayed.  When I felt left out knowing that the only thing I did for 11 years - campus journalism - was taken away from me because they didn’t think I belonged or I deserved it, you took me in.

   I do not know how to pay you guys back, knowing that what you did for the past three years cost you a lot.  But if anything, the only thing I can think about right now for all these years of you staying is for me to stay.

   All I’m saying is thank you.  Thank you for the support, the kindness, and the confidence.  Thank you.

Best regards for the New Year,

Marocharim

   The New Year is a time rife for firecrackers: before I left the house to buy fish food, I had to negotiate my way around a warzone of “piccolo,” “pla-pla” and “Judas Belt.”  While I like violent explosions as much as the next guy, I prefer to watch them from a safe distance.  Any residential back-alley on New Year’s Eve is a scene straight off a bad Chuck Norris movie, if you asked me.  Besides, I don’t want to be the next guy who goes to the emergency room not for actually lighting a firecracker, but for being a mere passer-by.

   Sure, I’ve lit my own fair share of firecrackers before, but after seeing somebody being mortally-wounded from a New Year’s explosion, I laid my hands off fireworks for good.  But I’m still pretty much guilty of handling boga, a plastic air cannon “powered” by compressed air and alcohol.  It’s explosive fun for the first few minutes, until firing blasts of high-pressure air becomes a bit boring.  Besides, there are a lot of interracial penis-related jokes you can make out of it, and it doesn’t make for a good bong.  Not that I condone or condemn the use of marijuana, though.

   Watching news reports from emergency rooms filled with people who lost their fingers from firecrackers has become an annual ritual for me.  Bloody carnage is something you would expect from suicide bombers a’la the one that claimed Benazir Bhutto’s life in Pakistan, but here it’s something you would expect on the first day of the year.  There’s something about carving spring chicken with these news reports on: the sight of a dismembered finger is enough to remind you of homemade hamonado.

   But I’m thinking that I’m better off celebrating the coming of 2008 playing old music by Prodigy.  Hence the title.

   As much as it applies to every damned year, 2007 has been an amazing year.  There are highs (so to speak), lows, and everything in between that made this year awesome.  And in TMX, it has been a fine year for blogging.

   The biggest news for Marochaholics this year was the launch of Marocharim.com: after three years of blog-hosting services at BlogDrive, everything became brand-spanking new a few weeks ago.  TMX loaded a heck of a lot faster and to some, looked a hell of a lot better.  Another big news was the online launch of Deus Ex Cybernetica: The Best of The Marocharim Experiment, which is an online e-book of the best of the first 1,000 entries of TMX.  Previously, it was only available through e-mail distribution.  Now that I have a lot more space to fiddle with, I will be making it - along with all other Marocharim e-books - available for download right here.

   It was also this year that I won my first blog-related award in PinoyBlogosphere.com’s Wika2007 Blog Writing Contest, where my entry “Pista ng Wikang Filipino/The Spectacle of the Filipino Language” won the Participants’ Choice Award (arguably my most famous entry to date).  The award, to me, is more than just a ticket to a free domain: to be recognized by top bloggers in the Philippines to be more than worth this award is something I will try very hard to live up to in 2008 and beyond.

   This year was marked by three volumes of TMX: Vol. 5, Vol. 6, and Vol. 7, spanning 362 entries in Original TMX, and 48 entries here in Marocharim.com (not including this one).  Yup, this year, I wrote 410 articles: statistically, an average of 1.12 entries a day.  On par with a professional blogger or a journalist working for a local newspaper.  And I have no one else to thank but my readers, who continue to read my blog and have sort of made a nightly routine out of it.  Thank you very much, guys.

   It was also this year that I have come to the attention of many notable bloggers, particularly Mr. Manuel Quezon III, who has quoted and referred to my blog on more than a few ocassions.  Internationally, my entry on Joma Sison’s September arrest in the Netherlands drew the attention of global neoconservatives, in particular The Belmont Club, Karlo Mongaya, and not to mention a few Joma supporters and sympathizers.  A brief debate between me and Teo Marasigan of Kapirasong Kritika on the matter of blogging.

   Overall, TMX has done good: way good.  Here’s to 2008, and many more Experiments to come.

   I’m particularly lazy tonight, so I’ll sum up my year in convenient bullet points:

• Marocharim.com was launched in December 2007, which means that at least for one year, I’m off free blogging services and I have the privilege of having my own website.  This is all thanks to PinoyBlogosphere.com and Wika2007, where I won the Participants’ Choice Award.
• My thesis, “The Articulation of the Self in Virtual Environments,” was finished in eight months and ended up as a 366-page tome.  Needless to say, I am very proud of it: the feeling that I have made a new theoretical framework has sunk in, and then there’s the feeling that I made an ass out of myself in that thesis.
• After 11 years in campus journalism, I finally called it quits: after all, I’m a bastard journalist.  I am now thinking about moving into things that really interest me: comic books and graphic novels.
• I promised myself a girlfriend as a New Year’s resolution.  As the year ends, I still don’t have one.  That’s unless some fluke romance happens within the next 28 hours.
• I’ve learned a lot this year and I hope to learn even more about life in 2008.

   Here’s to the convenience of bullet points, and a Happy New Year to all of you!

   I think that if I work hard enough, I’d probably be in Wikipedia.  It’s a pipe dream.  Nope, I’m not talking about editing Wikipedia: I’m talking about my own Wikipedia page.

   Allow me to indulge in ego boosting… after all, this is Wikipedia at work.

   Consider this sarcastic.

*   *   *

Marocharim

Marocharim (born Marck Ronald Rimorin, July 4, 1985) is a blogger and a writer who has significantly contributed to the development of Filipino online literature.

The Marocharim Experiment, 2004-present

Marocharim’s blog, The Marocharim Experiment (referred to as TMX on many occasions), is often argued to be the quintessental example of the development of Filipiñana in the global blogging community.

Writing style 

Marocharim primarily writes in English: while he insists that he writes in plain English, critics often vilify Marocharim’s writing style as “verbal taekwondo,” which causes “nosebleed” (an instance of confusion, which he calls an “epiphany”).

He consistently writes in long compound sentences, a style that has long since developed as a trademark.  On some occasions, Marocharim writes in Filipino: while he openly admits that it his not his primary language for writing, his entry “Pista ng Wikang Filipino” won acclaim in the Philippine blogosphere.

Marocharim calls his blog entries “experiments:” in the foreword to TMX II, he insists that he is a “mad scientist.”  He sees writing as a science that involves initial assumptions - the hypothesis - about ordinary life, which is subsequently tested through writing, and only then can conclusions be drawn.

Topics 

Characteristic of Marocharim’s writing style is the refusal to stay on topic: he claims that topics only serve to constrain both author and reader to understand implications.  Marocharim has a unique penchant to take an inane topic and transform it into something important.

Marocharim is known for his “tasteless,” “morally-bankrupt” metaphors that often involve analogies to anuses, fecal matter, hemorrhoids and herpes.  Marocharim insists that he is not paraphilic, and uses the analogies to challenge conventional notions of morality and good writing.

TMX is often understood to be a “political commentary” website, and is often referred to as a source of political opinions.  While often called a “Leftist,” Marocharim’s line of political thought is influenced very much by Niccolo Machiavelli, Baruch Spinoza, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, John Rawls, and French postmodernism.

Marocharim is also a “literary sadist” in poking fun at rich people, politicians, metrosexuals, the leisure class, and many others.  However, he insists that this is not “satire,” but is actually sarcasm.

Marocharim is also a personal blogger who writes about his life, particularly his “Quixotic” romantic exploits in a series he calls “romantic experiments.”

Praise and criticism

Marocharim’s writing style is a point of contention among many literary critics, in that his writing style has often been compared to that of the French thinker Roland Barthes, the Filipino columnist Jessica Zafra, and Filipino showbiz reporter Lolit Solis.  Still some claim that Marocharim’s style deserves a special place and distinction in Filipino literature, and some believe that Marocharim is a deduction to Filipino literature.

The “myth” that is Marocharim has led to many assumptions about his true identity, if only because he is open in saying that he is paranoid schizophrenic.  He is often accused of having homicidal tendencies and is bent on world domination.  He is also often thought of to subscribe to Satanism, which is completely false.  However, Marocharim is honest in saying that he is homophobic, is very sexist, and is very gender-insensitive.

However, readers say that Marocharim represents the repressed identity in every person, and is the future of Philippine literature.  His antagonism and subjectivity is, to many, a tableau of what people try to hide in presenting themselves.  Marocharim breaks stereotypical notions by engaging in the sterotype itself.

Important works

• Deus Ex Cybernetica: The Best of TMX
• TMX anthology, volumes 1 to 7
• The Marocharim Diaries (forthcoming)
• Revolutionary or Serial Killer: The Marocharim Story (forthcoming)
• Garrote: El govierno supremo de las Filipinas bajo nuevo Guardia Civil (graphic novel, forthcoming)