I’m still not over the fact that a couple of years ago, drunken_angel of FilipinoFriendFinder copied the following entries from Original TMX:

• Snake Eyes, dated 25 April 2005, which is also found here;
• It’s Hard Enough, dated 23 February 2005, which is also found here;
• Accept Me For What I Am, dated 14 April 2005, which is also found here;
• A Geriatric’s Power Trip, dated 03 May 2005, which is also found here;
• This Is Why I Write Here, dated 06 January 2005, which is also found here;
• When You Turn 17, dated 18 December 2004, which is also found here;
• Chasing Rainbows, dated 01 May 2005, which is also found here;
• And so many more.

   No, I’m not pissed.  She really should have copied those entries that had gratuitous metaphorical allusions to penises and feces.  Then she could have been just like me.  After all, she did copy those bracketed tag lines that have been my signature opener back then.

   Look, if you’re going to copy TMX, you might as well do a good job of doing it: please copy the ass analogies.  If you’re going to copy my romantic experiments, you’re not doing a good enough job.  Sige na naman, kung mangongopya din lang kayo, yung seryosohang kopya na.  I don’t have problems with plagiarists who would like to spread the Gospel of Marocharim if they copy the entries that describe sex and human excretion in detail in order to make a point.  But it seems that nobody in FilipinoFriendFinder would do that.

   I feel offended - even used - that people take my entries and pass it off as theirs.  But that’s forgivable.  But why are you so selective in copying?  Like I said before, there is no mutually-exclusive experience: I’m sure you have as pathetic a love life as I do, but why don’t you copy the more Freudian entries?  Really, you’re offending me in picking “favorites” to copy.  I put so much thought in comparing people to hemorrhoids and herpes lesions, and this is how you repay me?

   So please, do me a favor: if you’re going to copy TMX and pass it off as yours, please copy everything.  Huwag niyo naman sana akong insultuhin, na mamimili pa kayo ng entry na kokopyahin ninyo.  Pinaghirapan ko rin lahat nun eh.

   The Lamborghini Countach is not exactly my favorite: it looks like something off one’s wildest imaginations watching a Bee Gees music video.  Like the Saleen S7 and the Lotus Elise, it’s best left on the walls of a teenager’s room.

   The talk of the papers today are “hot” cars: smuggled European sportscars owned by everyone from congressmen to Willie Revillame.  I don’t know how true these rumors are, but I don’t understand why any level-headed man would drive a Ferrari on any given road in the Philippines.  You just can’t: we just have too many potholes in our roads, and traffic is too heavy.  It doesn’t make sense to drive a multi-million peso performance sportscar in the Philippines, unless you have passes to the Batangas Racing Circuit or if you can drive it around full-speed at Subic Bay’s nice roads.

   Of course, you don’t have to be sensible to drive a performance sportscar.  For example, a friend of mine has a boss who drives around in a BMW Z3 Roadster convertible.  While the Z3 is not my favorite BMW (it looks too much like a Mazda Miata from a certain angle), it is the car James Bond drove in Goldeneye.  So basically, you overcompensate by telling yourself that you’re in the same league as Pierce Brosnan.

   There are sensibilities in driving rally cars as road cars, like the Subaru Impreza, the Mitsubishi Pajero, or a Mitsubishi Lancer from the Evolution series.  Rally cars are meant for endurance: they have better fuel economy than a LeMans vehicle, like the ones made by Audi and Porsche.  The problem with some people driving rally cars as road cars is that they trick it out not for road use, but for rally racing.  It’s not uncommon to see a Mitsubishi Lancer with big foglamps and bull-bars, as if they just came from the Dakar Rally, lost miserably, and took a complimentary car wash.

   Don’t blame me: I subscribe to the common assumption that if you have a nice car, you’re overcompensating for other… inadequacies.

   In a report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) entitled “Wowowee and the Women of 200 P. de la Cruz St.” (PCIJ iREPORT, March-June 2006; this article is also accessible here), Sheila Coronel writes:

The poor are a willing and captive audience of television.  In fact, poor people watch free television more, if only because they have few other alternative distractions.  In some poor households, the TV is on 16 or 18 hours a day.  The better off have cable TV, DVDs, and cinemas.  They visit malls, travel elsewhere during their vacations, eat out in restaurants, and look for nighttime entertainment in theaters and clubs.  The poor watch TV all day and all night. 

   It’s a small wonder why GMA-7 and ABS-CBN will fight like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees not over the matter of killing a camp counselor, but denying the Filipino audience out of the freedom to choose.

   I’ve made my choice: screw them.

   For the past few weeks, both stations have been running long advertisements on tampered ratings: whether it’s on “24 Oras” or “TV Patrol World,” “Saksi” or “Bandila,” TV ratings are headline stories.  The two biggest free TV stations of the Philippines are demanding your undivided attention, ladies and gentlemen.  The media has polarized the country yet again into being either a “Kapuso” or “Kapamilya.”  It’s either you’re with them, or you’re against them.  This is nothing short of fascism: the kind of “us-against-them” mentality that threatens our freedom to choose.

   I made a decision today to quit watching free TV.  I’m boycotting free TV: I will no longer watch ABS-CBN or GMA-7.

   Tomorrow, I’m posting a manifesto.

   Yesterday’s episode of “Emergency” (I don’t have a meter-box installed on my TV, and nobody paid me to watch it) focused on “game addiction.”  The problem is that most gamers would either deny the existence of game addiction, or would say that they are not addicts.

   I have to agree in part with some gamers: “addiction” is an extreme situation.  It’s easier, if not more accurate, to call it ”game dependence” than “game addiction.”  However, it cannot be denied that extreme dependencies on computer games exist, that there is such a thing as “game addiction.”  There are cases in South Korea, for example, where marathon gamers either suffer heart attacks, lapse into comatose states, or in more than a few cases, die.

   The problem with the term “addiction,” though, is that it is usually used to represent not only the extreme that the term was meant for, but also for the mildest cases of game dependence.  It’s just like being called a “caffeine addict” if you drink coffee every day, or that you’re a “drug addict” if you catch a whiff of marijuana.

   Make no mistake about it: gaming is dangerous.  That’s from the perspective of a computer game player: while games are harmless, it is the drive to play games that is harmful.  That drive, I think, is what should be addressed when it comes to “game addiction,” not the content of the games themselves.  Almost all games have similar effects on the brain’s pleasure centers, creating a drive that satisfies pleasure.  Dependence - and even addiction - comes from “overdrive:” when people stay up for days on end playing games, when kids commit petty thefts to pay for computer rentals, when interpersonal relationships fall into disrepair.

   As a gamer myself, I acknowledge the dangers of computer gaming: to me, it is the drive to play games that is much more dangerous than the actual content of games.  While the responsibility of preventing - not controlling - game addiction falls to families, the government, and to gamers themselves, some of the responsibility should go to computer game companies.  Like cigarette packs and liquor bottles, the dangers of computer gaming should be explicit in their products.  It will cost a lot, but in the long run, it is beneficial not only to them, but also to their clients.