I just turned 23 yesterday to the tune of beer and a sore back. What better time to start my year off by talking about politics. Again.

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I don’t see why The Government should be in denial right now. Whether there was a coup plot or not, the mere fact that there is talk of a coup should be enough for The Government to heed the warning: it is unstable. The legitimacy of the administration has long rested on quicksand, so much so that thunderbolts and lightning - of the political sort - bode well to be heeded. History lessons.

I’m not talking about an Antonio Trillanes IV who would hostage five-star hotels for the lauriat buffet catering. I’m talking about 1605: the Gunpowder Plot. We’re not talking about ranking officers in the Army making a barracks out of a hotel. We’re talking about ordinary people disgruntled enough to consider the unthinkable; to store gunpowder underneath the House of Parliament and blow it up. Guy Fawkes got arrested, and we all watched V for Vendetta.

This is, of course, not a prescription for our ills. Yet this is the formula of a coup. People forget about tanks and rallies and blog entries. People do not forget ideas.

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Following the “investigation” surrounding the recent “coup plot” by Atty. Homobono Adaza - which begs me to ask what the frock was that all about and why he’s worth arresting - I myself would take a less-than-optimistic view of what will happen in the next few years. After all, AFP Chief of Staff Alexander Yano said it himself. Consider these quotes:

“Coup d’etat or no coup d’etat, what was clearly manifested in the arrest of Attorney Adaza, et al, is the collaborative vigilance of security forces, both the AFP and the PNP, against possible destabilizers.”

“Destabilization may be carried out in different ways, not only thru a coup d’etat.”

There’s a danger to all of this, if I may say so myself. Everyone’s a possible destabilizer, including myself. You don’t have to blow up anything these days to be a destabilizer, as long as you have an innate capacity to become one, that it is possible for you to become one. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter… and a government’s destabilizer.

“Destabilization” is a catch-all catchphrase for just about everything these days, which is a serious problem. When you lump up the discontented with wretched criminals and terrorists, that itself is instability. That itself is unthinkable. To do so is to destabilize the very foundation of democracy: the dissenting opinion.

So you do not have to destabilize anything to be a destabilizer. All you need is the possibility of becoming a destabilizer, with the possible intent to challenge the order, to change things for the better, to have the gall to stand up to the political powers-that-be and say, “Hey! There’s something really wrong here.” Destabilization can be carried out by having an opinion, by having an idea, or in the case of Adaza, being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Collaborative vigilance?” Institutionalized fear, as I read it. Although you really can’t destabilize something that’s already unstable to begin with.

So if you’re all for change, if you’re all for the improvement of your lot, if you’re all for making your voice heard, if you have that one idea that will change things for the better, consider yourself a possible destabilizer.

I think Tonyo summed it up best as he helped me upgrade my old WordPress installation to the latest version (via Yahoo! Messenger and a phone call): atake de corazon, which I think is pidgin Spanish for “heart attack.”

It’s not that I’m technologically inept, it’s just that I’m borderline scared to do anything that requires serious site management, like SQL and databases.  Back when my blog was still in BlogDrive, I tinkered with a lot of CSS to get TMX in the familiar black-and-red.  Having a domain of my own (which reminds me that I have to pay for it soon, as soon as I can get a handle on Jehzeel Laurente) means that I need to have a little more commitment.

“Commitment,” like its romantic counterpart, basically means having the balls to take a serious step.  I had to upgrade my WordPress for three reasons:

• WordPress Whatever.point.Whatever I used before (the blue one with the big editing window) was obsolete;
• I have a lot of spare time in my hands, and;
• I wanted to see why my dashboard was pestering me with a “Please Upgrade Now” reminder that has the uncanny ability to piss me off.

Woe upon me that I can’t smoke in the Internet shop, since I can’t stand the jittery feeling of backing up what I can of the website FTP.  So I decided to give Tonyo a buzz, who reminded me that I should backup my SQL (whatever that is) through “cpanel” (wherever the heck that was).

After a long exchange of messages that reminded me of “The Matrix,” Tonyo called me up, and figured that the best thing for me at that point was to use one of those automatic upgrade plugins.  It was a cross-your-fingers thing, so much so that I was turning pale just following the instructions.

Hot damn, it worked.  WordPress 2.5.1 looks like Friendster.

I guess I have a lot of things to learn about the Interweb: search engine optimization, Internet marketing, Digg, RSS, and so on and so forth…

“Famous five-minute installation,” my ass.  Preparing to upgrade WordPress took me two hours.  The plugin did it for me in three minutes.