I’m a jeans-shirt-jacket fellow, although you’ll never see me wear a suit of white.  I just happen to like black and grungy-themed shirts, and I feel naked without a jacket.  Yet if there’s anything I hate more than hip-hop attire that you would expect to see on a man with multiple circumcisions, it’s the get-up of the emo loser kid.

So pardon me while I play to the role of an asshole.

To look well within the stereotype of emo-ness, you have to build up your look.  It’s not about what music you listen to on your giant CDR-King earphones connected to your pissant 128 MB Starmall MP3 player, but what you wear that makes you a perfect example of the decay of Filipino mass culture.

One of the things I don’t understand about emo fashion is that stupid-looking Kevin Federline hat.  I always thought that emo was about that Quixotic struggle for unrequited romance and the ennui and angst that comes with it, but what’s up with the fedora?

Do the emos have a one-up on us when it comes to free open-source software?  Do the emos wear those big-ass headphones to hide the fact that they’re listening to the off-sync beats of K-Fed (or was that Fed-Ex) singing “Popozão?”

I do not know, but I doubt you’ll be listening to The Red Jumpsuit Aparratus, Sunny Day Real Estate, or Saosin (how they come up with these names, I do not know) while looking like a reject backup dancer for a K-Fed music video.  If you get rejected for that, and still manage to end up being rejected by a girlfriend that was never yours to begin with, then maybe you do have the right to do some wrist-slashing, or whatever it is you emo kids do.  Last I checked, this country is still a democracy.

Being a 23-year-old fogey, I also do not understand scarves.  There must be a semiotic quality to it, something poetic like, “I hate myself for losing that girl, so I’m going to eventually tighten up this scarf and asphyxiate myself because my life is not worth living.  Said scarf, though, was made popular by more than a couple Filipino broadcast journalists:

Abner Mercado: Host of “The Correspondents,” Mercado was said to wear this scarf as a form of public identification.

Ed Lingao: Former host of “The Correspondents,” Lingao used to wear a sniper’s cloak when he was covering the Iraq war in behalf of ABS-CBN.

Is there something remotely emo about journalism?  Hmmm… a change of career plans is necessary.  Maybe a really itchy scarf is a very good option for a cilice, that you’re hiding goiter, or you’re warming up the vocal cords for a gig in front of a couple dozen 21st century beatniks who stare at urinal cake sugar cubes dissolving into something that passes for absinthe.

I suppose that if you’re stuck listening to Led Zeppelin, The Sex Pistols, Cypress Hill, and Rage Against the Machine, you don’t really understand a lot about emo wear.  Like those skinny jeans: are they supposed to crush your testicles, or did you in fact neuter yourself with rubber bands?  Self-mutilation is a big part of emo, and I suppose doing the capon routine on your own… cock, would be a much more cathartic alternative to disposable razor blades.

You’d get it once you get hold of a couple of rubber bands and a barbecue stick.

Let’s make this quick.

I don’t have a messianic complex.  Instead, I have a rockstar/professional wrestler complex.  What if I had an entrance theme?

For the first time in the short history of VotW’s, this has nothing to do with jologs-ness.  If I had an “entrance theme,” it would be this:

Never mind the bollocks, here comes Marocharim.

A friend of mine showed me an online project called “iamninoy,” which makes available merchandise (t-shirts, buttons, glasses, stickers, and so on) that aim to boost the awareness of the youth for one of the Philippines’ most famous (if not infamous) heroes.  To me, the trigger was almost automatic: I’m betting that at least one person out there believes that this is the “commercialization of Ninoy Aquino.”

I’m not a historian or a historical critic, so I won’t delve or dwell into whether or not Ninoy’s assassination – and its precedents – constitutes heroism.  For all intents and purposes, let’s just assume that Ninoy is a hero.  Which begs the question: if someone out there sells Ninoy t-shirts, is it commercialization?  Are we commercializing the image of Ninoy if we wear the retro glasses?

“Commercialization,” like many words, is easy to use; however, the meaning of commercialization is often lost in context.  Everything has its price, and everything with a price can be sold.

Let’s take corned beef for example.  A can of corned beef is not free: it either costs P22.00, a serious natural disaster, participating in a political rally, or pitiful circumstances.  Any which way, there is value in that can of corned beef, which gives it value and a place in the market.  Whatever we can exchange and place in any sort of marketplace is to give it a commercial potential.  Commerce and trade is the backbone of economics; everything is, in effect, commercialized.

I know it’s shallow, and I know that people my age prefer complicated and overwrought explanations to something as mundane as the image of a guy in a T-shirt.  For purposes of complicating things, the image of Ninoy is a simulacrum: a representation of a representation (Baudrillard for the masses).  What makes it all the more mundane and absurd is that within that context, there is nothing beyond it.  We all have to be smartasses, in one way or another, to think that there is something more to that image, that the act itself is inherently the negative connotation of commercialization.  Yet there’s nothing inherent about symbols: language is arbitrary.

In other words, it means nothing.

Yet since nobody I know would subscribe to such a nihilist, com si, com sa affect toward symbols, let me put it this way.  If it takes the image of a hero to have a hope that we become heroes in our own right when the time comes, then that itself is worse than “commercialization.”  It is often the case that those who speak out against “commercialization” are those who allow themselves to be victimized by it.  It’s not because everyone’s a victim, but because of a lack of perspective.  We are all duty-bound to do at least one heroic thing for this country, and yet the bulk of us even balk at being half the hero that we label Ninoy.

If there’s any poignant meaning that can be derived from “iamninoy,” it’s the fact that it sometimes takes a t-shirt and a pair of retro glasses to remind us that there was a time that one guy stood up for what’s right, no matter how wrong he seemed.

And died for it.

I was at Greenhills the other day taking some assignments from a freelance gig, when I came across the bronze statue of the late great Max Soliven.  I don’t know what is it with statues and inspiration, but burnout ceased for me at that very moment.

I’d be a sycophant if I said that I idolized Mr. Soliven, but I did admire his work.  If there’s anything worth reading in the Philippine STAR at the time, it was the wise words of the man many referred to as “Manong Max.”  Before this pillar of Philippine journalism wrote 30 some four years ago, he was a foremost social critic, political commentator, and writer.  No weekday of mine was complete without the quick wit and solid opinions he made in his STAR column, “By the Way.”  That, a can of Coca-Cola, and a couple of cigarettes was usually enough to make for a fine day of reading a newspaper.

I always thought that the “Opinion” columns in newspapers belonged rightfully to old people, to people wise beyond their years, or to young folk who have good connections with mainstream media.  We young folk who are bent on making our opinions known rely on our blogs.  Even with the so-called “Age of Information” upon us, print media is still the Holy Grail for writers.  Many are called, few are chosen, but only the best would ever make it to a respectable newspaper and write opinion columns.

That’s where I want to be in the next ten years, and while I know that I will never eclipse the profound influence of Max Soliven, I know that if I work hard enough, I could very well belong to that pantheon of writers, journalists, and opinion-formers that Manong Max represents.  I think it’s all a matter of dedication, good timing, and good sense.

Why am I rushing?  I’m enjoying online writing too much to leave it just yet!

No, I’m not talking about one of my favorite drinking spots at Metrowalk (never mind that it’s noisy and queer, but they have cheap beer… and the best sisig in the city of Pasig… hey, that rhymed).  I’m talking about the English language.

I do remember that almost a year ago, I participated in a certain blog writing contest which won me this domain… which begs a revisit.

I remember a piece at the Baguio Midland Courier written by a schoolmate of mine back in high school – Conviron Altatis, if I’m not mistaken – where the youth were exhorted to learn and master the English language.  While I could hold my own in written English, I have problems with spoken English.  I still have something called tardive dyskinesia.  While I can speak straight English without a hitch, my speech is still pretty much slurred at some parts, so I can’t hold my own at a call center.

As usual, it takes a worse problem than mine to put things into perspective.

Owing to some financial setbacks, a friend of mine had to apply for a job at a call center.  The problem was that she had an accent problem, and she admits that she doesn’t have a good command of the English language.  In a call center, you’re paid as much for the quality of your English as you are paid to take bullshit from anonymous customers half a world away.

So she didn’t get the job.

I’m not a very introspective person; I don’t ruminate over the many grand and profound implications of something.  Besides, I only have one stomach.  Yet it kind of makes me think a lot about language.  If I remember my linguistics correctly (and here we go…), the linguistic tradition exemplified by Ferdinand de Saussure puts primacy on spoken language (la parole) above written language (la langue).  Later on, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf put forward two corollaries to this assumption:

1. For something to have a rudimentary linguistic significance, it has to be grounded on experience.
2. Any experience can be committed to speech, whether it’s an utterance or a word.

Jacques Derrida argued that the question here is not a matter of primacy but of difference, but I think that I’ve already invoked one too many theories off the top of my head.  What I do need to point out is that in the real world, nobody gives a rat’s ass about what takes primacy and precedence over the other.  It’s all about utility, sensibility, and practicality.

Like a lot of things in life, things can be summarized in two simple bullet-points:

• If you’re paid to write, written language is more important than spoken language.
• If you’re paid to speak, spoken language is more important than written language.

Well thank you, Mr. Stating-the-Obvious.

Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against the necessity of mastering the English language.  While it is the language of imperialist capitalist predators that prey upon the oppressed proletariat (…yeah…), it is the language that pays bills for your typical call center agent.  English is no longer a language that gives you a competitive edge: it is a language of survival.  Yet it is not kikay-coffee-shop-I’ll-drink-absinthe-even-if-reminds-me-of-urinal-cakes English that makes this survival possible, but proper English. American English.

Do I have a problem with it?  Yes.  It’s not because we should enforce nationalistic fervor by speaking in Filipino, but because the imperative of English does not produce people who are competent with the language.  Learning English cannot be rushed; you’d be surprised at how many call center agents speak in a kind of English that grates on the inner membranes of your spinal cord, or write in a kind of English that will stop short of reducing your brain into a throbbing medulla.  Instead of learning the language, most people who work at the call center industry are forced to learn mechanical phrases for sales and tech support.

“Globally competitive?”  I don’t think so.  What we need is a comprehensive, “down-there” study of the applications of proper English, whether it’s conversational or formal.  It’s not the call center agent’s fault that the word “actually” is mispronounced, much less abused as a conjunction and an interjection.  This task must be shouldered by the Philippine educational system; not for the sake of making more call center agents, but for the sake of being truly globally competitive.  Or heck, even for the sake of propriety.

I know it sucks, but that’s the way the world works.  You don’t blame the agents, much less engage in a blame game.  You go after the weaknesses of the structure.

Suffice to say, the suckiness of it can be summed up not in bullet points, but in three words: English, or perish.

I used to hate Ortigas before, but now I’m finding it the funniest, most ridiculously absurd place in the world.  When it comes to ridiculous absurdities, you can count me in as a fan.  Most people tend to add some semblance of glamor or prestige into their otherwise mundane and pointless roles as cogs in the wheel of a system they have nothing to do with, but got sucked (or suckered) into.

There are at least two ways that I know of to accomplish this much-needed (pardon the term) psychological blowjob:

• Understatement: Call yourself a “worker” even if you wear a collared shirt to work, and you don’t belong to a union.  For us in the content writing industry, it’s to call yourself a “corporate slave.”  Understatement has a lot to do with some degenerative personality disease.
• Overstatement: Make your job seem glamorous or interesting.  For call center agents, it’s calling yourself a “sales representative,” “customer service representative,” or “technical support representative.”  It’s to put yourself on the same plane as a politician.

I believe that no other method can bring the ego to a mind-blowing multiple orgasm than calling the place you work something else than it’s supposed to be.  Now that I started the sex metaphors, it’s like having sex, and by the time you’re about to… become one with Atman, so to speak, you groan (men) or moan (women) someone else’s name.  There’s “Eastwood City:” for all intents and purposes, it’s a complex of buildings crowded in some tract of land at Libis, not a “city” per se.  Or Makati, pronounced as “Mah-ka-ry.”  And of course there’s my Borg Cube: call Ortigas “Ehr-tee-gess.”

I’ve been in “Ehr-tee-gess” for a long time to profess that a lot about it revolves around completely necessary pretentions.  No matter how expensive your cellphone is, no matter how nice your clothes are, and no matter how many coffees at Starbucks you drink, you’re bound to eat at Hong Kong Style Noodle, and get the buy-one-take-one deals at Angel’s Burger.  I can sometimes do the Vulcan mind-meld with some of the pa-kikay types right behind Saint Francis who, on a good day, would don those big-ass shades, pretend to be Anne Curtis, and discreetly feed themselves with what we aura-interrupting plebians feed ourselves anyway.

Those big-ass shades also come in handy when:

• You don’t want to be seen riding the MRT (you either don’t have a car, or your parents decided to sell or dock your Toyota Vios until such time that gas prices roll back down to P30)
• You don’t want to be seen passing through SM Megamall B (because you’ll be passing through a supermarket, and you’d rather pass by EDSA Shangri-La)
• You don’t want to be seen smoking Winston Lights (because you don’t know that you can get the more sosy cigarettes at a cheaper price but you only know 7-Eleven and Mini Stop)
• You don’t want to be seen carrying a brown envelope to apply at some random BPO (because you’d rather be seen working at more cushy office jobs at “Mah-ka-ry”)
• You don’t want to be seen working from any other place outside San Miguel Corporation (none of us are good enough for them anyway)
• You don’t want to be seen walking or crammed into an FX (refer to first bullet point)
• You don’t want to be seen, period.

I know it’s not funny.  So?

Araneta Center, Cubao
6:00 PM

Those discount cards make a lot of sense, but I don’t understand why Gloria Jeans should offer EYP cards instead of free wi-fi.  Nothing against e-Yellowpages, but come on!

I get to see Benj of Atheista.net every once in a while carrying a special Atheista-branded shirt, and Jester with his floppy hat, and almost every blogger these days carrying a calling card.  So in the interest of jumping into the blog branding bandwagon, I decided to narrow down my options into some ways to advertise my blog to the masses during blog get-together’s:

• Corpse paint. I once suggested to Jester that I wear death metal corpse paint.  Scratch that, it’s a bad idea.
• Calling cards. I’ll get around to making a calling card of my own in the future.  Besides, it makes me feel like my dad.
• T-shirt. Which is what this blog entry is all about.

Being too much of a cheapskate to go to CD-R King to buy a proper mouse, I decided to break out my Photoshop skills with the touchpad of the Marocharim Writing Machine.  I came out with a rather nifty design concept for my official blog shirt using some Photoshop brushes sourced from somewhere:

With all that said, my sister’s friends will airbrush a shirt for me (I hope at a reasonable price) and have it ready for me next week come WordCamp Philippines (because they ran out of WordCamp shirts and I don’t have PayPal yet).  Said shirt has a sucky design because I don’t have a proper working mouse.

Great.  I finally have a brand.  I’ll still be cursing on live streaming video.

Hey, wait, I got a new complaint… I’m sorry, I just had to put that in.

It’s been a while since I last ate off a lunch box was a full decade ago.  Back when the portrait of Erap Estrada hung at the front wall of I-Gardenia, we all had to eat some form of packed lunch.  “Lunch” is too heavily loaded with gourmet connotations; I don’t care how much your mother loves you, but she won’t slave over a hot stove at 3 in the morning preparing cordon bleu. Lunch, for many students, involves some form of torta:

• Tortang talong
• Tortang Ma-Ling
• Tortang corned beef
• Tortang giniling
• Tortang hotdog

Under threat of being taunted as the child of a pauper, you’d disguise this unappealing hunk of fried egg on top of a block of cold rice to be something more gourmet, something more sosy that would appeal to your desire to be friends with your wealthy classmates.  The word is, of course, “omelette.”  Tortang talong becomes an “aubergine omelette,” which it’s not.  Ma-Ling, whether made with the flesh of pigs or chickens or horses or rats, would be made much more “class” if you called it “SPAM” or “Hormel.”  It’s either you throw your lunch away at the trash can, give it away to some poor wretch on the streets.  Or you explain your predicament to your mom, who spent 10 minutes slaving at the stove preparing your lunch.

I felt the same way with Nutribun when I was a kid.  Apparently, a moron decided that a potato-flavored bun can add some weight on your bones.  I don’t know about the next kid who had a Nutribun, but I have nothing to remember it buy except a bad taste in my mouth.  Worse is when you have to take a Nutribun and two glasses of Sustagen from the two giant plastic-faced mascots of Susie and Gino.

I was reading last week’s papers when I came across a news item where, in a conference in Baguio sponsored by Innabuyog-Gabriela, mothers in Abra and Kalinga are complaining about the unpalatable nutritional monstrosity called the “Vitameal.”  Vitameal is apparently a nutritional supplement/cereal drink made from healthy nutritious legumes.  Mothers and teachers are all up in arms over this more nutritious alternative to Yakult.

In case you don’t know what legumes are, think of beans.  Think of a cereal drink made of beans.  You think Marian Rivera will still be “byoo-ti-pul” after drinking that?

Which is why I like to add “nutrition” to my growing list of advocacies, if only because I grew so concerned about my back pain being related to an extra pound I carry as a paunch.  I’m gonna go lie down.

Pain is overrated.  Rage is overused.  Somehow, “painful rage” is not the accurate phrase for what I’m feeling… for what I’m visualizing.  My obsession has turned from reconciliation… to retribution.  My focus has changed to another person… to a single-celled soulless prokaryote, a parasite - a virus - who must be purged from the gene pool with a simple act of extermination.

Romance is not the motivation here, but disgust, a misanthropy towards a certain excuse for a person who represents a monstrosity, a man possessed, and must face what lies beyond life.  Death, perhaps, has its own continuity.  It begins with suffering.  It begins with a realization of humanity not in emotion, but in nerves, in pain receptors… in blood.  The essence of our humanity, but what makes us so inhuman after all.  Revenge, in a way, is a good substitute for justice.

When you hurt somebody, you know… you have to anticipate pain, not of guilt or of turmoil but of pain… excruciating pain.  A reminder that the pain caused by force and duress is not resolved or repaid through inaction, but through force and duress… amplified.  A bruise will have to be repaid with blood, and a broken heart will have to be repaid with a broken bone.  The flogging of the spirit is repaid with the flogging of the body; we commensurate a tortured soul by torturing a body.

It makes perfect sense; when you do not act like a human being, you have to be reminded of it…

Allow me to dwell on the word “moron” for a bit: when you cede sovereign territory to violent insurgents that you don’t trust, realize an error in judgment and take back the agreement, and then expect that these insurgents will go back to the negotiating table ready to break bread and make peace… well, you get the picture.

That, at least to me, is a perfectly good definition of the word “moron.”

Let me dwell again: when you’re invited by a moron to break bread and make peace, you instead choose to go on a bloodthirsty rampage at a rural hamlet, literally hacking away at the lives of innocent civilians, and then say you’re innocent of the atrocities and say you have nothing to do with it… again, you get the picture.

That, at least to me, is another perfectly good definition of the word “moron.”

So let’s clarify: only morons would give up inalienable possessions and territories, and only morons will take the lives of people who have nothing to do with moronic events.  In effect, the atrocities and offensives – the war – down south, is caused by morons.

Moronic; definition: an unconstitutional memorandum of agreement passed and taken back by the Government to the MILF.

The sad state of affairs is that a moron would not take responsibilities for an act he or she caused, because you really can’t pin the blame on morons.  Morons, being devoid of conscience, act on impulse.  If the Memorandum of Agreement was not an impulsive action, if the dozens of victims in Lanao were not hacked to death out of impulse, then the negotiating panel from both sides must be geniuses.

After all, it’s nothing short of genius to compromise something as basic as the lives of people, isn’t it?

*    *    *

I have to disagree with Cocoy’s comment on an opinion piece I made for Filipino Voices, that war is the crucible by which our relationship with the Bangsamoro peoples and/or the MILF insurgents will be tested.  The crucible was supposed to be the peace talks: when you have peace talks, war becomes the last remote possible option to resolve the conflict once and for all.  You have peace talks to avoid every possibility and suggestion of war.

Protracted as it may seem, the MILF peace talks were supposed to be that avenue for the peace process; if, after years of conflict and struggle, we can come to a win-win solution:

• One, the peace talks were supposed to serve the imperative of preserving Philippine sovereignty.
• Two, the peace talks were supposed to serve the imperative of granting Muslim Mindanao the right to self-determination.
• Three, the peace talks were supposed to serve the imperative for peace in conflict-torn Mindanao.

This sounds weird, but I have to agree with Maguindanao Rep. Didagen Dilangalen (yes, that very Digs who shrieked, “Shut up, freedom of expression, Your Honor!” back in the Estrada impeachment trials) when he said that suspending the peace talks spells danger for Mindanao.  It’s not that anyone is begging for a bloodless solution – the rationale behind peace talks is to stem bloodshed, not prevent it – but people were begging for a long-term, permanent compromise - a win-win solution - to this matter.

Yes, it’s definitely a pipe dream.  It could have been done if nobody drafted that MOA and took it back.

Yet you can’t do much about the consequences of morons: I cannot blame the Senate if they vote to suspend the Mindanao peace talks indefinitely, because there’s really nothing much you could do about the seething frustrations of a moronic band of terrorists who were baited with an unconstitutional MoA by morons in the GRP negotiating panel.

War is definitely not a crucible here, but an unintended consequence, an oversight that could have easily been avoided if only each side of the negotiating table possessed an iota of intelligence, a modicum of sincerity, and a smidgen of competence.

Yet an iota, a modicum, and a smidgen are too much to ask for, especially when you’re dealing with, well, morons.