Based and inspired from Rom’s entry; it’s R-18 if you decide it to be.  I am putting this “More” tag early to avoid more e-mails from angry parents who tell me I suck and I blow at the same time.  This is an entry that will elucidate the absence of my sex life.

This is as much profanity as you’re going to get from me.  - Marocharim

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Tomorrow is the feast day of the Poon Nazareno, where thousands - if not millions - of Filipinos all over the country will flock to Quiapo Church to get a glimpse, perhaps a touch, of the fabled Black Nazarene.  It is said that to touch the icon with one’s hands or a kerchief, or to climb on the jagganath-esque statue, or to hold the ropes towing the statue through the mass of devotees, will result to miracles.  For many people, not the least of which is Vice President Noli de Castro, to celebrate miracles with the massive ocean of the devout believers is a panata; an act devotion renewed every year as a submission to God’s will.

I’m reminded of a paragraph from Sir James George Frazer’s seminal anthropological study, The Golden Bough:

In ancient Italy every oak was sacred to Jupiter, the Italian counterpart of Zeus; and on the Capitol at Rome the god was worshipped as the deity not merely of the oak, but of the rain and the thunder.  Contrasting the piety of the good old times with the scepticism of an age when nobody thought that heaven was heaven, or cared a fig for Jupiter, a Roman writer tells us that in former days noble matrons used to go with bare feet, streaming hair, and pure minds, up the long Capitoline slope, praying to Jupiter for rain.  And straightway, he goes on, it rained bucketsful, then or never, and everybody returned dripping like drowned rats.  “But nowadays,” says he, “we are no longer religious, so the fields lie baking.”

- Chapter 15, “The Worship of the Oak”

Here, I think that Frazer alludes to the mystique of the worship of inanimate things like trees, or in the case of the Nazareno, a piece of wood.  For many people, the Nazarene is more than a dark statue; it carries for them meaning.  To not follow up on a divine promise is to court malas, or worse, doom one’s self and one’s family to the damnation of divine kamalasan. Fortune smiles on the devout and the pious, those who acknowledge the Poon to be more than what it is.

It always makes me think: what drives people to believe?  What is that motor that moves the human being to push on, to climb the statue, to descend into the madding crowd?  I don’t really know, but there’s always something that keeps a devout follower of the Poon Nazareno going there, to risk life and limb, to bank living through the divine intercession of the divined profane.

Miracles.  Hope, perhaps.  Not fanaticism, but a need for miracles.  Not idolatry, but a need for hope.

You see folks, I can’t talk about politics and translate lyrics all the time.  Sometimes I just have to sit back, put the problems of this country behind me for a time, and enjoy showbiz.

At the invitation of my good friend Flowell Galindez, I got invited into a grand press conference/tribute dinner for the cast and crew of ABS-CBN’s latest teleserye, “Tayong Dalawa,” starring Jake Cuenca, Gerald Anderson, and Kim Chiu.

My mission: to take a picture of Jake Cuenca for a friend.  Gwapo nya daw kasi. I don’t know about that, since I cannot make an objective opinion about male gwapo-ness even if I tried.  Besides, I can’t take a good picture for the life of me.

I had to leave early owing to the burnination in my lungs, but I did manage to chronicle my little adventure at Treatino, Greenhills with my bad photography with a camera I don’t keep in a proper camera case.

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Forgotten.

That’s a good word we need to remember right now.  We have the “Alabang Boys” bribery scandal, we had some violence party going on in Valley Golf and Country Club… just two more of the glaring bold headlines that greet us every morning.  Tell you what, though; later on in this year, I’m giving up all hope that we will remember.  We would probably forget all this happened, suffer a little bit of social amnesia, and push all of these issues and concerns onto the back burner, where they simmer and eventually evaporate.

One thing did catch my eye reading the paper today: the news that Armando “Jun” Ducat, Jr. hostage taker extraordinaire, visited his school one year and nine months after he held the children under his stewardship hostage in the name of social justice.  I do not condone what Ducat did then, and I certainly think that he should pay for what he did, but Ducat - in the commission of a crime - managed to have our eyes riveted to a purple bus parked somewhere in Manila, waiting for what’s going to happen.

Change.  America can expect it from Barack Obama, we can expect it from politicos with billboards and tarpaulin with messages of hope that’s slowly vanishing and fading away.  I guess we all want to forget that low point in our nation’s history where we banked hope and change and a better tomorrow on a man with a gun, with the ill-disguised threat to shoot kids in bad need of food, air, and a piss.

On that fateful day, we banked our hopes for change on a common criminal.  We lit candles for him, we cheered him as our version of John Q.  Only it wasn’t heroism or desperation, but a politics we can either agree with or disagree with.

Since when was the last time that happened… oh, I completely forgot, that happens every darned day.

Ducat returned to his school with 64 students less than what he started out with before he loaded up his pistols, his guns, and wiped the dust off a grenade.  For what?  Nothing much, really.  The same stuff he riled about: injustice is still here, inequality is still here, corruption is still here as it was one year and nine months ago.  So much for jail time.  So much for prison.  So much for making an ass of yourself through CNN.

Ducat is an ex-convict, a kidnapper, a hostage taker, and there he was before, demanding stuff we can only expect of the genuinely righteous.  And here we are.  Damn, eh?

“Waiting for what’s going to happen…”  I guess that’s a theme we all have to deal with these days.  Perhaps, like Ducat, every axe we have to grind against the whole machine of a f**ked up System will have to be dulled by the grindstone of time, more issues, and all the more shikata ga nai.  Bahala na. Heck, his own victims have forgotten, forged the path of peace, and still trust the man.  I can’t blame them; even I don’t know what to think or what to do anymore.  After all, we have Government officials who are bribed on a daily basis, and the monotony of political issues are broken up with novel allegations of Cabinet members and local government officials beating up people.

Perhaps there’s nothing more we could do, really, knowing that everything is… well, forgotten.  Just like Jun Ducat’s crime, and Ducat himself, at that: forgotten.

I’m a “Government destabilizer” and all - and this is not a self-appropriated label - but one thing I have to give props to The Government is its propensity towards acronyms and mnemonic devices to remind us about its programs for Governance.  Take Department of Education Sec. Jesli Lapus’ new acronym to remind us all of punctuality:

WATCH: We Are Time Conscious and Honest.

That read WATCAH to me, but let’s just give it to Sec. Lapus to remind us all to wear wristwatches.  Or:

GMA: Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (among other things).

Whatever.

Of course there are those days that I think our Government runs things by way of a slambook…

JAPAN: Just Always Pray At Night… perennial classic.

ITALY: I Trust And Love You… too bad about Jolens.

BALIWAG: Beauty And Love I Will Always Give… the fuck was that?

MALABON: May A Lasting Affair Be Ours Now… I think the motel rows are in nearby Caloocan myself, but there’s no acronym for that.

PARANAQUE: Please Always Remain Adorable, Nice And Quiet Under Ecstasy… there’s something kind of wrong here, since I think the PCP is being sold somewhere else, not here.  Not that I know anything about it.

MARLBORO: Men Always Remember Love Because Of Romance Only… change of cigarette brands in order.

Then there’s my favorite:

SAN MIGUEL
EXPERTLY BREWED
PALE PILSEN
AND BOTTLED BY
SAN MIGUEL
BREWERY
PHILIPPINES
NET CONTENTS: 320mL

Here goes…

Sa
Aming
Nayon

May
Isang
Grupo
Uminom
Eh
Lasingan

Erbi’t
X
Pinaghalo
E
Rinde
Tuluyang
Lasing
Yan

Bawat
Round
Eh
Washing
Eh
Di

Pati
Ako
Lasing
Eh

Putang
Ina
Lasing
Sila
Eh
Ngayon

Ang
Nangyari
Dito

Bawat
Order
Tumba
Tong
Lasing
Eh
Dumapot

Buti
Yelo

So
Ang
Nangyari

May
Isang
Gagong
Uminom
Eh
Lasing

Bawat
Round
Eh
War-freak
Edi
Rambulan
Yan

Pati
Hostess
Inupakan
Lahat
Inupakan
Pati
Pulis
Inupakan
Nahuli
Edi
Selda

Ngayon
Etong
Tangang

Constabularyo (Philippine Martial Law Cop)
Ominom
Nalasing
Takas
Eskapo
Nag
Tuloy
Sauna

320
Masahe
Lang

Corny, but true.

I don’t want to expound on politics and golf any more than I already did; for all intents and purposes, I’m already bored by it.  Before any more “revelations” come my way, let’s motor out of the fracas and translate some songs.

Man, that felt good… for a while I thought I’m going to be stuck writing serious stuff for a while.

For this week’s lyrics translations, I took out a page of the 1990s songbook and attempted to translate a few songs by Boyz II Men.  Anyone who had an ear in the nineties would know a lot of these songs by heart, or listen to them because of heart-related issues.  And no, I’m not talking about angina or coronaries; Boyz II Men songs are perfect for people with broken hearts.

That alone is good enough reason for me to translate lyrics.  Here goes…

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The controversy surrounding Nasser Pangandaman has the DAR Secretary (Pangandaman Sr.) appealing to bloggers to “stop the attacks.” While I’m not one to deny Sec. Pangandaman of his inalienable right to cry foul - and yes, many foul statements have been made against his family at this point - he seems to be a little bit on the other side of Zen:

Since Bambee’s blog, the story about the incident in the golf club spread through the Internet.

Bloggers condemned and some even put up a signature campaign for Pangandaman’s resignation.

Pangandaman said his family is hurting because of the bad picture being painted on his name and family.

He appealed to bloggers to stop accusing them on the Web. The secretary even warned bloggers against karma.

“I appeal to the bloggers to stop this. They also have their families, they have parents and siblings. Our family is already hurting. I hope this doesn’t happen to you (bloggers),” the secretary said.

First of all, I don’t appreciate the idea of dragging families into this issue, no matter how arbitrary the term may be.  Restraint and prudence should definitely be practiced, but the involvement of both Pangandamans in this issue is not in the interest of malice, but has factual bases.

I was reading some interesting pieces on the issue today, like that of Noemi, Butch, Pat, and Regnard, yet this issue reminds me more of Maupassant’s classic English class requirement than anything else.  There is wisdom in the assertion that this is a small issue made big, but there is also wisdom in the assertion that this is an issue that demands action.

That is why we should not forget this issue, and treat it as the black eye that it is.  Like every issue, the squabble is a microcosm of a lot of things wrong with the way things are going (OK, here and here and here).

Yet this issue should also be a wake-up call to action.  I’m not saying that we should draft an impeachment complaint to sue the pants off the Pangandamans and make Bloggers’ Intervention/Impeachment II, but we should be able to act responsibly and steadfastly when situations call for it.  Bitching and whining, yes; but how much of the pakyu and the tanginamo (excuse the Esperanto) frames this issue in terms of what it is?  Is it about the squabbles of the rich and the noveau riche, or is it about an injustice taking place?

Yet for all the bitching and whining that is taking place between the Hauchecomes and the Malandains of this issue, we’re pretty much privy to it.  Like the villagers who saw the fight between Hauchecome and Malandain as nothing more than a battle of differences between strings and pocketbooks, many still see this as a battle of whodunnit first at the golf course many of us can’t afford to go to.

While they squabble about who struck the other first, some of us fail to frame this issue along - not to separate it from - the many different injustices we all suffer.  The fact that something occured means that it cannot be denied.

Robinson’s Galleria
6:34 PM

I sometimes think that Ortigas, for all its failings and flaws, looks prettier when it’s empty; when the only traces of light come from the few cars that whiz by, when there are no employees shuffling from building to building, when there’s no traffic, when there’s no one there.  I guess the only way I could appreciate Ortigas so much from a misanthropic point of view is when there’s no one there.

Having no people around gives me a man-alone feeling that I almost always enjoy.  Perhaps Armstrong had the same feeling when he first walked on the moon.  Or the blissful feeling Amundsen felt when he reached the South Pole.  There’s no one there, or there could be someone there… we just don’t know.  I guess that you can never fully appreciate the beauty of a place when there’s nothing there but place.

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OK, what follows will be a rather offending rant.

Alexander Lacson, the author of “12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do To Help Our Country,” wrote a commentary piece for today’s Inquirer.  While I’m not one to deprive Mr. Alex Lacson of an opinion, I am afraid I must offer a dissenting one.  My belief is that Filipino pride is rested on prejudices; that while we Filipinos should be proud of the Philippines, we should be embarrassed at the way things are going.

I don’t know how to top Sparks’ entry regarding that commentary piece, but I do offer this paraphrase.  I think that in my own little way, I can frame the anger and the disdain that I have personally experienced over the past year.  It is by no means a pedantic, self-righteous sense of anger, but a subjective sense of it; a personal feeling of being wronged and deceived.

Please pardon - and take heed to - my paraphrase of your piece, Mr. Lacson. - Marocharim

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I was informed by a friend that I’m back in the news… again.  Following the incident at Valley Golf and Country Club, my take was taken up by posts in Inquirer.net and PinoyExchange by DJ Yap and Alex Villafania:

One blogger, Marocharim (http://www.marocharim.com) criticized the re-appropriation of agricultural land into golf courses. “The least you could expect is to demand courtesy and respect from everyone in the [golf] course.”

Rather than having at least one reader out there wonder how in the heck do you pronounce “Marocharim,” what I did in fact say was this:

A lot can be said about the issue of agrarian reform (like, say, CARP) at this point.  Heck, it’s ironic - even sarcastic - to speak of the caprices of golf when you’re running the Department of Agrarian Reform, and if you’re a mayor in one of the poorest provinces of the Philippines.  That, though, can wait for another day.

OK, I wasn’t “misquoted” by Yap and Villafania; I suppose that one of my Plurks may have leaked out to the world.  Today being the “another day,” allow me to take advantage of the angle that both Yap and Villafania decided to highlight.  (I don’t know how and why, but thanks anyway…)

The interesting question: if you hold a Government position, should you play golf?

Hmmm…

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