Maiba naman tayo: pagpasensyahan niyo na ang balu-baluktot kong Filipino.

   Sa aking pagmumuni-muni sa mga napag-aralan ko noong kolehiyo, naisip ko na mahilig ang isang sosyolohista o antropologo sa malalalim na dahilan ng mga problemang panlipunan.  Ngunit ang mga sopistikadong pagkakahulugan sa mga problemang panlipunan ay karaniwa’y hindi ang tamang pagkakahulugan.  Kungsabagay, madali lang naman sisihin ang “Sistema” sa lahat ng problema natin: di rin ba tayo sistema?  Istruktura na lang ba ang nagdidikta sa atin?  Sadya na bang ganito ang krisis ng ating pagkatao, na wala tayong kinalaman sa problema ng ating sariling istruktura?  Biktima na lang nga ba tayo lagi?

   Hindi ko yan kailanman matatanggap, ke sosyolihista ako o manunulat.

   Di ko rin matanggap na walang disiplina ang Pilipino.  Hindi ba disiplina ang magising nang maaga, mag-overtime sa trabaho, o magpuyat sa pag-aaral?  Sa akin lang naman, wala lang tayong konsepto ng pila.

   Gasgas na linya, pero yun nga yung masaklap, yun yung masakit.  Wala tayong konsepto ng pila.  Noong Lunes, nagkaroon ng welga ng mga pampasaherong sasakyan.  Payag na sana akong mahuli sa trabaho dahil walang sasakyan, pero meron namang MRT.  Kaya lang naman ako nahuli ng ilang minuto - at minu-minuto ding kaltas sa sweldo iyon - dahil walang konsepto ng pila sa MRT ke may welga o wala.  Walang diretsong pila, walang bangking na pila, walang pila.

   Kanina, pipila din sana ako sa may ATM para mag-withdraw ng pera.  Dalawang daan lang naman sanang ilalabas ko dahil sa katapusan pa ako susuweldo, at kumakalam na rin sikmura ko sa 12 oras ng trabaho.  Nakapila na ako’t lahat lahat sa may ATM, pero biglang may babaeng sumingit.  Ayun: bigla na lang sumingit lahat.  Nawala na parang bula ang puwesto ko sa pila.

   Natanong ko sa sarili ko: Pilipino pa rin ba ako dahil may konsepto ako ng pila at dahil pumipila ako?  Parang masakit yung tanong, pero gaano nga ba ka-totoo iyon para sa aming may pasensya at respetong natitira sa sarili para magkaroon ng espasyo?  Mas masakit na tanong: ano ba talaga ang pila?  Bakit ba kinakailangan pa minsan na lagyan ng mga pang-harang ang mga lugar na dinadaluyan ng tao?

   Minsan naiisip ko kung talaga bang problema natin ang NBN-ZTE, o kung meron pa ba tayong pag-asang manalo sa Miss World.  Kumpara sa malaking problema na wala tayong konsepto ng pila, parang mani-mani rin lang pala ang kurapsyon sa gobyerno.  Kung ang “pila” ay nangunguhulugang “disiplina,” sus, ang laki ng problema natin.  Di talaga tayo uusad bilang isang bansa.  Bakit, kailan pa ba tayo gumawa ng masama para bigyan ng “disiplina?”

   Sabi nila, sa kangkungan na pupulutin ang Pilipino.  Mga kapwa ko Pinoy, may pila din po doon.  Sana doon, malaman na natin ang halaga ng pila.

   I don’t believe in luck or serendipity or anything, but I’m sometimes tempted to believe that omens and good fortune come in all the right places.  If anything, I think that good karma won me my first job.

   I can barely pick my way around Ortigas Center, so I decided that the shortest route to the office building would be the corporate headquarters of San Miguel Corporation.  It turned out to be a bad idea, since I could have saved myself a few steps by not going there at all.  It was 10 AM: I was getting a bit sweaty, and my boots took their toll on my feet.  And I was damned nervous.

   Then an old beggar woman approached me.  “Sir, palimos naman po, pambili lang po ng bigas,” she begged.  In this land of tall buildings and John Gokongwei, she stood in stark contrast to the Ortigas trend of business casual.  If she looked that thin, I could only imagine the sight of her children.

   For the few seconds that I dug around my pockets for spare change, I think we stood in stark contrast.  There I was, dressed in the smartest way I could muster with blue jeans, trying to make a place for myself in this world.  There she was in her faded blouse, her old skirt, and her tattered sandals that you might as well consider her barefoot.  I was begging for a job, she was begging for spare change.

   With the five bucks I gave her out of my way, I entered the office expecting a nightmare.  As it turned out, I was only there to sign a contract: I’m employed.

   I don’t know exactly what got me my job, but I do know of one thing.  Fortune smiled upon me that day, and I’ll always remember that crosswalk near San Miguel Corporation… and that woman who got me my first job.

   Felix the Cat had the yellow Magic Bag, Doraemon had the pouch of gadgets, and girls have kikay kits.

   A kikay’s handbag holds many mysteries.  Like Horace Miner’s holy shrine among the Nacirema, it is common and at the same time strange.  For such a small container, it holds just about everything necessary for the social survival of the kikay: twelve brands of powder, eleven bottles of cologne, ten lipsticks, nine lip balms, eight boxes of Tic-Tac, seven mascaras, six eyeliners, five make-up kits, four packs of napkins, three pocket mirrors, two mobile phones, and a partridge in a pear tree.

   As a man, I’m left to wonder how it’s possible to pack a designer handbag with everything deemed “necessary” by the kikay.  Maybe it has something to do with the even distribution of weight, or that girls figured out bulk matter transmission way before men did.  It’s not my business to tell girls how to live their lives, but what’s so necessary about it?

   Take leave-on conditioner, for example.  Having long hair myself, I think I know a thing or two about haircare.  Spreading all sorts of semen-like goop all over your hair in the middle of the afternoon will not give you kinamay lang umayos na hair: it’s all about proper combing (start from the bottom, work your way up, and use even strokes).  Or blush: I don’t understand why girls like making themselves look like clowns.

   In the end, it doesn’t make sense to me.  After all, I’m a man.

   As you may very well know by now, the issue on AGB Nielsen’s ”tampered ratings” have become headline stories in four major national newscasts: “24 Oras” and “Saksi” by GMA-7, and “TV Patrol World” and “Bandila” by ABS-CBN.  If that isn’t enough, the two biggest networks in the country have not only taken this to the courts, but are also trying the case on the court of public opinion by running minute-long advertisements on the issue.

   This is obviously not about ratings: this is about dominance and control.  “Ratings” disguises the dominance-and-control agenda implicit in the messages of GMA-7 and ABS-CBN.

   Media - particularly traditional broadcast media - exhibits the potential to dominate and to control the collective consciousness.  More than anybody, they have the capacity and the capability to transmit messages that can (dramatically) alter public opinion and public perception.  As such, it becomes important to someone that calls you “Kapamilya” or “Kapuso” to control you and make you subservient.

   I’d like to be a bit academic (just a bit) with my arguments here: the least I want to happen is for people to misunderstand this idea of “dominance and control” to be a mere rhetorical device I’m employing as a disgruntled viewer.

Subject-referring properties and polarizing dichotomies

   Free TV is not “brainwashing” anyone through mind-altering television signals, but through corporate-guided messages broadcast through those television signals.  GMA-7 and ABS-CBN, through a series of consistent messages, have effectively polarized much of the public between being either “Kapuso” or “Kapamilya.”

   The philosopher Charles Taylor talks about “subject-referring properties:” things that refer to the subject, for example emotions, bear a certain import [1].  These imports sort of “speak” to the subject: a subject deems the thing important, and such sees value - no matter how superficial it is - in the object.

   The term “Kapuso” (employed by GMA-7) speaks to the romantic in every Filipino, while the term “Kapamilya” (employed by ABS-CBN) speaks to core Filipino family values.  The problem is that these are, by and large, catchphrases used by both networks: these are not truly genuine statements of love or of family.  While it is true that some network talents really live up to being “kapamilya” or “kapuso” in the strictest sense of the term, living up to the slogan seems to be much more important.

   What the corporate broadcast media elites have succeeded in doing is to alter the public consciousness enough into believing that “Kapuso” or “Kapamilya” mean something beyond the slogan: that in a shallow semiotic, you are actually a “lover” of, or “family” with, either station.  So much so that there is only but a dichotomy that exists today: it’s either you watch ABS-CBN as a “Kapamilya,” or you watch GMA-7 as a “Kapuso.”

   Claude Lévi-Strauss proposes that the dichotomy - the binary opposition - is a paradox reflected in myth [2]: it is, by nature and by application, contradictory.  If you’re not alive, you’re dead; if the color is not black, it is white; and if you’re not “Kapuso,” you’re “Kapamilya.”  Disregarding Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance for now, all binary oppositions take as a given that one must take primacy over another.  What the corporate broadcast media elites are doing right now is to take primacy: that one has a better quality of programming than the other network, that one has better ratings than the other network.

Ratings as propaganda

   Ratings themselves are irrelevant to average viewers.  Ideally, ratings are supposed to be confidential statistical presentations that should be used by networks to improve their programs.  However, ratings have been successfully used by both networks as a tool to legitimate their viewers’ statuses as “Kapamilya” or “Kapuso.”

   Both networks, in their respective TV ads [3], claim that this issue is not about who’s first or who’s second: this is merely about “the truth.”  “The truth” is rather obvious at this point: it is a matter of personal preference, and all Filipinos switch channels at one point or another in any given time of day.  A die-hard “Kapamilya” or “Kapuso” - that is to say a household that is always tuned to ABS-CBN or GMA-7 - is extremely hard to come by, and I might as well stick my neck out in saying that such a household doesn’t exist.

   The corporate broadcast media elites, however, have succeeded in saying otherwise.  You won’t tire of hearing “number one” being blurted out in television shows and ads for television shows.  Ratings, like any statistical exercise, are broad overviews: they will always have blind spots [4].

   More importantly, ratings do not measure the quality of programming or the strength of television signals: the truth is, they validate or repudiate the marketing strategy and the effect of network propaganda in a given area.  It does not have to be fair or it doesn’t have to be fought on a level playing field, as much as it only has to be effective.  This is where ABS-CBN is winning the battle for cable dominance, and why GMA-7 is broadcasting a hotline number for SkyCable-related complaints in the news tickers for “24 Oras.”

The denial of choice: “The truth” and its consequences

   So if ratings don’t measure quality programming, what does?  Short answer: it’s a matter of personal preference.  “Quality” means so many things to different people, which is why ABS-CBN and GMA-7 continue to struggle over this.  More and more people are shifting over to cable programming because of the poor quality of free TV programs.

   But for the bulk of the Filipino people who rely upon aerials, cable is not an option.  The most successful polarization in local free TV today is on the noontime gameshows “Eat Bulaga” and “Wowowee,” where both Joey de Leon and Willie Revillame have been venerated without understanding.  Where Willie is seen as a savior by many of the poor, he is seen as a cheater by Joey.  All of a sudden, it no longer matters to the people if you would go to EDSA to decry your disappointment with the government and demand change: it becomes more important to choose between Willie or Joey.

   The ratings war took this to a whole different level: an average viewer is presented with a choice between ABS-CBN or GMA-7, or suffer the consequences.  A respected journalist like Sandra Aguinaldo, for example, is at the center of GMA-7’s reportage on tampered ratings: instead of being the well-respected documentarist that she is, she has become GMA-7’s nighttime mouthpiece for the most publicized libel suit in Philippine history.

   Domination is at the center of the Oedipal figure in the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari [5]: Oedipus colonizes its members, represses desires, and organizes them so much so that they behave in a controlled fashion.  The Oedipal figures of “Kapamilya” and “Kapuso” has structured us so much that even the potential to switch channels is repressed, discouraged, and annihilated: our viewing habits controlled not according to our own needs and desires, but to what is profitable for, and beneficial to, their interests.

   As Oedipal figures, “Kapamilya” and “Kapuso” link us into seemingly inexonerable, permanent associations with TV networks: with the caveat of the prefix “ka.”  Oedipal complexes are triangulated: Daddy-Mommy-Me.  The two big TV networks don’t: its me and ABS-CBN, me and GMA-7.  This is a vertical relationship: a relationship of subjugation and of control.  A free TV viewer is left with absolutely no choice but to watch, to be dominated, to be controlled.

   They have succeeded at this point to be at the absolute extreme of the Oedipus Complex: our lives as a people are now revolving around free TV.

“You have nothing to lose but your chains!” 

   This is the battlecry of Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto: I’m not saying that we should tread the path towards Communism, but I’m saying that we should all be wary of the dominance-and-control agenda of the corporate broadcast media elites.  The imperative is not just resistance, but outright rejection.  You do not resist Oedipus: you reject it.

   My case against Filipino free TV is to reject it outright: to reject domination, to reject control.  We should reclaim our inalienable right to free choice.  Cable and satellite must be made readily available for the populace, so as to grant them more options in the way of quality programming.  Networks like IBC-13, RPN-9, and ABC-5 should improve their signals and churn out quality programming instead of home TV shopping shows.

   But the legitimate threat to the Oedipal oligopoly that is ABS-CBN and GMA-7 is the viewer: I urge you to stop watching their programs.  Do not allow yourselves to be controlled by their sloganeering and their self-serving advertisements.  And if you are forced to watch their programs, remain critical: have a good, solid idea of what you want to watch, and compare that idea to their programming.  Do not be swayed by their promotions and their ads: reject being a “Kapamilya” or a “Kapuso,” and remain who you are to the very end.

   It is not the ratings that are tampered.  The people have been tampered.

Notes

[1] See Taylor’s essay, entitled “Self-Interpreting Animals,” in Philosophical Papers I: Human Agency and Language, 1985 Cambridge University Press
[2] Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, 1970 Harper and Row
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHod3-G5I6g
[4] “Disputes in statistical analyses,” http://www.informath.org/StatDis.pdf
[5] Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1983 University of Minnesota Press

   My uncle - who tonight left the Philippines to go back to work at Seattle - is thinking about putting up a business here instead of working abroad.  I made a joking suggestion about putting up a funeral parlor.  Surprisingly, he - along with my parents - look at it as a very good idea.

   In the indy movie Ataul for Rent, Joel Torre became rich - and mad - renting out coffins to his neighbors.  While Ataul is a good study in the nature of man, it led me to assume that there is profit in dead people.  For one, funeral parlors have a steady source of profit: people die all the time.  For two, we Filipinos spend so much in appeasing the souls of the reposed.  For three - and this is just me - I like the idea of driving a hearse.

   In my father’s hometown of La Union, “Joces” is a ubiquitous name: it is the most famous funeral parlor in Bauang, San Fernando City, and beyond.  What started out as a backyard funeral home turned into a multi-million peso family-owned franchise.  From what I’m told, Joces not only has a flexible payment rate, but it also rents out chairs and tents.  The people at Joces also provide free biscuit tins and brewed coffee to its clients to defray the costs of feeding mourners.

   (In case you think I “sold myself” to advertise a funeral home, I did that for free: nobody at Joces told me to write about them.  So there.)

   When my grandmother died a couple of years ago, I became very interested in the idea of being a mortician or a funeral director: even better yet, a driver of a hearse.  There’s something about driving a corpse around town in neutral gear.  While I’d prefer to stick my earphones in for anything other than “Hindi Kita Malilimutan.”

   I was watching some sleazy softcore flick at Pinoy Box Office last night (I think it starred Roi Vinzon, who lost his bid for the Baguio City Council last election) where a stripper came on and danced to the tune of “Lady in Red/The Way You Look Tonight.”  It wasn’t particularly erotic: it reminded me of Wendy Valdez in “Margarita.”  And shedding your clothes (OK, taking off your bra from under your negligeé) to the tune of bad karaoke music doesn’t help, either.

   It’s not like I’m a morally-upright person: I’ve been to more than a few strip clubs before (because they serve cheap beer, and not because I’m a sex addict).  Not that I can say anything about floor shows that involve lathering up the dancer with a bar of Mr. Clean.  I can tell you about floors sticky with spilled beer, the unappealing aroma of Hope and smoke machines, and the unmistakable smell of sweat and semen.

   One thing I’ve observed is that the Filipino stripping catwalk has transformed from being something confined to bra-and-panties routines to accommodate fetish.  This involves everything from leather-and-lace to lingerie to traditional costumes.  Japan is particularly known for enjo-kōsai, subsidized dating that involves Japanese schoolgirls.  This has been adapted to in local erotic tableaus, with entertainers dressed in sexed-up versions of parochial schoolgirl uniforms.  Akin to what you would see in animé.

   Music also adds to the tableau, but it’s something generally confined to slow music from the days of the jukebox.  It’s not unusual to see strip show routines that involve Tom Jones hits, from something as obvious as “Kiss” to something as dubious as “Green Green Grass of Home.”  But that has given way to Lito Camo dance music, trance, and lately, Sean Kingston (damn “Beautiful Girls”).

   Oh, you should check out Pablo Francisco.

   Last night, me and a few friends scored invites at a gala dinner sponsored by Shell Northern Luzon, held at the Baguio Country Club.  It’s a lot like a Hollywood buffet, without Wolfgang Puck, the caviar canapés, and Jack Nicholson.  It wasn’t bad… but as long-time Marochaholics would already know by now, I’m not at my happiest in corporate-sponsored dinners.  All four of us - me, Dette, Bep, and Bonnierick - were underdressed.  In our blue jeans and rubber shoes, we stuck out like sore thumbs in a sea of three-piece suits and evening gowns.

   As much as I’d like to write about the “Jingle Shell Rock,” I would rather have it that it never happened.  It’s like a bad hangover that ended up with a menopausal old woman getting pregnant by your seed.

   While I like to have my own fun at the expense of rich people, even I know when I’m supposed to feel a bit of shame in being underdressed.  Thank goodness that Dette’s family was there and registered all three of us boys for the event, or else we would have been booted out for being common folk in the same social strata as gas boys.

   Not that there’s anything wrong with filling up gas tanks, but when the waiter is better dressed than you are, you might as well wish you dissolved into the glass carafé that holds your water.  Or if you’re like me on a lucid interval, you would have approached the table with the most glamorous-looking people, unzipped your pants, and gave them a healthy helping of the bubbliest champagne from the very depths of your bladder.

   That’s for jacking up oil prices, bitch!  While I’d like to give the next ass a Belgian chocolate fondant from… uh, my ass, that wouldn’t sit (so to speak) too well with anybody.

   I half-expected that waiters would take up my order of binagoongang baboy and free soup, but I forgot that this wasn’t my usual fare from turo-turo: this was a buffet.  A snooty one where “bistek Tagalog” is “beef striploin” and “chopped bacon” is a misnomer for bits that come off a plastic can.  Because I’m not well-acquainted with dinner-table etiquette, I assumed that I should just take a little bit of food and not go back for a second helping.  Then we all realized that the buffet table ran out of dessert.

   Don’t get me wrong: I had fun… sort of.  Pictures will follow.

   A recent Pulse Asia survey shows that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is the most corrupt President in the Philippines, followed by Ferdinand Marcos in the #2 slot and Joseph Estrada in the #3 position.  This is no survey that you would like to jockey a top spot for.

   But wait: should we make a big deal about statistics in the first place?  After all, Benjamin Disraeli wrote that infamous quote: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

   Whenever I do social science, I wouldn’t rely on statistics for two reasons.  One, I’m not a good statistician (I took my Statistics course twice).  Second - and perhaps the most important - is that statistical data is all-too-often misread and misinterpreted.  Numbers show something, all right, but the numbers rarely ever tell the story.  To me, the story behind the numbers is perhaps more important than the story the numbers tell by themselves: numbers beg the question of sampling method, statistical tests, and so on and so forth.  As such, any statistical presentation of anything is itself a source of doubt.  Which is a good thing and a bad thing at the same time.

   I’m not an Arroyo supporter - for heaven’s sake I’m an Arroyo critic - and I must say that while I agree that Arroyo is corrupt beyond reasonable doubt, there’s just no way in hell an unbiased and objective survey would point to her being second only to Marcos, or even Estrada.  Had Marcos been a non-factor, she would definitely top the list of the most corrupt Presidents post-Marcos.

   Here’s why: every corrupt excess Marcos had in two decades of iron-handed rule is the absolute benchmark of corruption (I hope) in the Philippines.  You can throw every shred of evidence of corruption against Macoy and you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to back them up: from the billions plundered and coursed through Swiss bank accounts to Imelda’s shoe collection when Malacañang was raided post-EDSA I.  Surely, Arroyo wouldn’t make the same mistake in being far more corrupt than Marcos to incite the anger and revulsion of the Filipino people in being “more corrupt than Marcos.”

   As far as Erap is concerned, say what you will about the Sandiganbayan verdict, but the verdict just goes to show that if we cannot indict the former President fairly and justly for plunder, we might as well indict him for a thinly-disguised charge of incompetence.  The evidence against Erap, as the prosecution panel said, can fill up a room.  If it did, then what more for Gloria?

   Here’s the thing: I’m not downplaying the negative effects of surveys against the President, but once the survey’s findings becomes questionable, then it is possible to downplay the whole idea of the survey.  Especially when the survey is supposed to corroborate something obvious.

   Not too long ago, I was talking to an instructor-friend of mine: like me, he has no love lost for Arroyo.  But he brings up a rather interesting point: aren’t the allegations against GMA completely circumstancial, like connect-the-dots painting-by-numbers things?  If anything, my general impression of the Arroyo Presidency is that it has proven to be a scapegoat for everything wrong with this country: if you can’t blame anyone else, blame Arroyo.  This goes for everything from the ULTRA Stampede to the death of Marrianet Amper.  Giving her the title of “Most Corrupt” only serves to add to the long list of “circumstancial crimes” we can pinpoint to GMA.

   Anyway, here’s what I think: statistics only tell half the story.  The other half still remains as speculation.

   I live in - and for all intents and purposes, I love - Baguio City.  I was born here, I was raised here, and if anything, I would prefer to die here.  I wouldn’t have problems in the afterlife if I am to be interred in the crowded necropolis that is the Baguio City Cemetery.  My love for Baguio has been a 22-year love affair: ever since I was born, I knew of no other place where I should live.

   I live near Brentwood Village, a place I sometimes refer to as “Little Seoul.”  Pardon the pun, but it is one Seoul-ful place, where Koreans have settled with their questionable residency certificates and business permits to operate English language centers.  Anyone fresh off college and looks for work would be hard-pressed not to find an ESL center at Brentwood, teaching a foreign language to foreigners.  It is the irony of it all.

   I’m not a “nationalist:” if anything, I share the same conundrum the Mahatma himself, Mohandas Gandhi, faced when he returned to India: he had to speak English instead of Hindustani.  At least I don’t have to suffer the nationalistic indemnity and damnation of having to speak a few words of Korean in order to “properly” communicate myself.  But I’ve learned a few bits and pieces of Hanggul: to know that a given place is either a church, an Internet café, or a bar and restaurant.

   There’s a bulletin board at Porta Vaga that’s the exclusive domain of Koreans: signs written in Hanggul advertising heaven-knows-what: prayer meetings, boarding houses, business opportunities.  I don’t know, and I wouldn’t know until someone is patient enough to teach me the language.  Not to be ethnocentric (the anthropologist’s mortal sin), but somehow I find myself irritated at the Korean invasion.  I feel an invasion of my space.

   There is, was, and forever will be an aversion to the invasion of space: whether it is personal space, interpersonal space, or social space.  Lately, America has been debating over the issue of outer space, even.  Wearing my hat as a passing “social scientist,” I think that everything from global policies to personal identities are built on space: without spaces situating these concepts, we effectively become voided and empty.

   And so perhaps I couldn’t be blamed for having a negative impression against Korean migrants in general.  Surely, there are a lot of kind-hearted and considerate Koreans out there, but the thing is, I’d rather have my space - and my identity - back where it belongs.

   I was having my morning coffee when breaking news appeared on TV: a kid committed suicide here in Baguio City, somewhere at Cabinet Hill.  I was extremely bothered: Cabinet Hill is a short walk away from my own house, and that house looked extremely familiar.  From the camera angle, it looked like the very same boarding house some of my old college friends rented a couple of years ago.  It was enough to have the hot coffee stop halfway down my gullet: if anything, yet another lucid interval yesterday had me hallucinating on the matter of a girl hanging herself, not too far from where I live.

   To further corroborate and validate some lingering suspicions on the death of that girl, a friend of mine blogged about it.

   Damn, I thought: what is it with kids killing themselves nowadays?  I would be extremely happy to assist an Angst-ridden emo-loser’s suicide if he or she wants to kill himself or herself with the bristly end of a toothbrush, but this is just ridiculous to the point of worry.  Back in Original TMX, one of my later entries was the suicide of 12-year-old Mariannet Amper, wher I wrote:

“We can only speculate what went on in Mariannet’s mind that All Souls’ Day when she found herself in that room with her hand clutching a makeshift noose.  Maybe the poverty was too much to bear that she decided to end her misery once and for all.  Maybe she couldn’t take it anymore.  Maybe she cannot have any more than what she already has, so the grim future was to be found at the loop of that noose.”

   Much as I hate to admit it, we can only speculate what happened to that girl who killed herself at Cabinet Hill.  Depression, maybe?  Sexual abuse, perhaps?  Or maybe there’s just something in the wiring of the human brain that just leads you to do things that you would not usually or rationally do, like kill yourself.

   There are things that even speculation would not solve: why a 12-year-old girl would make a noose out of a belt and rags and hang herself from a second-floor window.  I won’t play to the hypocrisy and hype in saying that this is “martyrdom,” but it’s a sad state of affairs.  Depression is caused by too many things: it is anomic, it is the failure to adapt and to integrate.  It is something that’s not only the failure of one person, but society in general… when we fail to live and to keep living.