< grain of salt starts here >

Hi, I'm Marocharim. I'm a writer-slash-blogger-slash-sometime-poet-slash-meantime-fictionist-slash-social-media-guy. I write about things you probably already know. Read at your discretion. Stuff I write do not represent the point of view of my employer.
Truth is in the (Im)Balance

Truth is in the (Im)Balance

I figure that this passing essay belongs in the immediate domain of someone like, say, @iwriteasiwrite or @ellobofilipino – but having not written anything for the past few weeks I think I should write something here as meaningful filler.

I firmly believe that the wrong solutions to the wrong problems find their roots in a wrong sense of history.  A wrong sense of history leads to wrong perspectives, in turn creating wrong analysis, which leads to the wrong methods to achieve the wrong goals.  Worse, a wrong sense of history is, for all intents and purposes, a wrong sense of truth.

Note that I’m talking about senses and not sides: to say “side” would mean entertaining untruth into the way we view ourselves (which is really what history essentially is: to recognize truth).  Which is why I’m writing this post as meaningful filler: when and how we tell the story of our nation is to tell – so to speak – the story of us.  While the function of something like, say, social media is to grant us the right to say something, the function of history is to grant us the wisdom and perspective to understand.

When social media functions as a historical resource, it should share history.  Truth, for that matter.

November 7, 2011 15 comments Read More
Tinamaan Ako. Anne Curtis. Translated.

Tinamaan Ako. Anne Curtis. Translated.

I really do not know why.

October 26, 2011 0 comments Read More
Tilting at Windmills

Tilting at Windmills

“There be dragons,” proclaims Bobit Avila in his latest column for The Philippine STAR, railing at the pro-RH crowd and the Communists among us, calling us back into the fold of the Catholic Church, and cites a laundry list of somewhat inappropriate examples of holy punishment to guide the lost sheep back to the shepherd.  Similes, metaphors, and correlations which, for lack of a better term, are made in heaven.  Surely the wages of sin find their own fires in Hell, for Franco and Mussolini and Hitler and the Communists he so hates, but the Earth is surely not one of them.  And maybe column spaces may be too limited to note that, among others:

  • The economic crisis in Spain is caused by property bubbles, unemployment, and long-term credit deficits and loan crises, not a reproductive health law;
  • Spain is not a Communist country, it is a Constitutional monarchy, and;
  • There’s a really huge difference and disconnect in the metaphorical device of “the new Herods,” since the Massacre of the Innocents was anything but a public health measure enacted in Judea.

I really don’t mean any disrespect to deeply religious believers when I take up an affirmative position on the RH Bill, but it’s discussions like these (and “RH Bill will be a source of corruption” – so since roads and schools are a major source of corruption let’s stop building them, too, and that every other public good that can be grafted from should be eliminated altogether… more on that when I feel like it) that become very grating points.

October 18, 2011 0 comments Read More
Super Bass. Nicki Minaj. Translated.

Super Bass. Nicki Minaj. Translated.

Oh yes.

October 13, 2011 4 comments Read More
A Dental Visit

A Dental Visit

On so many different occasions, this blog has been host to a lot of (undeserved and unnecessary) posts that have maligned the profession of dentistry, just because I have more than my own fair share of tooth problems.

Like here, here, here, and here.

My dislike for dentists bit me back in so many ways: abscessed molars, dental caries, extractions, impacted tooth removal, advanced prophylaxis, root canals, braces, caps, veneer, and everything else short of dentures.  I’ve called dentists everything from “holy mouth-men,” referencing them in some deep circle of Dante’s hell, and everything else in between.

Make no mistake about it: I hate dentists.  I do not deserve to own teeth.

Could a visit to some different sort of dentist change my mind?  Hmmm…

October 11, 2011 0 comments Read More
Sin Carne

Sin Carne

In Mahar Mangahas’ column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer, he claims that the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) has reduced its standards for food.  One of his more poignant examples:

Dinner was changed from: pork adobo/pechay guisado/boiled rice/banana latundan to fried tulingan/boiled kangkong/boiled rice.  Thus pork is replaced by tulingan; the poor may not enjoy the national dish of adobo any more, presumably due to the extra cost of vinegar, garlic, etc. In fact, the new menu excludes all meat, including chicken or beef, from what the poor may eat.  Pechay is replaced by kangkong.  The banana at dinner is gone, implying that the single banana at lunchtime is already enough fruit for the poor for one day.

I’ll be the last to say that a poor Filipino should indulge in foie gras or have lechon every day, but for purposes of being literal, these are items that the poor probably don’t eat.  Then again, setting a threshold at this level is, in my view, a tad too dehumanizing.  If not for the fact that the poorest of the poor already consider adobo a luxury considering a diet of watered-down instant noodle sabaw (and no, I’m not exaggerating), it should give us insight into what the poor eat, and what the poor should eat.

October 8, 2011 0 comments Read More