PORN FREE

CYBER ADDICTION

Now I am getting worried: an article in the papers suggested that this insatiable desire to be plugged into the net can now be categorized as an addiction.

It is not as if I have to deal with my nicotene and caffeine fixations ... not to mention my obsessive/compulsive excursions into retail therapy (read: shopaholic), do I have to wrestle with the realization that I am now a certified www-junkie? OK, OK ... I must admit that I am unreasonably spending so much each month ever since I upgraded to DSL ... and the only reason I did that was because I wanted to download faster and not have to pay additional fees to my dial-up server. Neither can I justify why each and every place I frequent must have SOME access to the internet --- whether I am hibernating in my residence or getting fine white sand on my feet in my Boracay adventures. Simply put --- I cannot live without logging in. Not anymore.

I cannot estimate the amount of damage staring at a monitor can do to one's eyesight. Perhaps this is an excuse I give avoiding all affirmations that age has got everything to do with slowly going blind. But then I estimated that with every available free time in my waking hours, I am seated right here, pounding on the keyboards and trying to check my virtual chums in Friendster, Myspace, Connexion and Tickle ... as if this were all of my social life. If not that, then I must be skimming through the tomes and DVDs at Amazon.com, finding excitement in bidding at eBay or even Googling everything from alopesia all the way down to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Or shall I also admit that there was a time I printed out nearly a hundred pages of recipes for biscotti as well as ingenius ways in making pasta using Italian sausages and eggplants?

Yes, this has become not only a way of life but my life ... and what a life! Now I dread that I have actually become a half-life.

Or worse --- what about the chatting? Years ago it was with Yahoo and MIRC ... now graduating to Yahoo or MSN with a webcam. Ah, and that is another joy of technology: the webcam. Some of my friends (meaning those who still belong to my age range and who exhibit some form of computer literacy) do not understand the thrill of having a webcam pointed right at my over-bloated forehead capturing me in moments close to embarrassing. Whether fresh from sleep or in dire need of going to bed, the webcam exposes me in my natural homely attire --- something I would only allow my mother to see but now available for the rest of the techno-plugged world.

Once I had a most animated conversation with a hearing-impaired twenty-two year old from Indianapolis using the webcam. Having learned the international sign language (for reasons I will elaborate in a less pressing time and within the range of subject matter), I actually spent close to an hour looking like an absolute idiot, gesticulating on the web cam while he replied using the same. There I was twisting my fingers and trying to have a really deep conversation with questions ranging from "How are you?" to "I am your friend" while gaping at this little lens situated right above my monitor. When I told some of my friends about this, they asked: "Couldn't you have just typed out the questions and answers rather than break your fingers and wrists doing all the sign language stuff?" I do not believe they understood me when I replied, "But I have a webcam!!!" Maybe it is because some of them use the webcam for other purposes --- like indulging in activities that were once upon a time relegated to peep holes.

Now I do not know if there is a definite cure for this so-called addiction. In the meantime, I have upgraded my computer (again) and even close to three in the morning, I find myself bonding with what could be the most effective synthesis of world society... pounding on keyboards, gaping at the monitor ...and trying to look pretty for the webcam. Yes, this is not much of a life.

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THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS

We had dinner out tonight. Tats Manahan wanted us to meet Monina Diaz, the director of the controversial documentary on the world's most famous Shoe Lady named Imelda. It was more of a casual laugh-a-minute, getting-to-know-you sort of thing that people over thirty-five consider as substantial entertainment for the evening. Together with Unitel boss, Tony Gloria, I and my two best friends --- Manny Castaneda and Don Escudero -- wanted to spend this Sunday evening without the usual dosage of Wansapanatym or the Videoke K Challenge. The prospects were delicious.

At a hotel coffee shop, we spent the evening twittering and keeping Ms. Diaz informed about the scenario of Filipino media. Now based in the U.S. after taking her graduate courses in filmmaking, Ms. Diaz has become a cause celebre of sorts, not only because her documentary won a prize in Sundance. Borgy's Grandma, either out of self-promotion or simply out of a need to have the blazing spotlight pointed at her coiffured direction, has filed an injunction delaying the original playdate of the documentary for the Filipino audiences to see. Imelda has not lost her media savvy at all. She still has that ability to elicit public attention and curiosity ... a talent that can only be matched nowadays by Cory's Favorite Youngest Daughter.

Although we were indulging in the usual menu of bashing, dishing and talking about people who were not there, we also got ourselves completely engrossed with the conditions prevailing in Philippine media. It was not exactly easy explaining to Ms. Dia why the most popular television show in the country today is about a mermaid (now imprisoned in an aquarium). It was ever more difficult to rationalize to Ms. Diaz why amidst the flurry of First World Movie Magic blatantly exhibited by releases like Spiderman 2, Harry Potter 3, The Day After Tomorrow, Troy and Van Helsing that we still come up with movies like Volta.

We tried, in very simple language, to explain to each other why good eye candy like Spiderman 2 can gross thirty million pesos on its first day of showing ... whereas the grand total of all the earnings of the five films of the recently concluded Manila Film Festival only reached P3.2M on its opening day. We had theories flying left and right, over and above each other's heads ... all leading to a simple conclusion that times are so hard that nobody is willing to pull out a hundred bucks to watch formulaic Filipino movies ... whose plots and elements can be seen everyday on free tv. We did not even dare rationalize the standards of mediocrity matched by the power of marketing and advertising that defines the cinema landscape of Gloria's Strong Republic.

And as we switched topics from the inane to the profound, we were completely engrossed with our attempts at intellectualizing that no one noticed that someone must have approached our table and cunningly stole Manny Castaneda's bag.

After all, we were in the famous coffee shop of an even more famous five star hotel. Who would have suspected that even in sacred venues such as this place (where a meal of Hainanese Chicken Rice, two glasses of dalandan juice and three cups of coffee can warrant a thousand peso bill!)should also be a happy hunting ground for petty thefts who victimize very comfortable clients either enjoying the food or the company.

We were stunned for a while as Manny realized that he has lost his wallet, his credit cards, his driver's license and his Chanel compact. We were shaken by the thought that as we talked of much bigger things ... and proposed such grand designs ... that the real problems that surrounded us became such a blur that we have lost complete touch of the more awful realities. As we further theorized on who could have done such a ghastly deed, as the manager of the restaurant and some other on duty officers came to assist Manny with various affidavits and God knows what else you need to do when such a crisis takes place, some petty thief must be counting his loot ... and patting himself for such a wonderful modus operandi.

The dismal state of Philippine cinema and television is not THE problem. What we were mentally deconstructing was only the manifestation of a much larger crisis that involves real people ... providing unfathomable dangers in places that seem to offer safety.

It is not the mediocrity of thought but the blatant corruption of a culture of poverty that has gnawed its way to make us all realize that, indeed, there are no more sanctuaries left ... and paranoia is no longer a byproduct of a demented mind.

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THE FOURTH OF JULY

This should be interesting.

I have not entered any posting for quite some time for a good reason or another. Definitely not because there is no reason to pour out random thoughts and rantings about things happening around us: hey, this is the Philippines, remember? Not a single day passes that events do not range from the downright comical (even to the level of slapstick) to the incredibly surreal. It is not cyber-fatigue either: perhaps it is just this feeling of mental constipation ... that too many things are happening all at the same time and that I realized that there is no panacea left, no sweeping statement available to cure all ills and make this place a better place to spend the rest of human existence.

But again, let me repeat: this is, after all, the Philippines.

In this country, for instance, we have laid down a curious history. To think that history is written by the victorious. And since I am no scholar of this discipline, the random sampling of events happening in this country do not really constitute much of what can be called a "history." If the story of any nation should provide great lessons wherein mistakes are made benchmarks to improve the people or hone the sense of nationhood, then there is only one recurring theme that tends to reverberate. Pinoys have not learned ... or may be hard on learning ... or will never learn.

I still think there are more than a million of my kind who think the way I do. Considering the bloating population of the seven thousand whatever islands that constitute this archipelago, the law of probability is that so many Pinoys have graduated from indignation to frustration to resignation ... and then eventually somnambolism.

All I have to do is read the front page of the daily paper (while trying to regain my consciousness through a mug of coffee and effort to face the day) and my blood pressure shoots up. All I have to do is plod through the day, listen to rumors, unsolicited opinions, watch Kris Aquino or any of the noontime shows ... then go straight into the night for prime time news, straight to the telenovelas and eventually the "screamathons" packaged as television debates ...and I never fail to feel that I am living a life so completely unreal. Go through this process seven days a week and you will understand why seventy percent of your relatives are living either in Mississauga in Toronto or Daly City on the West Coast. They have left the country not only for the better paying jobs (since God knows it isn't any easier out there anywhere) but to preserve their sanity ...or sense of human dignity.

Try dealing with your daily dosage of Filipino politicians and you have all the reasons to purge the contents of your stomach and develop fashionable bulemia. A great line from the rather insignificant prequel of "Star Wars" has the Great Jedi Master telling his ward, "Never trust politicians": he could have been talking about the Pinoys who have entered the game of being an elected official. For if there is any creature more disgusting than in-your-face television hosts and personalities, then it is the Filipino politician. Perhaps this is also one good reason why so many in Philippine media end up in politics. Crassness and duplicity are best exercised on cam before they are brought about to portable pulpits rich for opportunities in the art of grandstanding.

OK, I have had it with Pinoy politicos. They are ALL one and the same. Let me repeat that for emphasis: they are ALL of the same phyllum ... like unicellular amoebas that shift shape and form, undergo meiosis or mitosis ... but still end up being basically the same animal.

In the recently concluded national elections, I was asked why I opted not to vote and instead flew to an exotic beach in order to wear sarongs and have coconut oil massages. My reasons were quite clear and definite: in an election where you choose a president who is "lesser evil" than the rest, there is no point in exercising one's right of suffrage. I will not be privy nor instrumental to the perpetuation of suffering.

I was not surprised at all by the turn of events immediately after the voting. In the Philippines, there is only the winner and the cheated. No one really loses an election in this country: perhaps it is our natural love for paksiw or sinigang that Filipinos have a spontaneous and predictable way of sourgraping. We love to stomp our feet, cry bloody murder ... then whimper all sorts of invectives while finding the next best opportunity to get even.

Funny, but in a span of about three and a half years, some of the heroes of the impeachment of Erap have succeeded in turning themselves into complete buffoons ... all in the name of ambition, partisan loyalty or God knows which of the two millions there are available. So-called men and women of dignity and prestige, catankerous with their promises to dedicate their lives to the upliftment of the Filipino people, have shifted gears in their careers and have become circus performers. Aside from playing political musical chairs ("Kalaban mo ngayon, kakampi mo bukas"), it is not the art of the possible that should be the bone of contention. Rather, it is the crassness ... the sheer vulgarity ... the amorality of politicos and their minions singing "Bayan Ko" yet with very obvious self-serving agenda.

So this Fourth of July ... as we celebrate an imaginary independence from the Americans and unconsciously celebrate the fulfillment of the status of a republic in this nation, I simply lean back and sigh. A new president has been inaugurated in Cebu wearing a recycled gown while the bickering and snickering still reverberates from the legion of the defeated. As water cannons were aimed at the noisy and the News and Current Affairs of the networks continuously feature the prophets of doom wailing, "We'll never make it ... we'll never make it ...", I begin to appreciate the wisdom of those who packed their bags and are now memorizing the lyrics of Star Spangled Banner with such gusto and determination.

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THE PRESIDENT'S GUEST

Just when I thought that I have completely lost my capacity to be surprised, I made a fatal error of watching the late edition of the news. The bigger irony was that I was in a quaint yet dinky eatery --- one of these hole in the wall restaurants at the heart of Timog where every imaginable restaurant and other forms of earthly entertainment seemed to have converged to create a universe all on its own. While attacking a grilled squid and devouring a dinner that was about two hours too late, all I had to do was glance at the television set positioned high above the noisy and gastronomically challenged crowd to see the news snipper about the latest visitor at Malacanang Palace.

Jerry Yan flew into town and created enough havoc to send a substantial percentage (perhaps nearly all) of the female government employees stationed at Malacanang Palace to completely lose any sense of decorum and behave like teeny bopper fans overdosing on uppers. Well, yes --- such behavior was to be expected --- if you were as old as Angelica Panganiban or that actress who appeared as a granddaughter having to deal with a grandpa suffering from Alzheimer's disease in a hamburger commercial. But the fact that they all sported that same predictable look --- sack-shaped floral printed dresses, sandals or low-heeled shoes meant for comfort or commonly used in Passion Plays during Holy Week --- resembling the kind of mothers who visit the beauty salon about once a year and still fixated on baby blue eyeshadow --- did not only disturb me but confirmed something I feared for the longest time. Living in the Philippines can and has become completely surreal.

OK, OK, OK. So close to everyone is still going crazy over the Chinky Foursome in Meteor Garden, that kind of soap opera that offers nothing exceptional unless one has a taste for Asians trying very hard to look like they were slackers in West L.A. And, yes, yes, yes ... maybe it is because Filipino audiences are practically barfing at the sight of the same pre-fab actors and actresses conceived/manufactured/packaged by television stations and exposed eight days a week that we have resorted to a near-sacrilegeous adulation of Taiwanese pop idols. Why not? Aside from the fact that the mere sight of vacuous young Pinoy stars tends to give anyone a case of double vertigo --- the over-indulgence and near-fatal dosage of pagpapakyut has reached a near-saturation point --- give or take an occasional attack from showbiz talk shows accusing them of either being homosexuals or being a kept lover by one.

Jerry Yan, for instance, will never be accused of impregnating any available fertile starlet of dubious past and reputation ... not unless he stays here long enough to be immersed in the real insanity of our popular culture. Instead he will remain that fictional character he portrays in the most popular Tsinovela airing on prime time broadcast. He of the confused hair and the perpetually lonely eyes need only to flex his biceps and sing a song (solo or with the three other Musketeers) to send electric jolts and therefore bleating from the part of his vulnerable fans. It is easier to adore someone who cannot mutter a single syllable of Tagalog ... or even English. His being conveniently incommunicado spares him from being quoted ... and therefore misinterpreted.

But the fact that no less than the President of the Republic ... and her controversial First Hubby should greet a Taiwanese Boy Wonder with all the pomp and circumstance deserving of a foreign dignitary gracing our shores requires some further thinking.

We can indulge in all sorts of speculations. We can be more forgiving (ergo, understanding) by saying that the Madame may be a fan. For all we know ... between asking her husband to explain who is Jose Pidal or trying to find new ways to parry the next coup attempt, she could be rushing to some sacred and inaccessible portal of the Palace by the River catching every episode of the series and identifying with the pig-tailed heroine. Or one might suspect that she may be trying to gain pointers on how to achieve such rabid popular appeal ... something that the dear lady never acquired considering how her spin doctors have practically done everything to make her more palatable to the masses. From labandera to older sister, they have continuously repackaged her to feel like a human being ... and not some alien whose basic conversation always involves a discussion of macroeconomics. Whatever.

And then, of course, there is 2004. Pati ba naman si Jerry Yan gamitin pa sa pangangampaniya?! My God! Madame President should realize that this Hunk from Taiwan has replaced Richard, Jomari and Diether in being the face of Bench ... although a great many are wondering if he, too, will take the place of Mark Nelson and Jon Hall in the underwear billboards that should bring back heavy days even to menopausing ladies ... as evidenced by the squealing of that sort amongst the Palace employees.

So amidst this circus --- the perfidy that has permeated the popular consciousness of the entertainment-addicted Pinoy, I am only left to wonder.

How does Jerry Yan feel about all this? Let us go get a translator/interpreter. Worse, amidst all that excitement in the Palace, what did the Honorable Hilario Davide ... candidate for impeachment and whose issue has brought about a new low in dividing the nation ... feel about this event?

I am shocked. But I am not surprised. Only in the Philippines, I tell you.

WELCOME TO THE TITANIC

What will they think of next? The capacity of Philippine politicians to work on a demolition job in the country is something quite extraordinary. It seems that there is this suicidal drive --- fuelled with such determination --- to create disequilibrium, reap havoc or provide interesting events to mangle the backbone of governance.

Perhaps this is a result of boredom --- or an innate desire to create drama thereby certifying the status of the Philippines as an authentic banana republic. If we are not busy wrestling with mutineers holed up in a posh hotel atop one of the upper crust shopping malls, then we are preoccupied with impeachments. Of course, we are merely exercising the privileges of democracy --- but then again nowhere in the doctrines of the Great Founders of the Political Philosophy of Everyone's Equal is there a footnote that indicates fussing, backstabbing and maneuvering as tactics for reassurance or affirmation.

So now they are trying to boot out the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Interesting, indeed. The man most revered three years ago as he stood his ground and retained his dignity while senators squabbled and danced the jig is suddenly thrown into the piranha's pond with allegations of corruption.

The country has developed this allergy for icons and role models --- although we conveniently create overnight poster heroes out of those who have the gall to go on nationwide television to admit acquisition of venereal disease and dramatize domestic events as if these bore the same significance as the US attack of Iraq. We keep complaining that there is an apparent dearth of Filipinos who embody any form of idealism --- yet the system perpetuates the lynching of those who charm their way to elicit admiration from the thinking ... as if to disprove that there is really any single one among us ... popular or anonymous ... who deserves any kind of respect.

Then we wonder why we are free-falling into the darkest corners of Hades? Then we keep asking ourselves why we move one step ahead then take great efforts to move four steps back? Then we ask ourselves why an action star --- an indefatigable hero of the movies --- has strong chances of winning the highest position in the land? Then we accuse the masses of being undiscriminating or downright stupid for being such lapdogs to machinations of media?

To even ask these questions is but moot and academic. Whether we like it or not, we are all scavengers when it comes to discovering principle and idealism. We are all third-class passengers biding time on the Titanic.

THE BIRTHDAY ISSUE

For some reason --- both understandable and strange --- each birthday elicits a unique kind of depression.

It has got everything to do with the mortality factor. One does not encounter the big deal with age until the thirties come to an end ... and you begin to realize that you are getting more and more attracted to people who are old enough to be your children. The whole frenzy that accompanies youth ... the exuberance that swells with energy, courage and even recklessness --- is something that does not last forever. Somehow each candle added to the yearly butter cake wrapped with multi-colored icing mean absolutely nothing aside from another fire meant to be blown accompanied by a silent wish. Then one morning, everything changes. One realizes that youth has passed ... and that you are being treated with pronounced respect.

At first you find the "Sirs" and "Ma'ms" signifying your stature as flattering. For inasmuch as youth is embraced with all the strength of a wrestler's bear hug, the years move too fast for anyone to notice how everything slips by so fast. And there are those who simply refuse to age --- believing that by perpetuating a specific brand of lifestyle that include near-inhuman waking hours and the capacity to boogie till you can't no longer boogie no more that the biological time clock will stop ticking ... and get stuck to a particular quadrant of the space/time continuum. Of course that is not only wishful thinking. That kind of fantasy, conscious ... but, for the most part, unconscious ... comes something close to say ... a bubbling fountain of youth.

And that is why birthdays can be depressing. In a world where everything is judged by numbers, the ever-increasing age tends not only to diminish opportunities for lapses into insanity ... but instead increase the pressure of "behaving" your age ... or slimming down the chances for childish fun. When you cross that line when any claims of being young art heart works against the emergence of bodily factory defects, birthdays can be most dreadful even if everybody is wishing you were happy or you have more of the same date of the year to come. Yeah, right.

A STRONG REPUBLIC

A number of months ago during the Career Orientation Week of a university, I had the chance to be seated beside a businessman of utmost importance. I assumed that he was a bigshot considering the family name he carried as well as all the fussing given to him by nervous college students quite unaccustomed to the presence of demigods amidst the blue jeans and texting universe.

While waiting for the symposia to start, we ended up quite casually talking about Philippine politics, a subject matter that I have deliberately avoided out of sheer fear that I am going to exhibit the careless abilities of my machine gun mouth and thereby end up being downright tactless and abrasive. Having resolved that I should use charm over and above a natural tendency to bitch, I decided to limit my comments and reactions to perfunctory uh-huhs and Oh, really? with the hope that he would not deliver some mind-boggling statement that would send me off to the stratosphere and thereby be possessed by uncontrolled eloquence.

But at a certain point he sighed and said, "Given the choices of who are going to run for president this coming year, I would vote for ----, being the lesser of the range of evils."

This somewhat stunned me. No, I stand corrected: this knocked me on the head with a particular blow not because I experience some groundbreaking epiphany. What this gentleman in an immaculate white long-sleeved shirt and what looked like one of those four thousand peso ties from Linea Uomo said encapsulated all the dread and disgust I and so many others have been experiencing but never acknowleding to the point of verbalizing.

Only then did I realize the disturbing state of affairs. No, I am not even talking about the maimed economy of the country despite all the fanfare that accompanies supposedly statistical data saying that we are better off than we were three years ago. I am not even responding to a hasty generalization that the country is a) hopeless, b) direction-less, c) pointless or even d) headless. I was knocked off my feet at the thought that we must have reached such a nadir in our history to choose presidents out of an assortment of dregs equipped with the talent of posturing and the even more mundane capacity to dish out promises at every available opportunity to give a rah-rah-rah speech.

It can be disorienting to think that indeed there are no more heroes, no more role models ... no more ideals to even give the illusion of hope or to keep whatever fire or ardor burning. Instead, we are left with the choice of lesser evils ... as if the country has been transformed into a cursed kingdom ruled by a variety of demons or nincompoops.

Or maybe it is merely the air of cynicism taking alternate turns with the spirit of apathy once again possessing a people not showing any interest in even participating in the coming elections. Perhaps they have given up all hopes for change ... or they are too bored to be bothered to register at their local municipal halls because they would eventually have to make choices between the lesser of a line-up of evils.

That is most probably why I shudder each time I hear the pronouncement that the entire thrust of the present disposition is to usher in a strong republic. I am not equipped with all the rudiments of a flamboyant political scientist who can argue with platforms and foreign policy as if he were rendering equations to point to basic logic. I was disturbed by the irony of such great aspirations and good-sounding pronouncements while breathing the air that smelled completely sterile of any idealism ... or hope whatsoever.