Are you guilty of graft and corruption?

(New measurement scales)

I have a brand-new project for the new year: Listing down in grisly detail the various ways we all have corrupted ourselves with our corrupt life. Help me begin by sending in your list. I'm waiting with an evil, knowing grin. If you can include the disastrous consequences of each corrupt practice, that would be great. Those who insist they are not gulty in any way may threaten to do an Oblation run -- so we'll have the luxury of shouting in protest, "Oh, nooo, dooon't!!!!" Haha. Happy New Year! Later.

Okay, I'm backs! Here goes...

Parents: Do you literaly bribe your children so they perform well in school or behave at home? You're sending your kids tis message: One should do good not because it is the right thing to do but because of the reward.

Kids: Do you bribe your parents so they give in to anything you want (especially your fishy or rotten requests)? You're training your parents to become big-time crooks someday.

Students: Have you paid your teacher so he or she will grant you a passing grade? Have you faked your UP or university diploma in Recto (why the city of Manila can't get rid of this enduring instrument of infamy is a major world wonder)? Have you bought your thesis from the neighborhood drugstore or asked someone to write it or think or do the research work for you?

Teachers: Have you agreed to any of the above? You're doubly guilty of promoting miseducation.

Anyone able: Have you paid or illegitimately muscled your way to a government job/private firm job? Think of the more qualified talents you bypassed and are not languishing in unequal-opportunity hell.

Anyone: Have you paid the registrar (specify the office) under-the-table fees to fast-track a document or service you want completed, or for the document to move at all? You gave in to what I call an 'inside job,' the hidden regular windfalls hidden beneath a legit but tainted job. Think of the mind-boggling delay just because you refused to pay the 'acting' job, but think of the rights you violated of others whose papers were there ahead of you.

Media: Do you pass off paid-for materials as hard news? Goodbye, truth; hello, propaganda.

PR people: Do you wine and dine mediamen more than allowed by law? What? There's no law?

Employers: Do you give unjust compensation to your employees, fail to remit SSS benefits -- in other words, shortchange employees in any way? The heavens are crying out for vengeance for your crime.

Workers: Do you goof off instead of conscientiously delivering the goods you were hired for? You're guilty of estafa.

Contractors/Businessmen: Are you being forced by an unwritten law to pay local government and high-ranking officials the minimum 10% in under-the-table deals just to win bids and for the project to be approved and started? Have you participated in any rigged bidding, where you wine and dine each and every signatory to the contract with government? Did you evade your taxes? By how much and for whom? Do you manipulate the law of supply and demand?

Political constituent: Do you ask your local politico for a free burial/funeral or to stand as a lavishly gift-giving sponsor at your or your child's/fami member's christening, wedding, death, etc., as though it's the politico's expressed or sworn duty or election promise? Multiply the number of people with the same idea and imagine the political pressure resulting.

Voters: Have you sold your vote? Have you ever voted under a faked name, especially the name of a deceased registered voter? Hasn't her/his ghost haunting you lately?

Clergy: Do you curry political favor in any way? Are you a respecter of power above morals? DO you accept dirty money knowingly and turn a blind eye on the corrupter's personal and social sins? Have you used parish money illegitimately or without transparency?

Doctors: Do you prescribe medicine according to med reps' bribe bid?

Lawyers: Do you receive bribes for illegally manipulating a case for or against your favor?

Prosecutors: Have you ever entered into a prosecution-for-a-fee 'agreement'?

Anyone: Have you received any bribe just so you keep your mouth shut when you should speak up, or mouth off a lie when you ought to tell the truth? (Knowing whether to speak or not is also crucial.)

Congressmen/Senators/Governors/Mayors: Do you accept fat brown envelopes mysteriously sourced from the Chief Executive to buy you into blocking an unfriendly (to the Chief Executive) but essential (to the citizenry) bill? Have you ever received interest-group/lobby-group money delivered in sleek attache cases to influence your resolve for or against a particular piece of legislation? Do you invent contracts with padded figures?

Police: Do you collect protection money of any and all kinds? How many legit and illegal businesses do you keep in business by giving them "protection"? It's a wonder you don't have insomnia.

Military: Have you used your legit (i.e., state-sanctioned) power illegitimately, especially to acquire a posh/cushy civilian position and fabulous property? In a word: Wow.

Supreme Court: Do you decide cases on the basis of shady deals or political or social loyalty or affiliation? Goodbye, justice. Do you accept bribes, for cases to win, prosper, move, or die a sudden death?

New People's Army/Other rebels: Do you harrass legitimate businesses by extorting your so-called "revolutionary tax"? Okay, I know it's complicated, like Friendster says, but simply answer yes or no.

Commission on Elections: Do you accept money for the various ways that the voters' turnout and election result is fixed, shaved, padded, or creatively manipulated using Adobe Photoshop, magical macros, or simply White-Out fluid? By the way, why can't you automate the elections up to now? What happened to all those computers you purchased?

Drivers/motorists: Do you offer generous payoffs so you won't be fined or your license revoked for a violation you committed? Have you ever used power and position to escape penalty?

MMDA personnel: Are you in cahoots with people in power and people with money offers so they get exempted from city ordinances, particularly traffic rules?

Land Transportation Commission: Do you knowingly harbor fixers in your vicinity up to this time? Do you allow "colorum" PUVs to operate and run rampant?

Bureau of Customs/Bureau of Immigration and Deportation: Did you ever allow anything/anybody illegal entry/exit -- for a secret fee, of course?

Bureau of Internal Revenue: Have you received any bribe in the name of illegal tax reliefs and tax evasion?

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency: Have you participated (i.e., recieved 'rewards') for exonerating drug pushers from influential families?

City Engineer's Office: Did you ever receive bribes to gloss over Fire Code violations or construction shortcuts and substandard methods?

Professional Regulations Commission: Did you ever fudge the nursing exam results, for a song? Were you the perpetrator of any exam leakage, in cahoots with some review centers? Did you fake any professional license lately, for a fee?

Department of Public Works and Highways: Did you knowingly greenlight any project for substandard roads, schools, and bridges? If so, who were involved and what are the stakes? How many millions did you save -- and thus make?

Any government office's Accounting Department: Have there been any irregularities in choosing subcontracted businesses?

Any government office's Human Resources Department: Have there been any irregularities in the hiring of personnel?

(To be expanded as the tabulated results come in. Later.)

Fish, I want fish

This holiday bingeing, as expected, isn't helping me get any healthier. The very day I went home, I was greeted with a pit-roasted goat dish -- a salivary gland stimulator to this unrepentant carnivore. Next came the usual meats: invariably made of pork. This coming New Year, I anticipate the parade of chicken and beef dishes. I am drowning in animal protein (the footed kind) and swimmingly royally in high-density lipoprotein (that's bad cholesterol). I want fish. Give me fish. I want to live longer.

**

Speaking of food, did you know that the stuff we've always called rice noodles are not necessarily made of rice? If you carefully read the packets the products come in, you'll read cornstarch (as in the case of a certain brand of bihon), flour (made of wheat?), peas, broad beans (what's this?), etc. The other week, I was at a gathering where pancit sotanghon (glass noodles) was served for dinner. To start a conversation without making anyone feel uncomfortable, I asked something that I thought was apt for the occasion: "Did you know that sotanghon is made of monggo?" The question, if backmasked, translated subliminally to, "Would you believe we're having monggo for this dinner party?" I insisted it was true, but the guy next to me simply laughed out loud. Hahaha, he said, loudly. And everyone joined in. Everyone insisted the noodle was made of rice. Since nobody believed me, I began to doubt myself. How could I even consider that it was made of mung bean? But "No, really," I insisted and was growing offended because I was serious and yet everyone was acting like I was telling a joke, or worse a lie. Prophets are indeed never welcomed in their own turf. "This is, technically speaking, a vermicelli," a friend, who was close by lectured to me with an unbelieving face, "and it must be made of rice." "No, it's made of monggo, I was told." I couldn't remember who told it me exactly, though -- most likely it's my cousin L., and whether she was serious then or not. But I felt certain I had verified it one time as I scanned the Ingredients list of one product. As we tried to have second helping -- the pancit dish was delicious, especially with the steamy puto that came with it (I dunno how they could make sotanghon so delicious), I ended up really disbelieving myself. It could be that sotanghon was indeed made of rice, and I was being to naive and easy to fool. The next morning, I consulted my favorite research aide, the Internet, and voila, "most vermicelli are made of monggo," according to one article. Alright, it's the highly unreliable Wikipedia, but so what. I had preliminary evidence. I lost no time YMing my friend who didn't stand by me in trying times. Ah, I felt relieved to be finally proven right. Yeah, I thought so, too: Being the last one to laugh is sweet luxury.

**

I miss Manila. I love the clean unpolluted air here in the bondoocks, the freshly brewed Batangas coffee that would've cost me a leg and an arm in Starbucks, the stars that blink in the sky at night, the vegetables and fruits that are picked right from the backyard and frontyard garden, neighbors streaming in and out of the house bearing good gossip and gifts like Magi, red wine and Red Horse with the boys (Edward gave us a nice box of Marsha's Delicacies rice pudding (it's just rice, but tasty!) and Ilocano longanisa (yummy! garlicky!) straight from Laoag), the pastoral scene along the way home, and the the relative safety and gentleness, and unstressful pacing and harmlessness of it all, but I miss a lot of other things. Apparenlty, the QOL (quality of life) of promdis is superior in many ways, but for a city rat like me, I've learned to accept the compromise, and enjoy the best of both worlds whenever I can. Or maybe it's just me, I'm just too picky and don't easily get contented with my lot. But guess what, my hometown is now a first-class town, thanks to the income tax returns of this hot-shot guy named Quiambao (a contractor responsible for the MRT). And, whoa, the town just had its first McDonalds, Shakey's, Goldilocks, and an air-conditioned mall complete with a longish escalator, a giant grocery store, waterless urinals, Internet cafe, the works. Wow. As usual, I have mixed feelings. I felt like the word PROGRESS is being written on my hometown's forehead (Bayambang is the country's capital for a grand total of ten nanoseconds during the reign of Aguinaldo - hah, bet you didn't know that!), but I also read the word DEATH in the foreheads of small-time business plus whatever is left of the town's native culture, including its indigenous products. And with modern diet, of course, comes the associated illnesses. I hope there's a healthy middle ground somewhere. The real reason I'm sad, though, is that the kids aren't here this year. Sob. Later, crocodile.

The secret meaning of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song

I receive this in my Inbox each time it's Christmas and just received it today. I thought it's worth passing on for the sake of history buffs. I hope no harm is being done in any way, like passing off non-Snopes-verifiable info.

"From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics (where? everywhere?-R.O.)were not permitted to practice their faith openly. During that era someone defied the control of Rome and wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of this church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.
-Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.
-Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.
-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.
-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.
-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit--Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.
-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.
-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit--Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
-The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.
-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.
-The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed."

Merry (Twelve Days of) Christmas Everyone

Three proposed bans

To the MMDA:

Please ban the ff.:

1. Badjaos begging. The SLEX is too dangerous for them to do their thing. Let's not wait for accidents. The kids converge at the curve of the road from Fort Bonifacio to SLEX. Please think of an alternative for these unfortunate children.

2. FX taxing forcing five passengers into the back seats that are designed to accomodate, according to physics and common sense, four normal individuals only. The nerve of these FX taxi drivers and operators. They are blaming local government and the local police for exacting a penalty of some sort, but must we passengers shoulder the punishment? Ban the shameless overcrowding in FX taxis.

3. Firecrackers. Contrary to Chinese superstitious beliefs, firecrackers won't bring us swerte, they brings us malas; just like idolatrous feng shui charms, they don't drive demons away, they attract them. It's bad/evil/un-Christian to be superstitious. Ban firecrackers! If anyone disagrees with my religious reasons, then we can always revert to citing the medical reasons, not to mention the environmental and commonsensical.

To put it simply, firecrackers are malas. Let's spread this alternative and uncomfortable truth about firecrackers to replace the lie that it is swerte. ...For just how swerte can random killing or mayhem get? Hopefully, the utak-pulbura among us will finally have an open mind.

Global cooling

Brrrrrr.... It's that time of the year again when opening the front door is much like opening the refrigerator. I'm not sure I like this. As you know, I've lived in Baguio for four years, but I never liked the weather because I couldn't take a shower as much as I wanted to, I always needed a heater, my skin always felt scratchy, it's hard to sweat out, and so on. But since this is the only time of the year when we get to have a simulacrum of Baguio weather, I might as well enjoy it. Climate change -- bring it on. "Nippy" is the word. And "chestnuts" roasting on the open fire...

Review: 100

From the south, I traveled all the way to the north to the latest biggest strip mall in Manila, SM City North EDSA, to check whether Henry Sy was doing the redesign work right. Major finding: He is! The dome, the covered walkways, the wavy wall panels, the matte metallic finish -- all employed architects with the right taste, it seems. The mammoth mall was being rushed for completion, but that's not really the one we (a friend and I) came for.

The truth is we came all the way there just to catch an indie film we were raring to watch, and it was showing on its last day: Chris Martinez's 100. Our patience was rewarded. It was truly a remarkable film, as reviewed! No major objections from this ocassionally nasty blogger this time.

As you know, it's a movie about death, or about the things someone dying of cancer wanted to do before dying. They say the Hollywood movie Bucket List has already tackled this theme, but I skipped that one, so I can't compare. Reading its plot, though, I can readily sense how the local production fares in comparison: not bad.

100 has all the hallmarks of a Chris Martinez story that succeeds: the right mix and sequence of pathos and bathos, a strong spoofing spirit, perfectly timed moments of restraint and excess, a seemingly droning style of narration but one that ingeniously brings the viewer to a new level at the proper time (i.e., when a part of the story has been developed adequately), and finally, a punch line that leaves the viewer basking in reflection.

There's, of course, Mylene Dizon's superb acting and strong onscreen presence to make the story come alive. She single-handedly carries the film, even though her co-stars are no slouches either in the acting department.

We were expecting the story to go through the usual wringer: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We were suprised to find a story focusing on just the acceptance stage. Mylene's stoic character seems to have skipped the other four vital stages of grief, but I thought her kind of character may indeed be the type that is stoic enough to be very accepting whatever bitter fate lands on her lap. In other words, the story manages to be highly believable despite the potential accusation of being psychologically flawed.

Another minor misgiving I have, if I must have another, is its squeamishness in tackling the subtopics of guilt and atonement/reparation, which are totally BIG issues among those waiting in life's departure lounge. These points are, of course, implied in one scene or two, but the central character - a self-willed, strongly agnostic career woman - is quite not convincing as the same character who would fall hard for one type of guy, let's just say, and steal one-nighters with another type of guy, her what they might now call as FB (sex partner in a loveless relationship). Most dying people would, apart from fast-tracking the fervid reclamation of planned and long-delayed chances at saturnalia, have the afterlife as their major preoccupation and whether they are fit for it -- no matter how much they are morally confused or even when they are amoral all their lives. But I guess, I'm already over-analyzing the movie, which is a dramedy, and thus has the right to a good dose of absurdism. Besides, any audience would perhaps be especially forgiving to anyone who's on the verge of death (as long as the person wouldn't do something on the bucket list that brings another to his dire situation).

With this movie, Martinez seems to wonder what it's like to be on the brink of death, and decides to face his fear by making up this heartfelt-amusing story, thus exorcising his -- and the viewers' -- death hangup in the process. The results are a series of pleasant surprises: unexpected humor side by side all that heavy drama that neither lapses one bit into manipulative maudlin moments nor into black comedy.

Perhaps there were only about 10 of us watching in the cavernous theater, so you can just imagine how freezing-cold it was. After the movie, I found myself clapping instinctively. Oops, wrong crowd. During foreign filmfests, the crowd usually clap unhesitantly for any movie that they find has been worth their while. In my book of recently made local films, 100 is one of those few that make it to that list of stories that elicit instinctive applause, the hallmark of a satisfied audience.

Too bad the 'film' is 'just' in digital format. But thank God for digital. If not for digital, this type of movie would languish in the backburner of stories that were disapproved because, first and foremost, they wouldn't make lots and lots of money.

This digital 'film' makes me want to see the other must-sees in the growing, uh, indie film industry. I must have been missing a lot for not having viewed yet the following titles for one reason or another: Endo, Jay, Tribu, Kubrador, Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros, etc.

Why boxing is inherently an immoral sport

"A ring requiem" by the editors of America, the national Catholic weekly. (via G.)

"The basic reason why professional boxing is wrong is easy to grasp. It lies in the uniqueness of this activity: of all contemporaneous forms of sport in which man is pitted against man, professional boxing alone has as its primary and direct object the physical injury of the contestants."

To Manny Pacquiao: Now that you have lots of money, thanks to boxing, you will want to shift careers. If you want to join politics, fine. Just be sure to take up Public Admin first.

The origin of Christmas Day

Because of far too many misconceptions, especially the ones being spread by American Evangelicals, we see it fit to link this article on the origin of Christmas Day:

Calculating Christmas

"Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

"Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance."

Review: White Chicks

It's so funny the critics just didn't get it. This movie, they claim, is the worst in the season (circa 2004). Hello? This movie is meant to be bad. In fact, it is so bad it's actually good.

No wonder it's a runaway hit among theater-goers and DVD renters. Why? Because it's entirely a novel idea: it pokes fun on topics that normally cause us too much sorrow and actual violence in the real-world, and gets away with it.

The movie is a great spoof of the stereotypes plaguing the world of gender, economic, and ethnic discrimination, awful worlds that unfortunately are often closely intertwined. It upends everything we know about being black and white, about being male and female, and about being rich or poor. How? Watch the movie and quit reading because following is a storm of major spoilers for you. Don't say you haven't been forewarned.

White Chicks has got an interestnig formula. It's got dumb blacks from the hood, but it also features a black man assuming an esteemed position at a government office: law enforcement. It has dumb blondes as well, who are either spoiled heiresses or equally bratty but trying-hard social climbers, but these white chicks eventually get to rub powdered elbows with sexy black chicks. Worse, the white chicks get to cross fashion and musical swords with gangsta-loving black guys and their posses.

There are honest working stiffs that are white, but also white petty criminals and white high-profile gangsters. There are honest working stiffs that are Negroes, but also a black superstar walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the A-list, high society crème de la crème (yeah, that's sort of redundant). There are white tycoons and white dope addicts and big-time Ponzi-scheme embezzlers and possibly top-secret Wall Street criminals partying, with an all-white supremacy and faked charity as themes.

There are popular Vanessa Carlton and Britney Spears songs featured, and there are 50Cent and Black Eyed Peas numbers too. There's even a couple of Hispanics thrown in the soundtrack. Then there's a chick music- and possibly chick lit- and chick flick-loving black lothario.

There is marital suspicion based on stereotypes about men and black men, and then there is also honest work and a sense of achievement among them. There are handsome winking white dudes baiting all the pretty girls, but the stars of this show are equally handsome black dudes.

The scenes are delicately calculated to be NOT believable and NOT plausible to ensure the maximum comic effects.

In this merry hodgepodge of black-and-white extremes, the twains that are meant to NOT ever meet actually get to meet and mix and match, and when they do, there's lots of hip-hop and trippy dancing and the like it's almost tango to me.

This movie can only be written and directed by black guys with brain and heart and a healthy but skewed sense of humor in a world gone totally broke but is trying hard to come to its senses and recover. In other words, I love this movie, I love this movie, I love this movie, I'm going to watch it repeatedly.

Help! I love pork fat so much!

Pork fat must be like illicit sex: it tastes so right but feels so wrong. I especially lust after the dripping fat in carved hams and fried bacons. I slobber over the burnt sliver of fat that ends a richly lathered barbecue stick. I don't spoon off the islands of fat floating on bulalo, ginisang mongo, and sinigang; I slurp and devour them with the greed of a famine victim. I don't avoid the shiny slice of fat in pork chops, nor the rind decorating one end temptingly; I drizzle them with soy sauce and kalamansi (lemon) and eat them. What's a lechon slice, spare rib, siomai, and adobo without its quota of sinful pork fat? Pork fat makes life more meaningful. It goes without saying that I adore dinuguan, sisig, chicarron, chicharron bulakbalk, even bituka because they are all uniquely creamy because they are luxuriantly greased with pork fat. The more pork fat is gotten rid of in a given recipe, the more deliciously tempting it becomes, as when it is grilled and reduced to a mere stubble in grilled porkchops.

Pork fat must not be all bad. It must contain undiscovered vitamins and minerals that prolong a happy life. It should be closely restudied by nutritionists and dietitians. There must have been a serious mistake somewhere. Some people who avoid pork are missing so much in life.

What's bad is beef fat, which tastes and feels totally awful, as though to cause instant atherosclerosis. When it comes to beef fat, I limit my consumption to the tendons (litid) and ligaments because I know that, whenever I eat beef, I also engulf beef fat in equal amount. Eating fatty corned beef is much like eating tallow or candlewax. Next on the list of evil fats is chicken fat, except when the skin is grilled or fried to perfection, or except when we are talking about the yellow fat deposit in the chicken's uropygium.

Now don't get me started on crab fat. What would Christmas be without all the creamy rich, delightfully sinful goodness of fats, especially pork fat.

The tao of si

I learned something new and funny today: "Tao," in Chinese, allegedly means "bean." "Tawpe," for example, is a bean curd wrapper used in maknig kikiam (quekiam). That only means the following words we've unquestionably accepted as pure Tagalog words are not Tagalog at all, but originally Chinese and eventually Tagalized:

toyo (soy sauce) - tao yo ((soy)bean with ???)
tausi (fermented soya bean) - tao si (bean with salt)
toge (mung bean sprout) - tao ge (bean sprout)
taho (soya curd slurpee with lots of syrup and sago (palm starch balls)) - tao ho (bean curd)
tokwa (cheap (roughly made) version of tofu) - tao kwa(?) (bean curd)
tofu - not! this is a Japanese word, but may originally be Chinese (oops, did I just say something culturally offensive?)

Two other soya bean-related terms are, therefore, equally highly suspicious for their etymology: tocho (as in bangus en tocho -- note the misleading Spanish provenance) and tahure (whatever that is). Even vegetable names such as sitaw (string bean) and bataw (whatever bean) are suspect.

Now one wonders why "patani" didn't become, say, "patawni" or "patoni." Or is "patani" Mexican? Aw, you mean, it's a native? Whichever.

We're more Chinese than we thought, is just what I'm saying. "Why are Filipinos so fond of stealing words and converting them into Tagalog?," complained my informant -- to which I only answered with laughter. We do that all the time, don't we, as when we Filipinize certain Chinese names and steal the Chinese identity and convert the names into our own unique names, that's why we have -- voila -- such names as Lacson, Coseteng, Tiamzon, Tizon, Cojuangco, Dypiangco, Syliangco, etc.

No keychains, please!

Dear friends,

Please don't give me keychains this year as Christmas gift. I have already accumulated so many. I've become a hesitant collector of keychains from here and around the world because of this one favorite item that you always give me. I'm not sure if I'm beginning to resent it. They look nice to have, yes, but they end up totally useless, gathering dust and dust mites on the corkboard, as they are lined up side by side, as in a museum display or a firing squad scene. Name a country frequented by Filipino tourists and I have keychains from there. I have my favorites: the dollar bill keychain my aunt in California gave, the Vatican City keychain given by Ms. A. when she went on a trans-European tour (but I already gave the keychain to D. as a birthday present; if I gave you a favorite keychain or something I'd rather not part with, that must have meant a lot to me), etc. I have a Bench keychain, Boracay keychain, Banawe keychain, Aklan keychain, Dubai keychain, Hong Kong keychain, Canada keychain, USA keychain, Singapore keychain, Australia keychain, Mercury Drug keychain, De La Salle keychain, Sun Cellular keychain, horoscope keychain, etc. etc. Stop giving me keychains, please. I've lost count already. And since I don't own any keys, I can't use any. How sad is that. I prefer cash. ...Or any item you've painstakingly researched as something that would make me happy. Oh, wait, since you don't know half of it, let me give you an idea of my Christmas wish list:

-trip to New York, Paris, or Holy Land, or a pan-European tour
-spa treatment package including a foot spa and pet spa, or a slight makeover, complete with fashion tips
-a book of sudoku puzzles (moderate and difficult only, no easy or tricky)
-back issues or latest copies of New Yorker
-nicely fitting collared cotton shirts and polos (with design that makes me look like a part of the regular Makati office type crowd)
-nicely fitting black pants with non-polyester-looking fabric
-navy blue Adidas tracksuit
-fragrance (done)
-DVD of White Chicks or other useless Hollywood movies filled with stupid jokes
-book and movie (and short story) titles I have yet to read in my "Syllabus for self" post (never imagined it would be too hard to complete that darned list); titles from Booksale welcome
-iPhone
-a laptop that won't be useless after a few usage
-stress balls to relieve stress when I am asked to deliver perfect work in a total of one second

-(will add more to the Santa cart as Christmas nears)

Related post: Search my blog for "The art of giving gifts as a form of insult"

The importance of fathers/fatherhood

"The crisis in the family, however, can be further understood as stemming from a crisis in the concept of fatherhood and the very notion of manhood. For it was men—despite what some would like to think—who pioneered the intellectual and social changes that ushered in the family crisis. It was men who first proposed the ideas and who then expressed the behavior of the so-called “sexual revolution”; it was men who first began to reshape society to view women simply as sex objects, which led to the search for new and improved contraception and to the public acceptance and pervasiveness of pornography; it was male scientists who led the experimentation on human embryos and have aggressively pursued human cloning. It was men who first pushed for homosexual “unions” and then “marriages,” and it is men who are already pushing for polyamorous groupings such as polygamy. It was also men who developed the social and political ideas that created our modern notion of the state as an answer for fatherless families—ideas that, when implemented, simply created more fatherless families. In short, men, by withdrawing their allegiance from the traditional concept of fatherhood and by seeking biological and social means of avoiding that responsibility, have been at the very center of our cultural-family crisis. The absence of fathers results in boys and young men who are formed without any understanding of what it is to be a father, and so the problem continues to grow. Thus it is of importance to understand not only the importance of fathers within the family, but also how young men and boys are formed in their attitudes toward the responsibilities of fatherhood and of manhood generally, so as to better understand how we can help to repair the broken family."

Source: Priests and the importance of fatherhood

Bush, whacked. Well, almost. Etc.

There's another new Vatican document: Dignitas Personae

Related story: Vatican Condemns Embryo Research, Cloning, Fertility Techniques

**

Political porn vidz du jour:

Bush ducks as size 10 shoe flies past his head while delivering a speech in Iraq

Gerald Celenta of has shocking predictions for America: America will become an underdeveloped nation in the next few years. (Hope Celenta is wrong.)

Anybody who got a video of Sen. Mar Roxas -- Mr. Palengke himself, going, uhm, palengkero? Hehe. Thanks in advance. Inquirer has a very good editorial on it, so no need to comment further, except to say that the editorial failed to mention this: it's funny the length that Sen. Mar would go just to sound masa. Message to Sen. Roxas, possibly the country's next president: Nothing wrong with being a rich kid, Senator. You don't have to do that. What matters is your concern for the poor masa is real.

(Update: Here it is. Thanks, Willy!)

**

Meanwhile, a forwarded email I swiped from P.P. list:

Language proficiency test (with Answers)

IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS, YOU ARE NOT A TAGALOG SPEAKING FILIPINO

1 Use DEDUCT, DEFENSE, DEFEAT, and DETAIL in a sentence.
DEDUCT jumped over DEFENSE, first DEFEAT and then DETAIL.
2 Use DEPOSIT in a sentence.
I hear dripping in the sink. I think DEPOSIT is leaking.
3 Use DEVASTATION in a sentence.
Every morning I wait for the bus at DEVASTATION.
4 Use PAUL four times in a sentence.
PAUL, be carePAUL, you might PAUL in the swimming PAUL.
5 Use CUISINE in a sentence.
I hope you studied last night because our teacher might give a
CUISINE math.

6 Use PAMPERS and PAPERS in a sentence.
At the gas station, some people PAMPERS and some PAPERS.
7 Use SCHOOLING in a sentence.
(phone rings).....Hello? Who SCHOOLING?
8 Use AFFECT in a sentence.
Maria is wearing AFFECT diamond ring.
9 Use ADIEU in a sentence.
If you are ADIEU, the Arabs will kill you.
10 Use DECANTER in a sentence.
You can order that medicine over DECANTER.

11 Use DEFLATE in a sentence.
Can you please wash DEFLATE for me?
12 Use DELETION in a sentence.
The balat of DELETION is crispy.
13 Use DESPISE in a sentence.
Who baked all DESPISE?
14 Use DIFFERENT and DIFFERENTIAL in a sentence.
I am looking for DIFFERENT of this boy to get DIFFERENTIAL consent so
he can go to the picnic.

AND NOW FOR THE FILIPINOS WHO CAN READ AND UNDERSTAND TAGALOG

15 Use BORROW in a sentence.
Ang dumi naman ng BORROW mo.
16 Use CAESAREAN in a sentence.
Anak, mag-ingat ka, CAESAREAN mo iyang laruan mo.
17 Use CONTEMPLATE in a sentence.
Pare, ang dami-daming pagkain, pero, CONTEMPLATE.
18 Use ARTESIA in a sentence (if you don't know what this is, it's a
city or street at the L.A. COUNTY in CALIFORNIA ) Nako naman, ang
ganda-ganda nang bebot na yun, pero, ma-ARTESIA.
19 CADET in a sentence.
CADET ko si Maria nung isang gabi. Ngayon, ikaw naman ang CADET niya.
20 Use CARDIAC in a sentence.
Na CARDIAC yung kotse ni Pedro noong isang gabi.

21 Use CENTURION in a sentence.
Na-CENTURION si Pedro ng tatay niya dahil sa kalokohan niya.
22 Use DEDICATE in a sentence.
Pag ginamitan ng glue, siguradong DEDICATE iyan.
23 Use DEFIED in a sentence.
What is 2 + 3? Eh DEFIED, dali naman niyon.
24 Use DELICACY in a sentence.
Bagal mo... DELICACY mahuhuli na tayo.
25 Use DEPRECIATE in a sentence.
Sister, DEPRECIATE already, kaya pwede na tayong kumain.

26 DIFFUSION in a sentence.
Brownout...sigurado ng DIFFUSION pumutok.
27 Use LAITY in a sentence.
Taga LAITY si Imelda Marcos.
28 AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST:
Use MENTION in a sentence.
Ang laki ng bahay nila, parang MENTION

Dear online journal,

Is your face ISO-compliant?

Was so stresed out yesterday from the ISO audit the company had. I know ISO certification is a need, but there's a certain alienating feeling associated with it. Work is all about production efficiency, I know, but the human side of it is being neglected. I just can't find the right words right now to describe what's wrong with it. Then again, maybe I'm just an old fogey resistant to change or afraid of change and stuff like that. I'm so not used, knowing how complacent we are in the old company.

Food-tripping

I discovered two foods that I liked: efuven and Pampango-style chicken-pork asado. I tried efuven with a friend at Bacolod Chicken. Efuven is the Ilonggo version of pancit canton, but it's more like ChowKing's crispy/fried noodles to me, only a lot more delicious and appetizing. I also discovered the Pampango version of chicken-pork asado at Razon's. It tasted like no other asados I've tried. It's entirely different from the usual asado and Chinese asado I know. Interesting. The difference reportedly lies in the marination and the use of fresh tomatoes in the cooking instead of tomato sauce.

Another discovery: real-deal haleyang ube (purple yam jam). I'm glad to have finally eaten a real haleyang ube yesterday (after years of fruitless search), which we got from an office manang vendor through a friend from the other side of Herrera. I told my friend Manang must have really big arms, and she laughed because -- surprise -- it's true. Back home, I once tried to help in the cooking of this delicious snack, so I know how back-breakingly hard it is to stir the whole thing, especially when it's time to blend the ube with the condensed milk. What's good about this haleya is that it doesn't cheat the buyer: no extenders, no food color, and only the right (and right amount of) ingredients. The worst ube dessert I've tried either had camote, sawdust, questionable violet food coloring, poisonously excessive sugar, melamine-contaminated milk, and other deadly accoutrements. Even the fastfood stores use inferior haleyang ube. Nothing like the honestly, lovingly made (home-made) version. Of course, I'm gonna be selfish on this, and won't share where I'm sourcing my traditional ube jam supply.

Exclusive and excluded (Or, Hey, is this Malibu, California?)

I spent my Sunday with some other friends in Laguna Bel-Air and South Forbes. Did I just vacation near Malibu, California? Rubbed sun-tanned elbows with Hollywood stars? Nah, I just went to Laguna -- as in Laguna province, south of Manila. As I enjoyed the sparkling, luxurious scenery and navigated the equally foreign-sounding street names, I was reminded of an old essay by Krip Yuson, who beat me into satirizing the Filipino proclivity for foreign-ness in their/our chosen home addresses. It's indeed funny how we prefer our village to sound more like "Villa Tuscany" instead of, say, "Barangay Bakakeng." I was smiling with myself silently, refusing to share my usual viral thoughts, or I might negativize the cool spirit in the air, but I ceased and desisted upon remembering another article reportedly criticizing Filipino culture as a "damaged culture" (haven't actually read it until now). All throughout, as I joined my friends bathing in the exclusivity of the clubhouse, Olympic-wide swimming pool, imported landscape plants, non-smoggy air and all, I was debating with myself whether I should be angry or spiteful or have a let-it-be attitude about it. I decided to be Zen about it. As for me, it's my personal choice to embrace the good things that are uniquely Filipino. My culture is neither an inferior nor a damaged culture. It just happens to be my culture, period, a product not just of my nation's history, but the result of active choices made along the way by my ancestors, some parts of which, though not perfect, I am nonetheless grateful of and now have come to embrace by choice. I certainly won't mind living in Laguna Bel-Air or Southwoods and have handsomely gabled homes in the Mediterranean or Tuscan style, but I'd prefer a modern, abstract, but original and strongly Filipino-inspired design located in a postal address that won't make others feel deprived or left out. With these awful thoughts running in my mind, naturally I had a hard time being there 100% with our gracious host I was chatting with (a homeowner, who told me, among other things, that she's a daughter of a former diplomat to Germany), who was a friend of our actual host, a bubbly and theatrically funny grade-school teacher.

Request to academia

May I have a request for academia? Would you come up with just one definitive global citation standard, a gold standard, if you will? My head is spinning right now, thanks to the different citation standards I know, for I've been confusing everything with each other. I'm sure students are having the same problem. Students of law use Turabian. Some old-fashioned teachers stick to Chicago. Australians used the Harvard style. Doctors use the AMA style. most Americans use either the MLA or APA, depending on the education level and course or field. I'm not sure what they prefer in Philippine schools, but since Filipinos are de facto Americans, students must be confusing themselves with a lot of rules per MLA and APA styles. When I was a college student, we were told to use the Chicago style. There are perhaps a dozen other standards, and that makes the problem even more complicated. (And, oh, before I forget, the world's major media outfits have their own in-house stylebook each, thank you.)

What's the use of standards when there are so many? Can we just have one across all fields? Life will be a lot easier that way. Thank you.

Oh, and on a sad note...

My heartfelt condolences to the De Vera family for that unspeakable, tragic loss. The father-and-daughter victims in that shootout in Marcelo Green Village in Paranaque happen to be related to someone I know, who is from my hometown in Pangasinan. It's unbelievable what happened. You could just be walking down the street, and you could get shot at by policemen pursuing mad criminals. In Tondo, Manila, perhaps that would be easy to believe, but for that to happen in a place like Marcelo Green, it's next to unthinkable. But it did happen. Of course, the police had all sorts of alibis. I really hope the bullet that fell Mr. De Vera and his daughter were fugitive bullets. There's no question where our loyalty lies: Between the pursuing police and the criminals, we give the police our undivided sympathy. But reading through the story being told by newspaper reporters, one can't help but feel aggrieved by how the police pursued their targets. I don't want to call the men lame, but I don't like resorting to calling the De Veras 'malas' (have run into bad luck) either. The tragedy was entirely man-made, could have been avoided, and in the future should be avoided at all costs. We don't trust the police for so many other reasons, but when defending us from criminal elements, we at least give them the respect and authority to pursue our enemies and expect them not to hurt us while at it. I'm not sure how Ms. De Vera will recover from the trauma, but I sure hope she still can summon the will to stay alive, find meaning in the whole thing, and most of all, to forgive. I hope and pray her terrible suffering in the coming days will not come to pass without a good 'fruit' of some sort.

No to Charter change, but...

Of course, we say NO to Charter change, but why does it rain every time the various forces rally against the Gloria regime? Or is the weird weather change fake and cloud-seeding-induced? Or is Gloria just one lucky woman? Or are we seeing staged bomb attacks in the next few days? Aren't the circumstances surrounding the Glorietta bombing, for instance, too shady to be dismissed? Isn't it the handiwork of the military, as anyone with the brain of a cheese-stick suspects up to now?

Microminireviews

Miami is much like Manila

I haven't read Dave Barry until now. I know he's supposed to be this Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, but I've never looked him up on purpose if he's indeed any good. Reading Big Trouble, his first novel, I discovered how he can drop perfectly timed punchlines. That's where is talent lies. This comedy thriller about Miami is so fast-paced, an intense nail-biter and cliffhanger especially at the last third of the story, but the humor is not sustained throughout. What I learned, though, is that Miami is pretty much like Manila: lots of crazy characters, unpredictable turn of events, totally chaotic city life.

**

The Kite Runner - It's a beautiful story about sacrificial love set mainly in the exotic locale of Afghanistan. I've never seen an Afghan film before, so this one is a first and bound to be unforgettable. The story is quite complex, combining things as unexpected as kite-flying (a big-deal tradition in that part of the world), sodomy, Rumi's beautiful poetry, the exquisite charm of pre-Taliban Afghanistan, the terror of the ruling Taliban and its extreme Sharia justice, the ethnic conflict between the fair-skinned Hazaras and the Pashtuns, book-writing, etc. The story has several maudlin moments that aren't hard to take, except for the last one where the protagonist actually mouths the same exact words his childhood friend had said to him during an extreme moment of boyhood camaraderie. Talk about foreshadowed lines, eh? But this film is a must-see for all funamentalist Muslims.

I also got me a copy of the following: George S. Kaufman, An Intimate Portrait by Howard Teichmann (1972), I Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression by Erma Bombeck (1970), John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, Ann Frank's diary, and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.

**

Hairspray: Safe for the season

At last a play from Atlantis that neither a) deals with homosexuality (a controversial issue anytime) nor b) extols and celebrates the gay lifestyle, hoping it is eventually normalized, with the naive audience caught unawares. Whew. Now, we're safe from anticipated attacks.

"Safe for the season" must be the operative term for a play like Hairspray -- although 'safe' remains a relative word, knowing how this musical doesn't shy away either from hard issues: It is nevertheless a play with lots of fun and music and perky dance steps, but also tackles racism, acceptance, otherness, fatness just the same -- in the midst of personal ambition, and sense of fame and success and purpose in the social tumult of the '60s. Having said that, we should not forget that Hairspray is also a spoof of the shallowness of TV variety show, in its emerging from as a novel replacement to the dying forms of entertainment of the day (vaudeville, etc.?)

It's the musical to see this year for these and many other reasons, although the timing seems off and audiences seem to have shied away from this one in favor of other shows. Maybe they thought that John Travolta/Michael de Mesa in drag, fat suit, and big hair is a dead giveaway of a theme they'd rather not confront? I dunno. If people missed this one, they missed something big-time. So many of the actors who performed were apparently newbies, and the most impressive among them is that guy who essayed the role of the corny TV show host. Madel Ching, the lead star, was okay (considering it's her first time), but her voice lacks the right volume. Michael de Mesa and the other veteran actors (Menchu Lauchengco, Dulce, et al.) had a field day, needless to say, outshining all the new ones who were leads.

**

"Savage but splendid": Pre-Columbian art of North America and Mexico

Whenever I think of primitive art, I think of beheadings and live, squirming human sacrifices. But I'm glad that, finally, I was able to summon the courage of facing and studying up close what I've always regarded to be incredibly ugly and unquestionably evil: primitive objets d'art, especially those of the Americas before the rediscovery by Columbus for the New World.

Blame it on my recent visit to the new Ayala Museum for picking up this book at the Goldcrest Glorietta Booksale store. It's the handsome 98 full-color illustrations that sealed my decision to part with my Php210 just to own the bargain book. The photographs, I figured, could pass for the scrutiny afforded by an actual museum visit.

Each item is a page-stopper, instead of a page-turner: that is, I tend to linger just staring at the picture even as I longed to take a good look at the other photos. The sheer diversity in design is mind-boggling, from Alaskan/Eskimo bone figurines and pendants, and wooden masks, to Niska, Kitiksan, Tlingit wooden spirit masks, bone figurines, wooden panels, petroglyphs, incised shell fragments, shell gorgets, clay vessels with figure, Tlingit totems, Apache and Zuni basket with antelope design, painted terracotta vase, kachina doll, to Tlatilco anthropomorphic (duck-man, etc.), globular, and acrobat-form terra cotta vases, amphoras, Ticoman pyramids, Olmec ceremonial jade "axes," "heads" and "palms," standing figures, dragons, nudes, steatite acrobats, collosal heads in basalt, steles of "the king," kneeling figures, apes, stone sarcophagus, Colima barking chihuahua, Teotihuacan murals, Tlaloc effigies, Zapotec high-staircased-temples, ball courts, funerary urns, pectorals, Vera Cruz pyramids, imposing Mayan palaces, virility gods, limestone discs, maize gods, Toltec carved columns, caryatids, stone warriors, etc. etc.

From another perspective, though, I'm only too glad NOT to have lived at such a cruel, barbaric age. And as a Christian, I am actually grateful that those strange hideous-looking gods, which are really non-gods -- heathen idols, have been defeated with such finality that they are now confined to museums and labeled safely for what they are: objects d'art, cultural artifacts, anthropological specimens. I may reserve a space for these art objects in my home, but not at the altar, and certainly not by my bedside. (The real 'person' responsible for the mass conversion of ancient/prehistoric Mexican pagans, though, isn't even a normal human being; not even the equally brave and intransigent Catholic missionaries could take the credit for the conversion of Mexico and the rest of Latin America. It's the miraculous phenomenon known as the Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition that is historically responsible for turning Latin America into the Christian subcontinent that it is today.)

On a last note, I tried to look for close similarities between the Mexican artifacts and those pre-1500 artifacts recently discovered in the Philippines. I was disappointed, or rather elated, to find none.

Are you having Christmas-induced depression?

'Tis the season of joy, giving, and all that, I know, but 'tis also the season for intensified sorrow, want, and pain, if you answer yes to the following:

1. Are you unemployed and are left with no money to spend or to buy gifts?

2. Are you still single after years of longing to be with someone?

3. Do you live alone, have no family to come home to?

4. If alone, do you have no intimate friends or a closely-knit support group to spend Christmas with?

5. Are you a beggar or a homeless person, or in jail?

6. Were you suddenly evicted, or have you met with any form of human cruelty or bitter fate at the height of the season?

7. Do you believe in God, and yet you feel like you don't feel His 'presence' and unconditional love?

8. Do you feel like you miss the company of someone special at this time but is already gone?

9. Is your favorite Christmas album at the moment an album of the saddest Christmas tunes ever written?

10. Do you have to work through Christmas Day and right on New Year's eve?

11. Are you envious enough that the mere sight of others living it up drives you to the pits? Do you feel you are unlucky and miserable, compared to most people?

12. Do you have everything in life, but don't have real love?

13. Are you getting old, weak, infirm, sick, without a loving caregiver at the height of the season?

14. Are you in the midst of other 'hopeless' situations? (Or, do you have unrealistic wishes?)

15. Are you stressed out by the holiday rush?

16. Do you have the urge to throw yourself at an oncoming car or hurl yourself at the plateglass window on the tenth floor for no reason at all?

If you say yes to any of the above, you could be having Christmas-induced depression by now.

I don't know if this helps, but know that you are not alone. It's NOT entirely about you, it's also partly about the intensive/intensifying quality of the season. So many people go through this December-to-January nightmare. But like all seasonal things, this, too, shall pass. And every pain in life has hidden meaning, if you only know where to look.

But first, you need to be aware where your depression is coming from. Determine the hidden source of anger, frustration, or sadness in your life, because depression is mostly about repressed anger due to an irrational thought about yourself, life, the world, other people, or God (unless the depression is physiological, i.e., induced by meds, certain foods, etc.). Once you are aware you are depressed, at least acknowledge your feelings. Acknowledge that you have legitimate needs as a person that are being unmet.

Once aware, you will know by instinct what to do: You will do something positive about the cause of your sadness. Or at least you'll do little things to make you happy, at least fleetingly, to escape the pain at the moment. Like exercising. Or taking up any sport or dusting off a hobby you used to have. Or coming up with a worthy project, perhaps something that reaches out to others -- that is, if you can afford reaching out.

Be prepared to be misunderstood, though. You will most likely be accused -- mostly by the wrong people -- that you're just being selfish, self-centered, too focused on yourself. Forgive them who don't understand what you're going through. You need not really reach out if you can't, precisely because it's you who needs reaching out to the most.

The alternative extreme reaction is something you don't even want to consider: wallowing in sadness, giving despair the last word. This sets you up for more frustration and sucks you in a downward spiral. You don't want to commit suicide just because it's Christmas, or especially since it's Christmas.

If you can't withstand the pain, seek help. Expressing your negative emotions to a willing friend would be therapeutic. I hope you'll find love from your family and friends this season, or even from total strangers. And if you don't, that's okay. It's not the end of the world.

If you're a believer in miracles, I'm pretty sure love will find its way to you. ...Because that's how unfailingly magical Christmas is, if you believe. There's this unearned grace from it that is bestowed on anyone who dares. (I say dare because it's hard to believe, it's a challenge, it's a tough choice to make.)

**

Oh, by the way, there are a lot of Google-able and Wikipedia-ble depression scales available for download for free on the Internet, in case you really want to ascertain whether the 'depression' you're going through is already clinical depression. Here's a quick survey. (Any respectable article on depression, clinically speaking, should include a close study of all those psychological instruments.) The self-administered ones may not help you, the sufferer, in sorting out the issues in your life that gave rise to depressive thoughts in the first place, but they could help you determine whether you need professional help.

Here are two authoritative guides on depression:

National Institute of Mental Health
World Health Organization

How are our textbooks written?

The recent news on the whistleblower Mr. Calipjo-Go giving up his lonely fight is truly sad. Which brings the question, "How exactly are our textbooks being written and edited?" Is the education of our young people such a bad joke that our books should be written by clowns pretending as writers? This is so sad and tragic. Will someone in the media write an in-depth article looking into how exactly the darned books end up being written as embarrassing and shameful publications? I suppose a team of the best writers in the country is hired, whose output is edited by different levels of sub-editors and editors, followed by a close copyediting and proofreading work. I suppose the editors do the fact-checking and all that. How exactly did those ridiculous errors got published at all, and how exactly does the alleged corruption in the world of textbook publishing and the Department of Education figure in the whole scheme? I mean, we can't continue cheating our young, can we?

**

Before my BP level shoots to borderline, here's a nice forwarded email of the day:

What is the hardest thing to break? People come up with all kinds of ideas, such as this: Diamonds are hard to find but not hard to break.

But what, really, is the hardest thing to break? The answer is: H A B I T.

If you break the H, you still have A BIT. If you break the A, you still have BIT. If you break the B, you still have IT.

Hey, after you break the T in IT, there is still the 'I'. The person, at the end of the day, is the root of all the problems. Cute?

Now, I know why HABIT is so hard to break. Its destiny is in its name. The word itself.

**

The term bangungot much abused

Every time some prominent guy dies suddenly, the media blames the death on bangungot -- while the more believable gossip mill says something else. I wonder about the ethics behind reporting cases like the recent death of the first Igorot star/actor Marky Cielo. Assuming the gossipers are telling the truth, should media tell the truth or respect the request of the grieving family? Should granting requests for privacy (of public properties) be at the expense of the truth or the public's right to know? Is medical inaccuracy the right solution? The last thing media want to do is to lie knowingly.

Dear Manny,

(Siyempre, a brief missive to Manny Pacquiao is inevitable.)

Dear Manny,

I'm so busily being stressed out by Christmas, but know that I am paying attention to you. You are unavoidable. I can't quit you. You had me at Alaxan FR (the moment you endorsed the anti-muscle pain brand). So I am writing you this letter to let you know that you are not being snubbed by the snooty even if they missed the slugfest because they've been partying too hard.

For sure, you are going to cause chaotic traffic in Metro Manila today. Welcome back! This day will be so unlike the day you have a match in Las Vegas, where traffic in the entire Philippines crawls to a standstill because everybody's at home watching your every move, the police get a respite because the cell phone snatchers and hold-uppers watch you, the MNLF and perhaps even the Abu Sayyaf pause to watch you, and only a papal visit allegedly gets to ever match that record. You're not just an unexpected hero at a time when we were looking for one in all directions but find none, you're also an unexpected blessing to us all at a time when we are being tormented by a parade of curses.

I'm sure it will be my nth time bumping into your motorcade (with former mayor Atienza and family in tow) just as unexpectedly. Can you believe it? You were just this pug-nosed boxer from Cagayan de Oro the other day, but now, look at you: endorsing Nike side by side Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods. Wow. Will you please give my face a one-two punch? How did you do it? You're one lucky dude, Manny. Like Lea Salonga once chirped at the height of her post-Miss Saigon career, "What a journey it has been!" Perhaps even your enemies in your former life as a baker will sing to that tune without them knowing.

Maybe you'll say, "But I work very hard!" But so do we, and look at the rest of us workhorses. It must be something more than hard work. Ants work hard for the rainy days, but their little heroism is never telecast worldwide, with big-ticket sponsors ranging from Adidas to Ziplock bags.

I don't like ascribing God and prayer to your boxing wins, though. I'm totally uncomfortable with it. You know how I've always felt about boxing: a modern-day form of barbarism. What would Jesus do with boxing? Will He ever wear a boxing glove and be in a death match? I don't think God endorses violence. It's fun and exciting, yes, but do you really have to wear that rosary around your neck always, as though you are battling Belzeebul? What does that make of the parade of proud tortilla-feeding Mexicans you've toppled? Devils? Good thing they weren't wearing shorts with imprints of Our Lady of Guadalupe. What? They wore rosary beads, too? Good grief, then whose rosary is better and more powerful? Do rosaries ought to fight each other now? Since when did this questionable practice begin?

Never mind. But you know what, Manny? You're lucky in so many other ways. You are lucky to have the Philippines as birthplace and Filipinos as countrymen. If you were born in Denmark, the Netherlands, France, or perhaps Finland, they wouldn't give a damn. But Filipinos! They look at the boxing crown as the male version of the Miss Universe crown, another equally escapist pursuit, which packages beauty as this invented ideal. Boxing and beauty contests are two things that we all know are baduy (cheap) but watch anyway -- and yes sir, that includes me. Maybe we want to escape our pains, the pain of being Filipino, but who cares about the sociological implication of things? We just don't think about stuff along those lines; we just enjoy them if we like them, 'coz if we don't, we won't care. You can always say that boxing is not about violence, but a manly sport that adroitly employs so many kinds of skills; it just happens to be violent and even bloody because that's how a real man with inflated sense of masculinity is supposed to be: tough, like bunions. Up to now, though, I have yet to read this kind of slightly convincing alibi. Even veteran sportswriter Recah Trinidad doesn't defend the macho and sadistic sport this way.

Further, have you ever realized the kind of people you've been conquering inside the ring? These are the descendants of the fierce and great Tlatilco, Ticoman, Olmec, Nayarit, Colima, Teotihuacan, Tlaloc, Vera Cruz, Guerrero, Zapotec, Huaxtec, Maya, and Toltec tribes! Aztecs, for god's sake. ...Quetzalcotl-worshippers who wouldn't hesitate sacrificing entire droves of young men and women just to appease or satiate an angry or hungry god! Have you ever heard of the great ball courts and stone temples they've built, the handsomely carved pillars they've left behind as unintended testimony to their greatness, how advanced their ancient civilization used to be, how indecipherable their methods of writing and numerology are up to now, how "savage but splendid" their material culture was? Manny, all I'm saying is you've instilled profound pride even among the hesitant and critical spectators like this snob. And since your 'winning streak' is no fluke, I must admit, even if against my will, that it must be real talent.

I'll try not to mind the traffic today. We all know you are here to entertain us, give us joy, elevate our little uncelebrated existence into a higher plane of awareness. But please don't lose your sense of proportion. I know it's not just boxing, but it really is just boxing. And I use 'just' not to brush off sports just like that. "Body smart" is part of the seven smarts. We know boxing is your whole life, but if we come down to it, it's just a game, and life isn't just a game, or a big bet-driven boxing match. (See an old post of mine, "Work vs play," for further enlightenment on the matter.) I only use 'just' to point out the following: You don't have to run for barangay chairman, mayor, senator, or president; you don't have to mouth platitudes about Filipino heroism; you don't have to sport a fake American accent (your former defiant Vizayan accent was lovely and had dignity); I won't pressure you to be an ideal Catholic/Christian; I won't lay unrealistic expectations on your shoulder like solving mass poverty overnight and converting terror groups into sheep and their Uzis into ploughshares and spearheading a one-man crusade against corruption; and I won't egg you on to embrace my politics or endorse my own set of politicians like Ang Kapatiran.

All that is up to you. I just wish for you not to go the way of other pitifull, fallen boxers like Navarrete. I just wish you to remain the lucky sporting hero who made us Filipinos proud at a time when we're almost down to nothing. Manny, assuming the Gloria administration is not using your fame as a squid tactic (to obfuscate leads to their bad politics), you're a much-welcome "weapon of mass distraction" in these times. Magpa-burger ka naman! But, really, if I were you, I'd change careers now that I have lots of money.

New Vatican document

There is a new Vatican document released, and it is about street people, the homeless etc.: "Jesus Himself Came Up and Walked By Their Side".

Oh, hi!

Suddenly, I remember I'm a blogger. But I'm tired of blogging. Blogging earned for me not money but probably infamy; it didn't give me a lot of friends -- perhaps a lot of enemies. I'm thinking of quitting, but I don't like the idea of being silenced. I refuse to be defeated. I've ended up throwing stones in the pond, ruminating, wondering what happened, where to go, what to do, and whether it's all worth it. I guess I'll just keep this for the few who'll still want to hop over here now and then and not the least for that part of me that wants to write without being paid for it.

**

I've been snubbing the news again lately. That only means it's too depressing for me to handle the news. Let me share with you instead some random alternative and perhaps escapist stuff I've munch on lately instead:

I didn't know there's such a thing as flying snakes.

I received this info a year ago, but the sight of whale massacre, or are those sharks, is still revolting, even though I'm no animal rights activist or card-carrying PETA member. What's new is that the gruesome thing happened not in some place in Japan or China, but allegedly in Denmark!

Photoessay: Have you heard about the Hill of Crosses in Lithuania? Or is that Latvia. I'm confused.

Tristan da Cuncha, St. Helena:The Most Remote Place on Earth

33-Meter High and 9-_ Diameter Christmas cake in Jakarta Shopping Center Jakarta is now, what, turning Christian? Did you realize that Christmas is the best way of converting people to Christianity, and an effortless one at that? I've once denounced the material aspect of Christmas, teh sense overload, but I realize the material part per se is not bad -- it is essential to the celebration; it's materialism (the worship of objects, the primacy of objects and things over man, instead of objects being used in the service of man) that is.

Top news from the year you were born

Ain't this kewl?! :)


_1900_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1900.html )
_1901_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1901.html )
_1902_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1902.html )
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_1910_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1910.html)
_1911_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1911.html )
_1912_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1912.html )
_1913_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1913.html )
_1914_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1914.html )
_1915_! ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1915.html )
_1916_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1916.html )
_1917_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1917.html )
_1918_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1918.html )
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_1920_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1920.html )
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_1922_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1922.html )
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_1930_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1930.html )
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_1932_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1932.html )
_1933_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1933.html )
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_1936_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1936.html )
_1937_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1937.html )
! _1938_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1938.html )
_1939_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1939.html )
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_1945_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1945.html )
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_1947_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1947.html )
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_1950_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1950.html )
_1951_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1951.html )
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_1953_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1953.html )
_1954_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1954.html )
_1955_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1955.html )
_1956_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1956.html )
_1957_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1957.html )
_1958_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1958.html )
_1959_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1959.html )
_1960_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1960.html )
! _1961_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1961.html )
_1962_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1962.html )
_1963_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1963.html )
_1964_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1964.html )
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_1966_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1966.html )
_1967_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1967.html )
_1968_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1968.html )
_1969_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1969.html )
_1970_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1970.html )
_1971_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1971.html )
_1972_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1972.html )
_1973_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1973.html )
_1974_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1974.html )
_1975_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1975.html )
_1976_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1976.html )
_1977_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1977.html )
_1978_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1978.html )
_1979_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1979.html )
_1980_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1980.html )
_1981_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1981.html )
_1982_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1982.html )
_1983_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1983.html )
! _1984_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1984.html )
_1985_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1985.html )
_1986_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1986.html )
_1987_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1987.html )
_1988_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1988.html )
_1989_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1989.html )
_1990_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1990.html )
_1991_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1991.html )
_1992_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1992.html )
_1993_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1993.html )
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_1998_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1998.html )
_1999_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 1999.html )
_2000_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2000.html )
_2001_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2001.html )
_2002_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2002.html )
_2003_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2003.html )
_2004_ ( http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2004.html )
_2005_ (http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2005.html )
_2006_ (http://www.infoplea se.com/year/ 2006.html )

Notes

(Notes on the linguistically/religiously inclined talk I attended, "Power in Weakness: Unlocking the Paradox in St. Paul’s Language.")


Correct me if I’m wrong, but I remember Pope Benedict’s caustic Regensburg address, in which he pointed out the historic significance of Paul meeting a man in Macedonia, as a pivotal point in world history. The pope said that that meeting not just led to the conversion of that man to Christianity, but a scene representing how Paul also brought the Jewish religion to Europe, making Europe today the seat of Christianity or Western civilization (i.e., Judeo-Christian civilization), whose philosophy is based on Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy.

In a talk given by a bishop of Pampanga, Fr. Pablo David, on May __, 2008 in Makati City in honor of St. Paul in this the Pauline Year, the apostle, himself a convert from Judaism, was depicted as someone given to using the technique of paradoxical language to proclaim the gospel. Could Paul's beautiful and provocative approach to language a key to Europe's eventual conversion as a continent? I am, of course, stretching things, but then who knows?

I'm getting ahead of myself, I know. Here are my notes on that enlightening talk. (To be updated and completed as God, the owner of time, permits.)

__________________________



Encyclopaedia Brittanica defines “paradox” as “apparent contradiction,” something seemingly contradictory, illogical on the surface. “The purpose of a paradox is to arrest attention and provoke fresh thought.” MS Word’s synonyms for paradox (inconsistency, absurdity, irony, contradiction, impossibility, illogicality) don’t understand the meaning of “paradox.”

Indeed, the Bible’s paradoxical lines do not make sense to the Jews and Gentiles (outsiders, in short).

The Bible is replete with paradoxes. The introduction to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Sermon on the Plain in Luke, The Beatitudes in Matthew, and The Blessings and The Woes in Luke.

Jn 12:25
Mk 10:43
Lk 6:27-28
Mk 9:25

Where did Paul get this preference for paradox? The answer lies in another question: What did the Pharisee Ananias use to catechize Paul? Another clue: Paul’s instruction in the Way. Paul’s catechism must have been purely oral. And much of it must have been Christological: How the crucified one from Nazareth was the Christ, the Son of God. In the basic catechism can be found the most basic of paradoxes: faith in the crucified Messiah.

Paul’s teachings are couched in paradoxical language (note: Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles, in St. Paul’s voice):

1 Cor 1: 23-24
1 Cor 1:25
1 Cor 1:27-28
2 Cor 4:8-9
2 Cor 6:8-10
2 Cor 11:30
2 Cor 12:9-10

The purpose of this talk is to propose four key ideas that can help unlock Paul’s paradoxical statements:

1. Love (agape)
2. Self-emptying (kenosis)
3. Resurrection
4. The corporate Christ

Love

1 Cor 13:1-13 is a romantic text for wedding liturgies, but it’s more than that. In fact, its immediate background is a division and factionalism in the early Corinthian community.

The passage has three chapters on the unifying principles of love:

ch 11: the Eucharist,
ch 12: the corporate Christ, and
ch 13: the greater gifts of faith, hope, and love.

This is the passage that mentions the Greek word agape: “And the greatest of these is love (agape)," the love that must supersede all other gifts.

Agape is the fulcrum around which all spiritual gifts must evolve, the conditio sine qua non for any form of ministry in the Church. All else is worthless without it – speaking in tongues, prophecy, faith, sacrifice, martyrdom. Agape is the most basic key to the paradox of the Christian faith. In it lies the genuine road to power – the readiness to surrender power voluntarily. The genuine road to power is the readiness to surrender power voluntarily; to be powerful, you surrender power in the name of love. Agape empowers one to be “patient, kind,…” etc.

Agape is the path to eternity, for “love never ends.” The Johannine version is “Love is God. God is love.”

And Christ is the sole criterion for that love: “My commandment to you is this: …” Jn 15:12.

In the crucified Christ is an insight into the true nature of divine power. It addresses Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of an all-powerful God, a notion which he claimed is merely a projection of humankind’s self-seeking quest for power. The result, he says, is a God created in the likeness of mankind.

It is only because of love that we can conceive of a powerless God. The cross, as we know, is a “scandal to the Jews, a foolishness to the Gentiles.” It gives an apparently nonsensical notion of a powerless, suffering, crucified, and dead God.

Jurgen Moltmann says that the concept of a powerless God goes against the grain of any religion. In a “normal religion,” the Creator God is absolute and eternal, impassable, immortal, unchangeable (the last of which especially finds agreement in St. Thomas’ “unmoved mover” in his “Five Ways”).

But not so for Christianity. The paradox rests in a God who loves unconditionally, the God who surrenders power to teach us.. that it is not love if it not free. Love can only be an invitation, perhaps a compelling one, but it is still an invitation. It can only invite a free response. It is not love if it forces the beloved to that response.

Where did this style of using paradox originate? Is this ‘paradigm’/’model’ original to Jesus, Paul, and the New Testament? The answer is no. See e.g. Hosea’s radical theology of the unconditionality of Divine Love, a love that is willing to wait until His beloved could learn to love Him back, with God no longer as a master but as a husband (Hosea 2:18, 21-22; 3;1-3). There is a paradigm shift, with God telling Hosea, while Hosea is expressing his anger at his unfaithful wife, whom he had ‘bought’ out of love, but who he is calling now a harlot: "I know. I also loved a slave, Israel. But I made a mistake. I was hoping to be loved back. I will wait until the beloved returns and reciprocates that love."

The concept of a waiting God is revolutionary – the pain of God, the passion of Yahweh, the hurting of God. Can a powerful God be hurt?

Apparently, Paul’s paradoxical language came from being a Jew, his knowledge of Scripture, and from Jesus Christ.

Kenosis

Another clue to understanding Paul's paradoxical language is kenosis or the idea of self-emptying. Here are the relevant verses to look up:

In Phil 2:1-11, especially 6-8, the parallel idea of the two Adams is advanced: the old Adam, being the “man of dust” and the new Adam in Christ, the “man of heaven.” Paul’s kenosis hymn is like a midrash in Gen 1-3.

Cf.: 1 Cor 15:45-49. The new man is “like God,” “the man from heaven,” who ironically does not aspire to be God. Rather, he allows himself to be stripped of all divinity. In Christ’s self-emptying act, Paul expects us to get a glimpse of the true nature of “divine powers.” This becomes his very basis for exhortation to the Philippians: “to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility," etc. To be truly like God is possibly only by being like the self-emptying of Christ (Phil 2:2).

One can’t, of course, understand kenosis without agape, an “oblative, descending love” (see "Deus caritas est"), in contrast to eros, which is “self-seeking, ascending love.” Agape, however, is eros drawn out of the self (ex-stasis, in ecstasy, literally "standing out") toward the other, ready for the sacrifice. Eros is intrinsically good, not bad in itself. The foundation of agape is eros; you don’t stop until you achieve ecstasy in order to experience it fully. Agape is eros in ecstasy, achieving true power only in kenosis, achieving power only in powerlessness.

Where did Adam and Eve go wrong? They just desired what God had desired for them in the first place. Their error lies in their falling to the temptation for power, to be like God, which is a delusion.

(Fr. David relates this delusion to the tower of Babel, the prideful delusion of wanting to reach heaven; to the Qumran as a thwarted form of Essenism; to Enochic literature; etc., but I got totally lost.)

(He said that, in Enochich literature, a theory of evil that is strong on human responsibility is espoused. This belief is like Essenism: there is evil because there is disobedience committed by spirits before us and they are infecting humankind. We are manipulated by evil spirits; we don’t know.

(Christianity's belief in the nature or origin of evil is quite different: Evil resulted from the rebellion of angels/spirits that came before us. Evil is able to rule the present world through our fallen self, the fallen world, and through devilish insinuations. Fr. David said, the first Adam desired to be the powerful God and ended up in the valley of tears.)

Resurrection

The resurrection event is the third key to unlocking the meaning of St. Paul's paradoxes.

How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? 1 Cor 13:35 talks of the resurrection of Jesus as something that doesn’t equate with the resuscitation of Lazarus.

Note that Paul’s analogy of sowing is like that of the 4th Gospel. “Unless the grain of wheat dies…” (Jn 12:24). But this passage doesn’t glorify any kind of falling and dying as an act of sowing. In the Mk 4 parable, some seeds are choked. One cannot really call it sowing when there’s no fruit. It is the falling and sowing on good soil that effects transformation. Paul elaborates on this in 1 Cor 15:42-44.

Paradoxical statements, such as

- "the cross as victory,"
- "poverty as blessing,"
- "loss as gain,"
- "weakness as power,"
- "foolishness as wisdom,"
- "servanthood as greatness,"

...all presuppose the metaphorical sowing before the raising. The divine power lies in what is raised after the sowing of wheat. It is not illogical or irrational, after all, however absurd it might seem at the outset. When one can look beyond the seed and imagine the fruitful tree that it can bear, the paradox makes sense.

The corporate Christ

The idea of the corporate Christ is the fourth key to the mystery of paradoxes.

Paul’s first encounter with Christ is immediately with the corporate Christ. “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?” Luke’s narrative on Paul’s conversion is more straightforward, as he talks about the Christ Saul had been persecuting in God’s people. You hurt the disciple, you hurt the body of Christ.

In 2 Cor 12:10 is another similar paradox: “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” The key to interpreting this is the loaded sense of the second “I.” It is when I (Paul himself) am weak that I (beyond Paul) am strong. Beyond Paul, through baptism, as being received in Jesus, “I” become a part of Christ. In baptism we Christians received Jesus, to be part of Christ. Paul is saying that, it is when I am weak that the redeeming power of Christ can be strong in me. Paul is acting in persona Christi capitis (in the person of Christ).

Another key to further understanding the paradox is Gal. 2:20. "It is no longer I who lives but it is Christ who lives in me…"

Things are more evident in 2 Cor 12:9: Paul says he begged the Lord three times to remove his thorn in the flesh, only to be told, “My grace is enough for you, for in weakness, power reaches perfection.” We will always be inadequate for God’s service in one way or another as our individual selves, but as a body, we can do "great things in Christ." What is the point of being a Christian? It is not only to be saved but to be saving. A Christian is messianic, not in the negative sense, as in having a messianic complex, wanting to save the world, something that Jesus Christ alone can do, but in the positive sense: sowing like Christ, or being part of Christ, and not merely saved. The point of serving the Church is to be a part of a serving church that will act in the person of Christ in the here and now.

Attention is directed outward, to the society, to the world, the corporate Christ doing the same mission through time until kingdom come. A church without a mission is not yet a church…serving only its members is not yet a church of Christ.

Ironically, it is the opposite of this that prevents Christ from being at work in His body the church. In 1 Cor 12:5, Paul satirizes a community where the parts behave ridiculously, such as the foot refusing to serve the body "because I’m not a hand, so I don’t belong to the body." Paul implies that, when we become too confident of what we can do the work, and then deliver, and we don’t care about the rest of the body of Christ, we become ineffective.

Paul insists that whatever gifts we possess are not ours; they emanate from the same Spirit who has bestowed them on every member, and the proof that it is the same Spirit at work is when the parts, many and varied though they are in their capacities, can move together in a coordinated fashion, in agape, that they are ready to lose themselves in kenosis, so they can become fully a part of Christ.

In the 4th Gospel, John the Baptist dismisses the claims about himself as the Messiah and speaks of himself as the friend of the bridegroom. He has been sent ahead and is happy enough to hear the bridegroom’s voice. True to his mission, he says, "He must increase and I must decrease" (Jn 3:30).


Closing remark

So that brings us back to kenosis all over again, on account of agape, transforming the ego in all its weakness, into Christ, into a part of Christ, into a part of the body of Christ so that the Power of Christ becomes truly manifest.

And that is the context in which the Pauline paradoxes and other CHristian paradoxes are to be understood.

**

Acknowledgement: Thanks to the Daughters of St. Paul for the invite.

Workers' psalm

(I like the intertextualization in this forwarded email.)

Psalm 23
(for the workplace)

The Lord is my real boss, and I shall not want.
He gives me peace, when chaos is all around me.
He gently reminds me to pray and do all things without
murmuring and complaining.

He reminds me that He is my source and not my job.
He restores my sanity everyday and guides my decisions
that I might honor Him in all that I do

Even though I face absurd amounts of e-mails, system
crashes, unrealistic deadlines, budget cutbacks, gossiping
co-workers, discriminating supervisors and an aging body
that doesn't cooperate every morning, I still will not stop---
for He is with me! His presence, His peace, and His power
will see me through.

He raises me up, even when they fail to promote me.
He claims me as His own, even when the company threatens
to let me go. His Faithfulness and love is better than any bonus cheque

His retirement plan beats any 401k there is!
When it's all said and done, I'll be working for Him a whole lot longer and for that I BLESS HIS NAME!!!!!!

Truth, sex, lies, life, death, love

(The little I was able to catch from that talk by Dr. Telly Somera in the conference I attended last last week. I inserted ???'s in various places to indicate points I failed to catch.)


Why do all these things seem to happen all at the same time? Dr. Telly Somera wonders aloud -- rhetorically, of course. The assault is hideous, she implies. The basic things are all being redefined with vehemence never before seen in world history. Is there something going on beneath the surface that we need to know?

What is death -- and when is a person clinically dead? Does a person have a "right to die"? If death is rewrapped in the nicety of "patient rights," won't it sound more palatable, acceptable indeed? But shouldn't we call "mercy killing" "assisted suicide" (because that's what it is!)?

What is life? When does life begin, exactly? If the sperm is prevented from meeting the egg, wouldn't that be obviously wrong? If the fertilized ovum is prevented from moving to the uterus from the Fallopian tube, won't that be called abortion? If the zygote is induced to be dislodged from the uterus, where it is supposed to live and grow into an embryo -- a human being! -- won't it be called abortion, or cold-blooded murder?

Should divorce be ever pronounced legal? How did something as wrong as that (except for certain cases where the marriage was null and void) ever become legal?

How do we define marriage -- or even family -- anyway? Where did we get the right to redefine it and extend it to a marriage of man and man, woman and woman, and who knows what else? Since when is gay union valid or moral? Who said homosexuality is natural and should therefore be normal? What really causes homosexuality? Is there really a gay gene?

The very idea of conctraception is even more disturbing to Dr. Somera, as she pursues this line of thought. Why would women themselves object to being targets of love and consent to being reduced as objects of lust?

Is the world really overpopulated? Is the world really running out of food? Is the claim true that most people, or most Filipinos, want contraception and abortion as solution to poverty? Is the world running out of livable space? Really?

Everything controversial that's happening today seems to point to one conspiratorial plot, she continues, the plot to promote D.E.A.T.H. through divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total population control, and homosexual lifestyle. But that's a facet of the story that's too interesting and delicate to divulge here.

What is legal? That's another question that's facing another major redefinition these days, she claims. They want what's legal to be something not necessarily moral, never mind that human laws were originally based on moral laws. This way, anything is possible (she must be referring to relativism), and it's easier to forget the basics of right and wrong. She punctuates her talk with quotes from her solid theology background: "A rational man is first and foremost a moral man."

What's the truth? There is no sense in finding the truth, she says, because God is the Absolute Truth, and He is a mystery.

But that doesn't mean we have to live with lies. And lying is something the enemy is very good at, employing ingenuous lies, distorting the truth by employing Goebellsian strategy: "Make a lie and shout it loudly and loudly and repeat it and repeat it until it becomes truth." (Goebbel is Hitler's eugenicist.)

What lies are being spread in these our times?

Lie # 1. "Sex education" (as conceived by its framers) will prepare the young for the responsibility of sex, lowering cases of casual sex among them."

According to the Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality Study (YAFS3), a local study (?), casual sex actually rose by (???) among the 15-30 years old, which total 35 million (which means that the 0-30 years old sector comprise 55% of the Philippine population.) The prevalence among boys was double that in girls.

Lie # 2. "The pill is an effective contraceptive."

The pill is actually highly carcinogenic, and this fact is either downplayed or unreported. The pill was reported by (???) to cause a 400% increase in the risk of breast, liver, and cervical cancer. It results in a 600-900% increased risk of coronary thrombosis, which may lead to heart attack. If the contraceptive has been very effective, it's been very effective in the systematic killing of women who use it.

Lie # 3. "Sex education (as it was conceived then) will not just prevent sexual promiscuity, it will prevent abortion."

In fact, the reverse happened. Results from a study on the success of public sex education for 30 years in the US revealed a 800% rise of abortion in campuses, 214% rise in teenage suicide, and 270% increase in juvenile crime, including rape.

The HR bill wants its version of sex education in the Philippines mandatory. (In the Christian point of view, it's the parents' duty to teach their children about sex, and to teach it in the right context.)

In related findings, last week's (11/3-9/2008) study (worldwide?) sponsored by RAND Co. on teen sex and pregnancy due to sex in entertainment revealed a 57% increase in premarital sex among teens. Abortion was admitted to have been committed by 15-24 year old women, comprising 36% of 400,000 people (of both sexes?) surveyed.

Interestingly, 40% of males surveyed had UTI and genital itching and pain, 20% of boys paid for sex, 12% of girls paid for sex, 5% of males had homosexual sex, and 1% of females had lesbian sex.

"Sex education," or "subliminal education"? Smells more like "mind-conditioning" to Dr. Somera.

Lie # 4. "There's such a thing as safe sex."

Somera continues to quote damning findings from the same RAND study. Safe sex turns out to be unsafe sex all along! Results indicate that most girls don't practice "safe sex", but most boys do use contraceptives and agree to an abortion. Imagine the number of unreported and unadmitted cases of abortion.

Condoms don't prevent AIDS, STDs, and pregnancy, she says. The head of the sperm cell is 50 times smaller than the hole in the condom. The head of the AIDS virus is 450 times smaller than that of the sperm. And yet, framers of the RH Bill label contraceptives and abortifacients as "essential medicine"!

Safe sex? No such thing.

Lie # 5: "Abortion is a woman's right and an act of courage."

That's how abortion was unremorsefully worded, says Somera, at an Asia-Pacific Congress in Beijing sometime in the '90s. Somera says she single-handedly disrupted said conference when a paper referring to abortion to be among "women's rights" turned out to be part of the proceedings. Boldly, she came up front, took the microphone, and threatened to sue. She was booed by many of the delegates present, she reports. You don't do that, she says. I've been to so many conferences around the world, and you never do that to any delegate speaking. She said she countered the round of booing by shaming them, "You hypocrites! You support freedom of expression for women. Here I am, a woman expressing my freedom." That clipped their wide traps shut.

It was not until she was finished with her attacks that she was able to draw supporters from the crowd, who eventually applauded her for what she said about women's rights and freedom of expression.

Soon, she realized that those pro-choice delegates were mercenaries. They were paid hacks, paid for by big-shot foreign funders. (Name one. They were all there, she said.)

When she descended the stage, she was met by fellow Catholics who claimed to be in support of her. But Somera took offense. Where were you when I was fighting it out alone?

Lie # 6. "We have a right to die."

Euthanasia is another battle she has fought in the global stage. She relates that, when the framing of the relevant international law used the phrase "advanced directive," she felt uncomfortable. It clearly meant euthanasia to her, disguised in beautiful language. Soon, the pro-euthanasia camp countered, "What if the patient wants to die?" She was momentarily stumped, she said. But she was eventually inspired to invent an apt phrase as rebuttal: "Call it (the act of granting the patient 'the right to die') 'assisted suicide' then!" The powers-that-be ended up agreeing with her.

Locally, there's an equivalent bill. Palatably pushed as the "Patients' Rights" bill, House Bill 666 (that's the actual number of the bill!) turns out to be this old story churned out once again: it's an instrument that allows you to sign your own death warrant the moment you enter the hospital. In the Senate, Sen. Ramon 'Bong' Revilla is the bill's sponsor.

Lie # 7. "Homosexuality is natural and therefore gay marriage (and the gay lifestyle (sex change, etc.)) is normal and should be legalized."

Somera's reaction is a flat-out no. Apparently, she's one of the few who are convinced that homosexuality is a sexual dysfunction, a bitter, hard truth that most psychologists can not and do not want to accept -- at least, for now. She turns out to have counseled homosexuals for some years. She had been a therapist to them, so she says she knows what she is talking about. Thank God, she says, because same-sex concerns are not her problem. And she is grateful only because she knows how deep and how hard to heal is the homosexual wound, the feeling of being an unwanted child and all that. (Today, a few Americans are starting to revolt against the A.P.A.'s wishes.)

Of course, there are other lies out there, not to mention oversimplifications (from the naive to the grossly ignorant), that need to be confronted head-on. But it's inevitable that Somera closes by returning to her musings - nay, pronouncements – about truth and lies. The only search that matters is "the search for truth in the light of God," she says. The search for truth, per se -- for example, the effort at self-awareness -- is merely platonic. To know oneself in the light of God -- that's what we should strive for, she says. Stopping at knowing oneself would be narcissistic, which is Lucifer's original sin, Lucifer being the beautiful angel of light but also the first narcissist, as he declared ever-so-proudly, "I will not serve (that is, he will not serve man, God's new creation who must have appeared to him as God's new favorite). (Thus sin infected creation, and envy became a capital sin because it's a sin against justice, which means to be who one is as God meant him/her to be.)

Somera continues her lecture: When [we] find God, [we] find love, the love that purifies, sanctifies, and glorifies (known theologically as "the three movements of love"). Who are we to be fighting God with the sin of untruth? God as truth is God as love. As the Archangel Michael was summoned after the nine choirs of angels rebelled and fell (practically one-third of heaven), "Who can equal God?" (Until now, we don't really know what Michael the Archangel's real name is because that's merely how he was summoned by God: "Who is like God?" Jokingly, Somera says the believer is supposed to be ready to answer, "No one," or he/she doesn't enter heaven.)

Who are we to be fighting God? Do we know whom we are fighting? God is uncreated love. Fighting God is a fight we can't win. How can we be so presumptuous? Presumption is the "sin against the Holy Spirit." Or so Somera lectures.

And why should we rebel against God?, she continues. God is good. He is a God of love. God did not make death. What God created is life. The creator of death is the father of lies. At the beginning, God did not create hell. Hell is a contingency action, an emergency on the part of God.

If all this new knowledge seems sobering, take heart, she says. Remember that the battle is not between human beings. It's a battle between us humans and supernatural forces. We must not forget that Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, has already conquered the world. Victory is on our side, although that doesn't mean we must not work at proclaiming the truth and attaining justice. What we must avoid is despair, the sin of Judas, who can't see the good in himself, being God's creation.

**

Dr. Telly Somera is, among other things, a Rome-educated theologian, a consultant of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, a veteran pro-lifer and conference delegate, and the founder of the Culture of Life (???) in the Philippines. I am not worthy to shine her shoes.

Caught in the flurry of

"Caught in the flurry of what?," Mike wonders, aghast at my bad grammar, as I told him what I've been up to. Well, here's the answer, Michael.

I watched the ff. movies, which I hope to review here: The Kite Runner (Ian: thanks bro), The Passenger, To Kill a Mockingbird, Intrigue in Istanbul. I'm trying to get hold of The Animal starring Rob Schneider (Nen said it's a must-see) and White Chicks (Malou said it's another must-see).

I've also been reading -- again. I've just finished Dave Barry's Big Trouble. I've also finished thumbing through a little beauty of a book: Pre-Columbian Art (of North America and Mexico). Blame it on my recent Ayala Museum visit. I'm kinda disappointed, though, coz it didn't include the Incas of South America. I intend to read the ff. to get me through the holidays: G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man and Thomas Merton's Contemplation in Action. Also, Granta 101, Spring 2008.

Update: I've also been to the MYMP/Freestyle/Side A concert at the Araneta, thanks to free tickets from Jay. Watched the smash hit Twilight (which stars a new version of Johnny Depp, but what a so-so story; Interview with the Vampire is the vampire movie to watch), thanks to M. Company Christmas part on the 5th. Hairspray on the 6th. Advent retreat later on the 6th. A community party on the 7th. Another party on the 15th. ISO stuff on the 15th. I need to work on my job process flow description before that date. Hope by the 24th.

**

On a very sad note, it's no longer safe taking the jeepneys. When traffic slows down to a crawl along the stretch of the SLEX from Magallanes to Merville, the snatchers prowling the area pounce on commuters. It's a lawless world out here, a free-for-all, encouraged no less by the open windows of the PUJs. I miss the FX vans, which used to be available in the area 24/7. Commuters must band themselves, alerting each other against these snatchers, who must be based on the other side of the railroad tracks.