Illiterate

I did some research for my previous post and came upon a website written in heavy prose using our province's dialect.  Since it was the only the sole source of information, I had to read the material to its entirety only to figure out that I barely understood the paragraphs I came across. 

Am I becoming a stranger to the language I grew up to? 

Have I been accustomed to the tongue of the majority that I already forgot my native tongue ?

A more apt question would probably be, "Did I even learn the language?" 

............................................................................................................................

Can't speak, Can't write.

Doesn't that make me illiterate?

The Wonders of Pessimism

I am one of the most pessimistic persons you will ever meet. Amid the negative associations one can derive from the word "pessimism", it had already worked wonders for me. In fact I've become too good at it I started to develop my very own ESP for negative events. Yes! I am the psychic you wouldn't want to hear predictions from. My experience vary from various events such as hold ups (held ups?), snatchings and other malicious intentions, which makes me a flexible casualty alarm. This gift has actually benefited for me since this allows me to flee at once when negative vibes start crawling over me. Should my predictions materialize, I could always dwell on the fact that I sensed it beforehand, had an insight on what to expect, consequently lessening the pain of loss.

Living in constant worry allows us to have a reason for our compulsion of employing all means to ensure that everything is going well. It allows us to face reality and act upon it.We do not allow ourselves, and others to be submerged in our own perfect hallucinations. We do not say, "Okay lang yan may next time pa naman" when someone flunks an exam rather, we slap you with the bile-purging reality by saying "Ikaw kase di ka nagaral. bawi ka na lang next time."

Where you now, Action Star?

Photo from Flickr.com

How come I don’t see Filipino action movies in the cinemas today? The golden reign of action superstars Fernando Poe Jr., Edu Manzano, and Philip Salvador have now faded. Gone were the days of fake gunshots where one would first deliver a monologue before firing, fight scenes that seem to knock the senses out of the villain without him being touched, and those leading ladies crying over their apparently dead leading man who, at most circumstances, will recover at the latter part of the story.

Where are all the thrills of action movies gone? The last action movie I remember I watched was “Isusumbong Kita Sa Tatay Ko” where a boyish Joey (Judy Ann Santos) is spoiled by her aggressive single father by protecting poor Joey in a hand-to-hand melee combat against the goons in the marketplace. Soon after, Joey finds herself in a struggle between her father’s new lover and peer pressure in school. I am not even sure that would qualify for an action movie.

Currently in the mainstream cinema, we have a surplus of superficial love-team promoting movies, slapstick comedy series, and horror films that clearly does not work (see my Dalaw movie review here). What is more interesting is the fact that the artists in Filipino films never get dirty unless their role is a taong grasa or something similar. Another interesting point is on how a character still manages to put on make-up despite living in poverty.These kind of movies must already be limited. The movie industry has already been so commercialized to the point that it fails to deliver the “art” in every storyline as it is supposed to do. Movies are a reflection of a nation’s culture, as such, I seriously wouldn’t want to have Kimerald or John Lloyd-Bea as our front. (One More Chance is one exemption though)

I suggest that the movie industry would engage in the 3D movie arena. Yes, we are still lagging behind the animation shiznit but a better thing to focus on is the horror film genre. Just imagine a horror film in 3D, say for example, Saddako comes out of the big screen, literally crawling towards you.  Eeek! It would certainly double the thrill! We’ll really make a mark if we do something like that. 

We have a roster of talented artists. We have internationally recognized directors, actors, and writers, why can’t we be at par or even get close to the caliber of international films? I think it’s time to let go of the usual Filipino movie technique which focuses on the face value of artists and predictable storylines and happy endings and rather move further toward the more substantial and profound type of films.

Here's a snippet from www.carlodimaandal.com on how to tell if a movie is Filipino made. I just found it really true yet hilarious.

1. The single unarmed leading man will always be tougher and stronger than a group of armed villains. He can beat up a group of five or more people who are big enough to be bouncers or body builders.

2. The "final battle" will always occure in some sort of abandoned warehouse.

3. The leading man should have his wife/kid/brother/random friend or family member killed/imprisoned or injured early in the movie to justify his rage and all throughout the film.

4. Mistresses are acceptable but only for the leading man.

5. The enemy leader is either another tough actor that can almost switch roles with the leading man or an elderly actor playing a rich politician and/or business man.

6. No matter how rich the enemy group is, they always ride in old, beat down cars. But the very poor leading man can afford a very decent owner-type jeep or even a car.

7. Cops will always come at the end of the gunfight or fist fight between the leading man and enemy leader. All the cops will do is arrest the villains, its like they brought the big guns for no reason - no fighting for them.

7.1 Even if there is a group of heroes walking amongst the enemies when the cops come, the police will know exactly who to arrest without any help from anyone.

8. The movie should end either with the leading man and leading lady kissing or walking away, the leading man saying some catchy tag line or possibly the movie title or a hint for a sequel.

9. Any police investigation or any investigation for that matter should always include a scene in a night club.

10. Enemy guns have an angled barrel pointed to the ground, even the high-powered ones. Majority of their shots will hit the ground around the leading man. While the leading man's gun, no matter how low-caliber, small or cheap-looking it is, seem to have heat-seeking bullets that always hit the enemies.

11. All enemy henchmen are inutil.

12. No matter how old or old-looking the protagonist is, he will have the hottest leading lady. That is even if their physical features and age gap are enough to consider them father-and-daughter in real life.

13. The leading man is either a cop, a former cop, NBI, an ex-con or a former member of the enemy organization.

14. Before the "final battle," the villain and the leading man will say more lines of threat, stroytelling, anger and pain in a few minutes than normal people do in a lifetime. They will choose to do this even if they have their guns pointed at each other's heads.

15. Women will always use a gun of a fallen henchmen or a stick of 2 by 2 always conveniently placed beside her when she needs one, no matter where she is.

Watch this! 
 

The Make-Believe World of Pictures

Photo from www.gabrielsaplontai.ro

It’s so easy to have a gorgeous picture nowadays. You have Adobe Photoshop that clears all blemishes, alter one’s skin tone, and warp your body to the perfect figure you may never attain in real life. You have Adobe Lightroom that edits the lighting of the picture, its brightness and contrast, and other technical stuff, which I do not and would not wish to understand, to enhance your picture. You have DLSR cameras, those evil cameras which seem to make anyone behind the lens as gorgeous as a model.

It becomes so convincing that you yourself is convinced that the picture is so you that you upload it in Facebook. What a hallucination! Some gullible person then views it and before you even know it you have numerous likes and all praising comments on your picture. Let me shove some reality into you: These people who rave and comment are not actually praising you. Subconsciously, they are praising the photographer, who by his art, makes any uninteresting subject look attention worthy with just a click and a little processing. To a point, it looks like idolatry, where an object venerated by people is the one getting all the praise for the efforts of the one who truly worked for it.

I have this theory. If you want to view if a good looking boy/girl in Facebook is as good looking in person, go view their tagged photos. There you will see the reality, faces unguarded, faces raw from editing and other manipulation. This might not work if the user selectively chooses the photos where one would be tagged, because by all means any person could un-tag oneself to submerge oneself again in the make-believe world of beauty and glamor.

I don’t get the point why people have to overly enhance their pictures. I’m guessing it’s because of self esteem issues or some craving of attention. To those people, please help yourself and buy some cartons of self esteem and boxes of attention in you local grocery store, or have it delivered by your doorstep. That might work. However, I really think that it’s being pretentious. I’m actually glad when some blogger friend I met told me that I look the same in person as in my pictures. Let me tell you one thing, I look better in person. Haha. Kidding.


Here's a song for all those people:

La Belle Indifference

Photo from www.ads-ngo.com

Destruction does not kill – it is apathy. For in destruction, there exists an opportunity for growth and development – a seemingly non-existent idea in apathy. Amid the chaos and turmoil brought by the day, there is that silver lining that always makes up for the commotion. “Ordo ab chao”

Disparities happen because people have already been tired of their own indifference. They rally to right for their inherent rights that have been violated, their valid causes that seek to be heard and acted upon. Nations wage wars against another to settle political disputes, religious persecutions, and territory advancements. 

As in any conflict, there is always a neutral ground that maintains the balance which should always be respected. I’m talking about the noble journalists who would risk their lives to climb Abu-Sayaff infested mountains, those who witness or may play an active role as the victim in a massacre spree, and those who receive countless death threats coming from anonymous callers. 

Writers as part of their job is to expose political and social issues as they deem necessary for the general public to know. This selfless service allows the masses to think for themselves and carefully discern the truth of the matter. Journalists write facts and evidence-based conclusions eliminating every hearsay, allegations and other malicious intention. This is a writer’s responsibility – to propagate the truth, shun the black propagandas while still grounding their feet and pens on neutral grounds. For a person in a high office to say that a publication is taking sides in a hullabaloo as dirty as politics is plainly objectionable. Journalists, even those writers in a college publication, are well oriented and firmly grounded on the virtues of neutrality, justice, and respect for all parties. 

Now, to criticize something that you do not entirely know is unmistakably irresponsible. I, being a writer in a student publication, happen to observe how each article pass through editings and revisions from a minimum of three editors just to ensure a neutral stance for the article before it is published. What scrutiny there is even in a student publication! 

In an event, say for example, as small as a Miting de Avance for a local student council, where student candidates “propose” their platforms, proper consultation must be done with those whom they mention in their speeches. You cannot just say something out of the blue while the people involved are left dumbfounded. This is plainly a matter of respect. Should a candidate propose to collaborate with a student publication, I seriously have doubts if the editors of that paper would agree to such a term. Again, this is to maintain neutrality – an inherent nature of any publication. 

Journalists have been victimized by these political aspirations for countless of years, their names tainted with accusations more than they can handle, their integrity as a publication stained by self-serving motives. Let us help and respect them for their righteous works. 

A world that is full of controversy and debate is far better than a world full of all-smiling people and peaceful coexistence. Because when you have the latter group, the people become satisfied with what is presented in front of them, become passive in addressing their problems, function less optimally, and in time, may be too used to the situation up to the point where their conscience becomes indifferent to wrongdoings.

Someone recently said to me that when someone scolds you, it means that they care for you and it is when they stop talking that they also stop caring. If that is the case, shall we stop talking?

***

By the way, my first literary piece which I posted earlier in my blog was published in our college literary folio. :) You can check the entire poem here

Era of the Like

Photo from www.design-milk.com

You like it when people comment on what you say, no?

Welcome to the era where everyone is hungry for likes, reposts, testimonials, raves, and pokes. This is when a lot of people become so superficial, when that much needed promotion of one’s work is relatively rampant in social networking sites, begging and buying to be noticed through a simple link or an invitation to visit what they have to say. It’s pathetic as Shalani Soledad’s hosting can be.

We like it when people like what we say even though saying or writing it is against or not fully based on one’s discernment. We are all fixated to the idea of belongingness in this lonely world, where conformity had been the basis of good citizenship, procurement of licenses, and grading systems in schools. These are the times where almost everyone thinks alike, act alike, and speak alike. Should one dare to say otherwise, persecution will sure follow. We have been clones, poets, speakers of everyone we see around us, copying little by little one’s beliefs and values and assimilating it to ourselves day by day.

We are the people who are glued to the standardization and expectations of the society. Truly, this has lead to the deterioration of our creative faculties and death of rational thinking, accepting all information there is to procure, holding them as truths without even processing what was even said. We have been consumers for so long, it time we do otherwise.

We live in an era where the consumers dictate to the writers what they want to read, writing to please the audience. This somehow concerns me, when was the last time the writer wrote to please himself? I believe we must do something to revive the glorious ways of thinking that led man to its present state.

Like this? Poke me. Leave a comment!

Repenser

Photo from www.buchal.com

What if your religion is a hoax?

What if one day you find out that the miraculous virgin Mary wasn’t really visited by angel Gabriel? What if Mary was a hermaphrodite (having both sexual organs of the two genders), who impossibly happened to be fertile, and impregnated herself? Then, voila! You have the Son of God who turned water into wine, who died most un-majestically in a cross, and who happens be the road to salvation.

What if our Nirvana man, Buddha didn’t really see the four signs that he sought for but instead feasted on the finest wines and most delicious meat, as any prince would do, sealed a multi-million dollar deal with a public relations agency to spread his greatness and along the way transformed those gullible followers into believers and formed a new religion just for the fun of it?

Well, those stories didn’t really happen that way. I’m no theology expert nor do intend to shame other people’s religions, but all I’m saying is that what if those stories didn’t really happen after all, or didn’t really exactly happen the way we know they happened to be or didn't exactly happen as some people told us they happened to be?

Why rest facts to these people, who are highly able to err, specialized in making mistakes, as you and I would? Another thing is, bias may very likely be present when a person of certain nationality wrote it. Of course, in Spanish history, an Spanish historian would speak of the greatest feats, valiant crusades and noblest tales that they have done. But what about its dark, unflattering parts that shall be left forgotten until someone of truth corrects it? Shall we erase, say for example, the abuses the Spaniards did to our women, family, and country? 

Splash a little creativity written in prose or round up some nice sounding words in a verse, almost everything can be confabulated by the most creative of writers. It somehow scares me, the thought of resting all the knowledge in our history class to these people, presenting to the children these things as facts, only to find out then that it’s all false after deep, extensive researches and fact findings say otherwise. 

Let this be a call to be critical in the information that we find over the new media. 

In doing so, we must learn listen to other viewpoints, evaluate the facts and information received – differentiating a fact from fiction, and apply if you are convinced of it’s veracity.

The Long Lived Curse of Beautiful People

If you think being ugly is a curse, then being a good looking is as demeaning.

For starters, people usually don’t notice the not so good looking people when they have their major episodes of extra haggardness, but when beautiful people have their once in a lifetime unflattering outbreaks, even just the minutest and most hardly noticeable one, it forever ruins their perfect-esque look – well, not really forever, but for that certain day.

Probably my first reason may be due to the fact that surrounding people are already used to seeing an ugly person looking ugly. They have become apathetic and indifferent to their looks and they just forcibly accept the despicable creature in front of them. Or maybe they won’t even notice the vile matter made up of flesh and bones… uninteresting, just like a speck of dirt.

You get what I mean? That’s why when usually beautiful people come out not in their prime, people all over the world notice the change, magnify it a hundred times, exaggerate it a little more, and fix the poor person on a slide like a squirming bacteria under an electron microscope.

The worst part? People won’t even bother to tell. Don’t get me wrong that I’m being cynical about people, but although some will try, majority will be left to exhaust all the euphemisms they learned in GMRC 101 which makes them more grand to hang. They must die.

Moral lesson: When people actually notice you one time and says something not so nice about the way you look, thank them for their forthrightness then take it as a compliment, it means that you have the potential to look great.

Amen? :)

There's no Business like Showbusiness!

I.The costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props
The audience that lifts you when you're down


II.The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops
The sheriff who escorts you out of town


III.There's no business like show business
Like no business I know ...


With the untimely collapse of nearly all the businesses in the world, only one trade remains stable, SHOW BUSINESS. True, there really is no business like show business, from the factory to the final product,everything is superficial. It all revolves around the "show" with the hint of business at the background. With all the lights, make up and other aesthetics as the capital, the stage comes to life and has come to endure. Like a business, people come people stay, and people go. Change is something constant and inevitable.


IV.Everything about it is appealing
Everything the traffic will allow


Aesthetics play a huge factor in this trade, from the giant laden billboards on EDSA up to the surgical "enhancements" of Dra.Vicky Bello that most TV personalities avail. To sum it all up, I believe aesthetics is everything that is left in show business. It had become the home of the perfectly sculpted bodies or chisled faces with mediocre performance just to serve the purpose of entertainment. Yes, physical appearance is the name of the game. Through the years, the "artists" which we see on the boobtube shifted to become "celebrities" instead, it has become a question of "Sino ang maganda/guapo?" rather than "Sino ang magaling umarte?" Its like everyone could be an artist these days, model-turned-actress has now proliferated job descriptions. Even normal people, can become artists through the showbiz passport reality shows like Pinoy Big Brother and Pinoy Dream Academy to name a few. SHOWBIZ: AN OPEN HOUSE. Come one! Come all!


V.No where could you have that happy feeling
When you aren't stealing that extra bow


Sadly, albeit the premise of easy come and easy go idea that governs showbusiness, people still keep their hopes high with regard to their "Hollywood dream" (or in our case..uhm... ABS- CBN dream?) Maybe because people believe in the illusions of vanity that showbiz has to offer by giving them pretty clothes and a great deal of money involved,but I think that it does not go entirely so.


VI.There's no people like show people
They smile when they are low


Can you recall those two masks used to depict theater? One with a disturbing smile and one with a franatic frown? That's showbiz. Its all about pretending, acting at its finest. Conceling their bad side when at public or sometimes do something bad to get sensationalized. Its the trade I dread to proliferate our country


VII.Yesterday they told you you would not go far
That night you opened and there you are


VIII.Next day on your dressing room they've hung a star


IX.Let's go on with the show!
The show!

"There's No Business Like Show Business" is an Irving Berlin song, written for Annie Get Your Gun and orchestrated by Ted Royal. The song, a salute to the glamour and excitement of a life in show business, is sung in the musical by members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in an attempt to persuade Annie Oakley to join the Wild West Show.