remindables

we really do need a lot of reminding.

i shared how my presentation was a presentation

i already presented to others before,

this time it was for ajma’s leadership summit

(my third talk for them, my second for this particular annual event)

and the presentation was littered with “daw”s, literally.

stuff shared to me that I now share with them.

now I’m waiting for four people

who I have worked with in that task of reminding—

ging lizzie luis mica of the social concern committee, circa 2007

and as I wait for them

i came across two opinion articles

from the inquirer that proves how much reminding

we need (today’s editoral, link here; ms monsod’s article, link here)

we need a lot of reminding.

one that does not numb us all the more

but one that makes us jump off our seats.

pity my presentation didn’t quite make that cut.

will save that reminder for my self.

stop and stare

i think the song's title says it all.
got it from aaron. pretty cool

Oren Lavie's Her Morning Elegance



And She fights for her life
As she puts on her coat
And she fights for her life on the train
She looks at the rain
As it pours
And she fights for her life
As she goes in a store
With a thought she has caught
By a thread
She pays for the bread
And She goes
Nobody knows

(lyrics here)

compulsory voting

while looking for things i can share
for tomorrow's alternative class program session,

i read in wikipedia that
they have compulsory voting
in australia, belgium and brazil.

how interesting.

in australia, if you fail to vote without a good enough excuse,
you pay up to $70. if you fail to pay,
you end up in court.


do we need it here?
i really don't think so.
i think not voting is a vote too.

but not registering, i think that's slightly different.
so why register?

because you never know who will be running for office
until around two months before elections.
registration period ends five months before that.

you will never know that you have no one to vote for
until after you realize you can no longer register.

back in 2007, we were arguing (really really arguing) in sanggu
as to whether we should place a cash incentive
for voter registration.

i fought for a particular kind.
one that rewards a random block for having many registered voters.
like some raffle.
i thought of it not as some reward for having the most registrants
but as some form of promotions,
just a gimmick to make people talk about this duty to register.

we ended up with jeeps
room-to-room appeals
and a handful of jeepney passengers.

i wonder what we will have next

TED on inventing

Woody Norris: Inventing the next amazing thing

"Almost nothing has been invented yet."


neat.

romanticizing romance

eight hours
and the eight hours after

you have eight left
to call it a day,
though it hardly deserves
to be called one.

night really.
and like some wii game
where you can paint the sun
with a stroke of the brush,

you don't.
you didn't need it.
you paint a circle
by the ribbon on a tree
so the cherry flowers
may bloom

light sober

that it's not that hard to let go
that it's not that heavy to take it all in
that a little vice could help you
paint a little virtue

and that sometime somewhere
a little taste of your own pill
isn't so bitter, isn't so sweet
and so you take it all in.

pastiche

you know that scene in alfie
right after jude law hands susan sarandon
his business card

and that scene in avenue q
where princeton screams:
it's a sign!

try putting that together
and add a small amount of
maestro, that opening score
by hans zimmer from the holiday

and that's how this weekend starts.
an actual weekend.
i think.


life and art and life,
funny how they tease each other

God is home

God is home
it is we who take a walk.

classes on liberal theology under mr bobby guev
are for keeps. or better yet, they are for sharing.

one example is this prodigal son lecture
we're currently in the middle of.
where those lines are to be found.

and as my seatmate would put it:
ang ganda pala ng bible!

and while we're at it
i'm currently in the middle of:

the battle for God
the God delusion

the first one is karen armstrong's
beautiful (so far) retelling of the history of religions
and why fundamentalism is so popular today.

the second one is richard dawkins'
engaging (so far) discussion of atheism, "consciousness-raising"
the library is home.

was in the middle of a sticky situation
that would have led to a stickier situation
and as i was trying to stop what-ifs-ing

springwise sent me these:

heard of this before but apparently it's an actual marketing campaign (link here)



read of this before but apparently it has three other uses too (raincoat, bag, pillow, link here)


God has a fine fine way of saying things.

because

but getting there.

org love

a lot of org love going around lately.
both of the giddy and tough kind,
which is so cool.

goes to show how cool the people are
behind these shows

stages of love
feb4-14 (link here)

bare the musical
feb20 onwards (link here)


i heard enta's unang baboy sa langit is cool too!
opens this monday already.

because i'm voting for

given my history,
the least i wanted to do was share my two cents on
what i thought was the least political org i know.

but because other points deserve some scrutiny too,
i'm sharing what i think is private information:

who i'm voting for to be blueREP's next top leader.
for whatever it's worth.


many in the org are correct in emphasizing platforms
(even if we're in the middle of two awesome productions,
candidates have come up with pretty interesting ones: links here and here).

if i follow their advice, then i'm rooting for jio.
blueREP has been enjoying the safety of its comfort zone.
we have reached a point where the only difference between this year and last
is how daring/different/nice the borrowed material is.

nothing too wrong with that. but i really believe open-to-all planning sessions
and an actual beefed-up blueREP academy
and an actual well-financed blueREP lab
can drive the org's talent, resources, childlike wonder and vibe
to better use.

little changes here and there are what we have been doing for years
and so we're stuck. maybe it's time to move on and not get stuck
with little changes here and there.

but platforms are just strings of words.
we all know they need good leaders to make them work.
here is, i believe, the hard part:
i am absolutely certain both of them candidates are good, if not so goood.

but my very limited experience working with either
makes me root for jio again. for several reasons but i will share here only one.

upon deciding he wanted to be finance officer,
jio shared his plans as i was once finance officer too.
my initial reaction was of the yeah-right-sure-like-you-will-actually-spend-time-for-that variety.
two months later, his plan was right before me.
it wasn't as huge as his plans now (it was some tool that made it easy for officers
to compute blueREP finances, i think) but it actually worked.

and so i'm pretty confy that that platform
would actually bear fruit. but we'll see.

for now, there still are candidates to study
tensions to ease
two productions to catch (links here and here)

the theater is a wonderland

to say that i'm having a ball
just rehearsing for stages of love
is an understatement.

my castmates are hilarious
and the material makes you feel good
plus it helps to have something different
to look forward to each day.

i know i miss my cues
and i never get the choreography right
and some lines, well, i just can't seem
to say them without dropping
(i remember being in a musical where in our many runs,
i never got to actually sing my lyrics correctly)

but working on it
almost every night is a blessing.


i've been very sentimental lately.
is this because i'm sort of sure that i'm ushering in a new chapter of my life?
baduy.
but wait, there's still that paper to finish.

and speaking of paper (lame segue),
here's a pretty interesting new republic opinion article
on the washington journal's "punctuation fetish" (link here)

boo to "square quotes" and the republicans who love them.

TED on understanding comics

Scott McCloud: Understanding comics

oooh.
"blends the presentation-format into a cartoon-like experience"

our newbies

one sign i'm older:
i get all giddy
seeing my orgs' newbies
step up and do their thing.

i don't know the feeling yet
of having kids and seeing them grow up
or sending them to their first day of school
but i have a good good feeling
it's a sort of
similar feeling

and i like it.


won't be sad if i won't get to see them
in the same org in the future
but it's their call.

all i know is that right now,
it's a strange strange feeling
but it's good.


P.S. billy is a big annoying sidemate.
but he likes the girl in neon yellow and pink earphones
who answered a survey at 3pm here in the org room.

P.S.S. he made me type that so to the cads girl who came in:
text him.

1984

must read this book

Editorial
Desperate hope

Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:38:00 (link here)
01/13/2009

1984 is once again upon us. We refer to the novel by that title by George Orwell, a prophetic, nightmarish vision of a “negative utopia.” In Orwell’s generation, and even up to now, no other novel has stimulated so much loathing for tyranny and so much desire for freedom.

In “1984” the slogans of the Party are the following:

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Under the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration, the following might be the slogans of the times:

FALSEHOOD IS TRUTH

CORRUPTION IS SAINTLINESS

BLACK IS WHITE, AND EVIL IS GOOD

At no time in the history of the current administration has the truth of these supposed “slogans” been more strongly demonstrated than the present. Consider the following:

An upright, incorruptible, right-thinking Chief Justice is proposed to be impeached, whereas a President who has been charged with corruption, violation of many provisions of the Constitution, and other serious crimes, has always gotten away scot-free every time articles of impeachment are filed against her.

Whistleblowers like Acsa Ramirez, Rodolfo Lozada and Maj. Ferdinand Marcelino are either wrongfully prosecuted, kidnapped and muzzled, or criticized, while Benjamin Abalos and Virgilio Garcillano are allowed to resign without first being made to answer the charges against them.

A reformist provincial governor like Ed Panlilio is constantly being subjected to all forms of political harassment, while congressmen and local government officials who have been wasting the people’s money are given even more money in brown paper bags to support a president whose legitimacy is constantly being questioned.

Generals who are accused of killing unarmed militants are praised in a joint session of Congress while other generals and officers who dare to criticize high officials for their questionable acts are arrested and detained.

The people are fed half-truths by government spokespersons. The President will not answer “political questions” from reporters, for fear, possibly, of giving away her real plans for 2010. The truth, which is the oxygen of democracy, is kept hidden from the people. Sometimes it is exposed only at a critical time, as what happened when the treasonous Memorandum of Agreement on the Ancestral Domain became known only on the eve of its signing.

We could go on and on, but the idea is this: In this administration,

FALSEHOOD IS TRUTH

CORRUPTION IS SAINTLINESS

BLACK IS WHITE, AND EVIL IS GOOD.

Social critic Erich Fromm, commenting on “1984,” said: “Orwell, like the authors of the other negative utopias [Yevgeni Zamyatin, ‘We,’ Aldous Huxley, ‘Brave New World’] is not a prophet of disaster. He wants to warn and to awaken us. He still hopes—but in contrast to the other writers of the utopias in the earlier phases of Western society, his hope is a desperate one. The hope can be realized only by recognizing, so ‘1984’ teaches us, the danger with which all men are confronted today, the danger of a society of automatons who will have lost every trace of individuality, of love, of critical thought, and yet who will not be aware of it because of ‘doublethink.’”

We hope we Filipinos have not been reduced to automatons who have lost their individuality and their critical thought, and who have lost the capacity to rage against falsehood, dishonesty and corruption. Perhaps they are not protesting too much because the great majority of them are more immediately concerned with earning a living, putting food on the table and providing for the other basic needs of their families. Perhaps it is because they are so caught up in the daily rat race that they do not have time to engage in political action. Perhaps they are just waiting for the tipping point.

Many commentators have said that Filipinos seem to have lost their capacity to express their moral outrage at what is happening around them. Let us hope that this is not true, and that in time [we] will become engaged citizens of [our] country who value truth, integrity, honesty and freedom.

when it's cold outside

there's no need to worry
'cause i'm so warm inside
-refuge, john legend

it can get really really cold.
but i kind of liked it.

if only because a little warmth now goes a long way

and the sunday
oh the sunday
yes the sunday

puking as liberation

the only way you can worsen a 10am calltime and a 10page paper deadline
is to have banyo lights that flicker every 5 seconds
to spite you for being such a bad boy.

what's really nice about this morning
is that all three happened.


mlah hangovers.
this is one of those
thank-God-im-still-in-college moments

the amazing spiderman

has a new president




i hope his brand never runs out of momentum
or whatever it is that's going for the free world.

we, meanwhile, have a couple of months
to come up with our own political brand.

crossing the line

because i'm actually studying right now
i will share you two love-y and lovely things
that you might love too




my next blueREP musical! catch us at the gonzaga fine arts theater.
first two weeks of feb


and this song, cross the line
from john legend's new album, evolver


Only just a friend the love story begins
Now here's a happy ending to believe in
you're always there for me, now you're with me in dreams
It's got me wondering if you ever dream of me
I don't wanna risk losing everything
but I'll take the chance and tell you what I'm thinking

Girl, you've been my best friend
Can we put this to bed then
Tonight's the night to cross the line
Baby won't you be mine
Not just my home girl
Time that I take you home girl
Tonight's the night to cross the line
Let me love you tonight.

remember the bastards

many blogged about it,

maybe many can sign the petition too.

maybe you can join us

the link is here

it's a petition for them kid-beaters to resign.

(if link doesn't work, you may copy-paste http://angkapatiranparty.org/index.php?id=26&no_cache=1&tx_fepetition_pi1[action]=singleView&tx_fepetition_pi1[uid]=13)

istyupid #4

“Don’t you know who I am?”

-a line allegedly uttered by Mayor Nasser Pangandaman, Jr

allegedly, fine. he deserves due process too.

but many (including this Inquirer editorial today, link here) are right in noting that,

as written in the security agency's official incident report,

a  "14 yrs old son ... was bloodied also his left side ears and many personal bodyguards of Mayor Pangandaman wearing civilian clothes armed with high power guns."

and notice a trend?

a sitting president

a plundering president 

a former house speaker

a cabinet secretary/father of a mayor 

have all apologized without admitting any mistake, wrongdoing, crime, a tinge of guilt.

frost/nixon over and over and over and over again.

at least lars' doll was beautiful.

i nose

i can still smell it

and for all my talk 

of burying the hatchet

i can still smell it

the very air 

that reeked of old magazines

and delivered pizza

a scent 

at once so bland and

meaningful and

revealing and

i can still smell it

right?

David's The unbearable weight of a new year

if only we can translate this for everyone. methinks.


Public Lives
The unbearable weight of a new year
By Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01/03/2009 (link here)

Because it is the beginning of the year, I am torn — like everyone else, I suppose — between hope and anxiety as I look ahead to the unfolding of the rest of 2009. Everything I have read over the past three months forecasts a far more critical year than the one that has just ended. Experts paint a picture of a new phase in the global economy, a new era filled with uncertainty, danger and difficulty. But, since hardship has never been a stranger to us Filipinos, perhaps there is not much that dismays us anymore. Thus we tend to dismiss the direst warnings with an air of fatalism.

It is easy to mis-recognize this as optimism. Optimism belongs to those who see themselves as effective agents of history, rather than as mere spectators of passing events. I doubt if the 92 percent of Filipinos that the poll group Social Weather Stations recently reported as hopeful about 2009 are real optimists. I see them more as “bahala na” fatalists.

Filipino fatalism is not passive. It is often reckless, a source of vitality rather than of paralysis. Instead of being resigned to the way things are at any given moment, Filipinos take chances and face risks with equanimity. They thrive on instinct rather than on knowledge, and are not easily deterred by failure. They affirm life stubbornly, instead of rejecting out of hand the lousy deals it offers. Our kind of fatalism believes that if you have so little in life to start with, you don’t have much to lose if you venture out.

We have never been afraid of the new. In fact we readily take to it, partly because there is not much in our relatively young culture that is solid enough to ground and hold us. I think it is this attitude that has allowed us to slide into modernity — the belief that “everything solid melts into air” — without much difficulty. I have always believed that this is what accounts for the vaunted adaptability of our intrepid overseas Filipino workers.

The idea that everything changes, that nothing in the world endures, can actually be unnerving to anyone who takes it seriously. This belief clashes with all the positive values of stability, identity and continuity. The West sought to reconcile the belief in change with the value of continuity by riding on scientific knowledge to shape and manage change. The results have not been singularly beneficial. Indeed in the eyes of some philosophers, the disastrous consequences have so often outweighed the good that they have felt justified to speak of the “dialectic of reason.”

This growing skepticism over the power of science and technology to control the direction of change has paved the way for what is now called the postmodern sensibility. This is a way of thinking that questions all the existing grand narratives about history, life and the universe. It highlights the contingent nature of events, and the lack of any intrinsic order or purpose.

For relentlessly debunking the picture drawn by Western religious cosmologies and their modern scientific equivalents, the German thinker Nietzsche is sometimes called the first postmodern. He wrote: “Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: There is nobody who commands, nobody who obeys, nobody who trespasses. Once you know that there are no purposes, you also know that there is no accident; for it is only beside a world of purposes that the word ‘accident’ has meaning.”

Nietzsche has often been associated with nihilism, the rejection of all values. This is quite understandable, but also ironic. While Nietzsche rejected existing values, he was far from advocating a way of living in which everything is permissible. He rejected received values not because he did not believe in living according to certain standards, but because he thought that human beings must deliberately choose their values in the light of changing circumstances. If they are to be of service to life, values should furnish our sense of discipline, he said. They must, in his words, be our “defense and necessity.”

In a world that has become more complex every year, in which doctrines that have endured the test of time suddenly fail, where material fortunes built over many generations evaporate overnight, it is easy to find justification for the reckless fatalism of the Filipino. But this is not a sustainable answer to the challenges of the modern world. Instead of pushing beyond the frontiers of modern science in a quest for new directions, such a way of life eventually falls back on the fictions of pre-modern superstition. A reckless “anything-goes” attitude is a self-defeating response to complexity. It does not affirm life; it destroys and dishonors it.

When one has lived long, it becomes easy to believe that even as nothing endures in the world, nothing new is also created. Every new year suggests something different, but it also conveys the sense of something eternally recurring. How does one deal with déjà vu? Santayana admonishes us to remember the past so as not to be condemned to repeat it. But Nietzsche’s advice is better: I must live with the thought that my actions today will be repeated “once more and innumerable times more.” Thus — “What I do or do not do now is as important for everything that is yet to come as is the greatest event of the past.”

filmsy

funny how your childhood can haunt you

dragonball evolution
x-men origins:wolverine
transformers: revenge of the fallen
g.i. joe: rise of the cobra
astro boy
streetfighter: the legend of chun-li

just some of the movies coming this 2009.
and watchmen and the spirit very very soon.

yesterday
i was smiling after meet the robinsons (the godfather and aladdin were both alluded to)
i was crying after lars and the real girl (whoever wrote that must have been real courageous)

saw baler too. but let's leave it at that.
i just am wondering whatever happened to the good guys behind crying ladies.

zoology rocks

stumbled upon a link on a liberal blog
and guess what i found

the cutest and the nastiest.
all from WebEcoist (links here and here)

with titles like 20 Strange, Rare and Exotic Endangered Species and
7 Extraordinary Examples of Animal Camouflage
who could resist?

certainly not anyone who is supposed to be studying by now.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mexican Walking Fish

(Image via dillheady) The Mexican walking fish is on the verge of extinction. It’s a caecilian (more about that in a bit), and it lives in - where else? - the waters off Mexico. It’s also important because it will be the only cute animal in this entire post. Awww. It really is cute, isn’t it? It’s always nice to start things off gently. Digital foreplay, if you will.

Glass Frog

(Image via about:blank) The glass frog is endangered, as well. And absolutely stunning, so it would be a shame if we let it die out. Note the visible organs in this beautiful specimen. Unfortunately, with tropical rainforests in Central and South America threatened (in some places, the problem is actually worse than it was in previous decades), the glass frog may go extinct.

Honduran Ghost Bat

(Image via wonderful world of animals) The Honduran ghost bat is not officially endangered, but many American ecologists consider it to be threatened due to rainforest habitat destruction and climate change. It is unique, both for its tiny size (just a few centimeters) and its pale coloring.

Kagu

(Image via tropical birding) A rare New Zealand bird, not much is known about the enigmatic Kagu. It is flightless, though its wings are large; it is a forest-dweller, though its markings are oddly light in color. Very few remain and scientists know little about its preferences and habits. We do know that it possesses “nasal corns” unlike any other bird. For reasons unknown, the kagu also has one-third the red blood count of other birds. Scientists have had a difficult time classifying this rare and unusual bird.

Giant Water Bug

(Images via bug guide and time_one) The inspiration for Alien? The palm-sized giant water bug possesses a syringe-like tooth that bores into its prey, injects a toxic venom that liquefies the animal’s insides, and then…meat’s back on the menu! One of the favorite treats of Giant Water Bugs that live in the Amazon is the piranha. If that tells you anything. Why would we want something so bad ass to go extinct? It’s not like other animals are waiting around to eat piranhas.

Chinese Giant Salamander

(Images via xinhuanet and ZSL)Something tells us these giant salamanders were never called for in any witch’s recipe. Seriously, look at that thing! That lives under some people’s porches! The United States is also home to a giant salamander called the Hellbender, and it’s…well, the name fits. However, it is not as endangered as the shockingly strange-looking Chinese cousin. The Chinese giant salamander can grow to be nearly six feet long.

Dead Leaf Butterfly

(Image via conservationreport) The leaf butterflies look brilliant when their wings lay flat - they come in all manner of colors and shapes. But when their wings fold up they look like leaves - sometimes green, sometimes brown, as if fallen and dead. The likeness to a dead leaf is nothing short of remarkable. They live in forested, lush areas like New Guinea, southern Asia, Madagascar and India.

Malaysian Orchid Mantis

(Image via Daily Mail) The luxurious and seemingly fragile orchid is one of nature’s most revered blooms. In reality, it’s a rather hardy bromeliad, and there are thousands of different varieties. This Malaysian Orchid Mantis has cleverly adapted to resemble the striking white orchids of the region.

Leafy Sea Dragon

(Image via seahorse) Sea creatures are particularly fond of blending in. From nudibranchs to the octopus, from cuttlefish to many other brilliant fish, marine life has learned to hide. Future posts in this series will take you on an underwater journey to see these incredible animals, and here is another peek. The leafy sea dragon looks like a bunch of undulating undersea fronds or a stray kelp thicket.

To Cebuanos

I think Cebu needs a hot
get-out-and-register-then-vote
thing.

I have a strange feeling you think so too.
If you do, please leave a note and let's talk about it ASAP.

Yey. Have a good 2009!

sad

i know it's sad to start a new year with sad thoughts
but it's just really really sad to read that
one reason why this whole gaza thing is still killing people
is because a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire
is deemed still "unbalanced" by the US and the UK (article here).

i mean, people are dying in there.
but of course ranting about it won't do much.
here's hoping that prayers would help.


to summarize centuries of conflict into four words,
this whole gaza thing,
would be sad too but i can't help it.

somebody mentioned that in the film
frost/nixon
how oversimplification in the era of tv and close-up shots
can dehumanize us.
(i think it can humanize too and just to update the film: if during there time they were worrying about the tv, we have the internet now and a good example is the fact that israel has a youtube channel now just to update everyone on the whole gaza thing, link here)

the movie reminded me how (duh moment looming)
at our worst, we can be very very bad.
heck, all the books i've been reading lately sort of revealed that.

john f. kennedy, tony blair, adolf hitler, adam smith, osama bin laden.
and they're all filled with sad stories.

that good book status anxiety shared how
the greek tragedy might just well be
the best art form that illustrates our humanity,
how the worst in any one of us is so much a part of us
and how that whole hubris thing so consumes us.
which is why i thought the godfather was a more accessible greek tragedy.

i wonder how i'd actually embrace that thought.
here's to temperance,
and a happy and sad new year.


it will be both happy and sad anyway
so might as well just say it. have a good one.