Caustic Thoughts

Elections 2013 Senatorial Candidates – Easy on Substance, Heavy on Fluff

April 4, 2013 by witandwisdom

Political ads are like cotton candy, sweet, colorful fluff with very little substance and nutritional value. Sadly, for time poor virtual workers like me, that, and the candidates’ ability to dance like uncoordinated quadruped sticks during sorties are almost all the criteria I have to pick who to vote.

Think about it. If voters didn’t take the extra time to research, what they’d know of each candidate based on TV ads and bits and pieces of sensationalized news isn’t very encouraging.

facebook.com/jackenrile

1. Jack Enrile

Son of incumbent senator Juan Ponce “I’ve-been-ambushed” Enrile, Jack now also goes by the nickname “I’ve-been-ambushed-too-really”. Like father like son.

Notwithstanding the bullet holes, what really stands out with Jack is his campaign slogan. Translated in English: Cheap food. Lots of food. I want you to have food. I wonder if his copywriter was experiencing extreme hunger pangs when he wrote this.

twitter.com/jvejercito

2. JV Ejercito

What’s with the sign JV? His logo of three extended fingers that accompanies the slogan “Like Ko Yan” (I like that) looks a lot like arthritic claws and nothing like a Like sign. Its mysterious significance is something even Sherlock Holmes will probably never fathom.

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3. Nancy Binay

The vice president’s daughter’s work experience can be summarized in a phrase – personal assistant to her father. Oh and she knows how to feed poor kids too. Nuff said.

cynthiavillar.com.ph

4. Cynthia Villar

Villar’s PR team churned out excellent campaign ads that connected with me despite Villar’s dispassionate speech about her passion in life, but in one fell swoop, she nearly demolished her team’s efforts by belittling the nursing profession. She implied it was alright for substandard nursing schools to continue operating because, “Nurses… don’t need to finish BS Nursing. These nurses want to become room nurses… They don’t need to be that good.”

Her PR team should have been part of the audience when she said this on national television. They could have made Villar read their lips for the right thing to say.

teddycasino.org

5. Teddy Casino

He used to be known as the outspoken activist and champion of the marginalized. Since his senate bid started however, I seem to associate him more with jogging in the rain. A little hair flip and he’d qualify to audition for the senior edition of Boys Over Flowers. Honestly though, his wet look is mildly unsettling. He looks more like a sick puppy than Lee Min-ho.

jambymadrigal.com

6. Jamby Madrigal

She says she’s the champion of the poor too and is anti corruption but having been born with multiple silver spoons, she has no sob stories to tell. To make up for that, her ad shows her standing wet after having been hosed by a water canon during a protest against then President Arroyo. Her wet look actually looks better than Teddy’s.

twitter.com/Aksyon_Gordon

7. Richard Gordon

This guy’s got more going for him because of the work he’s done for Subic and the Red Cross but really, do we need another wet senatorial candidate picture? Really, what is it with senatorial candidates and the wet look? There must be a study somewhere proving that voters are more likely to vote for the wettest of them all.

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8. Koko Pimentel

So far as I’ve seen, all this fellow Cagayanon has is his father’s name and the story of how he got cheated out of a senate seat in the 2007 elections. He uses a zombie pig (scarier than Kris Aquino on a tantrum) in his TV ad and asks us voters to use our coconuts. Hmmm. Okay, I’m voting for Zubiri.

twitter.com/EdwardHagedorn

9. Edward Hagedorn

Hagedorn has an impressive track record as the mayor of Puerto Princesa and is largely responsible for making the city known globally for its cleanliness, orderliness and eco tourism. With all that he has to boast about though, all I’ve seen so far are images of him on motorcades surrounded by beautiful girls, like some sort of playboy Captain Planet.

This list is incomplete because my tolerance for inanity has limits. Let’s just hope these candidates perform better in office than they do in campaign ads and events.

Senator Chiz Escudero and Grace Poe in Cagayan de Oro

March 13, 2013 by witandwisdom

The elections are upon us. Who are you gonna call? By all means call the Ghostbusters and maybe some exorcists. Politicians have once again become possessed by such powerful spirits that they have begun dancing out of step and singing out of tune in campaign sorties.

I’d like to believe Filipino voters are intelligent enough to deserve more than the sing and dance routine and the flatulent rhetoric. That’s why I appreciate candidates like Senator Escudero and Grace Poe who sat down with the Cagayan de Oro new and traditional media to answer questions. While I do not wholly agree with everything they said, their press conference beats having to document proof of candidates’ lack of talent in the performing arts.

The encounter was not without its entertainment value. Escudero and Poe brought with them a treasure trove of intriguing bits from the capital, the senate and the campaign trail. Watch all 21 clips from the playlist above and you’ll find out:

Why Jack’s beans grow faster and better than Philippine rice
Whatever happened to UNA
Why their faces are plastered in all the wrong places
Why Poe isn’t using her neighbor’s name
What Da King’s daughter can and will do as a senator
What Escudero thinks is better than singing and dancing
Why Escudero will make one hot vampire er… I meant… what he thinks about being listed among the (un)dead (Team Patay)

Let it be known that I do not exclusively endorse these two candidates. I’ll shoot any candidate(‘s video) if he wants to sit down for a chat with the local media too.

The Comfort of Classical Music

February 23, 2013 by witandwisdom

My brother and sister are classically trained musicians. I grew up in a house where I spent weekends curled up on a couch constipated over Dostoyevsky and Chekov as I listened to my sister shake the ear wax out of our neighbors with relentless strains of Tchaikovsky and Chopin. When she left, my brother took up the viola and resumed the neighbors’ mandatory classical music education. Even when I wasn’t at home, I heard them play when I hung out at their music schools or attended their performances.

My distress was understandable then when I moved to Cagayan de Oro nearly a decade ago and discovered the absence of my usual auditory comforts. There were no public performances of classical music then. There was only the perennial videoke.

The videoke, by the way, is an excellent machine when in the hands of superb vocalists like my father-in-law. It becomes a tool of torment however, when entrusted to screaming banshees intent on letting us personally inspect their tonsils while singing in keys that have yet to be identified. I would vote for any senatorial candidate who promises to draft a law making prolonged singing by people without talent a crime.

The classical concert scene eventually crept into Cagayan de Oro with the inauguration of the Rodelsa Hall in 2005. The problem is that it costs an arm, a leg and some internal organs to get tickets to a show.

I had to crack open a piggy bank to get tickets and clothes to watch the Cebu Philharmonic Orchestra, the UUU Orchestra (Japan) and Rudolf Pelaez Golez perform at the Rodelsa Hall last Saturday. I had to watch. Some of the musicians were members of the same orchestra my brother played in before he left Cebu.

More than the music (which was superb), what I was after was the comfort of memories, of my lazy days on a couch listening to the work of musicians who suffered from depression while reading depressing literature. Strangely, I count those as happy times.

I wonder if the music meant anything to the rest of the audience. Except for the infernal sound of Cherry Mobile in between pieces, the audience was incredibly polite and gave the performers a standing ovation. But were they being more than polite?

When more pressing concerns such as hunger, poverty and security have been significantly addressed, my hope for Cagayanons is that we’ll find meaning in classical music if only because its true value lies in its ability to comfort, elevate and liberate the human mind and spirit.

Red Dawn 2012 Remake Movie Review

January 26, 2013 by witandwisdom

Red Dawn is proof that Americans can make really awful movies too and they don’t even need a washed up senator (like we do) in boots and a leather tunic to top bill. They’re perfectly capable of crafting awfulness with legitimate Hollywood actors.

There is no redeeming value to it. I realized that the moment North Korean soldiers dropped from the sky like giant snowflakes of aggression. In good fiction, there is such a thing as an element of plausibility within a story’s contextual boundaries. Red Dawn does not pretend to posses such an element. We are forced to believe that the enemy is able to cripple the systems of what would be modern day America, enough to render their lightning attack undetected.

The movie is a remake of a 1984 hit, but the original paints a far more believable story, placing events in the context of crumbling international relations and global political unrest. North Korea may seem like a logical choice for the adaptation’s antagonist but there is little to suggest that the rest of the world was so engrossed watching Lady Gaga split her pants that no one suspected what was going to happen.

The threat of real world North Korea is slightly more believable and disturbing. They’ve already said that if they were to attack America, it would be with long range nuclear missiles, not paratroopers in flying lanterns.

The forced conflict is not the only loose screw in the story. There’s also the grating drama between lead characters, the Eckert brothers. We were required to often pause between action scenes to watch one brother or the other stare into space and brood over the past while it was the other brother’s turn to flex his jaw muscles and look teary-eyed. If they were aiming to tug at my heartstrings, they missed it by a few inches and tugged at my gallbladder instead.

Then there’s the sad casting of Josh Hutcherson. Just because he convincingly portrayed a wimp in The Hunger Games does not mean he should now have monopoly over all wimpy characters. Poor Josh. I can imagine him now in his old age accepting a lifetime achievement award for consistently portraying wimps.

I suppose the only one we can forgive for being in this movie is Chris Hemsworth and that’s just because he’s cool as Thor.

Much Ado in December 2012

January 5, 2013 by witandwisdom

The Sin Tax Law will make alcoholic drinks so expensive in the years to come that some are already considering shockingly desperate alternatives.

I can no longer write year enders. My ongoing foray into the harrowing world of earning a living and trying to make ends meet has considerably shrunk my mental storage system into the size of a dehydrated pea. I can now only write about immediate or devastating incidents. Here’s my top seven events of December 2012 in the Philippines.

#7 – End of the World

Of course it didn’t happen, which makes it devastating for those who fanatically preached repentance and preparation. Don’t worry. There’s another end of the world slated for February 2013 so the public can panic some more and Hollywood producers can create another scientifically inaccurate doomsday movie.

By the way, didn’t we all get the memo? God says only He knows when. Except of course if you’re the leader of a secretive nation that may be manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, in which case, you’d know the approximate time.

#6 – Sin Tax Law Implementation

I saw people cry on New Year’s eve, not because they were moved by their resolutions to live better lives, but because this year, alcohol and tabacco products will be more expensive. Some will have to learn to drink in more refined ways: tea, coffee or juice with drops of brandy or vodka in tiny porcelain cups. Sadly, that won’t be enough. The streets will be filled with seemingly rabid humans experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

#5 – Reproductive Health Bill Signed into Law

We argued over whether or not it was an act of mass murder to use latex to hamper the passage of sperm cells, and whether or not the government had done its best to populate the country’s mountains and forests to curb urban overpopulation. The issue eventually zeroed in on the role of women. Some lobbied to allow us to perform our natural duty as baby factories until menoupause or death, whichever comes first, but then they lost by a slim margin.

Enrile vs. Santiago. A gift of boxing gloves for Christmas would have made the difference.

#4 – Pacquiao’s Defeat by Marquez

A stunned nation watched Pacquiao sleeping on the job for the first time. Needless to say, it was so shocking that it gave birth to fistfights of other sorts: Mommy Dionisia vs. Christians of other denominations and Justine Bieber vs. anti Bieber congressmen. It has yet to be determined who has less tact and refinement, Mommy D or Bieber.

#3 – Ms. Universe runner up Janine Tugonon

In a country where beauty pageants and rocket science are synonyms, Janine’s near win became yet again another event to analyze the crap out of. I’m sure there is now a 500-page official report on why we lost again. Really though, in this modern day and age, shouldn’t pageants already be banned like the Inquisition?

#2 – Hundreds Injured in Holiday Revelry

This year, more than 700 have been injured by firecrackers. At least two children have died after being hit by stray bullets. Not funny. I feel now more than ever that every city needs a Mayor Duterte of sorts.

#1 – Pablo’s Wrath

The typhoon that struck Mindanao this year claimed hundreds of lives. While it certainly is noteworthy to suspend criticism to give way to relief efforts, it’s vital to resume critical evaluation at some point. Over and above preparatory steps, shouldn’t we now be moving towards preventive and adaptive measures?

The tail end of the year had a sorrowful pallor to it which has blunted my humor pen. Here’s hoping there’ll be more to laugh about in 2013.

Wannabe Travel Host’s Indahag-Mapawa River Trek

December 5, 2012 by witandwisdom

Indahag-Mapawa Cagayan de Oro River Trek

As a teen, I always wanted to be the host of a travel or history show. Sadly, I was blessed with such generous amounts of vertical insignificance (in other words, I was/am short) and frightful facial features that can scare even rabid dogs into sanity that my dream became as likely as life on Pluto.

Aspiring TV personalities of today are more fortunate because society has become more tolerant of hosts who can’t fit into Ms. Universe bikinis. As long as you’ve got something else going for you in place of a beauty queen’s famished look, like, let’s say, brains, charm and one heck of a marketing team to counteract your dorkiness, then there’s a chance you’ll find your audience.

Also, there’s YouTube. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and his dog has a channel. It has become fashionable to conspicuously display one’s talent, expertise or foolishness in full color HD.

So I suppose I still have a shot. So here’s my first video of my Indahag-Mapawa River Trek to Mintugsok Falls with the Cagayan de Oro Bloggers. This doesn’t quite count as a hosting stint though because you won’t actually see or hear me talk. I was so busy with the act of self-preservation (i.e. hanging for dear life from near vertical mountain edges and navigating slippery boulders with my ass) that I couldn’t shoot any speaking parts.

In any case, you’ll see in white text what I would have said if I actually hosted an episode of my travel show.

UN Day Celebration and Ruffled Feathers

November 17, 2012 by witandwisdom

RIP peacock. May you rest in peace. (photo source)

Do peacocks die if all their tail feathers get pulled out? I guess not, but I can imagine them dying of shame. I only ask because last month, during the UN Day celebration, I saw a child strut on stage wearing a peacock costume so big it could blot out the sun.

I don’t make fun of other countries’ national costumes, even those so poorly reconstructed they deserve to be petitioned, but I feel I need to throw darts at this one and it’s not just because some departed peacock’s spirit is now weeping over his bare bum.

Because national costumes cost so much, I’d have to sell an arm, a leg and all my internal organs to get a new one made. My daughter was Ms. Panama two years ago so I told her she’d be Ms. Panama this year and every year thereafter until the costume no longer fits.

To my dismay, one parent, who’d been pushing her daughter to compete against mine since last year, made her daughter wear the dearly departed peacock’s feathers and a Panama sash too even if the kid was supposed to be Ms. Costa Rica. Her costume was so big and shiny that not even Ms. Zimbabwe who skinned a chicken for her headdress could hold a candle to her. Of course the judges couldn’t tell the difference between a national costume and a national disaster so she won the contest.

My daughter is no spoil sport and would have been happy for her classmate if she didn’t feel like her country was stolen from her. The offending parent’s story is that she made a mistake and thought it was Costa Rica’s costume she had made.

I didn’t know that if you searched for Costa Rica on Google they’d serve you results for Panama. If that were indeed the case, someone should tell Google they missed Costa Rica by a few kilometers.

Come on, I work online for a living. I use Google everyday and although it’s possible for irrelevant results to show for a search term, there is no way anyone can confuse one country with another unless the searcher has a reading disorder that’d make her read Panama as Costa Rica.

My kid soldiered through the event as if nothing had happened but on the ride home, she put her head on my lap. When she sat back up again, her cheek was wet. Unless my thighs were sweating through my jeans, I’d bet a million feathers those were tears.

I was crushed and for the first time in years, Google couldn’t tell me what to do next. My pal Irene says I should make sashes for every country plus Ms. Lost Atlantis and Ms. Bemuda Triangle sashes and sashes for every known planet, give it to the other girl and declare her the queen of the universe in perpetuity. I suppose though that the insult would be lost on the mother who, if she says she doesn’t even have the sense to use Google properly, probably won’t be able to understand the sarcastic gesture.

I settled instead for a chat with my daughter over chocolate ice cream, explaining to her why winning isn’t worth it if you have to step on others.

Chiz Escudero with the Cagayan de Oro Bloggers and Traditional Media

November 4, 2012 by witandwisdom

Type Senator Chiz Escudero’s name into Google’s search field and you’ll see search auto suggestions that revolve around topics that have nothing to do with his job.

I’m not a search algorithm expert and I hope I’m wrong but these auto options could imply that Google is suggesting them because there are more Filipinos interested in the state of his love life than the state of the nation.

This isn’t the first time a politician’s private life has generated more attention than his actual performance or his stand on national issues. That makes me think that what truly determine if a politician has a high chance of winning the elections are:

his civil status (in a relationship/single/it’s complicated)
his ability to sing and dance
his dermatological condition
the number of tarpaulins that carry his digitally enhanced face

Of course as members of the Cagayan de Oro new and traditional media, we had to do better than ask him about his girlfriend, his skin care secrets and the color of his pajamas when he sleeps at night.

The resulting video is a little long but it’s well worth watching if you care to find out if the Philippines is likely to crash and burn next year. Among some of the issues he addressed are:

ammending the Cybercrime Act of 2012
the Bangsamoro Agreement
seeking to prevent government officials from painting their faces, names and mustaches on public property
why it’s not a good idea to have a Freedom of Information law now
political allegiances and how they determine fund allocation
why some laws have slept and hardened like cooking oil (natutulog na mantika?)
hospitals so bereft of life saving supplies and facilities, they should start offering funeral plans instead
why lawmakers are still in labor over the RH Bill after 7 congresses

After hearing Escudero speak, will you still vote for him come elections 2013?

Waiting for the Postman

October 22, 2012 by witandwisdom

Ploning has been waiting and waiting and waiting…

What has Ploning been waiting ages for?

a. the love of her life who will never return
b. the end of the world
c. politicians’ promises to come true
d. mail from the Philippine post office

If you’re familiar with the story of Ploning, you know the answer is letter “a”. I feel a lot like her except that I’ve been waiting for the postman instead. There’s nothing special about the dude. I just want to get the training DVD package I’ve been waiting for for two years.

I’m not the only one with postal service issues. One of my friends who applied for the Ateneo graduate school got his letter of acceptance three months too late, while a relative never got jewelry sent by her fiance.

Letters and packages seem to get lost so often in the post office that if Tinkerbell, who collects lost things, were to visit Philippine shores, she’d probably find an abundance of lost mail and packages.

Tinkerbell in search of lost Philippine packages.

I suppose it was much worse in the past. Wasn’t there an urban legend once (used to scare truant children) of otherworldly creatures that frequent mail rooms? These beings looked a lot like post office employees too except that they had claws to slash through envelopes and hooked noses to sniff for freshly minted dollars. Interestingly, they had an abundant supply of scotch tape for repairing slash marks.

People were once so scared of these creatures that relatives abroad devised greeting cards with secret pockets to cleverly store and prevent the loss of green money. Harry Potter couldn’t have devised a better spell for mail protection.

Real or perceived issues with the postal service aren’t helping to preserve an institution already threatened by Internet technology. I dare say post office personnel have helped place themselves on the list of endangered species right next to the Philippine Eagle and sea turtles.

Next time someone wants to send me anything I’d be sure to suggest that he send it through special courier.

Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 – Batas Horibilis?

October 3, 2012 by witandwisdom

Philippine Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012

Image from We Support A******** Facebook page

The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is upon us. I guess I can only make fun of myself now, but there is a limit to the number jokes I can make about my cellulite. I, who thrive on sarcasm, have become severely handicapped now that I do not have the option to throw jibes at seemingly lobotomized politicians.

The part on online libel is so scary, it makes Freddy Kreuger look like a friendly burger chain mascot. It is Batas horibilis at its best:

You can be sued for libel even if you merely imply that an individual, dead or alive, has a real or imaginary defect. This part is so broad you might as well be sued for saying bad things about the man on the moon.

The Act references a libel law so old, it’s original authors have already decomposed. Eighty years ago, they could not have imagined that toilets in the future would have auto flush much less conceived the free-wheeling nature of the internet.

The mere act of joking about a person can get you in hot water even if there is no malicious intent. I bet the next bill our senators will file will propose striking out the word “joke” from the dictionary.

Law enforcers can seize computer data even without a court order at the mere suspicion of your having violated the law. Think action movies where cops burst upon unsuspecting culprits. Why don’t you plaster your face on one of those characters to see what you’d look like in a similar situation so you can plan the perfect hair and makeup before a televised raid.

You can go to prison for a maximum of 12 years and pay a fine of up to 1 million pesos. Good luck. Philippine prisons are meant to give people a preview of what hell is like.

With the passage of the law, I can envision several scenarios unfolding:

Millions of Filipinos will be found guilty of libel. Prisons will be so congested it’ll be standing room only. A friend of mine, JL, says this might be the government’s secret strategy for population control. He may have a point. After all, when one inmate farts in a cell of hundreds, quite a handful will pass out. I see the beginning of modern gas chambers.

To evade capture, Filipinos will invent a new language for Facebook use only to add to the hundreds of dialects our people already have. It’ll be based loosely on beki speak and jeje speak and will be indecipherable unless law enforecers are former bekis and jejemons.

Virtual invisible ink will be invented. Either that or social media users will just have to learn to communicate meaningfully with ***** and %#@!/*.

The only images that’ll be shared on Facebook moving forward will be pictures of babies, pets, food and grandmothers knitting. These will be interspersed with emo posts from hopeless lovers pouring their guts out and mixing them with molasses.

There will be a mass exodus to Cebu where the naturally fun loving Filipinos prefer to be incarcerated. My blogger pal RR says that’s where she’d like to go to become part of the Cebu Dancing Inmates, who at least are allowed some form of fun in jail.

What makes everything doubly sad is that some of our senators apparently signed the bill without reading the revised version in full.

Here’s hoping they move quickly to amend. In the meantime, let’s all pray they have special jail cells for bloggers, posters, likers and tweeters.