Caustic Thoughts

Top Five Mom Upgrades I Wish I Had

June 30, 2013 by witandwisdom

I’ve lost my nanny.

To full time working moms with kids this translates to the end of time — as in never having enough time for almost everything. Brushing one’s teeth and bathing must now be considered luxuries.

This explains why I’ve missed giving my opinion about various developments:

Vice Ganda stuffing his hoof in his mouth with his r*pe joke
Charice transforming from a butterfly into a happy caterpillar
Pol Medina Jr.’s unceremonious exit from the Inquirer and his near fatal allergic reaction to nuns
Congressman Benjo Benaldo’s gunshot wound on the chest and that new song playing in the airwaves, Straight Through the Lung

It’s all well and good that I didn’t have the time to write about these incidents. Only Medina would have welcomed being made fun of. If I joked about the other three incidents, I would probably get tomatoes and eggs thrown at me on Facebook. Not a bad way to make omelet really, if I didn’t have to wipe the ingredients off my face first.

So what should the rest of this post be all about now? How about top five mom upgrades I wish I had so I can have more time and energy to write sarcastic humor even without a nanny.

#5. An External Brain – Just like an external hard drive. So I can have enough mental room to swirl ideas for hundreds of web articles while never forgetting immunization schedules, PTA meetings, kids’ school projects (that only parents can really make) and my kids’ names of course.

#4. An Extra Eye – I need one that can extend and retract so I can send it downstairs while I work on my articles upstairs. It should have a nicely arched frowning eyebrow so the kids know it’s time to stop fighting over who gets the last cookie.

#3. Four Arms – I know a mom who can juggle babies and bales of fish while hanging on for dear life inside possessed jeepneys. My arms though, just aren’t as strong. I need an extra two so the two I have now don’t have to go into the intensive care unit.

#2. Lithium Batteries – I need these because all this stress has made me perpetually sleepy. I’m always so sleepy I can sleep anywhere — in jeepneys, restaurants, movie houses, heck, I bet I can even fall asleep in a roller coaster. My husband says if he could paint me black and orange using Photoshop I’d look exactly like Garfield — fat and always sleepy.

#1. Patience on IV Drip – Is this all really going to last 20 more years? If only I can order extra patience as easily as I can order extra rice.

If you’re a busy mom or dad too, what parent upgrades do you wish you had?

Manila – The Gates of Hell

May 25, 2013 by witandwisdom

Manila the Gates of Hell. From Mr. Lagasca’s Facebook page.

I don’t like Dan Brown’s books. I once made the unwise decision of reading one. It left me feeling as if I had lost parts of my brain and my intelligence had been stolen. His writing style is bloated and repetitive and his logic is flawed. I vowed never to read any of his novels again for fear I would lose my ability to construct even simple sentences.

Recently however, despite my resolve to stay away from Brown’s mental junk food, I felt I had to read two pages of his new book, Inferno. If you haven’t heard the news yet, the current uproar among some residents of Manila is “sponsored” by Brown.

In Inferno, he described Manila as having,

“…six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution and a horrifying sex trade…”

He then placed his female protagonist in the midst of it all,

“All around her the wails of crying babies and the stench of human excrement hung in the air. I’ve run through the gates of hell.”

Tolentino’s letter to Dan Brown

Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the Filipinos’ inability to take anything negative kicked in. Sure enough, no less than MMDA chief Francis Tolentino expressed in a letter to Brown that he was “greatly disappointed”, arguing that Manila was instead “an entry to heaven”.

I find both Brown’s and Tolentino’s metaphors faulty.

A gate is simply an entry way. If conditions are already awful at the gate, everything must be worse inside. In Manila, what can possibly be worse than what he described? Oh, I know. Perhaps being stuck in a car stuck in traffic with five people farting simultaneously is worse? How about the punishment of life imprisonment in Bilibid with mandatory eight-hour daily readings of Brown’s books?

Obviously though, Tolentino’s impression of Manila is more skewed. He needs his eyes, ears and nose checked. He must have lost his senses due to frequent exposure to the streets of Manila. If we were to redefine heaven according to Tolentino, it would be a lot like hell, only better perhaps because our twisted understanding of what is heavenly includes seeing a lot of people going to church and thinking reproductive health is sinful.

I’d like to think Manila is neither heaven nor hell. To me, it’s just the armpits of despair, needing truckloads of deodorant and political will to sanitize.

Regardless of what anyone thinks though, what’s more important is what we realize. Unless we see Manila for what it truly is, there’s no fixing it.

Mark Bautista’s The Sound of Love Album – Standard Songs in Unstandard Times

April 27, 2013 by witandwisdom

Standard songs are defined as masterpieces that are so popular, they have endured through time. Hereabouts though, the term conjures images of pomade, high waist pants, rheumatism, drunken grandfathers and retirement homes. There is no question that standard songs have some socio-cultural value, but hey, it’s not my fault that in my circle, people think it’s just a synonym for old.

When I heard that a local artist released an album of standards, I fell into contemplating the mysteries of the cosmos. Shouldn’t this artist with an old spirit have been born seven decades earlier?

Mark Bautista isn’t your tottering grandfather’s dentures dependent best friend. At thirty, he’s at the prime of his youth and in the age of YouTube where some of the more popular fare include an impertinent man who dances like a horse, a possessed diva who keeps on forgetting to wear pants and a misguided young boy who repeats four lines of lyrics indefinitely as if he’d forgotten the rest of the lyrics of his hit song, shouldn’t Mark be pandering to the desires of the masses?

But therein lies his appeal. I’m going to buy his album and it’ll be among the few oddities in my otherwise angst-ridden music collection because I like supporting artists who have the courage to take the risk to stay true to their spirit regardless of what the times say they should do.

Of course, that’s not the only reason I’m buying The Sound of Love. Mark’s ethereal voice is the perfect cure for all sorts of mental maladies such as, but not limited to, seeing dead people, hearing voices and imagining being stuck forever in the pits of workstation (a.k.a. cubicle) hell.

Mark’s voice is better than Prozac, Valium and San Miguel Beer.

Album song list:

Click here to get The Sound of Love songs on iTunes or grab his album at record bars nationwide.

You can also get his other albums on iTunes.

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.

twitter.com/nancybinay

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.

kokopimentel.org

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.