While I would much rather be watching Cha's anniversary gift, Gotham Knight, I find myself watching and feeling the need to react to the SONA. In fact, I have grown weary of it all. There was a time when this was important to me, when I felt that I had a responsibility to be aware and active in politics. Sadly, as I've grown older, and the need to make a living, and the general feeling that you can't change things has sunk in, I have turned my back on it all, thinking that my purchasing power has defined my politics. Still, here I am, tapping away at the keyboard while watching the pre-SONA coverage and I'll be reacting as I listen to the SONA itself. Oh, just for the purposes of clarity, I will say that I am watching the ABS-CBN coverage. as friends know, I have no antenna, but I can get that channel in grainy quality without the antenna.
1. It's very irritating that there's a feature on SONA fashion. Someone has likened the SONA to the Oscars. Would the Americans liken their State of the Union address to the Oscars? probably not, but I suppose with the fashion sense and the proliferation of showbiz personalities in government then perhaps it's not an unfair comparison.
2. Ang barok ng Senate president mag-call to order.
3. Legistlators' prayer? Why Why? If there were a god, then most of these people would be rightly punished. Sorry boys, you ain't prayin' to no one. And if there were one prayer, it would be, I pray that you fools would stop stealing the money I pay for taxes. I never tire of saying that the government took P70,000 of my money last year. Can I pray that they give it back? Or that I benefit from it somehow? The minimum expectation of a society is safety, that you are freed from the brutish, nasty, and short nature of life without society. How come I'm afraid to walk down the street at night, I'm paying so much to belong to this society?
4. GMA has such a terrible voice.
5. Why is it that when you give a speech, you have to say all these people's names before getting on with it? blah blah blah
6. GMA's code switching a lot. That means that she wouldn't get in if she applied to teach in the english department.
7. GMA says that world markets are erasing progress in local markets. True enough there are problems abroad, but then what tangible progress can she refer to locally before the failures abroad? Her 1 million jobs include MMDA and street sweepers, not gainful employment for the well-educated. Haha. how much am i earning these days?
8. "The global crisis did not catch is unprepared," You could have fooled me. Damn, costs so much to buy a good piece of meat these days. And gas has been killing me. Who is the we she keeps talking about? "For footing the bill I thank the tax payers," goddamn, i didn't want to do that.
9. GMA is now saying that she is willing to be unpopular so that she can get us through the economic crisis. Hmmm. is this a dark knight kind of thing going? I'm not believing it. There's a clear reason why she's unpopular. Things could be done better, there is a lack of transparency...She is going on now about the people she cares about, among them schoolteachers. If we really cared about school teachers they would be making more money, and they would receive ongoing training.
10. She's going to present her suggestions for easing price challenges . Sufficiency, energy independence, self-reliance, long term reforms. These sound like things that are obvious to anyone, but moves should have been made for these years ago. Let's see how this breaks down.
11. She's justifying VAT by giving a list of what it's for. Sadly, our VAT soars at 12% and we know that a lot of this is going into pockets. "Take VAT away...and you and I... pull the rug out from under progress...," sounds like a fallacy to me. Take away VAT and we strip the people of...riding out the energy crisis." "It is about doing what is necessary however hard." "The government has persevered." Then she says something to the effect of VAT will go to helping people now and investing in the future. It all sounds good, but they sound more like motherhood statements more than actual tangible explanations for things. V for Vendetta and Big Brother similarities anyone?
12. "Texting is a way of life." GMA has brought the price of texting down to p0.50. wow. everyone claps. should i be happy?
13. If we could replace all lights with fluorescent lights, then we could save 2 billion pesos. Um, ok. I don't know, but these things are very small scale. Now she mentions the amount of money released for typhoon victims. Do we really need to clap that we gave aid?
14. 32 peso commercial rice now. We shall see if it stays that way. I feel like there's so much disbelief in my tone. Can't help it.
15. Prices will remain high. But we can work to ease the pain while investing in long term solutions. That seems to be the recurring theme of the SONA.
16. People are clapping for irrigation systems. I don't know, might just be me, but when I play civilization, irrigation is a pretty basic thing. Not sure why irrigation should be a clap-worthy thing in the information age. It should have been there ages ago.
17. "Providing seeds at subsidized prices." This seems like something, like irrigation ,that should be expected. I'm looking for something more than this.
18. Promoting natural family planning. she's trying to get the religious congregations behind her on this one. One has to ask the question, because she refers to a drop in the birth rate, the demographics behind it. Is it the middle class and upper class that are having less kids? Which is expected as women focus on their careers, or is it the poor, who are the ones who really need to be educated about birth control?
19. Self-reliant, self-sufficient, independent. It's a doctrine that was adopted by the Japanese and Singaporeans which led to their successes in the past. The question is, in this global economy, can this be done? How effectively?
20 GMA is quoting figures for agricultural production. Again, irrigation and vegetable planting are mentioned. Damn, what year is it again? Oh right, it's 2008. Just checked wikipedia, signs of irrigation have been recorded as early as the 6th millennium BCE. damn
21. Agrarian reform and giving the farmers the ability to sustain their land and production. This is an initiative close to my heart, as I worked on some projects with DAR.
22. At this point my mind is drifting, as GMA talks about the place where justice and progress converge. I am thinking how she lacks charisma. No charisma, no inspiring ability. I'm not inspired in any case.
23. Something about the RORO helping the economy.
24. GMA's talking about vocational graduates and she's having them stand up in the hall to show I suppose that these people do exist, that it's happening. but come on, we're clapping for the welders of the world? well and good for them, but what about everyone else? No mention of the OSYs and initiatives for them, nor career tracks for these other people. I just can't stop thinking about the lack of intellectual progress and the absence of funding for it.
25. Microfinancing. very good. Another project I have worked on which I think is very beneficial.
26. GMA's giving more names, this time of farmers. It's a PR thing, showing the people who are benefitting from it. I think it can be effective, although we've had the Mang Pandoys and the bangkang papel so I'm not buying it anymore. Damn, i didn't realize that she's given so many SONAs. Been president for far too long.
27. Mindanao peace process. I'm actually writing a movie that plays on the whole idea. I've been reading about the peace process since I was a freshman. That's a long time. But it's been going on for far longer than that.
28. She's talking about the Pope. I'm zoned out. I'm standing by the need for a secular morality. Let's help people not because there's a god, there's help people because we're all people.
29. SSS and GSIS are reacting to inflation, etc. Good news. Ditto Pag-Ibig. GMA asks SSS to give bigger house loans. Could be a good thing, more homes bought, better economy with the money going round, government makes money from interest.
30. School-building program. Let's see. again, disbelief. The building may be built, but what about resources, teachers, etc, etc. Sometimes we only build what will be counted, the hard stuff, but the soft infrastructure is often overlooked. and the soft stuff is just as important.
31. Promotion of natural gas and bio-fuel. Let's see if this can help bring down gas and electricity costs. Renewable energy bill passed; again let's see how this changes the game. I'm looking for us making a shift to hybrid vehicles. What will happen with all the jeepneys in the next ten years? How will public transportation respond to the problem of renewable fuels?
32. Investments to strengthen institutions and fight corruptions. "I will continue to fight these battles everyday." Hmm, shall I say no comment when GMA says this? Ombudsman's conviction rate increased 500 percent. Question: How many of these officials were congressmen, senators? High ranking secretaries, Usecs?
33. 3 billion pesos for anti-graft fund. That's a lot of money. 4 billion for UP. hmm that doesn't seem right for UP, now does it if we place such a high premium on education?
34. GMA asks for a consumer bill of rights. Again something we should have had long ago. But better late than never.
35. GMA says she cares too much for our nation to let anyone stand in the way of our progress. Hmm, that sounds like some pretty strong rhetoric. Man oh man, am i thinking big brother and V for vendetta rhetoric here.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Secret Vanity
Some friends asked me to post what I read at the recent Read Lit District, so here it is.
My Secret Vanity
I'm a scruffy-looking guy. I wonder if it comes from wanting to emulate Harrison Ford as Han Solo (“Who are you calling scruffy-looking?”) or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (I did try wearing the Fedora, but I was much much too young then to grow stubble) or any of his numerous other scruffy-looking roles. Ford sports a disheveled yet dashing look that I wished I could emulate. My scruffy-lookingness sadly only gets it half right. I lack the dash; I just look really disheveled. And kind of fat. No, let's be honest. Not kind of fat. Fat. Really fat. Well, that's being a bit hard on myself, I'm not that fat. Just fat. So disheveled and fat.
I suppose the failure of a number of my relationships, and a reason for some romances never happening, is my apparent lack of grooming. Some of those girls could not bear my hair that hadn't felt the tug of brush or comb in years. When I get a haircut, I get my head shaved. Then I just kind of let it all hang out until it seems too long, or there's some occasion when I need to get a hair cut. Such occasions, like graduations, formal events, weddings, and the like are very rare in my life, and so the hair just kind of grows out about a year or two. I figure using shampoo and taking a towel to it are more than enough attention than my hair needs. It just kind of falls into place. I think.
My philosophy about shaving is similar to that for fixing my bed. When I wake up in the morning I leave the pillows and blanket in disarray. Why? Because when I get in bed later that night I'm going to mess it all up again anyway, so why fix it now? Similarly, it's going to grow back anyway, so why bother shaving? Again, a formal event may prompt me to put a razor to my face. Otherwise I take to my facial hair with a pair of scissors only when the hair gets so long that it interferes with my eating; I start feeling the mustache hair impeding the flow of food into my mouth.
When we move on to my fashion sense, or lack thereof, well, I've heard people say to me, “Hinahabol ka ng plantsa,” so often that those people get tired of saying it. I'm a T-Shirt and jeans guy, except when I teach which is when I'll maybe throw a collared button-down over that T-Shirt. I have a thing for flannel or plaid because my fashion sense is stuck emulating the Seattle-grunge look of the early 90s, but modified for the tropical clime (which means that the look looks terribly off). Sometimes I'll turn to the other fashion rage of my pre-teen youth and put on some big baggy clothes and look like a suburban hip-hopper mixed with punk from So-Cal. I really don't get how to dress up, and in the metro and post-metrosexual world my fashion sense is terribly dated, and grungy is the exact word for it.
So it's a wonder that I would be writing something about vanity. When I told my girlfriend that I was writing an essay about how vain I am she just replied with a grunt of disbelief. Then she fixed my hair a little bit.
My vanity though, is something that I share with many. It may not be as rampant as the droves of “vain pics” that you'll see on social networking sites, so proliferative that vain photography may become a classification title, but I think that a lot of us do it.
I like to Google my name.
Just an aside, isn't it interesting that Google has become a verb? Technically it's a noun, right? It's a website. But it can be used as a verb, and it's very cool that it's easy to make it past tense, “I Googled it.” Also, it doesn't sound so bad in Tagalog, “I-Google mo,” or “Na-Google ko na.”
I like to Google my name just to see if anyone's talking about me, to see if I'm getting any hits. I don't care what they say. I've seen the worst things written about my writing, but woohoo at least somebody wrote about me. Okay, so admittedly I wasn't happy that someone wrote something bad about me, but in the long run I'm happy that I am still worth writing about.
I have to run it through permutations of my name. First is Carl Javier. This just gets too many hits. Then I'll go with the publishing name Carljoe Javier. This shows up a good number of personal posts, along with reviews of things I wrote and the aforementioned negative writing. Sometimes I get surprised because people actually quote me. This is because I wouldn't quote myself. I'm often drunk or misled in thoughts. But I found out that there are some things that I do say that hold some value once they wind up on the internet. Just now I Googled my name and found that I have been listed in a number of blogs and personals as among these people's favorite writers.
It's also fun to be cross-posted. I once wrote an essay about the crazy things I'm tempted to do as a statement of my frustration with our government. It wound up on a gun enthusiast's site. I've also wound up on fan sites for various geekdoms which I belong to. They found my reviews and posted them on the sites.
Then there's the searching for what students say about me. High school teachers are especially susceptible to funny things. I've seen the worst pictures, like one where a teacher is in front of the class and everyone's sleeping. The “candid” pictures taken when a teacher flares up also make for good material on student pages. I've been lucky enough not to be caught, I think. Or at least I've been lucky enough not to see the bad shots of me that students have taken. There have been unusual blog entries expressing undying love, which I assume the writer thought I would never read.
It's all not worth much when you look at it. Mentions of my name in various articles, some references from friend's blogs, quotes from my class now and then, and the occasional picture that I was too drunk to remember I was in, the rare review of something I wrote, and some of the band's performances posted in youtube. And yet it all adds up to a lot of pages. From the first time I Googled my name and found three entries now I have to take about half an hour sifting through the pages seeing if there's anything new from me or about me online.
Is it something to do with my importance in this world? It's an attempt to leave behind some kind of mark, to matter in some way. I have to sit back and wonder why someone who is bored will hastily snap fifteen or twenty shots of herself, post them online, and then send out these announcements that she's got a new post and you should check it out when it's really inconsequential drivel.
Are she and I operating under the same motivations? Do we feel the need to be seen, to be heard in an exceedingly detached digital world? Face to face contact is mitigated these days by the online social network, and it seems that to be noticed online is just as important as it is to be nodded or smiled to when you run into someone you know in the hallway. We all want to be known, and to know and feel that we are known. I may not care about how I look, but I care that I am heard.
My Secret Vanity
I'm a scruffy-looking guy. I wonder if it comes from wanting to emulate Harrison Ford as Han Solo (“Who are you calling scruffy-looking?”) or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones (I did try wearing the Fedora, but I was much much too young then to grow stubble) or any of his numerous other scruffy-looking roles. Ford sports a disheveled yet dashing look that I wished I could emulate. My scruffy-lookingness sadly only gets it half right. I lack the dash; I just look really disheveled. And kind of fat. No, let's be honest. Not kind of fat. Fat. Really fat. Well, that's being a bit hard on myself, I'm not that fat. Just fat. So disheveled and fat.
I suppose the failure of a number of my relationships, and a reason for some romances never happening, is my apparent lack of grooming. Some of those girls could not bear my hair that hadn't felt the tug of brush or comb in years. When I get a haircut, I get my head shaved. Then I just kind of let it all hang out until it seems too long, or there's some occasion when I need to get a hair cut. Such occasions, like graduations, formal events, weddings, and the like are very rare in my life, and so the hair just kind of grows out about a year or two. I figure using shampoo and taking a towel to it are more than enough attention than my hair needs. It just kind of falls into place. I think.
My philosophy about shaving is similar to that for fixing my bed. When I wake up in the morning I leave the pillows and blanket in disarray. Why? Because when I get in bed later that night I'm going to mess it all up again anyway, so why fix it now? Similarly, it's going to grow back anyway, so why bother shaving? Again, a formal event may prompt me to put a razor to my face. Otherwise I take to my facial hair with a pair of scissors only when the hair gets so long that it interferes with my eating; I start feeling the mustache hair impeding the flow of food into my mouth.
When we move on to my fashion sense, or lack thereof, well, I've heard people say to me, “Hinahabol ka ng plantsa,” so often that those people get tired of saying it. I'm a T-Shirt and jeans guy, except when I teach which is when I'll maybe throw a collared button-down over that T-Shirt. I have a thing for flannel or plaid because my fashion sense is stuck emulating the Seattle-grunge look of the early 90s, but modified for the tropical clime (which means that the look looks terribly off). Sometimes I'll turn to the other fashion rage of my pre-teen youth and put on some big baggy clothes and look like a suburban hip-hopper mixed with punk from So-Cal. I really don't get how to dress up, and in the metro and post-metrosexual world my fashion sense is terribly dated, and grungy is the exact word for it.
So it's a wonder that I would be writing something about vanity. When I told my girlfriend that I was writing an essay about how vain I am she just replied with a grunt of disbelief. Then she fixed my hair a little bit.
My vanity though, is something that I share with many. It may not be as rampant as the droves of “vain pics” that you'll see on social networking sites, so proliferative that vain photography may become a classification title, but I think that a lot of us do it.
I like to Google my name.
Just an aside, isn't it interesting that Google has become a verb? Technically it's a noun, right? It's a website. But it can be used as a verb, and it's very cool that it's easy to make it past tense, “I Googled it.” Also, it doesn't sound so bad in Tagalog, “I-Google mo,” or “Na-Google ko na.”
I like to Google my name just to see if anyone's talking about me, to see if I'm getting any hits. I don't care what they say. I've seen the worst things written about my writing, but woohoo at least somebody wrote about me. Okay, so admittedly I wasn't happy that someone wrote something bad about me, but in the long run I'm happy that I am still worth writing about.
I have to run it through permutations of my name. First is Carl Javier. This just gets too many hits. Then I'll go with the publishing name Carljoe Javier. This shows up a good number of personal posts, along with reviews of things I wrote and the aforementioned negative writing. Sometimes I get surprised because people actually quote me. This is because I wouldn't quote myself. I'm often drunk or misled in thoughts. But I found out that there are some things that I do say that hold some value once they wind up on the internet. Just now I Googled my name and found that I have been listed in a number of blogs and personals as among these people's favorite writers.
It's also fun to be cross-posted. I once wrote an essay about the crazy things I'm tempted to do as a statement of my frustration with our government. It wound up on a gun enthusiast's site. I've also wound up on fan sites for various geekdoms which I belong to. They found my reviews and posted them on the sites.
Then there's the searching for what students say about me. High school teachers are especially susceptible to funny things. I've seen the worst pictures, like one where a teacher is in front of the class and everyone's sleeping. The “candid” pictures taken when a teacher flares up also make for good material on student pages. I've been lucky enough not to be caught, I think. Or at least I've been lucky enough not to see the bad shots of me that students have taken. There have been unusual blog entries expressing undying love, which I assume the writer thought I would never read.
It's all not worth much when you look at it. Mentions of my name in various articles, some references from friend's blogs, quotes from my class now and then, and the occasional picture that I was too drunk to remember I was in, the rare review of something I wrote, and some of the band's performances posted in youtube. And yet it all adds up to a lot of pages. From the first time I Googled my name and found three entries now I have to take about half an hour sifting through the pages seeing if there's anything new from me or about me online.
Is it something to do with my importance in this world? It's an attempt to leave behind some kind of mark, to matter in some way. I have to sit back and wonder why someone who is bored will hastily snap fifteen or twenty shots of herself, post them online, and then send out these announcements that she's got a new post and you should check it out when it's really inconsequential drivel.
Are she and I operating under the same motivations? Do we feel the need to be seen, to be heard in an exceedingly detached digital world? Face to face contact is mitigated these days by the online social network, and it seems that to be noticed online is just as important as it is to be nodded or smiled to when you run into someone you know in the hallway. We all want to be known, and to know and feel that we are known. I may not care about how I look, but I care that I am heard.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Mother---king Internet connection
I have ranted about this in a previous post, and yet it still deserves more complaints. Also, I enjoin the people who have the same problem to write about it in their blogs, in the hopes that the complaints will register. Any company that has any sense these days will pay attention to a deluge of blogs complaining about its performance. But then we're here in the Philippine Islands and god knows lots of company-people fail to comprehend the immensity of the internet's power, or people's ability to access forward thinking and employ it thanks to the interweb's capabilities.
Well, this morning I tried to get online and couldn't. Would it seem wrong to blame the rain? Is it mere coincidence that rain hampers internet performance? Is there really a connection?
And when trying to at least inquire about the status of the net, well, gee-whiz I couldn't get through to tech support. I hear all my friends going through all this shit in call centers, but then the local providers can't get enough people on the line for us. What's up with that? I spent damn near half an hour trying to get through to tech support and never getting anything more than rings and then a dead tone. I got through to Bayantel Customer Service, but they said they couldn't help me at all because my concern had to do with the internet. I tried the internet customer support some more before finally giving up.
Again, Bayan Tel, what's going on? What's with no one answering the tech support? How am I supposed to log a complaint when I can't even get through?
Just as I was trying to send this entry I was disconnected again. Ah the wonders.
Well, this morning I tried to get online and couldn't. Would it seem wrong to blame the rain? Is it mere coincidence that rain hampers internet performance? Is there really a connection?
And when trying to at least inquire about the status of the net, well, gee-whiz I couldn't get through to tech support. I hear all my friends going through all this shit in call centers, but then the local providers can't get enough people on the line for us. What's up with that? I spent damn near half an hour trying to get through to tech support and never getting anything more than rings and then a dead tone. I got through to Bayantel Customer Service, but they said they couldn't help me at all because my concern had to do with the internet. I tried the internet customer support some more before finally giving up.
Again, Bayan Tel, what's going on? What's with no one answering the tech support? How am I supposed to log a complaint when I can't even get through?
Just as I was trying to send this entry I was disconnected again. Ah the wonders.
Dark Knight
I spend a lot of time in movie theaters, and kind of working on film and having been writing reviews for a while now, I've found different ways to watch films. Sometimes I come into them expecting moving narrative, sweeping emotional journeys, quiet family dramas, and sometimes just plain visual virtuosity. And then there are times when I just want some easy dumb fun, like say Harold and Kumar or the Apatow-backed flicks like Knocked Up or Superbad.
I have talked with some friends, though, that I thoroughly enjoy films that allow me to experience the magic of filmmaking. Granted there are times when we expect total realism, or when we just cannot accept the way that films create or operate within the bounds of their film worlds. But I feel that the great films of my youth, the movies that made me love movies, were those that were able to convey in me a sense of magic, a kind of feeling that movies and only movies can create.
If I were to be asked for a concrete example I would refer to the first few minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark as a clear powerful example of movie-making magic. The rest of the film is likewise as magical.
I am waxing poetic about movie magic because of The Dark Knight, which I watched last night in IMAX. From the opening scenes, on through to the last sequence, one gets a sense of magic, and of the power of film to tell stories, to excite, to make us feel alive.
The visuals were amazing with the stunts and action sequences taking on a visceral quality that makes one scream out. At certain points in the film I wanted to stand up and start screaming, "That was fucking awesome!" Indeed that is the sentiment I felt when I walked out of the sensory-overload-inducing IMAX experience. I have no doubts that even in the usual theater this film will throw people out of their seats.
It's a rare thing to be overwhelmed with movie-magic, despite the saturation of the market. Dark Knight overwhelms on all levels, creating a piece of depth, beauty, and power. It's smart, it's challenging, but it's also great fun.
I have talked with some friends, though, that I thoroughly enjoy films that allow me to experience the magic of filmmaking. Granted there are times when we expect total realism, or when we just cannot accept the way that films create or operate within the bounds of their film worlds. But I feel that the great films of my youth, the movies that made me love movies, were those that were able to convey in me a sense of magic, a kind of feeling that movies and only movies can create.
If I were to be asked for a concrete example I would refer to the first few minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark as a clear powerful example of movie-making magic. The rest of the film is likewise as magical.
I am waxing poetic about movie magic because of The Dark Knight, which I watched last night in IMAX. From the opening scenes, on through to the last sequence, one gets a sense of magic, and of the power of film to tell stories, to excite, to make us feel alive.
The visuals were amazing with the stunts and action sequences taking on a visceral quality that makes one scream out. At certain points in the film I wanted to stand up and start screaming, "That was fucking awesome!" Indeed that is the sentiment I felt when I walked out of the sensory-overload-inducing IMAX experience. I have no doubts that even in the usual theater this film will throw people out of their seats.
It's a rare thing to be overwhelmed with movie-magic, despite the saturation of the market. Dark Knight overwhelms on all levels, creating a piece of depth, beauty, and power. It's smart, it's challenging, but it's also great fun.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Kaya Nga Ako Nag-DSL
I haven't posted anything in quite a while. And it's not because I haven't been trying to write in this blog. perhaps one of the most demoralizing things when it comes to blogging is typing up an entry, and then it not being sent. You try and jump back to the text and the page has expired. Poof. It's gone.
I had tried what most people said, write it in the word processor then copy and paste. Truth be told i'm just too lazy. But that's what I get. I mean, I went with DSL so I wouldn't have to put up with getting disconnected all the time.
So I"m looking at you right now, BayanTel, what's up? It rains and things are over. That just ain't right. And the inconsistent connections, the having to authenticate. Bah.
I had tried what most people said, write it in the word processor then copy and paste. Truth be told i'm just too lazy. But that's what I get. I mean, I went with DSL so I wouldn't have to put up with getting disconnected all the time.
So I"m looking at you right now, BayanTel, what's up? It rains and things are over. That just ain't right. And the inconsistent connections, the having to authenticate. Bah.
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