Written on 9:58 PM by isko b. doo
Got this one from my mail. How true! i'll come up with my own take on this next time... :)
Now here are the rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note.. these are all numbered "1" ON PURPOSE!
1. Men are NOT mind readers.
1. Learn to work the toilet seat.You're a big girl. If it's up, put it down.We need it up, you need it down.You don't hear us complaining about you leaving it down.
1. Sunday sports. It's like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.
1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem. See a doctor.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 Days.
1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't Expect us to act like soap opera guys.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are.Don't ask us.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one
1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.
1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.
1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine.Really.
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or basketball.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!
1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight;
But did you know men really don't mind that? It's like camping.
Written on 12:59 PM by isko b. doo
Disclaimer: Data and information in the following content are not intended to disparage anybody down, most especially the famous wide-eyed bug. The author shall not be liable for any errors and inaccuracies in the content. If the author should violate any copyright laws in the process, this disclaimer is meant to be a calculated way out. So, fuck that!
I saw on Backtracks, an episode of the local music channel MYX TV, a clip of Paula Cole’s “Where have all the Cowboys Gone?” released in 1996 and I was floored. Backtracks was supposed to be a celebration of the classics. The music video was lumped there together with the cult clip “Whip it” by Divo, the purveyors of disco pop; Selena’s “Dreaming of You;” Nirvana’s “Lithium;” and I forgot the others.
I could understand Nirvana, Divo and even Selena’s cheesy song “Dreaming of you” (being that she’s dead), but Paula Cole?
In this country, still reeling from post-colonialism, classic music has mutated into a loose form which is equilateral to the term “old.” Other factors could also categorize a music video as a classic:
- When the singer’s life is cut short, preferably in a violent way;
- When the song crosses borders between races and influences;
- When two or three artists, famous individually, collaborate;
- When the song develops a cult following or starts a new genre;
Paula Cole’s song did not even rule the charts up until the TV series Dawson’s Creek plucked it up from oblivion (insert your objections here) and made it its theme song. Could it be that the Generation-Y, the MTV generation to which I belong is now considered old?
Consider how the youth of today (the Gen-Z, I guess), scoffed at the major influences that shaped our young minds.
All 2-D games now are considered as classics: Pacman, Bomberman, Gattaca, Super Mario Brothers, Battle City, Commando. I doubt even 3-year olds would have fun playing them (what, no blood? Pffftt! Too lame!).
Our music: Metallica, Nirvana, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, R.E.M, Eraserheads, Yano, alanis Morisette, even the *gasp* boy bands. I think Eraserheads lead singer Ely Buendia summed it best after their songs were revived by various artists under the album Electromagneticpop: He feigned surprise and roughly said “Buhay pa kami.”
And shwarma! Who needs shwarma? They have kebab.
Good thing the gaudy clothes of the 80’s were not revived. Those were just kitschy man! The era of punk, wild hair with highlights, tattered shirts, white rubber high-cuts, high-waist and stretchable pants. The leotards? Way cool! Especially if you pull thick cotton socks over them. Hehehe.
The New Wave music and disco pop were a product of the 80’s but they never really took off until the 90’s.
I think it’s amazing to live in an era when history seems to be anachronistic. We are living in history itself where man is on the verge of takeoff, skipping to another evolution. Modern thinking proposes that there are no longer novel ideas, only old concepts rehashed and corrupted. But I think this is hogwash. New technologies are being introduced by the minute. Even mass media are tickled with the revolution. Scientists in Britain, for example, have cracked the code for curing baldness. So in the next few years (months!), the problem of baldness, falling teeth, cracked nails would have been solved. US scientists, on the other hand, reported to have attacked cancer with gene therapy for white blood cells. Could we see a cure for cancer in our lifetime? That would have been unthinkable yesterday, but now?
Imagine, the grandfather and grandmothers of the future would be listening to rap music to remember the days past! It’s their era, after all. Imagine a grandfather waxing nostalgic to his 4-year old grandson:
“Ah, when I was your age, we listened to Eminem, Snoop, and Nelly. Those were the days when the slurs and curses were bleeped not unlike your music today when all the words not containing fuck are bleeped. And I don’t take shit from you, beyatch!”
I remember seeing one girl at the MTS. She looked about 13 or so and she’s already wearing spaghetti blouse, strapless bra, micro-mini skirt and with red lipstick on. She was with her friends who are all dressed the same: little girls rushing to become adults. That would have earned you a slap on the face from the mothers of my generation right there.
While we still have yet to duplicate the tolerant liberalism of United States and the downright laissez-faire attitude of European countries on public nudity, I think we are getting there much faster than we realize.
Paradoxically, the technologies invented to realize the global village scenario, to bring people closer together might have been the same technologies driving the apart. Where are the games of our youth, the luksong tinik, tumba lata, syatong, chinese garter, sipa?
We are living in an era of fast foods; the short-order epoch. The missing link in human evolution would have been explained if there was a complex communication system in place then but I think we are in it: the jump from tree-dwelling monkeys to human beings. We are jumping from human beings to another step in the evolution process. But what? I know what we are now; we’re a breed of impatient people and I guess that’s a good thing to prepare for the breakneck speed of today and the future.
This short-order epoch is what I call the Jollibee phenomenon. The massive rise of Jollibee is no accident. People now prefer fast food, the turo-turo, so they could get back to their fast-paced lifestyle. At last count, there are nearly 500 Jollibee franchise nationwide with branches in United States, Hong Kong, Brunei and Vietnam.
This phenomenon even led the philosopher Slavoj Zizek to surmise that the true revolutionaries of today are the conservatives who desperately clung to old rules rather than those who ascribe to the changes. The conservatives, in essence, are the real change-makers.
I, on the other hand, still subscribe to Friedrich Nietzsche’s passive nihilism in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the antithesis of the Over Man -- the man who is never satisfied with himself, one who constantly tests his limits and demands more of himself once he breaches those limits.
I would become the Last Man.
Written on 1:06 PM by isko b. doo
How do you classify some practices as taboo? By what power does society proscribe something as unacceptable, as vile, as forbidden as to exclude it from mores and the fineries of civilization?
I saw on National Geographic the origins of voodooism and it demystified all my preconceived and ambiguous notions about the practice. All I knew about voodoo before were from the movies: the dolls, reminiscent of our own mangkukulam, the rituals of blood and sacrifices, and zombies. Who could forget about the zombies? I remember the film Night of the Living Dead in the old betamax and how they couldn’t be killed unless you sever their heads off from their bodies, or blow their brains out, depending on how you like your gore. That night I couldn’t sleep and it didn’t help that we had a weirdo for a house help who relished in regaling (read: scaring) us with stories from the radio programs she listened to.
Apparently, voodoo is considered as religion in Benin, South Africa where it originated with over four million believers. While the practice also believes in the one true god, it’s anchored heavily on animism. Believers claim that God is too busy to listen to all their concerns so they rely on the messengers. These messengers ostensibly are walking among us and could be invoked if the priest allows his body to become the vessel for possession.
The original meaning of the word from the Farsi (?) language was spirit. Meaning: to invoke the spirits. The invoking part is what makes the religion so controversial. The rituals include sacrificing a kid (not a kid kid but a goat young) or cutting themselves to draw blood, which becomes the sacrifice itself. The priest sways to the rhythm of the drums (maybe the reason why hip-hop music is dictated by the throbbing of the drum) before he’s possessed by the spirit.
I was watching the whole episode when I drew some parallelism with Catholicism, which is supposedly a mainstream religion and was partly responsible for creating the myths about voodooism. The use blood in voodoo rituals is not unique. During communion, priests drink the wine which represents the blood of Christ. All throughout history, we have ordinary people suffering from stigmata and some of them were canonized to sainthood.
Possession, too, is not limited to voodooism. God manifested himself through Immaculate Conception, which is quite simply a form of possession. In fact, Christianity as a religion was itself considered a taboo when Mithraism was the dominant religion years after Christ’s death. Christians were routinely hanged, fed to the lions, or flagellated.
Speaking of flagellation which is a prevailing practice in voodooism, during the Semana Santa, Catholic devotees also practice self-flagellation as a form of penitence. Some of these devotees even nailed themselves to the cross. The fanatics among the Catholic hierarchy like Opus Dei, for example, also practice self-flagellation.
The thing that struck me about voodooism is the violence. There’s a term that describes this: the passion of the real. The concept is that for the experience to be authentic, there has to be some violent or shocking encounter. This is especially relevant to our times when we are rendered more and more like automatons or zombies by the technologies that surround us. When conversations are diluted by the vicarious social interaction between a man and a woman, typing hurried words in their yahoo messengers.
Voodoo is an “in-your-face” religion, devoid of the trappings of social political correctness (which is the greatest thing that ever happened to bigots and racists, but that’s another story). When you break down all existing constructs, what do you have left? Ironically, it doesn’t follow what existentialist and post-modernist thinkers are proposing: that meaning and experience can only be created by the individual and so is not objective. What remains, in fact, is the common need to connect to something that is higher than ourselves. And that promise, that potentiality is universal to all religions. That’s what makes Christianity and Voodooism ultimately the same.
God, my head hurts.
Written on 4:01 PM by isko b. doo
I found a wrinkled Red Cross card when I was skimming through my wallet and I realized I’m due for another donation. The way I was made to understand it, every three months the 500 cc of blood I gave would have been replaced. The last time I visited the Red Cross office was in April so I guess in a few days, I would be shedding blood once again.
I dread these moments. I never did like needles. There’s something very violent in a hypodermic breaching the epidermis and into your veins. And just like rape, you feel violated afterwards. Who was it that said “rape is not about sex, it’s about power?” (Was it Demi Moore on the film Disclosure? Or maybe it’s Margarita Holmes, I’m not sure). The same maxim works here. Bleeding you is not about sex either, it’s about power.
The experience I had the last time I was there didn’t help in shaking off my anxiety. Our STAP Glenn and I were lying there on separate beds as the nurse prepared the needles and bags. I was aware that Glenn was getting edgy and so naturally I volunteered to be the first to be bled (there’s no other way to put it).
What I didn’t know was that the nurse was just an intern and not exactly a connoisseur in the ways of the blood. He tied my arms to pop a vein and inserted the damn needle (I swear it was two inches long and about an inch in diameter!).
No blood dripped. Not even a dribble.
So she pulled out the needle, screwed it again on the vein, making another wound in the process.
She must have noticed me grimacing for she asked: “Does it hurt?”
What else could I reply? Being a wiseass, I said: “No. Maybe you should shove it deeper so it would hurt.”
Glenn laughed nervously.
The nurse looked up at me; her face a blank. Then she twisted, turned and chucked the needle a little deeper, just like what I ordered. She must have thought I deserved it for being a wiseass. God, some people just don’t have a sense of humor.
After practicing on my vein, Glenn’s was a breeze. He bled on the first try.
Afterwards, we each got Zest-O and Magic Flakes. I shouted: “Yehey! Naa mi juice ug biskwit!”
That earned me a smile from the nurse. She’s not hopeless, after all. *lol*
Written on 10:42 PM by isko b. doo
This got me thinking. Would the demotion of Pluto have greater repercussions on astrology?
Before astronomers decided to downgrade the tiny rock as a dwarf planet, Pluto ruled over Scorpio in the zodiac signs. Definitely, those born under the Scorpio sign feel they got the raw end of the deal -- they have a dwarf for a ruler.
That’s not exactly good for your self-esteem, isn’t it?
Pluto according to western astrology symbolizes death, rebirth, sex, evolution, and “the breakdown of psychological blocks that prevent evolutionary growth.” That statement used to be profound but when you take it into context the new category of Pluto as a dwarf planet, it now seems funny. Apparently, these psychological blocks were responsible for Pluto’s present height, or lack thereof.
And would the symbols that Pluto supposedly represents drop their value? Would death now be reduced to unconsciousness? Would sex be a disappointment? Would evolution slow up? Or plainly stunted?
In mythology, Pluto or Hades was the god of the underworld. Brother to Zeus and the overall judge of the dead. In the old times, people were afraid to even mention his name for fear that they might attract his attention and kill them. Black sheep were often slaughtered and offered to him as a sacrifice.
Pluto was also known as a merciless god because mortals who happened to enter the Underworld could never hope to return. With the collective decision of the astronomers, Hades lost his status as a formidable and fearsome god.
Now, he just seems cute. (awww...)
Written on 2:59 PM by isko b. doo
They finally did it.
As if the distinction of being the smallest planet and the most eccentric is not enough, astronomers last week dispensed with political correctness and called Pluto for what it is – a dwarf planet.
Imagine what that classification would do to a planet’s rep which is, after all, what matters in the hood which we call the solar system.
Jupiter, the big bully, laughed his ass off after hearing the new word in town.
"Hey, did you bitches hear? Pluto who we thought was just small for his size was found to be wearing elevator shoes. The bastard apparently is a midget. So, that's why he's got a small dick!"
Mars, ever energetic and ambitious, laughed harder than most while exclaiming, “Good one boss!”
Earth, along with the tramp Venus, who might have bedded every planet in the solar system (with the exception of Pluto: “He’s too small!”) now is backing off as if he didn’t start the gossip in the first place.
“Hey, here comes the dwarf and his mini-me!” Uranus, being his usual ass-self, called out when Pluto and Charon passes their orbit. "Mini-me" refers to Charon, Pluto’s twin in size and temperament.
Some planets have always been suspicious about their relationship. Word is that they are lovers.
Saturn, with a regal air adjusts his crown and puckered his lips in disapproval, and looked away. This is so beneath him. Mercury tries to defuse the situation with logic and communication. “Aw, common bitches, they don't call them dwarves anymore. He’s now vertically-challenged.” Venus twirled her hair and gagged on her chewing gum on the comment. Instead, she called out “Brokeback!”
Pluto walked briskly and ignored them. He practically dragged Charon along with him.
Everybody hooted.
Earth, still unsure of his place in the pack, smirked: “That Pluto, he’s weird. He always love to roam in the darkness and his eyes are always shifty.”
Yeah, and he’s very pale just like that Japanese boy from that horror movie where everybody gets snuffed? Man! He gives me the creeps.” Venus added, taking a drag of her cigarette.
“Yeah, I hear an 11-year old English girl named him because ain’t nobody wanted to get near his ugly face,” Jupiter said.
“He’s a suck up too. Always forcing himself on the Sun for a little bit of light. Snorting that ray like some poor loser,” Neptune said; who is actually a little bit jealous of Pluto because the Sun in some days has been giving Pluto all his attentions.
Plus, there’s that one incident when the Sun, the big boss, was driving around the neighborhood in his white limousine looking for trusted guys for a contract. Word spread around. Neptune heard about it and so hied off to look for the Sun. His massive limousine parked near the park. He trotted towards the car when he saw Pluto turned the corner in front of him also approaching the limousine.
Their eyes met. Pluto walked faster. Neptune jogged. Their gravity starts to pull on each other and just when Neptune is about to catch up, Pluto speeded up due to gravitational acceleration from the big boss and pulled ahead. Pluto got the job and Neptune never forgot about the incident.
“The bitch does walk fast, don’t he?” Jupiter said. He leans in his chair, cigarette hanging on his lips.
“Yeah, maybe they’re going to see their girlfriends. I always see them hanging with those midgets Ceres and Xena,” Earth reluctantly volunteered. “Maybe, they’re having a foursome!”
Everybody laughed. Mars laughed the loudest.
A meteorite swung by, almost hitting Jupiter. He fell from the chair, his bling-bling falling to the ground and burning himself with his own cigarette. He stared menacingly at Pluto and Charon as if it’s their fault he fell.
“Those gay midgets. They’ll get theirs, someday.”
