Spectral Expansion

People are having less and less things in common to talk about nowadays. It's not that because people are becoming asocial, no, it's really just because people are having more and more choices in their entertainment. Say, if you lived during the Spanish Occupation, there was no TV, the newspapers probably came out about like once a month, and the news are like fucking three weeks old, so when there's a show/play in town, everybody would see it, and while it's the only thing you can talk about, it's probably something everybody can talk about.

Fast forward to my childhood, late 80s to the early 90s. We did have television, but nobody really had cable, and there were like 4 and a half channels that didn't broadcast retarded shows (most of the time anyway), so even though people were glued to the TV, they were still watching the same thing. There were like a grand total of ten cartoons on TV, probably five or so TV series, and about four movies a week, most of them occurring in varying timeslots. You could watch almost everything (specially as a kid because you had the time), or even if not, you at least know what each show was about. At school, everybody was pretty much watching everything, and you always had something in common to relate to. Sure the shows sucked by today's standard, but back then, what would you have compared it to? Even now, whenever people go nostalgic on that sort of era, everybody can almost say "o yeah, I remember that", because of the sole reason that we didn't really have that much of a choice.

Fast forward again to today. There's probably at least 15 different weekly TV series' that are available on the net or through your (not-so)friendly bootlet trader. And that's just for american shows. Movies come out in clear DVD form as soon as the cinemas stop rolling them. I wont even begin to discuss how much Japanese, Korean and Chinese shows are added to the list thanks to the Asian revival.

Now what? Half of the time you'd get questions like "Hey do you watch blah blah blah" and most of the time, you'd just be able to say "I think I've heard of it". And it's perfectly normal, because if you are going to watch each and every "weekly" show mentioned above, 24 hours a day will not suffice.

The only real way to have more people follow what you're following is to shove the shows down other people's throats. A less palatable alternative is to just go online and find strangers there who have the same interests as you, leaving you even more isolated from your local peers. How will the kids of today start reminiscing tomorrow when their childhood's scattered across so much that just knowing each and every one of them is already a daunting task?

Well there's not much use in saying I know how that's gonna turn out. For now, we'll talk about the news. Everybody at least knows about the news right?

"Well, I think I've heard of it"

Screw it. I have an obscure TV show to watch.  Read more!

Phases of a Field Trip

Field trips are about as much of a part in a student's early life as the uneasy experience of having one of his classmates soil his pants (in the sense that it's a yearly thing). And though the nature of field trips tend to change every year (i.e. sometimes somebody gets left behind in a forest, other times somebody vomits, etc), the natural phase by which the school activity occurs is pretty straightforward. This post is about that natural cycle.

0. The night before. This is when packing happens. Excitement usually causes the student to not sleep properly, which grossly affects his chances of being left behind by the bus, or spending half of the field trip knocked out, when his classmates will take funny pictures of him as though some cosmic law dictates that they should, even at risk of being murdered by the victim upon waking up.

1. Morning. Finding a seatmate phase - Finding a seatmate is very important, granted that the teacher is not a control freak who insists that seating should be done by class number, in which case the enjoyment of the trip depends on whether or not the student is chummy with kids whose surnames are alphabetically close to his. In case otherwise where the students are free to choose their 'mates, here are some factors that are considered:

- Whether or not the seatmate has motion sickness. Because seriously, fuck vomiters.
- Whether or not the seatmate brings a lot of snacks, if possible, imported ones. Fuck Humpy Dumpy.
- Whether or not the seatmate has a funny smell, is the class weirdo, or oppositely, the captain of awesomeness

After those things are considered, a seat is sought. Windows generally are given to students who seem like they've never been anywhere outside school or ridden a bus before. The far back part of the bus are for the "awesome" rowdy crowd who'll probably end up dead/in prison/pregnant before they hit 20. The front of the bus is reserved for teacher's pets, those who enjoy seeing the boobs of their teacher bounce as the bus travels in rough roads, and people who do not know the pecking order of this sort of thing. The middle part is reserved for the more normal kids who just want to sleep/much on chips/enjoy not being inside a classroom on a weekday.

2. Morning. Start of trip. - Prayers are in order, unless you're inside some pagan, God-hating school. If you hit the jackpot in having a Saint for a teacher, you will be saying the rosary for the first thirty minutes, which as much as I respect people's beliefs, is really a buzzkill to a kid who'd rather crack jokes about passing vehicles. Baons are revealed to people, carefully, as though one is playing poker, so as to not reveal one's entire loot. Classmates can smell quality junk food from an entire bus's length so it's wise to reserve some for later. After a good few minutes of travel time, the bus already smells like cheese flavoured chips.

3. Prelunch. - If there were no stopovers, chances are the people who munched and drank a lot of snacks right after departure are now holding a "who can hold their pee for the longest while being jeered by pretty much everybody in the bus" contest. Super excited people who couldnt sleep the previous night are, unsurprisingly, asleep.

4. Lunch - Here's the pecking order of a typical field trip lunch:

 A) Kids with fast food for lunch
 B) Kids with neatly prepared food for lunch
 C) Kids with canned goods and rice wrapped in plastic
 D) Kids with Nilaga for lunch (with matching ice cold sebo)
 E) Kids with money, but likely wont find any store because the teacher decided everybody should have lunch in     the middle of a goddamn forest.
 F) Poor kids who will go from table to table to ask for scraps

5. After Lunch - Everybody's asleep. The people who slept the entire morning will be left to themselves to find some form of entertainment, possibly by seeking revenge by taking pictures of people who abused them earlier.

6. Cocacola Bottling Plant - For some reason, every trip involves a vist to a cocacola bottling plant, as though there's more to making coke than providing a bottle, cleaning the bottle, filling bottle with coke from a magical tube that never gets explained, and then the sealing of the bottle. The only good part here is that coke is drink all you can. (for alternatives, see UP Botanical Garden, Bahay ni Rizal, Science Centrum)

7. Completely unplanned urine stop - Because nobody ever considers that exposing kids to bottomless coke and peer pressure will cause their bladders to increase to twice the allowable size from overconsumption. The bus driver has no choice, unless he feels that the bus needs to smell a lot funkier.

8. Return trip - Kids who have previously hoarded up snacks are now panicking to get rid of their stocks. Bags of junkfood are opened and passed around the bus, further increasing the smell of cheese to slightly intolerable levels. The sugar rush of drinking coke and eating candies will be taking toll, leaving kids in a hazy state of morbid stupor. Singalongs are known to break out during this phase, in the same way inmates try to sing about not being inmates when being transfered from one prison to another.

9. Pasalubong - Almost always the final part of the trip that doesn't involve going home just yet. The bus parks at a pasalubong store where they have arrangements with the owner so they can get freebies, cash. Kids buy pasalubongs ever so thoughtfully, after which they forget why they bought pasalubongs in the first place and consume half of what they bought, with the other half left to be mishandled, mangled, and misplaced so that it looks like a well-intended roadkill by the time it reaches the recepients (usually the sundo)

10. Trip home - The part where the bus gets stuck in traffic, some of the kids beg to be dropped off somewhere nearer to their place, during which they'd have to plow through the filthy, crowded bus just to get to the exit while toting their oversized bags and plastic filled with pasalubong. Eventually the bus reaches school, the kids disperse into the night and leave behind enough spilled junk food to make the bus look like somebody detonated a cheese-curls filled IED inside the bus.

This is also probably the last time a class headcount is done, and the teacher realizes that the count's off by one, and that some fat kid got left behind in the pasalubong store because he's too slow in deciding whether to get turones de mani or turones de casuy, neither of which matters because all pasalubongs in the entire Philippines are actually made in Bulacan. 


The END.

Read more!

Wala Lang

Tambucho - babae na malalaman mong lalaki pala dahil may nakausli sa pagitan ng bumper.

50% off - babaeng kalahati lang ang beauty pag imemeet mo sa lugar na hindi patay sindi ang ilaw

Sheraton - Sherang Maton

McDo - Sex

8-McDo - 50 pesos lang ang charge, may McDo ka na.

Hipon - Walang ulo, katawan lang

Lollipop - Okey ulo, walang katawan

Dikya - Walang ulo, walang katawan

Winston - Maraming wins sa party na ito

Lucky Strike - party kung saan swertihan lang kung may chicks

Hope - party na puro paasa lang

Marlboro Country - party kung saan dalwa lang ang umaattend - lalaki at kabayo

Philip Morris - Sigarilyo po ito

AVG - libreng proteksyon/condom

Read more!

Resolutions

This year I'm aiming for more realistic targets. Last year's projected invasion of Sabah using sea turtles did not work as well as I hoped it would. So here's my list:

Things to do for next year:

- Publish "the" book

- Give car a serious maintenance run  , Brakes, wheels, suspension

- Give standup comedy another go

- Read at least one Elliot Wave theory book

- Cook the perfect steak

- Find another

Others (aka shit that may or may not happen, kinda like sex on the first date):

- Android programming

- 10 lap regular swim

- At least one marathon Read more!

Facebook One Liner Roundup

A banana cue is just a more liberal turon.

"Niche companies that would die without Christmas: Mug makers, Song remixers (Christmas version), Queso De Bola manufacturers, and companies that make "Something green", "Something red", and "something cute"."

"Give a man another hundred years to live and a hundred year hence, he'd be laughing at every problem he has now. Most things in life's a joke, medyo slow lang ata talaga tayo."

"So if some pageant contestant privately disses the same stupid show that everybody else was publicly dissing a few months back, it's now a big deal? Filipinos just love to rage about all the unimportant things."

"Sana ako na lang si Mabini at ikaw si Bonifacio. Para 10 piso lang, magkasama na tayo palagi."

"Listen, I don't care how new you are to driving or what kind of backwater driving school you went to. You really should learn to use the signal lights whenever you're negotiating a corner or changing lanes. (hint: It's the stick behind your steering wheel that doesn't control the wipers)"
  
"Luckily a vampire never needs coins, because he doesn't need to follow barya lang po sa umaga. "

"Ever notice how trends are getting stupider and stupider? They're not. That's old age settling in without you noticing it."

"So the SUV in front of me had a faux-european carplate beneath an NBI comemorative plate, yellow lights for braking, an anti-RH bill sticker, and a bad case of smoke belching. I never thought a vehicle's rear could drum up so much hate in such a short time. Mind. F'ing. Blown."

"I refuse to acknowledge that a hero like Andres Bonifacio always went to war with a half unbuttoned shirt like the monuments and paintings would have us believe. I'm sure somewhere in the KKK Kode of Konduct, there's a clause there against man cleavages."

"If a Bohol rep can change EDSA to Cory Aquino Avenue, I propose we change Tagbilaran's name to Peanut Kisses. Everybody loves those things."

"The real worst airport is the one where you land in the middle of the ocean. Good luck clearing through immigration when your ass is five miles away from the rest of you. "
   
"What the Arroyos don't want you to know: That neckbrace can connect to an exoskeleton that has chainsaws for arms, rocket boosters, and ten-wheeler truck feet. You let her out of the country, she'll return as mechagodzilla or something."

"Last Sunday the priest had the gall to say that Santa Claus does not exist in front of so many children. He's lying because there was one time I saw him running on our neighbor's roof carrying their colored TV."

"Oft a grave error to mistake being swept by the current as personal progress."

"Thank you Vice. 95 million people, 3 joke variations."

"People will believe anything as long as you include a badass soundtrack to go along with it. #gullibletoads"

"‎(3:36:34 PM) nefasturis: I was going to ask for your comment about people who invert their names for nicknames and then realized it doesn't apply to names like Anna
(3:36:49 PM) nefasturis: Because, how would I know if you're already doing it? :|"

"Every 4-person thesis group ever: Leonard (leads), Donatello (does machines), Raphael (Cool, but rude), Michelangelo (#@$*& party dude)"

"‎"Sinong sumanib sayo? Sino? May pangalan ba sya? Kung sino ka man na nanloob sa aming kaibigan, magpakilala ka!"

"Ako si Red Horse. Red Horse Extra Strong.""

"Taena. Saludo ako kay Noli. Nobody can report about elves, ghosts, and other folklore with a serious tone for many years and still retain enough credibility to run and win vice presidency AND go back to reporting evening news."

   
"just keep chipping away at it. like the sea pounding a rock solid cliff it will erode over time, not because of strength, but because of consistency"

"Until facebook, I didn't know God talked through apps."

"I wish I had a dog named 20k so when people ask me what I do to exercise, I say "I walk 20k in the morning and in the evening.""

   
"The scariest part of growing up is watching everybody around you grow younger. There's something disconcerting about seeing your grand old barber replaced by a kid who would not look so out of place in "Ang TV"."

"People say fortune favors those who know how to wait. What they should be saying is that fortune favors those who know what to wait for."

"If you can give advice that's generic enough to say even without understanding the problem, you have a future as a horoscope writer. : )"

"Bago pa nauso ang planking, hindi ba mahilig na tayo manabla?"

"You're 30,000 feet up in the air where there's not enough oxygen for any scream, moving 3x faster than anything alive in nature, strapped to an heavy metal object that only flies through the explosive power of combustible fuel. So who was the smart ass that thought "Hmm, maybe this is the best time to sell duty-free gucci watches and fine wine"?"

"Globe's finally connecting people by forcing to meet them up in person."

   
"There are two kinds of dreams. One that you spend sleep on, and the other, with everything else."

"In hk, night buses go half as fast with twice as many stops. The same cannot be said of edsa buses that turn on warp speed at the strike of midnight."

"You mean the world to me, if I cared for the world, I mean."

"Why is San Marino Corned Tuna trying to market their product as a symbol of romance? ITS CANNED FISH. Barring mass hunger and the extinction of every marine life on the planet, giving somebody canned tuna floating in salt and vegetable oil in the interest of romance is NOT going to end well."

"Whenever somebody asks me for payment, I ask them if they accept time deposits. I don't have money but I certainly have time to spare."

"If you're obsessive compulsive, does it also mean you support arranged marriages?"

"In between moments you're telling the world how much youre having fun, you really should."

"You'll know democracy is dead when somebody loses a national election horribly and still manages to get power higher than the office he ran for. Binay's evil and all, but seriously, **** Mar Roxas for being the biggest line cutter in the land."

"Why are eggs sold by the dozen? Who decided that if I wanted to consume one, I might as well eat eleven more?"
   
"So do you click because you like something or to do you like something kasi click?

"As a kid I also had dangerous toys, but not because they might poison me. We were playing with tops with cold hard metal nail tips spinning at a hundred rpm thrown with a lashing cord that made the trajectory even more unpredictable.We caught them with our bare, prepubescent hands. There was not so much danger of getting cancer as there was the danger of accidentally reenacting the climax of The Passion."

"And the funniest thing of all, is that the things they scold you for in school are the ones that actually count! TALKING. PLAYING. STANDING. Reporting for f'ing duty, life!"

"So if we celebrate Christmas as soon as the BER months start and end it by Three Kings, that means we're spending more than one third of the year celebrating it. By comparison, there are only two weekends per week, which means we get more Christmas days than all the Saturdays and Sundays combined."

"Wala palang silbe sabihin ang "Pag di na ako busy, gagawain ko na ito." kasi mahirap talaga maging hindi busy para sa isang bagay na hindi mo pa ginagawa. Kung gusto mo talaga ang isang bagay, simulan mo agad. Dahil hindi lumalaki ang oras sa isang araw, kusang magaadjust na ang buhay mo para pagkasyahin lahat ng ginagawa mo. Di mo lang mamamalayan, may puwang na para sa pangarap na dapat matupad." Read more!

Metro Manila Film Festival is a Joke

I won't pander on the issue. The so called Metro Manila Film Festival is a joke. I have long since considered the yearly activity as an exercise of abuse of the entertainment industry to cash in on people's aguinaldos and government-officiated holidays. Even Wikipedia doesn't give a rat's ass about who started it or why it even exists. Whereas most Film Festivals encourage high quality and original content even when the films are bound to be unpopular, the MMFF is a cash-cow milking exercise where movies with recycled content and slipshod, hastily-assembled narratives are the main event. Instead of making people aware that there are movie types that go beyond the usual stereotypes, what we get are rehashes that reappear in the festival every year. Mano Po 6? REALLY?! At this point just about everybody in show business has played the role of a Chinoy at one point or another.

 Don't get me wrong though. Indies do have a place in the festival, just not the main place where they belong. No, in the school bus called the MMFFs, the indies get the plastic seat attached at the end of the bus where the spare tire is chained.

Here are the winners for the last 16 years:

  1996 - Magic Temple (Peque Gallaga tries to prove he can make quality movies that aren't glorified porn. Decent, until he took a shit at on a year later when he released Magic Kingdom)
  1997 - Nasaan ang Puso (Decent, if only due to Maricel's powerful acting)
  1998 - Jose Rizal (School teachers love this shit to bits as it saves them time from doing actual teaching)
  1999 - Muro Ami (Like Rizal, but under water)
  2000 - Tanging Yaman (Standard formula of old, powerful actors mixed with shitty upstarts to bloat the roll call)
  2001 - Yamashita: The Tiger's Treasure (WORST MOVIE IN EXISTENCE)
 2002 - Mano Po (Golly, pinoys sure love their racist jibs!)
 2003 - Crying Ladies (Let's have more jabs at Chinese customs because last year, it worked!)
 2004 - Mano Po 3: My Love (How about we add more Filipinos faking Chinese accents? Yay!)
 2005 - Blue Moon (See Tanging Yaman's formula.)
 2006 - Enteng Kabisote 3: Okay ka, Fairy Ko: The Legend Goes on and on and on (The movie as stupid as the title, proving once and for all that writers have long since stopped trying to sound legit)
 2007 - Resiklo  (Zero plot, zero acting, horribly out of place special effects, Ramon Revilla)
 2008 - Baler (Jericho Rosales pretends hes mestizo, while Ann Curtis pretends she's a local)
 2009 - Ang Panday (See resiklo, minus robots, plus several inches in Ramon Revilla's waistline)
 2010 - Ang Tanging Ina Mo (Last na 'To!) (Title explains it all, minus the "ing")


And here are this year's contestants:



Enteng ng Ina Mo! - Too many sequels already? Mix and fucking match with other long running movie lines.
My Househusband (Ikaw Na!) - Too many sequels? Change character names and setting, rehash the rest.
Ang Panday 2 - Too many sequels? LIE ABOUT THE COUNT. This has got to be the twentieth already.
Shake, Rattle & Roll 13 - Too many sequels? WE WONT EVEN TRY TO HIDE IT.
Segunda Mano - Spoiler:  KRIS AQUINO DIES. Like every movie she's been in.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow - See Tanging Yaman's formula, insert Gabby Concepcion.
Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story - We haven't had an action movie in years so this is the only real movie to look forward to OUT OF SEVEN ENTRIES.


Fuck. This. Shit. Read more!

Baryang Magiliw - A Review of Philippine Coins

When I was younger, money was very different - the money that I could get my hands on, anyway. The five and ten peso coins did not exist, which was a problem, because bills were much much more fragile than coins. In the hands of a child, the bills were practically wooden ships in a perfect storm of destruction. Banko central probably takes note of the number of five and ten peso bills that get destroyed every year, and 3 quarters of those would be attributed to "left in the pockets of a gradeschool student's shorts and then machine washed" and "crumpled beyond recognition by grubby little oilstained hands"

On the other (grubby) hand, we had the two peso coin. It was awesome. Like, the pinnacle of modern currencies. Hot-blooded and bare chested Bonifacio solo'ed that coin, until he moved up a notched and started bunking with Apolinario Mabini in the 10 peso bill, and then later in the 10 peso coin. I'd say it's tantamount to a barkada dick move, hanging out with a friend with a higher face value just because. Well, I don't blame Andres Bonifacio hanging out with Mabini. Who'd he bunk up with? Aguinaldo? History says that guy had him shot, twice probably. Putting them in the same coin would be like a spanish-era Tom and Jerry commemorative. Funny, but morbid.

haters gonna hate


The two peso coin was decagonal in shape. What was that? You thought it was octagonal? Well, welcome to the club. It was heavy, and its shaped gave it sharp angles. If you didn't consider how much candy it could give you, you could think it was designed to be a child's perfect throwing weapon, like a minor denomination ninja star or something.

Actually the same can be said about most of our coins before. They were heavy, and pitched at the right force,

they can do some mighty damage. They're twice as light now, probably adjusted so on humanitarian grounds and on

the pleas of the thousands of coin-flinging victims all over the country. I remember before when the newer, lighter coins came out, people went batshit insane about how the coins are so small we'd start losing them. We probably did, but the Department of Jeans, Shorts, and Paldas is happy to report that the number of busted pockets per capita has drastically gone down after a bag of coins stopped being as heavy as .50 rifle rounds.

Thinking about it, the weight probably has something to do with our perceived value of two pesos. Back then, like when you went christmas carolling and the house gave you a 2 peso coin instead of having the dog chase you for two blocks, you felt like you had a lot on hand, and that's because you DID. The coin is heavy, large, and you'd see Bonifacio's stern face staring at you from his decagonal frame, as though he's alive. "Where the fuck is the rest of my body," he'd probably say. And that made it feel even more important.

But no. Nowadays, you get two one peso coins with Rizal's face in it. Rizal in case you didn't know, is a richboy kid who barely spoke Tagalog, loved everything Spanish, went against independence and the revolution. If Rizal were alive today, he'd be that crazy hipster who makes Starbucks his second home and  keeps on advocating we should have stayed an American colony. And you get two lousy coins with his face on instead of the 2 peso coin.

I say, let's remove the one peso coin instead and reinstate the 2 peso coin, remove Bonifacio from the Baryang Walang Hagdan and place him back where he belongs. What can 1 peso buy nowadays anyway? Then just so we don't look like heartless bastards, let's bunk Rizal with Aguinaldo, and maybe he'll have him shot again, which might not be such a bad thing because hey, free holiday.

Let's just hope he does it sometime after Easter Sunday, holiday economics and all.     Read more!