PCSO is a boatload of bullshit.

I was watching local TV the other night when I saw this PCSO commercial for the n-th time. It dawned to me. What the fuck is PCSO doing on my TV? I asked my younger sister if she knew what PCSO is. She didn't so clearly PCSO wasn't informing anybody with the commercial. And yet this song airs regularly on both radio and TV. It's useless. I don't even know what they're trying to convey in the song.

Why the hell do they need to advertise themselves anyway? You don't see the Department of Agriculture plugging themselves on TV once every hour or so. For one, it's unnecessary. For another, nobody cares about their public image anyway.

I bet if government units were people PCSO would be the insecure attention whore bitch who always has to be in somebody's spotlight. When was the last time you said to yourself "I need to go to PCSO" anyway? (clue: never)

If ever they have to advertise something it'd be their main product: SWEEPSTAKES. You dont see that on the commercial. The assholes running the show are missing the whole point of advertising. They're wasting money. Money that's supposed to go to charity.

Just because they're one of the largest money-churning arms of the government doesn't give them the right to dot our screens with shitty songs by shitty bands with shitty vocalists.

Serve the people and stop spoon-feeding shit.

Reflections of A Frustrated Hero

Day 27, still at the office.

...At that moment, I realized how hard it was to be a superhero who has to put his costume on and off as the moment called for it. I bet Peter Parker and Clark Kent sometimes have their "oops I forgot" moments too. After thinking about it, having the whole office hear my boss yell "MISTER, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOUR PANTS?!" wasn't so bad anymore.

History's Misunderstood Characters

(warning: semi-technical article ahead. if you're not savvy with nationalism and Philippine history, come back tomorrow)

Our national history has always been a weird one. Unlike many other countries who have their own historians like Plutarch, Herodetus, Thomas Carlyle and many others, we don't have a lot of historical data generated by our own kind.

For our case, colonized by three diffrent people in a span of almost 400 years, it's always the colonizers doing the writing for us. So what happens is that invaders basically walk in, kill everybody, and tell whoever's left what "really" happened.

As a result, most of our history books is filled mostly speculative writing that sometimes feels like they are no more than biased subjective opinion on the matter. For today's article, I'd like to feature a certain personality I remember only from first year high's social studies.

His name is Januario Galut and this man is probably the most infamous of traitors in our short but interesting history. As with all other fine details of our amazing history, Januario's name was only mentioned in the testimony of the Texas Regiment who asked for his services during the Philippine-American War.

In case you don't know what Janurio Galut is famous for, he is said to be a Christianized Tingguian(Igorot) mercenary who, like Ephialtes of the battle of Thermopylae, led the US forces around a hidden third path of the choke point Tirad Pass where Phil. General Gregorio Del Pilar stalled the American forces to let the then President Emilio Aguinaldo escape.

For somebody resoundingly treacherous, very little is known about this man. At school I was taught to consider him as a brown-skinned Judas Iscariot, who sold his own allies to the enemy at the face of a handsome reward. In text book illustrations, he is often depicted as a small, retarded looking igorot with a scowl and a smug.

Of course, upon research, none of these elaborations can be proven with any concrete documentation. And even more striking is the fact that upon further research, the whole "traitor" stance taken by so many historians and teachers might even be proven wrong.

Lewis & Clark Journal October, 1905 ran an article about the Igorots. In this article (parap.), details about the stance of Igorots (Januario's minority) were given.

In February 1899, war broke out between American troops and Philippine independence fighters known as insurrectos. The Igorot sent a contingent of men to fight the Americans at Caloocan outside of Manila, but the Igorot warriors, armed only with spears, axes, and shields, quickly decided to return home when confronted with American rifles and artillery. The Igorot soon fell out with the insurrectos and became U.S. allies, acting as guides for American troops in the rugged highlands of northern Luzon.

Much like the Italians who, at the end of the first and second world wars, found themselves at the front of a helpless struggle, the Igorot army adopted a reversed role in the war and started helping the other side.

It is also know then that even then, among early Filipinos, there was already strong discrimination towards the Tingguian people by their lowland country men and that they were hardly considered as part of the same race and it was not until the formal establishment of the Commonwealth Republic that the indigenous Moros and Igorots were taken into the official pool of nationalities that formed the state population.

For this reason, reversing stances in a war like the Italians did was merely a tactical decision of an independent army and not exactly a last minute act of treachery by offical allies motivated by greed as romanticized by our history. It is highly possible that Januario Galut was, in fact, under orders to assist the Americans during the battle of Tirad Pass, which he did so. There was no mention of reward in any account given about the battle.

I'd like to end this little piece by saying it is possible that what is stated in this article is wrong and that history did not happen as I imagined it, but all logic and existing data is concerned, Januario Galut's nonbetrayal is more plausible than what is originally stated in our "historical" records.

Januario Galut, unfortunately, is only one of the many many misunderstood, misrepresented characters of our somewhat colorful national history.

This article was created to supplement the short story about the said Igorot pathfinder entitled "Traitor's Own" under the Alternate History speculative fiction genre.

Weapons of Mass Amplification

This is almost every typical mid-income house living room in the province that I've seen: a sala table, a sofa, possibly a small TV, pictures of family members on the wall and AN EXTREMELY LARGE COMPONENT RADIO occupying half the room that looks like it'd go transformers the moment you hit play.

Filipinos love music, I understand this. But what I don't get is why it seems like in every barrio, there's this arms race of speakers and shit. You'd go into a house and the largest thing you'll find is the component radio. These same people are the people who have barely anything to eat, yet have radios that eat up more electricity than Robocop having orgasm.

I remember one house we stayed in before, the radio was so large, whenever it was turned on it'd make a low humming sound and it'll dim every single lightbulb in the fucking village. 50 gazillion watts of speaker power baby!

5.1 digital speakers? Fuck that. These things can cause richter 5.1 earthquakes. I tried listening to "macarena" (they like to play these kinds of music) to such a stereo once, the song permanently burned itself on my ears. I was rocked so hard my body kept on involuntarily vibrating for about a month or so. And if ever I have children, I bet they'd come out of my wife doing the macarena because my sperm was exposed to such loud music.

God forbid you're in town when two households are component-dueling. That's when two neighbors startup their stereos and crank up the volume to try and outdo each other. This happened to me, and I actually thought I was in the scene of a disaster film. Roofs were blown away and many many children were lost (probably ran away because of the bad taste of the adults)

I really think there should be a regulating body regarding the size of these things. I'm sure at the trend we have right now, it wont be long before somebody comes up with Stereos large enough to blow people to bits- and give them bad hearing for life.

I don't think I can put up with bad tasting "Itaktak mo" spinoffs blaring in my ear at 180 decibels. And while there's no real study conducted yet, I bet hearing mic feedback from something that large as that would sterilize men faster than nude pictures of Vina Morales.

Think of the horror.

Dreaming Of Titanic

I had a dream last night. I was in the last moments of Titanic just as it was about to sink, talking to the captain of the ship. "Take all the women and children to the life boats," he said with a weary voice, "There's something I have to do."

I nodded and replied, "Whatever floats your boat."

I woke up after talking to him, but he probably didn't appreciate what I said. Some people can be cold like that. (specially when they're dead)

I think I'm going to watch Titanic again, just to make sure I didn't accidentally timetravel and change the plot of the highest grossing film of all time.

Did I tell you Tiger Woods was there too? Funny because I don't even remember Tiger Woods' face in particular. But he was there anyway. Maybe because I felt that all movies should have at least one black person in every film - the way Hollywood intended it.

I wonder if he felt bad about time travelling too? I bet that would mess up his golf because back then, black people weren't allowed to play golf (or own anything - not even a golf club) until very recently. Also, because he had 4 legs in my dream.

This is probably one of the most random posts I've made in a very long time. But that's okay I guess. When you've just come back from 1913, anything is excusable.

Spiderman 3 - World's Most Expensive Spider

So I've heard Spiderman is the second most expensive film ever made in history with a price tag of more than half a billion dollars. The first one is Cleopatra, which was made long before we were born, back when movie directors shat bricks of gold by eating a strict diet of shitty actors.

By comparison, a big budgeted local film is a million dollars. Spiderman's budget is like having every actor on the set of Gagamboy win the local lottery - twice. Titanic, one of the highest grossing films of all time, earned a billion dollars. Even if Spiderman earns half of what Titanic earned, they're just about breaking even.

Where did the money go you ask? I'm betting it's in trying to make Toby Mcguire look Peter Parker's age. I know it wasn't just me who noticed how Peter gets an extra chin for every SpiderMan film and how the strands of his web seems to be coming from his hairline. If the rumor that there will be six Spiderman movies is true, by the time the fourth one gets in, I'm guessing they'd have to make Peter Parker 100% computer-generated and cast Toby as his Uncle Ben instead.

Also, these pictures of "Mary Jane" should be enough to tell you where the bags of money went:

Heavy renovation.

The rest of whats left of the money probably went on to cramming as much plot in the movie as possible, leaving the story with so many open questions, you'd think it was a choose-your-own-adventure book turned into a film.

That said, Spiderman 3 was a good film. Seeing a Harry with a dead father and a scar on his forehead is new - something we've never seen in a film for the past six months. The sexual tension betwen Peter and Harry was well placed also. Really. There were several parts of the film that looked so gay, the gay people sitting behind us were saying "Told ya." There's sarcasm in this paragraph somewhere.

My friend Addy who at the time hasn't seen the film said to me, just before I was about to watch the movie, "Spiderman 3 is so emo, even the costume is Emo." After watching the movie I can't help but think that's the whole point of this amazingly long film:

"Wearing black turns you emo."

No? Listen to this:

Oh my god my apartment door won't open! It's like my heart that's not ready for joy, but is filled with only loneliness and revenge. Therefore I shall wear black, listen to jazz, and wear moptop. Also, I will dance pussified ragtime, for the heck of it.

Spiderman 3 is so emo, it cut its own scenes (like ones that make sense).

For what it's worth though, seeing Hobgoblin actually being able to kick ass using his flying sled and not half-falling like his father did in part one is a good change. Seeing people clothslined is the highlight of any movie for me (and midgets - all high-budget films should be able to afford midgets).

Even though you don't want to see this movie, unless you want to be left out and be labeled "that guy who never really goes out", you should watch it anyway.

Because Mary Jane says so.

Pen Saber

This is project two of my After Effects series - the pen lightsaber. I used After Effects 7.0 and Andrew Kramer's Lightsaber preset for this short clip. The actual movie clip was shot using my Nokia 6680. Also, you did not see me wearing my highschool P.E. shirt. It's part of the special effects.




I've yet to get Adobe Premiere and Adobe Audition so for the mean time, there will be no sounds on this film.

For what it's worth, after a few hours of going through tutorials, After Effects ain't such a hard horse to tame anymore. Still, I find some of its controls hard to understand. But I guess that applies for everything - including women.

Specially women.

Blabbering Is Good

One good reason why blabbering at work is cool: You don't get suspected as a serial killer. I know, it sounds farfetched but hear me out for a sec. Right after some shooting or some massacre and they start interviewing people who knew the guy who did the job, what do these people say*?

"He never really talked that much."

"We avoided him because he was the weird silent type."

"The guy always had the negative vibes with him, ya? Maybe it's because he never really liked to socialize. Also maybe because he has stockpiles of weapons under the drawer of his office desk. But I think it's mostly because he's all quiet and shit."

"You're not supposed to be interviewing people right after they just got shot."

Three of the four statements above are pointing toward an apathetic antisocial. The fourth statement would've said the same had he not been spewing out parts of his spleen while he was being carted away by the medics.

Here's what you never really hear from them:

"Yeah, it was good the cops shot that noisy motherfucker from across the office. I always thought his loud fucking mouth would kill him one way or another."

That's right. Noisy people are just noisy. Sure, silent waters run deep. But it's also the deep water that kills people just because they're passing by. So when you hear an officemate talking loudly about her latest escapade in a bar the previous night, think of it this way: "That's one officemate who won't be shooting nobody today."

*Taken from actual reenactment interviews conducted carefully by a group of accident experts from the credible establishment of my imagination

Odyssey Live

A bit of a short plug requested by a friend. I'm not getting paid for this so I'm still technically not selling out (don't worry, that's to come later on in the show)

So anyway, Odyssey Live is what you get when you put Friendster and Napster in a deluxe Vitoria hotel room and put rose petals on th bed. The site's pretty cool in a way because people hanging around the forums are a bit more cultured than, say, the random people who keep on trying to add you up on friendster. For the geeks, think of it this way: With all the music around you, you'd be deaf to not have anything to talk about when you try to work it up that cute looking girl in the jpg picture you saw in the front page.

Anyway, hit it up if you have nothing better to do online (surfing for midget pornography does not count as "better")

Music Downloads

Why Mark Lapid Cried Saging

Okay, so every now and then comes a day in a life of a man, when he steps up to face the challenge and creates something that's beyond him. The result is often something astounding even for that man. Something that would make that man's mark in history.

Other days, he installs After Effects for two hours and makes edited versions of Mark Lapid's famous saging movie clip for another fifteen minutes. Today's one of those days for me.



I really should start taking this aftereffects thing more seriously.

Seriously.