Today, July 18, 2008

I'd like to mark this day as a National Day of Mourning for all the gullible souls that inhabit our side of the internet. May you all rest in peace and never multiply. Seriously, we should consider weaponizing this kind of stupidity. We'd put gullible people in warheads and send them off to other countries where they'll spread their warfare-grade enriched dose of jackassery. It'll be devastating* We'd be a superpower in no time (granted there's enough left of us to actually still have a country)

I will not blog about the stupid earthquake prediction. Whoever even considers that mail is a moron. If you've done so and you're reading this right now, here's what I have to say.

You're a moron. You're a burden to society. You do not deserve to breathe the same air I breathe. You should never have kids. You should not get in contact with other people's kids, or other people for that matter. Get out of this website. Out of the internet, if possible. We need less ignorant asstards cluttering up our webspace. Print out your forwarded mail and choke on it. If you don't know how to print copies of your emails, call tech support and ask them to choke you instead. It's be the best thing you'll ever do for society.

Other than that, today's a pretty nice day, ain't it?

*Under the assumption that the target country has at least a good dose of stupid people as well, which is almost always the case.

My Dad Is A Fisherman

My dad had this penchant for telling stories about how he walked miles to school barefoot, because slippers were too precious to use up just by walking. He'd make jokes about selling dishes deliberately smoked with burning newspaper so they can be passed off as "agaw sunog" as a teenager. He also told me how he got jailed for vagrancy one time during the Martial Law days because he snuck out of the house to visit a beerhouse while fetching water late at night. There was also this story about getting jailed during his early days as an Engineer in KSA for lying in the bed of a prince just to know how it felt like. He told me those, among many other rather unbelievable stories that I learned to take with a grain of salt.

My dad also told me he used to be a fisherman before he went to Manila to study in college. He explained to me how to tell the time using nothing but the stars, an idea that I still can't begin to comprehend many many years after. I've actually forgotten about him being a fisherman until very recently, during one of our few times that we spent together. That time, we were talking about the recent Sulpicio ship sinking while eating steak (yes, not the best topic to bring up while eating medium rare meat). My uncle who was also from Masbate joined us during that meal. My sister had brought the topic up because she was concerned the spilled chemicals might reach Boracay, where she'd be spending honeymoon after her wedding.

At that point my dad and uncle went into rapid fire discussion about how far the location of the capsized ship was from the beaches of Boracay. They talked about the islands around Romblon and Aklan like they were damn streets. "If you turn right after that coast, you'd already be facing Boracay," I heard my dad say. "It's not far from " but the Habagat winds are strong there." "The currents of will carry the chemicals away, not toward Boracay." I actually lost track of what else they talked about, but the same way House talks about diseases we don't understand, it still sounded awesome. My dad really knew the shit when it came to using a boat.

I smiled. My dad's a fisherman and an engineer.

And he's fucking awesome.

What can YOUR dad do?

Ode To My Umbrella

Another umbrella of mine has gone with the wind.
To join my other parasols in the big place in the sky
where umbrellas enjoy all the rain drops they want
splashing on their latex faces like in a Japanese adult video
where no wind will ever touch its frames unbent
where no gust will ever twist its locks unbusted
where no storm will ever rape its hinges like a crazy motherfucker
and leave it looking like some robotic tentacled monster

Another umbrella of mine has gone with the wind
how it sailed with the ravage for one last time
in protecting me from the wet, it never lacked
even as it screamed the same way I would
if my bones bent like that, anyway
Thank god I'm not made of aluminum and cloth.
It lies now on the floor, but its spirit shall remain
folded in my heart for the storms of my own soul

Another umbrella of mine has gone with the wind
the seventh, if I knew how to count past five
it's a windy place for me to live in,
and a brave world for such a frail umbrella
for its frames are weak and made in China
but its mettle is of steel
and its courage out of this world.

So
yeah
let this
let this be
this is be my ode
this is my ode to my friend
An Ode To my friend the umbrella
Ode to my umbrella
(ella ella eh eh eh. )
ella
ella
eh
eh
(who
sadly
can't read)

Blind Dating for Gentlemen

Blind dates are like beggars. While they're not exactly forced on you, sooner or later you'd come across these. And while you can step aside or run away from them like an escaped lunatic, sometimes they just corner you and force you to deal with them. This guide will help you during those trapping moments. Or not.

1. All blind dates are 50-50. 50% says you're better looking than your date, the other 50% says you're uglier. Nothing will ever change that. The cardinal rule of blind dating is to not expect anything. The sooner you accept that having Angel Locsin magically appear in a blind date with you is zero, the sooner you just might be able to have fun with the cards dealt to you (yes, even if you get the occasional joker)

2. Meeting up can get tricky. You always have the option of making the girl reveal what she's wearing first so you can scout ahead of her, but that's not how gentlemen roll. Man up and tell the person what you're wearing or where you are. If the girl finds you revolting and runs off without showing herself, that's her problem. There's a special place in hell for people like that anyway (it probably looks like Afghanistan, where simply running off can get you lost in the desert and eaten by vultures and Taliban)

3. Just because it's called blind doesn't mean you should also act visually-cum-mentally handicapped. Have an itinerary ready, the same way you handle normal dates. List of restos, entertainment, and possible doodads should be in your head and ready to be checked at any point during the date. Let the girl decide by providing choices, but be ready to take the lead if she starts getting indecisive like how most women are genetically programmed (Anna, if you read this, I'm just kidding, baby).

4. The problem with blind dates is the first word, "blind". You're going in blind most of the time, meaning you have no idea what makes the girl tick or if the only common trait you have is that you both consume oxygen when breathing. Be inquisitive and don't shy on information either. Chicks dig getting asked. I think it roots to how every girl born in this country aspired to be Ms. Philippines at some point in their life (until they scarred their leg once and their parents told them they're no longer eligible) . As for things in common, the only way to prevent a situation when you have nothing in common or nothing to talk about is to learn about as many things as possible, from car engines to the latest season of House M.D. to nail polishes (if you're swinging partially that way). If you still get a zero commonality scenario, assume the "student" stance and then ask the girl to show you the details of any single interest she has (protip: menstruation is an exception. You do not talk about that ever.)

5. Another important rule is to be polite. Girls are girls, and despite the fact that no two girls are the same - they should be treated in the same way - with respect. That means not talking about dick jokes if she doesn't start it. Offering to carry her bag, open the door, take her home, and pay for the bill - unless she declines the offer (and only if twice). Do not allow her to get drunk and don't get drunk yourself - specially on the first date. And if ever you do get drunk, do not urinate on the table candle just to tell your date "that's how a fireman should do it".

6. No matter if you are romantically interested with the girl or not, keep the line open even after the date. Make sure you have followthroughs in the form of periodic communications, provided the date did not end horribly, like if any form of vehicle with sirens are present during your parting, it can't be a good sign. The goal of blind dates is to get people acquainted and not to have them produce babies after a night at some rundown motel just outside the Makati area. A girl who might not make a good girlfriend could make a good friend. Friends have friends, and your dream girl just might be one social network hop away. My point is this: don't burn bridges just because you don't like the face at the toll booth. Who knows? Some girls just grow on you. (but not all)

7. Last tip is be yourself. All dates are about getting to know the other person. If you come to a date as another person, that's already false marketing - a crime that should be punishable in our penal system. A gentleman should always come as himself, preferably fully clothed. Honesty is a rare commodity nowadays. Just being true to yourself is already a big positive, unless we're talking about HIV, in which case negative is positive. Or something. I'm getting confused too.

There you have it folks. Happy blind dating, or dating the blind, whichever suits your face, and her tastes.

Coffee Shop Assholes 101

As a quick foreword, I am not an avid coffee drinker. The stuff fucks my system up faster than unchased gin. I go to coffee shops because more often than not, they're the only places inside malls where you can talk to another person without having to shout in flea-market volume. Of course, other people want to go the the shop too, and for other reasons - mostly not directly involving coffee, which is sort of like going inside a cinema to get airconditioning. And as with most of what I write in this site, where there are people - there are assholes. That said, this article is a quick list of assholes you might, and probably will eventually come across during one of your visits in these shops selling hot water tainted with boiled innards of overcooked beans. (not so classy now is it?)

5. Overclassy callcenter agent
Okay, so maybe I'm stereotyping here, but stereotypes are there for a reason. It's like every time I go to Starbucks, there's always this one noisy asshole who disrupts the tranquility of the cafe by ranting mindlessly about his new cellphone or last "call" in perfect American (i.e. pretentious asshole) accent. Whether it's a force of habit or just his way of asserting superiority over other patrons is not known. In fact it doesn't even matter. Fact is, nobody really gives a shit about anything that comes out of his mouth, unless it's his broken teeth after somebody finally decides that his coffee is best served with a nice add-on socking in the face with a fist.

4. Internet Leech cum Laptop asshole
Technology is a great thing. Laptops are a great example. What's not great is that technology comes with technofags who consider their new "gadgets" are a status symbol. Always appearing to be the diligent corporate powerhouse on the go, these guys are often staring at the screen, barely touching the coffee that they are supposed to be drinking inside a COFFEE shop. Truth isn't as awesome though, as most of these guys are either in the shop to mooch on the free wireless internet, streaming the latest funny off youtube, and updating their sad overcustomized friendster accounts that hardly anybody visits. Actually that' s only for the subtypse that have learned to figure out how to connect to the wireless. If you're observant enough, you'll notice that most of these laptards are just doing any of three things:

- Watching a movie. That's why they look concentrated, most laptop speakers sound like shit and people have to concentrate to understand anything - specially when it's just a pirated movie you torrented off the net.

- Looking at ugly pictures of them and their friends.

- Randomly clicking at folders. I swear to god, there are so many people who do this, like they've never seen a windows folder in their entire lives and eyes filled with wondering if the next folder will hold something special. (read: specially retarded)

3. Bulk buyer
This person is somewhat special because most likely, she will not be staying inside the cafe - for long. Instead, she'll be choking the line by ordering what will range between 4-11 cups of coffee for her officemates who happen to be too fucking lazy to get off their useless asses and get their own. Much pity is to be given to this person, directly proportional to the number of cups she has to buy, because each cup represents at least one person in her office who happens to be smarter than her in the sense that they were able to pretend to be more important, and therefore need to be in the office more than Bulk Buyer. Meanwhile, you're stuck in the waiting area, wondering whether you can get coffee faster if you started planting a coffee tree outside and wait for the beans to grow out.

2. Out-of-school student
Out-of-school student isn't really out-of-school. He just happens to choose to become a student outside his school. These guys are easy to spot, with books and notes scattered all over the table/s and spare chairs that would otherwise be perfectly good for, oh I don't know, DRINKING COFFEE and SITTING DOWN. These guys apparently haven't heard of the term "Library" where there's pretty much everything they would need to study - minus the coffee that you don't see them drinking anyway. Every now and then you'd hear him trying to chant a list or formula he's trying to memorize, which theoretically would give him a scholastic charm that might get girls interested in brainy guys hooked - but fails in doing so anyway. Listen, if you think studying in a place where lot's of people are talking is good for your grades then maybe you're not taking the right kind of education. *cough* SPED *cough*

1. Generally every person who takes 2 hours to drink a regular joe.
Now this is a no-brainer. We all had this coming. And you fucking know you're guilty of it too. Shut up. You are. Yes, you and your friends. Remember that time you guys had already finished your small cups of lattes and you were still hanging out in Starbucks with your friends, mooching off the free water, airconditioning and ambiance while people outside waited for you guys to finish and finally realize you're just being a bunch of cheapskate assholes? The guy standing outside could've been me. And I was thinking of making a list of assholes you find in Starbucks with you in my #1 position. It's a coffee shop. Drink the goddamn coffee, talk while you're at it, then order something else or LEAVE.

Some people.

Fuel Woes

Almost thirty years ago, a guy named Ariel Ureta said on TV "Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, bisikleta ang kailangan." (For the improvement of the country, we need bicycles) It was a lame wordplay on the new regime's "Disiplina ang kailangan" (we need disicpline) motto. The unfunny motherfucker was sentenced to riding the bike around Camp Crame for a week, probably because people back then were less tolerant of shitty puns. I'm not even sure how Jimmy Santos lived through that era.

In any case, 30 years hence, Ariel Ureta's words is starting to make sense. With the skyrocketing fuel prices, and increasing transportation costs, people are starting to look for transportation alternatives, like, well, bicycles, and for people looking for compact versions - unicycles. Car companies, you just gotta look into this.

pictured: Toyota's new compact,
2009 model 1wheeldrive Zykleta

Why not right? If you're not that far from where you work, an hour on a bike running at 10kmph will give you 10km - that's the distance between Cavite and Parañaque already. Sure, you'll be a sweaty bastard when you arrive at your destination, but that's why we have deodorant, a commodity whose price doesn't appreciate 50centavos per litre every weekend. And there are actually some girls that like their guys sweaty. Don't ask. Let's end it there.

Oh yeah, about water cars. Somebody's bound to suggest that. Unless somebody learns how to separate H2 from O without using electrolysis, it just wont work. More power is spent splitting the atoms than is generated from setting fire to the H2 component. In other words, Mr. Flintstone gets more mileage in his foot-powered car than you will using a water car. The sooner you quit dreaming, the faster we can move on.

In the interest of preservation, we can also harvest other things that we're pretty abundant in. Among these are the following:

- Methane in closed spaces like elevators and LRT cabins. Harvest those farts. Arrest anybody who tries to steal this resource by inhaling our precious natural gas!
- Journalists from inquirer.net who don't know the difference between your and you're. If you add their works to the mix, all that dryness will make a good burn.
- Grease from taong grasa. I'm not really sure if those things are flammable, but we can always try right? If this is feasible, we'd be solving abject poverty and our power crisis at the same time.
- Smuggery. We'll never run out of those. The next time somebody tells you they're saving Mother Earth by drinking Starbucks in recycled cups, you can toss them inside an engine that runs on smuggery. I bet the mileage for that kind of machine will be real high.
- Oil from Shakey's food. We should really start consider drilling for oil in those Bunch-of-Lunch plates. Just eating one will make you think there's enough oil there to turn you into the Shah of Iran.
- Or how about gunpowder? Rocket-assisted transportation sounds awesome, and it just might help boost our ailing life Insurance industry.

If I don't post anything again in the next two days, either my plan of attaching baby rockets to my office chair has succeeded in sending me to Boracay or I'm dead.

Or both.

In any case, I'm doing my part.

Fun With Clone Machines

I was watching a feature on Discovery Channel about cloning the other day when I though to myself, why would anybody want a cloning device? While it's cool to multiply people like Toni Gonzaga and Angel Locsin, such a technology going mainstream means we'd have state-of-the-art ugly factories too, producing copies of people like Vina Morales and your hideous tito who still thinks moustaches are the in thing.

So I took that as a challenge and thought of reasons why I'd want a cloning machine for myself. Here are the results.

1. Life insurances will be my new source of income. Everyday I'd just clone myself, have myself as my own beneficiary, and then proceed to shoot him with a revolver in the forehead twice. Or better yet, I'll make people who hate me shoot my clone in the forehead - and then charge them damages.

2. I don't have to use Adobe Aftereffects to create shitty film illusions to clone myself. In fact, I just might stage my own war movie, starring myself. Stunts will be performed by the clones.
Anybody who refuses gets offered up to my "life insurance" gig.

3. I'll beat the record number of inmates in that Cebu prison dance video of Thriller. As an added bonus, I'll have my clones do that and then reenact a war movie scene afterwards (see #3)

4. I'll create 50 copies of myself and enroll myself in one class. I bet roll call will be fun.

5. I'll clone Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, make a couple of hundred copies, and then use them to invade Sabah. While my invasion might not succeed, I can most certainly use those extra non-working holidays they'll produce.

So what'll you do with your clones?

Denver The Last Dinosaur

Warning: Spoilers ahead. (highlight for actual text)

[ He's my friend and a whole lot more ]

Fears

Every man fears something. Fear is systemic, and everybody will always have that one thing he fears more than anything. For some people it's spiders, for others, clowns. It can be anything and there's one for every person you know. Show me a guy who says he doesn't have anything to fear and I'll show you a guy who's afraid to show he has a small penis (chances are he really does).

By everybody, I mean everybody, including me. I do have a phobia, I'm just thankful the thing I'm afraid of doesn't have a very long name (or any name for that matter) and it doesn't occur to me very often.

See, ever since I was a kid, about three or four, I've always been afraid of sharks. To be more specific, I'm afraid of being in the water with the thought that there might be sharks beneath, or behind me. It doesn't have a name yet, and I hate to call it alonusinthewateruswithlotsoffuckingsharpteethus-phobia so I just call it my own little fear.

I know it exists but I'm not really controlling it well. When it attacks, I just get all uncoordinated and panicky, which isn't really good when your favorite pastime is being in the water where you can actually die of just panicking. It can be on any body of water, regardless of the possibility of sharks being in it. Swimming pool? Check. Landlocked lagoon? Check. At one point it got so bad I was afraid of a "timba" of water i was using for bathing because the water got murky enough for me to not see the bottom.

Worst bit is when it happens while I'm in the middle of actually swimming. The thought of a shark comes to my head and suddenly i find myself trying to check the water around me if there are any sharks around at the risk of getting muscle cramps from all the twisting I have to do. Either that or I speed up and hurry towards the nearest person or high place like a ladder or beach. (If you're asking why the nearest person, it's because then I wont have to outswim the shark - only that person).

In any case, it's threatened my safety more than once, either because I had cramps or because I ended up swimming towards the wrong direction (i.e. towards the bottom of the sea instead of the surface) I'm not a bad swimmer, if I may be so bold in stating that, but my case of phobia often turns me into a stupid swimmer, which is the worst kind of swimmer, next to the pool-urinating type (who doesn't endanger lives any more than he endangers general hygiene)

Thinking back to where it came from, I remember as a kid, my dad took me to Ocean Park HongKong and held me directly above a huge tank filled with fish, that he nicely referred to as "sharks". (that asshole) I didn't really cry because of that, but later on I watched the film Jaws and thought of how dangerously close I had been to becoming part of a campy sea-horror movie. It just kinda got stuck, and before long I already was afraid of being alone in the water.

Luckily, I'm also the type that forgets bad things quickly, so that memory is repressed at the back of my head. It doesn't pop up very often, so I am able to swim a couple of laps and dive up to 12feet underwater without having any problems - as long as the thought doesn't surface.

A few years back I got to swim with reefsharks at Eagle's Point, but only out of peer pressure. Nobody at the time knew how fuck scared I was, and my trembling wasn't easily detectable underwater (it was sorta like urinating). It took my fears away a bit, but old habits really die hard.

You might be thinking why I'm writing this here now. No really reason, actually, I'm just sharing. I'd say, if in the future, you go swimming with me and you suddenly see me going batshit insane in the water, you'd know why - and you know it's not a good time to do that "fake shark attack" joke lest I plunge my foot deep into your ass afterwards. Of course it could be a real shark attack too, so you may want to double check first.

Your turn. What's your innermost fear?

Wanted: The Movie Review

Spoiler free part:
In my life, I've done many stupid things, some of those I really enjoyed doing with the full knowledge that what I was doing was stupid, but hella fun nonetheless. This includes repeatedly crossing a very deadly highway after school so I can shorten my trip home enough to be able to watch afternoon cartoons as a kid, and, decade later, making it hard for the next generation of highway crossers on that same stretch of asphalt with my car.

If those sort of experiences can be turned into a movie, the result would become Wanted - a movie riddled with many things that will make you say "THIS IS FUCKING STUPID." while sporting a raging hardon for the nonstop awesomeness the movie delivers. Directed by Russian Timur Bekmambetov, this movie is all about awesome scenes that go hand in hand with jackassery that's simply mindblowing.

The story is about joe schmoe named Wesley whose father is a member of a fraternity of assassins wittily nicknamed "The Fraternity" (oh u). After his father dies, he is then recruited and sent of by the fraternity to avenge his father.

In terms of actors, the movie is not lacking. There's Morgan Freeman in his eternal "mentor/quiet leader" stereotype and there's Angelina Jolie. Did I mention there's Angelina Jolie? because I thought I said "Angelina Jolie went naked again".

Action sequences are top notch, with gunfight sequences that say "This is how Equilibrium's Gun Kata should have been done", awesome enough to look cool and realistic enough to say "Fuck Equilibrium!" One liners aren't lacking either, and the presence of Russian humor adds a distinct flavor to the obviously overdone premise.

Spoilers start here:

If you've noticed, I used "stupid" once too many in this review. It's for good reason - because many times during the movie, common sense gets sacrificed in the name of looking cool (or just having fun)

- The multistage sniper rifle used by Wesley and Cross mark their targets with an X. A huge fucking X mark. You think if you were somebody from The Fraternity you'd notice something like a huge plaster marking X placed on top of perfectly good carpeting. Well, turns out these guys may be great assassins, but they just have no taste when it comes to interior design.

- Rats. Peanutbutter. Wrist watches. I don't think I've ever seen anything as ridiculous as that scene. The fact that he was able to fill a dumptruck filled with rats that had wristwatches attached to them meant Wesley spent countless hours taking them out of the truck (he lead the rats into the truck with peanutbutter first), slap them with wrist watches and placed them inside again. If you try to do this in real life, it's a suicide mission. Interestingly, you just might be the first ever victim of the Black Death in a hundred years.

- Still on the topic of rats, how hard is it to close a goddamn door anyway? The entire factory exploded because of the rats. That means every room in the place had to have been open (and there must've been peanut butter like fucking everywhere) Why a textile factory would have peanut butter is beyond me. (last time I checked we don't need peanut butter to make popped-collar shirts)

- The Fraternity is a 1000 year organization. The automated loom presented in the movie on the other hand, was nonexistent until the 16th century. Meaning for the first 700 years or so, these guys weren't doing anything (planting corn, maybe?)

- Wait. Loom. Talking. It's a loom that talks. You'd think they couldn't have done so badly in finding an excuse for killing people. Think about it. 1000 years of obeying thread runs in the produced textile by accident. You'd think some guy would find the idea stupid and the whole thing would die out after a year or so, but no. It actually lasted for 1000 years.

Conclusion:

The movie has lots of stupid moments, but you have to admit, curving those bullets are just too cool. While saying "this is stupid", my face had a grin that just wouldn't go away. As a corporate slave like Wesley, seeing him indulge in his fit of rage was pretty awesome too, because that's something I'd never do and walk out of in one piece.

Wanted in a sentence is "The most stupid awesome thing you will watch this summer." or "The most awesome stupid thing you will watch this summer." Either way, fuck it. Imma watch it again.