blame my gun

(O huwag mo kalabitin ang aking gatilyo)

"The lesson today is how to die..."
Which Strange Little Girl would you be?
You have a strong sense of justice, and believe that ultimately people should pay for their crimes.

Change address

After long months of neglect, I'm finally retiring this motime blog. I have a new blog address at http://ilangq.wordpress.com. See you there!

posted by: ilangq at 21:25 | link | comments |

May 1, Angel Locsin pictures

To anyone interested, I've uploaded my May 1 protest pictures on my photoblog, http://cameracurse.blogspot.com. I've also uploaded pictures of Angel Locsin celebrating her birthday with Gabriela (now these many would like to see, hehe). I've really now reached the shameful status of being a "bula" blogger. Medyo nagsasawa na rin ako sa hitsura ng blog na ito. So I'm thinking of creating a new one that I can update more regularly. Haha, I know that doesn't solve my lack of time to blog, but perhaps it shall motivate me back into purpose-driven blogging. Like my attempts in starting an exercise routine, humahanap lang ako ng tiyempo.

posted by: ilangq at 10:04 | link | comments |

Love, laughter, and truth

Last week, I went with my boyfriend and his law school buddies to a comedy bar in Quezon City. They wanted to celebrate the end of midterm exams . I guess staring at each other and talking about school, even over bottles of beer, had bored them and they wanted something different. It has been years since I have been inside a comedy bar myself.

Despite the knowledge that 90% of jokes cracked at such comedy bars are thinly disguised sexual assaults and ridicules of randomly picked members of the audience, I expected to have some fun. Five comedians were onstage when we came in. In delivering punchlines and in appearance, all were nondescript ( save for one transvestite whose kinky, Tina Turner hair kept getting pulled, but she was no more funnier than the others.) Thirty minutes into their act and none of my companions, all of whom I know to have a quite shallow sense of humor, have managed more than quick, half-hearted laughs. After a while, it became apparent that the comedians were basically just throwing around the word "betlog" to kill time (and making us drink overpriced beer). Of course, many in the audience were hysterical. But this, I suspect, is because half of them were homesick balikbayans who would find humor in the lamest Pinoy joke simply because it was Pinoy.

At around half past twelve (an indecent time for it to happen, if you ask me), all five were banished from the stage by a single comedian called Vice Ganda. Now he was a lot better, obviously among the cream of the comedy bar crop. Between neighing like a horse, trying to grope stage guests, and having a senseless conversation with a foreigner in the audience, some of his jokes actually had content. Still, at the end of the night, all I can seem to remember is the groping, the word "betlog" used in an astonishing variety of contexts, and yes, a particularly backward sexist joke that went "Bakit ang mga babae, lumalabas ng bahay bakat ang suso, bakat ang pekpek, tapos pag na-rape, galit?"

The next day, while searching for documentaries on You Tube, I stumbled upon Trio's "The Censoring of Bill Hicks." Narrated by Janeane Garofalo, it chronicled Bill Hick's rise to fame as one of America's finest stand-up comedians. Only America didn't know it, or knew it but didn't approve. In his satirical acts, he gave full vent to political and religious viewpoints, deemed too radical by mainstream television (he was censored on the David Letterman Show four times) and some comedy bars across America. Still, he persevered, steadfast in the belief that comedy was essentially about "communicating a truth." He wouldn't let it be about anything less. It didn't tae long for him to gain a following, especially in Europe, where he was greeted with more enthusiasm than in his own country. In the kind of jokes and impersonations that have you drawing in a sharp breath before exhaling in laughter, he lashed out against the hysterical ills of capitalism, US' role in the Gulf War, and televangelists, among others. This was one of his most striking:

I'm so sick of arming the world, then sending troops over to destroy the fucking arms, you know what I mean? We keep arming these little countries, then we go and blow the shit out of them. We're like the bullies of the world, y'know. We're like Jack Palance in the movie Shane, throwing the pistol at the sheepherder's feet.

"Pick it up."

"I don't wanna pick it up, Mister, you'll shoot me."

"Pick up the gun."

"Mister, I don't want no trouble. I just came downtown here to get some hard rock candy for my kids, some gingham for my wife. I don't even know what gingham is, but she goes through about ten rolls a week of that stuff. I ain't looking for no trouble, Mister."

"Pick up the gun."

(He picks it up. Three shots ring out.)

"You all saw him - he had a gun."

The effect ranged from having to dodge beer bottles to being revered like a god. If only he were still alive to react to the 2nd Bush's invasion of Iraq, I'd have more to watch on You Tube aside from Bush's spliced speeches and conversations (though those are hilarious, too). Hicks died in the early 90s of pancreatic cancer.

In contrast, I recall that night in the comedy bar in Quezon City and the most popular Pinoy comedy videos I've recently seen. Hmm, let's see... Manny Pooh-quiao on Wowowee (you know, I actually would've liked that guy if he hadn't appeared in Mike Defensor's Tol add--ugh!) and a couple of Jollibee mascots humping. As for political humor, there is GMA's diarrhea speech and the more progressive A Day in the Life of Gloria by the alternative multimedia group STExposure. But all in all, the pickings for meaningful humor are rather slim.

Hicks once said, "I left in love, laughter, and in truth, and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit."

Sure, Filipinos abound with love and laughter, but truth? I think that's something many would rather drown out with the first two.

posted by: ilangq at 03:28 | link | comments |
popcult madness

That murderer in Malacanang got me to blog again

I haven't updated this blog for some time and have at various times felt the urge to write about certain things--- like my Bohol sojourn, a fantastic website called librarything.com, Bamboo's glorious remake of Tatsulok and the rather stupid MTV that went along with it, musings on a year-long ownership of a professional camera, etcetera. Relatively light stuff, a respite from all the rather heavy content of my writings in my newspaper, and in this badly maintained blog as well. But as it turns out, and I didn't mean for this to happen, the next thing that has got me logging again into this humble motime account is a desire to dish out a fuming mad reaction to a recent speech by no less than the murderer/impostor/cheater/liar that resides in Malacanang.

Yes, there's nothing like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attempting to wash her hands off any culpability in the more than 800 extra-judicial killings under her regime, trying to appear concerned over these killings for the international community's sake, exonerating Maj. Gen. Palparan and other military officials already found guilty several times over for the unmerciful assassinations of activists, and once again justifying and spurring on these killings by naming legal organizations as "communist fronts"---all at the same time---to make me wish I had better skills to write a brilliant, universally understandable, cannot-be-disputed damning piece on GMA's unconscionable killing spree in the country and a hacker friend that would place it in a pop-up window upon the visit of every internet site that ever existed, which in turn would have the whole world breathing down Arroyo's neck that would then be, politically and I do wish literally, snapped into two.

Of course that's impossible, with me hardly being able to tether my rage for a measly blog entry. Plus there's this frustrating truth no truth should ever be relevant nor acceptable to everyone and that it takes inordinate time and effort for it be so for enough number of people to be able to effect significant change, like, say, throwing out from office a certain illegitimate president. But I shall try and here it goes.

President Arroyo is looking sillier and sillier trying to launch investigations on extra-judicial killings one after the another, in the hopes of finding one that would exonerate herself and the rapacious rightist military men promoted and coddled by her administration. Last year, upon growing national and international pressure, she created the Melo Commission. This presidentially hand-picked, supposedly "independent" body, contrary to a popularized belief, was not boycotted by human rights organizations. For several occasions intentionally left out of the process, they simply found it pointless to legitimize what they consider as a charade. Nonetheless, months after, the commission came out with a report that clearly pinpointed Palparan as one of the killings' mastermind (the general has admitted being something close, an "inspiration") and the military behind most of the killings. 

Yet, it was as if the President heard nothing. Before the diplomatic community last Wednesday, she described the main perpetrators of nearly a thousand unarmed civilians as such: good, hardworking and patriotic Filipinos.  “They do heroic things like killing terrorists in battle, putting their lives on the line every day to protect the nation, and make our homeland safer,” she said. A day before, Armed Forces chief of staff Hermogenes Esperon has said that Palparan cannot be held criminally liable for the spate of killings under his command, and that besides, he has already retired from active service last September and thus cannot be held accountable. That was all that the public needed to know that the Arroyo administration will never be serious in punishing human rights violators, much less compel them to stop their bloodthirsty drive.

Of course if the people cared to comprehend the complete truth, they would find out that these killings are a state policy, and equates to President Arroyo ordering all these killings herself. Documents on Oplan Bantay Laya, the military's counter-insurgency campaign, describes in vivid detail how members of legitimate cause-oriented organizations would be targeted for liquidation simply on suspicion of being communists. Never mind that by the way, being a communist is legal and even if it were illegal, it is certainly more illegal to gun down an unarmed one, especially by people paid by taxpayers to uphold the law. And the president, in the same speech, has just officially called human rights groups, whose tally of victims of extra-judicial killings differ from that of the Philippine National Police's , as "legal communist fronts." Hmmm, now doesn't the lingo sound familiar.

I would not care to delve into how operations outlined in Oplan Bantay Laya hewed so closely to reality for the past few years. How members of progressive party-lists tagged as communist fronts by national security officials ended up being shot inside their own homes while having dinner with their families, in workplaces where they were drawing up plans to lead mass campaigns for land rent reduction or wage increase, in streets that held so much danger yet they bravely traversed everyday. How these same people saw their names being demonized as communist rebel commanders in pamphlets distributed by the military, how they received death threats to get them to stop joining anti-administration rallies or pickets or any other activity that helps people realize and fight against their oppression. No, I believe there is already a wealth of information on that.

Now that President Arroyo is wooing the European Union and other international observers to probe deeper into the killings, it is most useful to note how she plans to manipulate these foreign guests into subjectivity. Already, human rights groups are saying that they are being denied audience to Mr. Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings and Summary Executions, whose schedule is being drawn up by the National Security Council. Is there a reason to hope that these investigations will be as importial as victims' kin implore them to be? All I can say is that if previous international fact-finding missions and the Amnesty International can come up with an indictment of the Arroyo administration in these killings, then other groups can if they are smart enough to know what pitfalls to avoid (such as having military bodyguards while interviewing victims scared half out of their wits).

This of course says nothing about the Arroyo administration's capacity to accept such an indictment. Which tempts me bring forward the Philippine Daily Inquirer's lead sentence in today's editorial: "Nothing government can do about the rampant and unabated murders of activists probably will satisfy the Left -- or nothing short of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordering some top military officers hanged, drawn and quartered, and then committing seppuku herself." Well, she sure deserves to, so why the hell not???

posted by: ilangq at 07:22 | link | comments (2) |
political chuvachuva

Dusk of 2006

To us, who are left behind

The last rays of the sun are beside themselves,

abandoning a year that is readying its’ farewell.

Of tasks surfeit, they will not dance to revel.

Instead, they pay their last respects---shroud in shadows

those gaping wounds in the motherland’s flesh---and pass on.

 

Many stay behind to mourn.

 

Tomorrow, when the sun shines with the vigor of a new year,

the ugly, lovely landscape will remain.

But loss’ illumination will attract no more grievers.

 

Let light bathe on every surface that glints with justice.

posted by: ilangq at 11:35 | link | comments |
malikhaing pagpanggap

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