Things that make you go GRRRR…
Sep 1st
I am getting seriously tired of hearing how apologetic we are for the deaths of those Hong Kongers in last week’s hostage taking. Even our FUCKING PRESIDENT has apologized. We’ve had a national fucking day of mourning, for chrissakes! How many of our domestics who die or are raped or are dehumanized at the hands of foreign nationals – and YES, some of them in Hong Kong – ever get as much? For crying out loud, Philippine government, stop kow-towing already.
Seriously. Keep it up, and someone might get the bright idea to use the hostage taking as an excuse for starting a war. And since our tora-toras couldn’t possibly win against their flying soldiers, we’d be screwed.
I mean, the petty shit like keeping us out of the Miss Asia pageant – yeah, I know! I went “Huh?” too! – I can laugh about, but those mean looking flying squirrels give me nightmares.
In the meantime, our Prez is doing awfully important work like making sure people are addressed with the right titles. I mean, god forbid someone call you Ambassador when you’re just a special envoy. Yeah. That’s worth being the fifth Executive Order of this Administration.
I mean, who cares about the small insignificant things? Just off the top of my head, how about an executive order directing all Department Secretaries to implement FOI infrastructures within their respective departments before the end of the year? Or how about an EO creating a commission to promote Filipino culture? And it had better be a commission that doesn’t merely define culture exclusively as traditional film, theater, song or dance, but one that actively seeks out the many ways that our people express our identity.
Or – and this is a personal favorite – how about an EO that directs the PNP to procure only Philippine-assembled vehicles for use as prowl cars and detainee transports? This will boost the local economy and perhaps spur the assembly industry towards improvement in terms of quality and efficiency of production methods.
But of course, all those things are too petty to bother with. The first few EOs have to deal with earthshakingly important matters like the creation of a Communications group that doesn’t know what to communicate. Lovely.
Speaking of lovely, I really don’t know whether to rejoice that there are some parts of the world where Rubenesque women are considered hotties, or to weep because in that place, young women are force fed to make them curvy.
Tijanniya wants to become a French teacher, but Elhacen says her parents have already arranged a marriage for her. “Her job will be to make babies and be a soft, fleshy bed for her husband to lie on.” To this end, she intends to fast-track Tijanniya’s weight gain by serving her cups of pure animal fat. “The stomach flab should cascade, the thighs should overlap, and the neck should have thick ripples of fat,” says Elhacen. The ultimate sign of beauty, however, is silvery stretch marks on the arms. “Parents will give me a bonus if a girl develops stretch marks.”
Gross. I mean, I don’t believe in being waif thin, but I don’t think corpulent is the way to go either.
Strike force
Aug 29th
The man plays too many video games.
In response to the tons of criticism received by his administration over the bungling of last Monday’s hostage situation, Noynoy Aquino has called for – or has already created (depending on where you’re getting your news from) – an elite strike force that “could be deployed nationwide to address crisis situations such as the hostage-taking incident that resulted in the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists on Monday.”
I haven’t touched a game console for more than a year now, so don’t razz me when I say that this all sounds just a bit too Counter-Strike to me.
Or maybe Penguins from Madagascar. LOL
The hilarity of the idea, however, is only one aspect of this FAIL mission. The more important problem in my opinion is that it is – all around – a poor, cosmetic, solution. Simplify it: People think our cops failed; people are prolly right; so let’s make a group of supercops that everyone will be awed by and will love!!!
Sounds logical on the surface, but what are you gonna do about the failed cops? And if you pour in all the money and resources to fund a supercop unit, what is that gonna mean for the funding and resource requirements of ordinary cops? If you take from ordinary cops to give to the supercops, then you’re shitting on ordinary cop morale. That’s make ordinary cops less effective simply because they are less motivated. Less motivation means greater inefficiency and ineffectiveness PLUS an increased predisposition to abuse and general assholery.
If, on the other hand, you simply increase the budget allocation for the PNP, then you’re taking money away from education, agriculture, and such. Terrible call. Not only that. You may not have taken away from ordinary cops, but they will be seeing that disproportionately more of the budget increase goes to the supercop unit rather than being spread out equally among everyone.
Good lord. My fingers are cramping up and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of why it is a moronic idea to create elite units. Elite units make good Hollywood, Noynoy! Not real life. In real life, only fanboys like you think that an elite unit can swoop in and rescue the damsels in distress.
A better solution – albeit less sexy and definitely less immediate – is to simply increase the funding for police units everywhere. At the same time, re-orient the National Police Commission to allow it to oversee training of anti-urban terrorist units nationwide, as well as authorize it to conduct frequent surprise drills. Authorize also the establishment of training facilities where anti-urban terrorist units can drill on a daily basis. On a different front, Noynoy should ask the legislature to enact laws that will enable the CIVILIAN police force to respond more effectively to the increasingly negative effects of urban terrorism.
SIDEBAR >> There was a time when hostage takings weren’t such big deals. They were more violent than regular crimes, of course, but in the grander scheme of things, they barely stood out. Committed mostly by deranged desperadoes, they made the evening news only for their shock value rather than as indicators of how bad things were getting. Nowadays, hostage takings are used as political platforms where the hostage taker rails against everything from corruption to their dismissal from service. Worse, with so many foreign nationals sojourning in the country, the hostage taker out to get maximum publicity is provided with a wealth of targets of opportunity. This is good for them, and sucky for the rest of us. There exists, therefore, a need to define hostage taking as some sort of species of urban terrorism, i.e., a domestic criminal act that causes serious injury to individuals, death, serious disruption of services, or serious destruction of property with the intent to strike fear into the domestic population.
I say a “species” because acts like those of Rolando Mendoza clearly didn’t have as its primary motive the striking of fear in the domestic population. However, it did have that effect, and worse. Again, the definition is something Congress needs to figure out. My point simply is that it’s time that lawmakers acknowledge that hostage taking has more extensive ramifications now and that new rules are needed to empower the police to deal with those ramifications. <<
All told, this “elite strikeforce” idea is moronic. It is an ill-advised public relations move meant to shut people up who don’t know better; it is a placebo given a Hollywood-ish name because it looks good on headlines and gives a good soundbite; it is an image-healer meant to portray the President as a man of action, hopefully to erase the memory of his deafening silence and the image of his smirking face.
UPDATE
Tonight, someone else took someone hostage. QCPD-SWAT killed the hostage taker. I sure hope the cop who pulled the trigger didn’t think he needed to finish this off quickly before it became another Mendoza situation.
Your englishes bleed my ears
Aug 28th
You know how you would say “Arrneo” to spoof the Ateneo accent? LOL. Well, never will I ever do that again.
Apparently, Ateneo now openly broadcasts the state of your financial obligations to the school. Hahaha. I pity the poor fool who, as of last night, still hadn’t settle his tuition fee to the Cashier. Hmmm. Maybe he was one of those GSB students who were not assess basic fees.
LOL.
Or maybe, this poor guy realized that he was in the wrong school. One imagines him smacking his face and going “I arready speaka da engrish!”
Dear Hong Kong
Aug 27th
Dear Hong Kong people,
First off, it’s awful that your compatriots died in that hostage taking. Believe me when I say that we never wanted that to happen. You see, we understand the grief and the anger you must be experiencing now. In fact, we don’t just understand it; we sympathize.
Like you, we know the heartbreak of losing a countryman in a foreign land. Like you, we too find it hard to fathom the utter loneliness of dying alone, far from home. Like you, we also know how it is to be outraged when you learn that a countryman suffered at the hands of a foreigner.
Remember, we may not have lost as much as you have in a single blow, but our fatalities have added up through the years. Filipino domestic helpers have been raped, killed, tortured, or otherwise submitted to such indignities that some might even have prayed for a bullet. And to my recollection, not once have we heard an apology. Instead, we’ve been rewarded with ridicule, scorn, and contempt. We’ve certainly never had a national day of mourning dedicated to our dead.
So our apologies are not empty gestures. They are not meant simply to placate an angry people, but to convey our shared and keenly felt grief. You are not the only ones suffering.
Love,
ROM.
It’s Gloria’s fault!
Aug 26th
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I was wondering when he would start pointing at GMA to get some sort of breathing room on this hostage mess. LOL. But, certainly kudos to Noynoy for holding out this long!
Noynoy is a pretty lucky fuck, isn’t he? I mean, he’s got a woman for nearly every imaginable reason! Think about it. For credibility, he trots out his dead mother. For mass appeal, he unleashes his sister Kris. When he wants to appear manly, he displays meek Shalani. And best of all, when he fucks up – like he did with the Quirino Grandstand brouhaha – he has Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for a tar-baby.
“I would like to point out that the administration of Benigno Aquino III is just 55 days old while Arroyo’s administration lasted for nine years. We just inherited the state of the Philippine National Police,” Secretary Herminio Coloma of the Palace communications and operations office told the ABS-CBN morning news program “Umagang Kay Ganda.”
“The previous administration should also answer for what they did [for the police]. Did they provide enough funds for the modernization of the PNP or did it waste funds for cases like the euro-generals and other corruption cases?” Coloma also said.
Very ABS-CBN. Very Ted Failon-ish.
What does it matter if the Aquino administration is only 55 days old? He’s smart, isn’t he? He’s surrounded himself with smarter and more competent people than himself, dint he? So how come they weren’t able to work around the limitations of their situation?
F’rinstance. If Robredo had been there a little earlier, he could’ve given the cops the backbone to put up a perimeter and hold back the press.
F’rinstance. If Sonny Coloma, or Ricky Carandang, or – hell – even Manolo Quezon had been there, any one of them could’ve been able to finesse the press to stay somewhere safe.
F’rinstance. If that god-forsaken comm-group had been on the job – instead of busy being clever with blogs – they would’ve been able to monitor the three-way phone conversation of Erwin Tulfo, DZXL’s Michael Rogas, and Mendoza. If they had heard that and had been smart enough to figure it out, they could’ve sent notice to the cops on the ground that things were going sour when Mendoza rejected Isko Moreno’s love offering. And extra few seconds of advance notice would’ve helped plenty to allow the cops to pacify the agitated man with the gun.
None of these things depended on the age of the administration, because ultimately, these shortcomings are a matter of leadership. He says he was at Emerald Garden the whole time? What was he doing there for more than 10 hours? Ok. Nevermind that. What was he doing during the last forty-five minutes when the shit was hitting the fan?
Fine, nevermind that too. What was Robredo doing before he arrived almost at the eleventh hour – literally and figuratively? More to the point, what exactly did he do when he got there? How could he not have strategized a better disposition of cops? Did he forgot that he had the SAF at his disposal?
And here’s something I haven’t yet heard anyone talk about: WHY THE FUCK DID NO ONE TRY TO VERIFY THE HYSTERICAL DRIVER’S CLAIM THAT EVERYONE WAS DEAD? Because that seems to me to be the linchpin.
Because the driver said everyone was dead, the cops approached the breaching operation lackadaisically. Remember, they thought that no one was alive anymore and if no one was alive anymore, why would they rush willynilly into a bus. A dark bus is a perfect ambush site for whoever is in the bus. Mendoza had the advantage of height, he could not be seen, and the entrances to the bus were small and few.
I imagine the cops instinctively knew that and decided to go slow; breaking the windows and tossing in teargas were clearly intended to soften Mendoza up by rattling him, so to speak. If the cops had thought that some people were still alive, they might’ve approached the bus differently. Sadly, we’ll never know.
And we’ll never know because the whole deal went down so haphazardly from a very palpable lack of competent leadership. But then again, why blame the President and his lieutenants? Haha. After all, it’s Gloria’s fault, isn’t it?
Miss Perfect
Aug 26th
When I’ve bought something expensive, I stop looking for it in other places. I’m scared to death I’m gonna find it being sold somewhere else at a lower price. I know that a thing is worth what you’re willing to pay for it, but I tend to ditch that logic when I realize I could’ve gotten the same thing for even a hundred pesos less.
When Venus Raj lost, I wasn’t surprised at all. Like a consumer resigned to paying top-dollar for something, I’d reconciled myself to the idea that 2010 was not gonna be a Ms. Universe year for us. So when I found out today that Raj actually had a legitimate shot at winning, I suddenly felt the real sting of defeat. It was like finding that iPod you paid 15k for, on sale at 10k.
Peechur-peechur
Aug 25th
To date, we’ve declared a national day of mourning; our President has asked for forgiveness; we’ve paid for medical expenses as well as expenses for shipping their bodies home; we’ve castigated ourselves and basically prostrated our country and our psyche to the world.
There are those who would say – me included – that we’ve done quite enough to pay for the brutishness of Mendoza and the ham-handedness of everyone else involved in last Monday’s clusterfuck.
Then a picture like this comes along, and all of a sudden, nothing we’ve done so far will do.
Peechur-peechur!
UPDATE
Just stumbled across this, particularly poignant video.
This is how Kongers will remember this event. It is painful and needless and something no one wants to see trivialized. So, no matter how innocent, stop taking photos of yourself with the death bus in the background.
Lupang Hinirang
Aug 25th
Marian Rivera as a nun.
Holy Mother of God. Now there’s a concept I can get behind. And under, and … ehem. Lezbionic moment. Sorry.
This cinematic slice of history comes to you courtesy of Viewer Discretion, via an insightful review of GMA7′s latest version of the National Anthem.
Now this cut is beautiful, no question about it, so the following nits that I’ve picked shouldn’t detract from the pleasure of watching it over and over – as I have.
1. Lapu-Lapu’s battle with Magellan looked like it had been Michael Bay-fied. Still I hunger for a gritty-realistic depiction of that moment. Also, the actor is done up in body make-up that looks like a modern day Filipino’s idea of what a native warrior ought to look like … if he were in a VIDEO GAME.
2. When the GomBurZa were executed, dint Zamora go apeshit? He was begging and pleading and cussing and generally making an ass of himself; nothing at all like the slo-mo serenity of the GomBurZa in GMA7′s rendition of history.
3. Check out the shadows cast by the firing squad about to smoke Rizal. Wasn’t Rizal shot at dawn? Hence that famous death spasm where he spun around so he could die facing the rising sun? Anyway, I like that the Lupang Hinirang started after the death of Rizal. As Agoncillo convincingly argued, Jose Rizal was truly the first Filipino.
And
4. Despite how good Richard Gutierrez looked, Dingdong Dantes would have been better as MLQ seeing as how they’re both lipless wonders.
Ximena
Aug 24th
What can i say? With a face like that, how could she not have won the right to be called the most beautiful woman in the universe?
She’s Jimena Navarrete Rosete, she’s 22 and is 5’8″ tall. In Guadalajara, where they refer to tall, beautiful, and shapely women as cathedrals, I bet Navarrete would be called the Vatican.
The truth is that when Ms. Mexico strutted her stuff during the swimwear competition, I put all my money on her to win. Well, ok. Not all. As a hedge, I bet on Ms. Australia.
Yeah, I bet against Venus Raj. And the fact that she choked on her question only … well never mind that. Although seriously, didja see the pained look on Baldwin’s face as he was listening to Raj bubble over with nervous glee?
Anyway, see for yourself.
Oh wait, this isn’t about Raj – who came in 5th – but the new Miss Universe. 
Here ya go kiddies.
