June 2002 Archives
Just in! Super duper neat art (and game!) news:
Michael and Auriea of the legendary entropy8zuper have just launched Tale of Tales, their very own game development company. Their first project, currently in the first stage of development, is 8, "a 3d narrative gaming environment based on versions of the story most commonly known as Sleeping Beauty."
Peter's Poetry Program is a javascript program that "generates what might loosely be called 'poems'." I set it to five lines and these are two of the results:
The twisting fish hunt a walking boat.
Foolishly flustering, a silver green, offered woman breaks behind starting scissors perhaps greenly.
Fluttered black, red ice finds the twisting papers.
Foolish liquid mud redly ignorantly turns and offering, sometimes scolding ice blackly turns perhaps liquid, huge truth.
A hunting false hair greenly shortly flusters silver, hunted playing apples therefore shortly redly offering, forever, the smoothly fluttering cigars splash to returned indifference.The falsely sweating, shortly walking stanzas slickly twist ignorant boats.
Plundering, the beautiful oxen stop a smoothly hard, black piano then breaking, a feared, played playing duet loiters.
Walking, the fairly turned pianos yellowly softly sweat.
Perhaps falsely, the plundering candles sweat.
Hunted started scissors flutter greenly sometimes.
Deliciously bad! Sad to say I've read much worse, even (especially?) in creative writing workshops full of creative writing majors.
Dog News is, as you might well have guessed from the name, a theme blog: all dog news, all the time.
From The Independent comes an interesting interview with Dutch novelist Marcel Möring on, among other things, what it means to be Dutch ("There's no such thing as Dutchness."). This next bit in particular caught my attention:
Möring tried living as an orthodox Jew in his twenties, but was "far too liberal and far too left-wing. It's wonderful to surrender to an idea of faith but I will never get it back because I can't be persuaded by it. It's like a fairy tale."
I've been an atheist since I was fifteen, although thinking back I was never really a believer, but growing up nominally Catholic and spending ten years in a Catholic school aren't things easily shaken off.
While I think faith is a crutch,* there is a very small part of me that wishes I was capable of surrendering to it; Möring says faith is like a fairy tale and the interviewer points out fairy tales are "hugely seductive," and she's absolutely right.
[ via Hydragenic ]
*and organized religion possibly the worst thing ever invented by humans, but that's a discussion for another day.
I've never liked him much in any of his public incarnations (columnist, tv host, former UP faculty regent) but Randy David's recent column on cults was pretty good:
What amazes us, modern city-dwellers, is why anyone in this day and age would want to join, and die for, anything like the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association (PBMA). We take one look at its banefully unattractive leader, Ruben Ecleo Jr., and our amazement grows even more. For we have learned to expect that such groups should be led by individuals with a commanding presence, exuding magic, charisma and strength.
How do we explain the spell that the PBMA seems to have cast upon its members? We can be sure, first of all, that the PBMA works like a mutual benefit society, offering a broad range of assistance to the underprivileged and powerless. Beyond that, movements like this provide an experience of solidarity and strength to their members who feel excluded by modern society. Yet the PBMA claims to have members overseas, possibly OFWs working all over the world, and counts among them engineers and teachers who would hardly be regarded as marginalized. We believe that.
People join movements, cults and brotherhoods for various reasons. (...)
Conrado de Quiros goes over the same territory and comes to much the same conclusion as David does here:
The PBMA exemplifies the distasteful mix of grandiose concepts ("benevolent missionaries"), Latin-sounding gibberish, secret signs and passwords, rituals, syncretic beliefs, of guns and money, and powerlessness and patronage, that is so symptomatic of the sad state of our people's culture. (...)
To dismiss the PBMA as nothing more than a bunch of misguided fanatics led by a mindless homicidal shabu addict is to miss the larger social context that breeds and perpetuates cults in our time. Far from being the remnants of an age long gone, groups like the PBMA are very much the living organs of a society that is underdeveloped, unequal, predatory and corrupt.
From Regulations leave collectors smuggling "Kinder'' by Barbara Carton:
In one of the sweetest black markets in the country, kind-hearted grandmothers are heavily implicated.
One of them is Deb Nelson, an insurance agent in Minneapolis, who says she buys about 1,600 contraband chocolate Kinder Surprise Eggs each year, handing them out liberally to office-mates as little gifts, or to her four grandchildren, who clamor for them on every visit.
Jane Whitaker, who sells real estate in Douglasville, Ga., keeps a stash of several dozen of the illicit confections on hand for her grandchildren. "When things don't always go right -- a bruise or a heart pain -- they can get an egg," she says.
I love Kinder Eggs and have a small collection of my own, one egg for every day spent in any country where they're sold. They aren't available in the Philippines officially but I've seen them in a few specialty shops -- sold at outrageous prices, naturally. Feh.
They're contraband in the U.S. because the toy is considered "embedded" under a 1938 law and thus dangerous. Hogwash, because the toy is inside a plastic egg covered in chocolate, and the egg has to be twisted or pulled open -- it won't just come apart because someone's stupid enough to bite the chocolate (despite the packaging talking about the plastic egg!).
As for people worried about young children swallowing the toy, as the chief executive from Ferrero USA put it, ""You can be injured by Lego as much as you can by Kinder Surprise." Either only let small children have Kinder Eggs under supervision or don't give them Kinder Eggs at all. Take responsibility for your actions!
related gripe: I read this story, originally titled "A New Growth Industry In the U.S.: Smuggling Small Chocolate Eggs," in the dead tree Asian Wall Street Journal and went online to post it but the WSJ wanted to charge me money to read an article that they'd sent out to syndicates and was available on Yahoo! anyway. Bad WSJ, bad bad bad.
Bart's Special Shape Collection has over 850 photos of special shape hot air balloons, most of them neat but nothing else quite like the one above which has got to be the most unusual one of all: a Mahatma Gandhi hot air balloon! What the--?
My favorites: the happy saucepan, a swiss cow with wings (a must-see because of where the basket is suspended from), Bibendum the Michelin Tire mascot, a grocery bag complete with groceries, an elephant, and a saucer-type ufo.
I saw Ghost World recently (liked it a lot) and now I can't get the idea of a Don Knotts-shaped balloon out of my head. That would be the best hot air balloon EVER!
Sorry, Gandhi.
One of the reasons I love the web so much is that no matter what hobby I decide to either pick up or research for whatever reason, I can be sure that there will be at the very least a handful of websites about it filled with everything remotely related to said hobby and then some.
The fact that this next page exists makes me very happy, despite the fact that I'm afraid of heights and would have to be paid a gobsmackingly huge amount of money to ever go up for a ride in one: Music for Balloonists.
Update on my missing I-20: Grad Admissions found it last week and forwarded it to OISS, which is as far as I know still processing it.
I'm not panicking -- yet -- but should I be?
Don't ask me how I stumbled onto this site because I'm so stunned by it that I've forgotten, but Miss Philippines Beyond 2000 manages to inspire both awe and fear in me.
I mean, hundreds of photos! Tons of detail! So much energy devoted to Philippine beauty queens! The Potential Queens of Tomorrow and Local Pageant News and Trivia sections are the ones I found most entertaining, but it's all good.
Those of you who know him will understand when I say -- with much affection -- that Miss Philippines Beyond 2000 brings out my inner Wendell.
P.S. If you're freakishly into beauty pageants you probably already know this, but the store Pride Exchange at the corner of Nakpil and Maria Orosa in Malate carries videos of national and international beauty pageants past, neatly labeled by year, winner and local representative.
This made me laugh so hard because it's just so true, Kris Aquino really is hopeless.
That said, and although I probably dislike Aquino more than the average man on the street, if you think she's tweetums* then go read Dolly Ann Carvajal's column for the Inquirer, Dollywood. Carvajal makes Kris Aquino look totally self-aware and cosmopolitan by comparison, a mean feat if ever there was one.
*local slang, used to describe a stupid y- (although some men also qualify). A good example: Amber from Clueless.
So, is Abu Sabaya dead or not?
Philstar.com
Body of slain Philippines rebel leader Abu Sabaya recovered
12:59 p.m. gmt+8
Defense chief denies Sabaya dead, bodies recovered
1:24 p.m. gmt+8
Inq7.net
Official says Sabaya killed in clash with troops
12:27 p.m. gmt+8
Troops recover, identify bodies of Sabaya, 2 men
2:04 p.m. gmt+8
BBC
Philippines rebel leader 'dead'
5:49 a.m. gmt
CNN
Abu Sayyaf leader shot and missing
8:19 a.m. gmt
And if he is dead, is this (the beginning of) the end of the Abu Sayyaf? One can only hope. I'm not sure whether seeing his water-bloated corpse would be more emotionally satisfying than having him stand trial for his crimes, but I do have to say that a drowning will probably go further to calm the political situation down in a hurry than a (drawn-out, and they all are in this country) trial ever would.
Not checking email for a week means I haven't deleted spam for a week. These are my three favorite subjects from recently received spam:
DO YOU LIKE FREE PORN!!
Sure, who doesn't!! Especially among people who write in ALL CAPS and use two exclamation points where a question mark will suffice!!
FREE Sample - Weight Loss & 2 FREE Air Tickets
This is actually way cool: I can lose weight then go on vacation and promptly gain it all back again, all on someone else's dime. Best used in conjunction with the next offer.
Get PAID To SHOP and EAT!!
Can you say "dream job?"
Only almost two months late, I present some photos from when I went to the Singapore Zoo with Avid, who was kind enough to lend me a spare CF card when the (tiny) one I'd (quite stupidly) brought with me filled up a third of the way through the place.
(For the stalkerish among you, the gallery script is newly-installed so it's no use poking around to see more pictures because there aren't any up yet. So there.)
The Jocelyne Wildenstein Collection exists because "there are precious few pictures of Jocelyne Wildenstein on the web. So I put what I could find up here. Enjoy."
Thanks, buddy! I sure did.
[ via RuPaul, who keeps multiple portraits of her around the house ]
Been sick as a dog something nasty since I last posted and I'm only just getting back into the swing of things -- I have a zillion unread emails in my mailbox and almost as many unreturned text messages and missed calls on my cellphone, so please excuse me if I haven't gotten back to you yet. It'll probably be a while till I do.
Unless you're one of the dirty old men who occasionally email asking to see my boobies, in which case you can just keep on waiting until you drop dead. Except if you're Jeremy Irons, in which case you really should give me your number so we can get to know each other a little better.)
Alliance Française de Manille together with the French Embassy hosts the 7th French Film Festival at the Cinema 2, Shangri-La Edsa Plaza Mall from June 7 - 25, 2002.
If you can speak french or have the luck to not be one of those people who get dizzy trying to read subtitles, take a look at the screening schedule and synopses of the movies to see if any of the choices interests you.
I'm looking to drag The Boy over to Shangri-La to catch either 8 Femmes or La Fausse Suivante. Or maybe both, if I'm lucky.
I've linked to Niem Tran's lovely ACME Toy Novelty Gallery before, but check out this armor he made out of 242 losing lottery tickets! I imagine he'd be a fun person to go trick or treating with come Halloween.
Check out PageDown.net, an experimental pdf magazine put together by my friend Jayson. The first issue came out today, right on time to celebrate the Philippines's Independence Day.
NYU's compulsory attendance student orientation begins on August 26, so I'm looking to leave for New York by the last week of July or first week of August at the latest to have enough time to find housing and get settled before I have to begin preparing for school. Problem is, I don't have my student visa yet because my I-20 form still hasn't arrived (when I asked to have it FedExed to me) and it takes around a month and a half from when you call the U.S. Embassy in Manila to schedule an interview to when it actually takes place (unless you send a letter explaining why they should see you sooner), so as you can imagine I'm getting really, really antsy about the scheduling.
I emailed ITP's Grad Admissions office to ask about the location of my I-20 and was referred to the OISS, which handles everything related to international students. Well, OISS has just emailed to say they haven't begun processing my I-20 yet because they never received the form I sent that they need to do it -- which was part of a package I FedExed in to NYU on May 1 and have confirmed they received.
Well, fuck.
[ via Dr. Menlo ]
Matt of Provenance: Unknown has a whole bunch of links on the dying written language of nüshu, which was used and understood only by women in a particular county of China's Hunan Province.
From Sunday's excellent PDI editorial on hypocrisy:
Sen. John Osmeña, whose defection to the opposition started the circus, struck the note of political self-righteousness right from the start. He said last Monday that he decided to leave the administration coalition he joined only last year because it had failed "to exercise its constitutional role of check and balance and to protect the tradition of independence of the Senate."
This is the same senator who, together with Sen. Teresa Aquino-Oreta, accepted a 1-million-peso "balato" from then President Joseph Estrada, after another particularly lucky day at the mahjong table; the same senator who decried the presence of media in the Estrada impeachment trial, and later voted to keep the second Jose Velarde envelope unopened. These are acts of subservience to Malacañang that will forever stain, not only the Osmeña name, but that of the Senate. What right does Osmeña have now to lecture the country on independence of mind?
Even better reading is "Mr Fix-it" by Gina Abuyuan-Llanes in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine:
They know what you want before you even ask for it. They can see it in your eyes, sense it in the way you walk. Once they've identified you as a customer, they'll send one of their runners after you. From afar, the runners make strange gestures, like the ones you would make when asking for the bill from a waiter. The one who catches your eye and manages to hold it gets first dibs. "Papeles? (Documents)" he asks, once you get up close. "Boss, papeles?"
The article focuses on "Jake," who moved to Manila from the Visayas sixteen years ago and makes a living forging documents in the infamous Recto area. Good stuff.
(I liked "Mr Fix-it" so much I bookmarked it at 2 a.m. on Sunday and went to sleep soon after; The Boy called at lunch time the same day to wake me up and say that I had to go read this piece in the SIM so I could blog it, and of course it was the same one. It's great to be with someone who understands and encourages your dorky interests.)
"By 2007, more web pages will be in Chinese than in any other language. Last year India produced more than 800 films , far more than the current output of the USA. The USA population is 4% of the world."
Asiafirst is "a weblog about the Art and Culture of India and China." Plenty of fascinating links and commentary here -- I can't believe I've never seen this site before!
[ via American Samizdat ]
From "10 Ways My Dog is Capable of Add Logic" by Heather B. Hamilton, lately (formerly?) of Dooce:
The first time I ever heard a dog speak was five weeks after I brought my first puppy home from the shelter. He was eleven weeks old, the most snuggly-soft creature in the universe, and was tired of every game my fiancé and I knew to keep him entertained. At the behest of an experienced dog owner in the neighborhood, we bought our puppy an ‘IQ’ game, a fuzzy box filled with three squeaky balls designed to stimulate his problem-solving instincts. Our dog took one look at the cube, stuck in his nuzzle and pulled out the three balls in one grip.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ he said, then rolled his eyes and wandered off to chew a curtain.
Apparently, all dogs talk, but you can’t hear them until you’ve owned a dog yourself, and only then if your dog decides that he’ll let you into the club. Moreover, once you’ve been accepted – deemed capable of handling the secrets of canine creature-hood – your world implodes into a swirling black hole of dignity-sapping dog worship. Your dog will always be better than you.
True.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure declaring yourself a Christian while spouting ignorant racist* crap means you have a really poor understanding of the religion you claim.
[ via Radical Pinoys ]
*Redundant, I know.
After over year and a half of frequently sending people over to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, it's very strange to have traffic running the opposite direction today.
(Hello Infotech section readers!)
The other night while downloading something with Kazaa (*cough, cough*) I noticed what could quite possibly be the most ineffective banner ad ever.
I've never had Pirate's Booty and as a matter of fact don't know anything about it other than that it's edible, but despite that I've been looking through Booty Shotz because it's run by Merlin of Kung Fu Grippe and silly web projects like this always make me happy.
Anyway, I got to this photo and immediately thought, that can't possibly be Miranda Richardson, can it?
(It isn't, of course, so bonus points if you can guess which unlikely blogger it is before following the link)
Being the happily dedicated carnivore that I am, I really really really want this sticker.
"Is It OK To Hate Bush? In which the president's carefully orchestrated dumb-guy shtick proves hollow and dubious" by SF Gate columnist Mark Morford.
(If you aren't subscribed to Morford's super hilarious The Morning Fix newsletter yet, you really should be.)
A wounded Filipino soldier recalled Saturday a heartrending sight of two US missionary hostages he found moments after a battle with Muslim rebels in the southern Philippines.
Gracia Burnham, wearing a black sweatshirt and gray trainer pants, sat slumped on the forest floor beside a hammock amid heavy rain, crying silently beside her dead husband Martin Burnham.
"Martin lay prone beside her," Army Scout Ranger Rodelio Tuazon told AFP beside his hospital bed here, recalling Friday's bloody military operation near the town of Sirawai. "She knew he was dead."
Congratulations to Caterina and Stewart, who've just tied the knot. As we say in Tagalog: Mabuhay ang bagong-kasal! (Long live the newlyweds!)
Oh, and happy birthday to The Mirror Project. Can it really have been a year already? I'm not sure if I'm feeling old now because I'm actually getting old or because the web helps me keep better track of time.
Martin Burnham, Ediborah Yap dead, Gracia [Burnham] freed in rescue.
Well, crap.
My thoughts are with their families, especially the Burnham and Yap children.
update: Yap's death is reported along with Burnham's in CNN.com's main article, but not mentioned on the site's front page as of 06:28 a.m. EDT, as you can see below.
If Yap had been the only casualty, would the story on the front page still have been "hostage killed?" Or would it have been "hostages rescued?"
From the Things That Sound Great But Really Aren't Department:
Negros Oriental Rep. Herminio Teves wants congress to promptly pass a bill that would allow parents to claim tax refunds on at least 50 percent of the amount that they spend for the tuition of their children.
So far so good, no? I was a believer until I got to the last sentence of this next paragraph:
Under Teves’ proposal, each individual taxpayer may claim a tax refund covering up to 50 percent of the total amount paid for the tuition of his or her children in any given year. The refund shall be paid out of the taxes withheld from the taxpayer’s salary or other forms of income if the taxpayers is not a compensation income earner. The refund shall not exceed R20,000 per annum.
Bills like this are targeted towards the lower middle and middle middle classes, people who aren't one serious accident or illness away from poverty but aren't exactly comfortable either, especially considering that the cost of living has drastically increased over the past years and hasn't been met with adequate wage increases. These are the parents who scrimp and save to send their children to private schools because the public schools are crap and the ones who should theoretically benefit most from tuition tax refunds, but the proposed refund limit is laughably low -- especially for those with three or more children in school, who are obviously the people that need the tax refund most.
The GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) website is surprisingly spiffy and clean -- it's my new favorite government website, beating out WOW Philippines and the informative but dry gov.ph -- and definitely worth a look if you or someone in your family is or has been an employee of the Philippine government.
"GSIS members can now access their membership information, policies and claims through our secure e-GSIS site," which has an online calculator so they can estimate the value of their benefits (nice faq on there too), and soon they'll be able to apply for loans and other things online to avoid filling up tons of forms and spending time lining up at the GSIS office. Members can check the status of their salary loans, balances and amounts they can borrow by sending a text message.
Dog owners in Makati may soon have to pay taxes to the city government in order to keep their pets, whether they be the lowly "askal" (mongrel) or the pedigreed kind.
The Makati City Council recently presented draft ordinance 2002- 087, which aims to impose the tax as a means to control the spread of rabies and the proliferation of stray dogs in the city.
Under the proposal, Makati residents will be imposed a P500 tax if they own one dog. Any dog in excess of that would cost an additional P1,000 per pet.
That's a lot of money -- my household would have to fork over P5,500 (around US$105) if the bill passed because we have six dogs. We can afford to pay the tax but not everyone who lives in Makati can, so I'm guessing that if the ordinance gets passed and is strictly implemented a lot of dogs in the poorer barangays (barangay = district, loosely) like Pembo, Bangkal and West Rembo are going to be stuck in the city pound for life because their owners won't have the money to bail them out. Which would obviously be A Bad Thing for dogs and owners alike.
Most Makati residents probably haven't even had their dogs registered and tagged at their local barangay hall, which costs only P60 (US$1.20) and includes free vaccinations for those that haven't had it done yet. I'm one of them because I didn't even know about the registration until I read this article! My barangay usually sends flyers out for everything, but apparently neglected to send one out telling us about it, so I'll probably be bringing my dogs in to sign them up tomorrow.
It's a weird month in the Philippines* when I can read statements from Senators Ramon Revilla and Noli de Castro and actually feel better instead of having my stomach turn queasy the way it usually does whenever I encounter one of their names.
*by which I mean "weirder than usual," since hopefully we've all realized by now that this is a country where magic realism reads as non-fiction.
chinese american princess is so beautifully put together that I can forgive the headache-inducing font setting of Arial at 10 pixels -- I love love love sans serif fonts but Arial is evil and must be destroyed.
(I especially dig the lovely way things are shadowed in the site. An orange checked transparent gif sits under blockquotes right now to set them off, so I know how it works, but I'd like to do a bit of a redesign here after all my current projects are done. I was planning to join the all css crowd but now I'm tempted to stay with tables because I can't think of a way to get this done in css! But I'm just a few steps up from being a css dodo, so maybe the more knowledgeable among you have ideas?)
Every time I think I couldn't possibly harbour more hatred toward certain people than I already do, something always happens to prove me wrong*.
If I accept that some people are perfectly happy willfully making the world a shittier place day after day, am I going to go through life less disappointed and less angry? Or will that just eventually make me apathetic? I don't know if I could ever be one of those people that just don't care at all and I'd rather be disappointed and angry than risk finding out.
*And just when this was finally looking like it might come through after all. Well, fuck.
Since I currently have six dogs at home (Jarvis being My Dog much more than the other five) plus a Peruvian guinea pig, as you might imagine I got very excited when I saw a flyer for this tucked into my neighborhood newsletter:
Your pet cat or dog is your best friend. You care for your pet, providing them with food, a warm place to sleep, and affection. Having a pet becomes more a pleasure than a responsibility.
However, experienced pet owners would tell you that owning a pet is not risk-free.
Malayan Insurance, the leading non-life insurance company in the Philippines, provides you with the country's FIRST insurance protection for cats and dogs. Put the fun back in owning a pet, with Pet Insure, the Pedigreed Pet Insurance.
Note: it's for pets with pedigrees only. Never mind that most of the people here with enough money to buy pedigreed animals are so rich that they either wouldn't need or want pet insurance; five of my six dogs are mixed breed and I love them all dearly and would scrape up the money to have them insured if the insurance policy was better (the death and liability benefits are piddling, and what I really want anyway is medical insurance of some sort -- money in my pocket after one of my pets dies isn't going to make me feel better) and if Malayan would let me.
Speaking of poems, here's one I read recently (thanks to The Boy) and loved:
Fable
Then I looked down and saw
the world I was entering, that would be my home.
And I turned to my companion, and I said Where are we?
And he replied, Nirvana.
And I said again But the light will give us no peace.Louise Glück, from The Seven Ages
Insane friend kafkaesque has composed three little moments of love in honor of the "Insert" key. The William Carlos William one is my favorite.
Great Britain's Ambassador to the Philippines Pail Dimond said the country's negative peace and order image was getting in the way of more British investments, especially in the power industry.
Dimond said British firms are particularly drawn by the liberalization of the energy sector in the past year and a half, but media coverage that creates an unstable peace and order image has turned them off.
"There are already British companies in Mindanao and there are more businesses that want to come in. But they are held back by the media reports," he said last week in a public forum on development aid for Mindanao.
Dimond said media coverage of Mindanao gave the wrong impression that the entire island is unsafe for business. He was referring to sometimes obsessive news coverage of the Abu Sayyaf's acts of banditry and instances of terrorism in Basilan and Zamboanga, a tiny part of an island that is almost as big as Taiwan.
"When media make these reports frequently, these are picked up in the international stage. These make investors think twice about putting in more investments in Mindanao," Dimond said.
And discourages tourists from coming over here -- not that the Philippines has ever been successful at attracting hordes of tourists, but the last few years sure haven't helped. What foreigners (as well as many members of the Filipino diaspora, especially the handful who paint "the homeland" as an absolute hellhole they barely escaped from with their lives and talk about those of us who choose to stay like we're Stone Age savages) who think of this country as a warzone1 don't understand is that a) Basilan is a small place and b) it's so, so far from Manila that it would take you two days to get there in a boat; it's nearer to Malaysia than it is to most of the Philippines.
Do we have terrorists running around? Yes, sort of; a few thousand or so, in a population of 75 million spread across 7,000+ islands. Is it scary here? No, not really -- certainly not as scary as Indonesia should have been when the Timorese separatists were being slaughtered by the Indonesian-sponsored militias, but that didn't stop a soul from going to Bali. Is it safe for visitors? Yes, when they have the common sense every tourist anywhere on the planet should have, like: to not go places locals won't go, especially with strangers; to not flash money and valuables around; and to never drink from a glass you've left unattended for any amount of time. I wouldn't do this unless I was with a table of people I absolutely trusted -- can you say rohypnol? -- so every time I read about tourists who've been victimized by the Ativan gang or predators like them, although I feel bad for the victims I also think they were either really naive or really stupid, or both. As you've surely guessed by now, I think most of the travel advisories against the Philippines are overkill and should be taken with a pinch of salt (which is what I'd say about travel advisories in general), but all the same, since they are out there you have to be an idiot2 to not take them into consideration at all.
And now, because this post is getting long and I'm getting too lazy to continue when I can pass the job along to people who've already done it (and how), I direct you to Wow Philippines. Against all odds (it's the official site of the Department of Tourism), it's a thing both useful and highly attractive. Go check it out.
1True story: when the U.S. troops landed in Zamboanga a few months ago, members of the international media flew in en masse expecting they'd be covering a wartorn area like Sarajevo. They were surprised to be staying in two and three star hotels with all the amenities, and that people were walking on the streets like normal, kids were going to school every day, etc. Of course, none of this ever made it abroad -- because as any journalist will tell you, bad news sells so much better than the good. It's not just the local media doing the damage.
2Or a racist in denial, which is sometimes the case. Yes, we're (mostly) small and (mostly) brown and (mostly) very nice, but we also happen to be human too, capable of all ugly human traits like greed.
"You know what's sort of weird? Dick Armey openly called for ethnic cleansing and nobody seemed to care! Can I openly call for fantasies of my own? I mean, they might be freaky, but they're no goddamn ETHNIC CLEANSING!"
I can't imagine how it happened, but I managed to miss the posting of Get Your War On pages ten and eleven. Why didn't anyone tell me?
Wankers, the lot of you.
Kevin Murphy's Ghost in the Machine blog has finally moved off of Geoshitties and onto a domain of its own. The content, I'm pleased to report, is as excellent as ever.
I didn't have much pocket money as a kid, and what little I did have was usually used to purchase super unhealthy things like Jack 'n Jill Chiz Curls, Clover Chips, Magnolia Pinipig Crunch or orange Twin Popsies that I'd split with my friend Kay, but I'd pick up a copy of MAD Magazine every once in a while.
My favorite parts of the magazine? Sergio Aragonés teeny marginals (mad props to those of you who can link my choice of url to Señor A) and the late Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of," which I liked even though it seemed to stick out from the rest of the content and I didn't always understand it. Reading "How MAD's Dave Berg and Roger Kaputnik Introduced Me To Post-Modernity" by Terre Thaemlitz today made me really happy.
[ via Boing Boing ]
This interview with top female designers Lulu Tan-Gan, Patrice Ramos-Diaz, Michi Calica-Sotto and sisters Mimi and Juliet Tan of DAACS from the other day was an interesting read; this part made me laugh out loud (note that DAACS produces what some people would call clubwear):
How do you feel when fashion critics put down your collection? What was the worst thing said about your clothes?
L(ulu Tan-Gan): (Poking at Mimi's shirt) There's a hole. (Laughter)
J: Sometimes we get comments like, "How do you wear this thing?" but we don't consider it a bad comment. Minsan, "Duster ba 'to?"
Mimi Tan (MT): They ask if our clothes are pang-prostitute. (Laughter)
J(uliet Tan): When we started we made these beaded bras so when they came out in the shop, they thought the whole shop was pang-prostitute.
I spend the whole day in shorts and pool slippers because I'm too lazy to dress up and broke besides, but when I know I'm going somewhere special in the evening a little switch in my head you'd never guess existed flicks on and I become as vain and self-conscious as your average Cosmo reader (sorry Tara, not that you'll ever read this), so this exchange had me nodding in self-recognition:
Complete the sentence: "The best thing about being in the Philippine fashion industry is..."
J: Well, it's our living. It pays us well.
L: I think it's still fun to dress up Filipinos in general. There's this Latin temper. Filipinos are vain; they're not conservative. Well, conservative in taste but not conservative in spending (laughter) on something that would make them beautiful, which has to do with clothes, cosmetics. I think that's the nice part about working in the Philippines-you live in a country that appreciates beauty, and you might not have a house but have a nice outfit. (Laughter) It's favorable for us.
J: I think it's only our culture where itong okasyon I have to get something new, each occasion.
L: It's a vain society. It has a vain culture. So it's quite healthy. (Laughs)
"For the good of the country, Tancangco should be impeached!"
My KaKosa.com boss and buddy Rome is the latest featured member (wow, that sounds so dirty!) over at Philweavers.
Few things can make you pretty and hungry at the same time; this sushi necklace does both. I want!
[ via Pop Culture Junk Mail ]
"Thank God It's Wednesday" is a) something UP students and faculty say on the blessed day they can wake up late and stay home smack-dab in the middle of the week, every week, except those stupid or desperate enough to take classes outside the regular MTThF schedule, and b) a new weekly feature on 0(zero)format. I heartily recommend both.
