rejoice!

wonderful news abound today, for a change. Philippine prizefighter/national hero Manny Pacquiao conquered Antonio Margarito in the ring, pummeling the Mexican to a pulp. crime stopped and my country was momentarily united as every Filipino watched the boxing match in the Texas arena without blinking, seemingly.

our Southeast Asian neighbor, Myanmar (formerly Burma), released political dissident and Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who is more popular than any of Myanmar's detestable military leaders. 

Cuba, where I lived for 15 months in 2006-2007, released 13 political prisoners. That's a lot!

Church service at OLMC, my favorite place of worship in southern illinois, was so touching. the gospel today was about the apocalypse and other cataclysmic events, you know, so this spate of good news seem mistimed. but to God be the glory.

the hubby was recruited as a guest speaker in a grand Christmas party 3 weeks from now. 

All's right in my slice of earth. (P.S. the only thing I hate is seeing manny's pictures with all the simpering politicians who suck up to him, like chavit singson. ) 

dig deep...

what is it about writing that still pulls me back again and again, like a gaming addict returning to the internet cafe? i thought i've gotten rid of the writing affliction since i graduated from college and scratched out a bourgeois lifestyle as an "esteemed" junior diplomat, occasionally getting steamed by a boss or two in the foreign service. it was an existence so compromised that i just had to get out after 6 years of deluding myself. i am no diplomat, far from it. there were lots of opportunities to write in that career, but my writings were so devoid of poetic lyricism or creative garnishing that i might as well have used the hard copy to wrap stinky dried squid in. six years of telegraphic writing may have dried up my creative juices beyond repair, draining my deepest literary aquifers.

at this stage, i still fancy myself a budding writer. i'm now thirty-four, way past spring to "bud." either i grab this addiction and tame this proclivity to write, write, write...or i suffer at a distance from the muse i so detest, then love, then detest.

dig deep, love. it's time to sharpen those pencils.

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The Bullying epidemic

I thought bullies are just caricature characters in American movies or TV series, and are so demonized by the scriptwriter that they could not be true in real life. Growing up in Asia in the 1990's, bullies are much rarer because Asian kids are spitfires and can take care of themselves. We were taught to stand up and defend ourselves at home, and usually attended the same school with several siblings in different grade levels, that's why we can always depend on an older brother/sister to step in when a childhood "frenemy" starts ranting.

Not so here in the US! Bullying has become so common among school kids that the mayor of our town, who just happens to be my husband, organized a seminar aimed to teach children sixteen years and younger useful strategies to combat bullies, or diffuse situations which involved bullying. Twenty kids attended the seminar, where they learned punching, evasion techniques, grappling, and more intense physical techniques when verbal bullying escalates into a fight.

Johnston City is a small bedroom community of 4,000 residents in Southern Illinois. It is a suburb of the much larger nearby cities of Marion and Carbondale. You would think this town could escape the demons of city living, but think again! I personally got to know a short, 11-year-old kid who was bullied continuously for two years that he contemplated quitting school and running away. Now, the youngster has taken up karate to gain confidence.

Until such time when smaller, more timid kids learn to stand up for themselves and scare bullies away, we will have to contend with this social epidemic in our towns.

Invasion of the Metalmouths

Someone once said that the eyes are windows to the soul. Well, today a person's smile is the window to his pocket.

It seems that wherever I go, almost all the strutting guys and girls way past their pre-pubescent years (the right age for dental braces to be fitted) are sporting wide smiles that reveal shiny, sturdy wires snaking through their teeth. Move over, terminator. The metalmouths are here. They will take over planet earth and conquer us with those wolfish, practical smiles that expose thousands of bucks worth of dental toil.

This new breed of mutants will always display dopey smiles that begin where their mouths are and end at the lobe of their ears. Oh yes, they have to crack those overly expensive sneers in order to bare the hiding pre-molars still enveloped by that aluminum, stainless steel brace. At its maximum width, you can see thousands of pesos worth of expensive dentistry at its best.

They don’t have to utter anything. The smile says it all: “Hi there! Do you see my retainers and my braces? I can afford to have them, you know. Too bad you don’t have a pair. You can turn green with envy now.”

Poor, penniless man. cruel? Perhaps. And a tad hypocritical as well.

Okay, okay, i confess, I’m a metalmouth myself. Just a simple retainer, fitted when I was seventeen to push my jutting upper incisors. The dentist said five years would straighten my upper dental line to a perfect curve. Since I am twenty now, a couple more years of silent gnashing and martyrdom, and these wires will come off.

Never mind my retainer, it’s a necessary pre-requisite toward an improved dentistry. But I have seen people with perfect teeth lines, who are armed with complete aluminum braces, the kind that make you think the fellow has sprouted an entirely new kind of exoskeleton. as in kumakain ng alambre.

Others have those ossified wires with inlaid designs like stars, flower petals, even something that looks like a Rorschach inkblot embedded in their canines and, more often, the upper front teeth.

It’s funny how people within our age group can be so vain, to the extent of spending oodles of money on something that is not so very necessary. Everything is for show. I suppose it is remotely possible that they view their teeth only as a support system for their braces. In the early ages, the filthy rich bedecked all their fingers with rings, or had their perfectly healthy teeth encrusted with gold so that when they smiled, others could see the color of their money.

In the united states, persons with braces are unpopular and avoided like the plague. Here in the Philippines they are revered. I think people here associate a literally steely smile with wealth.

It used to be that the braces come off at sixteen or sometime in the mid-teens when their owners were on the threshold of adulthood. Now, even the twenty-somethings wear these mythical wires. Ah! The fecundity of culture.

I made a trip recently to our family dentist. After an examination, she said that my front teeth had not been pushed that much. I will need another year before I get back my toothpaste smile. For three more years, I will be a suffering member of the Metalmouth society, that exclusive NGO with rapidly increasing membership of wire-eaters.

Oh, one more thing. To my fellow metalmouths out there, suppose we narrow our smiles a bit? It won’t hurt, you know.

(I was 19 when I wrote this piece. I didn't edit any prose, just posted the article as is. First published in the Youngblood column of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 1997. Included in the Youngblood 2.0 compilation of the best essays which appeared in the Youngblood column from 1996-2000)

facebook as meth

If only the US will ban facebook like China does, I can accomplish more in a day. I will have time to do the laundry, dry the wash out in the clotheslines rather than just toss them inside the dryer, clean the bathroom, buff my new leather boots to a mirror shine, watch more online episodes of Criminal Minds, catch more criminals in my head, read the complete Millennium trilogy of the late Swede creative genius and journalistic god, Stieg Larsson rather than just be stuck on the twentieth page of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I would have time to study dragons, research tattoo designs, and read more about psychopathic girls.

But as it is, facebook is the ultimate opiate in my own little parcel of American soil. It is an addictive opiate to American youth and old-timers much like religion is the opiate of the masses, as was so eloquently stated by Karl Marx.

Facebook is my own brand of crystal meth, and I will continue to inhale its destructive fumes as long as my modem is working. If my internet service provider crashes, I may curse and rant the service to high heavens, but later in the day, you bet that pile of dirty laundry is gone!

11/7/2010