Mikey

You’re probably on your way home right now, it’s 8:45 and I’m guessing you’re on a jeep somewhere in the bowels of Makati.

You know what I noticed, whenever we’re together for extended periods of time we end up talking about the could’ve beens and what-ifs. Like what if we hadn’t gotten back together, what if I stuck it out with Baki and you pursued Isis, what if you’d stuck with offshoring, get the picture? But we’re here now, so screw the could’ve beens; even if we usually yearn for something outside of our realities, I can’t take mine for granted. You’re wonderful. And we spent the weekend together but instead of staying up late, talking and relishing staying in for a change, we chose to work, and nap, and work some more. Work is interesting, what I do has nothing to do with what you do. It’s nice to be in such close proximity to someone you love while attending to completely different matters.

You know what else, last week we hit the 4 year and 4 months +/- 7 months mark. That’s a pretty long time. Of course the most time we spent together last week was spent with me sewing and you emailing people and watching…was it Superman? I think it was Superman, whatever–I LIKE TO COOK!

I don’t know a lot of people who’ve been together longer than us and can still find it awesome just staying in on the weekends of their 4 year and 4 months +/- 7 months anniversary thingies. Monogamy’s a pretty big thing among bicurious girls with the attention spans of goldfish. Whoa…I just mentioned bicuriosity and I had a flash of Sarie Cruz saying “Guyabera” and how hot she is when she does that.

Nikki texted me a while ago. I’m comforted by the idea that there is no shortage of constants in my life. You, like the pouch of fat on my belly, are one of them.

In the Future, My Kids will Think They Came From the Stork

Before this I had a diplomatic and rational entry relating why I had a problem with the Anti-pornography and Obscenity bill, but fuck all that. I’m pissed that the net’s not woking properly and my entry got lost in the cyber vortex of lost blogs, and I’m pissed that my baby brother scolded me a few days ago for saying “Naked” because it’s a “bad word”.

Hey senate, fuck you! While Wowowee! can shed light on where the juvenalia that is the Anti-Porn bill is coming from, what it can’t solve is how people will negotiate their sexuality, or for that matter, their naked bodies, because obviously local institutions think they can take matters of what if obscene, pornographic, and offensive into their own hands.

To say that what is offensive to some may not be offensive to others, or that porn can be art is an overused argument and is beside the point. But does anyone seriously think that censoring things that are potentially offensive will do anything to educate people on their humanity and the sexuality that comes with it? Will it do anything to yank us out of the patriarchal-capitalist mindset that it’s okay to commodify the female form, to use is a source of entertainment, and an object of pleasure and fantasy?
Forget censoring sex, how about censoring stupidity? Just this morning Imee Marcos was in the lifestyle section again, does anyone want to do anything about that.

Re. Joee and Tara

This is not a repost from Gang’s blog, just something I’ve been wanting to write about but couldn’t find the time to sit down to.

To recap the situation for those who may not know what happened, Tara Santelices was held-up on the eve of her birthday. Her bag, containing her laptop, was taken from her and she is still in a coma and confined at Medical City. Luckily her friend Joee Mejias witnessed the situation and–considering the accounts–is the reason Tara is still alive.

So again, considering the accounts (that’s one account at least), what bugs me is that there were other people on the jeep when it happened. And even if they may have been helpless to stop the man who shot Tara, they did not make it any easier on Joee to get her medical attention as soon as possible. In other countries there’s a law ensuring that no witness should stand idly by in a crisis such as this one; allowing something like this to happen is just as good as being an accomplice.

It’s this particular brand of blind tolerance that fosters these kinds of situations, wherein people can allow a young girl to bleed from the head before their very eyes, and still have the gall to step out of the way instead of helping; because you know, having to help out is inconvenient and you have less to lose by minding your own business. That it was ‘her fault’ is a non-issue as well; no one deserves to get hurt for defending something that’s important to them, regardless of what that something may be.
What pisses me off is this mentality that it’s okay to be a bystander as long as you’re privileged with some semblance of normalcy and peace; that’s it’s okay for others to get hurt as long as you get to where you’re headed safe and sound; that suffering is fine as long as it’s not happening to you or anyone you know.

* * *
One of the essays I came across while doing research for my thesis was about the “utopia of an odorless city,” which relates the events that led up to the building of sewage systems so people would quit emptying their shit pots out the window, as well as the moving of public cemeteries out of cities because the stench of the dead was killing people–literally, the miasma that would escape from people rotting in their graves was making people sick and at its worst, killing them.
There’s a point here; our senses are the most basic tools for grasping our physical and social environment. Thus, if it smells like shit, and it looks like shit, then it is shit; if it smells like a rotting corpse and looks like a rotting corpse than it is a rotting corpse. Neither of the two have a place in a clean and secure environment, and it is only right and for the good of all involved that what is explicitly harmful be removed. But it takes a certain amount of time before the senses cave and the smell of shit becomes intolerable enough for removal to commence.

It took cities such as London and Paris several centuries to clean the shit off their streets and move the dead out of the cities. However, it was all done by the turn of the century. A century later, and where the hell are we?