Jack The Scribbler

(This was written and posted in a separate blog way back in August 2007 during the release of the last (?) Harry Potter novel, the title of which I don’t even recall now, two years after the fact.)

Thanks to the Internet, cheap technologies, and of course, the Chinese — who have apparently thought of everything (but that’s another story) — films and television shows have emerged as the most inexpensive forms of entertainment.
Or at least in countries like the Philippines where piracy is rampant, copying licensed material is tolerated, and enforcement of intellectual property rights is, more or less, a joke. (And a bad one at that, primarily inflicted on the predominantly Muslim sellers of pirated DVDs.)
Although piracy has introduced many excellent foreign shows to local audiences (Battlestar Galactica, for one, which I highly recommend), there are still those who care enough about the written word to actually read, let alone, buy books, despite prohibitive prices.
Take the latest Harry Potter volume.
Only available in hardcover — at least as of this writing — the book costs a lot more than my weekly lunch allowance, beer money, and poker subsidy combined.
But this didn’t prevent many Filipinos from promptly purchasing their own copies. Which is a good thing I suppose.
However since I remain unwilling to risk ulcer, skip drinking, and auto-fold during Texas Hold ‘em night, I have deliberately foregone the experience of owning and reading the last of J. K. Rowling’s series. After all, by now, pretentious, irritating, and insufferable coño kids and their pretentious, irritating, and insufferable coño parents have told everyone that their favorite teenage magician is — warning: spoiler alert — alive.
So instead of spending more than a thousand pesos on a novel whose ending I already know about, I recently decided to indulge in an old habit: that of visiting stores which sell used books.
Financially-challenged Filipinos such as myself have always looked for finds in small establishments such as Book Sale and Limited Edition which put up shelves of books along malls’ empty spaces, hoping to get some business off visitors.
And just last week, while on the way to a meeting, I chanced upon Limited Edition’s two shelves on the third floor of SM Makati.
Located right by the entrance connecting the Metro Rail Transit and the mall, I scoured the bookstands thoroughly, primarily examining non-fiction titles and checking their publication dates to see whether the contents were outdated.
Not long after, I hit the jackpot and bought two books — Maria Bartiromo’s Use the News and an old but nevertheless serviceable issue of Granta’s issue 36 which dealt with Mario Vargas Llosa’s unsuccessful bid to become the president of Peru in the late eighties.
All in all, both books cost less than three hundred pesos and no one has yet told me how each would end.
Now that’s what I call a bargain.

Not everybody believes, I was to discover, that President [Ferdinand] Marcos personally authorized the murder. At the time, one is assured, he was having one of his relapses. A man who was involved in the design of the presidential dentures told me, meaningly, that at the time of Ninoy’s death Marcos’s gums were very swollen – which was always a sign. And he added, intriguingly, that whenever Marcos’s gums were swollen, the gums of General Ver, the Chief of Staff, swelled up in sympathy. Marcos was in the military hospital at the time, and I have it from someone who knew one of his nurses that, when he heard the news, Marcos threw his food-tray at his wife, Imelda. Others say he slapped her, but I prefer the food-tray version.

– James Fenton on The Snap Revolution as published in Granta 18

Half an hour past midnight finds self-proclaimed protagonist in his self-proclaimed Bat Cave, confident that victuals will last the weekend

Unfortunately, certain cold beverages do not fall under the category of victuals, which explains why he remains awake at this unearthly hour

And so, he continues to Tweet, formulating thoughts into 140 character configurations while warding off the threats posed by sheer thirst.

While Tweeting, he discovers that Oprah Winfrey will end her show in September 2011 — a development best appreciated while nursing a beer.

To thwart outbreak of beverage crisis, self-proclaimed protagonist takes a quick shower, hoping cold water will get mind off beer. Bad move.

The failed strategy is further complicated by tweet from @Kid_Kilatis who mentions Frank Sinatra, bringing images of bars, saloons, women

Situation getting out of hand, protagonist mutters to himself, left hand clutching neck. Will tomorrow night be any different than this one?

Drastic plan change proposed. Instead of spending whole weekend indoors, protagonist promises to leave apartment and purchase more supplies.

Story now ends as protagonist moves on to other plans, including updating his Facebook status as he looks forward to tomorrow night’s beer.

(Certain punctuation regulations were relaxed to comply with Twitter’s 140 character limitation. Some entries didn’t have periods, for instance. Similar attempts in the future will absolutely do away with these oversights. Cropped photo on the top right was taken during the September 2009 launch of San Miguel Brewery Inc.’s Oktoberfest, which was attended by, among others, the Oktobabes, a group of lovely Brazilian women.)