Jack The Scribbler

In my small world — a world of basic needs (running water, decent cellphone signals, and free copies of Pinoy Parazzi) — chili is big.
You got that right: Chili.
Chili makes a mediocre meal good, a good meal perfect.
Whether liquid or solid, chili is the best agreeable companion for every meal, next to a hottie and a cold alcoholic drink.
But then again, that’s just my opinion.
Which explains why I always keep a jar of chili handy — it’s always useful for correcting kitchen emergencies, which fortunately happen rarely owing to the utter lack of trying. However, that’s another story altogether.
Anyway, whenever I go out, I never pass the chance to try the house chili.
And thanks to my limited culinary adventures, I have discovered that the best chili in Metro Manila, perhaps even in the Philippines, isn’t for sale.
It’s for free — you just have to visit Kowloon House along Matalino Street in Quezon City to enjoy it.
To do so, you first have to pick something off the establishment’s menu, which is posted right up above the kitchen that also serves as the counter for orders.
And there, my friend, lies the rub.
Ordering food at that Kowloon branch is more difficult than getting the attention of a government worker five minutes before his/her coffee break.
Just this Saturday, I dropped by, relishing past, pleasant thoughts of Kowloon’s beef mami, consisting of tasty meat chunks so large and rich that if you eat them everyday for the next two years, you’d either suffer from a heart attack or choke to death.
My reverie about beef mami was interrupted when I was ignored a couple of times by the servers.
Had I been younger, I would have raised holy hell, demanding that I be waited on hand and foot, just like any regular asshole.
But times were now different.
Besides being older — and supposedly less assholish — I was wearing a tattered T-shirt that had more holes than the ozone layer.
In short, I looked like an old, loserish fogey in the making that deserved to be ignored.
Only until I sat down and grew a foot-long beard did a waitress take notice.
When my order arrived — a bowl of beef mami and a can of Coke — I asked for some chili.
Just like my supper, my request for chili was faciliated at a pace slightly faster than the speed of a three-legged turtle.
The chili was consumed the minute it arrived because the serving was no bigger than my thumbnail.
Partnered with a chunk of beef, it was delicious.
But taken individually, the chili was a meal in itself, giving off a melange of flavors — strong hints of garlic, pepper, and a sweet fruit which I can’t quite place (pineapple?).
After I consumed it in one go, I asked for some more.
However, the establishment refused to be generous, giving me the second serving in just about the same quantity.
I finished my meal and nearly licked the chili off the sauce plate it was served in.
And as I settled the bill, I discovered that I learned another lesson — or at least I think I did — from this whole experience of chili cutbacks: The best things in life may be free but sometimes you just can’t get enough of them.
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From the Digital Imaging Dept. Cropped photo shows Sophie Monk in an advertisement for PETA. Thanks, Zimbio.com.

Let’s get philosophical, even for just a minute.
After all, sixty seconds is just about the longest time I can think deep, profound thoughts, let alone process them, because my mind, since birth, has been conditioned to respond to very basic stimuli: tasty food, cold beer, and healthy parts of the female anatomy.
But I am getting ahead of myself, something that I often do, especially when I get manic over the fact that my website — such as it is — has yet to be updated.
Anyway, to begin: There is only one rule that has no exception.
It’s not the golden rule [1], the four noble truths [2], Moore’s law [3], Kessler’s algorithm on upstarts and incumbents [4], or whatever regulations the government [5] wants you to follow every single time you step out of your home and enter whatever remains of public space in this country.
That rule is this: for every rule, there is an exception. That’s it.
Having said that, I believe that the world can become a better place if only people — rich and poor, young and old, male or female, gay or straight, supervisors and subordinates — followed only two rules.
First rule is: Don’t take yourself or anything, for that matter, too seriously.
While I have sometimes become a sanctimonious prick myself — frothing in the mouth about say, Earth Hour, SUV owners, conspicuous consumption, individuals that have sticks up their asses — I have more than a bone to pick with people who take themselves too seriously.
These include the self-indulgent individuals who obsess over their reputations and how they come off to other people.
Give yourself a break, my friend.
Everyone is just about as egotistical as you are.
They are too busy thinking about themselves to ever think about you, even if you may be arguably considered important and/or famous.
The Filipino nation as a whole could also use this piece of advice.
We take ourselves too seriously that we are offended when someone cracks a joke at our expense.
Take the recent Adam Corolla episode.
Whatever he said about Manny Pacquiao or Filipinos may not be funny or amusing at all.
But let’s face it: Manny Pacquiao may indeed be one of the greatest boxers of his generation but he seems incapable of expressing his thoughts and feelings (unless it’s through singing, which he doesn’t seem so good at.)
In the meantime, we Filipinos should get a hold on ourselves.
We’re not a perfect race nor are we God’s gift to the world, having evolved from simian-like creatures with tails who lived in trees to become little brown Americans who spoke pidgin English the way we do now.
So what’s my second rule: Uhm, I forgot. (How about this? Don’t have a senior moment unless you actually get 20 percent off when you eat at Jollibee.)

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[1] He who has the gold rules.

[2] a) There is suffering.
b) There is a cause of suffering. c) There is the cessation of suffering.
d) There is the eightfold path leading to the cessation of suffering.

[3] Simply put, the processing power of computers doubles every two years, a law that is expected to hold at least for another two decades. (At least that’s what my Google search told me. If it’s on the internet, it must be true.)

[4]1. Rules are established to create order and maintain profits for incumbents. Examples of rules are: social mores, professional licenses, government regulation, locked-up distribution channels.

2. Cheaper technology suddenly allows for the bypassing of the rules.

3. Incumbents are fat and dumb and happy with current monopolistic profits and their general situation, so they bad-mouth any new stuff which threatens their incumbency or profits, or both.

4. Fringe players emerge to use this ever cheaper technology to simply ignore the rules.

5. Fringe companies attract venture capital since there are great profits to be made underselling the incumbents.

6. Incumbents are in denial until their profits are really threatened and/or market share begins to erode meaningfully.

7. Chaos ensues; fringe players are threatened with lawsuits, government regulation, public shaming, etc.

8. Growth at the fringe accelerates, as it is the right way to do business using new technology.

9. Incumbents co-opt the fringe or fringe players become the new incumbents and seek to establish new rules.

10. Go to 1.

This is from Andy Kessler, author and venture capitalist, as quoted by Michael Lewis in The Future Just Happened (a great book which I advise you to read. I’ve got a hardbound copy myself. Not interested in lending it because it’s not going to come back.)

[5] Mainly, the Metro Manila Development Authority.

From the Digital Images Appreciation Dept. Photo shows Angel Locsin who is known, among others, as a matinee idol who own, maintain, and regulate healthy parts of the female anatomy. As explained earlier, healthy parts of the female anatomy are one of three stimuli that yours truly responds to.

Dr. Hunter S. Thompson must have been a real SOB when he was alive.
Just look at what happened to Maine politician Edward Muskie, who in 1972, was trying to secure the nomination to become the US Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.
Thompson’s imagination got in the way of Muskie’s ambitions.
Sometime during the period, good old HST wrote that Muskie took Ibogaine.
He said that the psychoactive drug was administered by a doctor who flew in from Brazil, a claim he would later say was something he just made up while beating a deadline.
This didn’t help Muskie’s chances any.
Someone else — Senator George McGovern, a Governor from South Dakota — later secured the nomination but he lost the presidency to Richard Nixon.
Whatever consequences Thompson might have on the course of United States history — with or without what is now called the Ibogaine effect — remains debatable.
However, one thing is certain.
Thompson was one of the best writers and journalists the English-speaking world has ever read, heard, and seen.
“Some people will say that words like “scum” and “rotten” are wrong for objective journalism which is true but they miss the point,” he once said.
Like most personalities here and abroad, modesty was never one of his virtues.
Thompson loved the camera, as shown by the various pieces of footage shown in the same 2008 documentary about his life, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, a copy of which was lent to me by Karl Kaufman.
He was also a womanizer, a gun freak, and, according to his landlord, a tenant who failed to pay his rent on time.
But even before he killed himself in 2005, these character flaws were overlooked.
After all, the man invented Gonzo Journalism, a form that many of us — including deadline-beating deadbeats such as myself — can only dream about replicating.

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From the Gratis et Amore Dept. HST’s picture, taken during the 1988 Miami International Book Fair is from Wikipedia. Entry was first published under the title of Hunter Thompson, inventor of Gonzo journalism.