Jack The Scribbler

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.)

———————
[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.

I’m sorry sir, that it had come to this.
If I had any kind of influence, I would gladly use it to have the blacklist against you revoked.
I would have wanted a multi-awarded actor such as yourself to visit our capital and appreciate its charms, which includes the stench of cockroaches.
Or at least that’s according to Claire Danes who made that remarkable, if brave observation fifteen years ago.
Of the world’s many poor, underdeveloped capitals that stank to high heavens, she had to choose to visit Manila, thereby forcing her to take in the powerful scent of the city’s armpit districts.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pleasant.

Alec Baldwin on a block of Monterrey cheese as conceptualized and created by an artist named Rakka on Flickr.com who has been gracious enough to allow use of his/her work. For more of the artist's work, please click on the photo.

However, Manila’s City Council felt differently about the whole matter.
Just days after Ms. Danes reportedly embarrassed the Philippine capital, the body issued a resolution that banned the actress from Manila.
While the move was hailed by all manner of lobbyists, sycophants, and self-proclaimed patriots, the order didn’t do anyone any good. Like most laws in this country, the resolution only showed the public that council members were indeed hard at work, protecting the nation’s pride and integrity at the expense of the truth. After Manila’s supposed assault on her olfactory senses (and her critical faculties), little was heard from Ms. Danes.
I’m sure the actress was hardly interested about ever coming back to the Philippines, a sentiment shared to this day by little brown Americans headed for — or currently living in — North America and various parts of the world.
Thankfully, ever since that incident, progress has arrived in Manila and in the country in general.
Fifteen years after Ms. Danes showed that she was right on the nose, the city and its offended residents have moved on.
No longer does Manila carry the stench that so repelled Ms. Danes, although on hot summer nights, it retains a slight hint of piss and sweat, making beggars and street people long for the good, old days.
Meanwhile, its residents have discovered the wonders of perfume, which many of them use in cloying amounts.
Indeed, many Filipinos may live in hovels, earn starvation wages, encounter regular police harassment, suffer from daily hunger, but we do smell good (and our prepaid cellphones have enough credit to send a text message to say that we’ll be late).
After all, looking and smelling good is a matter of national priority and cultural pride, besides making babies and allowing ourselves to be raped by US servicemen so that we could get US visas.
During the past decade and a half, many Filipinos have also been  introduced to the internet, a vast computer network developed by former US vice president Al Gore.
Faster and easier access to information — false, factual, and trivial — have made many of them more small-minded and parochial, jingoistic and oversensitive.
When you cracked that joke about Filipina mail order brides on US television, the whole country heard it via YouTube and read all about it through their email inboxes.
Naturally, they were appalled and disgusted at your remark, even though they cared little for Filipinas who dreamed of marrying foreign males they hardly ever knew.
In any case, the remark earned you a ban from the Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration.
You’re in good company.
After Danes, a Hong Kong-based journalist was also banned for telling the truth.
In his column, Mr. Chip Tsao called the Philippines “a nation of servants,” a piece of information that was factually accurate.
Except that it wasn’t something that enhanced our exalted sense of self.
I guess you very well know by now that Filipinos take everything seriously, save for political and economic reform.
This is the reason why it might take awhile before you can get the ban lifted.
In the meantime, let me just say that as a Filipino who is obviously in the minority, I apologize. I am so sorry that you had to be prompted to say you were sorry.

N. B. Good luck with having kids. And send my regards to Ms. Basinger. That is, if you’re still on good terms.

Chip Tsao should take a break from beating deadlines.
Or perhaps even quit the writing business altogether.
Just recently, the Hong Kong-based writer wrote a column that failed to bring his message across to his readers.
Not that that’s such a big deal.
Many of his Filipino counterparts are a chip off the old block.
Even on slow news days — in which deadline beaters have more time to check their facts, grammar, and sentence construction — Filipino journalists regularly fail their readers, a fault of either their education, intelligence, career choice, or their publishers.
Of course, I may be unduly incriminating myself, being currently employed by a media company.

Hong Kong-based columnist Chip Tsao said he was being satirical when he wrote that the Philippines was a "nation of servants." Photo courtesy of www.pep.ph

Nevertheless, as a struggling semi-professional humorist, I have yet to encounter a situation similar to the one faced by Tsao a week or two ago.
Our man in Hong Kong was roundly criticized for writing that the Philippines was a “nation of servants,” in a column entitled “The War at Home.”
The remark prompted many Filipinos — especially leftists who have nothing better to do — to openly condemn what he wrote, express their heartfelt indignation, organize demonstrations, and pressure Manila to file a protest against Hong Kong, and its parent company, China Inc.
In less than 48 hours, Tsao and his publisher apologized, with our man saying that what he wrote was, you know, satire.
Like most bloggers and self-proclaimed journalists, I remain grossly uninformed about abstruse issues that govern humanity, including, but not limited to, the life and times of crazy, middle-aged Asian men (i.e., myself in a few years).
But I’m not exactly stupid, despite appearances to the contrary.
I happen to know a thing or two about satire, having read the Bible when I was in seventh grade, Gary Lising’s “How Green is Your Mind?” in high school, and Amado Guerrero’s “Philippine Society and Revolution” as a zit-faced college freshman.
Upon hearing Mr. T use the “S” word to justify his writing, my built-in bullshit detector went off, a device whose batteries I thought had long expired.
I went online to see what the hell the whole thing was all about.
I read Tsao’s column. Several times.
It was satire, no question about it.
But it was not that well-written.
As a result, functionally illiterate Filipinos — including those who believe that Al Gore invented the internet — were misled into thinking that Tsao was serious.
Owing to his failure to make his point obvious, Tsao should apply for a sabbatical while taking comfort in reading the badly-written comments and/or reviews about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.
But at the same time, we Filipinos should get a grip.
For starters, we should stop being oversensitive.
Filipinos are fair game, much like Americans and Australians, Canadians and Kazakhs.
And that means no unnecessary outbursts of patriotic sentiment, no overdramatized acts of nationalism whenever someone makes a pejorative comment about us and our country.
After all, however anyone looks at it, there appears to be very little to rejoice about being Filipino nowadays.
And our collective inability to appreciate satire, however poorly-written, doesn’t really help our race any.