Thursday, April 26, 2007

Reclusion Perpetua

Weng and I are off to Naga this weekend to attend a friend's wedding. It's about freaking time. You see, it took them only about 10 years before both of them decided to finally tie the knot. Just for perspective, they have been dating for maybe three years or so, before I met my then future wife. Well, at least, we know that they really thought about this very seriously. We can also rest assured that they are entering into this special contract knowing fully well all its effects and consequences, both having taken up law, and presumably familar with the Family Code. For his own health and physical integrity, I also would like to remind the groom of the significance of Art. 247 of the Revised Penal Code.

I spent the last five months or so listening to an old fart make the same old jokes about his marriage and his wife, week after week. The jokes were admittedly funny (at least for the first two times you hear them). But, when you think about it, marriage is really not so bad. Really (Granted there are others out there who will swear otherwise). Although I have to submit that he has a valid point about how the wedding ring restricts the circulation ("of the blooooood!"). Of course, when you really get tempted to take it off to uhm, permit circulation, you can always remember Art. 247, supra.

Speaking of wedding rings, after the four-hour funfest last weekend, I went to the marketplace that is SM Megamall to have my eyeglasses fixed. Weng went there later and we decided to finally have our names inscribed on our wedding rings - over three years after the fact. The delay was not deliberate on our part - we simply have not gotten around to doing it for the past three years. I was thinking to have "Oh my God, what have I done?!" inscribed, but it looked like the words wouldn't fit.

I was kidding. Really.

Monday, April 23, 2007

More Ads

I never thought I'd see a worse TV commercial than that of Mekeni Food Products, until I saw the ad for Arthro Food Supplement. Until you see it with your own two eyes, you wouldn't believe somebody would be so stupid as to show something like that on TV.

In the ad, a rather unfortunate old man, apparently in really bad shape, testifies before your very eyes how sick he is, while his pitiable condition is shown onscreen. At that point, you are expecting him to drop dead anytime soon. But no. Due to the miracle that is Arthro Food Supplement, the still unfortunate old man, obviously still in really bad shape, is next shown doing something which oddly resembles jogging (or maybe he's trying to kill himself, I can't really tell), and unconvincingly proclaims "Ayan! Ang lakas ko!"

Whoever came up with that ad, should be fired, shot and quartered, not necessarily in that order. I saw pretty horrible ads in my life - from a toothpaste ad asking the entire family "How do you brush your teeth?" to a cowboy with an unmistakable American twang asserting the efficacy of a mosquito coil in the vernacular - but this one, hands down, takes not only the freaking cake, but the entire bakery with it.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Die, Bitch, Die

"Ikaw ang kanlungan sa kahirapan/ Ikaw ang pagasa at kinabukasan/ Haplos mo ay lunas sa bawat pagal/ Ikaw ang dampi ng pagmamahal: PCSO."

There really are only a few things in TV that are a notch higher than mediocre, so you don't really expect the extraordinary, and you don't exactly turn on the tube hoping that the networks would cut down the tele-fanta-sine-seryes and whatnot, and show something intelligent for a change.

So, there are really, really very few things in TV nowadays that would arouse one's senses and stir one's blood into murderous rage.

Take for instance, PCSO's ad. This is slowly becoming to be the most annoying, infuriating, fingernails against the blackboard-type ad ever created by man. The lyrics of the song are probably the most juvenile and pathetic lines of futile attempts at basic poetry that I have ever heard in my life. Whoever came up with this shit must be high on something really very cheap. Either that or they did not have enough monkeys and typewriters.

But no, it doesn't end there. In the ad, while the band (which nobody in the country has ever heard of, but now has more airtime than Parokya ni Edgar) is adeptly demonstrating exactly why nobody has ever heard of them, GMA is portrayed in various poses of care and concern. I don't know shit about psychology, but with the lyrics of the "song" and her face together, it's almost diabolical.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, 84


- drawing by Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Sonofabeach

Yesterday was the first day in a quite a while that I did not have to even touch a single book written by any old, dying, or dead lawyer. After the three-hour mind-numbing, harakiri-inducing exercise last Tuesday, the last thing you wanted to do was look at the text of the Civil Code. You were just grateful that the gods saw it fit to mercifully end your misery, and make the three hours gently pass into oblivion, before you can figure out whether the goddamn aquarium guy was a depositor or a bailor.

While most of our fellow masochists are enjoying the summer, or taking summer classes (why they want to subject themselves into such horror, in the only two months of the year that you can actually watch dibidis, is way beyond my comprehension), we lucky bastards still have to prepare for one more four-hour funfest and one whodafuckknows. Hopefully, all of these will come to pass before June - when succession, corpo, et. al. come along.

The good thing is I made it a point to enjoy summer at the same time as the rest of the country. Last week, Weng and I visited the folks at Gapo and spent Saturday at White Rock in Subic. I grew up five minutes away by foot from the coast of Subic Bay. It was the first time I paid any amount of money to swim in it. But, it was all good. After last Tuesday, I was able to confirm that I made the right choice. No further amount of preparation could have prepared me for that one. So, if anything, the pictures should be able to explain my grades.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Granfalloons*

My old basketball team won the alumni league championship in its division two Saturdays ago. It was the team's first championship since the league's founding in 2000. For the past two years, the concurrent demands of unreasonable clients and really, unreasonable professors of the grand manner, would not permit me to join the team, and be its human victory cigar. I would have loved to be on this year's team - I would have been a champion without even breaking a sweat. Literally.

Speaking of the grand manner, three folks from Diliman made it to the top ten of the most hyped examination (probably, rightly so) in these islands. Somebody from my father's Alma Mater placed first. Good for him, and good for all of us, as well. This year's top ten, at the very least, shows that the provincial schools have enough brain cells to give Imperial Manila a run for its money. Nevertheless, I am still happy that the only two law schools I ever considered applying to are still in the list, as always.

On a related note, if you're shopping for a law school, check out if the owner also owns a car dealership. The confluence of such orthogonal factors appears to be a good incentive to prepare well for the Bar.

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*A granfalloon, in the fictional religion of Bokononism (invented by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1963 novel Cat's Cradle), is defined as a "false karass" (imagined communities). That is, it is a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless in terms of fulfilling God's design. The most common granfalloons are associations and societies based on a shared but ultimately fabricated premise.
- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia