Failure to Communicate

This silly war really has to stop now. Not only does it get more stupid and more annoying, you also get to hear about it more and more, every single day, whether you like it or not. The level of animosity between the two protagonists is already threatening to reach the Ang Dating Daan vs. Iglesia ni Cristo proportions. Unlike the latter, though, it is not even half as entertaining.

I am writing, of course, about this silly tit-for-tat mudslinging between the two largest TV networks in the country today. Mind you, the case is already in court - you know, that place where a supposedly impartial judge sits to hear both sides' arguments, and render judgment according to law - and they still won't stop babbling. Obviously, both networks are loathe to lose in the court of public opinion, and are leaving absolutely nothing to chance. But, most of the viewers cannot intelligently decide who's right or wrong in this stupid and protracted conflict. Most of the viewers don't even know why the show is called "Big Brother." Are you fucking kidding me?

Everyday, every time you watch the news, you have to tolerate hearing all about each side's claims and defenses, as if you have a say in whatever damages one side to bound to pay, and the other is bound to receive, if any. For the sake of everyone's sanity, I do hope that the court hearing the case decide this soon, with finality, and with prejudice.

(Of course, the loser will appeal, but at least, the RTC will not hear it again.)

Otherwise, we all won't hear the end of it. In the meantime, thank God for RPN/CS.

Institutionalized

"I believe in two things: discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord; your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank."

- Warden Samuel Norton, The Shawshank Redemption

The past three months has been, so far, a piece of cake.

To be more precise, a piece of cake, dropped, in a cesspool of organic fertilizer, teeming with a seething mass of slimy, healthy annelids.

Lovely.

Brotherhood

Imagining Sisyphus Happy

"All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling."

- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

Baker's Dozen

Here's twelve things I learned during the holidays:

1. Takezo Kensei?! Takezo Kensei?!!!
2. A lateral patellar dislocation really looks awful. (Apparently, it also hurts like hell.)
3. It is not that easy to look for an orthopedic surgeon on Christmas Day. It also pays to personally know the hospital owner.
4. The Olongapo City government has spent my taxes wisely. Either that, or I just never had the opportunity to really appreciate public property before.
5. Sedatives have interesting effects.
6. Spending Christmas Day within the confines of a private hospital room is not as nice as it is made out to be.
7. Emergency medical care is freaking expensive.
8. When driving on the South Luzon expressway, time and space are distorted, and the Calamba exit will be farther than it appears on the map.
9. You can overtake slow vehicles at Bitukang Manok (otherwise known to locals as Zigzag Road, or Eme Road; otherwise known to me, as the scariest highway ever created or imagined by man). It is not advisable. It is not wise. It does not even make any sense. But, it can be done.
10. Welcoming the New Year is not the same when it is raining. Hard.
11. You can (a) get an unlicensed copy of NBA Live 08 for PS2, (b) get a DVD copy of Enchanted, (c) buy toasted siopao from Naga Restaurant, (d) get a copy of the Inquirer, and (e) buy Tenderloin Tips, Cordon Bleu, and Pork Kebabs from Bigg's to go, and be back home in less than an hour.
12. Isarog Lines can traverse the distance from Naga to Manila in less than seven hours.

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[13.] HB, D(+).