The Fat Man Today

Man drinks alcohol. Man is happy. That's like one of the most zen realities there is. This is the reason why we flock to watering holes at the end of every week - every day, if you're an alcoholic - for a pint or two of the golden brew. Living in Manila, however, means that you're either a San Miguel Pale Pilsen fan, or a Red Horse Beer fan. Colt 45 is also there for the truly courageous, and Manila Beer - a fantastic product while it lasted - just didn't make it. The lackluster selection of alcoholic beverages in the metro has led to a proliferation of high-end "speakeasies", a hipster term for the truly expensive drinking spots mostly found in Makati. Do not confuse these places with prohibition-era speakeasies; you won't find the neighborhood drunkard here, on his way to see a man about a dog. These places have achieved exclusivity by virtue of being expensive, and I spit at the idea of calling them speakeasies. There is nothing "easy" about a...

One of the best things you can choose to do for your social life - both on and offline - is to disconnect.  Oh sure, you say, people do that all the time. Disconnecting is one of the things we do on an almost cyclical basis. We do it when we're fed up with the banal everydayness of all the posts we see in Facebook, or when we're overstimulated with all the media we've absorbed for months on end. When we disconnect, we go on a cleanse, we think. We purge our system of all the bad vibes we've built up in the weeks and months of being connected. And after some time - when we can't stand being so far away from the buzzing world of social media - we reconnect with a vengeance, feeding on the silent electrical impulses we receive from the world of the Internet.  It's no wonder that the 'net's gone from a luxury to a basic necessity. It's being treated like a lifeline to the world at large, where the time spent away from it comes rushing back in, consuming ...

The other week, I read about the whole #CropTopDay brouhaha on Twitter. Apparently, a young girl was sanctioned in her school for wearing revealing clothing. Instead of taking her punishment as a life lesson, she took to the web and started an extension of the movement to promote awareness, and started a debate that students should be allowed to wear whatever they felt was comfortable in school. For the record, I am feminist-compassionate. I don’t understand all of their social demands, but I’m sympathetic, and try to understand why they think the way they do. I do, however, draw the line at women parading around the streets wearing whatever they want, and saying that even if they’re doing that, they’re not asking to be raped. This is really where the whole issue of Crop Top Day stems from: the objectification of women that prevents them from being able to dress comfortably in fear of sexual assault, whether be it verbal or otherwise. See, I get it. I know women shouldn’t be ...

I love reading Yann Martel’s short stories—although they’re anything but short. He is, for those of you unfamiliar with the author, is the writer of Life of Pi , an awesome book about a boy and a tiger set adrift on a boat in the open ocean. His style is full of whimsy and what I’d like to call floating language, not in the same way as Murakami is whimsical; whereas the latter is like a sunny afternoon where the quiet pierces the monotony, the former is like a lazy Sunday spent outside in the sun. A long time ago, this was me. From the Wanderlust movie website . Last Sunday, while having breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and waiting for the 7AM mass, I went through one of his stories called “The Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Rankin String Concerto with One Discordandt Violin, by the American Composer John Morton”. The story sees the main character stumbling upon a dilapidated concert hall in the slum area of Washington, D.C. He then proceeds to watch the titular Private Donald...

Just a quick one today. Sorry for the lack of any post last Wednesday. I didn’t have enough time to hammer out something for that day, since Typhoon Glenda happened. Luckily, we didn’t deal with that much damage, aside from some roof damage (not so severe) and broken windows (again, not so severe). I have to say, though, wind’s more my element than, say, water. I can’t stand it when it rains, and when storms bring in terrible flooding—well, let’s just say I can’t help but get anxious whenever it rains. And we’ve got four storms barreling their way into the country. Bleh. And then, to cap off the week, there’s all this news about MH17, and the continuing saga of the Russo-Ukrainian battle over territory. I don’t know what to make of all of it for now, but I can’t help but feel sick to the stomach when I hear how civvies became casualties over something that could and should be resolved through dialogue. Bleh. Anyway. That’s it for me on Friday. Hope everything’s okay in your corner...

People keep looking for a better Philippines, but then they end up doing things that prevent a better Philippines from happening. And in case you didn’t get it from that first sentence, this is a post dripping in irony, sarcasm, and perhaps more than one cuss word, so I’m going to cut the article after this paragraph. You have been warned. Click on if you wish to read, or look at the pretty picture, then leave. Jesus bridge when it was being demolished. It’s better now. From Balita .

People appall me sometimes. It’s surprising how self-absorbed some folks can be without realizing it. Like last week, there was this news item about a pick-up truck that had been dragged by one of the PNR trains. The driver was safe, thankfully, but his pick-up was demolished. The first thing people had to say when GMA news posted its full story on Twitter, however, was sobering: Sorry for the quality. I suck with GIMP / Photoshop. This was probably within thirty minutes after the news item was posted. One retweet, one favorite. And the responses were asking if the item was newsworthy, or if the traffic in the area was back to normal. Yeah, the driver of the car was okay, people. Thanks. His car’s a wreck, though. If that were your kid, or your brother, would you care if the traffic was back to normal? Does it matter whether what happened to your bro was newsworthy or not? Where’s your empathy, people? Are you really just stone-cold selfish beings living just for your own s...

I like to listen to Pink Floyd. Theirs is a weird, psychedelic brand of music that doesn’t lend itself well over the generations (I can’t imagine my nieces or nephews listening to “The Wall”, for example) but if you were at the right place, at the right time, and into the right music, Pink Floyd is epic. Cool. Just cool. Taken from Last FM . One of their best songs, in my opinion, is “Money”. It’s a total departure from their sound in “The Wall”, which is what every new listener expects them to sound like all the time. In my opinion, it’s very old-timey, with a cute till sound effect at the start of the song (or throughout; I’m not always very sure) that drives the point of the song home. And the point is, man. Money. And that’s really the point of what I’m writing right now. Money is probably the most depressing thing in the world. Not that many people will agree with me, of course. Cash is just a means to an end, and it shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of your life. But whe...

Yesterday, Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte publicly stated that he will hunt out rice smugglers in his city, and he would kill them. I find this ironic, since the good mayor seems to be trying very hard to sound like Liam Neeson’s character in the first Taken .

Dear Steven Moffat, First off, Happy New Year to you and yours! I hope you had a great celebration of the turning of the years. Goodness knows, your year-ender—a fantastic shift from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi—was fantastic, to borrow Christopher Eccleston’s catchphrase. There’s every reason for you to celebrate 2013.

Lao Tzu said that the journey of a thousand miles starts beneath your feet. And that’s a line that’s been resonating with me for the duration of this week, because basically what Lao Tzu is saying is that in order to get something done, you need to get off your butt thinking about it, and start working to get it done.

I detest Facebook. Detest it because it consists of nothing but the detritus of all human waste. Day in and day out, you see nothing but people posting about pedestrianism, the last meal they ate, something cool (!) on the Internet, or their latest kitty photo. I’m guilty of all that, except that I take photos of my food AFTER it’s been eaten, and my cat is a macho noisy lazy butt who can put all of your Caturday photos to shame. I copied my girlfriend in that we both decided to skip checking Facebook all the time, and just go back to it every so often—in my case, every weekend, unless work demands it, in which case I probably don’t check it properly at all.

So. Anderson Cooper. Korina Sanchez. Mar Roxas. And Noynoy Aquino. These are the stars of the current drama unfolding in the continuing saga of the Typhoon Yolanda relief efforts. And it isn’t a pretty chapter.

So last week, Haiyan went through the country. It made a total of six landfalls, and we’re still coming to terms with the possible loss of life and property the storm has left behind. If you want to help out, GIYF, although this link is a good place to start. For the rest of us still struggling with the aftermath, there are some things I would like to touch on in today’s post. So read on.

I was supposed to write on a daily basis, but that doesn't always happen - and for a myriad of reasons. Every writer gets to a point where they hit that wall, and find it hard to keep on going. Some folks call it the writer's block. I call it the dark little time where you curl up like a ball in your bed and cry yourself to sleep because you can't write something even remotely decent. Yeah,writer's block is probably a better word for it.

It’s halfway through September, and I’m quite pleased to note that I haven’t written anything even remotely full-on political on this blog. And no, that Celdran article was not even close to political.

Reading takes up too much time. This is the reason I don’t write; I read all the time. Which is a pretty big paradox in my opinion, since you need to be a good reader to become a great writer.

The other day, Carlos Celdran was put in jail for offending the Catholic Church. While it may come as a surprise that one single person can, indeed, offend an entity like the Church of the Philippines, please take into consideration that this is the Philippines we’re talking about, and in this country, Philippine rabbits turn turtles.

Two things grabbed my attention yesterday. One was Lucy Liu’s remark about being compared to a Filipino. The second was Jessica Sanchez’s stint in Glee. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two items were trending topics in Twitter for at least an afternoon.

If you guys thought we were done with Robert Blaire Carabuena, think again. The last I heard of this man was when he 1) apologized to Saturnino Fabros, and 2) when he was publicly heckled, and was brought to the hospital. Now, he’s going to jail .