Disaster and imagination

By Elmer A. Ordonez

I MISSED the Philippine PEN conference (Dec. 1-2) at which I was supposed to chair a panel on “Apocalyptic Writing: Disaster and Imagination.” I inveigled Gilda Cordero-Fernando to be one of the panelists. But recently I experienced my own “apocalyptic” moment that compelled me to skip everything, cancel all my appointments, and declare that my column “Romance of the Seas” might be my last. Faithful readers swamped my e-mail with queries “Why?” My daughter Mo who sometimes has a strange sense of humor, rejoined, “Why only now?”

But here’s why. We in the family have learned to accept fate. My wife, the afflicted one, and I, both of “uncertain age,” have become philosophical about it. None of that Dylan Thomas thing about not going “gentle into the night” and raging against “the dying of the light.” It’s more like just coming to terms. The lyrical stuff may or may not come later.

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The Piolo predicament

has gone viral.  posted just two days ago by gma news online, the link has been shared 44,500 times!  the charice challenge, that made it to the list of Best Music Writing 2011’s honorable mentions, was shared some 2 to 3,000 times, and we thought that was a lot.

Dear Teddy Boy Locsin

by radikalchick

I believe you were trying to be funny and witty, your followers will say ah, it was satire. But truth to tell there was nothing here that could be taken as constructive criticism really, and therefore there was no reason, there is no justification, for the kind of homophobia, the kind of discrimination, that was in that piece you call the NAIA Mess. And since those words you used couldn’t function as satire, in the end it’s all just literal, it’s all just you and what you think. Ah and what a revelation that is.

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Guillermo Luz Statement on NAIA1 Project

because you still wrongly think that Cobonpue-Layug-Pineda were not given this project by government

and they deserve our thanks, not opprobrium just because the new dotc sec prefers to work with his own kind.