Category: blogs

OMGWTFIDONTWANTTODIE

check out radical chick‘s take on the u.p. friday the 13th riot that found burgis youth freaking out, as in OhMyGodWhatTheFuckIDON’TWANTTODIE, and suggesting that the u.p. admin close the university and limit access only to u.p. people.  haha, as if u.p. were close-able.  and, hey, what does it tell us about these u.p. youth and about u.p. diliman today.  how burgis naman talaga.

in fairness, alex maximo’s post in reaction to radicalchick’s is gracious and thoughtful, more agreeable than defensive, pero defensive pa rin, of course — he was misinterpreted, he wasn’t done, it’s a stream of consciousness in process.  well, possibly.  benefit of the doubt, just because some of the thoughts are worth remarking on.  particularly the ones regarding that clear line drawn between the jologs and the burgis, and about being burgis:

For the longest time, I have been arguing that the discourse of the blogosphere is the discourse of the burgis. At one point, I considered playing the anti-burgis role in the blogosphere but dropped the thought altogether. The fact remains that I am burgis and all the people I know who blog are burgis too. I’ve resigned to the fact that there will always be struggle between classes and, as a member of the petty-bourgeois, it is inevitable for me to acknowledge the differences between social classes.

Whether the burgis guns for egalitarianism in their discourse or not is based on their own ideologies and now I do agree with Manolo in his answer to a question I personally asked him – that the blogosphere’s voice is heterogeneous.

In the context of the anti-jolog sentiment, even some of the kindest people I know who were in the Fair that night drew the line between themselves and the jologs. I really do understand why people think this current blogging discourse on the UP Fair is quite “classist.” I really do. Maybe I’d be with them in this one if not for that delectable experience of being in the middle of a sea of angry jologs with barbecue sticks and water bottles who were cursing UP, the fair, the organizers, etc…

… Oh well. I’m sounding too defensive to my distaste. I’d be a bigot for now and if this becomes a prime example of classism then I think I have strengthened one of my points regarding hegemony and the discourse of the Philippine blogosphere. Quite interesting to find myself as part of the dominant bloc in this one.

good honest thoughts, these that grapple with conflicted values.  the clearly sensed perceived line between burgis and jologs is the very line that has to be crossed, and deleted, if there is to be any hope for inangbayan.  after all, burgis and jologs share many common interests, good and honest governance, transparency and the right to information, among many others.

we are them.  they are us.  ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan.  being burgis but concerned for the masa shouldn’t, doesn’t have to, be so hard.  some tibaks have gotten the hang of it and do a pretty good job at balancing things.

the burgis youth have as much to learn from the masa, as the masa youth from the burgis.   imagine if burgis and masa were friends that night in u.p.  that raw energy could have been channeled constructively — they could have together helped bring down those fences to accommodate everyone along some arrangement that would keep everyone happy in place.  and the next day they could together have ganged up on the concert organizers and given them hell (well, rotten tomatoes at least, and maybe some baho tsinelas) for inciting violence.  ang saya sana.

marck, edel, benignO

over @ the collective filipino voices, young blogger marck ronald rimorin laments:

When are people going to write for the poor, the downtrodden, the laid-off, the fired, the underpaid, the hungry, the sick, the ill… those people who are as sickened about everything as we are, yet don’t have the benefit of blogs or computers to do what they can of it, no matter how small?

radical u.p. intellectual edel garcellano, “sir” edel to many generations of comparative lit students, has this comment on bloggers post-bambi that might explain why it aint gonna happen, marck.

The ANC journalists find blogging the most competitive for mainstream media. Now anyone can infiltrate the public sphere when once in the pre-cyber years only the favored & the ideologically acceptable icons could smugly perorate.

Bloggers of varied IQ & credentials can deliver their daily spiel in cyberspace. Let a hundred flowers bloom? There are, of course, the attendant risks of libel & other judicial threats in a feudal environment, but the current scenario simply exemplifies that the huge energy of counter-discourse is being tapped to mount an offensive against the canonical satraps of state apparati.

This is what the valley golf brawl has uncovered: the rise of cyber critics, who responsible or not, middling or talented, tilt the balance in favor of the unarticulated response, the publicly repressed, the individually marginalized. The personal-& the quotidian, the everyday-has assumed the political: & militarist mentors are hard put to clamp the irreverent folks in jail, much less stem the textual avalanche. In the techno-terrain, words transform, mutilate.

Of course, bloggers must necessarily be middle-class, professional. No informal settlers would figure in the equation, even if OFWs infest their fold. The discourse therefore is basically extension/amplification of capitalist production, some internal resistance that however falls within the ambit of reformist negotiation. The very idea therefore of a radical dialogue isfar-fetched.

It might even cultivate the impression that freedomflourishes in a fascist state. For which a Maoist revolution is old hat, impractical, naïve, discredited.

yes, the discourse is reformist rather than radical.  most if not all bloggers are middle-class and the middle-class is, at best, reformist — we want changes, an end to corruption (which we think will solve poverty) but nothing too drastic, nothing that would rock the boat or upset the status quo.  in contrast, “radical” is associated (and outlawed) with the communist left and means drastic deep-seated changes in the way wealth and resources are distributed and how we do business with each other as a people.  the kind of discourse that threatens and shakes the status quo, indeed the kind of discourse (in filipino) that can be found elsewhere in the blogosphere, but not in sosyal fv.

HOWEVER, fv is not entirely without substance.  i hate to disagree with practically everyone who has ever dissed and continues to diss marck’s co-blogger benignO.  i’ve just been to his blog getrealphilippines — i visited once long ago to check out his ebook but was turned off, i don’t remember why now, senior moment ;) — the book’s gone, in its place a brief analysis of and solutions to the poverty and backwardness of the filipino that is the best stuff i’ve read so far on the subject from a filipino (okay, filipino-australian), who is obviously influenced by third wave thinkers and informed by the filipino experience, and whose context of solutions is actually another way of redistributing the wealth and doing business with each other as a people.  his current post substance matters in an economic crisis is also worth cross-posting @fv.

Decades of dependence on foreign employment (and a lack of appreciation of its social costs), sustained prostitution of the economy at the altar of the gods of “foreign direct investment”, and a consumer market opened to a flood of non-durable imports has rendered Philippine society one that utterly lacks substance — one that could now be providing a safety net for workers once hailed as “heroes” of the Republic now returning to become its burden.

it’s a pity that rather than flesh out, test, develop further his ideas @  fv — the perfect venue, i’d say — mostly benigno heckles and baits and asks hard questions, the latest of which is:  what does “the filipino” stand for?

Even as we struggle with the low bar of defining an identity, the aim for a stand – the higher bar – I realise seems a virtual impossibility for a people such as ours based on what I’ve seen so far.

What does the “Filipino” stand for?

The question remains unanswered; not that it ever will be convincingly.

Then again isn’t conquest of perceived impossibility the very essence of achievement? Maybe not so if you are a Filipino. And that kind of regard for achievement is probably what defines us.

what does “the filipino” stand for?  right now “the filipino” (collective, as opposed to the individual) does not stand for anything, much like fv, which does not stand for any one thing that the group as a whole can agree on — if there is, it has yet to be articulated.  in the case of the nation, the possibility of standing for something, the capacity to stand for something, has yet to be grasped, thanks to mainstream media that continue to fail the people.

showbiz sheet

habang mabaliw-baliw ang amerika (at ang mundo na rin) sa inauguration ni obama that’s turning out to be the greatest show on earth — mairaos sana nang maluwalhati — ang dami ring nangyayari sa local showbizscene na puwedeng patulan either dahil nakakainis o nakakapagpaisip o nakakamangha.

nakakainis: all the praise and adulation for charice whats-her-name, that small girl with the big voice who sang god bless america, susmaryosep, at some pre-inaugural show.  read wrong on so many levels, my thoughts exactly.  but i don’t blame young charice, who may indeed be wanting a green card, so this was a great career move.  i blame the americans who asked her to sing a songthat should have been sung by an american.  why not an american nga ba?  to make a political statement?  see how this asian loves us?  see how we love this asian?  well they can have her.  i think she’s raw and overrated.  hindi nga siya mananalo ng singing contest dito sa atin.  but these americans, they’re too kind, too nice, to her.  i sense a touch of condescension.  kakainis.

nakakapagpaisip:  vicki belo‘s broken heart.  on the one hand, what did she expect, really.  bakit naman niya inasahan, bakit siya nag-ilusyon, na magiging tapat sa kanya si hayden kho, a horny hunk almost half her age.  painfulas it is, conventional wisdom is right, she should find someone closer to her own age who’s more likely to be faithful or at least, to be discreet.  on the other hand, i can imagine how in love she still is and her head says no, don’t take him back, but her heart says yes yes yes, give him another chance.  how hard.  it doesn’t help that her ex resorts to dramatics like that suicide attempt kuno.  men can be so mean.

nakakamangha:  bebe gandanghari.  i saw her on the buzz and, oh my, kinilabutan ako sa transformation, ang ganda niya, babaeng-babae,pinong-pino, talbog si ruffa at si kris!  kung hindi ko alam na siya yung guwapong rustom na kapatid ni robin at ka-live-in ni carmina until finally nagpakasal sila, it would take me a while to wonder who she reminds me of.  nakakabilib.  it would have been an easier life if s/he had stayed a gay rustom na nagmu-mujer lang when the urge hits or the talent fee is good.  going all the way, calling attention to her new self, career move or not, is very brave of her.  good luck, bebe!  so long, rustom.

and speaking of transformation, it was a blast waking up one morning to find my blog transformed, thanks to my techie son joel na pinagbigyan lang ako with that parchment paper effect but who was working pala on a new theme and upgrade, and i love love love it — it’s so me ;))

kudos to carlos conde

for one who seemed to be too smart to get caught in the golf war, dean jorge bocobo seems too kind naman now to the mom blogger who has a problem with credibility, as she herself admitted on anc’s media in focus.

She really scored a bullseye for the Bloggers and outshined veteran journalists Carlos Conde (International Herald Tribune) and Danilo Arao (Bulatlat) when she pointed out that it is the very active comment threads that come with real blogs, as well as the commentaries of other bloggers, that provide check and balance on what bloggers report or opine. Indeed, as a blogger myself, I am grateful when my Comment Thread participants point out blatant errors in my posts. I gladly acknowledge them.

and what’s this about “very active comment threads that come with real blogs”?   so blogs that don’t have very active comment threads are not “real” blogs?   so this, mine, is not a “real” blog?   oh pleasssse!   comments are only that, comments.   as long as there is no erratum or formal acknowledgement of error by the blogger, where is the check and balance?    where is the check and balance when a blogger feels free to blog one thing now and the complete opposite tomorrow without a by-your-leave, or so it is alleged.

to his credit, carlos conde is the only blogger i’ve read who had the grace to follow up his anti-pangandaman post with serious self-examination and a rueful apology for allowing himself to be swept up by bambee’s blog.

As a journalist, I should have known better.

In itself, the brawl at the Valley Golf was a fascinating story, with an even fascinating backstory from each side: a family of powerful politicians from a region known for their goons and guns versus a family of golfers trying to make it big in golf.

I felt strongly about what had happened (at least according to Bambee) but instead of investigating the incident and get to the truth of it, as any journalist ought to do and as I have done in other stories in the past, I put on my other hat and merely blogged about it.

Did I attempt to get the side of the Pangandamans? I did not. Did I investigate whether what Bambee dela Paz wrote was accurate or truthful? I did not. My outrage had been vented, so why bother? It was so goddamn easy.

however i disagree that it was a mistake to blog about it just because all the facts were not in.   one could have blogged about it without taking bambee’s side right off.   one could have first wondered aloud about the truth of the story, the possibility of bias, and even given the pangandamans the benefit of the doubt, why not.

as for all the blogging going on these days about blogging and why we blog, ang masasabi ko lang ay:  i love blogging because it’s a liberating kind of writing. i’d been blogging barely a month back in 2007 when i wrote this:

i’ve written for all kinds of media – print, television, stage, [docu] film – and i find that the happiest kind of writing, i mean, the kind of writing i like best is this, writing for cyberspace, to be read by many or just family and friends, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that i’m free to say anything about anything, and it’s posted out there for cybereternity, what a great way of passing on mind stuff to my kids, and i can write it in any style and length i please, puwedeng no caps, use the same word twice, thrice in the same sentence, the same paragraph, and take as long as i like before bothering with a period, even smile or frown, scream or swear, in english or tagalog, taglish or gayspeak, and no censor, editor, director or producer to mess it up.   sarap!