The Marocharim Experiment

I think Tonyo summed it up best as he helped me upgrade my old WordPress installation to the latest version (via Yahoo! Messenger and a phone call): atake de corazon, which I think is pidgin Spanish for “heart attack.”

It’s not that I’m technologically inept, it’s just that I’m borderline scared to do anything that requires serious site management, like SQL and databases.  Back when my blog was still in BlogDrive, I tinkered with a lot of CSS to get TMX in the familiar black-and-red.  Having a domain of my own (which reminds me that I have to pay for it soon, as soon as I can get a handle on Jehzeel Laurente) means that I need to have a little more commitment.

“Commitment,” like its romantic counterpart, basically means having the balls to take a serious step.  I had to upgrade my WordPress for three reasons:

• WordPress Whatever.point.Whatever I used before (the blue one with the big editing window) was obsolete;
• I have a lot of spare time in my hands, and;
• I wanted to see why my dashboard was pestering me with a “Please Upgrade Now” reminder that has the uncanny ability to piss me off.

Woe upon me that I can’t smoke in the Internet shop, since I can’t stand the jittery feeling of backing up what I can of the website FTP.  So I decided to give Tonyo a buzz, who reminded me that I should backup my SQL (whatever that is) through “cpanel” (wherever the heck that was).

After a long exchange of messages that reminded me of “The Matrix,” Tonyo called me up, and figured that the best thing for me at that point was to use one of those automatic upgrade plugins.  It was a cross-your-fingers thing, so much so that I was turning pale just following the instructions.

Hot damn, it worked.  WordPress 2.5.1 looks like Friendster.

I guess I have a lot of things to learn about the Interweb: search engine optimization, Internet marketing, Digg, RSS, and so on and so forth…

“Famous five-minute installation,” my ass.  Preparing to upgrade WordPress took me two hours.  The plugin did it for me in three minutes.

I just turned 23 yesterday to the tune of beer and a sore back.  What better time to start my year off by talking about politics.  Again.

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I don’t see why The Government should be in denial right now.  Whether there was a coup plot or not, the mere fact that there is talk of a coup should be enough for The Government to heed the warning: it is unstable.  The legitimacy of the administration has long rested on quicksand, so much so that thunderbolts and lightning - of the political sort - bode well to be heeded.  History lessons.

I’m not talking about an Antonio Trillanes IV who would hostage five-star hotels for the lauriat buffet catering.  I’m talking about 1605: the Gunpowder Plot.  We’re not talking about ranking officers in the Army making a barracks out of a hotel.  We’re talking about ordinary people disgruntled enough to consider the unthinkable; to store gunpowder underneath the House of Parliament and blow it up.  Guy Fawkes got arrested, and we all watched V for Vendetta.

This is, of course, not a prescription for our ills.  Yet this is the formula of a coup.  People forget about tanks and rallies and blog entries.  People do not forget ideas.

*     *     *

Following the “investigation” surrounding the recent “coup plot” by Atty. Homobono Adaza - which begs me to ask what the frock was that all about and why he’s worth arresting - I myself would take a less-than-optimistic view of what will happen in the next few years.  After all, AFP Chief of Staff Alexander Yano said it himself.  Consider these quotes:

“Coup d’etat or no coup d’etat, what was clearly manifested in the arrest of Attorney Adaza, et al, is the collaborative vigilance of security forces, both the AFP and the PNP, against possible destabilizers.”

“Destabilization may be carried out in different ways, not only thru a coup d’etat.”

There’s a danger to all of this, if I may say so myself.  Everyone’s a possible destabilizer, including myself.  You don’t have to blow up anything these days to be a destabilizer, as long as you have an innate capacity to become one, that it is possible for you to become one.  One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter… and a government’s destabilizer.

“Destabilization” is a catch-all catchphrase for just about everything these days, which is a serious problem.  When you lump up the discontented with wretched criminals and terrorists, that itself is instability.  That itself is unthinkable.  To do so is to destabilize the very foundation of democracy: the dissenting opinion.

So you do not have to destabilize anything to be a destabilizer.  All you need is the possibility of becoming a destabilizer, with the possible intent to challenge the order, to change things for the better, to have the gall to stand up to the political powers-that-be and say, “Hey!  There’s something really wrong here.”  Destabilization can be carried out by having an opinion, by having an idea, or in the case of Adaza, being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Collaborative vigilance?”  Institutionalized fear, as I read it.  Although you really can’t destabilize something that’s already unstable to begin with.

So if you’re all for change, if you’re all for the improvement of your lot, if you’re all for making your voice heard, if you have that one idea that will change things for the better, consider yourself a possible destabilizer.

WTF moments: I had an early birthday present from a thoughtful post by Ronin AnimeLover, who writes:

The youth are now proactive, not only in the streets but also in cyberspace as well. People are now taking their outrage from police-controlled environments to the untrekked world of digital information, a.k.a. the Internet.

And with their struggle supported by the launching of the blogs of Jun Lozada and Among Ed, respectively, and joining the ranks of the respectable political blogs of MLQ, Lester Cavestany, and Marck Ronald Rimorin, to name a few, it won’t be too long before the cloud of the Philippine political blogosphere gathers like water drops condensing into a massive thundercloud.

I like the idea of the youth being socially proactive through the Internet and all, and I like the ring of “water drops condensing into a massive thundercloud.”  All of a sudden, political meteorology sounds like such a good prospect.  But what really got me squirming - both with flattery and shame - is that the blogger lumped me up with Manolo Quezon and Lester Cavestany.  These are two people who deserve everything about being “respectable political bloggers.”  I, on the other hand, translate songs by Aegis.

Who?  Me?  Respectable political blogger?

I think it will please the likes of Arbet and Jester-in-Exile if I lifted my self-imposed political blogging moratorium and wrote more about politics, and if I postpone my post on the possibility of Renz Verano singing a Tagalized version of “Always Be My Baby” (I have it in my Drafts).  Which means I’ll end up doing two things: post the translation anyway (I still have to check if the measure matches) and lift my political blogging moratorium.

To be honest, even I can’t stand it.

I’m going to turn another year older tomorrow. Yup, Marocharim turns 23 on the Fourth of July. That itself is a pretty good reason to take a good, long look on the 22 years you already led, and the road that lies ahead. That itself is a pretty good reason to look at exactly where you are, and what steps you’ll take next.

Twenty-three is anything but a crossroads; at my age, I already have set a course for my life, and to a certain extent, I’m making it happen. Among my many ambitions and dreams, I always wanted to be a writer. If anything, I never imagined myself to be famous, much less rich. My life is still rather Spartan: not in the sense of 300, but living within what I can of the pittance I get for my pay. As you claw your way to a “destiny” that seems to be within your reach, you find yourself clawing for your cellphone, texting your parents, and asking them if they can spot you a thousand to tide yourself over until the next payday.

There’s rent to pay, lunch to eat, and painkillers to numb the gunshot-like pain at the base of your skull shooting down your left arm after a day’s worth of writing. Or as my friends call it half-jokingly, my “source of inspiration.”

I guess that if there’s anything I learned the past year, it’s that I really can’t separate myself from what I do. Granted that I don’t make a lot of money and pester my parents too often for a small loan, but I am in the extremely enviable position of making a living out of my passion: writing. I’ve been somewhere holding a pen, lugging a typewriter case, or tapping away at a computer keyboard for most of my life that I really don’t know what else I can do. I no longer think of writing as a means of making a living, as much as I do think of it as living. As life itself. As happiness… as sensibility, as meaning.

Everytime I get up from my bed and take the long commute to the office, I sometimes question that thought; if I pursued a different direction in life more than one that has me popping pills and smoking cigarettes like crazy. I sometimes shed tears, wondering if I ever failed at yet another decision in life just because I felt like looking at things through sentences and phrases. Those tears dry up quickly, knowing how many differences I make with just a few thoughts, with some sentences, and doing things without the wax. From there, no matter what road I will take, I’ll still end up somewhere: somewhere I’m destined to be.

Where that would be, I do not know. I am absolutely uncertain about the steps I’ll take. But I am, however, certain that one road will lead to another. All this is meaningful. All this is happiness.

All this can be written about.

All this… is life.

Once you get used to artificial lighting and a giant concrete wall blocking your view of the world, you lose track of time.  It’s a good thing I don’t do night shift, or else my body clock will be seriously messed up as it is.  “Early” is a state of mind, so I managed to ditch my daily after-work ritual - proofreading - and managed to get out of the office building with a full view of a cloudless, crystal-blue sky.

Had the Sun been ten degrees cooler, it would have been perfect.  This isn’t heaven, darling.  And this sure ain’t Sparta.

In a four-letter word, EDSA.

I have to go all 300 for the morning MRT commute, which does traverse EDSA.  Whenever I ride the MRT and have a clear view of the street-commuting peons down below, I feel like King Leonidas sans the cinematic steroids:

Madness?  This is EDSA!
Commuters?  What is your profession?  (Outsourced labor!  Ha-whoo!  Ha-whoo!)
Ready your breakfast and eat hearty, for tonight, WE RIDE IN HELL!

If historically inaccurate cinematic testosterone is not your thing, then afternoon commutes have their own sense of emo-ness.  There’s nothing more emo than waiting for a bus at 5:30 in the afternoon at the very artery of an alienating metropolis, despairing, forever waiting, wondering if there’s a place for you in this world beyond the back of the bus.

If that’s not emo-ness, I guess you have to stretch it a bit further.  You do find your place: somewhere in between.  You either talk about Lifehouse concerts you’ve already had reserved tickets to, or you talk about the aisle of a rickety deathtrap where you’re faced with a gauntlet of elbows and asses.  If you’re virgin, one swerving move by the driver could have you getting fellated through your jeans.

Then you ask yourself about the meaning of life.  If that’s not navel-gazing, I don’t know what is.  There’s really nothing existential about riding a bus at 30-degree heat, trading sweat with the working class.  These are the moments when you, an activist, revise Marxist theory (dum dum dum!) and include call center agents and their kind among the 70% majority of the Philippine proletariat.  Hey, if you’re as politically-inclined as I am, EDSA does hold a special place in your heart.

Never mind if you feel the urge to head to that commemorative plaque in front of the EDSA Shrine, drop your pants, and defecate on the engraved name of President What’s-Her-Face.  You have to do this at a particular angle if, like many Filipinos, you believe that the Virgin Mary is omniscient.

Robert Frost once wrote:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In my case, that road is called Katipunan.

I don’t know about the next person, but I’m starting to find the phrase putang ina - and all its derivatives - completely and utterly meaningless.  “Putang ina,” often contracted to “tangina,” is of course the Filipino equivalent of “your mother’s a whore.”  While it’s used in the same way and frequency as the curse-word “motherfucker,” the direct translation is different and rather difficult to say: “Sumasampa ka sa nanay mo.”

Putang ina is supposed to be a very offensive phrase that violates the dignity of mothers and women everywhere, but if you use a curse too often, it loses its power.  People flick middle fingers too often nowadays that I stopped using it; these days, I use The Shocker.  Putang ina can be used to begin a sentence, as a conjuction, as an interjection, as a verb, as a noun, as a conjecture, as an adverb, as an adjective, and so on and so forth.

There is no single mode in Filipino or Taglish that putang ina does not fulfill.  Putang ina can be a subject, it can be a predicate, it could be an object, it could be a referent, it could be a signifier, it could be a signified…

What was once a genuinely offensive figure of speech is so common, that you might as well be offended by the word “The.”

I surmise that there was a time that putang ina was the stuff that would make a good plot device in a Ronnie Ricketts film: the hero’s mother is called a whore, the hero goes berserk, and an old schoolbus explodes.  These days, it’s too common; putang ama doesn’t have the same kick.  Putang aso mo is merely a reiteration of the word “bitch.”  Puta madre?  Nah, too common.  Puta ka?  You’re not exactly Vilma Santos.

So don’t be so surprised why I use the words “dickshit,” “monkeyfucker,” and “dogfister.”

I blame it all on emo.  We glorify heartache and unrequited love so much that sometimes, we forget what real pain is all about.  Real, honest-to-goodness, physical pain: the kind you get from botched (and yet completely necessary) tooth extractions.

The saga of my miserable tooth has come to a rather climactic end this morning.  Rather than opt for oral surgery, the dentist decided to take out my tooth by hook or by crook.  Four ampules of anaesthesia and a nerve-block didn’t do anything to numb the godforsaken molar.

Anaesthesia will never work.  So the dentist decided to pull it out the hard way.

When confronted with physical pain, it’s perfectly OK to cry.  If you twist your ankle the wrong way and the hilot comes in to force the joint into place, there’s nothing wrong about wailing like a banshee.  Now if you have a numbed mouth and a dentist prying away at the offending tooth with a pair of dental pliers, crying is really not an option.  Nor is screaming with the primal, guttural tone of a caged animal.

I just squirmed in that dental chair.  Like I was chugging a bad lime tequila, or that leeches were making their way up my rectum.  Perhaps even rigor mortis.

The tooth extraction seemed to last forever.  The pliers made the death grip.  It was a good thing I took a piss early in the morning, or else I would have wet my pants with sheer, excruciating pain.  Twisted ankles, tweaked knees, and a broken heart are nothing compared to a heavy-handed dentist pulling out your impacted and decaying molar with sheer brute force.  If that’s not pain, I don’t know what is.

Snap!  I thought it was over.  Nope, the dentist managed to snap the tooth, leaving part of the crown and the roots of the tooth behind.  There was no other alternative for the dentist but to pull it out.  Sideways, upward, a bit of rotation, lateral movements… I didn’t know whether to cry, take a shit, or go blind.

Did I mention it took two dentists to do this?

After four dental appointments and eight ampules of novocaine, the tooth lost by knockout.  The soonest I got back my wit and normal blood circulation, I took a picture of the offending tooth:

I could have taken a clearer picture, but my hands were too unsteady to immortalize the offending tooth.  The red stuff on top is actually a cyst: hardened pus that was responsible for the anaesthesia not working.  Now that I managed to kick my tooth’s ass, I could probably go one on one with Manny Pacquiao right now.

So talk all you want about the pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you back, or the pain that comes with your self-inflicted emotional misery, or the pain of belonging to someone else when the right one comes along.

Some people will blog today about the pain of a broken heart.  I, Maro-Freakin-Charim, just blogged about a dental extraction without anaesthesia.  Who’s got the pain now, eh?

That entry, of course, begs a rejoinder.

I personally think that it is at the height of a moral and ethical crisis in society when basic precepts like honesty (honeste vivere), doing no harm (alterum no laedare), and giving every one his or her due (suum cique triburere) are questioned.  When something like a just and fair society becomes relegated to the “unattainable,” it is a crisis in itself.  If rice crises and the rising prices of fuel are bad enough, the inability or reluctance of a society to work toward justice not only becomes its own undoing, but it spells its own death.

Let me explain - again - why “do no harm” is something I hold in such a high (if not neurotic) regard.  We do live in an unjust society, so let’s hold that as a given.  Society today is replete with so many liars and ingrates.  The reason why we still live today - the very reason why we exist, survive, and scrape the bottom of empty barrels to eke out a living - is because of a precept called “do no harm.”  I think Emperor Justinian I, who coined the phrase “alterum no laedare,” had enough foresight in his time to realize that for society to exist in harmony, even in its most rudimentary form, people must look out for each other.

“Foresight,” or I should say, a “duh” moment.  Consider people mobbing a thief or a pickpocket.  Or people throwing epithets at rapists on TV.  People who boil over with rage and anger when they hear of a crime.  A criminal represents the opposite of “do no harm.”  He or she is a malcontent whose existence revolves around harming another person, to live devoid of conscience, to disregard the welfare of other people.  If the malcontent harms one person, he or she can definitely harm another.

Let me get to the word “conscience.”  Laws, ethics, and personal principles are nothing more than embodiments of conscience.  Rather than to restrict us from living meaningful lives, laws permit us to do so.  There are just some lines you cannot cross.  For all the complicatedness of the law, it is merely a map that indicates your limits.  You can have your fun in a given limitation, but when your fun transgresses upon one’s person, there are repercussions.

While we’re on the subject of blogging responsibly:

A libel is public and malicious imputation of a crime, or of a vice or defect, real or imaginary, or any act, omission, condition, status, or circumstance tending to cause the dishonor, discredit, or contempt of a natural or juridical person, or to blacken the memory of one who is dead.

“Definition of Libel”
Art. 353, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

I leave it to lawyers to interpret if libel does apply to blogs in Philippine jurisprudence.  Even if it doesn’t, this is not a license for libel or slander to find refuge in blogs, for blogs to be made as a venue for it.  Still, it brings to mind a very important point about how laws are merely reiterations of conscience: the definition of libel in Philippine law is worded in such a way that nobody in the right mind would dare dishonor someone, to discredit someone, to hold someone in contempt, or to besmirch dead people.

The motive is of course, irrelevant.  The law, being a reiteration of conscience, is very explicit:

Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is shown.

“Requirement for Publicity”
Art. 354, Sec. 1, Ch. 1, Title 13, Book 2
Revised Penal Code of the Philippines

Because the law draws lines on the basis of reiterating commonly-held beliefs about what ought to be, there is no reason for us to not live up to it.  The law - conscience - exists because we have to live up to it.  Never mind the perceived “sacrifices” we make because this is “imputed” on us and “imposed” on us.

To act with justice, to live honestly, to harm no one, and to give every one his or her due, is NOT an ideal.  These are the most basic of requirements expected of every single human being who lives in some form of society.

Which brings me to ask: what is so difficult about life without doing any harm?  What is so complicated about writing - irrevocably reduced to blogging, in this case - in a responsible, fair, just manner that seeks far more prudent and noble ends than to commit slander?

I won’t dare be sanctimonious to say that in four years of blogging, I never made lapses.  I wrote things that, had I lived in a less-permissive society, would land me in jail for sure.  Yet as time goes on, and you learn from your mistakes, you realize how responsible you really are for what you write.  It’s not “just a blog,” as much as every act of writing is itself a commitment to history.  To own up to it is not enough; it is expected that in the exercise of free speech and expression, that in the exercise of creativity, people should realize how important the ought-to-be is.

Besides, “do no harm” is not all that complicated.  It’s just three words.  Meaningless?  Relative?  Antiquated?  A deterrent to the creative process?

Hmmm… I am reminded of how Plato, in The Republic, offered a prescription to those who do not act justly and those who do not have the interest of others in mind.  Plato’s solution, metaphorical or literal, makes a lot of sense: the people in the polis throw the malcontent over the city walls.

It makes a lot of sense.

If there’s any feeling that has been crushing me lately, it’s being surrounded by poverty.

After writing a guilty entry over at Filipino Voices, I decided to go home immediately before I start having pangs of conscience again.  I think I’m growing morbidly obese over feelings of guilt lately, to the point that some of my friends think that I am developing an unhealthy propensity towards sociological emo.

As I alighted from the bus home, I decided to have some calamares for dinner.  As luck would have it, here comes a kid tugging at my pants.  “Kuya, pahingi,” he said.  While children can deceive you out of Christmas aguinaldo, they can’t dupe you out of food.  Soft-hearted loser that I am who would not at once doubt the innocence of a child asking for food, I decided to buy him three pieces, which he then proceeded to share with two of his friends.

I couldn’t take it anymore.  I walked fast to some corner of Citimall, lit a cigarette, and allowed the tears to fall.  Not being a good crier, I stopped crying after I was done with half.

I’ve always confessed to my mom that my real problem here is being surrounded and exposed to poverty like I’ve never seen before.  You think poverty is just an invention of cinema or of documentary journalists, until you see people actually scrounging trash cans near fast-food chains not for recyclables, but for food.  You actually see people cooking leftovers bound for the trash in tin cans bound for the dump.  What makes it extremely heartbreaking is that as you look around, you see wealth.  You are privy to affluence so much so that you live it.  You see, for the first time in your life, gaps between the rich, the poor, the really really rich, and the really really poor.

You realize you’re sick of it and want to change things, then you realize that there’s really only so much you can do.

So you do what you can, then you realize that you really aren’t doing enough.

Empathy’s a bastard.

I’ve noticed a particular trend among a lot of bloggers.  The mentality can be summed up in the phrase, “It’s my blog, and I can write whatever the hell I want to write in it.”

Bullocks.

Having been a blogger for almost four years, I have seen - and read - a lot of blogs that espouse this mentality.  On many occasions, I’m guilty of this.  If there’s anything I learned both as a blogger and as a writer, it’s this: blogging is NOT a license for slander.

Freedom of speech is one of the most protected and valued rights in democracy, if not for the fact that much about democracy is grounded on that essential freedom.  I have to say, though, that this basic right does have its limits.

A Latin proverb goes:

“Juris pracepta sunt: honeste vivere, alterum no laedere, suum cique tribuere.”

Translated: “The precepts of law: to live honestly, to harm no other, to give each one’s due.”  Free speech, like every other freedom guaranteed by a democratic society, is limited by another person’s rights.  No right of an individual should transgress upon the rights of another individual.

This is not an issue of whether or not we live in a truly democratic society, or if cyberspace is really a “digital democracy.”  If I had my way, everyone who has access to the Internet should blog.  To a certain extent, things are going my way.  More and more people are blogging, so much so that information is decentralized.  People are as much able to access information, as they are able to create information not only for themselves, but for the public as well.

Let me get back to the mentality I mentioned earlier.  If it’s your blog and you write whatever the hell you want in it, then I, as a reader, have to make a retort: so what?  It’s not a disregard for “blogging ethics” that makes me, as a reader, come to that retort, but a disregard for my presence in your writing.  It is to disregard my humanity, my existence, and my being.  It’s as if a blog is a world of its own, that it’s not part of the world-at-large.  More than that, it’s as if nobody reads blogs, and nobody will come across your blog.  Can you write whatever the hell you want in a blog and get away with it?

I don’t think so.

“Alterum no laedare:” harm no one.  No other precept of the law, no other requirement of justice, is more meaningful and more important than this.

Like I said countless times before, blogging is no different from writing.  It’s the same banana in a different medium (Cyber-Banana, Computer-Mediated Banana, Virtual Banana, or what-have-you).  We cannot, as social beings (much less as members of a democratic society), escape the responsibilities that come with exercising our right to vote, our right to free expression, and heck even our right to fart in crowded elevators.  While we cannot take back what we say or what we write, it behooves us to be responsible for it.

Every time we write something, we commit ourselves into those words.  Everytime we write about somebody, we commit them into those words.  Responsibility goes hand-in-hand with the right to free speech, if not that it defines free speech.

I like to think of writing as a mistress, and the writer as a cheating husband.  No matter how much a writer cheats on his wife (the reader), the mistress is bound to be discovered.  A writer is burdened by the responsibility he has to his wife and to his mistress.

Maybe it’s because I’m an old blogger, but I can’t help but think that blogging has become way too mainstream.  Four years ago, people think that something’s wrong with you when you have a blog.  These days, if you don’t have a blog, you’re behind the times.  The damning part is that whether I like it or not, this is what “free speech” has become.  This is what blogging has become.

I can only hope it doesn’t stay this way.