Monthly Archives: April 2010

iBlog 6: The 6th Philippine Blogging Summit

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Promote this event badgeMark your calendars.  iBlog 6: The 6th Philippine Blogging Summit, is on April 16 and April 17, 2010, at the Malcolm Theater, UP College of Law, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

It’s going to be a two-day affair: the first day is for business people and entrepreneurs who want to maximize blogging for promotions, and the second day is for blogging 101.

Oh, and I’m also going to be one of two speakers on political blogging, online commentary, and social media.  That’s on Day Two.  So if you see a dorky guy in black with long hair and glasses, that’s probably me.

Hope to see you there, ladies and gentlemen!

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Jejemon Series 1: Jejemon Fashion

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Eclecticism and syncretism have long been used to explain fashion.  Alfred Kroeber, for example, writes that changes in fashion are not the product of a single mind, but that the end result of a fashionable trend is the result of the contributions of human beings through a multitude of perspectives.  If fashion were a catalog or a magazine of different cultural affects, we are contributors as much as we are subscribers to it.

Fashion is almost always the accretion of different cultural facts, coming together to clothe a particular taste.  Yet taste never exists solely on the level of the personal: tastes, like many other things in society, are social facts.  They are defined by us, as much as they are also defined for us.  Fashion constrains us as much as it enables us.

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V

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Over at Barrio Siete, the claim is that when you create a blog you should resist the urge of using the letter “V.”  Now I have no problems at all with the good people of the Barrio – I am, after all, a reader – but I just realized how much fun I can have creating a blog entry chock-full of words that start with the letter “V.”  Not that I’m trying to strike the ire of Reyna Elena, but I think it will make a fairly good practice session to populate one entry with words that begin with the letter V.  It’s fun to play with words and form.

I just thought it would be so much fun… even if this entry wouldn’t make sense in the end.  Lulz.  :)

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A Revision of Manny Pangilinan's Ateneo Commencement Speech

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Okay, the big news – slow news day, after all – was that Manny Pangilinan apparently read from a plagiarized speech in front of the graduating class of the Ateneo.  Having nothing better to do, I tried to revise as much as I can from MVP’s speech – that apparently took weeks to prepare – in about an hour of outlining and typing.

Here goes nothing!  BTW: this is all just for the sake of practice.  I mean no harm, and I don’t intend to do harm, revising – or attempting to revise – Mr. Pangilinan’s speech.  Some bits and pieces thrown in, though.

*     *     *

Magandang hapon sa inyong lahat.  I want to thank Father Benjamin Nebres and the Ateneo community for the honor of this doctorate.  My congratulations also go to our Law School, for having 7 out of the 11-10 topnotchers in the recent Bar exams!

Father Nebres, Father Magadia, trustees, faculty and staff, parents and siblings, graduates of 2010, many congratulations. Thank you so much for this gift of fellowship with the sesquicentennial class. You’ve earned your diploma from a great learning institution, and you have every right to be proud. I have wracked my mind and heart with what I should say today.  It took me around an hour to ask someone to write this speech for me – and an hour for him to write about it – as I told him the story of my own graduation day 44 years ago.

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Rage (?) Against Adam Carolla

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The easiest thing to do would be to ignore it; it’s fairly easy – if not accurate – to pass off Adam Carolla’s latest tirades against the Philippines as sophomoric attempts at satirizing and lampooning the Filipino condition.  Right now it’s fairly easy to Google every blog that talks about Adam Carolla, and leave comments about boycotting his show, kicking his ass, belittling him, or engaging him in the kind of intellectual debate in levels he probably can’t even comprehend.  Make him go down on his knees, and publicly apologize to an entire nation which he found so convenient to insult.

The other easy thing to do would be to accept it; after all, it is kind of true.  For all our experiences with the Teri Hatchers, the Claire Daneses, and the Chip Tsaos of this planet, it seems that a negative observation of the Philippines only becomes “racist” because it is “foreign.”  Or that “everybody’s just a little bit racist.”  Truth hurts, all right; even an extremely shallow, bankrupt statement like the racial slurs made by Carolla are not that difficult to disagree with.  It can even be passed off as satire, or perhaps fair comment, that a comedian – for sheer lack of material or talent to not play the racist card – could do exactly that, and pass it off as artistic license.

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Via Crucis

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It’s that time of the year again where we crucify Jesus Christ.  We commit sin so many times in a year that Jesus symbolically has to be crucified by us.  Not that we’re saved when Easter comes – we have sought salvation since the first Crucifixion – but every year, a few days of spiritual self-mortification often become excuses for beach trips and long vacations.

I dread Lent because it forces me to reflect on such a sustained, prolonged period; far longer than I could stand.

I put myself in the shoes of the many characters responsible for Jesus Christ being crucified.  Like Peter, I deny.  Like Judas, I betray.  Like the people, I condemn.  Like Pilate, I wash my hands off everything.  I sin – the present tense being the condition and situation of man while he exists – and therefore every sin I commit is another welt made by the flail, another blow to the cicatrices of Christ, another barb in His crown of thorns.

At Lent, it seems that all of this is forgiven by going to Church, avoiding meat, and waving palm fronds on the last Sunday before Easter.

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