Pounding The Keyboard

These days, everyone can be gorgeous and beautiful. Everyone can now have perfect face, svelte, fat-free figure, tantalizing, eyebag-free eyes, gorgeous smooth hair and flawless, glowing skin and underarms that are as shiny as the sun without going to the doctor or buying those expensive beauty products. Yes, everyone can be a goddess or godlike when it comes to their appearance. At least, on the pages of those glossy magazines and on billboards and calendars. Photoshop is the word. A friend of mine, Dingdong (not his real name) used to regularly buy FHM magazines and the likes but when he noticed that the models’ photos were starting to be heavily doctored and photoshopped (to the point that the models looked deformed and their bodies not proportionate), he stopped buying it. “Fantasizing to a doctored photo is downright cheap and degrading,” my principled friend declared. “They’re giving us fake photos, we might as well pay them fake money.” My friend did just that but was promptly ...

My good friend and fellow blogger Arman Francisco is currently running a series of blog updates about local cartoon strips and cartoon characters. Obviously, he loves cartoon strips. I, too, like cartoons. I also wanted to be a cartoonist then. When I first got inside the premises of Atlas Publishing then, I had with me my own cartoon strip entitled Rizalito . I haven’t wrote a single comics script then and GASI was still an unknown entity to me then. My strip was about a teenager who was named after Jose Rizal by his patriotic father. Rizalito resembled (at least the hairdo) Jose Rizal and he was supposed to act and speak like the national hero). He’s supposed to be smart, witty, sarcastic and love to spew patriotic lines. The editor (I forgot his name) liked it, he was grinning while reading the few pages I gave him. “Okay ‘to, kaya lang ilipat mo sa mas malaking papel gaya nito,” he told me before showing me a standard-sized comics illustration. I drew my strips on short bond papers...

“Hey you, out there in the cold Getting lonely, getting old Can you feel me? Hey you, standing in the aisles With itchy feet and fading smiles Can you feel me? Hey you, dont help them to bury the light Dont give in without a fight…” --“Hey You” by Pink Floyd “Do you have suicidal tendencies?” I was asked that question quite a few times, some jokingly, some seriously, while I was still actively writing for local comics. Some people noticed that I loved writing stories about suicide or about desperate people committing suicide. “No,” I would always answer, “I don’t have any.” It’s just that suicide as a topic always has a strange attraction to me. I love lonely, lone wolf characters. Unfortunately, suicide as an act also has strange attraction to a lot of people. World Health Organization(WHO) says that one person commits sucide every forty seconds. Count to forty, please. You’re finished? There, another person just died by suicide. Bless his soul. WHO also says that suicide rates all ...

When they are not busy putting melamine in milk or lead in children’s toys or thinking of other ways to harm the humanity through their products, some Chinese people dabble in zodiac. And according to them, this year, 2009, is the Year of The Ox. If you are an ox (people born in the year 1913, 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985 and 1997), this is your year. And if you are a believer in these things, consider yourself lucky this year. Go ahead, take risks, be bold and adventurous. Do things that you don’t normally do, like bungee jumping without a rope or crossing EDSA in a blindfold. I really am not a believer in chinese zodiac or horoscope or the likes. I don’t read my horoscope. I don't understand why lots of people go gaga over it. Think about it, if this year is lucky for all the things ox, then why is this cow (a close relative of the oxen) having the worst day of her life.

The following is a wish list, some of the headlines that some of my God-fearing, pseudo-intellectuals, beer-guzzling, computer-hogging, law-abiding but non-taxpaying friends would love to see on Philippine newspapers this 2009. POLITICS "GMA Revokes Pardon, Estrada Finally Going To Jail" "Cocky, Abusive, Golf Club-Toting Gov’t Officials Mauled By Ordinary Citizens, Mob Threatens To Beat More" "Cory Apologizes Again, But This Time To The Filipino People For Failing To Lift the Country After EDSA I, For Her Failure To Truly Resolve The Ninoy Murder And For Giving Birth To Kris Aquino" "20 Corrupt Politicians Convicted Of Graft, Judge Sentences Them 50 Years Each, Rules Out Pardon Or Parole; 3 Quickly Jump Off Tall Building And Kill Themselves" "Imelda Marcos Finally Admits Her Family’s Sins Against The Nation, Returns Wealth And Hits Her Head Hard With A Shoe In Repentance" "Joe De Venecia Retires From Politics, Will Try His Luck As...