Pounding The Keyboard

This is probably one of the weirdest telephone conversations you’ll ever hear. Lots of people call this the Citibank Scandal. But this is a different scandal. The woman here is screaming, yes, but in a different, non-ecstatic way while the man is moaning but also in a different, non-glorious and non-delirious way. It is a recorded conversation between a woman and a Citibank call center agent. The woman was apparently trying to withdraw money from an ATM but could not. Frustrated, she called up the office of Citibank to complain. And complain, she did. She let out a nasty and profanities-driven tirade against the hapless call center agent, against Citibank and one of its managers and against the Philippines and the Filipino people. She was a raging bull, a loose cannon and a hardcore terrorist rolled into one. Ang lutong magmura! The woman was obviously deranged but her little, nutty mind’s hatred, disgust and prejudice against the Filipino people was truly astonishing. The cops (bett...

Ang maikling kuwentong katatakutang nilikha ko para sa Dark Pages. Tatapusin

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down…” -- Woody Allen, noted American film actor, writer and director In connection with the celebration of Valentine’s Day, a worldwide organization which aim is to propagate love and understanding all over the world, annually chooses five greatest male lovers. Here are this year’s five winners, caught in the act, while they were showing and proving how sweet, thoughtful and caring they were to their significant others. How lucky these women are! Now, who says most men aren’t romantic and loving? All these five Casanovas will be receiving a trophy and a whack at the back of the head.

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 ...