Pounding The Keyboard

       There are two things that are certain in this world: growing old and dying. Most men in my family (grandfathers, my father, uncles, cousins, etc.) don’t get to be septuagenarian; they die in their fifties and sixties, some even younger. And I don’t mind. In this world that gets harsher every year, you’d be lucky to live in your fifties—until my younger sister started sharing to us anecdotes about her precocious five year old son who is in kindergarten. The little guy took nursery school with ease and ended up with the highest honor. They would sit down to dinner and his son would regale them with information about multiverse, galaxies, solar systems, the size of the moon and the planets, how tall some famous mountains are and how numbers don’t stop in the billions. No, they don’t teach these things in kindergarten; her son would search and read them on Internet. And my sister also told us how she had noticed her son getting bored with his online classes...

       So the past few days, I’m seeing on my Facebook News Feed pictures of reunions of komiks writers (which I used to be) and editors. Reunions, plural,   meaning these are reunions/parties held in different years (always around Christmas and New Year). And I realized I wasn’t there, that I haven’t attended even a single reunion. I was invited to many of these gatherings, I acquiesced to some of them, but still I didn’t attend, preferring to stay at home, drinking alone, staring at the wall or watching some paint dry while listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s I Am A Rock .      But now, looking at these photos, and how the people there seemed jovial and in high spirits, I probably should have attended. The food seemed delicious and beer, of course, is free. Tsk! It was a terrible mistake missing these gatherings. I probably would have had a grand time being in these partie—Wait, somebody sent me a private message, it’s from a frie...

      Two days ago, I nonchalantly made a satirical political comment on a post on the ABS-CBN News Facebook page,  a comment which garnered more than three thousand reactions and more than 200 comments in a few hours. Lol. The previous highest number of reactions I got for a comment of mine was more than two thousand, a comment (satirical, too) I made, I think, on a post on the FB page of  Philippine Daily Inquirer broadsheet. Of the more than 200 comments made on my comment two days ago, half of them were agreeing and cheering me, the other half (from government supporters and fanatics) were either wishing me to be afflicted with various illnesses or threatening me with bodily harm. Aside from the comments and reactions, I also received a private message from a woman whose profile picture was that of a cute baby girl, probably her daughter, cursing me.      Most of those threats, of course, were gone with the wind as soon as they wer...

       Metro Manila Film Festival still pushed through this year despite the pandemic, but no, you don’t have to go to the mall to watch it, you can stream it on your smart TV right in your living room. My sister and her family has this sort of tradition to watch a film or two every MMFF, so she tasked her daughter to pick a movie, and since my niece is quite a fan of Paulo Avelino and because the film has early good reviews ( an excellently-crafted film, says one reviewer), she chose Fan Girl —and off we watched it.      The film (a small-budgeted one) is about a famous actor who has a few dirty secrets and his obsessed 16-year old female fan.      The movie is dark, or at least, it tries hard to be, with scenes that show the main actor urinating, his penis (prosthetic only, girls) showing; the actor teaching his fan (a minor) to smoke and drink; the actor using drugs; the actor cursing like there’s no tomorrow; the...

       Two tragedies appeared on my Facebook News Feed this morning, four days before Christmas, and both occurred yesterday, Sunday, 21st of December 2020. The first tragedy happened near Manila City Hall, a 16-year old biker was hit and killed by a speeding jeepney at the corner of Padre Burgos Avenue and Victoria Street. The photos attached to the post would make you weep. One of the photos shows the  biker (his head bleeding profusely) and his mountain bike with its damaged handlebars lying on the road, surrounded by rescuers and onlookers, some of them bikers, too.   Another photo shows his bike again but without him, a puddle of blood underneath the bike and a surgical face mask and a broken helmet near it. The Manila City Hall building, cars traversing the road, and some persons of authorities and other onlookers could be seen in the background.      A few commenters said that the jeepney hit the victim’s bike, and that h...