Jesusification
[If a Danish newspaper could publish a cartoon on Muhammed, and
Filipino protesters could indulge so much in freedom of expression,
maybe I could up the ante myself. I’ve realized recently I haven’t been
enjoying my so-called freedom, so I’m posting this “evil” piece and see
how far it would take me to verbal hell. This was inspired by a Rowan
Atkinson sketch, by the way, so this piece is best when read aloud and
the reader is dressed as a priest.]
(*Also appears on The Skirmisher superblog.)
And when Jesus went out, He saw a great multitude, and He
was moved with compassion for them, so he went back inside the room, and later
he came out dressed in a carrot suit. He went around the multitude and
entertained them and pulled a rabbit out of a hat and made jokes about mothers-in-law.
And the sick were healed because they were happy. And one
of them asked, “Do you do Tupperware parties, too?”
And Jesus said, “Only on weekdays.”
When it was evening, the disciples came to Him, saying,
“This is a deserted place. There’s not even a local Pizza Hut franchise in
sight. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy
themselves food and do some R & R in some videoke bar so that they can also
sing ‘My Way.’”
But Jesus said to them, “They do not need to go away. You
give them something to eat.”
And they said to Him, “We only have here five loaves and
two fish.”
Jesus said, “Bring them to me.”
Then He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass,
then He took the five loaves and noticed they were long past their expiration
date. He took the two fish and smelled them and said, “This smells like James’s
armpits.” So He commanded Judas to call on the cellphone the Salvation Army or
the ABS-CBN Foundation for five truckloads of relief goods. Then the trucks
came immediately, and the disciples were so awed at the quick response that
they asked Him, “Master, how did you do it?”
Jesus chuckled and said, “I have clout.”
And they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve
baskets full of plastic wrappers and Styrofoam cups and table napkins. And
James said, “Let us not throw away these. I can make teddy bears out of these
Styrofoam cups.”
Immediately, Jesus made His disciples get into the boat
and go before Him to the other side, while He sent the multitudes away.
And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on a
mountain by Himself, checked if it was a WIFI hotspot, then checked his Friendster account on his laptop. And he
was disappointed because some teenager flooded the bulletin posts by posting
fifteen times some chain email about a woman called Mary that you have to send
to many people or else you’ll die tonight. Jesus asked wisdom from the Father
and the Father told him, “Unfriend
that kid.” So Jesus removed the kid from his list of friends.
Now, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came to the
disciples on the boat, walking on the sea.
And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they
were amazed, saying, “Cool. Can you also do somersaults?”
Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Be of good cheer. Of course,
I can somersault.”
And Jesus did a somersault.
The disciples were doubly amazed, and they said, “Can you also
spit through your front teeth?”
Jesus said, “Of course.”
The disciples asked, “Like, as far as five strides?”
Jesus became annoyed, and said, “Of course, I can spit as
far as five strides. And even farther.” And Jesus spat through his front teeth,
and hit somebody standing by the sea shore.
The disciples were amazed, and they all said, “Wow. That
kicked ass.”
But Peter said, “Master, I can also walk on water.”
The disciples said, “Oh, shut up, Peter.”
Peter said, “Seriously, I can.” And Peter came off the
boat to walk on water, but immediately, he sank like a rock. And Peter was
gone.
And Jesus said, “From now on, let us remember Peter as
‘Peter the Rock.’”
And the disciples said, “Truly, you are wise, Master.
‘Peter the Rock’ sounds like a wrestler’s name, and only you can think of it,
oh Son of God.”
And Jesus, upon hearing it, just shrugged like he didn’t
care. After all, as far as he knew it, the only other creature that could walk
on water was not even human; it was a lizard, a basilisk. But the disciples did
not know it. So Jesus said, “Let’s call it a day and let’s go to a videoke
bar. I hear they have this intriguing new contraption called ‘Magic Sing.””
The disciples asked, “Master, can you sing ‘My Way,’ too?”
Jesus was annoyed. He said, “All ye of little faith. Of
course, I can sing that song. In fact, I can do almost anything except chartered accountancy.”
And right there standing on the sea, Jesus began singing
Frank Sinatra’s song.
Turn me on, Dead Woman
There’s this thing that keeps nagging at me.
What if there were no “Hello, Garci” tape?
Instead, what if there were a video footage of GMA
and Garci in a swanky five-star hotel room, and the words coming from the room
were not “Hello, Garci,” but “Yes! Yes! Yes! Garci, oh yes! Give it to me, Garci!
Give it to me! Give it to me hard,
you bad, bad boy!
Sihnong nanay
moooooh?
That would be a truly grotesque footage, worthy of web hosting
space on WhereisGod.com. GMA would vanish from her seat faster than you can say
“Bienvenido Jesus Torres.”
But no, we don’t have that. We don’t have that kind of
certainty. Instead, we have this little “Hello, Garci” tape, this little clay
of a soundbyte that people from all caves mangled into ghoulish proportions. We
have this “Hello, Garci” tape that’s so corny but still enough to turn the past
many months to culminate into the passion play of yesterday’s Edsa
celebrations.
My country, the Philippines,
turns me on so much I get a hard-on each time I watch local news. Everybody’s
passion just gets to you. But there’s a point where you just stop caring.
There’s a morning when you just wake up, take a careless look at the TV, and
mutter to yourself,
“Fuck you all.”
Right about now, I just want to give all these people
exactly what they want. They know the solution, right? People like Cory know so much about “supreme sacrifice,”
right?
So, this is an open plea to Gloria: For Mang Pandoy’s
sake, why don’t give them the fucking helm?
But please only ask one
little condition: that each one of them—every single one of them—is fed to
angry African ants if they’d perform as badly as the buffoons they’re dying to
replace.
Then it would be the turn of people like me to sit back
and see how they would do it. How these people—all these people who care so much about the country’s future
they’re willing to forget taking a bath and brushing their teeth and giving
their mothers a flower on Valentine’s day—would turn around the economy in a matter
of months or, say, five years.
I’d love to see how they’d “lower” the prices of fuel. How
they’d give across-the-board increases to whatever levels of salaries our
workers demand.
I’d love to see them do it because it would be like
watching a magician pull a brontosaurus out of a hat.
But then somebody told me yesterday that true change would
not happen without the participation of everybody.
I just stared at him and said, “Exactly.”
This reminds me so much of Hamas after they won the Palestinian
Central Elections last December. They won after years and years of playing the
gadfly, stinging (or blasting) the secular Palestinian government while, on the
side, trying to erase Israel off the map. After Hamas won, Scot Adams joked, the top members probably
huddled in a small room and muttered, “Oh, crap, we won. Now what?”
Yesterday, the whole Edsa thing was turned into a Grand
Martyr Generator: everybody who got a wound, truncheoned, and arrested would later
go around telling friends and admirers their war stories.
Hey, Ma, look! I lost
a tooth!
I had a chat with somebody last night who actually went
there and asked him, What is wrong with you guys? Did you really go there and
expect to find a phalanx of smiling and happy dispersal police?
Did you really think you could provoke the beejesus out of
these already nervous policemen and expect nothing in return but a benevolent
nod, a naughty I-saw-your-peepee wink?
And did everybody really expect that the incumbent
government, after the past many months of filtering all the rumors of
destabilization and political coup, would sit at home and watch old reruns of John en Marsha?
Now, the media and everybody’s cousin are climbing the
towers and banging the gongs because “it’s martial law,” as if everybody’s
surprised, as if nobody ever felt they had it coming.
So this is a plea to Gloria: Give them whatever in hell
they want, and let’s see.
Give them what they want, then we’ll see.
And the truth is, my heart is bleeding over it, knowing
fully well how our deepest shame, our most painful lesson will always hit home—not
out of a lightning strike, but on the dullest of days,
the day you get what you want.
Take Two
I shouldn’t be here; I shouldn’t be making a new post on
my blog. I’m supposed to be up to my neck completing a lot of things because
the truth is, I indeed am. I’m chasing various deadlines that sometimes make me
wish I were on another planet in the solar system, one that has 72-hour days.
But there’s something so funny and surreal on TV these
past few days that often, I find myself gaping at it.
For example, notice how everybody from ABS-CBN makes their
report on the Wowowee stampede; notice
how subtly they shift the blame on somebody else. It’s so subtle and clever I
bet so few actually sense it. There’s this committee report where the general
drift of investigation only superficially touches on the company itself; even
the bleeding-heart commentaries of anchors like Ces Drilon and Dong Puno deftly
sway opinion and focus on the emotional appeal of those deaths, and very rarely
on liability.
It’s so clever I actually find myself admiring the sons of
bitches.
Before anybody makes a mistake in perception, I don’t hate ABS-CBN. I have friends and former
classmates from Adamson U. who are working for that company. In fact, many in my Friendster list must hate
this post for the simple reason that they wouldn’t bite the hand that feeds
them
I admire ABS-CBN because it’s an efficient money-making
machine, and for me, that’s cool. I don’t hate big business; in fact, I’m a big
fan. I’m an aspiring hot-blooded entrepreneur myself. I’m a true-blue
capitalist; I’m probably the Filipino version of Joseph Heller’s Milo
Minderbinder, only nuttier.
As an aside, I’ve been spending the past many months
crafting my business models while everybody else was busy blaming the
government. For me, and it’s probably just personal, but I think the government
is a dead horse (“kicking a dead horse” refers to the concept of futility), and
kicking it is something that doesn’t appeal to me. On the other hand, I’m
getting a big kick out of the fact that while many people blame the government
for many things they couldn’t do (lack of capital, opportunities, etc), I’m
actually not needing the government and doing exactly what I want; through
slightly naughty ways, yes, but that’s not the point.
The point is, if you suddenly decide not to need the
government and not to blame it for your own woes, and just do it like that Nike
ad campaign, the amazing thing is you actually can. You might stumble in your
first few tries, you might find yourself bankrupt in your first attempt at business,
but that’s all right—things like that separates the grain from the chaff, the
men from boys. As the Bible said: Don’t mess with me; you are Hulk Hogan, so
get up!
I don’t hate companies like ABS-CBN just because it’s such
a huge juggernaut of a cash cow. I love the cheesy ways it innovates just to
flatten the competition; their exclusive coverage of all things Manny Pacquio,
for example, is simply a wonderful financial masterstroke. Remember how GMA
Network’s Arnold Clavio would beg sheepishly for an interview? I never thought
I’d live to see something like it, but there it was. Everybody was an outsider,
except ABS-CBN. It was as if they’d built a fence around Manny Pacquiao.
And I’m still awed at the way they made Pinoy Big Brother such a business
success.
Has anybody actually done the numbers? I did. And here I
am speaking as somebody who hates numbers. If you’d try to figure out how much
the company earns from “text-ins” alone, even if it’s just a ballpark figure,
the numbers would make you salivate. Now, compare that number to the amount
shows like Wowowee actually dishes out
to people, you’d realize it’s chump change.
Add that money to the amount ABS-CBN is paying for medical
and funeral expenses of the victims, you’d realize it’s chump change.
Barya lang.
Personally, I love money; lots of it. I love how having
oodles of money can let you do cool things like produce a movie like Syriana or a Web application like Google
Earth or maybe have somebody like starlet Keanna Reeves stay for the night.
That’s why I don’t hate ABS-CBN in the way a spurned lover
would feel. There’s nothing personal about it. But right now, the truth is, if
I could drag this company into a room, I’d beat it to pulp using Manny Pacquiao’s
left fist (or is it the right fist?). If it has an ass, I’d kick so hard it
would forget its own abbreviated name.
ABS-CBN made a big fuck up; they should pay big. Not to
me, not to the God of Lip Service, but to the victims’ families. Maybe give
each of them a house and lot, or a million, or something that would finally let
them “fish on their own.”
These days, this country is really darkly funny it drives
people so mad. But maybe there’s something good about it; in Shakespeare’s
plays, often the insane characters are the ones who clearly see the truth.
Maybe after everyone has cleaned and rinsed the shit that hit the fan, things
would be clear. Things would be as bright and sunshiny as that Sunday morning
song.
But I won’t hope for it. ABS-CBN is after all a media
juggernaut; only somebody from Hell like Ferdinand Marcos could bring it down
to its knees (dragging with it the whole country, too), and I don’t see anybody now of Marcos’s caliber.
But in the highly unlikely event that the company would make
the kind of “change” Saul met on the road to Damascus,
that would be so astounding, so uncharacteristic, it would probably feel like
discovering a new species of toad in the African continent.
If ABS-CBN suddenly decides that, okay, let’s give all
these people just compensation—and more—it would feel as surprising as finding
a naked Katrina Halili in my room.
If ABS-CBN does that, I’ll eat my hat.
[*as REM-dictated by the still-frozen subject straight
from his cryonic dewar.]
Sue ABS-CBN
More than 60 people died this morning. And the whole thing
was so crazy that for long moments I failed to find words how to describe it.
ABS-CBN, particularly this noontime show and others like it,
has pandered to the desperation of the Filipino masses for a long time. It
actually created this peculiar mania among its audiences, probably to stir and
encourage word of mouth. Probably they measured the show’s success by how crazy
the poor can get, and the lengths they’d go to just to make it past the
ABS-CBN gate. It must have been fun watching all those people making a frenzied
beeline for that door with not a shred of human dignity just to have a shot
at a few thousand bucks. Or a bleeding million.
Now, the company and its people are saying sorry. Now,
ABS-CBN even has the nerve to declare, with the requisite show of regret, that it
is shouldering the funeral expenses of those who died—saying it as if expecting
you should thank them to high heavens for such “generosity.”
But no, those are cheap words, and the dead don’t need them.
No, it was not, as Noli de Castro said, “the responsibility of the MMDA.” The
whole thing was an ABS-CBN event, it was the anniversary of one of its shows,
and at least they should have had the sense of responsibility to ensure that it
remains orderly and safe.
Now, the company is saying sorry? I can imagine somebody like Chris Tucker
saying, “Why don’t y’all…shove it up your ass.”
But more than 60 people have already died so uselessly. And
among those who are dead, I see my own mother in them. Among those who are
dead, I see friends, neighbors—folks whose lives were so close to my own.
In any possible context, this is a very dark fucking joke,
the kind that makes you laugh and cry at the same time.
The company’s anchors, and particularly this actor Willie Revillame, are saying nobody wanted it this way.
Oh, sure. But you know what, you and your kind should stop tugging the
heartstrings of the desperate poor. You know what, their families should
sue you until you’ve bled out all the profits you’ve raked at their expense.
But maybe that’s just me thinking aloud.
[*as REM-dictated by the still-frozen subject straight from
his cryonic dewar.]
