Killing Me Softly With His Phone

(If you don't watch Glee, watch the commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v0G8KdMc3w)

Everybody watching the US Match Airing of Glee on ETC will see what I see: a commercial for some newfangled text promo from Smart, which starts with a bunch of girls fawning over this guy who passes them. After going all "Squee!" over him, what do they do? Do any of them even continue talking with each other about the guy, or even about guys in general?

Of-frakking-course not. Instead, they all whip out their cellphones, and start trying to out-class each other by broadcasting who they'll be forwarding this entirely insignificant piece of trivia (that trivia being "Ang cute ni Joe!") to: the first texts some random name, the second calls some other random name (read: "classier" than texting, supposedly because it's more expensive) and the third blurts out, "I'm gonna text my Facebook!"

I'M GONNA TEXT MY FACEBOOK.

Then the hoopla about the promo comes around. The flashing images, however, no matter how gaudy, are nothing compared to what has just happened, and what effect it has on a student of communication. It is a travesty of  the entire process: the choice to simply text a random social network, no matter how famous said network is, over actual human contact, whether verbal or nonverbal. Thoughts about a person near you, transcribed into text then broadcasted into what could probably be called a pseudo-imagined community, instead of going through the simpler, more sensible, more "human" process of translating it into phoneme and utterance and broadcasting to people around you, even if not to the person you really want to talk to. Instead of breaking down walls, as is supposedly the philosophical rationale behind all these advancements in communication technology, we see new ones being erected by no less than ourselves.

What happens after the images are the salt to the wound, though: cute guy Joe's friends receive the Facebook status update, and they joke around with him for being called "cute" and all, revealing that they were connected to the girl in some way (hence the Facebook "friendship" prior to the event covered by the commercial).

End commercial.

People who would rather go and display their exhibitionism in front of a pseudo-present audience? Is this what all this communication technology-related compatibility is leading us to? Will our sons and daughters grow into an age wherein everybody will become even more introverted than ever, for by that time it will be more the norm to broadcast to pseudo-present audiences than to present ones? A future where, simply put, posting a status update will become more important than actually speaking with another person face to face, all verbal and nonverbal signs considered?

Of course, you may chide me for seemingly over-reacting to what is nothing more than a cellphone commercial that probably would not even last a year. But remember that television commercials, moreover ones that come with really popular (hence, commercial-laden) television shows, come from the minds of people living in the now and reflect the value systems of people living in the now, therefore having the potential to influence the minds of people who either already live in the now, or want to. And if this is what stands for communication nowadays, I sincerely fear for the future of my future children.

Long Weekends are Never Long Enough

For time doth grow its leathered wings
To fly through warm and balmy winds
That only long vacations bring
To thy worn shell of human will

Alas, respite thy doth lack still:
Time speeds only to be eclipsed
Till naught remains of all thy flings
Except regret's godawful stings

Or, as Parokya ni Edgar sang, without the frilly iambs and quadrameters:

Tatlong araw lang pala
Ako naging maligaya
Di ko man lang napuna
Tatlong araw ko'y tapos na

As a Daft Punk album cover can so easily remind us that we are Human After All

Regalado (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) wrote a large number of short treatises, many of which he disguised as free-verse poetry, on what appeared to be a seasonal form of depression, a gnawing emptiness which would only emerge either near the end of a collegiate semester or during the week-to-month long break that followed it, the temporary halt in academic affairs possibly hearkening back to the days when Jewish craftsmen who, in honor of the Sabbath, would put down their tools and snore in the timbre of a Latino siesta, creating a cacophony that would make even the most clueless postmodernist proud of his clueless-ness. The time-defined nature of his depression appears in the fact that most of the entries in the browned and blackened pages of his websites coincide with the latter parts of a conventional University of the Philippines semester, as well as with the break that follows one.

It perplexes the mind, however, to note that the author of these treatises, who possibly wrote them for the posterity of the phenomenon leaving him as he left the life of a college student, was discovered to still be beset by the very same wave of gloom that always seemed to have arrived right on schedule every time. Not only this, but the depression seemed to evolve along with him, adapting to the three-semester schedule used by the school he taught in instead of the conventional two-semester schedule his insomniac eyes used to read, write and study to.

Amidst these discoveries, it is to no small wonder that the author of these treatises has always sought sabbatical, sought Sabbath, in all manner of ways, from harboring all sorts of inanities and insanities to comfort foods and to writing even more treatises on his condition. His latest treatise is one that is all about his previous ones, as well as about a phenomenal depression which beset him as of the time of this writing.

REFERENCES:

Regalado, Franco Antonio. Turris Eburnea: Ivory Tower. Retrieved from http://francoocnarf.blogspot.com. Blogger: 2005.

Regalado, Franco Antonio. (no title). Retrieved from http://ocknarf.multiply.com. Multiply: 2007.

Postmodernpostmortem

(for AJ)

Death, such an amalgam of ironies: departure and gathering, silence and noise. The latter: every solemn moment is punctuated by the chugging of the diesel motor and the clanking of the tractor as it hauls trailer after trailer of dirt into the grave site. The dirt itself is a hodgepodge, a mass of brown dirt, gray rock, black and white pieces of what appear to be the same marble and porcelin used to adorn other gravestones, mausoleums and columbariums.  Thus, it is not only his father who is buried with each pathetic tear and each apathetic shovelful; he is covered and sealed into his resting place alongside bits and pieces of other people's lives and deaths, a mass grave that is gravely un-massive.

Enduring all this unceremonious ceremony in the infernal heat, Alvin says to himself, only half jokingly: "I want to be cremated when I die."

Clear-Headed Zombie

Can't sleep, pumped up from last night's and this night's Coke. And as I have said time and again, the boon and bane of these zombified nights is that it gets a person to thinking. And when things get me to thinking, I get to writing.

Oh well. To quote the vegan zombie: GRAAAAIINSSS... (munch on a granola bar)

- Funny how reading a piece for the second or third time rarely gives you the exact same impressions as the first, especially when you're going through a piece that's so prone to multiple interpretations. Take the Salvador Lopez piece Literature and Society, for example: read the piece first during fourth year, as something I was hoping I could glean quotable thesis stuff from. First reading gave me the same impression most probably get with their first skimming: writing must be done with the improvement of our society in mind.

Discussed the essay with my fourth year students as part of their World Literature curriculum, which meant I had to read it again. Second reading gives more elemental results: when you write (and by write, I don't mean the stuff that you put in your journal, the stuff you don't really want others to read), keep in mind that people can and will read it, whether it is mushy poetry or some heated exhortation against a present evil in society. Whether it will relate to them and whether they will appreciate what is written, though, will be another matter. Might as well, then, give them something to look relate to, so that in your own little way, you've sort of contributed to somebody else's learning, and to the overall progress of the human race as well. Simply put: writing for yourself with the intention of being read will probably cave into itself, so might as well write with others (and what is society but a bunch of Others, colonialistically speaking?) in mind.

- Sometimes, I feel like I'm better as student than as a teacher, which is probably why I like treating my students as more like classmates I simply have to deliver a report to. Besides, there are few things in life that are better than a class where learning doesn't exactly feel like learning, right? (I can hear you nodding, BACA batchmates.) Hence, perhaps, my lack of drive to constantly quiz my students on what they have or have not learned from my prattle. (Sucks that there's a minimum required number of quiz points per semester, else I'd simply have asked for an arseload of papers instead.) Oh well, there's still my dreams of a degree in Law, as far as studying is concerned. Guess I'd sometimes rather be soaking up all the information than dishing it out, I guess.

Not to say that I don't like teaching, though. There is, after all, nothing quite like the flow of chi, ideas and information through an active classroom, an exchange of energy from listener to speaker and vice versa equaling those mentioned in those New Age pseudo-philosophies. Problem comes only when chi is blocked, usually by somebody failing to read the materials that are to be talked about.

- I miss writing. The creative sort of writing, that is, and not the sort you need for quizzing 3rd Grade students on things like figures of speech. Rocket Kapre's got submissions for some Filipino fiction anthology of sorts by the end of the month, and I've got a story which just needs revisions (and more pages to make it to the word count minimum) in line. Hope I can at least start getting it up to speed this week. Bulols, after all, can only say so much.

- Weird that I had a headache just a few hours ago, and my head's as clear as a field in Quezon right now. Guess my body misses the occasional zombie night as well.

Calliope! Clio! Erato! Polyhymnia! Thalia! GRAAAAARRRGGGHHH!

post-Max's gluttony: thoughts on sin, the stomach and the bottomless

Up in Mountain Province, legends tell of a man who ate too much and danced too hard as the origin of the lights in the night sky. Until now, people search the sky for this man named Matakaw, forever reminded of the dire consequence of gluttony: your body becoming so rounded that once you spin, you gain lossless momentum, until gravity itself loses its grip on you, leaving you to do the dizzying twist through the heavens, your crown and beads thrown off your body to shine for eternity as the moon and stars, respectively.

Gluttony, after all, is a sin. One of the Maleficent Seven, even. Yet one that capitalism loves to take advantage of, using the illusions of satiation grandeur brought about by the buffet and the bottomless. Everyone is lost and googly-eyed at All, when everybody really needs to focus on Can. Sure, they can further distort things by calling it an Eat All You Want or a Drink All You Want, but no amount of desire can stretch a stomach, no amount of willpower can turn back the hands of a ticking clock. You are no Hiro.

But who's to blame? In the world where every movement can easily be broken down into costs, profits, statistics and other numerical whatnot, merely the chance of a glimpse into the infinite is an alluring illusion, whether or not our heads themselves end up spinning into space after eating or drinking more than what our minds and stomachs can usually hold.

a professional crastinator

So I promised myself that by one o' clock, after lunch, I'd either be checking papers or making new exams for the kids. Yet it's already past eight, and I've done nothing...

Of that sort, that is. Instead, I've done a hasty pictorial of the different Optimus Primes in my toy collection, emailed a few pics to a tita who wanted them, had several YM discussions with some friends on topics from saving face to high school life to card games, played a game of Starcraft, writing this down, and a load of other things that have no connection whatsoever with what I have to be doing. Strange, how efficient we sometimes are with the many little nothings in our lives, as opposed to the big things we should be focusing on. ADHD, I say again and again. This is probably why though the amount of creative content all around the world has increased exponentially (thanks in no small part to the Internet as well), creative masterpieces remain few and far in between.

It is so easy to dismiss this as nothing more than the most extreme form of procrastination, but with such theories such as those of Multiple Intelligences, postmodern fragmentation, oh-so-elitist-when-you-call-it-loss-of-mental-focus-yet-oh-so-bakya-and-so-layman-when-you-just-call-it-stupidity and other what have yous, things are simply not as simple as they used to be. Add another layer of complications when you try to explain why, as I have written above, some people can be so efficient on what they do not have to do, yet so uninspired with the other side of the fence of priorities.

I currently have neither the time nor the resources to look into such a deeply obscured area of psychology. Suffice it to say, I just want to ask: is there any reasonable explanation of this, whether psychological, socio-cultural or what have you?