helped out with Better Living Through Xeroxography (BLTX) 2 which happens tomorrow, March 2, at Ilyong’s in Cubao. it’s the one independent book fair that happens in these shores as far as i know, and the one that gathers together the writers / illustrators / artists you wouldn’t see in bookstores. am launching a teeny tiny book to end the life cycle of an essay that should’ve been printed / published a long time ago. do come! (more…)
this piece went up yesterday on that horrid cover for March that FHM Philippines was set on putting out. which it has pulled out, announced via that official statement posted on their website. that might be a success, but seriously? why is that official statement not a public apology? it needed to be an admission of having made a mistake, full stop. (more…)
in mid-2010, i wrote this as introductory piece for what was planned as a column on arts and culture in a publication under the editorship of exie abola. it is perfect that i remember it now in light of National Arts Month, with the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) celebrating it via the Philippine Arts Festival 2012. that we are more than halfway through February, and we have yet to feel this celebration at all? that this still applies almost two years since? welcome to the state of the arts and culture in this country. (more…)
In a land where a president takes pride in conditional cash transfers and poverty alleviation disbursements, it is not surprising that there is no real long- term solution to solve poverty. Worse, poverty is seen only as by-product of corruption: such was Benigno Aquino III’s campaign slogan, such is the continued tagline for what it is that ails the nation. It is corruption not poverty, it is corruption not human rights, it is corruption not a systemic dysfunction that keeps the poor where they are. (more…)
in conversations with my Pinay friend Sunshine who left for the US five years ago, and who came to visit in the middle of January, tears were necessarily in order. what was surprising was that while these would be shed in the first two hours or so for the distance we had kept and the things we had survived separately, the rest of our time together would be spent crying about nation, if not shaking our heads in dismay.
by the end of it i found that what needed to be articulated, what needed to come from me, what Sunshine needed to hear, was this: Catholicism, as we know it in this country, is the death of us. (more…)