Elsewhere in the world, election surveys are held against the light, and assessed based on where it is done, whose bailiwick(s) it chooses to survey, and how the survey is conducted.
In the Philippines, it is the media enterprises like ABS-CBN and Rappler that commission or do their own surveys, justifying the practice instead of questioning it.
I wasn’t very good at doing arts and culture in the country the past year. But here’s a list of the strange, the good, the surprising in culture for 2015, not at all a best or worst list because … see the first sentence.
First a critical aside: having worked as dramaturg for Kleptomaniacs and a bit with Tanghalang Pilipino in 2014 meant keeping the theater reviews to a minimum in 2015. I needed that time to let go of the little inside stories that I know, if not to forget the petty tsismis. Distance is a good thing, and one is glad when it is given.
I had read about the stories of the members of the Talent Association of GMA (TAG) Network with sadness and frustration, compassion and anger. I could not believe that this institution, this high profile media network, could be so unkind to its workers of 5, 10, 15 years. I could not believe that the same space that I thought had treated me well enough for three years (or so) as a regular contributor for GMA News Online, had decided to treat its workers so badly.
Because being unfair to another, oppressing one’s workers, is a decision one makes. But also being silenced by fear — that makes us all complicit. (more…)
You’ve got until midnight tonight (Sunday) to download “It Will Be The Same But Not Quite The Same” for free over here. —
http://www.mediafire.com/…/adam_david_-_IWBTSBNQTS_-_single…
And to play with HiMaamSir. — http://himaamsir.blogspot.com/.
Very sad and dismayed and angry that these sites will be going down by the end of today, because of the use of the law (and lawyers!) without consideration for appropriation, transformation, and derivative work, not to mention critical-creative engagement. These are sad times for Philippine literature, when a publishing house like Anvil and editors like Noelle de Jesus and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta cannot see beyond the terms “copyright infringement,” will not even engage in a discussion about it, and instead demand that we do not see this site and PDF anymore.
Here’s the statement from writers and supporters of literature on the case of Adam David who has been told to take down a website and PDF that critically engages with the book Fast Food Fiction Delivery, published by Anvil and edited by Noelle de Jesus and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta.
Here is the site — http://himaamsir.blogspot.com/
And the PDF — http://www.mediafire.com/…/adam_david_-_IWBTSBNQTS_-_single…
Here’s Adam’s explanation of what his project was about — “It’s a collection of 132 stories gathered from a story-generating machine I encoded called thirty minutes or less. It’s a simple randomiser that I fed story fragments to, culled from the flash fiction collection Fast Food Fiction Delivery (edited by Noelle de Jesus and Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, Anvil 2015).”
— http://wasaaak.blogspot.com/…/thirty-three-and-two-more-new…
Do add your name to it if you are of the same mind about this.