What has Judy Ann done wrong by speaking for Meralco? She has, after all, sold practically everything.
Simply said, it is the fact that the truth she sells in the hotly contested ad is unlike any of the truths she declares in her other endorsements. In selling vinegar or ginisa mix, feminine wash and shampoo, laundry detergents and plastic ware, beer and diet pills, one can suspend belief and say, yes, those products may have worked for her, if not necessarily for others. (more…)
You know there’s something wrong when you don’t understand your bills di’ba? But of course this has been happening since forever, since I started paying my own bills. Long ago, a housemate asked: do you think Meralco’s really charging us more than it should? Sure that this was (is) the nature of capitalists like the Lopezes, I said, of course! even when I couldn’t explain how or why.
Oh but the powers of perseverance coupled with the patience of pregnancy, and bills that seem to grow expensive by the month! There’s also, of course, the continued distrust in capitalism and government. This was first published in early May of the year via www.stuartsantiago.com, long before Judy Ann Santos did the paid ad of Meralco, and dared talk about her reading of her Meralco bill, insisting that it’s the correct one. To wit, Juday says of her “meralco-is-innocent-reading”: “Yan ang basa ko. Tingnan mo sa bill mo. Maliwanag.”
E ang totoo, hindi nga maliwanag. So here’s a rundown of what I’ve figured out so far. (more…)
i’m the last person who will look down on what people enjoy reading, nor will i insist that you must read certain books in order for you to be called “literary”. i will insist though that anyone who decides to diss any form of literature, particularly philippine lit, even more so literature in our vernaculars, has better sense than just his or her superficial notions of taste and literature, and in this case, language. (more…)
chanced upon Korina Today, with Samantha Echavez, Carljoe Javier and Dean Francis Alfar, talking about their works included in what seems to be the anthology on tales of enchantment and fantasy, which is really beside the point of this critique.
the point being this: Alfar says that having readers isn’t a matter of length or short attention spans, as with the blog and its accessibility in terms of form, but that it’s a matter of, and i quote, “the story”. he says he doesn’t think it’s true that there’s a problem with readership, and that readers will be lost to new media, because the Filipino reader wants a good story. he then of course, talks about himself, and his experiment with Salamanca, which he says, he had published in parts on his blog for 30 consecutive days, and he got a lot of comments, and he won the palanca and got published by ateneo press. (more…)
(or laughter as the worst medicine)
it was an unlikely but perfect match: a bad stomach, a long rainy, dark and dreary day, and three lessons learned from 4:30 to 5:30 with only coke and very little food in my body.
one, you can pretend that you ARE an activist by saying that you WERE one during the first quarter storm and throughout Martial Law. it apparently gains you enough credibility to be invited to talks and have books published in this country, even if they are about communism – and even when the issues you raise are old and the problems you assert have since been solved. apparently, any person who’s proven by word of mouth as activist of three decades ago, can get away with pretending that he remains one, by virtue of the fact that he continues to talk about it. with an air of credibility, and – dare i say it? – wisdom. which is directly connected to something i proved to be true: if you admit to being old, you also apparently deem yourself wiser. and you can say, i’m tired and want to study rats. can you – addressing the young impressed audience, of course – please continue what i started? (which of course presumes that what you’ve done so far is worthy.) (more…)