QPG

I’m being haunted by Nick, Brian, Howie, Kevin and AJ.

Yesterday, I refreshed with the new watermelon float (where’s the green apple float!) of McDo and a large fries over lunch because I needed to get out of the office lest my head explode. Then, while in the middle of nibbling the cream, the boys started singing I want it that way, admittedly my favorite Backstreet song, or any boy band song for that matter. Two more songs played, Drowning and Quit Playing Games.

C’mon, the boy bands really had it their way when it was their time. I remember buying the first BSB album on cassette when I was Grade 6, the one with Get Down in it, which we eventually danced during Christmas parties those times.

After a mañanita for our Chairman the other day, a forgotten Filipino tradition which I only knew about this week where a bunch of birthday wishers greet (pester) the celebrator at the break of dawn with bygone songs, the assigned group arrived at around 6 am in the office with time to kill. So I grabbed a pillow and immediately looked for a BSB song on the net and dozed off in my desk. I dunno why the hell a BSB song popped into mind and so today I am haunted. Maybe it's hounding me to really consider that botched career? Jeez, heavens forbid.

***

Speaking of botches, my Tawi-Tawi trip is one. Goodbye Sheik Makhdum, islands, seaweeds, and lantsas see you next time, promise. So much for finally being at the southernmost tip of the Philippines. Photos courtesy of Ate Sarah.

Caco-phonies

The whole nation is crumbling to bits, millions of pesos can now slither its way to Moscow courtesy of perennial schmucks, plus the much-awaited confrontation with a fertilizer scam pig, err, king, and Anabelle Rama wants fucking yacht for crissakes. Come hell or high water and the miracle of Sto. Niño, give her the goddamn yacht! Jeez, whatever the fuck is happening, I too am miserly stuck in a quagmire.

Middlesex

Back in grade school, we had an infamous schoolmate whom we call Vizconde (yes, after the Vizconde massacre). She always had a ruffled hair covering most of her face and some missing front teeth and I dunno if that made everybody call her that. She also acts weird and sometimes opens up her skirt for us to see her panties. Perhaps what’s weirder is that everybody seem to believe that she has a small penis (or penis-like appendix in her female organ).

The use of she is based on the empirical data that she wears a skirt as uniform and fairly looked more of a girl. I remembered seeing her play basketball with the boys, in her skirt, or takyan, the vernacular term for sipa only with a piece of hardened alloy as base, which was a very popular pastime during recess with us boys.

Vizconde was the first person to come to mind when I read Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex. When I picked up the book, I had a remotest idea that the character already symbolized the title, that the subject matter is one of gender identity crisis, which when u think about it becomes more complex in a hermaphrodite’s case as the story of the novel’s protagonist would imply, when all I was thinking of Middlesex was a city in England or Michigan.

(Interestingly, I'm currently reading Strange Tribe by John Hemingway, grandson of Ernest. It's a family memoir, so personal that it traces the similarities between John's father Gregory's cross-dressing deviance to early hints in Ernest childhood and even in his literary works.)

If Calliope Stephanides, the engaging narrator, is a living person, his/her life would be perfect fodder for the media. Life would be a living hell and she would be the most talked about person in recent history. That’s because we don’t know of any famous, living or otherwise, hermaphrodite whose life is very much an open book. Or nobody, perhaps in Hollywood or any famous personality, would evidently expose his or her genitals as a proof of his/her hermaphroditism and create public morass.

Pages flew like leaps of calendar leaves in a generation – three in fact. For Eugenides cover three generations of the Stephanides family, from pre-war era in Mt.Olympus to the raucous 60s, it captures the very essence of Cal’s search for meaning: profound and immense, sometimes beyond comprehension.

The New York Times says in the back cover that Cal is an amalgam of one of Holden Caulfield and maybe that’s why the narrator is engaging – it seems like Cal is talking right in front of us. Cal’s discovery in every twist and turn of fate is like ours too. Her condition solicits not one of sympathy but understanding and a mesmerizing sense of bewilderment.

But because Eugenides’ epic journey of perhaps everyone seeking acceptance out there is not just one of biological or genetic idiosyncrasies, not just of a search for identity, but for meaning, acceptance and a rightful place in an already peculiar world.

dark, menacing times

I want to say that The Dark Knight is one of the best films this year. I don’t care if it gets overlooked in the award foray but the second installment of Christopher Nolan's reinvention of the caped crusader is also one of the best things to have happened in comic book hero adaptations. But then, it would be difficult to shrug off a film that is now the second highest grossing film of all time, wouldn’t it?

I watched it four times in the theatre, with one outing a treat. And immense wonder and disbelief fills me every time. The Dark Knight in jayclopsiswatching.

Man of faith.

As with the Philippines, religion in the U.S. pretty much has a say in the course of the election campaigns, more evidently with the Obama-McCain match. Though as to influencing using religion as tool, our lot is more shameless and blatant of recent times. We have our presidentiables attending prayer rallies and also acting as if they too have been suddenly possessed by the Holy Spirit. Make way for the anointed one!

Unfortunately, haters gripe over Obama’s seemingly lack of strong religious foundation or his unorthodox way of Christianity, which can be “politically problematic”. His schism with Trinity United Church and Rev. Wright, erstwhile spiritual counselor (?) and head of TUC has also escalated into a religious bout that has in some way created a perception of a confused leader.

In a lengthy article in the July issue of Newsweek, writers Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe cited a survey which reveals that around 12 percent think Obama is a Muslim and many perceived he was raised in a predominantly Islamic home. I remember chatting with a friend from Long Beach, California (who I surmise a Republican) a few months back and though I can vaguely note all the details about the conversation which was regarding the U.S. elections, I think it was something about this perception of Obama.

Indeed, Obama has been exposed to Islamic culture because of his stepfather (his father, who is said to be an atheist, left them at 2). His mother, whom Obama referred to as an agnostic, took him and his stepsister to Buddhist temples while in Indonesia andalso attending Catholic masses. In Hawaii where he spent high school, the family would also spend time in the United Church of Christ congregations. His readings also say a lot about his influences: St. Augustine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther King, among others.

Obama has upheld Christianity saying that “the emotional and intellectual” is joined in a powerful sense. He is touched by the Christian story and tries to align his actions with the teachings but traditionalists have often accused him because of his confused, modern brand of Christianity. Obama believes redemption only through Jesus Christ but also he says that the Golden rule is a very important guiding principle for him.

No religion offers one single truth and Obama is well aware of it. His search, his life, his journey is very American.

“I’m on my own journey and I’m searching,” he said. And, “I leave open the possibility that I’m entirely wrong.”

His honesty is courageous. His admittance is audacity. And I admire him for that.