“Aah, go back to sleep. I’m not gonna join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I’d probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards.”

When I said that, old Ackley sat way the hell up in bed.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t care what you say about me or anything, but if you start making cracks about my goddam religion, for Chrissake-”

-Ackley & Holden, doing pillow talk.

I’ve stopped attending Sunday masses around the same time I stopped believing Mariah Carey will have another number one Billboard hit. I stopped going because it seemed a waste of 4 hours of every week of making a show of reverence and love for an omnipotent being that was brought to my consciousness through ‘childhood indoctrination’, via an alleged blind acceptance. It’s not so much reverence as it is a confusion about a spirituality that’s been spiraling lately into an inevitable hole of heathenhood. Arteh!

Which is not to say that me and the God are not chums anymore. As a Catholic child with mildly imposing church-going parents and relatives, I’ve been made to think of certain things relating to God and goodness and faith that are always quite simplistic. If you don’t go to church, you’re not a very good person. If you steal, it’s bad blah blah blah. I believe it’s only bad when you’re the one who gets robbed. So officially for me, stealing is bad. Church-going just suddenly seemed like a chore, but as sure as the skies are blue, I still have faith especially when I have an embarrassing diarrhea.

Some people though join in the fun of church bashery because they see it in their FBs and and get an impression of its hipness.  I can feel it in my bones, some are just in it for the ‘likes’. Some are just in it to meet wit-vomit quota. ‘Hmm how can I be funny today about the latest CBCP inanity? Must think hard’ is becoming a popular mindset. If you’re going to give the church the finger(s), I pray that it’s not entirely because you’ve decided that church-going is a lazy-inducing enterprise or because you saw someone made a remarkably witty comment about a priest or CBCP or Pope and you want to be funny too. But whatever, it’s your lives. At least hate Catholicism or religion for ruining your favorite author’s penchant for writing vampire books. Hate it for something worthy! But then there are those whose religion issues seem organic and rooted so deeply and purely that you can’t help but go philosopher-like yourself and be introspective like, ‘Yeah, what IS God?’. I think they’re called UP graduates and peoples? Joke only.

I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion  which offers a lot of ideas for the positing of certain beliefs and being as a kind of delusion. I wish for a surge in popularity for this in  the Philippines where Catholicism is king because it’s always fun to witness banter from all sorts of enlightened personalities in this beautiful country.

Priceless to me is the anecdote involving certain Islams unleashing hell and fury because a certain Danish cartoonist made a caricature of the prophet Mohammed in an extremely unpopular publication. The world then came to know of the cartoon because of the intensity of the Islams’ reaction. Protests were held because of their anger, and in one such widely circulated outrage, someone went to really bombastic lengths as to proclaim love for Hitler via huge placards which made the rounds of CNN, BBC and WWW. This equally damaging sentiment was expressed just so the ‘wronged’ faithfuls could spite the supposedly Jewish cartoonist’s Jewishness. Blasphemy, meet intolerance.

In the end, it’s the reactive Islams who got the bad rep because their anger just about exploded, some might say uncontrollably and brainlessly. Ultimately, it was the anger that got more exposure than the infamous cartoon, and between the silly caricature and the protesters, we know who ended up looking more like a (violent) fool. It just goes to show that there are things you will never ever get away with. Certain nasty things you say, even if you’ve been such a generous human being, a feeder of the multitude, even if you’re Kathy Griffin, who I love with all my heart, you will and shall and should NEVER get away with. Never ever. Ever never.

So maybe if you’ve read this book and felt personally affronted by its convenient perception as blasphemy, you might be driven in a fit of rage precisely in the manner that stubborn, religious characters behave when their beliefs are doubted. So for example, you did not like the idea behind The God Delusion, you could come up with your own The ______ Delusions and be done with that nagging, raging intolerant fool deep inside your self. Because in the first place, why stop at God?

Some ideas:

The Gay Delusion – this will be a book about homosexuality’s falseness. Gayness is false, as in, it was made up by people who wish to poison the world with glitters and rainbows and Madonna songs. It will fault people for choosing to become gay and reinforcing a certain kind of hate through no fault of anyone but the gays’ own. This one’s bound to be a bestseller given the astounding number of gay haters in the world. I don’t know that I will buy this book because as much as I enjoy the occasional silly, misguided books, the idea just seems too much. But in spite of this book’s hideousness, if the publisher can promise to at least make a portion of the proceeds go to a charitable group, maybe I will try to summon the will to try to tell myself that this is not the worst book ever conceived.

The Alcohol Delusion – you’ve heard people say about how they don’t ‘believe’ in drinking or that they don’t ‘get’ drinking. This book is for them. In my humble opinion, drinking is not to be ‘believed’ or ‘understood’ it is only to be done and like every other vice, done with relish. But that is just ol’ humble me. Needless to say, I will not be getting this, but maybe I will if I get to be desperate for a laugh.

The Diva Delusion – for people who don’t believe in the power divas hold on their contingents of soldiers. Include this group maybe the celebrity delusions. Diva Delusions sounds nice, too, does it not? It could even be Christina Aguilera’s next album.

The Superstarmarian Delusion – this book can make a claim about how the Twitter account that swept the internet off its feet with its ridiculous humor is not really that funny. It could make a case about how corny it is, even. If you are in the minority who thinks this fake Marian Rivera account is the most hysterical thing you ever followed, feel free not to buy The Superstarmarian Delusion.

The Beefcake Delusion – for those who don’t believe that achieving a beefy look for guys is a thing to truly aspire to. It will claim that beefcakiness is not only a disease to be avoided but also a self-inflicted plague upon one’s otherwise carefully kept sexuality. It will bore/enlighten you to death about how inner beauty is all the beauty that ever will matter in this world.

The Intolerance is Wrong Delusion – which would basically trumpet the idea that intolerance of others’s belief systems is right and wise. This book will espouse the virtues of self-righteousness self-righteously. It will make for a serious (of course) reading about bigotry and matapobreisms and will rightfully reinforce your belief that not only are your philosophies and ideas about the world and humanity 100% correct, they’re also ideologies to aspire to and perfect. It will tell you how rewarding it is to act like a queen all the time like as if you’re Beyonce goddamn Knowles. This book will believe in the utter wrongness of differing values and life circumstances. It will ask, ‘how dare anyone else think that my beliefs aren’t THE best beliefs ever!?’ and not even be joking. This book is will champion closed-mindedness. It will highlight the merits of intolerance like nothing you’ve ever seen, and like every garbage in the free market, plenty will rejoice this product’s existence because there’s nothing like a printed affirmation to satisfy a bigot’s bigotry.

I only ever felt this need for Mariah whose Greatest Hits I got recently. It is a sloppily packaged CD and there are no thank yous to be found, not so much as a Hi, not even the type of hasty i-love-you-fans type of message that artists feel the need to say to fans for their contribution to their already insanely vast riches via album purchases and general acts of worship. As a practicer of such worship, I don’t feel sorry for contributing to certain singers’ riches as it is their due for being so aspirational and generally just fabulous in every way and for being so great at making people feel this blinded but ultimately satisfactory sense of satiation, and for being so skilled at promising lifelong fanaticism to them that creates within a fan/lonely-consumer-who-finds-meaning-in-material-things a true sense of fulfillment and joy that’s quite hard to explain although easy to be repetitive and be such a bore about. Greatest Hits is quite the obligatory Sony release and its fuss-free booklet is such a shameful act of obligation fulfillment since this is the least suspicious greatest hits of hers and couldn’t they have at least got a nice, crazy quote from her. In a perfect world this would have remixes, b-sides, live performances, rock versions and remakes which we will never tire of.

The Collection is disposable, like a tissue. This CD claims that this is ‘the ultimate Mariah Carey album. From the infectious Dreamlover through to Fantasy and Underneath the Stars all the songs on this album are certified Mariah classics‘ which may or may not be right depending on which particular consumer is consuming this product at any given time of Mariah Carey popular hits immersion. This is simply something that can be said of any of her compilation albums including The Remixes and #1s. The sequence doesn’t do the randomness of the songs any favor since they were chosen really randomly. I don’t know if there’s any significance in having Babydoll follow Emotions, then onto I Am Free, then Fantasy Remix, and how much of a classic Babydoll really is. This compilation is for the very casual Mariah Carey consumer and the album is happy just to be sold.

The inclusion of Fantasy ODB Remix in The Remixes, although already included in two previous compilation albums, is not this album’s only sin. Here is finally a remix album with which the geniuses at Sony can finally shelter the REMIXES of her great remixes [I Still Believe (Damizza Remix), Breakdown (Mo Thugs), Honey (Bad Boy Remix), to name a few ] and what do the geniuses do? They not only exclude the remixed version of the songs, they include the previously released album versions, probably with the mindset that consumers who have yet to discover the very obscure Mariah Carey discography will learn that a song called Breakdown exists in its chaste form, that is, non-remixed, even though it is in a REMIX ALBUM, and it will be so much better to leave it untouched and stack said songs with actual remixes. Concept schmoncept, sales is king. Also a sin? Uglifying Charmbracelet’s Yours featuring a guest verse from BIG sound alike Bone Crusher. Another sin is editing I Know What You Want right to the part where Busta Rhymes says J Records. This album needs to confess.

And because the world needs another Mariah Carey love songs compilation (and maybe it seriously does), Sony, the milkingest record label of all time, releases The Ballads. Mariah is pure cash cow at this point. She’s been milked so thoroughly, you have to wonder if there’s any left for her babies. I’m sorry, that was sinister. But Sony is sinisterer. This is actually not a completely worthless product if you ask the laziest playlist maker in the world. This proves useful when you don’t feel like making your own Mariah ballads playlist, except the playlist is still quite limited and repetitive. If I were to make my own ballads playlist, I’d include unreleased and rare stuff such as Slipping Away and There for Me because I’m not from Sony music. Record Label Geniuses think differently. What is another Hero, Vision of Love, My All in yet another Mariah Carey greatest hits of sorts collection? Cash and time spared from a well thought-out playlist, is what.

The greatest greatest hits in my humble opinion is the modestly titled, #1s. In its liner notes, Mariah screams, No! This is not yet the Greatest Hits! Too early for that! although it may as well have been. This is a remarkable collection that reminds of the time when Mariah albums are both product and art, however meaningless being either entailed. And it’s just what we needed: a fairly sized number 1 hits collection that begins with a foreboding of things to come, image and soundwise. It begins with the sexy Sweetheart with Jermaine Dupri, followed by prestige duets When You Believe with Whitney Houston and Whenever You Call with Brian McKnight, which if songs were representations of our diva, is exactly how I like my Mariah: sexy and prestigious. It begins with the recent hits and winds down to the earliest, offering a trip down memory lane, tracing the progression/regression from the skimpy outfitting, helicopter ho posturing-Mariah to the Boyz II Men dueting, tights-loving Mariah of the Sony Mottola years. It was a lovely era of great, almost minimalistic album covers (#1s, Butterfly, Daydream) and rap guest verse-heavy R&B which is really what made me go crazy about her. Not long after this gorgeous era, she got a little crazy herself. But the hits that resulted from the insane era, also great. And with bated breath, I/we await the 00s Mariah’s greatest hits., Glitter things very much included.

1. Wishful Thinking by Duncan Sheik – because it’s well within my range. Plus I really like the Great Expectations soundtrack. From that soundtrack, I’d also pick Sunshower by Chris Cornell because it’s so sweet and I’m a sometime admirer of Chris Cornell’s jawbones.

2. Wait by Sarah McLachlan – because it sounds so dark and deep, and Sarah McLachlan is one of my favorite singers of quietly angry songs.

3. Borrowing Time by Aimee Mann – because if you’re a guy and you sing her songs, it doesn’t matter what your vocal chords are made of, because as long as you know how to interpret any song of hers, the vocal chords will not matter very much and your true feelings, your soul will lend itself to the song, the music and all will be forgiven. Hahahahaha. But I kinda mean this.

4. That’s Just What You Are by Aimee Mann – because I truly love her candidness.

5. Morning Theft by Jeff Buckley

6. All the Lovers by Kylie Minogue – which I would have to render in acoustic or maybe not.

7. Cosmic Love by Florence + the Machines – because this song is just too damned gorgeous not to be in my album god damn it.

8. Rootless Tree by Damien Rice – because I want to be able to say fuck you in a song in a meaningful and melodic way repeatedly.

9. Train on a Track by Kelly Rowland – because If I were a pop diva, I’d definitely be Kelly Rowland: low key yet gorgeous. But more than that, this song is so heartwarming and it has a cuteness to it that doesn’t feel forced or something.

10. Siren by Tori Amos – because once upon a time I really idolized her and this is the song that introduced me to the wonderful world of Tori Amos.

11. HATE U by Mariah Carey (Bonus Track) – because even though she’s crazy, I love her and if the song proves to be too tough for my limited vocal performing, I could always switch it up with The-Dream version.

Please buy my albums.

-Junot Diaz

Not the first of its kind either! Just maybe the first time in a long time that someone involved in THAT KIND OF PREGNANCY decided to intensify the buntis drama this early, because in the 90s or earlier, it usually takes months or years before you hear about someone’s abortion in the States. You’ve heard all about starlets going to the States for medical treatment that involves super secret procedures and barely alive fetuses. Every generation has its share of teen mom starlets/fetus murderers but this time it’s unique because right now, the age of social goddamn media, is such a fabulous moment to let everyone know about everyone’s unborn babies! Got an abortion confession? Leak it and get a billion repost.

Sometimes these Philippine showbiz personalities think they have the monopoly on human suffering. These poor, glamorous, attractive, rich celebrities whose physical beauty’s preservation is imperative to their jobs are so api because when they have sex with their equally glamorous colleagues, they have to always keep in mind that when engaging in sexual acts, they should use protection always because if they get pregnant they will be dropped by their network which is just so mean. Being a celebrity is so hard! Prettiness is oppressive!

On that note, I hope Aljur Abrenica gets pregnant.

This is probably the sort of hate that you can or should throw elsewhere because celebrities have done nothing wrong but thrive in their industry. But they’re celebrities: beautiful, powerful, filthy rich and all over our faces. I don’t mind patronizing the beautiful and the powerful but our artistas, they are spoiled. Also, most of them eventually become our leaders. They rule!

When Anne Curtis rides the MRT, it’s cute because it doesn’t happen in her everyday life. When Anne Curtis rides the MRT, it’s because her limosin is stuck in traffic and she has to get to the Kylie Minogue concert on time because otherwise her 15,000 Peso seat will go to waste. When you ride the MRT it’s because you have no choice as buses are greedy motherfuckers, EDSA is the most inconvenient highway in the whole of Asia and it can only fill one stupid rail line, and that’s a way of life. Not fair! When some starlet gets pregnant and gets an abortion, she gets to keep her endorsement deals and million Peso contracts with their millionaire employees. When a college student gets preggy, she aborts the baby through the neighborhood raspa, or she flushes it on the school’s most abandoned-looking building’s restroom, or her dorm’s backyard, out of which chanak stories emerge, and she suffers as an aborted mother would. The non-artista aborter normally does not get the benefit of a Pia Guanio interview with which to put on a show for how wronged she was.

When Mo Twister, one of the most polarizing people working in local entertainment today, who also happens to live off of celebrity culture and all its trappings, whine, weep, and bemoan the cruelty of this business called showbiz, it’s redundant, crazy, irritating and very… angry blog post-inducing.

So, no, accidentally pregnant starlets and boyfriends of starlets, getting pregnant is not among the worst kind of job hazards there is. Pregnancy is just a personal responsibility that all unprepared women must guard themselves against.

Sometimes I really hate this country’s celebrities. Joke! I hate them most of the time.

• Emma Forest used to cry herself to sleep because she didn’t write the The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. She’s saying this as someone who probably used to be nuts over Edgar Allan Poe, and I instantly recognize the sentiment because it’s similar to my own failure to come up with the idea of superstarmarian, not that I’ve ever had the foresight to come up with something revolutionary or meaningful. But me and Emma along with other fellow Florence nuts should just forgive ourselves for not birthing Florence Welch, for not being responsible for Ceremonials. We should just be happy to have it in our lives.

• People who joke about wanting to end their lives because there’s nothing in it for them anymore should cancel the suicide and listen to this first.

• Strangeness and Charm is even more explosive in the studio version. In it Florence sounds like Karen O but thousand times better.

• You would want to dance to Heartlines, cry to Only if for a Night and Shake it Out, and have sex to Seven Devils. It’s the kind of album you’d want to do activities to, including but not restricted to doing drugs, getting drunk, jumping off the 33rd floor of a building, expressing love.

• Many times before I almost swore off Mariah because she keeps making decisions I do not approve of, the latest of which is allowing Justin Bieber to shit on All I Want for Christmas is You the result of which is highly despicable. But I probably won’t let her go, the crazy one. In case I do, dahling, Miss Welch will take your place and it is not a place you would want to relinquish.

• Regarding Christmas, maybe this Christmas I’ll give really nice people in my life Ceremonials so people in this country responsible for accounting for album sales will see sales of it skyrocket and then sound the alarm up in the UK where Florence presumably mostly stays or wherever and have her informed and her people, ‘hey, that tiny Asian country that is not Singapore is buying your album. Go there.’

• When I go nuts over a musical artist I want everyone in my life to believe and succumb to the fascination like I did to Robyn. The Robyn campaign wasn’t very successful on account of her CDs aren’t being sold here. This time it will be different…

• I used to think of Florence as an indieish, panderous-to-the-hipster-crowd type of performer that I had to have someone pull strings to obtain Lungs from somewhere over at some First World in the belief that the album simply would not be available here. It’s with an enormous surprise that I discovered Between Two Lungs wedged between Faithless (whatever that is!) and Foo Fighters at an AstroVision. This country’s music distribution people have taste after all and it is a taste I highly approve of. Deluxe Edition at that! Bravo, people in the Philippine music distribution industry. I’m sorry for doubting your faith in the absolute gorgeousness that is Ceremonials. Never had I been so pleased to have a notion of mine be disabused.

• Adele’s 21 is highly and widely regarded as one of the modern time’s most recognizable greatest pop album and in fairness to the fattie, 21 is indeed very good but it’s also so thoroughly depressing. Ceremonials is also mostly sad but it’s also pretty, hopeful, powerful, otherworldly, vibrant, alive, mesmerizing, danceable and joyful.

• The Grammy will regret the day it did not choose Florence + the Machines as Best New Artist. They will not recover from that folly.

• ‘And I did cartwheels in your honor, dancing on tiptoes My own secret ceremonials before the service began, In the graveyard, doing handstands.’  I do, if it’s physically possible, want to perform cartwheels in her honor, dancing on tiptoes, my own secret ceremonials before the album mania began.

• When I had my first break up with my first male girlfriend, I remember repeatedly playing Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm and I have never stopped associating it since then to heartbreak although it was really more like a loss of a prized gadget than human. Nothing truly remarkable is happening right now except the remarkable things that are happening that I’m not aware of. I won’t remember any of these recent times’ remarkable things but I’ll always remember it as the time that this stunning piece of art was born.

‘Works of artistic worth never attract the grasping mind of popular devotion. You can visit an ancient church in this country of ancient churches and gaze in awe at works by Perugino, by Pinturrichio, by Piero della Francesca – the tourists do, by the millions – but you’ll never find such works attracting the adoration of the pious and the penitent. The glimmering flock of candles is always ranged before an ill-proportioned painting of crude primary-school colors, meretricious thing with an incongruous and ill-fitting silver crown pasted to its head like a paper hat from a Christmas cracker. Pilgrims always pay homage to a piece of kitsch.’

Which is why things like The Da Vinci Code is more popular than Simon Mawer’s The Gospel of Judas.  And what’s being described by the ‘painting of crude primary-school colors, meretricious thing with an incongruous and ill-fitting silver crown pasted to its head like a paper hat from a Christmas cracker’ is your average Dan Brown product. So haughty!

This is not to say that this novel is perfect. But it’s hard not to enjoy as it involves a conflicted priest who’s going through a crisis of faith which could only mean almost exclusively one thing: the Father wants ass, and that kind of novel is always fun to read. To add to the the otherwise common conflicted priest dilemma, a relic from an early century written by Judas Escariot, that claims the Jesus resurrection is a hoax, surfaces while Father is going through a major dick-related crisis.

It’s not the kind of Dan Brown religion-themed potboiler although to be fair to DB, his novels do move fast. So fast you forget it’s sometimes so corny that you could almost hear a thrilling musical score when nearing the end of a chapter. The comparison is of course faulty and lazy but also apt since putting Jesus twists in your novels  kind of puts you in the very exclusive group who dare do Jesus fiction, not that Jesus is untouchable novel-wise.

I can’t decide which is juicier, the sexing priest or the Jesus lie. What’s admirable about it that unlike the others, the author doesn’t feel the need to create extensive, numerous, ridiculously named world organizations, with deep involvements by inconsequential characters that would turn out to be the evil schemers. What’s wrong with it is that the symbolism of things, names, and some characters’ histories are so obviously, hugely symbolic to how things are in their present lives. Leo Newman, the priest, is called Newman because he’s experiencing a crisis and he can choose to be a new man or, you know, not. But now that I’ve mentioned that, maybe it makes perfect sense and it’s a a clever way of paralleling the personal with the historical-biblical, etc.

It ends classily, that is, without the major hero having to have a hero moment to resolve things, and Catholicism is fantastic and wonderful still after all. But that’s not to say that the alleged falsified account of the resurrection is actually proven wrong. Leo Newman, the anti-hero, carries the burden of exposing the truth, and it’s a testament to this character’s strong development that the reader MIGHT care more about what he does with the knowledge of truth about Catholicism than what that truth can do in the broader sense.

The Gospel of Judas is the kind of irreverent, controversial Catholic novel I wish Anne Rice wrote. Instead, she gives this:

In her return-to-Catholicism memoir ‘Called Out of Darkness’, Anne Rice has this to say about the Jesus novel:

Anybody could write about a liberal Jesus, a married Jesus, a gay Jesus, a Jesus who was a rebel. The “Quest for the Historical Jesus” had become a joke because of all the many definitions it had ascribed to Jesus.

I agree that anybody with the time and means to write a Jesus novel should do so to their heart’s content. Anybody with a working word processor should create a gay Jesus novel if it will make their lives that much richer. What didn’t or wouldn’t occur to Anne was that she should have been the creator of those novels because a rebel/gay/liberal Jesus is so her. This is poor justification of why she should be the writer of such a novel but then there’s also no justification as to why anyone would have created those incestuous Taltoses too. What this is is just plain old hoping.

This is seriously asking too much, I know it. I am not denying anymore my stand as a ‘negative fan’ who wants more more more. Also her Christ the Lord series is not so much a product of a surge of creativity as it is of a guilt payback for the faith she once denounced and came back to and sort of denounced again, so to expect a groundbreaking work from her out of the relatively recent Jesus fascination is silly. And I’m honestly exhausted already pining for the old Anne Rice who would produce orgy-participating and exaggeratedly attractive vampires, witches and peoples. If none of us stop now, this issue might turn into a cycle of each other weariness: me wearying her novels’ strong pro-religious slant, and me growing tired of me whining about how she’s not doing what I want her to be doing. It has to stop someday.

In her social networks, she rants about the ‘negative fan’ who would actively express dissatisfaction over an artist’s work. She beefs with the vicious Internet people who would put stuff up on the web just to publish dismay. Infamy was once gained by her because of her heated Amazon letter where she lashed at the meanies who lambasted the not quite the masterpiece, Blood Canticle. Well she is still at it. It is a tad mind-boggling for someone so involved and attuned herself in the ways of the world wide web that she, celebrated creator of supernatural creatures, would find surprise at being met with dissatisfaction over the stuff she’s releasing now.

On Road to Cana, her second Jesus novel, she tells the story of Jesus as it was told in the Gospels. In it, Jesus goes to Cana.

The Pink Morgue and Other Homoerotic Stories of Mysteries and Suspense’s

But in the spirit of kindness, people should approach this not as serious literature but as a kind of porn, which might exactly be the author’s intent, and complaining of its awfulness might just make its professor humorless and needlessly unkind. Besides which trashy things can be enjoyable too. I don’t know if drinking games are done in celebration of awful books such as this but in case anybody ever needed one, get this and you’re all set. Drinking game’s rule could be: take a shot every time a participant opens a random page containing corny, stilted dialogue. This game will be fun but also hazardous to all as extreme drunkenness is sure to be had.

And in the spirit of even more kindness and tact, I checked the publisher Redbridge Books Publishing on the web and found ample evidence of so much grand ambition, it’s almost heartbreaking. Its Facebook page indicates its dedication to ‘publishing high quality original books for and by the Filipino gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GLBTQ).’ It also aims to be ‘the premier GLBTQ publishing company in the Philippines, in Asia, and the world by pursuing the highest standards of book design and production…’ Tall pronouncements such as these make it all the more confusing that its premier book is of substandard quality. All efforts seem obviously to have gone to looking for the perfect pair of man-tits with which to slap on its admittedly fine-looking cover.

Despite this, I humbly highly recommend this book to fans of trash. This is not sarcasm, just an honest to God, straight-faced recommendation. Be warned though that what you’re experiencing is not a ‘haunting passage to the deepest, darkest recesses of human consciousness’. Instead, there will be lots of ‘brief and small chortles’, conversations that sound like DOMs speaking to store-bought whores, plenty of corniness, and some of the most painful, unfunny usages of Gay Lingo ever.

My favourite things in it:

The gays are called Dr Angelo Sanvictores, Juan Carlos Quintero, Lester Dantes, Andy Angeles, Jr, while the rest are either an Aling Babang or Mang Bruno

Aling Babang saying things like ‘inundated’

‘Oh Ric, I thought my feelings were wrong and will go unreciprocated. I even tried to forget you but I never succeeded. I couldn’t stop loving you.’

‘I wanted to kiss you that time, Ric. I wanted to touch you. But I wasn’t sure if you were feeling the same way too…’

‘Lintek naman, how’s that fair?’

Paolo Montresor, Fortunato Fermin in a story called Club Amontillado

Mang Bruno: You just go ahead and cut this body whatever you want. I mean, it’s not as if this stupid thing here will ever complain… And I wouldn’t really care if you butcher this body like an animal. I mean, with some bodies, perhaps, I’d mind. But this fellow here is a worthless piece of crap.

‘His tongue was begging entrance to my mouth.’

‘His briefs landed on top of the television set and hung there like an oversized moth.’

‘Rolly then went near the body, and seeing Vida dead, he picked up a big shard of broken glass and began partitioning her face like a small bilao of biko.’

‘Some people wear masks to conceal their true identities or hide their real emotions. Some to live out certain childhood fantasies… I wear one for the same reason. Among others.’

‘His car followed mine, and after a short drive, we reached the exclusive and high-class condominium building where I live.’

‘The interaction in the parking lot however fleeting was to my chagrin, vividly captured in those snapshots I was holding in my hands’

Understand that this is not an act of superiority-demonstration. This is merely a sharing of found joys.

You wouldn’t think that a group announcing itself as a Premier-something would be so deficient in taste and structure, but this book venture managed to be immodest, ridiculous and mockable all at the same time. In short, us, its target market, have just been given a gift. Congrats and thanks, but please stop saying things like ‘deepest, darkest recesses’ because we will be more than glad to wade through your shallow, superficial publications. We all know that ‘deepest, darkest recesses’ sounds nice and mysterious but assigned to the wrong product, it’s deceitful and stupid. And try not to lord it over with the premiership.

What’s striking was not that someone would express dismay over a seemingly difficult movie; it’s that the person expressing it is someone who I know is a fan of highly intellectual things, who would argue with anyone about politics, religion, sex, art, film, underwear, literature, etc. So the friend, who I’m mostly okay with – ok as in outside of our circle we don’t care enough about each other to ask about how each other’s families are doing, etc, so you know this is certainly not personal – raped Contagion in front of a relatively sizeable Facebook crowd (and where else can a larger crowd be had? Where else can a captive audience be easier to snatch) and that is all the reason I needed to want to see the film for myself. I saw it not because I felt strongly for Steven Soderbergh’s works but because sometimes truly awful word-of-mouth is irresistible.

I know that no one takes my takes on social networking behaviour seriously and the only person who thinks I’m such an expert on psychology is myself but the criticism ambience is becoming alarming. There are people who don’t care for critics, people who even think critics are funny (whatever that means), and then there are the critic-dependents who wouldn’t watch a film unless it’s rated with a 65%+ freshness in Rottentomatoes.com.

Contagion is the perfect film with which to observe people’s behaviors towards criticism, says the expert. People who could think for themselves naturally do not subscribe to critics’ opinions to form their own but there always will be the ‘thinkers’, the supposed intelligent ones who would purposely shun sorta brainy stuff just to show how certain widely perceived culturati things are beneath them.What it could be is a ploy to monopolize and keep all discussions of intellectual merit to those which these same people (ie aforementioned friend) find worthy. Or maybe Steven Soderbergh molested friend’s (and similar people’s) puppies in their youth and/or their drug addict sensibilities were seriously scarred by the Soderbergh film, Traffic. Just wild-guessing!

To illustrate, suppose you’re a smartypant and a film like Inception is showing and people are actively campaigning for its greatness and enjoyability. You  will shut it out of your life and maybe throw in a nasty comment or two about its great potential to bore, and then express your own preference for lowbrow flicks like Hot Chicks, and feel good about yourself. That sucks! If you think you’ve got such a hot pair of brains, you will not let your bias affect your right to enjoy a truly remarkably made Christopher Nolan film, or in this case, a good Soderbergh film. But for the record I didn’t care for Inception too because it was so boring. What makes me special is that I hated Inception because it was so boring and I have extremely high tolerance for boring. And unlike Inception, Contagion is really not pa-intellectual. That’s just his style! It scatters details and characters in a way that can be alienating but everything is so urgent and focused, you don’t forget for a moment that you’re watching a film about an illness. And it’s called ‘Contagion’.

To make a point I could have gone on living without saying, I could say that contrary to his opinion, Contagion is quite good. But point or no point, the movie is not worthy of a peer pressure-motivated censorship. I also like very much the music and the dryness of it, and the terrificality of the acting. I liked Gwyneth, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Ehle and Marion Cotillard, and I like the dry, sandpapery look of it. See, it has a market! In the old days, as in around 3 months ago, I would have attempted to do a review thingy of it, probably, but considering how inept I actually am at doing that, I reduce my thoughts on films and things in the most uncriticy way because already, my eyes have been opened and I now realize how ignorant I appear every time I try to opine on something I don’t fully understand and appreciate.

But, whatever! Someone spreading contagious remarks about Contagion is delicious. Har! Maybe the friend is just aiming for a punch line. He is probably waiting for someone to challenge his probable perception of the film’s ending as a kind of a ridiculous surprise. Maybe he hates Steven Soderbergh. He’s free to hate. The trouble with this particular hate is that if people take heed and ignore Contagion, they will never experience its alleged awfulness by themselves. The admonition to not consume something is detrimental to everyone’s right to criticize. Criticism is fine. It’s fun. It’s just not for everyone.

The pre-social network blogs I used to stalk sort of stink of desperation in coming up with a decent post just so traffic would be directed onto his blog. Me, I honestly only ever sought the joy that self-indulging sometimes brings and the attention that sometimes came with it. Remember when you used to worry about not having enough posts to keep that maybe cute or interesting commenter commenting on your substanceless, pa-profound rants and Very Introspective Ruminations? I may have said somewhere that bloggers that aspire to regular blog postage to keep steady traffic is disgusting behavior but really, such behavior is entertaining and I believe that there is a market for all kinds of garbage and it is vicious to deny that market its product. But maybe I’ve just been too busy with my other online things that I fail lately to dig deeply?

I have been loitering elsewhere in the www where, as Bjork would say (or shriek), it’s oh so quiet! It’s where I managed to say mean things that I mean that are not seriously offensive (just ever so slightly offensive), except for certain deserving, truly irritating airplane things-thieving family, which I know sound so inside-jokey, and you can’t anymore relate with the implied hilarity. I’m really sorry you had to miss that. You would have commented so hard! I know there are still blogs that don’t care for all this katarantaduhan but I think I miss being unbridled like a butterfly that people pay moderate attention to. I miss saying things like unbridled butterfly without someone quickly pointing out how wrong that is.

I like Twitter but it is just so full of characters that are often instrumental in igniting foul moods. But I love some of them! Adore, even. Twitter is of course dripping with plenty types of obnoxia, from left to right, front to back, top to bottom, ass hair or no hair, etc, and I understand and appreciate it completely. It is a visual festival some days, a Chirst-level crucifixion on some. It is entertaining on low testosterone weeks, a smash plate wall on heavy flow days. Much as I could, I try to not to think of myself as a target for obnoxia but sometimes I feel like I am and sometimes I want to be. But I know we have to aspire to harmonious co-existence online and off-. This is after all the great grand Internet. Let us all of us please just allow amongst ourselves garbage-flinging against one another and be at peace with it because it will happen every day for all of our days.

And although I would always find so many wrong, irritating things about the population of Twitter and Facebook, the fact is I’m drawn to these giants and I might never ever leave. I might find the occasional barrage of emo-obnoxious-braggart posts too much of a torture to endure on regla days but I doubt that that will be enough reason to get out. Irresistible too is the desire to witness the interesting dynamic between the trifecta of emo-obnoxious-braggart posters and the people who take precious time posting equally obnoxious snaps, because the advocates of pure, humiliation-free, strictly witty statuses are themselves also a target for yet another kind of online personality type, the kind who derive satisfaction locating in fault-finders who lash at the consistent, persistent emo-obnoxious-braggy posters.

EMO FACEBOOK PERSON: What a bad, horrific, awful, ugly day. [Repeat 3X/day]

GODS/EXEMPLARS OF WIT AND SENSE:  (will say something sharp AND WITTY – don’t forget the witty – about posts not to their liking/taste and will get 1 million likes)

DERIVERS OF SATISFACTION: Make blog posts such as this

I know I’m a fine one to talk but as a person with heightened awareness of problematic attitudes, believe me when I say, it’s exhausting to deal with feelings of hatred towards less emotionally intelligent fools. Besides which, wishing for emo people to disappear in Facebook/Twitter is like wishing for cockroaches to disappear forever. Besides which, attention is so, so good to have when you’re emoting and bragging. You do it too sometimes, oh self-righteous ones. If you haven’t, then do! Emo-off with the emotionals of the world. How many times do I have to condone tolerance for weak-minded idiots? Once? Twice? Jesus Christ Himself loves all his emoteros and so should you.

Maybe it’s the allure of the speed and the effortlessness that drew people away from heavy duty blogging and into the embracing, welcoming arms of Twitter, etc. It could also be that actual physical meet-ups with the people you used to exclusively interact with online took away much of the allure of the blogger as a mysterious personality, and with it the need to comment. Either way, it’s sad when no one pays any mind anymore to stuff you take hours, sometimes days or weeks to construct. I guess people do prefer more chewable, bite-sized garbage.

I’ve been rereading my old entries and they are so embarrassing. I have very yucky sentiments. Even yuckier is my way of exposing them. But they were made to look less disgusting by the comments that imbued them with a smidgen of substance.  My posts are almost exclusively disgusting crappy craps (by the way, did you notice that certain blogs nowadays (or ever since) that attach the word crap to them is actually crappy?) but they are fun to read. I’m quite adept at amusing myself because almost all of my attempts succeed at giving me joy of the unbridled kind. So this blog is not all that corny to me, and sometimes it’s such a treat. So maybe, all of this is just to say, please fucking comment. Maybe not.

Maybe it’s the length. If it were about the length, though, as sure as I’m alive and bilious, if pictures of lengthy cocks made up the bulk of my content, I wouldn’t warble about indifference because Internet people are so disgusting and like a moth to a flame, they will flock because length is king and this blog will rule.

I’m aware that lately I teeter on the edge of boring but I’d like to also think that continuing this is a form of service to people who will be well-armed with my words. It is such a charitable act to set your self up for mockery and disdain. Do not be deceived by the me myself & I tone of this. This aims to serve, actually. Messages of gratitude can be dropped at the comments section, thanks.

Maybe I just really don’t want the world to continue spinning on its axis because I catch on a little slow, and it’s a little too fast for me. Maybe, there’s a stubborn (but pretty) child in me that just refuses to let go of his attractive innocence. Maybe I just can’t get along with the hundreds of voices in the social networks and anywhere else so I choose to remain in the quiet solitude of blog. Maybe I was just desperate for a post today.