Whine Time

I unusually get tired a lot earlier and easier these past few days. It is probably due to thinking, no, make it considering problems that have yet or not even sure that would occur.

It is hard when you are told be like this, then hear through a grapevine that you might be doing this and that. Complaining is among the farthest of words in my relatively short line of vocabulary. Yes I observe and often I critique, but I seldom, no, make it very200000x seldom complain.

This is one of those very200000x seldom times. This is one of those times wherein I feel like I am one of those toys that I have.


Or Am I not.

Yun lang!!!

ELECTION DAY - An Ode To A Successful Defeat

It has been a tradition of mine to listen to a particular song every election day, since 1998. I found this song as early as 1995, a 45-rpm vinyl record, stacked along with so many many "plakas" as it is called, in the then house of my grandparents in Kidapawan.

You have probably not heard of this song since it is not really that popular. It will never become popular. It is not catchy, lyrically weak, musically awful. But for nostalgia and the heck of it, I just need to play this every time of the season.

Some members of our family, for reasons unknown to me, are into politics. Some gained success, while most did not. Not really a big time politicians, but I would say, trying hard to be one. So the election of 1998, is one of the most memorable times of my adolescence-maturity (does this beginning to sound like Xerex? hahahaha).

In 1998, my grandfather, old and weak (relatively compared before) decided to run as councilor . Unlike before, It is obvious then that no party is interested on him anymore, none took him into the slate. So he ran as an independent candidate.

It meant making a campaign funded by our personal and limited pockets. It meant the absence of "professional" campaign groups and mga bayaran to actually do the campaigning. It meant having to do the campaigning, a family affair. This is then, where all the fun started.

Me and my brother went to Kidapawan only for our annual summer vacation, as we thought. We went there to get wild with our cousins and of course to help for the campaign sparingly. But as fate would have it and due to limited resources, I ended up as the campaign manager for the group. We were composed of the cousins, all unregistered and unqualified voters with ages ranging from 7-17 years old. I myself had no knowledge and experience campaigning except when I ran and won as President of the Student Council in High School.

We tried to be resourceful then. We were so proud of our election posters made of up old and used calendars, bond papers and manila papers with the name of our beloved candidate (our lolo) manually written using ballpens, pentel pens, crayons and water colors. Only to be dwarfed by the expensive and attractive paraphernalia of the seasoned politicians. The final product, our posters can barely be seen and noticed.

We only have a single jeep at our arsenal, a colored blue owner type jeep with a sitting capacity 7, there were 12 of us. Our gasoline allocation was sourced out from the tipok2x of our respective uncles and aunts, relatives, friends and supporters (this one I doubt). Despite it, we tried and were able to roam around the city, and actually went to places I never knew existed in Kidapawan.

We were able to meet and greet lots of interesting people. As in guapa, pangit, humot, baho. There were some who finds us cute (the team, not me) and there were those who would remark, "pila gi bayad sa inyo?". There were those whom upon given a fact sheet would remark "dili lang ko dong, di ko mo boto", and there was a time we gave someone a fact sheet and just smiled at us strangely, only to be told by a bystander, "ngano gi hatagan mo man na, buang man na".

But still every so often, the kid in us would also surface then. There were times wherein we didn't wanted to campaign. Instead, watch the cartoon network or just play computers and basketball. There was even a time, during the final meeting de avance at the public market that we were not able to hear and watch our lolo speak. The reason, we were at the other side of the palengke. Busy and fixated with the street magic2x salamangka, with all its bitin2x (as in snake) and what have you.

Despite the odds stacked upon us, and even if the obvious are staring on us, we never really felt that we were at a disadvantage. Such youthful optimism and probably innocence and ignorance made us believe that somehow, we are going to pull this one out.

The result? Since I am the campaign manager, what would you expect? Of course, we did not win :0. But the good thing is, we did great. We were number 13. The magic number is 8. There where more than 13 candidates, 35 to be exact. We gained notoriety as the cleanest group (ok we were neat and had good smell), and the only candidate who did not spend more than allowed, mainly because we have nothing to spend.

We did not win, yet the experiences and the memories made us all feel like winners. The bonding we shared, the many times that we were chased by dogs, the drunk who made fun of us, the laughs and other intangibles that makes us feel good to be alive, the things that we still talked of today whenever the cousins get together, thanks to the election.

There were other campaigns that came after 1998, for my other relatives. We still got involved and this time came up with relative success as far as getting the win goes. But nothing beats out defeat in 1998.

As for the song, I did play it on the old turntable at my grandparent's house , the first thing I did during election day of 1998.
Let's enjoy this if you can :)

1998 Campaign Team

Splitzapper
Jiveman
Forge
Reibach
Wild Kanapian
Kenot
Brenz
Karl
Kwek
Adette
Ace
Kiko - Ni apas ka pa

RUNNING COST

While I am at it, I will be making of list of movies that I liked this year. This list will go on as the year progresses.

MOVIES THAT I SAW THIS YEAR THAT I LIKED (Regardless when it was originally released)
not in a particular order.

1. Memento
2. Silence of The Lambs (I saw this already when I was in Elementary, but it made no sense then)
3. The Usual Suspects
4. The Blind Side (my gf loves this also)
5. Where The Wild Things Are
6. Ironman 2
7. Serbis
8. Tokyo Sonata
9. Up In the Air

THE INEVITABLE

Yes, this is about a movie.
This is about Tony Stark.
This is about:
That's gotta be one of the crappiest intro of all time. How ironic since Ironman was and is the only hero that for me is cool and possible enough to become a reality. To become an IRONMAN, you just need intellect, charm, and much money. All of which, I do not have. But I could always buy a cobra energy drink and become the other "IRONMAN" if you know what I mean.

I watched this movie more than a week ago, last Sunday to be exact. I went out with my gf, a Downey fan I supposed, while I am not really a Robert Downey fan. The only movie that I can recall that starred RDJ is Only You with Marissa Tomei. Yet, I still mistaken him as Patrick Demsey on that film.

As expected, the cinema houses were full. We went earlier, even earlier than the next scheduled show, only to find out that the best seats on the Red Carpet are taken already, even up to the last full show. So we just settled with the next best thing, the best seats on VIP. It is obvious by now that I am referring to the cinema house in Victoria Plaza, right?

Justin Hammer, Happy Hogan, Pepper Pots, Obadiah Stane (not in this movie), the arms race, Crimson Dynamo, Whiplash. These are the reason why I was not really interested in IRONMAN the comics.

IRONMAN's armory, the Mandarin, his battle with alcoholism, the Avengers West Cost. These things what's makes its comic book runs, quite intriguing. All of which were not in the movie. Ok, I concur that you cannot put everything in a cramped up movie. But IRONMAN without its armory is like peanut butter sandwich without the peanut butter. (WOW!!!)

The movie is good but not great. Good enough to entertain you, but not that great as to have a profound effect on me after I went out of the cinema house. It has humor, drama, impressive special effects, respectable acting, even though with not so intriguing of a plot and less action than expected. This is still IRONMAN. It was still fun and worth the cost, the time and the wait.

Anyway here are my findings, mostly not directly related to the movie, quite a mouthful, but I avoided sounding like a geek as much as possible.:

1. The sexiest comic book heroine ever in the universe is Psyclocke, my high school crush. The black widow cannot hold a candle to her, when it comes to hotness. In the movies, Psyclocke is one of the ugliest characters ever. More so compared to black widow in IRONMAN. This is unfair. This is injustice. Here is the proof:



2. Whiplash is actually just a secondary villain. Despite so, he was really cool in the movie. He appeared formidable.

3. The only good thing about Gaisano Cinema Malls are its sure seats. The screen is mediocre, the sound is bad, no, terrible.

4. There is an alternative ending/ epilogue to the movie. The one you saw probably involved the discovery of Mjolnir (Thor's hammer). The second one has screen caps as found below:


As parting shot, I will give to you the best IRONMAN MTV out there. The 1960's cartoon classic.
Enjoy!!!

The Crazzies

I've been commuting a lot going to work in recent days. It means waking up extra early in the morning. Riding tricycle and jeepneys going to work and back home and to everywhere I go. Not that I am not used to commuting, I've been doing this for more than half of my existence here on earth. It is just that I observed something while doing so.

One night, while on my way home, I saw some substantial number of crazy, insane, buang na tao in Davao. I saw one in, R.Castillo, 3 in San Pedro, 1 in Mc Donalds MTS, 1 in NCCC Mall, and 1 in Ulas. Mind you, this is on a single night. Then there are ones I regularly see. The running man of Toril, the walking man of South, and the respective resident buang of the Churches in Davao.

When I was young, I only knew of two. This is because, mao ni ang pang hadlok sa ako mama and papa sa una if mag binugoy ko. Na kuhaon ko nila, not seriously though. These two by the way, goes by the name of: Django Buang and Pansit. They can be found back then in San Pedro. God knows, where are they now. No plans of finding out for myself either.

Seeing them made me asked myself, what might have caused them this situation? I don't want to second guess, but statistics shows that, wait, I really have no statistics to back me up on this one.

But conventional wisdom would suggest that they are probably suffering thy fate due to kawad on. Ok, sige na, extreme kawad on. Probably depressed due to kawad on. Or nalipasan ug kaon tungod sa kawad on. Na depressed tungod gi bayaan sa uyab, asawa tungod sa kawad on. Dagahan mahitabo na di maayo tungod sa kawad on.


So its poverty pala ha. Then how would you explain the insane, na anak ug datu? Well, could you find them on the streets? Maybe, but probably not. Malamang sa malamang they are in a "mental institution", rehabilitating, because wala sila problema sa kawad on.

I really have no point to make here. I am just shocked to have observed this. Is Davao getting poorer now? Is this the trend (as if naman getting insane is cool). Is this the final phase of human evolution? Or this is a norm that I was not able to recognize then, due to kawad on (sa care ug time to observe). Whatever is the case, how I wish I have the strength to be optimist for them. For now, all I can give them are my prayers, and probably a little buck or two from time to time. Not that much I can do, that I do recognize.

Mahirap maging mahirap. I agree. Pag may hirap, may ginhawa. Yes, I also agree. But most of the time, ang gumiginhawa ay indi yung dating mahirap. It is just a statement of parallelism. That the poor and the rich exist. Not necessarily the poor will become rich.

On a lighter note, here are some fun facts (if you call it one) about our ill fated brothers and sisters:

Their favorite song is of course: Crazy
Their favorite male singer is Julio Iglesias for his song Crazy
Their favorite female singer is Kim Chiu for her song Crazy Love
Their favorite movie is One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Their favorite color is the Rainbow
Their favorite food is Beef Insanity, sadly they cannot afford it due to kawad on
Their favorite blogger is not me. :-) (though i am not sure about it)

and a Pampagana oh: