Friday, March 23, 2007

Funny road signs...

1. Along a highway in Pampanga: "WE MAKE MODERN ANTIQUE FURNITURE" --> Somewhere in the area is a permanent portal that enables one to tramp across parallel universes. Potential Paskuhan Village nemesis!

2. On window of a restaurant in Baguio: "WANTED: BOY WAITRESS" --> Hahahahahah! UNISEX ONLY!

3. Outside a building in Manila: PLEASE DON'T LITTER IN THIS AREA (Huwag tumambay rito)! --> Baka dapat "PLEASE DON'T LITTER YOURSELF IN THIS AREA"!

4. Outside a building: "NOTARY PUBLIC, TUMATANGGAP DIN NG LABADA KUNG LINGGO." --> Multitalented AND hardworking!

Oh puhlease...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s intellect may not have paralleled that of John William Sidis, who eventually passed on to the Great Beyond via a brain hemorrhage, but Rousseau displayed indisputable genius when he said that ‘humans are born with natural malevolence.’ No matter what you do, people are bound to their innate wickedness. They’re only good to you for as long as you’re usable. In the intervals that you’re not, they try to pick on you, they gloat, and you’re coerced to listen until your temperature rises enough to destroy every one of the Zobel de Ayalas’ state-of-the-art thermometers, your eyes pop out, and you can’t hide the verity that you’re ready to vomit and extrude a vital organ in the process. Puhlease. I love my spleen more than I’ll ever love you – which I don’t. Figures. It would be fine if the gloating were factual, but your brain knows that the boasting is always phony, cheap, and obtuse, which makes it another eyeball-rolling episode.

As for me, I am exhausted of being forced to please people to whom I am already insensate, anyway. It’s pathetic to work your brain off solely to have something to brag when you’re face-to-face(?) with their revolting, polymer-based hides. Why do it when you don’t have to? Henceforth, I resolve to make full use of my towering brain for the benefit of the people with whom I don’t feel any friction and for myself. I’m usually very cordial and sociable, but I realize that interactions with people below a magnitudinous intellectual level like guess whose may stultify mental capabilities, so I’m having fewer if not completely nothing of those – these unusual moments are reserved for charity cases. If you’re not a charity case, and you just need me to listen to your trivial thoughts and to your gloating, then pardon me; I am far too brilliant to drain away, dealing with pus excrement like you.

...

A commencement NEVER WAS, NEVER IS, and WILL DEFINITELY NEVER BE an exit. Every toddler knows that.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

The Responsible Man

If there is one great lack in adult men, Christian and non-Christian, it is integrity. That is a word that encompasses honesty, moral soundness, purity, uprightness and the willingness to take responsibility. It is this aspect of integrity that is addressed here. After a person receives Christ, responsibility should be an expected characteristic. Responsibility is one of the characteristics of a selfless man. Irresponsibility is one of the characteristics of a selfish man.
God has assigned responsibilities to kings, governors, masters, husbands and fathers. We are held responsible by God, whether or not we are acting responsibly. If we do not fit any of the above positions, we should be in training to be responsible. It is part of manhood.

We have had a worldly view of manliness. It is determined by testosterone and it results in fighting, drunkenness, and licentiousness. In many cases, the emphasis on these characteristics keeps a man from accepting responsibility -the real evidence of manhood.

Adam was irresponsible when he said to God, "The woman you put here with me she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate" (Genesis 3:12, NIV).

Adam blamed the woman and God. God replied in Genesis 3:17:
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.” (NIV)
Men have been blaming their wives ever since, and their children, and their bosses and everyone but themselves.


Abram was also irresponsible:
As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai. “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.” (Genesis 12:11-13, NIV)

Abram anticipated being killed by the Egyptians to get his beautiful wife. He had her tell a lie and say she was not his wife, but his sister. Pharoah took her and treated Abram well and made him rich. Pharoah and his household were afflicted with serious disease because he took Abram’s wife to be his wife. When Pharoah found out, he gave Sarai back and kicked Abram out of the country. About 20-25 years later, Abram, now called Abraham, did the same thing again with another king of another nation, only this time he lied instead of having Sarah lie. The king of Gerar, Abimelech, took her. God told Abimelech that he was as good as dead for taking a married woman. God protected Sarah. He had not touched her. Read the story in Genesis 20. This irresponsibility was passed on to Isaac. He lied to the same king about Rebekah. The unbelievers had a greater conscience about this than Abraham and Isaac. They had scorn for the irresponsibility of the believers (Genesis 26). Sarah and Rebekah were weaker and innocent.

Irresponsibility is a special kind of sin. It is a sin that holds other people responsible, someone weaker and maybe innocent. Irresponsibility is like lying. It is a cover, a means of self protection. It is selfishness to the extreme. We see it in disclaiming fatherhood, not paying child support, blaming others, wife beating, verbal abuse, not providing, and not giving love and protection.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

When is a Man Responsible?

Beginning the time a man reaches the age of reason he (she) was taught that they are responsible for any action that he (she) commits. Whenever a man does or does not do something it is because he (she) willed it to be done or not to be done. But how far does his (her) responsibility go in terms of liability or praise? It is a question of being right or wrong, and of duty, in man's conscious and deliberate activity—a question on man’s responsibility on human conduct.

To answer this, there is a need to differentiate between a directly willed act from that of an indirectly willed human act. Philosophical research center stated that When the act itself is the choice of the will, it comes directly from the will and is said to be willed in itself. When the act comes indirectly from the will, inasmuch as the will chooses rather what causes the act than the act itself, it is said to be willed in its cause. Thus a man, who wills to become intoxicated, wills it directly; a man who does not wish to become intoxicated, but who seeks entertainment where, as experience tells him, he is almost sure to become intoxicated, wills the intoxication indirectly. This distinction of direct and indirect willing raises a notable issue, and we have here two of the most important principles in all ethics.(1) The difference between indirectly willed from directly willed is that when you want something to be done, you do everything in your power to achieve it, thus it is directly willed. While an indirectly willed act connotes that you wish something to be achieved but you use other alternatives to get to your goal, because these alternatives are the ones available to you.

The term human act has a predetermined technical meaning. It signifies an act carried out by man when he (she) is responsible; when he (she) understand what he (she) is doing and wills to do it. An act is considered perfectly human when it is done with full knowledge and with the full consent of the will of the person, and with full and unhampered freedom of choice, thus, free will(2).

Man is born with free will to act through his thoughts and actions but when the divine and the only omniscient God intervenes, there is no turning back, and absolutely no saying no. To ask whether a man is responsible for an act that is indirectly willed entails the need to discuss the godly forces therein, if there is such. It is written that whenever a man wants something really bad and works hard for it, the entire universe conspires to make it possible. But there comes a time when something we do not expect to happen takes place, or worse something we do not want to happen comes to pass. This is where the problem arises. Who is responsible? Is it the man’s fault? Or was it all planned by the Almighty?

Bigoted people would automatically point the blame on God, asking “why of the zillions of people in the world does it have to be me? What did I do to deserve such adversity?” The person then, tries to analyze his life, his relationships, what he did in the past, thinking that what happened was somehow his fault. He is the one responsible why he is in such deep mess that is his life. This can be rooted to the fact that the notion of where we are and what we do in life is the cause of past acts, rendering us responsible for all the things we have at present. This idea has been programmed to our consciousness since time immemorial. So to answer whether or not a man is responsible leads us to ask ourselves about our past. Thus leads us to think that whether or not an act is directly or indirectly willed, it is still our responsibility. Why? Because we are the ones involved, we thought of it in the first place, the idea of being in that situation probably brushed through our naïve minds. Unknowingly we probably did something that projected an impact on our lives, ourselves and how we react to certain situations. Perhaps we have done something unwillingly to get to where we are, because we wanted to get there.

Decision making is a task that is given to us humans exclusively. It is what sets us apart. We might be gifted with the skill of reasoning but sometimes we end up choosing the wrong things.

According to the “Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy”

“The example of the cake may be artificial, but similar situations of choice occur regularly in human life. They are the experiential rock on which the belief in ultimate responsibility is founded. The belief often takes the form of belief in specifically moral, desert-implying responsibility. But, as noted, an agent could have a sense of ultimate responsibility without possessing any conception of morality, and there is an interesting intermediate case: an agent could have an irrepressible experience of ultimate responsibility, and believe in objective moral right and wrong, while still denying the coherence of the notion of desert. “

Even though the act hasn’t been done, the fact that you thought about it makes you responsible for it because you entertained the notion may the idea will result in something that is good or something that is bad.

With the increased awareness to the practice of holding persons morally responsible has generated much of the recent work on the perception of moral responsibility. All theorists have recognized features of this practice — inner attitudes and emotions, their outward expression in censure or praise, and the imposition of corresponding sanctions or rewards. However, many people understood the inner attitudes and emotions involved to rest on a more fundamental theoretical judgment about the agent's being responsible. In other words, it was assumed that the blame and praise depends upon a certain judgment, or belief, and the agent involved have satisfied the objective conditions of becoming responsible. These assessments were recognized to be free of the inner attitudinal/emotive states involved in holding responsible in the sense that reaching such judgments and assessing them required no essential reference to the attitudes and emotions of the one making the judgment. For those people who believes in the consequentialist’ point of view, this is a judgment that the agent exercised a system of control that could be influenced through outward expressions of praise and blame in order to restrain or promote certain behaviors. For those who consider the merit view, it is a judgment that the agent has applied the mandatory form of metaphysical control,
In any way we look at the events in our lives, we play a vital role in each part because we are the ones who makes the decisions, we are the one sticking on to our beliefs, we choose our own destiny which makes ourselves responsible for whatever we may become because of the decision we have made or the path that we have chosen to follow. We lead our own lives and it is our choice how we want to live it, therefore, how we live our life and were we stand now whether or not we indirectly willed it, we are held responsible.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

glorious moment

My hands are sweaty. I've been doing this for years now but I still get the chills everytime. The same feeling in my gut. The excitement, the nervousness, all wrapped into one. There's nothing quite like that rush.

I can hear them right now. I can hear them whispering, murmering. Some excited, some regulars and used to it, but one thing is common: They're all waiting for me.

I'm on in 5 minutes. I run the words over and over again in my head. I rerun all my movements and prepare myself in silence.

I get distracted a bit and reminisce about everything I had to do to get here. The hard work, the long hours, it seemed so hard back then, but now, it's all worth it.

I shake off the nostalgia and start to focus back on the task.

Finally, I'm ready to go.

I walk my way to my position and stare at the marvelous fabric of red.

And then, the most beautiful music starts to play. I close my eyes and enjoy the harmony and the grace of more than 30 instruments coming together and playing as one.

Then, the curtains rise.

I step into the light and darkness becomes hundreds of people on their feet cheering and delighted by my prescence. This is the moment that makes everything worthwhile.

Then the whole place turns silent.

The intro music starts to play. All rehearsals go out the window, they're only there to prepare you for this moment. But now, it's just me and the music. The moment belongs to me.

I start to sing and I feel every word that I utter as if I'm living the words of the song. I live for this, when I transcend simple performing to something else, something greater. The audience hangs on to every word I say as I take them on a roller coaster ride from start to finish.

I hook the audience and myself from start to end.
The first stanza is my birth
The second stanza is my childhood
The first chorus is me, 16 years old, kissing a girl for the very first time
The third stanza is when I turned into an adult
The second chorus is when I married that girl ten years after the first kiss
The bridge is when we had our son
The third chorus is when my son had a son of his own
The final chorus is today, in the twilight of my life
The last line is my thanks and my goodbye

The music ends with swift and graceful finish. The audience is up on their feet. Some are cheering loudly, some are in tears.

I bow and graciously accept their praise and exit the stage.

I humbly receive the congratulations and start to pack my things to leave. Tomorrow is another day, a new audience and another moment.

I look at the now empty theatre and appreciate every inch of it. I know I'm nearing the end of my career and my journey in life.

I bow to an empty stage and leave.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod

by: Eugene Field

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe ~
Sailed on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.
"Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
The old moon asked the three.
"We have come to fish for the herring fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we!"
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

The old moon laughed and sang a song
As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew.
The little stars were the herring fish
That lived in the beautiful sea ~
"Now cast your nets wherever you wish ~
Never afeard are we";
So cried the stars to the fisherman three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam ~
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home;
'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed
As if it could not be,
And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea ~
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.

tsinelas

Rotting, rotten subhumanoids are among the most vile, repugnant creatures that never should've walked the planet. They glory in the very thought of your ruin because you embody just about everything and anything that defines and will ever define their dream self. Musca domestica (the common housefly) may be a pest, but at the least, its importance as decomposer is impeccable.

Frankly, it gets difficult to be a perpetual gradient topper, but it's something beautiful-, gentle-minded people in my circle perish without and thankfully are good at. I'm treating their dislike for the highly-lovable me, instead, as another decorative that only serves to underscore all talent and privilege with which I have been and am continually generously showered by the Powers-That-Be. Therapeutic.

I'm glad I got these slippers I'm wearing right now. They're green, air-light, and just give my feet a constant massage.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

so this is a blog?

so this is the blogger.. wow. anyway i made myself one just in case i would need a ready ear to air out my frustrations to as i try so desperately to get myself to sleep, somewhere to put the countless random thoughts i have, instances of spacing out, and if ever i'm lucky it might actually trigger any creative juices this so-called brain of mine can conjure in moments of immense boredom, euphoria, dementia and the like...well, you get my drift.

anyway, why don't we give it a shot then?

ahh..the things i get myself into.. i should be institutionalized..damn!