Believe it or not, the trip to Boracay was work. I’m in the middle of writing a review of Mandala Spa in Boracay, and will post it to my Southeast Asia Travel website this Tuesday. I thought I’d take the opportunity to post a few pictures I took of the place.
I’m writing this in the pre-boarding section of the original domestic airport terminal in Pasay, Metro Manila. Will be boarding SEAir flight headed to Boracay in about an hour. It’s not a vacation, it’s work - I’m on a press visit for a resort/spa on the island, and I’ll be scooping up more content for my Southeast Asia Travel website. It’s a living.
I’m writing this interlude because I’m trying to wean myself from the idea that my blog posts here have to have some bigger meaning. This explains the paucity of blog entries over the past year - as I’ve been buried in deadlines for my About.com site and other commitments, I’ve had no time to think - and because I’ve been so used to thinking hard about my blog entries before posting them, updating my blog has simply passed further and further away from my radar.
I’m not giving up editorializing on current events, philosophy, or the Internet. I’m just going to give a little extra attention to the “real life” part of this blog that has so far only been featured on my Twitter and Facebook pages.
I’m a work-from-home dad to an awesome little girl, and I’m lucky to be married to a wonderful lady. I think that deserves a little more space in this blog. I’m not swinging to another extreme, I’m just saying you’ll hear about my family a little more, a little more about the dog, stuff like that.
Concluding this blog entry now, the laptop is getting heavy and my crossed leg is losing circulation. Besides, I want to have some lunch before I board the flight. Next stop, BORACAY!
This is Marlene Aguilar’s world; we’re just living in it. Under its humdrum façade, the world is actually a seething cauldron of suspense, action, and DRAMA, hidden so well that only a genius-level mind like Marlene Aguilar’s can perceive it.
“We are genius[es], borderline insanity. My intelligence is way above most people. Does that make me insane?” Aguilar told radio dzMM’s news anchors Julius Babao and Tinton Bersola-Babao when asked to react to some listeners’ messages that she must be crazy.
Nooo, Marlene Aguilar is not insane… she just has a… unique grasp of reality. Which I wouldn’t mind so much if she didn’t try to get us to see the world her way.
Foreigner Danger: Back in 2004 when her son’s car collided with the Ponces, she immediately perceived a horrific conspiracy against foreigners like her son, which she immediately sent to all the foreigners on the ADB listserv:
I asked one of the police officers from Eastern Police District who spoke to me in confidence, “What would have happened if my son came from a poor family?” He replied, “You would have found your son’s body floating in Pasig River already.” “Kung pangkaraniwang tao lang ho ang anak ninyo lumulutang na ho sa Pasig River ang katawan niyan.”
The very real danger of being a foreigner in this country is not known until you are involved in an accident, or an incident; most especially if this involves a government official, and the country’s law may not apply.
(This just in from my astral self, who projected this message: “What would have happened if Marlene Aguilar came from a poor family? She would have been confined in Mandaluyong, or naging taong-grasa sa kalye.”)
I Swear I Didn’t Know He Was In the Basement: Hey, Marlene! Remember when you were calling on your son to surrender from… where was it again? Hawaii? Florida? Or the storeroom under your house? Read more…
Many Catholics say that they stay in the Roman Catholic Church because it provides a moral compass: in many doubtful circumstances, the Church is best able to tell right from wrong.
Catholics with a more fully developed moral compass may want to reassess the situation - just ask ABS-CBN’s Ricky Carandang:
This afternoon I interiewed Fr. Melvin Castro, who heads the CBCP commission that drafted the [voting] guidelines and asked him why candidates who commit plunder and acts of corruption are not being condemned in the same way that reproductive health advocates are.
Castro said in effect that plunder and all of those corrupt acts are an offshoot of the lack of respect for the family and therefore not as bad in the heirarchy of catholic morality as family planning which is as he says, anti-family.Flabbergasted, I asked if they were saying it was alright to vote for a crook as long as he doesn’t advocate modern family planning. His roundabout answer,—as I understand it is …in so many words – yes.
With the caveat that a) this is Carandang’s spin on Castro’s response, absent a transcript, and b) the blithely-dismissed “roundabout answer” may actually make sense, if we knew what it said… assuming it’s true, the CBCP demolishes its own moral authority with Castro’s answer. At the very least, we’d question Castro’s ability to make a moral judgment.
But that’s the minefield the Church has put itself into, through its own actions. The Church hierarchy currently puts an abnormally high priority on its anti-contraception policy. The price it pays for its single-mindedness is this: an absurd taxonomy of acceptable candidates prioritizes thieves and liars for public office over (gasp!) men who advocate pills and condoms!
How can we trust a self-proclaimed “moral authority” that bends morality to suit its political needs of the moment? Where is the moral superiority of overlooking minor issues like corruption for any given candidate, so long said candidate is against spending public money on birth control?
Actually, I’d like to throw the question back to Ricky Carandang and his friends in the so-called media - you know that relativists like Melvin Castro are just as morally questionable as the typical politician. So when does the Catholic Church stop getting a free pass in media coverage? When will the media stop treating moral failures like Melvin Castro and the CBCP with kid gloves?
Update: Melvin Castro answered Ricky Carandang on the comments section, and his “clarification” does a wonderful job of explaining what he thinks, although not in the way that he’d like.
A true Pro-family and pro-life candidate would also be anti-corruption and pro-environment candidate. And in our contention nothing could be more corrupt than one who corrupts and undermines Family and Life values.
Seriously, that’s how Castro answers the question: pro-RH candidates are by definition corrupt. Ergo, no contradiction, since the definition of “corruption” has been arbitrarily changed to include pro-RH candidates! Dishonest arguing, but I’m not really surprised; this is what passes for a logical argument in Church circles these days.
Alleged Road-rage killer Jason Ivler, it seems, was not in Hawaii (as per his nutso mom Marlene Aguilar); not in Colombia (as per some of his advocates on my comments section).
Apparently Jason Ivler was in Blue Ridge, Quezon City all along, in his mom’s rented home, whose walls were thankfully no hindrance to a dedicated NBI team armed with ladders and the threat of deadly force.
Jason Ivler returned fire with a “baby Armalite” (a short-barrelled CAR-15 rifle), but got shot by the NBI when they returned fire. (I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to see him on TV, groaning in agony while the NBI put him under arrest.) They found a .45 pistol with him, which will be tested to see if it’s the same gun used to kill Victor Ebarle Jr.
I checked with my contact in ADB (the same contact who forwarded me the “open letter” Mrs. Aguilar sent over the ADB listserv when her son was first arrested) about the hapless Stephen Pollard, stepfather of the alleged murderer Jason Ivler. Pollard was married to another British citizen at the time he first joined ADB, but later divorced her and married Aguilar.
My bubwit says that there was some talk about persuading Pollard to resign - he can’t be fired for his stepson’s supposed crimes - or at least assigning him to Afghanistan where his family situation could do the least damage to ADB’s reputation. At least, my bubwit says, ADB immunity only covers acts committed while performing ADB duties; Pollard sheltering his no-good stepson does not apply. Conspiracy theories aside, Stephen Pollard will probably not be able to benefit from any immunity in this case.
(Also, let’s get this straight - Pollard is not a diplomat. He’s an economist who enjoys a diluted form of diplomatic immunity. But enjoying diplomatic immunity does not make one a diplomat!)
What now for Jason Ivler? Nothing too bad can happen to him or his mom; nobody I know has much sympathy for this cold-blooded moron and his Mommy MacBeth. I’m hoping rough, unlubricated, unwelcome butt-sex with a Bilibid prisoner called “Boy Tulis” is in his future, that’s if his “Special Forces” buddies don’t break him out of prison in a bad imitation of every Cannon Films movie from the 80s. Welcome to the Philippine prison system, pretty boy, hope you brought KY Jelly.
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