Pregnant at eleven

In the UK, an eleven year old girl is pregnant.

Wow, right? And the wow doesn’t end there. 

The girl started smoking at 9, drinking at 10, and in a drunken moment when she was 11, had her cherry popped and got knocked up by her 15 year-old boyfriend. Now, eight months preggers, she still smokes about 20 cigs a day. And her momma is proud of her.

Many of us, when we first read the story of this 11 year old brit will prolly shrug our shoulders and mouth some pious bullshit about how westerners are so immoral and how family life has broken down so completely over there. 

But how about this? In the Philippines – where people wear their religion on their sleeve, and parents proudly proclaim how they make it a point to share quality time with their kids –  an eleven year old girl is pregnant too. 

I doubt that she’s as brazenly vice-riddled as the Brit girl – that sort of thing just doesn’t fit the Filipino upper middle class aesthetic – but apparently, something’s just as wrong here as there. The Filipina pre-teen mama goes to a Catholic school run by nuns, and apparently, she’s carrying her and her driver’s love-child. Yes. She has a driver – paid for by her parents – with whom she supposedly carried on a romantic relationship.  

Wow, right?

When i first stumbled across this story – it’s just now starting to buzz through the social networks – my first reaction was to wish all manner of plague on the driver. It was rape, after all. Regardless of the level of the girl’s consent – even, in fact, if she had initiated sexual contact – her age makes it rape. There is no defense for the driver (unless he can prove that a gun was held to his head) so, yeah, shoot the damned pervert. Or at least send him to some jail where he can learn first hand the meaning of the word sodomy.

But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there was no way I could stop at the driver. And more importantly, there was no way that I could wait for a slow and careful settling of blame. Still, absent a clearer picture of what really happened, that may be exactly what we’re gonna get. 

Nevertheless, we have to acknowledge that society failed this young girl. And if she – with all the privilege apparently available to her – could go this way, you can just imagine what a minefield pre-puberty can be for those not so privileged.

We live in incredibly permissive times when children are exposed – daily – to sex and sexuality without the benefit of guidance from parents who are too busy making or spending money; we have a government that is so servile to religious institutions that it has failed to take even the most basic steps towards protecting the young by providing them with age-appropriate education about their bodies; and worse, we have an entertainment industry that when it isn’t promoting the fairy-tale concept of sex as ‘cool’ and casual recreation devoid of serious consequence, relentlessly romanticizes sex as the logical and imperative climax of a loving relationship.

Don’t get me wrong. Sex is fun and sex is the logical and imperative climax of a loving relationship. But that concept is something you want to share only with people who have matured enough that they’re able to hold their desires in check. You teach that shit to young kids – bundles of appetite and id – and you know you’re headed for trouble.

I don’t know how they do things over their in the UK, but I do know that we as a society are not doing right by our kids. Maybe it’s time we accept that and start doing something to rectify the situation.

Filed under: Quick Posts, sex, society , pre-teen, pregnancy, sex, society

Making it right

How can Tracy Borres make things right, I’ve been asked.

The closest analog I can come up with is how insensitive American celebrities are dealt with. People like that actor from Grey’s Anatomy – Isaiah Washington (i think), and that DJ who said something about nappy hairs.

Like Tracy, these folks did nothing felonious, but they did expose their inner homophobia and racism. Now, they weren’t punished by force of law, but their respective organizations did apply pressure on them to make amends.

Both had to publicly apologize to keep their jobs, and I think Washington was even required by his employer to clock some community service.

Is a similar outcome unthinkable for Tracy? As far as I know, she hasn’t exactly apologized to the people she offended. At most, she’s said that she’s keeping her head down til this blows over. Reminds me, in fact, of a tactic favored by politicians; mostly the same politicians officially and regularly derided by Ateneo.

I don’t think waiting for this issue to die down should be an option. Sure, if it dies down without an apology having been uttered, it might seem that nothing has changed – the Aetas will still live in the same dismal conditions, and Tracy will not be even a wee bit poorer. But something will have changed.

If Tracy squeaks by without an apology, then the bar of our society’s tolerance of in-tolerance and discrimination will have been lowered significantly and it will become easier for people to spout hate. We will be de-sensitized to insensitivity and we will be promoting the mindset that material wealth is all one really needs for one’s dignity to be respected.

Is that what we really want?

Filed under: Quick Posts , Aetas, ateneo, immersion, tracy borres

Plurk FAIL

AAAARGH. PLurk has been “under routine maintenance” that’s been going on for more than an hour already. Where o where do the plurk hordes go for their fix of compulsive cyber-exhibitionism?

 

Update 1: Oops. Spoke too soon. It’s back up. *whew*

Update 2: GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. No. It. Is. Not.

Filed under: Quick Posts , Plurk

Pacquiao wins

Manny Pacquiao wins. He’s 482 million pesos more equal than the rest of us now.

UPDATE

The Filipino commentators are grating. They’re all superlatives and pseudo-expert talk. Sheesh. I wish I could just turn up the ambient noise and totally tune out the trash spilling out of their mouths.

Still, they did get it right when in the fifth round, they said Hoya looked like a slow old man. That he did, altho I kinda think that was more by design than out of actual pain.

Manny strutted into the ring with a sunny smile on his face, totally unlike his previous forays into that battlefield. He looked for all the world like he was on his way to the main dancefloor at Embassy. 

Dela Hoya, on the other hand, looked like he had seen the end of the world and had resigned himself to it – or to the role he had to play in it. I say the Golden Boy took a dive, and all to ensure that this franchise gets at least one more rematch.

Sickening, in my opinion. 

Sports are now entertainment, rather than contests of skill. The sooner I come to terms with that, the sooner I can get back to enjoying the atavistic thrill of watching two grown men pummel each other to bloody pulp.

Filed under: Quick Posts, sports , boxing, Manny Pacquiao, Oscar dela Hoya

New Dash

No equivocations: I love the new wordpress.com dashboard.

’nuff said.

Filed under: Quick Posts , blogging, dashboard, wordpress.com

Satisfaction

NOW – Since eleven this morning, I’ve already smoked three packs of cigarettes. Just now, I’ve started on the first stick out of the fourth pack, and it looks like I’m not even done with the day yet. 

There’s a tightness across my chest and a scratchy noise comes out of my throat whenever i try to speak. Which is ok, since I haven’t spoken to anyone for over six hours. 

My eyes are bloodshot, and my shoulders are so cramped they feel like two blocks of wood attached to each other by a leather strap draped over the back of my neck. Did I mention that I’m smoking my 91st cigarette of the day?

My back is hurting like no one’s business and my calves are nice enough to alternate cramping. And even though my deodorant is hanging tough, I imagine I must smell somethng awful. It’s a good thing pleadings aren’t scratch n’ sniff, or this motherfucker hasn’t got a chance in hell.

9:00 AM – My boss calls me and tells me he needs help preparing a pleading for the Supreme Court. With a cheerful lilt in my voice, I tell her yeah, I’m coming to work, even though I’m supposed to be off today. 

10:30 AM – with my wet hair still clinging to my back, I arrive in the office. No one’s there, so I’m thnking I’m the only one that got called in. Good news, i thought, since that meant the work wouldn’t be so tough. Otherwise, at least one of the lawyers would be here. Like an idiot, I sashay to my desk and see a pile of green folders there. On the topmost folder, there’s a little pink post-it. I recognize my boss’ chicken scratches.

Rom, we need this pleading by eight o’clock tomorrow. 

No please, no thank you. Just that matter-of-fact note.

10:50 AM – I realize this isn’t going to be a cake walk, and that i’m actually working for a cunt. I fire up the computer and start typing.

NOW – I’m staring at 75 pages of text. I wouldn’t have minded typing this all up if I were just copying some shit. But I had to pull this thing together from five different drafts aparently written by five different people. It’s a good thing they all pretty much agreed with each other so all I really needed to do was consolidate. HAH!

At least that’s what I thought several lifetimes ago. As it turned out, these drafts by these lawyers – who all talk like they know the law inside out and guffaw at the stupidest law-themed jokes despite being unable to get knock-knock jokes – were all cut-and-paste from various SC decisions. 

I could have done the same with their work, but I have too much fucking pride. I end up paraphrasing like crazy, stringing arguments together so that they make a coherent case instead of a haphazard collection of smart-assery, and going through piles and piles of documentary evidence for footnoting – which these assholes were too lazy to do. GAWD.

6:00 PM – My boss calls and tells me how wonderful I am, and how sorry she was that none of the junior partners were around to help. I force a grin and tell her it’s ok. She heaves a sigh of relief and calls me a super-trouper (she knows I adored Mamma Mia!) for doing this. She says the other lawyers were all grateful because if I hadn’t come in today, they would have missed the day trip to the beach in Nasugbu. I suddenly realize that Mother Teresa has nothing on me. 

6:30 PM – After half-an-hour of stewing, I decide this is bullshit, but I’ll be damned if I quit on the job.

NOW – The stupid pleading is finished and so is my fucking resignation letter.

 

Dear Sylvia,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you. I have learned a lot since I started here, and those lessons will never be wasted. Take today, for instance. Today, I learned respect for the Supreme Court can be quite easily faked. All I need to do – taking the example of your valued partners – is to plagiarize the Court’s decisions artistically. After all, isn’t imitation the best sort of flattery?

Today, i also learned the value of respect for one’s subordinates. I imagine when you find my desk cleaned out tomorrow, you too will finally learn that lesson. Although, I doubt it. After all, you’ve been a lawyer longer than i’ve been alive and since in all that time, you haven’t figured it out yet, I can’t say that there is much hope for you in that department.

And finally, today, I learned from you and your partners the meaning of pride. Since I started work here, I have taken all of your tantrums in stride; even your thermonuclear meltdowns at the loss of a stapler. I have fired people for you whose only offense was to forget to address a Senior Partner with an adequate amount of brown-nosing; and I even had the temerity to tell everyone else that we needed to grin and bear it. But thanks to you, I have rediscovered my pride and realized that there are some lines I will never again cross for the sake of treading the path of least resistance.

Awesome working here, really. And I am pleased to say that you can take this job and shove it. Don’t bother sending me my paycheck. You will probably need it to pay for a new copy of Lex Libris since I am taking my copy that you and every other cheapskate lawyer have been mooching off of since I got here.

Very truly yours,

Romany Sedona

Filed under: Quick Posts

An alternative Alternative

Don’t get me wrong. I think Filipino Voices is rocking, and I will keep on posting there too. But there are just some things that don’t fit in that arena.

“FilipinoVoices.com is a collaborative blog of Filipino bloggers. Focusing on politics and society, especially in areas of human rights and civil rights.”

See what I mean? Filipinos don’t just talk about politics and society (at least not the kind of ’society’ implied by having the word tagged on to ‘politics,’ if you catch my drift). We talk about food too, and concerts, and gadgets and our lives.

One could argue that that’s what personal blogs are for. True enough. But FV does something else besides aggregating political blog posts: it gives people who don’t otherwise blog the opportunity to be heard in the blogosphere. Take benign0 for instance. Sure he had a website, but that’s not exactly a blog, and he mostly just commented on other people’s blogs. Being on FV has made a blogger out of him, and now people comment on his posts as well. The same is true of Bencard. And I’m sure even cvj watches movies from time to time.

Given my recent fey mood, I got it into my head that it’d be nice to have a blog that lets other people be bloggers as well – without making them feel that they need to write about politics. Hence, speed blogging.

Of course, those who already blog will be welcome, and maybe this can be like a more expansive kind of Twitter for them; or as Forrester would have put it (in that movie Finding Forrester?) “Blogging is the main course. This is dessert.” Or even maybe something like a break from ’serious’ blogging – kinda like ‘The Road to Gandolfo‘ was for Robert Ludlum.

BTW, the name speed blogging comes from ‘speed dating‘ – which basically involves a girl and a guy ‘dating’ for about five minutes before moving on to another partner, all within the same venue. The idea is to get as wide a sampling as possible of what’s available, and then to decide which ones have potential. In the same way, the mini-posts on this blog will allow you to sample what the various authors (assuming other people decide to join this little kibbutz of mine) have to offer the reader. Naturally, the mini-posts can also be conversations between and among authors.

So, if you want to join, get a wordpress account, then send me your email address. Just fire-off an e-mail to romsedona(at)yahoo(dot)com, tell me what you want your username and password to be, and I’ll hook you up.

Filed under: Quick Posts

Who’s telling the truth?

When the big news about Sabio’s accusation broke, I was dumbfounded. Seriously. Why would an Associate Justice of the Court of Appeals wreck the reputations of his peers and his peerage? I understand the need for whistleblowers, but to my mind, the benefits of blowing the whistle in this particular instance are friggin de minimis.

Think about it. Suppose Sabio’s revelation does expose shennanigans in the Meralco case – is that case so important that it justifies destroying the credibility of the entire institution? The CA handles thousands and thousands of other cases of varying degrees of public interest – some even more significant than the Meralco controversy. By accusing fellow AJs of corruption, Sabio has done nothing less than throw into question the integrity of ALL Justices and the validity of ALL CA decisions. Is the Meralco case worth it?

I think this dust up between Sabio and de Borja amply illustrates Filipino society’s current infatuation with scandalous revelations and its inability to see the forest for the trees. We as a nation have become too obsessed with the idea of ‘personal crusades’ that we ignore the damage caused by loose cannons riding roughshod over our institutions.

Believe it or not, those institutions do have mechanisms for dealing with corruption; believe it or not, not everyone is corrupt; and believe it or not, taking every thing to the bar of public opinion often does more harm than good.

Especially when, as in this case, the whistleblowing seems not to have been because of a patently wrong decision, but more the result of pique.

But Sabio said in a previous interview with abs-cbnnews.com that his complaint focuses on the process by which the decision came about. He and another colleague in the 9th division previously issued a TRO that favored the Lopez-led board in May and heard the oral arguments in June.

Both justices, however, were eased out when the case’s ponente, or the designated writer of the decision, was transferred to the 8th division, which eventually issued a decision that favored the Lopez-led board.

Simeon Marcelo, the lawyer of Meralco’s Lopez-led board, earlier said there is nothing irregular about the transfer of the case to the 8th division since it was in accordance to the internal rules of the appellate court.

Sabio, however, said something was “fishy” since he was offered a P10-million bribe to let go of the case.

For the sake of exorcising the smell of fish, Sabio was willing to tear down the credibility of the second highest court in the land? Would it have been too much to ask him to have something more substantial than something that wafted up his nose? Or if the smell of hengeyokai were truly unbearable, couldn’t he have had recourse to whatever internal mechanisms the Court may have? Kinda makes you think that the closest thing to his nose is his own mouth.

Oh well. Of course, now that the whistle has been blown, the question is who is telling the truth?

Mesself, I think both Sabio and de Borja have in their possession different parts of the same truth. Which means, I suppose, that the best either be capable of are telling half-truths. Which everyone understands to be nothing less than whole lies.

Filed under: Quick Posts, judiciary, law and order, musings , bribery, Court of Appeals, de Borja, GSIS, Meralco, Sabio

Mamma Mia!

On long drives, my mom would pop in an old old old ABBA cassette and we kids would all hum along, and then sing along, and then eventually peter off into sleepy silence. Still the music would play on and on. The older kids would start to complain at some point, but my mom always said that when we had our own cars, we could play our own music. At which point, we would all swear that we would never play ABBA.

Well, if now I’m playing ABBA. Hahaha. And I blame it all on Meryl.

I approached the movie with some trepidation, but with more excitement. I mean, I remembered listening to ABBA! Sure, I also remembered getting fed up with it, but that was from the repetition. I liked the songs, especially Chiquitita which one Latino courtesy uncle used to call me.

Plus, I remember almost getting to see the musical; not seeing it had something to do with a leather whip, a daschund, and a three orange m&m’s – but that’s a long story.

Anyway, I finally got to see the movie last night and I was blown. a. way. And wouldn’t you know it, I totally related to Sophie.

Y’see, the movie’s about a young girl (Sophie) who is madly in love with a wanderer (Sky) who, because he loves her too, has decided to give up his wandering ways, not knowing that she’s a wanderer too, except that she’s being held back by a sense of guilt at leaving her mother who raised her alone. In what may have been an unconscious effort to complete her mother’s life – and in so doing complete her own – Sophie sends out invitations to her wedding to the three men most likely to be her father. For their own reasons, they drop everything and come. Once there – ‘there’ being a lovely Greek island – the three come to terms with their pasts and discover the beginnings of their futures.

It was the guilt part that got me.

There have been many times when I’ve felt the desire to just up and go – follow my bliss as it were. But always guilt. Heh. Sometimes it feels like I have enough guilt to start my own religion. And most of that guilt, centered around my mom. I don’t know why. I guess, like Donna (Sophie’s mom), there’s something desperate about her energy and dynamism; almost like she’s a whirlwind as a defense mechanism. And like Donna, you can see it in her eyes sometimes.

My mom has never asked me to stay – in fact, she often tells me to to go and, if i absolutely have to, only to come back with my shield or on it (no, Frank Miller did NOT invent that line for 300). But still, the thought of leaving her seems to me quite ungrateful. I mean, the simple act of moving into my own apartment was a gut wrenching moment, even though neither of us quite consented to show it. And I’m pretty sure she still resents me moving out. But that’s a mother’s job – to tell her daughter that it’s ok to fly out of the nest, but to wish with all her heart that her daughter doesn’t.

The daughter’s burden, on the other hand, is to stay until she knows with full certainty that she truly wants to be somewhere else – not to get away from her mother, but to be with the one who holds her bliss. I haven’t gotten to that yet, but when i do, I hope it’s with the same clarity that Sophie had when she realized that it was time to go.

Even more than the charming portrayals -

Dominic Cooper (Sky) was, as always, hotter’n hot pockets. Loved him in the History Boys, loved him here double! I regret though that he had such a small role. Couldn’t be helped, I guess. But the main thing is he was able to come across real well even with so few lines; and even if he was a bit of a douche at one point. And when you can make a girl go weak at the knees while being a tool, you know you’re doing something right!

And as far as older men go, Stellen Skarsgard is a god! even with tattooed knees! Pierce Brosnan, as Glenville pointed out, was hilarious while trying to emote on S.O.S. It was tough trying to ignore the pained expression on his face, but the whole scene was so nicely worked that no lasting damage was done, except to his hotness. Colin Firth was also cute – but sadly still stuck in the stuck up proper gentleman stereotype he’s been in since Bridget Jones’ Diary.

The Dynamos – Christine Baransky and Julie Walters – were hammy goodness all throughout; perfect foils to Meryl Streep’s neurotic Donna. And pretty creditable singers too.Baransky, in particular, sizzled as the mature sexpot who may have well be archetypal for Sex in the City’s Samantha.

- and even more than the MUSIC -

it was Sophie’s story that made sure this movie left an indelible mark on me.

Filed under: Quick Posts, movies , ABBA, Mamma Mia!, Meryl Streep, movies, musical, Pierce Brosnan

Miss Universe

“Actually, God made men and women different. But the big difference between women and men–it doesn’t matter what kind of life they live–is that men think that the faster way to go to a point is to go straight. Women, no. The faster way to go to a point is to go through curves and fixing every curve,”

Oh wow. That’s what won her the Miss Universe crown. It makes me sad to think that this Universe is represented by such pseudo-profundity (Still, credit where credit is due, she’s waaay better than that Ms. Carolina chick, and she didn’t bomb like our very own beauty-queen-what’s-her-name). I swear, the other Universes must be laughing at us. Ah, but then, what do I know, having myself never strayed far from this little blue-and-white marble.

Corny universe jokes aside, tho’ my main complaint about the Miss Universe pageant – and what makes it so hypocritical – is that it pretends to celebrate women when in fact it is nothing more than a physical contest: a BEAUTY pageant (stop rolling your eyeballs, gentlemen). You can talk all you want about scholarships and charities and what not. The fact is, the whole thing still revolves around how one woman looks, how hot her body is, and how good she is at flirting with the judges and the audience. Hell, they threw that question-and-answer portion in there just to mollify the feminists. But a token nod to the importance of intelligence is just as bad as totally ignoring it altogether. Ignoring intelligence as a factor would, in fact, be more preferable for being more honest.

Don’t misunderstand me. I mean, the way I see it, if it were treated strictly as a contest of looks, there’s really nothing wrong with that. Humans are competitive – we constantly strive to outdo each other – have for centuries. Physical perfection is, to be frank about it, just another field we can compete in.

The problem is, we don’t exactly live in equal-opportunity times. Like it or not, women are disadvantaged today and in so many ways, the most insidious of which is that women are judged by their looks alone. Beautiful women don’t need to be smart, so the conventional idiocy goes, therefore beautiful women need not be considered or thought of as intelligent; Ugly women are smart, but who wants to talk to a homely bitch?

The pageant simply reinforces this troglodytish concept of the value of a woman being inextricably linked with her physical appearance. A woman, according to the Miss Universe pageant, has to be extremely beautiful, very sexy in skimpy clothing – and by necessary implication, naked – graciously mannered and able to make everyone else feel smart. The sad part is, you go to Makati on any given day, and 8 out of 10 women you meet there will prolly agree with you – very certainly not in any explicit way, but in the way they actually live their corporate lives.

I seriously think we traded down. Blame it on my asian bias or whatev, but I think Riyo Mori is hotter’n hell while Dayana Mendoz just looks like a trophy wife gone lush.

Having said all that, do I want the Miss U pageant abolished? Hell no!

Like I said, physical competitions are healthy and they are a part of human nature. So my thought is, either return the Miss U to it’s old concept of being strictly a BEAUTY pageant – in which case there’ll be nothing to distinguish it from wet t-shirt contests – or maybe change the criteria around so that meaningful service to community or country gets to contribute a significant percentage to the final ranking.

Filed under: Quick Posts, vacuity , miss universe, pageants, riyo mori, dayana mendoza