people's brand(tm) potatoes

testing testing

2009-05-10T22:00:45Z

Evening, July 23, 2005

Me and this taxi driver chap, we were going to pull off a heist on an unsuspecting coconut hawker. We were in his taxicab, staking out the hapless mambubuko for what felt like the fourth day or so. In the trunk sat dozens of fake coconuts, which we intended to use in a classic bait-and-switch maneuver. My partner was the sleazier of us two, and he wore a panama hat with a Hawaiian shirt.

I wore a pinstriped suit.

It turns out that what he really intended to rob was a branch of the United Coconut Planters’ Bank. I can’t remember what happened next.

Morning, July 24, 2005

1: All I could remember about this dream was that it involved an ad for floor wax, and that the sole advertised characteristic was that it was colored ube purple instead of the usual red.

2: I was at home, and my family and I were packing stuff up into these big balikbayan boxes. We were leaving for San Francisco the very next day, apparently. There wasn’t enough room for all of my things, as my mom was using up most of the space for the junk she’d accumulated over the years (she was the sort that never threw things out – lifestyle sections of newspapers, hopelessly shot appliances, etc.). I was surprised at the extent to which I had put down roots here, and at the fact that I was about to leave a lot of it behind just because my mom can’t bear to throw Tim Yap’s columns and a broken electric fan away.

Evening, July 25, 2005

I had to bring my sick brother (who really is down with the flu right now) to a hospital notorious for its undead population and its inadequate parking space. I had a bit of trouble once they got him all fixed up, as I could not remember where I had parked the car. So my mom, my brother and I ended up threading our way around the mostly-empty complex at midnight, careful not to spring any traps that the zombies laid out. The architecture of the hospital was similar to those gray monoliths that Marcos put up – something of a cross between the main theater at CCP, the Philippine Children’s Memorial Center, and a videogame medieval dungeon.

It turns out that I was parked next to a friend’s car, someone I haven’t seen in a long while. And as luck would have it, he was heading towards his own car, and so we traded gabs right then and there, at midnight, in the amber-lit parking lot of some Marcos-era hospital with a zombie infestation.

I just realized that ‘finding a parked car at night’ is a recurrent theme in my dreams, although I’ve never had the problem in real life.

Afternoon, August 1, 2005

In my hand was a piece of fried chicken that could pass for a relief map of France. I took a bite out of the Bordeaux region, and all of a sudden I understood why it was famous the world over for its wines – Bordeaux was absolutely delicious. Normandy, on the other hand, tasted like stale, salty bread.

And then I dreamt that this dream would make a great dream journal entry.

August 2, 2005

I dreamt of the smell of freshly toasted, freshly buttered bread.

This sort of dream usually happens when I chew caffeinated gum before I sleep, which I did. The last time I did, I dreamt of nothing but the smell of cinnamon buns.

9-11-1973 never forget

2008-09-03T20:34:41Z

A Moment of Silence Before I Start this Poem
Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I start this poem, I'd like to ask you to join me
In a moment of silence
In honour of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th. I would also like to ask you To offer up a moment of silence For all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared,
tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, For the victims in both Afghanistan and the US

And if I could just add one more thing...

A full day of silence
For the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of US-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year US embargo against the country.

Before I begin this poem,

Two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, Where homeland security made them aliens in their own country. Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin And the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Vietnam - a people, not a war - for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives' bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war .... ssssshhhhh.... Say nothing ... we don't want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, Whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem.

An hour of silence for El Salvador ...
An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua ...
Two days of silence for the Guatemaltecos ...
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west...

100 years of silence...

For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness ...

So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won't be.
Not like it always has been.

Because this is not a 9/11 poem.
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.

This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written. And if this is a 9/11 poem, then: This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971. This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977. This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.

This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.

This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program.

And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves
The lost languages
The uprooted trees and histories
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children
Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

If you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights,
Delete the instant messages,
Derail the trains, the light rail transit.

If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell, And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July
During Dayton's 13 hour sale
Or the next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful
people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it NOW,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
But take it all... Don't cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime. But we, Tonight we will keep right on singing... For our dead.

* * *

Translating thought to word--on the decade of hundred-dollar flip-flops and trillion-dollar wars, on the strange, tingly sensation of awe and fear that the stricking, spectacular views offered by the Precipice of Human Hubris brings--will commence shortly.

¿Venceremos, venceremos, venceremos?

Allez-oup!

2007-09-07T11:19:25Z

Elsewhere in the world, Castro breathes his last few thousand lungfuls. Syrian missiles home in on Israeli jets, which could make for even more interesting times. Raul Gonzales munches on an adrenal gland plucked fresh from a dead infant, his fourth for the day. My Econ 100.1 classmates plow, brain-dead, through their corrected midterms.

But then and there, all that mattered was the long, slight uphill ahead, the downshift, the reassuring thnick of the rear derailleur, and me matching cadence; I don’t give a shit, expressed in meters per second.

Glory be to the machine, to the afternoon sun, and to my momentarily free spirit.

So it goes

2007-04-17T15:34:58Z

When the tupelo
goes poop-a-lo,
I'll be seeing youp-a-lo.

Friday morning, early amihan

2006-11-02T23:53:32Z

Sana maulit yung trip na ganito--tamang dinuduyan ka sa pagitan ng pagkaidlip at pagkamulat, sa lupa at sa langit.

denas @ 2006-11-02T14:40:00

2006-11-02T06:40:58Z

* * *

Saka na ang dada; magpapakabasag muna ako.

denas @ 2006-10-29T11:48:00

2006-10-29T03:45:56Z

denas: you know catholic prayers are really fucken scary when you think about it
macri: really, how so?
denas: "and lead all souls to heaven especially those in need of your divine mercy"
denas: "glory be to the father...as it was in the beginning now and ever shall be world without end"
denas: samuel l. jackson's character in pulp fiction got it right prayers/bible quotes make for great signature phrases for killing people
denas: it's such a militant religion
denas: christians see jihad in such a negative light but at least their holy wars are declared
denas: christians are permanently on a crusade, man
denas: it's a good thing europe underwent a rennaisance otherwise we'd still have inquisitions knocking on people's doorsteps and crusades to re/capture holy lands
denas: i think if i ever become a contract killer my signature phrase will be the angel's prayer
denas: angel of god my guardian dear to whom god's love commits me here ever this day be at my sight (BLAM) to rule (BLAM BLAM BLAM) and guard (BLAM...BLAM)
denas: *steps closer to the corpse* amen (point blank BLAM)
denas: you know what hollywood needs to do more crossovers
denas: i would very much like an alien v. robocop
denas: or indiana jones v. james bond
denas: obligatory christ v. chuck norris
denas: alright i will try and make one and roll everything into ONE GIANT MOVIE
denas: "fight club 2"
denas: tyler durden invents a time machine and spreads fight club to all times and spaces
macri: ^________^'
denas: but eventually it becomes one big excuse to pit fights between history's most important men and women
denas: and robots
denas: and animals and extraterrestrial lifeforms
macri: between history's most important men and women
macri: haha masaya yan
denas: it's a great idea i think this will be the shit of the most high
macri: didn't mtv do something like that?
denas: in fact i might hit a second bird with the same stone the film
denas: will be revered
denas: and will become the basis for a new religion
denas: it will become the holy text for the next 2000 years, or perhaps the next 20,000 who knows what the human race will be capable of under my guidance...
denas: yo are you still there i thought you wanted to just chat
macri: im here
denas: this is a very one sided conversation
macri: if you need crew for your film i can volunteer
macri: just make sure your cast is all warm and cozy or else
denas: fuck that i don't want wars to be fought in my name
macri: extinction
denas: i am already responsible for the collapse of 1.442x10^2256 universes
denas: further bloodshed will not do
denas: you know it would be amazing if all of everything operated on sensitivity to initial conditions
denas: if i flick my wrist that way i destroy a civilization
macri: whatdayamean?
denas: you're pseudointellectual enough to be familiar with chaos theory am i correct
denas: butterfly effect and all that shizzle
macri: your bluntness never ceases to amaze me
macri: i think i have enough pseudointellectual bullshit hanging around my waist pocket so go ahead
denas: nobody except for chaos theorists have any business dabbling in chaos theory and that includes you and me
denas: look the logical extension of the butterfly effect wherein a miniscule input into the system results in dramatically huge changes overall
macri: yeah
denas: is that the miniscule input is a product of an infinitisemally smaller input
denas: and that the huge effects will in turn be the cause of something orders of magnitude bigger
denas: this chain of causality extends infinitely on both sides
macri: so its not a happens therefore causing b?
denas: regardless of tensions between classical and quantum mechanics as long as sensitivity to initial conditions exist within a system it will follow that the ultimate initial condition would be something inconceivably minute
denas: so observing a particle (a little “quantum mechanics” “reference” here) will ultimately lead to the collapse of entire universes
macri: lay man terms please
denas: ooga fucken booga
denas:

Language rarely does justice to these moments of clarity

2006-10-16T00:39:33Z

Case in point: I think I just figured out exactly what to do for the next ten to fifteen years.

* * *

Expand your mind
to understand
we all must live
in peace
todaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

What I did with my rocket fuel

2006-10-08T16:16:46Z

I’ve been meaning to commit some thoughts to writing for so long, now. I haven’t succeeded, yet, but I intend to see this attempt through, no matter how badly it turns out.

My attempts so far have been characterized by bad starts, by first few keystrokes that didn’t have that starter cough-starter cough-vroom resonance to them. I’ve always hated the way I write when I’m happy; it’s a mood I’d much rather spend drawing, or in conversation. Writing is for introspective early-morning lulls, or for when I feel like dropping a pile of logorrhea.

Still. This pogo-stick hijink, which took me three-quarters of the way around the sun, deserves a proper paragraph.

So, yeah. Over the past year I burned a lot of unneeded weight, got rid of both my asthma and my rhinitis, and am overall healthier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I rediscovered a couple of old hobbies, learning the ropes of a couple more, and I spend my time working for worthwhile causes. Got to know a lot of great people, had a lot of laughs, learned a couple of lessons and went through a few moments of clarity. Fell in love for the first time in years. Lost fights to some personal demons, too, but that's how it is with playing the hand you were dealt.

Well! Enough with the laundry-listing. I still have three months left to toy with. Till next time.

my god, what is that awful smell?

2006-09-01T23:04:14Z

"I'm sick of making my liver pay for mistakes that my limbic system made,"

was the exact same thing I told myself the last time this happened.

motherfucker I'm cool with attitude and ego to spare

2006-07-07T15:47:43Z

denas: i'm an arts and crafts guy, myself
denas: renaissance like motherfucken da vinci, dawg
joe: so you collect garbage and present it as abstract art that nobody dares question lest they look like ignoramuses in the finer things in life?
denas: no i'm post-postmodern
denas: i.e. i see that shit for what it is and am not afraid to point and laugh and possibly kick the "artist's" ass
joe: great, just great, another loon.
denas: my art = inventing a fucking time machine, stepping into the post-apocalyptic world of 3023, acquiring the Deadliest Weapon That Will Ever Be Conceived By Man, traveling back in time, and using said weapon on them fake-french postmodernist fucks
denas: possibly vaporizing the MOMA while i'm at it but hey THAT'S ART MOTHERBITCHES

* * *

From Carlo: Leave your name and
1. I'll respond with something random about you.
2. I'll challenge you to try something.
3. I'll pick a color that I associate with you.
4. I'll tell you something I like about you.
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you.
8. If I do this for you, you must in turn post this meme on your LJ.
9. With a letter I assign to you, you must write ten things you like that begin with that letter.

1. salamat sa pagbigay ng n.e.r.d. life changing yon
2. magpataba ka ulit hahahaha
3. yellow. aba malay
4. nakakapaghoard ako ng mga mp3 sa yo
5. binabasa mo yung white shirt mo bago ng CAT para magbaktong
6. duck-billed platypus
7. kumusta na pala ang iyong exploits? wala na kong balita dun ah.

do letter G!!!
1. gin
2. godspeed you! black emperor
3. google
4. goatse
5. garden tools and implements
6. gaguhan
7. gir---de ladies
8. grass
9. guns, germs and steel
10. graphite

Shit entry muna bago ang main event

2006-06-02T19:06:01Z

Presenting: A Softer World.

* * *

Attn: Dre + Orhe.

Two points lang mintis ko sa essay part. Partida, natulog ako sa gitna nung test. No-effort na 1.75 > no-effort na 2.50. Ako ang kampyon ng STS!

ang pangarap kong jackpot

2006-04-26T16:22:50Z

+ Natapos ko na yung first stage ng pagrestore sa bisikleta
+ Okay ang reading/viewing list
+ Walang problema sa acads
+ Nakapagbeach, natuto mag "ultimate" frisbee at mag skimboarding kahit palpak
+ Nakapagpalipad ng saranggola
+ Relaks lang all day all night
-------------------------------
= AYUS

+ Tapusin yung pagkalikot sa bisikleta
+ Alamin kung anong asa dulo ng Commonwealth Avenue
+ Take up karate
+ Asikasuhin yung application sa internship

Dapat din ata asa reality TV show ako ngayon (yung premise ata eh low-rent na the Apprentice set in a call center ahhahahhh) pero di ko nirereturn yung tawag eh

SCIENCE!

2006-03-28T02:28:44Z

Pigs have been genetically modified to make their meat as healthy as seafood, researchers report.

The premise of the work, published yesterday in the online journal Nature Biotechnology, is based on cloning pigs to genetically express higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, a type of natural oil that is thought to fight heart disease and various immune disorders. The oils are typically found in fish.

"Omega-3 fatty acids are crucial to human health," said Jing Kang, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"But the source is increasingly limited, due to declining fish stocks and contamination from mercury and other harmful chemicals. We need a cheap, land-based alternative to meet the growing demand, and these pigs could be the answer." (more here)

Panalo.

I've had enough of we the youth/middle class bullshit

2006-03-08T05:00:49Z

True, our opinion of the President should not get in the way of “doing our share”, but by the same token, our opinion of the political opposition should not get in the way of our duty to resist authoritarianism. There is nothing political--in the narrow sense of casting oneself as either for or against a politician--about coming to the defense of civil rights; one does not have to hate Arroyo and/or love Cory to find the idea of entrusting a corrupt, ineffective, and abusive state with any more powers ridiculous.

Furthermore, to see civil rights activism merely as a front for the political opposition’s schemes is an unfair characterization, and a politically loaded one at that--it’s the administration’s version of last week’s events, after all, a version that it has yet to prove satisfactorily. Does apolitically casting one’s lot with the current administration include treating its bullshit as gospel? I, for one, don’t think so; supporting a government also entails criticizing it.

Inasmuch as supporting the Arroyo administration in an effort to improve our collective lot is apolitical, opposing it when it oversteps its bounds should be apolitical as well. If acts of authoritarianism and outright lying aren’t considered instances of a government overstepping its bounds, what are?

On an entirely different level, I think it’s absurd how the letter, despite its slipshod logic, was able to spread across the Filipino online community with minimal critical evaluation coming from the demographic it supposedly represents.

Fair enough, the author raised some valid points, but it must be kept in mind that he raised these points by way of faulty logic, false propositions, and ad hominem lines of attack. Given these shortcomings, what merits the passive acceptance and repetition of the letter? Isn’t it disturbing that, in a time of crisis, the Middle Manileños had nothing but a copy-pasted mindset--a terribly written one, at that--to show for their expensive educations? Shouldn’t they be pissed at the author, if only because he did a lousy job at speaking in their behalf?

To me, the people who forwarded this letter are no different from the slogan-chanting tibaks they distance themselves from, in the sense that they’re merely repeating a prepackaged message they happen to agree with without giving much thought to what they're saying.

Reason should be above political allegiances; if one were to use reason as the basis for one’s stand, one must be ready to refute friend and foe alike. Given that the educated middle class is unwilling to critically scrutinize a perspective just because they agree with it, I cannot help but doubt whether they are as rational and apolitical as they portray themselves to be.

I find the emergence of a staunchly professional, apolitical middle class a welcome development, and for the most part I agree with their trabaho-muna mentality. However, the fact that its sentiments probably owe more to dogmatism than to reason should be enough cause for concern.

denas @ 2006-03-01T23:00:00

2006-03-01T15:03:07Z

I think it's now our responsibility to encourage discussion on the issue, whether through debate or through other means.

Let’s get right down to it, then.

We haven’t set anything definite just yet, but me, Inna, and Joan have been organizing a series of forums with a couple of UP institutions. Jack’s bassist friend Mikey is also on board. (Jack/people who know him: how do I get in touch with him?)

The idea, so far, is for these institutions to provide unimposing, comfortable venues for unaffiliated students to come as they are and air their own two cents on the recent events, free from the fear of being drowned out by more organized voices or the fear of a violent dispersal.

These informal afternoon gatherings will lead up to weekly forums with key speakers from the government, civil society, the academe, and other experts, who could then respond to the questions, opinions, and thoughts articulated in the informal round table discussions.

To frame the discussions, each week’s afternoon sessions (Mondays to Thursdays) and forum (Fridays) will be themed: first week, 1017 and average, everyday Filipinos; second week, military adventurism; and so on.

If you’ve got anything to say – even if you support 1017, even if you aren’t sure of your own position just yet, or even if you just want the politicians to let you get on with your life – please please please please come and share your thoughts. You matter; it may not seem like it, but you do. We want to provide you with an opportunity to shape others' thoughts, and perhaps to shape national policy as well. I’m posting concrete details as soon as they become available.

I’m spent, and I’m not in the condition to type out everything I want to say. Its times like these that make me wish I didn’t need so much downtime, and its times like these that remind me just how good falling in love with a cause feels.

One day after

2006-02-25T01:55:54Z

It must be kept in mind that the existence of clear and present danger has yet to be established, either by Malacañang or by the outfit behind the armed threat. So far, all the shows of force on the streets of Manila were by government troops and policemen. No anti-government armed threat materialized. All we have are reports and rumors.

Of course, by Malacañang’s own account, government forces have already neutralized the group behind the attempted power grab. So: if (1.) the threat had already been neutralized and (2.) was apparently so small that it had been resolved within a few hours, without any shots being fired, then what justification remains for the declaration of a state of emergency?

Two devil’s advocate possibilities: first, assume the threat hasn’t been neutralized just yet. If this is the case, then why is it that we haven’t heard from its instigators at all? There haven’t been any pirate radio broadcasts, no cloak-and-dagger interviews, no shows of force, nothing – not even in the span between Gen. Senga’s announcement of a foiled coup attempt (around 5 a.m.) and the declaration of 1017 (around 10:30), when the media was still free to broadcast whatever it wanted to. From experience, anti-government forces would've taken advantage of the broadcast media by then, if only to show that the neutralization wasn't effective.

Second, assume that the group behind the armed threat had been neutralized – so effectively, in fact, that nary a peep from it can be heard, nor was it able to fire any shots in its defense. If this is the case, then why is it that the government hasn’t shown any tangible proof of its actions? Names of people in Senga’s “personal custody” have been dropped, but so far, no detainees have been presented to the media.

Given that there haven’t been any manifestations of a clear and present danger – and I trust that the list above exhausts the possibilities – it is the citizenry’s responsibility as the final check and balance to question whether the declaration of a state of emergency was justified. This responsibility is beyond politics: one may disagree with the opposition and/or support Gloria’s policies, but one cannot simply disagree with the principle behind civil rights, nor should the rights to free expression and assembly be so passively relinquished.

The circumstances surrounding the alleged ‘neutralization’ – that it was quick, effective, and total – are unrealistic, probably because the armed threat never existed to begin with. Based on what can be seen so far, I'm inclined to think the reports - reports are all we've seen so far, after all - of an armed threat was merely a Malacañang ploy to justify the restriction of civil rights. This, in turn, was designed to allow them to break up demonstrations and silence the press with impunity. The actions of the government since yesterday better fit this hypothesis than the one it would have us believe: that is, that an armed threat exists, and that 1017 is supposed to facilitate the elimination of this threat.

To wit: the first manifestations of 1017 – the ban on all demonstrations, the arrest of Prof. David along with 19 other demonstrators, and the confiscation of several mock-up copies of the Friday Daily Tribune – were against civilians who were merely exercising their rights, and had nothing to do with any armed threat. So far, these are the activities that the government considers to constitute the “clear and present danger”: the exact set of activities that the citizenry should have a guaranteed recourse to if and when the government oversteps its bounds.

Such is our Catch-22: it is our responsibility to raise questions over the government’s actions, but the government’s actions were designed precisely to prevent us from raising these questions.

Updates: ANAKPAWIS Representative Crispin Beltran and his wife were arrested earlier today in Bulacan; BAYAN MUNA Representative Satur Ocampo successfully eludes capture after military men show up at an opposition-led forum in Sulo Hotel.

The Reichstag fire and Gleichschaltung

2006-02-24T09:18:47Z

On the night of February 27, 1933, a large fire broke out in the Reichstag building, the assembly hall for the German parliament. Judging from the speed and size of the blaze – most of the building had been gutted by the fire by the time the authorities were able to respond – investigators on the scene concluded that fire had broken out in multiple places, and was probably the work of an arsonist, or a team of arsonists.

A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was found naked and cowering behind the building. Nazi party members Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, who later became the head of the Gestapo, arrived on the scene shortly, and van der Lubbe was presented before them. Based on van der Lubbe’s presence in the scene of the crime, Göring declared the fire to be the handiwork of communists, and promptly had Communist Party members arrested. Hitler, in his capacity as Chancellor, used the fire to justify the declaration of a state of emergency. Within a day, Hitler was able to convince the aging President, Paul van Hindenburg, to declare the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended the rights to warrants for arrest, search, confiscation, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of peaceful assembly.

Thus began the process of Gleichschaltung – literally, synchronization – by which the Nazi Party consolidated its hold on the democratic Weimar republic. Within a month, all legislative powers had been effectively transferred to Hitler and his cabinet. Opposition parties were either banned or dissolved themselves voluntarily, and their members arrested; labor unions were forcibly broken up. The formation of new political parties became illegal, transforming the republic into a one-party state. The assassination of enemies of the state was legalized. Finally, upon the death of President van Hindenburg a year and a half after the fire, a secret law transferring the responsibilities of the Chancellor and the President into a single office came into effect and eliminated whatever check and balance remained.

In hindsight, it is clear that Hitler and the Nazi Party took advantage of the situation. Worth noting is how they were able to use the pretext of a single incident to gradually introduce increasingly totalitarian policies, through superficially legal and constitutional means. Beginning with what was ostensibly a temporary measure to resolve an urgent state of emergency, they eventually succeeded in transforming a democratic state into the Third Reich.

Also worth noting is the way the Nazis were able to do all of this without ever establishing the complicity of the communists, even though the rational behind the Reichstag Fire Decree was to facilitate a crackdown on their activities. While van der Lubbe was indeed a communist, it wasn’t as if he was acting as one: the communists were quick to distance themselves from van der Lubbe and his actions, and it eventually became clear that he was acting on his personal megalomaniac tendencies.

In other words: the justification used for the declaration of the state of emergency might not have existed at all.

In fact, some comments made by Nazis at the Nuremberg trials seem to indicate that some Nazis – including Göring – were involved. If this was indeed the case, then the Reichstag fire was part of a larger ploy to drum up support for their policies: an instance of orchestrated lawlessness to justify the creation of a totalitarian police state.

Niftacular.

2006-02-21T12:53:54Z

Do you ever find yourself staring at a blinking caret on a blank page for hours on end, for want of a way to structure your ideas? Ever toyed with your own personal Theory of Everything that you never commit to paper and eventually forget about? Need a method for making sense of your notes? Try Freemind. It’s a free application that generates a diagram for linking words, images, ideas, hyperlinks with each other using an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

Features:
Fully functional HTML, be it www links or links to local files.
Supports folding (collapsing of large, unwieldy sections of your diagram)
Fast one-click navigation, including folding / unfolding on one click and following links on one click at the same time
Smart drag-and-drop, including the possibility to copy nodes or copy style of nodes; dragging and dropping of multiple selected nodes; dropping of texts or list of files from outside
Smart copying and pasting into, including pasting of links from HTML or structuring the pasted content on the basis of the number of leading spaces in a line; pasting of lists of selected files
Smart copying and pasting from, including plain text and RTF (MS Wordpad, MS Word, MS Outlook messages).
Maps can be exported as webpages, with folding (see example)
Maps can be exported as .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files for printing

Screenshots: 1, 2, 3, 4

In the three days since I’ve downloaded Freemind, I’ve used it to generate a conceptual framework for a research proposal, an outline for a report on resource wars, and a reviewer for a theory class - shit I'd usually take a whole week to wade through. It certainly helped with organizing ideas into systematic trains of thought, cataloguing and contextualizing concepts within a framework, and developing raw, unstructured thoughts to the point of coherence and clarity. I’ve found that seeing all my ideas mapped out on a neat, structured diagram also helped with generating new ideas as well, if only because it freed up my mind from having to do the organizing on its own.

Catholic pantheon reference sighted, cap'n!

2006-02-13T18:52:21Z

St. Thaddeus, pray for us.

Interesting.

2006-01-28T12:01:45Z

My ecological footprint, in global hectares:

Food: 0.8
Mobility: 1.5
Shelter: 1.2
Goods and services: 4.4
Total footprint: 7.9

In comparison, the average ecological footprint in my country is 1.2 global hectares per person.

Worldwide, there exist 1.8 biologically productive global hectares per person.

If everyone lived like me, we would need 4.4 planets.

The highest average ecological footprint listed on Redefining Progress' 2004 report is - surprise, surprise - the United States, at 9.6 global hectares per person. This means that if everybody lived like an American, we would need the equivalent of 5.3 planets.

So much for our standard notions of 'development' and 'underdevelopment' - I mean, what sense is there in aspiring for a Western standard of living if we don't have five planets' worth of fossil fuels, farmland, steel, water and air to muck about with?

Not like I'm in a position to speak, though.

It was around one o'clock when the coffee began to take hold

2006-01-25T21:08:18Z

Since I've got nothing better to waste my caffeine buzz on, I watched The Root of All Evil?, a two-part Channel 4 documentary by Richard Dawkins (of Memetics and The Selfish Gene fame) on religious faith in the 21st century.

It’s certainly a relevant topic: on one hand, the natural sciences and other forms of reason has never been as developed as it is now, and has never before enjoyed as big a role as it does today. On the other hand, we have seen the advent of Muslim extremism and the reemergence of fundamentalist Christianity as a political force in the world’s sole superpower. Given that religion has historically given birth to the bloodiest and most destructive events and looks set to launch another big clash of civilizations, what status should religion be accorded in our World today?

Dawkins sees faith as something that has absolutely no place in 21st- century society. For him, faith and reason are mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed paradigms toward knowledge. According to Dawkins, since reason has now been taken to a very high level of sophistication, faith should be completely abandoned – which, to me, is tantamount to saying that we have reached the perfection of reason. It must be kept in mind, however, that reason is only as perfect as the knowledge it is based upon. Thus, to say that faith should be superseded by what Dawkins portrays as Perfect Reason is tantamount to saying that we 21st-century humans have perfect information about absolutely everything, which certainly isn’t the case.

Take, for instance, ‘rational’ social technologies from the 18th and 19th centuries, like bureaucracy and classical economics. From 200 years’ worth of experience, we can safely assert that these ideas are only perfect within the vacuum of pure logic, and tend to be less perfect when executed in the real world. Bureaucratic, rational-legal systems do not properly address human disenchantment as an unintended consequence, nor do they accommodate an apparently all-too-human desire for traditional forms of solidarity. Neoclassical economics can only take account of economic phenomena so long as they can be accommodated into the theory – as it turns out, ‘the World running out of viable energy sources within the century’ can amount to no more than an ‘externality’. Reason has failed society on multiple instances (and continues to do so) not because the method of logic itself is unsound, but because our information on the World is imperfect.

The claim that we now have perfect information on is a silly, invalid premise, yet this is precisely where Dawkins grounds his insistence on the replacement of faith by reason. His portrayal of reason as the only valid method to knowledge and understanding, ironically enough, irrational; he does not subject his view of reason to reason - it may even be said that he places absolute faith upon reason. As an aside, his frequent displays of irritability during the interviews he conducted made me wonder who, exactly, was playing the role of the whiny fundie and who was being the calm, objective, rational observer.

While I’ve been subjected to more than my fair share of fire-and-brimstone-for-not-going-to-mass hogwash, I wouldn’t go as far to say that religion and all the other forms of faith do not have a place in today’s world. In the broader sense of the word ‘faith’, day-to-day activities can only be accomplished through it – faith that pressing the key for ‘t’ will indeed cause a ‘t’ to show up on my screen and not bring about the end of civilization, for instance. In other words, methodical skepticism cannot be practically applied to each and every passing moment, if one were intent on actually accomplishing anything.

In the more restrictive sense of faith as religion, religion’s universality among all human civilizations seems to indicate that it caters to a basic human need: humans need to explain why the sun goes up and down, why the stars shine at night, why they need to eat and breathe and drink, and ultimately, why we live. Fair enough, 21st-century science can give us answers to the first three questions, as well as to a myriad more; however, for as long as that last question isn’t answered satisfactorily, people will still seek answers – even, as absurd as it may sound, from a book written about a hippie from 2,000 years ago.

I agree with Dawkins’ core assertion, though – that blind faith is dangerous, if only because it leads to extreme intolerance toward believers of other blind faiths. To me, however, Dawkins’ views, especially his insistence of his belief system’s superiority over all others and his reluctance to subject his own views to rational scrutiny, is nothing more than another form of blind faith, and thus a valid target of the same criticism.

Tsk. Nanghihinayang tuloy ako na walang Sociology of Science/Scientific Knowledge/Special topics: Ethnomethodology na inooffer sa UP.

Hmm. Between this documentary, BBC World, and The Office, it seems that I’ve been watching nothing but British TV, lately. Maliban sa Law & Order, pala.

denas @ 2006-01-11T23:50:00

2006-01-11T16:15:15Z

(19:02:16) me: chong alam ko na
(19:02:20) me: mag ex lax trip tayo
(19:02:24) me: tignan natin kung merong purple shit na lalabas
(19:02:44) *********: silly boy...
(19:02:51) *********: ex lax is for sick people...
(19:02:53) me: gago baka magtae ako ng
(19:02:56) me: leprechaun!
(19:02:56) me: gago
(19:03:02) me: chong
(19:03:07) me: pag ako nagtae ng leprechaun
(19:03:16) me: di kita bibigyan nung gold

(19:05:27) me: *****! nahawakan mo na ba ang sarili mong tae
(19:06:32) *********: of course i have...
(19:06:38) me: yak
(19:06:42) *********: there's this one time i used too much toilet paper...
(19:06:52) me: ahahahaha
(19:06:53) *********: so the toilet was overflowing when i flushed...
(19:07:05) *********: so in a panic i started taking shit out...
(19:07:32) *********: and then the guy in the next stall was like wtf!

* * *

(19:04:26) me: pare
(19:04:28) me: astig siguro
(19:04:30) me: kung tumae ka
(19:04:33) me: tas yung lumabas
(19:04:34) me: genie!
(19:04:38) **********: lol
(19:04:41) **********: san mo nakuha yang ideya na yan
(19:04:43) me: "i will grant you three wishes!"

(19:05:44) me: ikaw ****
(19:05:49) **********: ano
(19:05:50) me: nakahawak ka na ba ng sarili mong tae?
(19:09:19) **********: well pag naghuhugas ng puwet
(19:09:23) **********: nde ako fan ng tissue e
(19:09:27) me: HAHAHAHAHAHA kadiri ka gago
(19:09:34) **********: bat
(19:09:45) **********: pag available yung tabo dun ako hehe
(19:10:17) **********: pakyu!
(19:10:59) **********: ska isipin mo nga
(19:11:01) **********: pag tissue ginamit mo
(19:11:04) **********: may matitira tira pa run
(19:11:05) **********: yak
(19:11:40) me: hahahaha
(19:11:41) me: so pano yun
(19:11:50) me: kinakamay mo yung bawat piraso ng tae sa puwet mo
(19:12:24) ********** logged out.

denas @ 2005-11-12T23:49:00

2005-11-12T16:15:44Z

I just spent the past day and a half fixing my pc. It's up, barely, but it would be a stretch to call it running; up and limping, more like. The real issue - either an overworked power supply unit or a bad motherboard, as far as I can tell - remains unfixed, and I wasn't able to salvage most of the programs from a botched reformat job.

There's nothing quite like a reformatted pc, especially one that'd seen you through deadline nights, sound trip afternoons and Civ3-marathon early mornings. I've never been one to become attached to anything (much less inanimate objects) but this pc had become, over time, less an appliance and more an extra limb, hand and brain. This isn't merely the attachment to the well-worn fit of a pair of old sneakers - it has more in common with the familiarity with one's own muscles, senses, and thought patterns. I mean, I spent a good thirty minutes in slack-jawed shock trying to figure out the suddenly-unfamiliar mouse sensitivity, icon placements, keyboard shortcuts and window positions once I got XP to work properly; I imagine this is how it would be like to forget how to use a pencil, or walk, or talk. More intense than that time I forgot how to sit down, at the very least, or that time I snuck a Family Guy reference into an entry under the influence of fatigue.

I had a falling out with a good friend (a real, meatspace one) the week before this one, incidentally. The problem, as far as I was able to tell, was a matter of unintentionally prolonged periods of silence, with a couple of unfulfilled promises thrown in the mix for good measure; truth be told, it probably had more to do with my addiction to virtual realities, electronic, chemical and personal - porn, video games, internet humor, and self-absorbed daydreaming, in other, less euphimistic words.

Both hard losses, to be sure; both were intensely personal on completely different levels, although I committed more time mulling over those lost gigabytes than over the lost friendship. Not exactly surprising, especially to people who know me; the real surprise is that I bothered to write a paragraph on the fact, that I bothered to recognize this particular pattern of thinking and commit it to memory.

Bah, enough of this mopey malarkey! I might as well end this entry on a lighter, less contemplative note: it's not all bad, considering that I've successfully sexified my desktop back to its former glory, and I've got a few interesting reads lined up to boot.

Puede na, puede na.

I’m in the throes of a hoity-toity existential crisis, goddamnit!

2005-10-28T20:51:49Z

Whoop-de-doo, my grade for the past sem just came in, and boy are they abysmal! With all the forlorn dot zero zeroes, my TCG could pass for a PETA flier featuring puppies on death row! Here’s another sentence that’ll end with an exclamation point! Hell, I’ll end this one with three!!!

I don’t get it: on most days I’d be up to the gills in good music, good food and overall good vibes. I get enough sleep. I like the course I’m in, and while I can’t say the same for the people I go to school with, it’s not something that can’t be remedied by a good pair of full-sized headphones. I’m doing something I like to do, and on my own terms, too. What gives?

“See now, that’s your problem right there.”

It’s that dude from the More International Cigarettes commercial, the one where he saved a lady who was stalled on train tracks from a nasty death. He’s in the driver’s seat of the late-eighties American convertible from the ad, probably because didn’t have enough money for a new set of props for this hallucination. He has that cut-rate Caucasian model grin going on, and a cigarette dangled from his lips.

“Growing up in a school ran by deranged, venom-douching nuns conditioned you to reserve your best efforts exclusively for things you detested doing.” he breaks his smile just long enough to get a light going on his More International Cigarette. “Things that you did find interesting, on the other hand, were relegated to the status of mere after-school shenanigans done halfheartedly, and if I may say so myself, slip-shoddily.

“As a consequence, you can only really be good at what you hate doing, or if you’re doing something under copious amounts of stress. You can only shine after the spit of being told what to do, of being made to do it on an unforgiving timeframe, of being made to do this all while sitting in a cramped classroom with boys who don’t shower and girls who’re a little too overeager with the baby cologne.” More International Cigarettes Dude’s lady friend giggles haughtily from the passenger seat. She is clearly a woman who knows her way with the baby cologne.

He catches a quick puff of the Taste of Magic before continuing: “Doing what you like to do, on your own terms, is what you suck at. You haven’t got the initiative nor the dedication to see things through, which, unfortunately, is necessary for your lifestyle.”

Hallucinatory revelations I can handle perfectly well, but hallucinatory revelations involving cheap Rod Serling clones are of an entirely different breed. I can’t take it any more. “Glory fuckin’-be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit,” I stammer. “Don't you guys ever change copywriters? The script for this moment of clarity stinks!”

“I think what you meant to say was ‘They’ve made a half-assed rank-and-file pink-collar red-tape serf out of my genius-I.Q. ass!’”, he mumbles under his breath. He takes another puff and quickly regains his composure. “Look on the bright side, kid: you’ll probably make a good clerk, or a call-center agent. I hear there’s good money to be had in those nine-to-five shit-shoveling jobs. Or you can be an accountant, like your parents.”

“Shit, onga no.” I slouch back into my seat, defeated.

“I’ll take that as a ‘help me, please, Mister More International Cigarettes’.” He takes one final drag, and with a snap of his fabled fingertips, with the exact same digital abracadabra he had used to save countless lasses stalled on train tracks, the man from the More International Cigarettes ad made something out of my life for me. I am engulfed by a bad special effect. “Catch the Taste of Magic, the Magic Taste of More!”, croons an unseen voice talent, and this is the last thing I remember before passing out.

I was toiling over a spreadsheet when I came to. “Budget Allocation for FY 2006.xls”, proclaims the header bar. The walls are reverberating to the strains of my neighbor croaking Bamboo’s “Hallelujah” over a tinny karaoke set. My ass is in a world of fiery pain, and upon further inspection, I find several chili peppers firmly lodged in my behind.

“Ah,” a smirk slowly forming on mouth, “doing something I hate in less-than-ideal circumstances. I now understand the price of perfection.” I thump my knuckles on the desk to the tune and get myself started on allocating budgets on my way to a long, fruitful life.