It’s good to be back!

It took a lot of heaving to put an end to that month-long bout of literary constipation. I also intentionally stayed away from my time-hogging computer to put a dent in my reading backlog. So my apologies to the blog’s readership. I know you’re a small bunch (my estimate circling around an innocuous single digit figure) but I really appreciate you guys sticking around. If I somehow snap out of the financial slump I’m in and I know where you live, I will send each of you a bundle of sharpened pencils as a token of gratitude. What to use them for is entirely up to you (but if you can find a way to threaten Kris Aquino with them, I will send you a freakin’ Boeing 747).

If you read my stuff, you must have wandered into my blog from the comments I made in Jessica Zafra’s site. If you understand her humor then you must have some level of weirdness floating around in your head. Quick! Run outside and thank the high heavens you’re not normal!

I think normalcy equates to mediocrity and we are stocked full of it as it is. I mean look at our attempts to secure any semblance of recognition in the Olympics. That in itself is a symptom that something’s terribly askew.

Has anybody noticed that we as a culture don’t encourage ingenuity as much as we should? Sure we come up with creative ways to get around certain day-to-day dilemmas. And we do have excellent underground talent. But an alarmingly large chunk of the societal bell curve finds fulfillment in copying others (preferrably the ones that come from overseas) which I think is completely cockeyed.

Case in point: In 1996, Alanis Morrisette came to Manila as part of her concert tour. In the weeks leading up to the said event, local noontime show A.S.A.P. held an ”Alanis look-alike/sing-alike” contest and the winner would be announced by Alanis herself. At the finals, they had about a dozen wannabees lined up on the stage and nobody seem to be cringing.

Strange concept. In North America, they do that too by the way…Every Halloween. Or maybe as a spoof of something. Or at the gay pride parade. But only we can do it with a straight face.

And do movies really need to have recycled song titles to sell at the box office? And how come a considerable percentage of local TV shows are really just travesties of imported originals?

As I’ve probably already said before, I’m proud to be weird. As should you be. It’s hard to defend sometimes but it’s easier to breathe when you’re far from the herd.