SKIRMISHER

I think this is how “the betrayal” actually happened.

[Judas to Jesus: I’m forming a heavy metal band. I’ll let you do drums. Come on, what do you say? I’m not really gay, but I’m so sincere I’m kissing you.]
When evening came, and when Saturday Night Live was over, Jesus was reclining at the table with [...]

Cyberspace is full of dead people; it’s crawling with traces of people’s last thoughts, last sentiments, last human impressions.
In a sense, mankind has unwittingly created an electronic version of immortality.

Simon Ng was a college freshman in New York. In May 2005, somebody tied him up and repeatedly stabbed him in the chest with a butcher [...]

We’ve been deciding on how to create a new invite for a girl’s 18th birthday. The mother of the girl wants something different. While the usual invites say something like, “I’m 18 now, you’re invited” and all that shit, the mother wants it done in as unique a way as possible.
And we’re wracking our brains [...]

The further integration of blogging into the lives of individuals is fast taking us back four million years ago, right at the heart of Stanley Kubrick’s greatest tale.

I have always believed the whole idea behind blogging is simple: placing anybody in a role that allows them to make sense of something as faceless as the [...]

There’s something so sad about a dead man with shiny shoes and a lunch bag.

I got this email today, about somebody who got hit by a bus crossing Ayala Avenue in Makati.
And the first thing in my head was, “What shiny shoes.”
How neatly the shoelaces were tied. And the lunch bag. These little things, how [...]

Look at you. Aren’t you just all dolled up? How cool you’re standing there like that toothpaste TV ad. Sucking air through your teeth. Staring into the glass and wondering what you’re doing here, anyway. You’re thinking, This is how Elvis did it.
You gaze across the maddening hyperspace and still, she’s on the bar stool. [...]

[OldBoy: Daesu eats a live octopus before an awestruck Mido [left], and later screws the girl [right], only to discover something so devastating about her that he’d ask the first asshole who comes along to “shoot him in the head.”]
Revenge is a dish best served cold.
I first saw that line in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather; [...]

Three of the best words in the world are, “You are right.” When I find I’m the recipient of these three words, it calms me. It makes me feel good.
But sometimes, it also shames me. It gives me a strong urge to jump off a cliff and die. How can anybody enjoy feeling so right [...]

I was feeling sentimental the other night. There was Mozart’s piano sonata in the background as I worked. Then out of nowhere, a small butterfly came fluttering into the room. It circled around me as I stared. Tenderly, it landed on my shoulder.
I almost cried; there’s something about pretty small flying things that touches your [...]

(Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo [left] before the hasty makeover, and [right] announcing the Unproclamation wearing a near-perfect emperor penguin disguise. Ignacio Bunye says the same make-up artist who worked on Shrek did this fabulous makeover; that same makeup artist is probably now “sleeping with the fishes” with Luca Brasi.)
No, I’m not specifically pro-GMA. I’m not also siding [...]

[If a Danish newspaper could publish a cartoon on Muhammed, and Filipino protesters could indulge so much in freedom of expression, maybe I could up the ante myself. I’ve realized recently I haven’t been enjoying my so-called freedom, so I’m posting this “evil” piece and see how far it would take me to verbal hell. [...]

There’s this thing that keeps nagging at me.
What if there were no “Hello, Garci” tape?
Instead, what if there were a video footage of GMA and Garci in a swanky five-star hotel room, and the words coming from the room were not “Hello, Garci,” but “Yes! Yes! Yes! Garci, oh yes! Give it to me, Garci! [...]

I shouldn’t be here; I shouldn’t be making a new post on my blog. I’m supposed to be up to my neck completing a lot of things because the truth is, I indeed am. I’m chasing various deadlines that sometimes make me wish I were on another planet in the solar system, one that has [...]

A kid threw me this question today: When people fart in other countries, does it smell good?
This is the same kid who, three weeks ago, was leading a platoon of six-year-olds down the road chanting (in true Lord of the Flies fashion), “Ibagsak si Gloria! Ibagsak si Gloria!”
They were just having fun, but the grown-ups [...]

“I don’t buy drugs, but if you really want it, I know people,” I tell him.
I’m not really into paying women for sex, but if you really want it, I know people, too. I can show you the way. I can even hook you up with my ever-bugaw cousin.
Point the way; that’s what I usually [...]

You’re looking for clarity and meaning, but this world, baby, offers neither.
Yet, while I acknowledge that life is meaningless, I still choose to live; that choice makes me one of Albert Camus’s “absurd heroes.”
I’m squeamish about calling myself “hero.” But maybe, by not choosing suicide, or by not choosing the artificial meaning offered by religion—by [...]

Sometimes, mornings are like a nosebleed.
Some mornings, you feel you don’t wanna write this novel anymore. Some mornings you feel you’d rather write a 50-page treatise on the rings of Saturn. Or the mating rituals of Cuban earthworms.
Friends tell you you’re now living the “good” life. Now you’re calling the shots. Now there’s no specter [...]