SKIRMISHER

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 […]