Dear Great Leader loves the Muslim Socialist leader of That Powerful Capitalist Country.
I finally got my t-shirt from Monica.
Comelec.gov.ph and other vital government websites have been taken offline by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) cyberattacks just days before the most important day in our democratic way of life.
Transport, telecommunications, and mass media networks are reported to be fending off similar…
We at Democracy.Net.Ph express our concerns over latest reports over the defacement of a Philippine government website. According to news reports, the website of the Philippine News Agency was hacked by the self-identified “Chinese Hacker EvilShadow Team”. This latest incident gives the impression…
Everything you always wanted to know about the automated election system (AES). And you get to ask your questions too. Join Democracy.Net.PH for “Social Media Forum on National ICT Issues: The Automated Election System 2013.”
On Saturday, 23 March 2013, 8:00 o’clock in the morning, at the…
Democracy.Net.PH and Sen. TG Guingona met today to discuss crowdsourcing and legislation. Sen Guingona is the author of a crowdsourcing bill while Democracy.Net.PH collaborated with ICT experts, civil rights advocates, netizens, and concerned citizens via crowdsourcing in crafting the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom (MCPIF).
The MCPIF was filed as SB No. 3327 by Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago after the successful completion of the crowdsourcing initiative. Democracy.Net.PH hopes that its experience in crowdsourcing the MCPIF can serve as valuable inputs to Sen. Guingona’s bill, and hopes that he will support the passage of the MCPIF in the legislature.
(Photo by Senator TG Guingona’s staff.)
“This is a start but our position is that ICT policy should be holistic and not piecemeal. This bill can still be improved to address the ICT policy and development our country needs now. Issues like cybersecurity, cyberdefense, cybercrime, and national ICT development must not be put off and…
“So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn’t make me feel better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I’m the one dating me. As I go to endless rounds of parties and bar nights, perfumed and sprayed and hopeful, rotating myself around the room like some dubious dessert. I go on dates with men who are nice and good-looking and smart – perfect-on-paper men who make me feel like I’m in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
“So you suffer through the night with the perfect-on-paper man – the stutter of jokes misunderstood, the witty remarks lobbed and missed. Or maybe he understands that you’ve made a witty remark but, unsure of what to do with it, he holds it in his hand like some bit of conversational phlegm he will wipe away later. You spend another hour trying to find each other, to recognise each other, and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, That was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.
“And then you run into Nick Dunne on Seventh Avenue as you’re buying diced cantaloupe, and pow, you are known, you are recognised, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though). You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It’s finally arrived.”
- Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Alternately thinking, “I don’t wanna be sad anymore” and “I wanna be happy.” Which is better, do you think?
- Boss: you are losing weight.
- Me: sir, i have not been eating.
- Boss: well if you don't eat, you die.
- Me: we all die, eventually.
- Boss: are you trying to rush your death because you cannot find a man?
- Me: that is an assumption on your part and that assumption is wrong.
I heard news today (quite hush-hush because of its nature) that M was contemplating a separation from his wife. They had been married some time and, apparently undeneath the exterior of marital bliss, he has been suffering in silence. And this suffering, he has decided, can no longer be endured. I ask about what makes him hurt: wifey is nice enough, I have met her a number of times. I thought he got exactly what he wanted, she being one of those sweet, good-natured females not given to complaints.
We are just so fundamentally different, he tells me. But you must have known that, how she really is, I reply, noting that they dated a good seven years before marriage. Ah but what is seven years when you only see each other once a week or even less? Besides, while I will admit to having known about this side of her personality, I was totally blindsided by my inability to accept it on a day-by-day basis. You think you can and are willing to accept things. But it’s really quite different when you are living that life.
What happens now? I ask. He says he does not know how to tell her.
- Me: Kuya, ambilis mo naman in-adjust yung sa kuryente. Parang madali lang ata. Turuan mo naman ako para sa susunod, ako na lang ang gagawa niyan.
- Mechanic: Eh di nawalan naman ako ng trabaho ma'am.
“Just one thing?” I asked.
“Just one thing.”
“Ask you to love me,” I said.
“Justin—”
“Just let me say this. I don’t say honest things often enough, and the years are growing short. Sometimes I curse the stars — the fates — for playing this trick, that I wasn’t born at the right time you need, for you to love me.”
The boy was quite for a while, and then he said, ”I’m sorry.”
I consider that in the stillness that burned between us. “Don’t think about it,” I said. I smiled at him and looked at the gathering dark of sunset.
But I do think about it. I think about it every single day.
