Senator Richard Gordon today ends the Senate investigation of the fertilizer fund scam, as he tells the Office of the Ombudsman “NAKAKAHIYA NA KAYO!” The last part will probably not find print or public broadcast for being too harsh but I just loved it when I heard it blurted out. More than a thousand days since the scandal broke out, the Ombudsman has not filed a single case, finding alibi at every turn for it.
Richard Gordon for President!
Satellite view of Barack Obama inauguration. More photos from The Big Picture.
The Secretary of Justice of the Philippines is being recommended by its very own association of lawyers, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, for suspension.
It’s confidential! he shoots back in anger, instead of pleading innocence.
You get this cadaverous leprechaun of a man for a Secretary of Justice in your country, something must be terribly, awfully wrong somewhere. You are the President and you choose him to be your Secretary of Justice to show how well you regard issues pertaining justice, you must be sick.
It is my nature—I am loyal to fault, from people to things; and that includes cell service providers. I was a Smart subscriber ever since first time I owned a cell phone many many years back and never thought of migrating to another. But after four cell cards and autoloads totaling more than a thousand bucks that flowed out like water on a leaking bucket, enough is enough. My power as a consumer, I have decided to exercise: I am junking Smart.
Just to be sure, I’ve asked around friends and colleagues. Is it just me, maybe? They wondered aloud: you mean you notice Smart’s game only now?!! All except one were Smart subscribers before their own big switch months ahead. Globe is a lot better, they advise me, even in signal. And so the switch starting tomorrow.
Smart has this 206 line for their promos. I guess it started then. It bugs with endless raffle promos that come streaming down even in the most inconvenient hours. But unlike other promos which could be unsubscribed or blocked, this one just won’t fucking go away because they come with no button for off! Now the thing is they seem to be charged from the load balance! I’ve heard about that before but I dismissed it as something improbable, until lately.
Yesterday, I did a test. I eloaded my phone with a hundred bucks. I texted a friend five blocks away: “are we gonna have a jamming today, bro?” Then came a flurry of messages on 206. I checked my balance: dialed 1515. Surprise, it worked: “your current balance is P68 and 0 free txt msgs”. What? P32 for an 8-word message! I did that for three more messages before balance inquiry service went off as it often does.
I am wondering if it’s a scheme to recoup payments they are making to extortionist insurgents just to be spared from sabotage of their towers. Or some people are making a fast buck.
Oh well…
A janitor worked for 41 years at UP, gets 92 centavos for retirement pay. How the hell could this happen?
In any case, he may yet end up with a lot of money with all the attention he’s now getting from beneficiaries of his past good deeds.
For mature audience only.
I heard it over the radio: the continuation of the unfinished Eraserhead’s reunion concert will be on March 7. It will be called “The Final Set”. No final venue yet.
LATE UPDATE: Venue is Mall of Asia
Line up quick if you have what it takes— for the best job in the world.
If there is yet any doubt that the world is in crisis, take this: the porn industry kingpins are seeking financial rescue.
The war on drugs is a war that will never be won.
The wildfire about the Alabang Boys is spreading about just yet. Allegations of payoffs, as usual, are surfacing alongside accusations of impropriety and illegality here there and everywhere in the capture and detention of the drug suspects. In the courtroom, the question to be asked would be: where are your proofs, people? Lawyers will rule the day and pockets will be lined with money. The man on the street in his street-smart wisdom by now knows who’s telling lies and half-lies and who are gonna be making huge sums out of this, and then some, but, like it or not, it is wisdom good for idle talk for proof he has none. In time, the heat of the transgression will dissipate and the news will be pushed by more urgent issues of the day. Days will turn to weeks, weeks to months, months to years, and the issue about the Alabang Boys, as most others did, will certainly wear out and vanish– mark this. Some will fall as sacrificial lambs but society’s war on drugs will remain just that— a war that can never be won.
It’s the law of supply and demand, folks, and like the law of gravity it will assert itself without fail after paying the high cost of staying afloat in midair.
Here, on one hand, you have users who wonder aloud what’s wrong about sniffing chemicals to get high and is not wrong with chain-smoking cigarettes or drowning in barrels of alcohol right in the street corner. On the other hand, you have suppliers who wonder aloud what’s wrong about selling cocaine or marijuana to willing buyers that is not wrong about selling insecticide or ropes or cigarette or liquors, for that matter, in the neighborhood store. Consider now: if anything is ever wrong about them, how do they compare with murder, for instance, or arson or burglary or with any crime against humanity? Exactly what crime against the world is it being committed when a person is sniffing shabu, I wonder. Is he killing anyone? is he raping someone? is he to massacre a neighborhood? is he committing a crime as heinous so that he must be purged from the alleys or delivered to death? If truth be told, if we come right down to it, if one is caught with a few grams of illegal drugs and is sent behind bars according to the law, or sent to the gallows or electric chair, loses his freedom or life as the case may be, who is committing a bigger crime? Is it not society who robbed him of his freedom or life– all for what?— a few grams of mind-bending chemicals?
The war on drugs is inspired by noble motives, no question about that, but we wonder if society must indeed be shielded from evil. Is a man holy because he is kept in a room sheltered in comfort from the wickedness of the world? Or is he holy because, exposed to all sorts of sins, he refuses them all? In protecting man from wickedness, are we not in fact creating a bigger monster instead?
Thoughts to ponder about…
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