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The Copycat Effect

(January-February 2007 issue)

The authorities in the discipline of forensic psychology have analyzed with keen attention how in the name of heaven and hell does society breed criminal-minded, morbid-brained mad caps.

Yours truly, for instance, is admittedly morbid-brained (but emphatically not criminal-minded nor a mad cap); this for the reason that I am born of medical practitioners of a mother and father whose daily discussions on hospital deaths over breakfast have been entrenched in the recesses of my subconscious.

Forensic psychologists (God bless them), moreover, in a study conducted to determine the triggers of criminal tendencies, arrived at a conclusion that cultural conditioning, psychosis or a person’s traumatic upbringing can elicit criminal propensity.

However, apart from the triggers mentioned, what else can be taken into account as a justifiable reason for triggering a criminal psyche?

Three words: Media. Lame censorship.

The Copycat Effect (coined by Loren Coleman used in his book of the same title) is a tendency of sensational media hype about violence and criminalities to result in more of the same through imitation. In an article written by Michael Hammerschlag on the copycat effect, he reasoned coherently that “…in a nation of 300 million people there are enough twisted individuals to latch on the sickest example…if it’s drawn clearly enough. “

Case in point: I happened to drop by a Makati outlet of McDonald’s for a later than usual breakfast when a poster glued over a building wall caught my interest.

The poster exhibits a bloodied body of a middle aged man with black text screaming Kay Lito Glean. Walang Atrasan (For Lito Glean. No Retreat.).

I stood before the wall for a moment, examining the notice and wondering to myself who on earth is this slain man and why a testimonial of his misfortune is on display for pedestrians, both adults and the young at that, to gawk at.

As a consequence of this encounter, I munched on my breakfast trying especially hard to think of rainbows and daffodils so as not to lose my appetite over a foul display of some poor person’s bloodied remains.

From an online research, I learned that Lito Glean—the murdered man on the notice—
was the security chief of Jejomar Binay, Makati Mayor and a major opposition politician. September 16th of 2006, Glean was gunned down at a gas station in Fort Bonifacio, a posh shopping and residential area in central Manila. The murder is viewed as nothing else but politically motivated (duh).

I acknowledge the truth of Lito Glean’s people’s bereavement and rage over the former’s unfortunate murder. I understand that no amount of street and media exposure could contain the misery they bear heavy on their shoulders. I realize the pathetic probability of justice delayed or never accomplished.

But for crying out loud, whatever happened to the protection of the civilians against malicious media and their vulnerability to irresponsible media hype such as the Lito Glean crusade and its macabre parade of bad publicity?

This, along with sensational, sex-embracing, violence-happy tabloids (Misis, kinatay ni mister: bloody foul), pollutes and adulterates the populace.

Alas, these days, whether we like it or not, parents can only do so much to safeguard their children.

Just ponder on Murphy’s Law number seven: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

Yes.

***

The student-journalists of the Benildean Press Corps receive incentives in the form of tuition subsidy.

The subsidy is granted and approved by the Students’ Grants Unit, an office working under the college administration.

The amount deducted from a student-journalist’s tuition is reimbursed from the fees the rest of the non-scholar members of the student body disburse.

Hence, the college administration nor the La Salle system is not directly responsible for the incentives granted to the student-journalists.

For this reason, the Benildean Press Corps is in service to the student body that proffer part of their tuition for the publication of the college paper.

In this case, I beg of you, my old lady tyrant: Please do not assume you could impose your authority or intentions and play the despot in our little campus press room drama.

We do not and shall never owe you.

Read up on bribery and while you’re at it, the Campus Journalism Act of 1991’s Declaration of Policy: “It is the declared policy of the State to uphold and protect the freedom of the press even at the campus level and to promote the development and growth of campus journalism as a means of strengthening ethical values…”

Ethics: munch through it. Then wash it down with self-respect.

No apologies for spreading the truth.

Top five reasons to choke on that Christmas ham (No, make that six)
(December 2006 special issue)

Even before the Pampangueños start pushing over-priced lanterns to gawky nonnative tourists in sun visors or sidewalk eateries open the bibingka department of their shop, Henry Sy already has Here Comes Santa Claus blaring in his mall speakers. The ambiance of synthetic pine bearing glittered mini-globes and Christmas cane peppermints on sale will not be complete without the immortal Pasko na Sinta ko sang in perfect I’m-gagging-on-a-pinecone voice of Gary Valenciano.

If you are a holiday grinch or you are simply a person with enough sense of irony to recognize what’s real music from what seems to be some rubbish composition arranged on a bad night peppered with booze and bad inspiration, I suppose you recognize the sad fact that the following Christmas songs (unfortunately, probably blaring in Henry Sy’s mall speakers as we speak) are as lethal as the five-year-old fruitcake you left rotting in the cupboard.

Ladies and Gentlemen and suckers for Christmas, here are the top five reasons to choke on that Christmas ham:

1. Spageti Sa Pasko (Pasta Remix), Sexbomb Dancers—talk about milking dry a novelty song until household cats go berserk from the overplay that they begin to yelp obscenely in the dead of the night. Because the producers thought that the overrated Spageti’s sickening popularity on airways was not enough, they decided on a Christmas remix of it, making the Sexbomb Dancers-smitten bus drivers play it on loop during the worst time on a Christmas day: rush hour.
2. Christmas Bonus, Aegis Band—the official Christmas anthem of the blue-collared proletariats. The song speaks about hirelings and wage-earners badgering the upwarldly mobiles to hand them extras so they can fund the ideal Christmas dinner—one accompanied by a rented videoke machine.
Performed by the Aegis, a band comprised of members with mustard-yellow hair and imitation blings, Christmas Bonus still remains one of the favored picks in every company Christmas caroling. Go figure.
3. Macarena Christmas remix, Los del Rio—you bet your boots, this is the Christmas version of that popular dance song with dance steps even a pea-brained retard can perform acceptably. Its music video featured scantily clad women in platforms, doing lousy lip syncs and dancing the dance. If you look closely, one of the dancers in the video suspiciously resembles Dennis Rodman in hot pants.
4. Macho Na Si Santa (Super Dance remix), Masculados—the same pseudo boy band who contributed the songs Uhhya, Uhhya and Ratratin to the brilliant realm of MIDI-sounding novelty music brings us Macho Na Si Santa Super Dance remix. This song, together with I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus will surely scar a child forever, with the thought that Santa Claus is very much human like any other middle life crisis-stricken lemon who gives in to vanity and lust to hopefully compensate for a receding hairline.
5. Crazy Frog Christmas medley—played usually in cheap roving circuses, this music bleeds from every jeepney speaker, maddening commuters with its fast rhythm and distorted consonance. Having to listen to it on a supposedly happy Christmas Eve would only make you want to stab the person sitting next to you at the dinner table with a fork (Hopefully it’s the silly one who gives out the bad fruitcakes.).

***

So, Saddam Hussein had been sentenced to execution by hanging and I am shaking my head with the distraught humanitarians. However, this is not a question of the savagery of execution or of Hussein’s despotism and twenty four year practice of atrocity over Iraq. This is an issue of sheer hypocrisy on the part of the first world dynamite that is America.

Hussein shall be subjected to execution because of the reprisal attack he ordered against Dujail which lead to a massacre of 148 of its town people in 1982. Moreover, the court also shoved crimes against humanity issues to his sorry face, which of course, involved the infamous Operation Desert Storm a.ka. The Gulf War.

Can you smell the stink of stupidity? How preposterous this whole political applesauce is.

The 1991 Operation Desert Storm was a Republican idea with the U.S. government under George Bush Sr.funding for arms and biological agents. Hussein is widely known to have acquired battlefield intelligence from the United States, which also hints of substantial CIA involvement during the era.

And why was the verdict announced two days prior to the American midterm elections? Three words: Republicans milking votes.

Choke me.

Blimp shady
(October 2006 issue)

I was told of one DLS-CSB professor who diverts her misplaced frustrations toward her miserable students by loudly labeling them idiots in classroom discussions. A self-proclaimed super person, she forewarns the nuisances in the lot that she could hurl them out the window if need be.

Horror swelled in the four corners of my skull as I visualize Miss Super lugging a writhing student and afterwards hurling him out the window. Then, the noise of glass crashing, coinciding with a roll of thunder as an impending storm looms over the doomed juniors holding up anxiety-induced constipation, stranded in their armchairs.

“Eeek.” was all I could mutter under a lungful of air.

I recall being verbally insulted by my first grade Mathematics teacher that a lump of fire seemed to build up in my guts which explodes into a screech each time she revealed a pack of arithmetic flash cards from up her sleeves. I finished elementary school with minimal knowledge in math. In high school, I would stare down on the red zeros in my Algebra notebook and my first grade teacher’s face would materialize on the o-mouth of a zero, with the same fat, incensed face of a child annihilator.

I don’t understand why Miss Super, the colossal scrooge, was granted a teaching post in this institution.

I acknowledge the fact that constructive criticism is necessary and indispensable for an effectual education. However, being called an idiot in class is comparable to paying some tyrant to repeatedly sock you in the head.

A sane dog would bite you mean on the arse if you kick it too cruel.

Oh, she’ll have her day.


***

It is supposed to be a rape case, and as a woman, I should be feeling especially offended and perturbed. But I am emphatically not.

“Nicole”, the 22-year-old Zamboanga City native who claimed she was raped by Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith while three of his companions, all servicemen as well, cheered on, should have known the repercussions of engaging in a drunken spree with four liquored- up strangers and afterwards even hitching a ride with them.

The June 6th issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer came up with a news article stating that Nicole “never used the word rape but only the word “sex”” when she first confided the supposed incident to another US serviceman who was eventually questioned by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The same serviceman later identified as one Bamberger said Nicole had admitted that a condom was used in the sex act.

The pieces of evidence that reveal that Nicole supposedly only used the word “sex” and never “rape” and her alleged rapist using a condom during the deed bring about doubts whether or not there was an actual rape that happened or it was nothing but consensual sex between two matured individuals.

The case is still being tried in court so I should stop gnawing into the controversy and play down my ranting.

However, there is one thing I am sure of: Freedom is a package deal. With it comes responsibility…

…and consequences.

Birthday Bashing
(August 2006 issue)

My tormenter in grade school was an androgynous eight-year-old tub of lard who feeds on sloppy peanut butter sandwiches in between mathematical equations. She would loudly express her repulsion towards me by calling me a midget in the middle of a game of hopscotch at dismissal, and, on every occasion, when she felt like performing her obligatory terroristic attacks against my humanity.

I recently had the direful chance of meeting her almost a decade after that one afternoon she tried to shove my head in a flowerpot. She is now, beyond my imagination, a loving mother of two, and a type of a kindly woman who would cry over a detergent soap commercial.

I then resolved that people, like things tangible, change over years of parental chastening and secondary school classes on values and formation.

However, in the concept of dualism, it is stated that there are two basic opposing principles, such as good and evil, both of which can not exist without the other.

In this light, do I say that while there are reformed jerks, there are, of course, perpetual browbeaters.

What is utterly disturbing is when such brutes mature into middle-aged bullies, using their seat of authority to concoct misfortunes against people who don’t take their fancy.

Case in point: I published a poster in the eve of my birthday inviting my co-student journalists to free lunch. The poster shows a mock cartoon of myself with child-drawn horns sticking out of my hair. The horns were implications of an inside joke in the press corps, following the knowledge that a chief like myself is the Darth Vader of a normal workplace.

I was having a wonderful afternoon with my cohorts amidst an Everest of paper work when a DLS-CSB Queen Bee paid an unannounced visit to the office bearing the poster in question. After exchanging hellos to my boss, she then proceeded to questioning me regarding the birthday poster she found posted on the office door. I explained that the girl-child on the poster was a cartoon version of me and that the horns sticking out of the cartoon’s head has been an inside joke among my co-student journalists in the press corps.

“You’d post this in a Catholic institution?” was the only response I received followed by “This should call for a disciplinary action.”

I was overwhelmed beyond words like how I was bowled over watching Mariah Carey’s Glitter on big screen with my head screaming “Justice!” for the P200 I just blew.

The Queen Bee left with a caustic barb so terrifying it left my pancreas melting out of my derriere: “This is not the end of it.”

In this cause did I decide to come up with possibly morally insulting sights within the Catholic institution that is the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde:

The brilliant student dancers of the College posing in their promotional posters with their privates bandaged-up in canvas.

The photoshopped posters of one professor doing a flimsy impersonation of the unhallowed, hellborn Lestat in MMA mini exhibitions along the Mutien fourth floor hallway.

Students doning shirts bearing logos of bands with names such as Porno for Pyros and The Cult clearly advocating sacrilege and immorality.

My homosexual brethrens playing dress up with Hilton sisters-inspired fineries.

Due to my so-called crusty demeanor portrayed in this article piece, I am expecting a stern scolding from the Queen Bee and perhaps another meeting with one more overgrown DLS-CSB bully popular for his menacing tactics provided a disciplinary action shall be filed against my big bad mouth.

Just in case they kick my sinister self out of this Catholic institution, here’s a word of advice for your benefit: Beware of middle-aged bullies.


***


I hate politics.

Now, if that doesn’t pose enough “oomph” because “hate” is now a so-so terminology used to define one’s disgust over little things like spinach or that hotel heiress with an infamous home video, then allow me to rephrase myself: I scorn politics.

Now that figures.

At the outset, politics defies the third most important of the moral imperatives stated in the Decalogue, likewise known as The Ten Commandments being the fifth precept: Thou shall not murder.

Saddam Hussein, Iraqi president from 1979 until the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, is standing trial under the interim Iraqi government for war crimes and genocide. Case in point: the Halabja poison gas attack that the Iraqi government forces used to exterminate a multitude of civilians from the Kurdish town of Halabja. An estimated number of casualties range from several hundred to 7,000 people. The poison, a mixture of mustard gas and nerve agents, moreover, maimed, disfigured and gravely debilitated 10,000 more Kurds. The assault occurred in concurrence with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign, a crusade intended to defeat the Kurdish Peshmerga rebel forces.

In the Philippines, political killings are becoming the common cold of politically motivated crimes.

In Arroyo’s administration alone, there have been some 117 extra judicial political executions.

Regrettably, already on its third year, the Philippines still maintains its status as the second most dangerous country for journalists.

Whatever happened to democracy?

But perhaps, democracy is but a dream; something comparable to Stephen Hawking’s and WJ van Stockum’s time machine pie in the sky.

Overkill

(published in the June issue of The Benildean)

Sampling overpriced latté one dog day afternoon triggered momentary annoyance over everything for me. My unfortunate item of ridicule: The Da Vinci Code movie poster nailed atop a waiting shed peopled with coeds in dirty white.

I resolved that The Da Vinci Code is an oversell which brought me to another painfully overrated film—James Cameron’s 1997 shipboard romance blockbuster, Titanic.

If you ponder on it, Titanic and The Da Vinci Code practically bear no difference from one another. Both films are overrated. Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, translated in 40 languages, primarily in hardcover, and was released in the United States under Doubleday Publications in the year 2003, is a worldwide bestseller with over 60.5 million copies. Three years later, Anchor Books released 5 million paperback copies of the book, and Broadway Books released 200,000 paperback copies of The Da Vinci Code Special Illustrated Edition. I was already seriously considering putting a barf bag over my head when I learned that a computer game version of the book published by 2k Games was premiered May 13th of 2006, which is playable on both the Playstation 2 and Xbox.

Titanic’s popularity had also escalated to the point of hopeless stupidity. Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On invaded the airways for months on end that by its sixth week of non-stop airplay, the neighborhood dogs began to yowl in apparent misery. I, myself, nearly succumbed to the idea of romancing a ledge when radio stations came up with a re-mixed version of the song. Some genius probably thought that inserting the cheesy dialogues of the about-to-drown Jack and Rose in between chorus lines was pretty. It wouldn’t surprise me the least if Celine Dion socks that genius with a microphone head if she learned of his odious opus. Now, I am eagerly awaiting Hans Zimmer’s Kyrie for the Magdalene with inserted Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu dialogues: This is the Bois de Boulogne?; We must find anozzer way!; I've never met a girl who knew that much about a cryptex…

Both Titanic and The Da Vinci Code also drew a multitude of film aficionados on its first screening day. Never mind the sorry fact that movie theaters hiked up the ticket price (minus the fresh theater floors and all). I know somebody who had seen Titanic sixteen times; the same person resolved to see The Da Vinci Code more than the flashlight-bearing movie theater attendant.

Another similarity both movies share is the purported legitimacy of facts presented in the storylines. In fairness to Cameron, Titanic is based on an actual luxury super liner, the RMS Titanic which sank April 12th of the year 1912. Although Rose Bukater and Jack Dawson were fictional characters, the movie features the real ship chief, Captain Edward John Smith, and one of Titanic’s most prominent passengers, the Countess of Rothes. The definite number of people who perished in the Titanic mishap disclosed in the movie (1,523, according to an investigation by the U.S. Senate) is also accurate and so is the cause of the majority of deaths which is hypothermia.

However, the movie presents a scene or two that is later to be discovered nonexistent in the real Titanic catastrophe. In the film, Nearer My God to Thee is the last song played by the Titanic band led by Wallace Hartley. However Harold Bride, the wireless operator who survived the sinking claimed that it was actually Songe d'Automne, a popular ragtime song at the time. Another thing, the movie featured a three-man band; the actual Titanic band was composed of eight musicians.

Now, as I contemplate whether or not to discuss the legitimacy of facts of The Da Vinci Code and my personal opinions on this Ron Howard movie masterpiece, I could almost hear the conservative fuddy-duddies in my head chanting “Sacrilege!”.

Mind you, I have been accused of being a bleeding heretic because of one published opinion article. And because my parents acknowledge this accusation as somewhat true and people now see me as an atheist in baby pink, I resolved to shut my trap and fix a halo above my head.

However, I guess it won’t hurt to spout a sentiment or two about this popularly supposed scandalous film. One, believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. Two, respect for religion is the duty of all civilized human beings.

With the creators of Titanic and The Da Vinci Code leering in joy over the incredible success of their blockbusters, I can’t help but be disgusted with the idea that with these two films, we are sinking Titanic and selling Jesus’ head over and over again. An overkill, if you may.

I was supposed to end this column piece with a quote on overratedness. But quotes, an imperative in every blasted motivational book and highschool autographs, are, well, overrated.

Why, all of a sudden, Cesar Montano’s underrated film The Great Raid looked inviting.


***
“Always tell the truth. That way, you don’t have to remember what you said.”
--Mark Twain

It is supposed to be a rape case, and as a woman, I should be feeling especially offended and perturbed. But I am emphatically not.

“Nicole”, the 22-year-old Zamboanga City native who claimed she was raped by Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith while three of his companions, all servicemen as well, cheered on, should have known the repercussions of engaging in a drunken spree with four liquored- up strangers and afterwards even hitching a ride with them.

And she shouldn’t have buddied around with them…

The June 6th issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer came up with a news article stating that Nicole “never used the word rape but only the word “sex”” when she first confided the supposed incident to another US serviceman who was eventually questioned by the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The same serviceman later identified as one Bamberger said Nicole had admitted that a condom was used in the sex act.

The pieces of evidence that reveal that Nicole supposedly only used the word “sex” and never “rape” and her alleged rapist using a condom during the deed bring about doubts whether or not there was an actual rape that happened or it was nothing but consensual sex between two matured individuals.

The case is still being tried in court so I should stop gnawing into the controversy and play down my ranting.

However, there is one thing I am sure of: Freedom is a package deal. With it comes responsibility…

…and consequences.

And she shouldn’t have buddied around with them…

Alanis Morissette: Strength in skirt
(music review)


You ought to know that God is a femme.

At least in the 1999 Kevin Smith film Dogma where God was played by a woman: Alanis Morissette.

It figures, you reckon, considering the fact that Alanis Morissette is deemed a deity in the sphere of arts. She portrays a modern day Betty Friedan armed with a fret board and the poetry of contemporary feminism.

Alanis Nadine Morissette was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada to school teachers Alan and the Hungarian-born Georgia Morissette. Showing a love for music at an early age, she composed her first song at age 9 and eventually released an independent single Fate Stay With Me with the B-side Find The Right Man.

In 1990 when Morissette was 16, she was signed up by MCA Records and released her full-length Canadian debut album, Alanis the following year. The album acquired double platinum with its first single Too Hot landing on the Top 10 Canadian charts. Alanis was followed by Now Is The Time which sold less than half the number of copies of her Canadian debut album. Frustrated at ending up without a major label contract after her two album deal with MCA was completed, Morissette began making trips to Los Angeles where she became acquainted with American producer/songwriter Glen Ballard. Together with Ballard, Morissette was able to come up with the bulk of the prodigious Jagged Little Pill. The rest, you bet, is history.

I acquainted myself with Jagged Little Pill at age fifteen, in the midst of adolescent acne, suicidal tendencies and abortive relationships. I recall my junior class from my old high school for girls: adolescent females scribbling Jagged Little Pill lyrics on textbook covers and duffises striking up out-of-tune Alanis singles on borrowed guitars over lunch. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder was the grunge-rock poster boy for the jailbaits but nothing amounted to the fervor of adolescent infatuation for Morissette.

Jagged Little Pill has proven its pizzazz with the fact that it overshadowed Janis Joplin’s 1971 album, Pearl in popularity. Pearl sold 4 million copies in the United States; Jagged Little Pill sold over 16 million units, also in the U.S. alone.

In the eon of male-dominated grunge music scene where and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland run the mill, Morissette served as the voice of an adolescent female who everyday battles life demons at each turn. Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill single You Ought To Know together with Right Through You and All I really Want became outspoken, public testimonials of every young woman’s crusade against abortive romances and backbiting boyfriends. The idealistic You Learn, on the other hand, mirrors hope and optimism, a carefree song which seem to counterbalance Jagged Little Pill’s astringent aura.

Jagged Little Pill was subsequently followed by the less-cynical Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie which was released in November of 1998. Junkie clearly illustrates Morissette’s spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth with the cerebral-contemplative UR , the spiritual singles Thank U and Baba and bittersweet romance chronicles Unsent, Are You Still Mad and So Pure.

Then came the birth of Morissette’s less-celebrated records Under Rug Swept, So-Called Chaos and the very recent 2005 album The Collection, a compilation of recharged old-school Alanis hits.

Morissette’s music and musings have ripened and matured with a bevy of pain-redress personal experiences, completely human and soulful, with dead level honesty and aboveboard attitude. Morissette is an embodiment of a contemporary female breathing in the so-called male-dominated world, unabashed and unthreatened, a real intellectual beyond her years.

You ought to know that God is a femme.

At least in the realm of music Alanis Morissette has changed forever.