The Daily Bluster

“The sky above the port was the color of television, turned to a dead channel.” So begins William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer (1984). Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that features advanced technology vis-à-vis a dystopian society – a kind of high tech world juxtaposed with a broken-down social order. Or in other words, high tech/low life. Think Star Trek suffused with the despair and helplessness of “The Grapes of Wrath,” then throw in the gang wars and mob bosses of the “The Godfather,” and instead of governments, mega corporations rule the world, each fighting for supremacy. William Gibson is considered to be the founder of cyberpunk. However, many writers before him had written all sorts of proto-cyberpunk novels, most notably Philip K. Dick, he of the “ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?” fame, the novel that served as inspiration for the classic cyberpunk film (and one of my personal favorites), “Blade Runner.” (Read up on Philip ...

Yes it’s a very real possibility that he might win.  But you know, it would have been nice to have a leader that would make us proud. To have a statesman – a statesman who knows how to deal with world leaders and win us friends in other countries –  lead us. Someone who could make us want to shout out to the world, “Yes this person leads us. This person embodies our aspirations, our ideals as a people.” It would have been nice to have someone who could bring out the best in us, and teach us compassion and empathy. Someone who could be an inspiration to our youth. Someone who could balance the budget, who could straighten out our fucked up, labyrinthine tax and banking laws, and improve our abysmal educational system. Someone who could get to the root causes of criminality, to actually do something about them and not just slaughter petty criminals and call it justice. That would have been nice, you know? Instead we are saddled with a group of candidates that includes ...

Is “bayot” an insult? I’m wondering because last night I heard Rodrigo "Digong"  Duterte on TV saying this in reaction to Mar Roxas’ expression of disbelief to his (Duterte’s) incredible claim that he could eradicate criminality in the first six months of his presidency, if and when he gets elected. The way he said it, his body language, the tone, his facial expression – all convey his meaning, that bayot (gay) is something so hateful and disgusting that he reserves that judgment to those who dare question the pronouncements of Emperor Digong. Well, to be fair, that is probably his most benevolent method of answering his critics. I suspect he has far more “creative” methods of silencing them. I can just hear his followers saying, “ Buti nga bayot lang e. Dapat sa iyo pinapatay .” (You should be thankful you're just being called bayot . You should have been killed.) And they’re right. They will inform you this, with unholy glee and righteous anger, with blazing, fana...

Adjective Order is one of those obscure English grammar rules that nobody told us about in college. A summary on how it works: Look at these two squares. How would you describe the objects? The image on the left you’d probably describe as a big, red square, because that’s what it is, right? Now, what if you describe it as red, big square? Does that sound right to you? It sounds quite a bit off, doesn’t it? It’s because there is a specific order of describing things that for some reason English speakers have established as the proper way. When you are describing a noun using two or more adjectives, the adjectives are usually in a particular order. Opinions come first, e.g. gorgeous, ugly, etc., before factual ones.   There are several levels of order. The Cambridge Dictionaries Online lists ten: Order                relating to                 ...

It’s so strange to see someone watching herself dance 75 years ago. The image of a 102-year-old woman juxtaposed with her youthful, beautiful, and vital self is unsettling, and makes you think thoughts that you often ignore.     You could see through her eyes that she’s reliving it—she can hear the music and feel its rhythm, feel her feet as they strike the floor, feel the adrenaline rush of doing what she likes best and doing it good. Someone once said not to fear growing old, because it is a privilege denied to many. That’s true, of course, but there are moments when one feels that growing old is the saddest thing that happens to us. She’s remembering it all. It’s all in her head still. She was beautiful, she was lithe, and she was a really great dancer. I guess that’s what our most precious possessions are—our memories. We are still 12 or 16 or 21 inside. We’ll all grow old and die someday, but we pretend that we are immortal. We’ll see our lov...

“How do you say, in polite English, ‘ Punta muna ako sa kubeta; taeng-tae na ako! ’  (I have to go the toilet; I’m about to shit myself!)?” In a (Philippine) website that deals mostly in computer parts and peripherals, there was this thread about English grammar. Presumably, the thread starter (commonly referred to in internet forums as the TS ), who was one of the regulars of the aforementioned site, has trouble expressing himself in grammatically correct English. As the site is quite popular, and the site members come from diverse backgrounds, many contributed to that thread, and competently answered the TS’ and other posters’ questions regarding English grammar. The “English” thread, suffice it to say, was one of the site’s most active threads. Anyway, the question quoted above was just one of many. I stumbled across it one afternoon a few months ago. It appeared that the poster works for a firm run by Americans. During one particularly unforgettable meeting with his Ameri...

Misis Djyli is the username of a young housewife who, for the past few months, had been uploading her cross-stitching projects on YouTube. It’s her hobby, and clearly she loves it—you can hear the happiness in her voice as she presents her cross-stitches. I am not an expert on cross-stitching, but hers look beautiful, at least according to the few comments on her YouTube channel.   Here's one of her earliest uploads: Almost nobody watches her cross-stitching videos, but it didn’t seem to bother her—she just kept making and uploading them.   Her latest video, however, has currently over a million views, and it does not show her cross-stitching. It shows her town being bombed, and her normally happy voice is gone.  She is crying and sounds very afraid on the video, and you can hear a baby crying in the background. The woman, you see, lives in Ukraine. She lives in a town called Kramatorsk, and the town was recently attacked by Russians (or perhaps ethnic Rus...