The Bangus Ultimatum

Well, I missed the big Chinese New Year parties, but it’s not too late to give a lyric-laden blog tribute to The Year of the Dog (Fire Dog, bay-bee!).

Dirty Dawg

-By New Kids on the Block

You should have treated me right
But you left me lonely and cold at night.
Since you won’t, someone will
Treat me better and be for real.

If you didn’t want it you shoulda let me know
But since you didn’t want it, then girl you got to go.
You left me sad and lonely, and ran away from home
So since I’m not your only, then go and fetch your bone.

Chrous:
Dawg, dirty dawg, dawg, dirty dawg,
Dawg, ooh, you’re a dirty, dirty,
Dawg, dirty dawg, dawg, dirty dawg,
Dawg, oh, you’re sow damn dirty.

I gave you all that I can
Til I caught you swingin’with another man
But this time you strayed too far
Now you come beggin’ like the dog you are.

If you didn’t want it you shoulda let me know
But since you didn’t want it, then girl you got to go.
Don’t think that you can play me, and jerk me all around.
You used to be ma baby, now your ass is in the pound.

Chorus:
Dawg, dirty dawg, dawg, dirty dawg,
Oohh, you’re a drty, dirty,
Dawg, dirty dawg, dawg, dirty dawg
Oh, you’re so damn dirty.

Yo, yo, why you wanna act like a tramp, a wet food stamp,
I think it’s time for me to break camp
Had a crush on my man the first time we met.
Now what you see is what you get
Lost more than a mil on a gambling bet
So here’s the chuckwagon for the dog in you,
Here’s the kennelration and the alpo too

Now you know I didn’t want her
She tried to back me on a corner told her
Blow the horn like little jack horner
Forever forbidden, the fast girls in life
The fast cars they call’em kittens
They’ve been known to amaze
But they can’t pull one over me
I got game for days
Save the sap rap for the handicapped
I’ve been around the block and I didn’t
Fall for the trimmed trap.

Chorus

(Reprinted from the Man Blog)

Maryam, wife of powerblogger Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble weighs in on why geeks make good partners. Reason number one goes:

He can fix your computer. There I said it. Do you really need another reason? He is not a bum. He has useful skills that can make your life (at least the part that is spent on the computer, and let’s face it, that is where we all spent most of our time any way) run smooth.

Well, that is at least something.

Straight-out endorsements of geeks and nerds as mates are still rare, especially in mainstream culture. It’s tragic but not at all surprising. We’ve got thousands of years of social evolution working against us.

Sociobiology traces cultural phenomena such as the “traditional” female preference for hunky chunks to sheer genetic advantage. Our ancestors needed to hunt their food to survive. Ergo, big-chested males who can hurl stuff well can hunt better, get more food. Naturally, these males tend to have better success in finding mates (for young prehistoric girls, “finding the one” meant “finding the one who can bring a large chunk of caribou back to the cave”), and then sustaining offspring. Offspring, it turns out, who either grow up to be big-chested males or girls who dig big-chested males (or hell, big-chested girls who hurl stuff well - isn’t inheritance fun?). Genetic advantage reigns in cultural preferences, and reinforces them. You’ve got pretty much the whole of literature and media masturbating over muscled males.

So woe indeed for the lanky (or chubby), computer geek or DnD enthusiast. But all is not lost. Cultural preferences may have lagged behind, but they do catch up eventually. Specialization is the name of the game in evolution. It may have made sense to be a good hunter back then, but the repertoire of adaptations that will help a guy throw a spear good, or shoot that ball, or hammer that divot into the ground makes less and less sense in a world where economic success (and thus genetic advantage) is increasingly dependent on processing information. So geeks of the world unite, I guess. We have nothing to lose but our inferiority complexes.

So yesterday I discovered that some of my classmates use their Starbucks planner not to actually get some uh, planning done, but as a quick and easy diary. It is, after all, important to keep a journal of your daily activities, just in case the police drag you off to some gulag and start questioning you about where you were and what you were doing during so and so. (Hence, when those pigfucker police have you in a dimly-lit room and start chocking you with a wet towel, you can oh so casually say that yes, your Starbucks planner says you were in the harbour taking in a shipment of drugs)

When told that I should get one of these beautifuly-bound acid-free notebooks, I dismissed them with a wave and said “Oh, I’ve got a blog and everything,” and left it at that. Then I realized that I hardly ever blog about how my days go and I hardly ever remember what I’ve done. Maybe I did fence drugs. Maybe I did murder someone yesterday. I don’t know, perhaps I should be writing stuff down!

I guess the reason why I hardly ever write about days is that my life is pretty linear (boring), until recently. A theoretical entry from two months back would probably go:

Dear Diary,

Read cases today. Tried talking to crush. No dice. Am still such a geek. Worked on random stuff for JJ. Surfed the net. Upgraded to the latest greatest Wordpress. Had ramen for dinner. Yummy!

See?

Then again, it’d still be nice to account for days, if only to get my blogging groove on (and yes, get a better idea what is it I’ve been doing). I’m wondering how I’m supposed to go about this now. Should I get a livejournal now? A sideblog? Slap it onto the main continuity as protected posts?

(Reprinted from The Man-Blog)

If there should be any reason why I like the Star Wars prequels, it’s probably because of the parallel “political” aspects of its storyline. As compelling as the tale of Anakin’s fall to the dark side may be, there is something especially tragic when an entire galaxy-spanning civilization slips from democracy to tyranny. It is a seduction all the more sweeter, and a loss far more devastating.

The lowdown (based on the movies, novels, and comic-books) I snarfed from a Wikipedia article:

Traditionally, the Chancellor could only serve two four-year terms, but Palpatine stayed in office much longer, due to the prolonged Separatist Crisis.

The crisis occurred when several of the Republic’s member Star Systems and organizations united in order to separate from the Republic. This unified organization became known as the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Tensions between the Republic and the Separatists eventually escalated into all-out war, and the conflicts that would later be known as the “Clone Wars” began (chronicled in Attack of the Clones).

The Senate granted Palpatine emergency powers to deal with the Separatist Confederacy in a motion introduced by Representative Jar Jar Binks. Palpatine’s first move, widely supported at the time, was to create a vast army of clone warriors to serve as the Republic’s fighting force against the Confederacy.

In the ensuing years, the Senate increasingly ceded its power to Palpatine, who became the war’s political Commander-in-Chief. Such actions were justified in the name of security, and eventually Palpatine did not need the approval of the Senate for many of his actions. Since the chancellor held a vast majority of supporters in Senate, this was considered a perfectly reasonable way to increase the wartime government’s efficiency.

…
At the conclusion of the Clone Wars, Palpatine addressed the Senate. First he related the story of the unsuccessful “assassination attempt” by the Jedi, and declared the Order to be enemies of the Republic. Then he announced that the Galactic Republic would become a Galactic Empire so strong as to never be threatened by outside forces again. The Chancellor, who by this time had been grotesquely disfigured (he claimed this was from the Jedi assassination attempt), proclaimed himself to be the first Emperor of the galaxy. Deluded by Palpatine’s charisma and skill (and perhaps also by his considerable Dark Side power), the majority of the Senate cheered him on loudly in approval, which provoked one of Senator Padmé Amidala’s most memorable lines: “So this is how liberty dies: with thunderous applause.” After so many millennia, the Galactic Republic had ceased to exist.

At the center of it all, of course, is Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine, the consummate politician, carefully pulling the right strings and playing both sides, all the while maintaining a veneer of integrity and compassion. Besides being such a devious sonofabitch, however, he had another advantage: War changed the galaxy’s socio-political environment (just as it had, according to the novels, darkened The Force itself.) People (and their representatives in the Senate) became more and more willing to surrender their rights in exchange for security (or the illussion thereof). All power eventually became concentrated in The Emperor, who Cannot Be Wrong, and can’t be held accountable to anyone. Of course, most of us know where that arrangement led to: homicidal maniacs blowing up a planet to smithereens without so much as a half-assed inquiry.

That is why I feel very very very very VERY concerned at all this talk of term extensions and more government power. Limited terms and limited powers ensure ultimate accountability to the people, that the feedback process that makes democracy fresh and viable remains operative. The promise of more prosperity, security (and stronger republics) in exchange for longer stays in office (and more expansive powers) is truly alluring, an easy way, but a slippery slope to the Dark Side. The true burden of a free people is vigilance, and we must never be remiss on our duties.

Scientist James Lovelock believes we’ve gone past the point of no return in global warming, and that civilization is basically well and truly fucked. All efforts in reducing emissions are puny and too late. “Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic, where the climate remains tolerable.” Hey, who wants to go to the North Pole with me?

Plus, they finally realized that metal deposits will not last forever. What a concept, huh? According to this genius study, “if all nations were to use the same services enjoyed in developed nations, even the full extraction of metals from the Earth’s crust and extensive recycling programs may not meet future demand…”

Time to get in touch with my hippie friends and tell them the bad news…

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A couple of wonderful offers from the cool office I work for, the Internet and Society Program:

* First, we’re opening up the planning process to iBlog2. We’re giving the blogging community a whole lot of control over the content and structure of the next Philippine blogging summit.

* We’re also willing to give bandwidth and storage space to podcasts on law and legal issues. We’re also giving technical assistance for those who haven’t tried podcasting.

Interested? Drop me a line through (emersonDOTbanezATupDOTeduDOTph)

It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live

-Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by JK Rowling

I’ve been doing a lot of blank staring lately. Into bright pools of  warm light. I’ve been holding on to a vision of what could be (perhaps, given time, and the slightest shadow of hope)

Hope, I realized, is as empty as fear. I’ve been enjoying a heady durg. But I can’t afford to crash. Not now.

I have students and they’ll need a teacher to guide them through their next miserable, nose-bleeding lesson.

I have colleagues and they need a partner in moving the state of the scholarship forward.

I have friends, and they’ll need their dose of ontological whatev.

There are those left behind, and the debt that will never be repaid.

So what now? I guess I’ll just keep the candle close and safe, relax and have faith.