INQUIRER: MUG SHOTS These mug shots of former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did not come from the Pasay City Regional Trial Court which has refused to release the police photos. Sources who requested anonymity sent the photos to the Inquirer.
Last night at a coffee shop with a friend, I did not quite expect an encounter with my own people. Well, two of them.
Coming back from the men’s room I found my friend with an awkward smile, pointing at a tray of used plates and cups on our table. I asked what that tray was doing there as we only had coffee; he carefully glanced at the lady at the next table, gesturing that she put it there.
I turned to the lady and just before I could say anything, she gestured both her hands and with a face, coupled with glaring angry eyes, that screamed “WHAT?!!?” I asked if she did put that tray on our table and she vehemently shook her head, frowning at me like I’m some dirty leper from Jesus’ backyard.
Fine, I turned back to my friend and asked again if he was sure if she indeed put the tray on our table. Just then, a Japanese guy came up to me and gently explained: “Sir, nakita ko po na siya ang naglagay ng tray sa table nyo.” Yes, in very polite Tagalog. Instead of lashing back at the lady, I was impressed at his mastery of the Filipino language that I just told him how good his Filipino was, and simply thanked him for his honesty. To which he replied, “Walang anuman po.”
| — | Dr. Fe del Mundo, first Filipina awarded as National Scientist. She passed away today at the age of 99. She founded the first pediatric hospital in the country, and is credited with devising an incubator for use in rural areas without electricity. (via pinoytumblr) |
One wouldn’t expect a lot of squeaky-clean characters with a name like Toxicology, but in her eleventh book, multitalented author Jessica Hagedorn confronts the reader with the most washed-up bunch of users she’s ever created. Set in modern-day New York City, the story starts its winding narrative with Mimi Smith, a one-hit filmmaker who laments her failed career as she tries to cope with her derelict teenage daughter, a relapsing alcoholic brother, a missing cousin and the disappearance of her drug-dealing lover. Rounding out this desperate crew is her next-door neighbor, a cocaine-addled octogenarian has-been writer named Eleanor Delacroix, who is mourning the loss of her partner to cancer. With all these sinewy relationships in place, the plot points are simple: Eleanor must write a new story to read at an event to which she’s been invited to perform, and Mimi attempts to track down her missing cousin as she contemplates ideas for new films.
The details are burdensome, but the real success of Toxicology is the writing that comes once this messy web is laid out. Hagedorn’s prose is grotesque and lurid, slipping in and out of different points of view in the heady style of storytelling that readers have come to expect from this poet and playwright. Rich sentences mimic the druggy fog the characters are lost in as well as the cinematic nature of Mimi’s aspirations. Both subject matter and writing style would make a hell of a movie.
Although the story is framed around Mimi, the real tragic hero is Eleanor: arthritic, lonely and full of cocaine. Through the elderly neighbor’s attempted comeback, Hagedorn expertly touches on the themes and characters she’s always wrangling with: sorry people seemingly removed from one another who struggle with the same difficulties and ultimately search for the same acceptance.
Buy Toxicology on Amazon.com | Buy it on BN.com Grab your own copy now!
Statement of His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III President of the Philippines On the death of Osama Bin Laden [May 2, 2011]
The death of Osama bin Laden marks a signal defeat for the forces of extremism and terrorism. It represents the end of the efforts of one man to stoke the fires of…
(Source: gov.ph)
It is in this regard that we commend GMA News Online for its decision not to renew Yuson’s contract as editor at large. It is in the same regard that we profess ourselves disturbed and outraged by the deafening silence with which the writing establishment has met this controversy. The plagiarism of Yuson does not involve him alone: to the extent that he is representative of—because deeply imbricated in—the larger world of Philippine letters, his act also necessarily implicates the figures and structures that make up that world. The prevalent reluctance, nay, refusal among Yuson’s peers to openly condemn him would seem to indicate cowardice at best, and complicity at worst. Neither speaks well of our writers, journalists, scholars, and institutions—and may even be symptomatic of a more deeply entrenched cancer of corruption in our cultural sector.
