The Essence of Beauty and being a Man-Miss Universe

Judge nothing by the appearance. The more beautiful the serpent, the more fatal its sting.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY, Proverbs

The recent ruling of the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant got me thinking a lot, "what is the Miss Universe all about?". I love the evening gown competition, is exquisite. And I won’t be a hypocrite, I enjoy the swimsuit competition ass-much as everyone else. The difference, I got over the stage of shallow meat shopping towards a pairs of perfect tits and ass running around their clothes hanger body.

I’m thinking harder with no intended puns as I watch the interviews of Miss Canada, Jenna Talackova, she’s really hot, a knockout I mean look at her, slender, tall, she got nice pair of perfect breast that keep on staring at me and knowing that this is synthetic and man-made didn't change the fact that she’s hot—for a man, she really believes she’s in the wrong body to begin with and she believes she’s really a woman. I don’t want to sound like a discriminating chauvinist swine but anyone who had doubts of their sexual preference and orientation should be heard and understood, give them a chance right? But then again, I think that Donald Trump should reconsider the name of his beauty pageant since from what I can understand; it’s a competition for women.

Now the question arises, "what is being a woman all about?".

Know that this opinion came from someone who was born with a penis and a pair of testicles between his legs, I can put it a hundred ways but let's pretend to be among the general populace and ask, you see the nice pair of mammary glands on Miss [Country] ? How about the perfect pelvic bone structure on Miss [Country]? The side discussions sometimes is abhorrent but perfectly normal, sometimes it’s not even that shallow. If you’ve dealt with a woman before (or is one) I think the rawest most conclusive most consistent answer despite of its seldom irregularities is the monthly menstrual period. Yes! That’s what’s being a woman is all about, bloated breasts, wild mood swings, uncontrollable appetite and hormonal imbalances, you just gotta love it like scattered pheromones scenting like sweet ambrosia.

It’s hard to educate and reiterate to the next generation on how non-cosmetic being a woman should be. What I’m afraid the most is their divine god given ability to bear a child. I think nothing could encompass being a woman more than that.

It’s not how good they look when they dress up, or how sexy it is to be on high heels, I guess those things could be done by bipedals trying to look and pretend like one. Knowing that Miss Universe Beauty Pageant holds rules and a moral standard, it pains me that they’ve turned into a great disappointment to allow ‘beings’ without those divine endowments run the catwalk.

If the Miss Universe Beauty Pageant dictates what beauty is, then I guess they’ve made their point as clear as plastic and as transparent as sheets of cellophane and silicone. But from what they’ve just done, they’ve ruined the definition of what being a woman is all about to those who look up to them for  their prestige and respects their authority.

I don’t know if that’s the essence of beauty to you but for most certain, I’m pretty damn sure it’s not the essence of a woman, not to me, not today.

Cockblocked

We live in a world of twisted perceptions, cruel intentions and hidden agendas.  Someone out there right around the corner is holding a rusty vicious knife after flashing a kind and friendly smile at you. They wait for you to turn your back for them to eviscerate you by surprise to no ends. It’s fine, we’ve been living in a world like that for the longest time and we deserve to get hurt if we haven’t learned our lessons yet. But sometimes one might find a way to liberate them freeing themselves from all the hypocrisy and pretenses of being pretentious. Few people succeed while a lot succumb and sulk to a non-verbal solace, which is causing them to collapse from within. Good thing I refuse to shut up.

As we’ve learned in the past, motivations can drive a person to do great things, hard things, and impossible and unthinkable things. Regardless of their motives’ benevolence, they act under the condition, a machination that operates them as a whole is still anchored somewhere externally. Once this external motivation is modified, changed or taken away, a phenomenon happens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockblock

It’s an interfering behavior preventing someone to the endgame.  Chances are, whether it’s a hot girl at school or the position in the office that you’ve been gunning after you’ve been cockblocked at least once in your life. But here’s the question, is being cockblocked a good thing or a bad thing?
I don’t recall how many times I’ve said that I’m not a saint, it is my selfish human nature to want something and get something so long as the conditions have been met. It’s a logic that I live by.

I can hear the superego moral whispering words of admonition to my head that I should use the opportunity of being cockblocked to learn from myself, on how do I respond in a situation of cockblockerry. Do I crumble down and take my show on the road where there won’t be any cockblocking or do I rise above the adversity of the temporary predicament I’ve been situated upon?

On most parts, the superego is right, but on the dim lit moon outside his utopian world is the raw human emotion side of me that demands rectification. Because I deserve it!

Here’s a real-life cockblock sitatution.

When you’ve been working for as long as I have been you might get that itch of just getting a supercharged internet connection at home, which we already did. All I wanted to do is play Street Fighter X Tekken on the PSN and my internet connection has been cockblocking me. This is unintentional because my ISP can’t do anything about it, but still I’m left cockblocked.

YES, you deliver the speed. YES, you deliver the consistency but this isn’t what you’ve coerced me to believe! The speed is unacceptable to the ONLY ACTIVITY that spells the difference between winning and losing a game.

The analogy can be translated to “do I wait for my internet connection to get their act together because I’ve invested money on them already” OR “do I terminate my ISP contract and move on to an ISP that won’t give me cockblockerry”. Obviously, it’s not a managerial decision to be made, just a simple one. You ditch the ISP and move.

The problem is even if you’re well capable of ditching the ISP, you’re still bound under contract and you’re going to get hurt with the surcharges for the pretermination.

Cat Blocked

Also, in real life not everything can be resolved by a basic managerial decision.  Things that have been cockblocking you might be dear to you. You don’t just lay down the law if they unintentionally cockblocks you. Obviously, you’ll wait . the same energy you have obviously went to dust upon blockage, but you’d still wait even after you rummage through the car crash of what’s left of your enthusiasm. But who can blame you?

I guess the bottom line is that it’s the only appropriate response to cockblockerry. It’s more a question ‘how do you respond to a cockblock response’. The challenge is to find something to draw enthusiasm and energy again. As demoralizing cockblocking can be, there’s always something else to draw enthusiasm from, hopefully greater than the motivation itself. We don’t know what that motivation is yet, but I’d sure like to find out one day.

Transforming Motivations

When you’re fresh out of high school, your given motivation is to study to get a steady supply of cash when you get a job after graduation. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly normal motivation. But what people stumble upon while pushing you through college is if it coincides with what you want. On my personal case, I had warped motivations which resulted me untangling everything even until today.

I realize how my motivations transformed 10 years later, from a simple ‘get out of the house’ to a simpler ‘because I said so’. I want to go back to school and study Fine Arts again. Maybe I’ll major in Visual Communications or Advertising, the thing is people do that to land a steady job for a consistent stream of cash. To someone who’s getting those without the former, is it really necessary for me to go back to school and graduate? Am I just satisfying my own selfish desires without making a social impact with what I’m doing and studying? Is it even necessary to make a social impact with it, or be the best in it because frankly, when money talks everyone listen?

I don’t know if it’s still worth my time or money or heartaches to invest in the title in the academic world to prove a point or should I just focus on a business to have a wallet to prove it for me. But the more that I force myself in focusing on a business the more I lust for learning things I’ve never known. The heavy irony of all of these is, when you stop making cash you start getting better at things.

I’ve been swamped with engagements, deadlines and work, my thoughts are in chaos as it is but there’s one thing I know, I want a legacy. I want something nice written on my tomb, on my biography, on my legend. I have a clearer motivation that I had before.

Myself.

Aside from the usual love, courage and hope typecasting, the best motivation has always been one’s self. The more value you place in yourself, the more motivated you’ll become. But then again that’s just motivations; the next question is what you are going to do with all that motivations. Right now I couldn’t be any more confused than I already am. I’ve been asking folks who seemed to have ‘been there’ and looked like they’ve ‘done that’ and I keep getting the same answers. I have to find myself over again, this time not in a glass of merlot but in the middle of nowhere.
Now, I want to get lost.

One Day Millionaires and Drunkards

Advanced apologies to non-Philippine based readers. Majority of employees here get paid on the 15th and on the end of the month, it doesn’t have to be a Friday to be a payday, they do it mid-week if needed be and if 30th or 15th falls on a weekend or the holiday, people gets it earlier, if not later.

Everyone is drinking and having a good time on Fridays. Why is everyone drunk on a Friday night? I think the larger question here is why am I not? Why is the joke on me? Shouldn’t I be getting shit faced on a Friday night? Apparently, I’m writing this blog post while a lot of people are itching to spend their money on drinks and fun. This is the downside of working on a BPO environment.

Here in the Philippines, the phenomenon called ‘one-day-millionaire’ is observed on paydays. Commonly happens twice a month when most people are just burning to get their cash out their pockets, and greasy food in their bellies. Beer rains like there’s no tomorrow and the good times just keep rolling like a boulder down Mount Everest, you’ll be buried in the avalanche of what’s left of the good times the morning after, and most of all you don’t care.

But why do people think irrational about their cash on a Friday night? If society has a tumour I’d name it “cost of living” not to mention way of life here in the Philippines and how difficult and taxing it has been to majority of its populace. Not that the cost of living here isn’t expensive but it’s relatively tough to live comfortably. Commuting everyday on jeepneys is like being in a purgatory, can you imagine acid rain mixing with your favourite petroleum brandname carbon exhaust from vehicles stuck in traffic while you’re sitting beside a sweaty bag of grease, not much different from what you’re current state will be in if you’re riding with them? That’s just the half of it, the other half is when you start walking down the sidewalk which is equally crowded, street vendors proliferate worse than cholesterol from the clogging artery of a 400lb iron liver’ed champion by the roadside. Going on an overpass just adds a nail to the coffin, and while you’re halfway through the rain you’ll be wet, not that drenched but wet enough to catch a cold which will definitely be the case when you start riding a crowded bus, standing with the AC on full blast on a rainy day.
Welcome to the Philippines. It’s more fun here in the Philippines—not to the common Juan though.

If I think about what the majority of folks go through every day, it starts to make sense to me, not everyone is born with a spoon in their mouths whether it’s silver or gold, not everyone gets paid the same way to afford to take the taxi cab on a drizzling 2am drive home. Not everyone is as privileged as we are or as we think or opt to be. And obviously, not everyone has the same motivations in doing so. It makes sense to me that when life is too hard, be happy when you can. If you can’t be happy, two bottles of beer might talk you into a good laugh, if that didn’t work, a bucket will surely will if you don’t fall asleep first. It’s easy to pass on judgment and label people than to understand them and show empathy towards what they’re going through.

Irrational as it may be, being in a vantage point where we see them as one day millionaires judging them for their habits can feel morally upright if we stay on a social high-ground where we can comfortably say. But I’m thanking God that this exercise has been a both a blessing and a challenge to the humility, empathy and compassion that I can extend towards everyone in my attempt to step closer to enlightenment. At the end of the day I don’t think I’m any different than any of them, what’s the difference between draft beer and a bottle of merlot anyway if your motives in downing both is equally the same on a different standpoint. I guess we’re just as qualified as the next one to be Dr. Seuss on that specific instance.

What’s so wrong about wanting to be happy?

Demystifying Inday Badiday’s Line Out

I want to be an egoist and say that I’ve lived during the time Eye to Eye was on air almost every evening of the day. Lourdes Jimenez Carvajal aka Inday Badiday has an infectious show theme song. FINE, I’ll be honest. It’s more of an over assumption that I hear her show every day, but when I hear the infectious show theme song “eeeeeeye-to-eeeeeeye” I know that she’s going to start yapping about the latest happenings in showbiz. This happened when I was too young to care about show biz, not to mention that I’m clueless about what the entire biz is. To our younger readers, this might be a ploy to make you believe that everything worth living for happened when you’re not yet born, no don’t believe that—I wasn’t born at the era of the Beatles too so that makes us even but anyway~

Inday Badiday died on September 26, 2003 but only a few people know how she lived. I know how she did though, talking about the interesting showbiz issues for 30 minutes every day her show was on air, at least on those days that I’m actually paying attention around the proximity of the television set. Back then it’s a big brown box with wooden window door plates. You part the door plate windows left and right like a curtain to reveal a tube that has moving pictures inside. There’s no other word to describe that part of my childhood than that.

Lourdes imparted a lot of things that makes her culturally significant, back then, there were no Korean-Novellas on TV and yet she says “Saranghambida, Bo” every time her show cues out. Thanks to the very talented and multilingual Faith Yongco who heard one of my random blasts-from-the-pasts-blurts in my cubicle at the office, we found conclusion to the flabbergasting catchphrase that plagued everyone for the longest time. It’s literal meaning was “I love you, Bo” with “Bo” being the nickname of her second spouse. It’s rather interesting that there’s actually a lot of backstory attached to the catchphrase and not just the catchphrase itself. According to Faith Yongco, the normal typical usage of that phrase now is “Saranghe” (sic?) and “Saranghambida” is quite the formal old-school way of saying it. I wouldn’t wonder though, Eye-to-Eye was pretty old school like LITERALLY.

Seeing that this post will be another trip down the memory lane—a lane that we can’t cover in a tiny 500 word self-imposed discipline post, let’s close this with a Happy Birthday to my lovely spouse.
Happy Birthday Ju, and since we’ve been lisinging—yeah I coined the word, brilliant eh?—to 1990’s black-boy-band songs in the pick-up on the way home last week, I’ll #nowplaying this for you.

#nowplaying I'll Make Love To You – Boyz II Men

The Good 'ol Good Enough Stuff

I’m not a glutton for punishment, but it’s not my fault that inspiration comes to me when I’m down whether it’s writing or designing. It doesn't matter what the adversary is, getting kicked in the groin when I’m floored makes me get up (in the figurative sense) and up I shall, that’s after a significant amount of agonizing writhing.

It’s been 3 substantial years since I’ve written something I felt worthy to take public and be read by anyone, majority of the problem comes from the fact that I don’t know where my head was up in. Sometimes I see that the problem comes from the fact that nothing I produce seems to be good enough for myself. The whole time I’ve been employed was to meet a condition set by a machine for me—piece of cake—but I haven’t accomplished something I've set for myself, that’s what I intend to correct. Perhaps I have to lower my ridiculously high standards and face the fact that sometimes, ‘good enough’ is good enough.

That being said, I have all the intentions to indulge myself in things that are culturally significant to me once again, things that provoke and cultivate my creativity, I've been living under a rock for the longest time in a big box with air-conditioning within its glass walls and it should have never been the case in the first place, the whole thing stank but my nose has been out in the cold for too long. Then again, it reminds me that I wouldn’t know how nice it feels to be walking on sunshine for some good old photosynthesis. I don’t even know where that came from but love me or hate me; you’ll be seeing more of me.

#nowplaying She's Long Gone - The Black Keys