"Said the lamb to the little shepherd boy..."

Christmas outside the Philippines bites. Maligayang Pasko, anybody out there!

Poetry in Emotion.

The door opens, and the master walks into the room, doubtless up for another evening walk around the lot. Euphoria.

Buttons, the cute little dog next door, threatens to cut free of his leash and charge. Despite his cutesy bootees, he's one mean son of a bitch. Aggression.

The master and the mistress, for no apparent reason, start baying like wolves. Annoyance.

The lights go out, and it's time to settle down at the foot of the bed. Sleepy-time--or so you'd think, until the master and the mistress call, doubtless for another minute or so of soothing tummy-rubs. Peace.

I so, so, so envy our dog for the bare simplicity of his emotions.

The Worst Noel.

I've come to expect a rhythm to my life. It's ingrained. I look forward to a wind-down at work on the week before Christmas; a couple of days before the 25th, I pack and take the first flight to Davao; then I spend two weeks mucking it up with the family, then I take a reluctant fly-back to Manila for yet another working year.

The rhythm's changed drastically in the past three years. Before Christmas 2000, Dad had a stroke and I flew back three weeks earlier than usual. Obviously, the season lost a bit of its luster, despite my five weeks' off work. Last last year's Christmas saw a slight return to the rhythm, with Nanay's "surprise" birthday celebration and all, and my humble proposal to Minnette.

This year, the rhythm's been thrown completely out of whack. I'm far from any family I've grown up with. Minnette's my family now; we're both missing our childhood family and friends so much it hurts. Only hundreds of km from home, and it seems like we're worlds away from Simbang Gabi, puto bumbong, quezo de bola, badly-sung carols, and parols hanging from the eaves.

We'll try to surround ourselves with familiar folks this Christmas so it doesn't feel so much like we're missing out, and we'll count the days to our Chinese New Year return to the Philippines for much-needed catching up to do.

The Pavlovian instinct to connect this Christmas will have to be tended to a month late, and I dearly hope to whatever Divinity's left out there that next year, we'll get to fulfill the rhythm right.

Talking to myself.

"When a person talks to himself, it's schizophrenia; when a company talks to itself, it's marketing." - unknown ad hack

The last thing I remember, before i came out of a hypnotic trance, was an expansive white room with a shelf of awards. Marivic Gustilo, our Psych teacher, was guiding us through a visualisation exercise; apparently, if we'd done the first few parts right, we would see the future (or our wishful vision of it).

It would have been more useful if I had visualized a set of lotto numbers. Twelve years forward, I still don't have that expansive white office, and my shelves are sadly bereft of advertising awards.

Where I work, opinion is divided on awards. About two or three people think advertising awards are worth pursuing. The rest think that awards are stooooopid. To the uncharitable, these people would either be (a) bean counters who can't see how awards can put money in the bank accounts, or (b) creatives having a collective fit of sour grapes.

Group (a), I can't do anything about. Republicans, fanatics, and actors running for President I can live without, but are part of the air we breathe. Group (b)... sometimes, I get invited for a sleepover in their camp. Call me a reluctant awards hound - I'm all for winning an award to give my career a little more mileage, but I'd like to win one for work that was actually created to communicate to the target audience.

The way I see it, two kinds of work are being done these days. Work that tickles the client, and work that tickles the awards judges. Precious little talking is aimed at the target market, you know, the guys who actually buy the products?

These days, the target market has become the unwanted child in the marketing conversation. Any significant message that does get through to the target market happens to be more of a conversation overheard between the adman and the awards body.

Why the hell is it so hard to offer an honest, compelling sell in advertising these days?

It's not just in Singapore, I gather. This guy writes to my art director complaining about the American advertising industry's "constant fear of offending women, the ultra religious, dwarfs, gardeners, darf gardeners, heterosexuals, heterosexual dwarf gardeners, their cousins, their wives, the inbred, lawyers, inbred lawyers who litigate against dwarf gardeners, etc." I got news for you pal, your scared little shits of cowering clients had to learn it from someone. They probably learned it from this side of the pond.

You'll see it all here - smiling talents who look like they've OD'd on Prozac ("think positive!" you hear the clients whispering appreciatively); campaigns taken word-for-word from advertising briefs and tacked on with a tagline to make them look like ads; scared-shitless suits who write ironclad briefs with no breathing room for any actual consumer insights. The House of Horrors that is Asian advertising is one long ride with no end.

The antidote is out there, but the cure begins only when clients and agencies alike begin to take it seriously. It starts with getting a clue - the Cluetrain Manifesto, for one, a breathtakingly simple dissection of what today's consumers REALLY want to hear, but really, nobody cares what consumers today want, right?

Pass or fail?

Nette and I have a running joke about the ongoing Survivor series. (Well, two, actually.) The first one goes: put a full-blooded Pinoy in the running, and he’ll win over all those whining Americans. Hands down. ("What the hell you mean, you don't eat fish heads?!")

The second, a little less complimentary to the Pinoy state of affairs, goes that the most challenging Survivor ever would be: Survivor Tondo. Now, that’s a real challenge.

It’s another challenge only the Pinoys could win. We’ve been fighting for our survival as a people for 400 years, and we’ve kept the specter of total chaos and genocide at bay. Only just.

What will tip the balance, in my opinion, is the upcoming exam the whole nation will take this May. Pass or fail. There are no second chances this time.

And I hope desperately that we’ve learned our lesson: no actors for President. No devious politicos hiding behind their Senatorial status to evade prosecution. Just honest, decent men who’ve only got the good of the country on their agenda.

But who have we got? An actor, a bloodthirsty police general, a discredited President, and an untested leader.

One would hope that the nation would have gotten the message. On a municipal level, the lesson seems to have sunk in: Sonny Belmonte won over actor and Erap buddy Rudy Fernandez in the Quezon City mayoralty race. The pre-exam review for the rest of the country, however, depresses me. The same crowd who saw glitter over substance in the last Presidential election seems likely to swerve the same way next year.

Exam day approaches. Somebody give this country a crib sheet.

Michael Jackson, meet normalcy.

From this site. What could have been.



Before.



After.

“Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.”*

*“I'm not interested in your dopey religious cult” in Latin.

Knock knock. Bea gets the door.

“Hi, I’d like to share with you the saving power of Christ.” A man wants to talk to us about Jesus. On a Sunday morning. Beside him, his six year old daughter paces the hallway.

“Sorry, it’s not a good time.” Bea, after all, is not exactly wearing her Sunday best. Rubber flip-flops, old shorts, and a ratty tee-shirt are not exactly the best attire for a life-changing revelation.

Bea closes the door. As she passes me on the sofa, she gives me an “I know what you’re thinking” look.

Bea and I have since ceased to be flatmates, but I still keep that image in my head just in case I’m sorely tempted to have at it with religious nutjobs (make that sorely, sorely tempted, when they’re religious nutjobs who bring their toddlers along with them to guilt you into submission).

She knew that, had it been me at the door and not her, I would have had a little fun with Mr. Flanders. Kid or no kid.

“The Bible says that the faithful will be able to drink poisons safely,” I’d say. “I’ve got some bleach here we could test you with.” And so on.

How low is that, you ask? Well, how low is dragging your kid along for some guilt insurance? Richard Dawkins thinks giving your kid a religion is tantamount to child abuse; I’m not that extreme, but Mr. Quality-time-with-my-kid was <----this----> close to crossing the line.

I’ve seen the line crossed many times in my day, from pastors ridiculing teenagers who know just a little bit more about paleontology than the status quo in Sunday School, to schools boycotting science exhibitions outright because it had the dirty little “e” word, to mutaween sentencing girls to a fiery death because they weren’t decently enough dressed to escape a burning building.

And it makes me a little angry. Here we are, in the 21st century, and people are still living and dying by beliefs that have been passed down unchanged for millennia!

2000 years after Christ, millions of people who should know better to still think that the world is 12,000 years old, and that we were descended from a single pair of naked homo sapiens who lived in a garden! And, thanks to a brutal misogyny that lives on in Christianity and Islam, women and girls are sacrificed to a ruthless God that neither Jesus nor Muhammad would have recognized.

Imagine that collective imagination gone to waste - billions who’ve been bullied by their respective religions into thinking that human intelligence should play second fiddle to faith-based nonsense. Each of those brains, capable of so much more, shutting down in deference to ideas that are thousands of years behind the times.

“You have to necessarily believe in Adam and Eve to believe that Christ died for your sins,” I’m told by a Christian in earnest. Facts aren’t important; believing is all. If the evidence points to an earth that’s billions of years older than the Creationists’ estimate, disregard the evidence.

Believing is all.

Faith cheats knowledge. In my experience, the faithful fall harder for flim-flam than skeptics; believers are conditioned to unquestioning obedience to an Idea, making them easier targets for the next con-man who knocks at their door. It’s true that you can’t question the ineffable presence of the Divine, but since when did God demand you throw out thousands of years of accumulated human knowledge to be saved?

The next time somebody knocks on the door with their kid in tow, I have this and a thousand other questions to ask. I’ll push aside Bea’s gently remonstrating look, and inquire. Some things are more important than peaceful Sunday mornings.