“We have already spoken of the more or less latent predisposition
which exists in the Philippines toward indolence, and which must
exist everywhere, in the whole world, in all men, because we all
hate work more or less, as it may be more or less hard, more or less
unproductive.”–Dr. Jose Rizal
Jun 28
Judging from the drug cartels that have allegedly infiltrated show business circles and the recent nationwide drug testing in schools, the Philippines must be awash in narcotics of all kinds.
Things were not always this way, though. Back when all the addicts had to go on were meth and marijuana, people went to great lengths to get high. High enough to believe that totally non-narcotic products could give them some sort of buzz, at least.
Read the rest of this entry »
Jun 12
For Independence Day ‘09, The Indolent Indio is publishing a series of posts that touch on nationalism, freedom, and crass comedy.
This is us cheating by reposting old stuff you may not have seen yet.
We put this here so you'll think we're credible
“Bad as they were, our Spanish conquerors did not spend all day dreaming up ways to make us miserable. They made us miserable by their very existence, milking our labor and resources to feed their empire. Still, we have to admit that their centuries as our overlords left us some good things too.”
“Every settlement in this country that rates a paved main street has a street named after Dr. Jose Rizal.”
“Decisive set-piece battles are not in the Filipino subconscious. When we say patay kung patay, we mean our willingness to kill, not to die.”
“The Philippine Revolution, you say? Which one? The Katipunan was made up of factions that acted independently of each other except during elections and such (and not even then, if Andres Bonifacio has anything to say about it.)”
For Independence Day ’09, The Indolent Indio is publishing a series of posts that touch on nationalism, freedom, and crass comedy.
This is the first post in the series
–
CSI: You're doing it wrong.
A recent study has shown that the value of the average Filipino has plummeted steadily over the years.
Whereas 20 years ago the Filipino was worth dying for, today, they are valued to be just worth getting crippled for. In some markets, the price is pegged much lower, with the average Filipino merely worth enduring a bout of minor migraines for.
Read the rest of this entry »
If there’s one thing that characterized a ’90s childhood, it was lies. In an age before Google could pretty much debunk any false claim, kids took turns one-upping each other’s bullshit just to seem cooler, richer, or both, than everyone else in school.
Of course, the advent of the Internet made our teenage years even doubly angst-ridden. Not only did we have to contend with hormones and crippling insecurity, we had to find out that our classmate did not really see the Gokongwei snake-child lurking in the basement of Robinson’s Galleria.
Read the rest of this entry »
premadonna asks:
1. Sa palabas na Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Ang daga ay si Splinter, ang kalaban na may metal helmet ay si Shredder, ang dalawang goons ay si Rocksteady at Bebop. Ano ang pangalan ng mukhang kurimaw na may utak sa tiyan?
Apr 26
Let it not be said that the men and women of the Armed Forces of the Philippines do not try their best to make lemonade from lemons. In the proverbial sidewalk of life, these guys squeeze every bit of juice and pulp to put in their lemonade. Which doesn’t quite mean that they cannot be kicked to the curb by big bullies.
Great effort does not always mean great success, as these formerly top secret weapons will show.
Once a year, the school dentist and a representative from some toothpaste company, probably Colgate (as are they all, all Colgate,) made the rounds of the classrooms on their zero tooth decay campaign.
They gave lectures on proper brushing (i.e. do it) and handed out free toothbrushes and little tubes of single-use toothpaste that ended up in the bottom of bags and hardened into little tubular rocks.
That was all par for the course in eliminating tooth decay, and was a welcome respite from the rigors of, say, learning the major exports of Philippine provinces (copra and abaca, generally.)
What was scarring about the whole thing was the part where kids were made to let bitter-tasting pink tablets melt in their mouths. The tablets would supposedly mark plaque buildup and, incidentally, rape your taste buds.
It has been said that a hungry man is an angry man, and if an SWS survey conducted last year is to be believed, there are about 4.3 million households that are pretty pissed right now.
The government has admitted that the current global financial crisis has affected food security, but says that it has programs and plans to address the problem.
Given how the government can take a P1-billion grant to curb corruption and still end up with worse corruption, we’re better off fending for ourselves.
Said fending for ourselves primarily limited to foraging at the supermarket, here are some god-sends from the ’80s that will keep you and your wallet relatively full (if not necessarily happy.)
Mang Tomas
If Perla is the jack-of-all-trades in the world of soap, Mang Tomas is the Jack (Bauer) and MacGyver of food in general. Not that it will fashion a helicopter out of spare parts or bust you out of a Vietnames POW camp, but it comes pretty damned close for something made of chopped liver.
Originally marketed as lechon sauce, it needed to rethink its strategy once lechon became a once-a-year delicacy so it soon became a sauce-for-all-seasons. Lechon manok, porkchops, crispy pata, sundry pork products. Pretty much anything would taste better with Mang Tomas. It was like edible weed if weed weren’t already edible in itself.
For the really poor (or high,) Mang Tomas was good as a substitute for meat. Poured on rice, it was not so cruel as not being fed. Mang Tomas was arrogant enough to advertise that it was good on bread, much like, say peanut butter, jam, and other bread spreads not made of chopped liver. And it does make sense, after a fashion. It was like duck liver pate, only made of pork, runny, and was the final undeniable sign that your parents just weren’t making enough.
Pic Related: Poverty Sandwich
Colored Bread
There was a time when an afternoon snack consisted of some random bread from the sari-sari store and some soda. If you were a bit more middle class than most, you got pan de coco or spanish bread. This was basically bread filled with margarine or coco jam, good for that extra burst of sugar to tide you over until dinner.
For those on a tighter budget, it was colored bread. Essentially, this was just plain bread, likea dinner roll, made festive with food coloring. The coloring didn’t really add anything to the bread, but one must keep up appearances.
So, you had random chocolate-colored bread, ube-colored bread and the sickly-pink-red pan de regla (bread of menstruation. If nothing else, the color helped distract you from the fact that you were hungry.
And then, of course, there was the rarely-seen but forever-remembered mutation called rainbow bread.
100% RDA of Vitamins FD&C
If you’re not at a birthday party and are made to eat rainbow bread, your mother probably resented you for being born.
Healthy Snacks
Most kids hate vegetables. Most kids love snacks. So, someone came up with the most insidious plot to deceive children since a wolf pretended to be someone’s granny: they made Snacku! vegetable flavored snacks.
Made of healthy rice crackers and fortified with iron, it would have been the golden mean between what kids want and what parents want their children to eat, finally bridging the gap between generations while keeping kids healthy.
Like most utopian ideas, it failed horribly. Snacku! tasted worse than okra (universally hated by children) and had a suspiciously green tinge, like someone had gotten too creative with their watercolouring project (or had no talent.) The ultimate test to find out if your parents secretly hated you was if they gave you Snacku! in the afternoons.
In time, children were practically begging to be fed actual vegetables instead of this mutated munchy. They even offered to do extra chores and eat soap just to get away from this stuff.
Sadly, with a more health-conscious consumer in mind, many other “healthy snacks” are being offered on the market now.
And we’re not talking about peanuts or sunflower seeds, either. We mean vitamin-fortified corn-based snacks that are little more than updated Snacku!. Even sadder, not even twenty years of technological advancements have succeeded in making them not taste like ass.
Now that the false nostalgia for the ’80s has been supplanted by false nostalgia for the ’90s, we can now focus on something that, unlike your affected fondness for neon, is actually something quite familiar: being poor.
Despite what the government says, our economy being in the shitter is nothing new. We faced it in the late ’80s and got through it alright, bangles and big hair aside. Here are some of the ways our parents got by and gave us the middling-middle-class childhood we so richly deserved. [Note: if you grew up rich, then this will be a nice look into how the rest of us lived. Also, my nine-year-old self hates you.]
You are currently browsing the archives for the philippine history x category.
Xenophobia Begins At Home 4: Muslims