Filed under: blogging communities, bugsey, humor, idiocy, life, Love, mushy, soul, your template is ugly hon | Tags: Birian Gorrel, blogging communities, Brian Gorrel, bugsey, Helium is great, Media in the Philippines corrupt, Multiply
Someone I know started a blog that landed him a book deal plus coverage from BBC. Yes, that’s the good news. The not too great follow-up however is that this friend of mine, Brian Gorrell, is HIV positive. He tells his whole angst filled spiced with his rather blunt expression of raw anger.
Brian’s story is one too familiar. He is an HIV positive Aussie guy, who fell deeply and foolishly in love with some Filipino guy known as Delfin. Brian admits that he did enjoy the beach paradise at a place called Boracay but his kind of “eden” didn’t last too long. He didn’t know that his boyfriend was associating with socialites allegedly with “crime links” and he witnessed the not too pleasant reality of living among the extremely rich who have acquired their money through less than decent and legal means.Last that I managed to chat with him, he admitted that his blog was something that he needed to do to release his “rage”. Rage is a good thing sometimes. Or at least, the releasing of ‘rage’- because it can be something like a catharsis. I guess that was why Brian Gorrell just HAD to start a blog.It was the only therapy that was available while he was hurting.His blogging was like his own version of personal journaling. Perhaps there were days when he was crying while banging his keyboard. But he does have one thing – GUTS!
Filed under: asshole, blogging communities, fr grevy, humor, idiocy, inspirational
Malu Fernandez is a lifestyle writer who wanted to simply make a point about “the right scent” and the “right people”. A lifestyle writer is a “social writer” — thus, part of Malu’s job is to find out the latest “who’s who” in the social registrar.Fernandez also tried to come up with something “witty”, but she found blog notoriety instead.
Part of what she wrote is this :
However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.
While I was on the plane (where the seats were so small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh, popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga sann ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?” Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are you a domestic helper as well?” I though I had died and God had sent me to my very own private hell.
On my way back, I had to bravely take the economy flight once more. This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good summer. Jetting from the Aegean Sea to the Pacific may sound a bit pretentious until you wake up in economy class smelling like air freshener.
And no one thought it was a joke. In my mind, the “joke” was on those who were so angered by her article to the point of making her famous. What a way to GET BACK at those who literally believed that ANYONE would “slash their wrists” all because one doesn’t like your seat mate. There must be something utterly defective in our English lessons that make us NOT understand what is hyperbole.
It wasn’t really that she wanted to degrade Filipino domestic helpers. She was making the point that they are everywhere, and that everyone on the economy presumed that she was one of them. What she is saying is simply – “not ALL Filipinos on the plane is a Filipino domestic helper, because there are professional Filipinos too”. Hers was more of a point against the Philippine government exporting slaves and making the Philippines a “nation known for the mega-domestic helper” MORE than a nation of scientists, teachers and medical professionals.
It didn’t sound nice. Not that she probably wanted to sound sweet, maybe she was pissed.For all we know she made it a point to write like a dumb “social elitist” because she wanted to make a point against them and the policies which divide Philippine society into “haves” and “have nots” and “poor” and “dirt poor”.
Whatever her motives, noble or ignoble, isn’t it funny how there seems to be a mob-blog mentality which seems to say : ” I AGREE THERE SHOULD BE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND LONG AS IT PLEASES ME.” Heck there was even this PRIEST with a strange handle of Father Gravy (reminded me of roasted turkey with cranberry) who went on a cybe rage rampage “in all caps”.He was hilarious and made more of a fool of himself than everyone else. If there is ANy reason why anyone should NOT be a Catholic, one has only to figure out the logic of this Grevy priest.
grevy525 wrote on Aug 27, edited on Aug 27
While she already resigned and apologized, let us hope that she is sincere and that her ordeal will serve as a warning to irresponsible journalists. There is one thing though that I am not comfortable with from among the hate blogs against her that I have read— they called her a pig, among other invectives. In so doing they (hate bloggers) might (just might) have proved some of her consternation …..
grevy525 said
IS THERE ANYTHING I HAVE SAID THAT IS OFFENSIVE TO HER??? DID I BERATE HER OR HURL INVECTIVES AT HER??? PLEASE READ ALL OF MY COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY.
I replied 🙂
“Is there something wrong with your keyboard? ohhh.. a shouting priest! 🙂 Such meekness is admirable and.. Brutus was an honorable man:) oh yes, you berated her for being an irresposible journalist adding that you hope she learned her lesson by her ordeal.. gee, i am so glad you are not God”
“The pig thingy, I agree with you, also hurt me a bit because i am also fat. Are you fat too by the way?”
Actually, Father Grevy is fat and unmerciful. He has no idea what the First Amendment is(and where his asshole is?) and has his own eerie definition of freedom of the press. He thinks that Malu is a prime example of an “irresponsible journalist” for trying to use hyperbole. Yet, the same Father Grevy is so upset that his anger drips like oozing gravy which makes him pound his keyboard with the gusto of a rabid retard who declares that “the First Amendment does not apply to the Philippines’. Actually, if he wasn’t so stupid, I could have told him more than “the bill of rights of the Philippine Constitution includes freedom of the press”. But he just had to be stupid. Now Malu was TRYING to write stupid and she got the flak. Fr. Grevy wanted so much to sound intelligent that he ultimately sounded stupid.
Heck, I love Malu Fernandez~! She has a knack for getting THE REACTION and if we were to measure a writer’s worth, I would think it is by the way the readership reacts. And they did REACT! Malu Fernandez also exposed how some pretentious and onion-skinned some people are. Most of All, how dumb they can be and how BIG and SERIOUS they think of themselves.
Hyperbole! dang.. that was why Forrest Gump was really SMART, his whole was a hyperbole! And that is why the Fr Grevy’s of this world remain cold boring and DUMB!
Friendster dot com seems to be the technological proof that one REALLY exists. Sounds weird, but everyone I know here seems to have a friendster. The warped cyber philosophy goes something like this —
“I have a friendster, therefore i exist!”
Nevermind those who have no web access, like the dying kids at Sudan. Maybe they do not exist because they have no friendster?
Anyway my favorite kid Niccolo happens to have a friendster. He exists.
The problem started when he started playing cyber-detective and found that he had a generally nice sister and brother. He also found out that I wasn’t their mother.Yah get the idea?
Of course, he found was terribly ‘enlightened’ and thought that he was now qualified to write something as monumental as “ROOTS“. Poor kid.. really.Now he is bent on coming up with some geneological dissertation on the value of family trees.
This upsets me. Why? It is not because his father wasn’t Abe Lincoln or Donald Trump, but because he may be having too high of an expectation of acceptance and mushy loving. It also boggles me because it would indeed be comical if his suspected half-sister is trying to be merely civil and that they aren’t related at all! It would be pathetically hilarious and I can’t stop him because I am a middle-of-the-road liberal (LOL!)
Thus, I have to allow him space to make an absolute fool of himself.
So, he asked his “suspected sister” something like : ” Is blah-blah your father. I think you’re my sister!”. Of course that was idiotic, but part of my being a good parent is to allow the kid some moronic experience. He went furthur : ” You look like me!” . Talk about kids and their stupid utterances! The suspected sister went : “ Really, I like see you!”. Thus I told him something to the effect that cyberfiriends are great, but it isn’t the place to go and find.. roots! Like, anyone can find someone with the name Napoleon Bonaparte in some community like friendster, but he couldn’t be the REAL thing.
What I am not telling him however is that this suspected-sister looks exactly like him. And yes, they could have had the same father because I wasn’t into the Albert Einstein types when I picked him up some long years ago. Aside from that, his older brother THINKS SO, but his older brother had no horse nor common sense enough to send “feelers” first.
He thinks that cyber bullying his brother’s “suspected half sister” to “telling the truth” is the most honest thing one is supposed to do. Of course, his brother is the ultra-rightist Republican type. Now can you imagine how politically incorrect and chaotic my home is.
Heck, so what if the poor ‘suspected sister’ is REALLY his sister? She is only the “suspected” sister, and she has the individual right to say or not say what the name of father is/was/will be/whatever. Same as my fave kid – he had the individual right to ask. After all, who wouldn’t be interested in knowing one’s imaginary or real father?
The cyber bully is my fave kid’s older brother who thinks that terror tactics are completely acceptable to make the poor “suspected sister” admit who her father is. It is also warped and rather annoyingly hilarious because it is none of his business. He has his own father. He knows his own father. He sometimes acts like his own father which makes me want to reconsider my pro-life political stand.
Heck, I want to sue Friendster!
I feel that it somehow “pressures” utterly sane people to do the most ridiculous things. Like, looking for a “sister”. Now, I have this outrageous idea of actually placing an internet ad like : ” Wanted : Sister for my Kid! Must be mushy, nice and INTELLIGENT enough NOT to have a friendster account”.
Or maybe they’ll both get invited to “OPRAH”! Dang!
Seconds ago I was reading my multiply site when it dawned on me – people have a knack of writing about NOTHING! Nothing as in really wanting in substance. Not that I longed for something like a heated intellectual high fallutin discussion. Just a sane one. Something beyond pictures of Asian dishes, flowers, dogs, cats, and cutie pics wherein one can predictably comment : ” This makes me hungry!” or “Awesome” or the usual one liner “ I Love This“.
There must be MORE to blogging than — ” I love this! ” and then your reply goes: “Thank you visiting my site!“. Yet that seems to be the IN THING in blogging communities — You leave me a “nice” comment and I leave you one too. That explains the traffic. But it doesn’t explain “making sense”. I always thought that communication is saying “something” more than “Look at my food“.
I may be wrong, but blogs are supposed to challenge our mind and tickle our creativity more than staring at the latest pizza or Mr. Lee’s monochromatic dumplings.
It is frankly annoying if not downright boring, particularly if it isn’t such a biggie as something like a tourist catalog of Italian feasts from a Sorrento or something like that. There must also be something more to blogging about or torturing those who are abroad by presenting pictures of dishes one can get ONLY at home.Be it food or stuff, I mean. There also must be something more to blogging than mushy exchanges that I read everyday ” Have a Good Day”, “Be blessed” or some incredibly boring account of one’s exhausting day. Saying really nothing, except, hey I am here (or I was here)and not having the temerity to honesty just type that and nothing more.
But I guess that is how these community blogs are supposed to be.
Thus, I put up a series of really fanatical Islamic videos I snatched from youtube and I don’t get anything more than the typical : “Not All Muslims are That Way”, “We should love them too“, and still the usual “have a great day“. So I wonder if it is a “blogging sin” to suddenly switch from mushy to real.
People are dying in this world everyday because of inexcusable violence and the only ones who seem aware of it are those Israeli blogs. My blogging community does not give a damn, not that I expect them to, beyond pictures and “God bless you”.
The positive side however is you find who is real.
You find out that that one who was your friend eight years ago is still the only one who “gets” what you mean and that it’s time you realize that you can’t pick-up a buddy by “multiplying” your blog network. You can pick up a hundred of “backs to scratch” but nothing beats a friend who shares even your “politics”.
And then, you understand why you no longer fit your own culture mode. You are pass the phase of dishes and cutie pics.
You have something more to say.
Filed under: blogging and money, blogging communities, blogging party, bugsey, hot
Blogging seems to be the new “media” but not in all cases. Some blog because they are pragmatic, they want to earn. There is a certain peculiarity however with the site MULTIPLY DOT COM because they give you a FREE account but if you are a more creative blogger, you’d probably want to do MORE like using java script tags, having your own adsense, providing your network with a trade/barter/selling page and much of the normal blogger good intentions.
Instead you get a customized choice (unless you get THEIR css pages) and when you have used more than the space for the video, you get a rather rude template telling you something like you have a video overload. unless you pay for a GOLD or PLATINUM account which is silly considering that will cover my server cost plus my domain name that I intend to use here at Word Press.
But there are bloggers who DO pay the GOLD and SILVER accounts. most of whom do NOT use their sites enough anyway to think of going to adsense or even adlite to at least get back their “blogging cost”.
I would think that it is the NETWORKING there that makes people bite the bullet. Multiply is like a Filipino Community site which is NOT OWNED by a Filipino but it does give one the virtual feeling of home chatting and exchanging views with people back home. While others would go to something like Blogger Party it seems that Multiply has done a great job at “site selling” despite the fact that Blogger Party has the VERY SAME features– and it’s honest, they say you blog, you get your adsense publisher’s code and you EARN some.
The sad thing is that Blogger Party is owned by a Filipina who is a basically responsive admi. Still better is that there are no GOLD or SILVER accounts because you are expected to EARN. Come to think of it, Blogger Party has even more traffic than Multiply and is a lot more honest than Writing Up dot com.
Still I don’t GET IT? Thus, Brenda, the Filipina Blogger Party admi person has attracted instead really good Canadian and American writers while members of Multiply could have even the same benefits without the blogger’s boxed-in feeling and the payment. And those from India can enjoy the blogging party and the Bollywood pics they PUT UP (and which every member is expected to put up with)on their respective sites.
Well, perhaps it is all a matter of “marketing”? But after all the prostestations of “Go Go Go Pinoy”(“Go, Go Filipino”) and “Yabang Pinoy”(Filipino Pride), why aren’t they at the Blogger Party site? I do not wonder. Still I hope that those at Multiply would “help” their own. But again, I do not at all wonder. Really.
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