Gratitude is a Sickness Suffered by Dogs

15Oct08

I was sick yesterday and had to stay in bed the whole time. I had to forgo going to the office but still attended my four year old sister’s ballet recital in the afternoon. Actually, It was nothing really serious. In fact, it allowed me to not only rearrange my room’s miniature library of five hundred books but also indulge in rearranging the placement of the fixtures themselves (not to mention catching up with my readings). While Nietzsche felt grateful to all his miseries and “bouts of sickness” because “it is the sort of thing” that he said left him with “a hundred backdoors” through which he can “escape from enduring habits,” I cannot but smile at how my “bouts of sickness” all the more reinforced certain enduring habits in me. Should I be grateful for the gift of sickness then? As Comrade Stalin (he-he-he) once said: “Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.” Anyway, here are some things that caught my interest yesterday apart from sleep and occasionally staring at the lizard in the ceiling who was my companion for the morning:

1. I’m not nearer finishing any of the books I started reading at the beginning of the month. From a three chapter-a-day goal for Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, I find myself applauding if I even get to the end of one chapter a day. Like the one doing this The Penguin Blog entry, I find sometimes myself wondering at how other people seem to be reading too fast. “I often re-read sentences or even whole paragraphs (which, at my most positive and self-delusional, I claim makes me a conscientious, diligent reader)…”That’s exactly how I read.

2. After Soul, another Andrey Platonov story had me yearning to finish the remaining works in Soul and Other Stories (more about these other stories later). I don’t really know what more to say of “The Third Son,” a story about six young men called home by their aging father after the death of their mother, except that I like it. Of the story Robert Chandler wrote in the introduction: “Few stories convey, in so short a space, so complex a sense of the passing of time.”

3. From A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Chuck Klosterman:

JUNE 15, 2032: A virtual-reality amusement park in Berlin allows patrons to momentarily experience the sensation of death. Controversy explodes when studies indicate that almost 10 percent of those who participate in the simulation commit suicide within one year.

JAN. 5, 2061: Chicago doctors perform the first successful brain transplant. The patient survives for sixty-one days, mostly in a state of perpetual terror and befuddlement.

4. Congressman Pablo John Garcia said late last month that officials offended by media should just blog instead of supporting the “Right to Reply Bill,” a proposed law that poses a grave threat to Press Freedom. Not only is it unconstitutional, as media organizations like the National Press Club’s newly reorganized Cebu Chapter contend, but also ridiculous as pointed out by several commentators like SunStar Cebu columnist Frank Malilong:

Section 2 of HB 3306 says that the “reply of the person so accused or criticized shall be published or broadcast in the same space of the newspapers, magazine, newsletter or publication or aired over the same program on radio, television, website or through any electronic device.”

Thus, if 15 people are identified in a page one report as accused of complicity in the purchase of decorative lampposts, the replies of all the 15 should also be published in the front page. Can you imagine accommodating the letters of 15 people in the same page at the same time?

These lawmakers should just follow Congressman Garcia’s lead and just blog about their press-related grievances. It would really be interesting if all their blogs would be as entertaining as onion-skinned.com.

5. I was invited to join the Blog Action Day 2008 Philippines. So as not to be accused of indifference I will end with a reminder on how the global financial crisis is bound to affect the country. I am optimistic about capitalism’s ability for regeneration. Did not Marx himself describe capital as “vampire-like” (indeed, how many times have we tried to kill and bury the exploitative and oppressive system only for it to rise up again to torment us)? However, I simply cannot abide by the assurances of Filipino officials that the country will not be seriously affected by the crisis that now stares everyone in the face.

Allow me to quote from analyst Mon Casiple’s “Recession risks to Filipinos” for as he warns, “It would have been better if they started telling the people the truth and prepare them for the hardships ahead. It is not fair nor prudent to mask the reality–when it hits with no preparations, psychological or otherwise, it will simply swamp those unprepared to survive the economic blows.”

How may Filipinos be affected by recession? Let me count the ways: 1) you may lose your job in the global job market, whether it be in the call center here or your overseas job; 2) you may lose the foreign market for your goods; 3) you may lose your credit card, your insurance plan, and/or your bank account; 4) you may not be able to get loans or credit for your business or other needs; and 5) your stocks may plummet in value and your foreign investor partner may leave and saddle you with the remaining liabilities.

A second round where the local economy contracts in sympathy will do the following to you: 1) your business may fold up with the shrinkage or disappearance of your foreign market, lack of capital, or bad debts; 2) you may not have the necessary reserves to weather the slowing or stopping of the business cycle and consequent loss of earnings and profits; 3) you may lose your job; 4) your peso may not be worth much as exchange rates deteriorates; and 5) you may not have the money at all to buy basic necessities. ■

Filed under: Ephemera, My Life, Política   |  3 Comments
Tags: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Andrey Platonov, Blog Action Day, Chuck Klosterman, Economic Crisis, Economics, Economy, Financial Crisis, Journalism, Marx, Media, Mon Casiple, Nietzsche, Pablo John Garcia, Philippine Economy, Philippines, Platonov, Press, Press Freedom, Reading, Recession, Right to Reply, Right to Reply Bill, Short Story, Stalin, The Third Son