And though I had slain a thousand foes less one,
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
--John M. Ford, The Final Reflection

The Asylum Director

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"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any." - Russel Baker

Saturday, February 16, 2008

In The Philippines, People Never Learn

Makati City is the Philippine equivalent of the US' New York City. Crowded, noisy, full of some very stupid people, and usually so full of people that sardines in a can look like they have more leg room than the average corporate drone in Makati does. Yet, starting from mid-afternoon to some time late at night that I am not sure of, it was, well...see pictures below.




Where are all the people? This is like walking into New York and seeing something right out of I Am Depressing. Oh, sorry. I mean I Am Legend.

Oh, there they are!




I forgot, there was a "political rally" going on. It was an attempt to gather popular support to overthrow the never-really-popular-in-the-first-place president, who's just this much shorter than your typical Tolkien hobbit child. Mind you, this has been done tons and tons of times before. They typically do this for some scandal or another, usually with no real results other than annoying the very people they're supposed to be trying to convince to join their side. Smart people, these activists. Me? I don't bother keeping up with the "scandal of the week" anymore. There's really no point to doing so, or the rallies. I'd hardly even consider the turnout from yesterday a rally. Looked more like a particularly dull street party, I'd reckon.

Want proof? Take a look.




It was even complete with music. The music wasn't very good, mind you. Just some local band that's hardly of any real importance or talent. A couple of half-decent, half-"worse crap than even Britney Spears now could pull out of her crack-smelling ass" songs, with campaign songs being thrown in every few songs. The non-campaign ones were, obviously, the only things that were really keeping people's attention. It certainly could not have been the speeches, which were of two variants. First were the ones that were dull, boring, and just full of the same pseudo-political, pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-sensible ranting that makes no sense when you really listen to it, but has just enough snarky commentary to make an odd listener or two laugh a bit. The other kind? Imagine it as being roughly ten times worse in construction, take out any semblance of intellect, and throw in a good dose of misguided "passion."

Some reports claim that a huge chunk of Makati came out to listen to all this. I beg to differ.

The MRT was still so full that people couldn't tell whether they were stepping on other people's feet, or their own, as you can see from these shots.




Still, there might have been some truth to those reports. As you can tell, there was just a tiny, tiny bit of...breathing room.

Philippine politics? Bah. More like Philippine comedy!

Delayed Edit: No, I was not there. I just had to pass through the sea of asinine humanity because they were blocking my way home.

6 comments:

me said...

i was in makati during this rally. we saw the crowd from up PBCom tower. but i had better things to do that time kaya i didn't join it. hehe. was walking around makati with my bf. yihee. hehe.

Cough Syrup Junkie said...

nagpunta ka sa rally?

VIIIofSwords said...

Nope. Dumaan lang ako kasi nasa daan sila papuntang MRT.

digitalburyong said...

i would be very glad to join, as you know my sense of politics could be very irritating and draining at times, but thesis work pulled me out of doing insane things. i really feel you in the MRT situation, man. asphyxia is the "in" thing these days.

Anonymous said...

akalain mo may rally pala nun? joke! hahahahaha!

Anonymous said...

wow! street drama! anyways, namimiss ko na sumakay ng mrt. hehehe.Ü