Compilation of short MORNING THOUGHTS.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

Michael Jordan's jersey from 1998 NBA Finals Game 1 sells for a record $10.1 million. Sports money! But that’d be “less astounding.” Any memorabilia from famous guys could sell millions$. But the salary level, then and now? The great (late) Bill Russell’s salary at the peak of his Celtics years was $100k (or “only” $600k today). Not a million$. Today’s highest paid NBA player per salary: Stephen Curry, $92.8 million. Salary + endorsements: LeBron James: $528,992,480. 🏀💰🏀

Per Covid Left/Right murkthrow, this side muzzles that Science is absolute. Science is never absolute. Experiments and more experiments are conducted before a degree of certainty. Then there’s the FDA skepticism per annual list of product recalls. What is absolute? When Arrow barks, per decibel or tone, I know what’s up. Cyd also reminded me of the certainty of the weather forecast and newbies Ching and Fizz? They can tell if a cat chow is up for FDA recall or not. Uh huh. 🐕😜🐈

Influencer Marketing. Social media endorsements and product placement from influencers, or people and organizations who have a purported expert level of knowledge or influence in their field. Example: Go to Google without typing a word, the first on-line is Alexandra Daddario. Know her? Many would ask, who? But she has a huge presence. Pretty much how the Kardashians got rich and famous. Market economics via steady “influencing” and focused (re)branding. 😒📲😏

Notice how Republican women politicians are shamed, dissed, and maligned. The favorite target these days: Marjorie Taylor Greene. Worse than how Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann were trashed in the past. Per my Homepage, that’s what I see, dished by obviously Democrat minions. But not much from GOPs. I read 1 or 2, from time to time, versus AOC or Nancy Pelosi, but not as nasty as those vs Marjorie. Can we criticize like grownups sometimes? 

       OF course, the men are ridiculed as well. Tops murkthrow recipients: DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Giuliani, Lindsey Graham, McConnell, and oh well you know the undisputed #1 as the most shamed, spat at, demonized dude. LOL! 🤨😏😟

Today’s journalism language: “Kelsey Plum brings the dawg out in Game 2 win after A’ja Wilson told her to ‘get her s*** together.” In my days, we were barred from typing up words such as s*** after we have already conveyed the message of a quote. I may sound conservative? LOL! Yet that’s the no-brainer media stylebook in those days. Not anymore. Language evolved. Maybe reason why people simply throw s*** and f*** Is it their primal language? 🗣👥🫂

Asheville crime is up 34 percent from 2021. I first got here from New York City in late 1999 and decided to stay right after 9/11. Had a 2-year sojourn in Los Angeles (from 2017); returned in 2019. Most of my years in WNC were spent organizing events/concerts and publishing a newspaper. Having lived in big cities as a journalist, crime doesn’t jar me much. It is the divide that is pushed by political hate that bothers me. We can’t solve crime as a divided community.☮️☮️☮️

People castigating people in public about something that they don’t (politically?) agree with. Current life. A dad drinking beer with his kids at an open-air rock festival. A neighbor grilling steak wrapped with aluminum foil. Woman gassing up her SUV. Etcetera. And me wearing a Duck Dynasty shirt. Pure personages are compelled to chastise you and so proud to declare that it is their hooman right to do so. Don’t you ever drink Coke in public, okay? Pepsi is it! 🤨🧐🤪

What is wrong with employees these days? Yesterday, the young Amazon guy didn’t even smile back or say anything when I said “Thank You!” after he dropped boxes here. The general feeling when I head out and face humanity. Basically. Asheville wasn’t like this when I first got here, 2000. I still experience niceness though, from time to time, but from what some stereotype as “rednecks.” They are old school nice. “How are you? I like your hat! Have a good day, Sir!” 🤨🧐🤪

I can proudly say that despite my self-imposed recluse personality, I created so many friends than the average old dude my age. So it follows that I am interested to know people on Social Media. Why don’t you talk about yourself? I mean, not the TMI drama. But less anti Trump, anti  Christianity, anti Conservative? Talk about you beyond the anti. Probably, you did advise LBJ or Kamala? A degree in Cultural Anthropology at UC Berkeley? Love paella? Bee Gees? 👈👀👉

I mostly post old, old songs. Not only those songs that I enjoyed as a young man but also those that older people used to listen to when I was a little boy. Turntable music was a leisure staple in our house when I was growing up. I used to spin records for hours on a weekend. I’d crank the volume up so everybody, including neighbors, would enjoy the sound. They did, and even requested their favorites. So on my FB Page, I share music (also) to remember the good old days. 🎹🎸🎼

Anger within. Love without.

Previously posted on my Facebook page. Or written years ago, unedited/not updated.

ALL the anger from without but where is the love from within? I opted out of two election-related Facebook groups (in the Philippines and the US) because of obvious reason/s. There is so much negativity in there. I don't need to be reminded how horrible the past was. The Martial Law and post-ML years (1980s mostly) back home, yet the young need to know somehow without ramming `em down their throats. They are not dumb either. Yelling those grim memories of days gone over and over and over won't help. 

       We need to pose solutions and remedies so that the ills of yesterday won't be able to find cracks to seep through the system again. The same with some political groups in the US. So much spewing and spitting to the tune of “My candidate is god and yours is Lucifer!” / “You don't know shit, you are a Communist!” / “Damn Rightist freak!” mud-throwing. Goodgollymissmiley! Chill, superhomeys! Grab some chamomile tea and simmer down. 🙂🥰🙃

WHERE are the issues? Where are the facts? Let us discuss economic platforms and foreign policies. What have presidents done on the good side and what do these leadership aspirants got so that a light of hope gleams in the horizon somehow—than a pall of rabid cloud swarming the glade? Some people got really intense precautionary blahblah than the optimistic taps on the shoulder. I observed and covered elections in the islands and in the US for years. 

       Although I kind of “retired” a bit to work on book/s, I still get news/info feeds from the White House press relations and several media organizations in Manila. I like to read stuff and know what's going on around me. I sat down with political think tanks and listened and spoke. Alongside that, I've been known as a hardline activist almost all my life that it seems impossible to shake that persona. In Asheville I even devoted my little newspaper to anti-war ideals and the Occupy movement. 

       But somehow we gotta sit down and look at the eyes of our children or grandchildren—and the kids out there. What do we have to hand to them? Anger? We need to hand them plans rather than promises, you reckon? Let's lead them to the light of the field then pull them to the dark of our shell. The past that I tried to heal from was a past littered with deaths and mourning—yet I didn't hand these to my kids. They will explore and navigate life and build their truths based on what they got and not on what I had. 

       I needed to raise a more mature mind than an angry one, a heart that calms the storm down than one that provokes it. I still have so much anger in me but you know, dafuq with that. LOL! My love poems and the ethereal music of the Bee Gees get me by, feel me? 🙂🥰🙃

MEANTIME, I do enjoy recent chats with my longtime buddies back home. Exchange of views about language (we islanders got a lot!) historical puzzles, even origins of food, carrot man nose and music. I also talk/IM with friends in the US who offer objective discussion about Trump's economic agenda beyond the wayward motor-mouth and Bernie's brainstorm beyond the socialist pronouncements, and why Hillary's centrist stance got some points to ponder as well. I love these talks. 

       I continually learn from listening, especially with those that I seem to disagree with. The chants of the choir can be boring sometimes. In between, we got some cute cat videos, funny posters/stickers, family jokes, and those sweet sentimental songs like “Just When I Needed You Most” and “Sometimes When We Touch” by these dudes Randy Vanwarmer and Dan Hill, you know them? And yes—awesome blues-rock by Pinay rocker Sampaguita (who fondly calls me Sampogito) and “kundiman” songs by my idol Celeste Legaspi. Enjoy! Facebook is not a slogan chalkboard, right? It's all fun. Dig? Cool. Now I digress. 🙂🥰🙃

About Dogs and Cats and their Buddies. And some little jokes.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

CATS rely much more on other senses, such as hearing and smell, to understand the world around them, so for some cats it may just be the noises they hear and fast movements they see that attract their attention towards the screen. Ching and Fizz, especially Ching, binge-watches fish/bird videos on YouTube. They have their own laptops for that purpose. Fizz, however, doesn’t watch as much upon knowing she couldn’t catch the birds or fish, anyways. Fizz overthinks a lot. 🐱💻🐱

WHILE not all supermarkets non-organic vegetables and fruits are sprayed with pesticides, it is likely that the majority of non-organic produce sold in supermarkets has been treated with some form of pesticide. But I don’t get paranoid. Repeat Mark Twain: “Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” 🍎😋🧀

THE signals and behaviors that cats and dogs use to chat are different and can lead to signals of aggression, fear, dominance, friendship or territoriality being misread by other critters. Dogs have a natural instinct to chase smaller animals that flee, an instinct common among cats. That’s what experts say to justify their research budget. But in my experience, dogs and cats are cool with each other. Little fights like what YouTube videos to watch are solved by giving them individual laptops. 🐕🥰🐈

WHILE an adventurous cat is more likely to roam, a scared cat may not trust their inner compass, get confused, and get lost. Who knows. Once a cat has wandered out of its comfort zone anything can happen to scare them further: Barking dogs, wildlife, loud traffic noise, anti Trump noise. Once their adrenaline levels have subsided, these cats will work their way back home, often showing up the next day or a few days later and tell you they just went somewhere to clear their head. 👈🐱👉

SHRINKS always ask the depressed personage. 1. Find someone to love. A dog or cat. 2. Find something to do. Watch a fine Netflix series. 3. Find something to look forward to. The new (upgrade) of iPhone. 🙂🙃😉

WHEN cats groom, their barb-like tongues stimulate the sebaceous glands at the base of their hairs and spread the resultant sebum throughout the hairs. Their self-grooming also helps rid the coat of dirt and parasites such as fleas. Remember those majick words: “Sebaceous” and “sebum.” Yes, you may also “groom” your partner via licking. Sebaceous and sebum. 🐱👅🐱

DOG and cat cognition differ due to brain size. Cats are independent thinkers and problem solvers; dogs are socially intelligent. Arrow can tell a fake news from factual news. Fizz has the “genius” brain. She figures things out: Source of laser dots, what makes the spring toy bounce etc. Ching knows where and when to get back rubs, with due respect to her hooman’s schedule. Meanwhile, hoomans are more “dog brain” and “pea brain,” that’s according to Fizz after reading FB posts, 24/7.

POWER-SAVE, a feature of a component or subsystem designed to actively reduce its power consumption when not in use. That’d happen to humanity when AI takes over humanity’s existence, 100 percent. We will be on constant power-save for the next streaming TV series or TikTok dance. 😴🔌😴

IF you throw a ball for your dog, her erratic movements mimic those of the prey her wolf ancestors used to hunt and kill, and even though dogs have been domesticated for centuries these instincts are still very much alive. Chasing things, hunting and retrieving is in their DNA as a means for survival. Those dogs though who don’t chase golf balls or bowling balls are trained by cats not to. Obvious. 🐕🏀🐕

WHY do cats stretch out their front paws when sleeping? It's when your cat lies on his belly and stretches out his back paws behind him and his front paws as well. It looks like Superman in flight. This sleep position is a sign of an extremely relaxed cat, and he can fall into a deep sleep in this comfortable position. Okay, of course, you may sleep that way, too. No one’s stopping you. 🐈😴🐈

About Dogs and Cats and their Buddies. And some little jokes.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

FOR dogs, it's instinctual to be interested in moving objects. Bicycles, cars, and yes, postmen, trigger a dog's natural hunting instinct. So the advice to the postperson or Amazon etc personage: When you deliver mail and stuff, don’t move. Like you’re frozen. Let the dog collect the mails and boxes from your vehicle. 🐕‍🦺📬🐕‍🦺

WE say cheese on photo-shoots. I don’t know why. But dogs may hear differently and think you’d give them cheese sticks after a photoshoot. Cats though don’t care. They pose for the cellphone cam because they can or because they won’t. 🐕📸🐈

FORGIVEN, or grant pardon for a mistake or wrongdoing. Your dog trashed your $7,199.99 Haverty’s Audrey Sectional couch and your cat broke a replica of Christie’s Ming Vase (fake, maybe $300; real one: more than $10 million). Would you forgive them? I will. (Because I don’t own any of those couches and vases.) Arrow can always destroy stuffed toys from Goodwill Outlet that I bring her and Ching and Fizz can break whatever thingy that I got from Dollar Tree. No problemo. 🐱🐕🦊

WHY do cats follow us to the bathroom? Whatever the reason, cats follow us into the bathroom to spend time with their beloved hooman. Kitties associate the bathroom as a positive space. Sitting on your lap while you're on the toilet means caresses. Bath time means playing with bubbles. Although Ching and Fizz follow me to the bathroom, they are not that “lap” or “bubbles” dramatic. They just stay quiet as my security details, in case a python crawls up from the toilet bowl. 🐈🚽🐈

SQUEAKY toys tap into dogs’ hunting instinct. Such as with Arrow who is a hound dog. Experts agree that squeaky toys offer dogs a way to connect with their natural prey drive because it mimics the sound of a scared or injured animal, which immediately activates the urge to hunt. Arrow is also a natural surgeon. That is why she “operates” on those stuffed toys and figures out or studies if the squeakyness makes them sick. 🧸🐕🪆

IF your cat has decided his once favorite cat bed is no longer cool, it could be the usual personality change. If she's not showing any other signs of abnormality, she could simply have found a better sleeping spot. Or maybe after she scrutinized her bed, googled stuff, and found out it is made of toxic materials or made by abused child workers. Reason why Fizz sleeps in only one or two beds in the house. She likes to google. Ching though, no problem. Whatever is cool. 🐱🛌🐱

CATS are good at visual recognition, except when it comes to human faces. Though they use other cues: Scent, sound, or mood swings to ID us. Reason why they run when an Amazon person shows up on the porch. “OMG! Who is dis guy?!?” Or “Are you stressed out again about Elon?” That’s what researchers (who are cats) from Tokyo University say. Meanwhile, dogs can understand human phrases or nonverbal cues. And some can google. Because they are trained by cats. 🐱🦊🐱

ZIP LINE, an inclined cable or rope with a suspended harness, pulley, or handle, down which a person slides for amusement. That’s what I need–from my room upstairs to the living room, in front of the big TV screen and work/computer table. Seriously. ☺️😊😂

Wanna Talk Weed?

Marijuana or cannabis is a sensitive issue to many. While I seldom oblige a “hit” when offered as a gesture of friendliness or diplomacy, I don’t consume it at all. But I digress. Here is part of an article on Sierra, 2017 issue, that is part of the reason why I don’t thumbs-up (unregulated) marijuana growth. 

ON public lands, drug cartels and other criminal organizations have built enormous, well-guarded plantations in remote areas, covering the land with trash and irrigation pipes and contaminating it with pesticides. Growers have exacerbated California’s historic six-year drought by diverting water from headwater streams and springs in the summer and fall, when flows are weakest. Each marijuana plant consumes about six gallons of water per day. That can have major effects on seasonal streams, which salmon rely on. Water demand from Emerald Triangle* marijuana grows often leaves streams there completely dry.  

*The Emerald Triangle is a region in Northern California that's known as the largest cannabis-producing area in the United States. The region is made up of three counties that form an upside-down triangle: Humboldt County on the coast, Trinity County inland, and Mendocino County to the south. 🍀🎍🪴

Photo: USDA.

HOW IT WAS. Compiled from my previous Facebook posts.

Slippers or barefootin’. Cautionary tales abound these days, online. Don’t do this, don’t do that. Don’t eat that, don’t eat this. Humanity isn’t spontaneous anymore. Primal behavior, instinctive reflex (sic) are gone. We gotta google stuff. Slippers may be manufactured with toxic materials. Barefooting may infect feet with deadly viruses. I remember those days when my main “shoes” were outdoor slippers and I could run around the yard, in mud and dirt, barefoot. 👣🩴👣

Long time ago, television was a huge luxury. Only the rich had a TV set. And those came with a door that could be locked because TV-watch was only in the designated hour of the day or week. So we did extremely appreciate TV shows then. I remember those years when we kids, kin and friends, would gather in one room, kept quiet and very behaved, to watch the week’s favorite event on television. Rowdy children were sent out. Those were the days. 📺👦📺

Mahjong is a tile-based game that was developed in the 19th century in China and has spread throughout the world. Usually played by four players, mahjong is a game of skill, strategy, and luck. Although the game has also been adapted into an online entertainment, I prefer the family and neighborhood leisure original. My family and kin played mahjong a lot as a form of weekend social, as we kids minded our chess and scrabble. 🎲🤹‍♀️🎲

“Bilyaran.” Or pool halls. With most medals in the sport, the Philippines is a dominant force globally for billiards/pool. Brazilians are obsessed with futbol/soccer, Canadians with ice hockey? Filipinos with billiards. Betting, heckling, and sometimes petty fights, figure in the neighborhood “bilyaran.” My mom had to angrily fetch my older bro Alberto from there to remind him of house chores. I do play but I am not very good at it though. 🎱🇵🇭🎱

Holen or jolens is a variation on marbles game. It is played by tucking the marble with the player's middle finger, with the thumb under the marble, and the fourth finger used to stabilize the marble. In a one-on-one game, you and your opponent choose a “shooter” marble. The rest are grouped and placed in a circle. Opponents must have the same number of marbles. You and the other player will then take turns using your “shooter” to hit the other's camp. 🧿🪬🧿

“Turumpo” is a small, egg-shaped top. A well-known toy or street competition game among Filipino children. The top is spun by winding a length of string around it and launching it so that it lands spinning on its point. If the string is attached to a stick the rotation can be maintained by whipping the side of the body. It could be dangerous, I know. But still less dangerous than the mental impact of the Grand Theft Auto video game or social media on young minds. 🔫😁🔫

Jingle (chordbook magazine) exudes a poignant flash in my memory. Before I launched a young pro journalism life at 14 for a provincial city newspaper back home, I was already sending out poetry and jokes (!) to Jingle. Yes, I wrote jokes that my own dad laughed with. LOL! I got free Jingle copies in return. Me and my bestfriend Duwi used to follow guitar chords from the magazine to write our own songs. We wrote quite a collection then. Our high school days. 📰🎼📰

The payphone by the roadside in the middle of nowhere or by a dark alley as rains poured. We only see them now in crime thriller movies. The black phone in our neighborhood pharmacy store in Manila of many years ago: 1 peso for 5 minutes. Go beyond time, the store clerk would eye you like a terror professor. Payphones. When phoning means communicating. These days, people use the cellphone 101 ways. The least, to communicate with someone. ☎️📞☎️

In the Philippines, “sangplatitong mani” means a bowl of fried (or boiled) peanuts. The finger-food goes with a drinking social. A symbol of “may pinagsamahan” or comradeship. If you share a drink with someone over “sangplatitong mani,” that’d mean you are now friends. Many neighborhood quarrels are fixed via this pop-culture gesture. Simple, primal. No need to sue anyone. All can be negotiated or “napag-uusapan” via serbesa and “sangplatitong mani.” 🍺🥜🍺

Tobacco and cigarettes. My grandpa’s tobacco brand was Alhambra Regalis. His cigarettes, Empress. Old brands: Pall Mall. Chesterfield. State Express 555. Lucky Strike. In the Philippines: Winston, Hope, Champion, Bataan. The ad “I’d walk a mile for a Camel.” The macho cowboy TV commercial for Marlboro? Most (Filipino) women didn’t smoke in those days though. And if they did, it was for “class.” Virginia Slims: “You’ve come a long way, baby.” 🌱🔥🌱

Photo credits: CNET. CEAT. Shutterstock.

Falling in Love, Living a Life in America.

Previously posted on my Facebook page. Or written years ago, unedited/not updated.

MY poem “Seeking Home” was, in a way, inspired by Federico Garcia Lorca's “Poeta en Nueva York,” or poems he wrote while in the US in early 1930s, plus the work of revered Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan. A part of my poem goes:

 

… I seek comfort in

many open doors that remain close

even as I am freely welcomed in.

Love fails to communicate 

in a borrowed language 

that seems to grow more strange

in each mumbling of sorrow

or joy; words that bounce back 

like ten-minute autumn rain 

that dry down like cheap vodka 

on chapped lips, hot clinches stolen

in between hours-rendered,

dollars-paid...”

THE excruciating need to belong, to love like the way we've ever known before we sailed away from home, screams from within. We try to find room for such a huge longing for love and so we buy into the culture—a culture that is close yet so distant—and then we end up empty because of the blunt, naked fact that vacuums within aren't filled by fillings that don't speak of the spirit that we've known. 

       In a more blatant way, can we imagine the many illegal immigrants who fell in love and allowed that heart to stay suspended in midair—since love is not real without a green card? Those people who had to numb the craving for a tangible touch that stays? Those people who had to sell their soul for a piece of paper called a visa? So they can live normal lives—minimum wage, a tiny room with empty walls, a beat up sedan, mininum-plan credit card, or just to stride into a bar for beer and not being eyed with indifference or suspicion? And what goes on in the mind of those who say “I love you” in a 3-minute marriage in a Las Vegas drive-in chapel because that's what it takes to be “normal”? 

       This is an immigrant's pain that America's heart should fit in. The Great American Dream. It is not a dream—it is just a job that pays for a few dollars sent to waiting families back home, a box filled with Spams and Campbell Soups and a Goodwill sweater. The journey is not a dream—it is love that is said from the depths of one's heart and not lost because the other guy has the dream more secured with an AmEx card and health insurance. 

       The Dream is not the Statue of Liberty or Disneyland or a beach house in Big Sur or an SUV with built-in wi-fi. The dream is the freedom to say it because we feel it as an individual truth, the freedom to pursue happiness as a human right, the freedom to worship a god irrelevant of shape and color and language, and the freedom to love and keep it because it is personal and intimate and exclusive.

       Hence, “Seeking Home” comes in little snippets of joy—a kiss from a child after a Dollar Tree gift, a hug after a recitation of a poem in a downtown cafe, a good hot meal on winter, and a song that reminds of a past, a memory, that says, “I was there, I was complete—until my pieces slipped into a ship and sailed away...” At least, that memory offers hope. 

       The title of Carlos Bulosan's novel was “America is in the Heart.” I never knew what that meant after reading the book. Until I felt it myself. America, life—like love, it's all in the heart.  🇵🇭💖🇺🇸