TRASH

by Dean Francis Alfar

  Fond of liberty and fearful of internment, the first to charge was the Frenchman, yelling, “Vive la France!”

  Next was the gung-ho American, who tore into enemy fire shouting, “Long Live the U.S.A!”

  Last was the Filipino, who ran into the hail of lead screaming, “Mga putang ina ninyo!” (“All your mothers are whores!”)

  That’s how I feel right now. Enjoy, everyone, enjoy.

  Download: Candidate Scandal 1 – Bathroom Break

  Download: Candidate Scandal 2 – Boardroom Balling

  Download: Candidate Scandal 3 – Hallway Happenings

  Download: Candidate Scandal 4 – Stairway to Heaven

  Download: Candidate Scandal 5 – Landing Letdown

  Download: Candidate Scandal 6 – Faulty Tower

  I certainly hope you enjoyed your visit to our offices, Candidate Tambuk and friends. Please do bring your wife next time, we’d love to meet her too.

  It was not long after this post became widely available that the end came for Blogoy and the rest of his colleagues.

  Comments (0):

  [None]

  FEET OF COLD CLAY

  [ KIDKONYO | 6:58 PM ]

  Two days after the accidental publication of the cheekily titled “Election Scandal”, the following entry appeared on the blog:

  Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

  We three, the remaining Watchers, have been debating whether or not to go on hiatus until after the elections. Some of our recent reports have apparently angered several powerful individuals, and we now fear for our lives.

  The more sarcastic segment of our reading public may scoff at my fear, with their flawed view of me and my family’s influence in the political world. Allow me to short-circuit the upcoming debate to remind you all: the campaign proper has already turned violent, with several candidates injured and one killed.

  Is this the battle where we retreat to fight another day, or the one where we stand our ground? In my youth, I wouldn’t have hesitated and jumped into the fray with a smile and a snarl.

  Now, I look around at the people I love and realize how much I stand to lose if I continue.

  Less than a week later, the posts on Watchful Eye slowed to a trickle. The reports that did come out were factual, but lacked teeth. The members of the first blogcaster circle had balked and backed down – but only halfway.

  They had been asked to do two things – stop writing their entries, and take their blog off the web with all their past entries, links and comments. They had complied with the first demand, but had omitted the second.

  Several anonymous demands were posted in the comments of the latest entries. They went unanswered for several days.

  Then the murders began.

  The following entries appeared on the Watchful Eye public site in rapid succession:

  Bong Badong Murdered in Greenhills

  Arnel Lipunan, Jr. was gunned down by a pair of assassins on a motorcycle last Tuesday night. He was returning from the Greenhills Shopping Center to his home, braving the rush hour traffic, when an electric blue motorcycle carrying two helmeted individuals stopped beside his vehicle and emptied a clip of 9mm rounds into the driver’s side of his vehicle.

  Arnel Lipunan, known to many as Bong Badong, head of the blogcasting circle Watchful Eye, died instantly when the first bullet entered his skull.

  Jones Bridget Murdered in Quezon City

  They’re after us. The unidentified woman whose body was found along N. Domingo early last Thursday morning was identified by her family this morning. She was Camilla Martirez, known to people who frequent this site as Jones Bridget, and she was a good friend.

  She was apparently accidentally run over by a beat-up Toyota Innova driven by a fifty-year old man named Tristan Macaraeg. According to witnesses, she was thrown, with her hands and feet bound, in front of the unsuspecting Macaraeg’s vehicle.

  I guess I’m next.

  Farewell to Tuna

  All the eyes have closed but mine. John Cruzado, once known on this blogcast circle as TunaFriend, fell from the balcony of his brand new condo while entertaining guests.

  It’s interesting to see that he overcame his life-long fear of heights and spent the last moments of his life “horsing around along the edge of the balcony” when he slipped and fell, according to friends present.

  Poor John. He should’ve been more discerning in his choice of friends.

  No doubt Blogoy’s lineage kept him safe for a few weeks, and the sudden inactivity of the site seemed to indicate that the once-fearless Blogoy had been cowed.

  Comments (3):

  [deleted by moderator]

  EDM_III | 9:45 AM

  [deleted by moderator]

  KidKonyo | 5:01 PM

  Behave. Final warning.

  BatManong | 4:07 AM

  RIPOSTE

  [ EDM_III | 10:13 AM ]

  The silence was broken by a damning near-encyclopedic summary of then-President Tambuk’s illegal activities, indexed and hyperlinked, on a separate site.

  The Truth – Hijacking an Election

  President Tambuk is unwilling to let go of his Presidency and will do anything to hold on to it and has done an admirable job of it.

  It started early in his campaign, during his visits to the provinces of Pampanga and Lanao del Sur and the ARMM. Considered strongholds of his fiercest competitor, Antonia de la Cruz, he lavished time and money taken from various sources (See The Truth – Filling the War Chest) and courted key people in those positions.

  The extent of such campaigning is difficult to quantify, given the subsequent manipulation of the supposedly independent polls conducted by Trendfinders, the source of poll interpreting bodies like PulsePhilippines and Social Metrics Matrix (See The Truth – Salting the Polltakers).

  This important task was entrusted to Illustrio Tambuk, a close cousin of President Tambuk’s and was no doubt undertaken to help justify one or more upsets in these provinces. Illustrio and his organization were efficient and effective, if somewhat overzealous in their work – a startling average of 56% to 69% support for President Tambuk in these areas triggered suspicions, poll falsification, and mass rallies for Ms. De la Cruz in those same provinces (events that were subsequently forgotten, after newer election-related scandals arose).

  At the same time that this was happening, President Tambuk’s wife and brother-in-law were busy at the clan’s printing house, generating a large supply of pre-printed, pre-answered, and pre-approved ballot forms for each of the precincts, municipalities, cities, and provinces identified as crucial for a “clear mandate from the people” (For samples of each form, see The Truth – Falsified Election Documents).

  In most areas, these falsified ballots replaced the real ballots after the polls had closed, though in certain areas (most notably Pampanga, Lanao del Sur, and ARMM) these substitutions were done after the elections to corroborate the falsified numbers announced during the count at the Batasan, and the falsified Certificates of Canvass (COCs) that replaced the actual COCs.

  The control of election operations was not solely a family affair, however, as two other operators with their own organizations were used to ensure victory: one within Comelec, and one within NAMFREL. A documentary video of the count and announcing of results made with the aid of concerned members of the Congress and Senate through a series of smuggled in digital cameras clearly shows members of this organization reading out, writing down, or otherwise misrepresenting key tallies at the Batasan (See the video links at The Truth – The New Math). Not everyone shown committing election fraud did so willingly – some were coerced.

  In charge of this operation was Efren Halcon, former AFP chief and current intelligence advisor to President Tambuk. Interviews and frank admissions from some of his closest lieutenants to this blogcaster revealed that nothing was sacred – blackmail, kidnapping, rape, and murder were all used in securing the obedience or silence of key personalities in Comelec, NAMFREL, and the news medi
a. Not even relatives of members of the AFP were spared their attention.

  It is likely that Blogoy stepped out from under the protective aegis of his family because of what happened to his girlfriend Aileen Dimagiba Lorenzo.

  Fifteen days after President Tambuk was declared the winner of the elections, and nine days after Blogoy’s “Showdown in the Batasan” entry, Aileen disappeared from work at 3:00 pm and never returned. In a manner similar to the deaths of his friends Louis Torreo and Erlinda Chen, she was lured to a supposed meeting with her immediate superior at the Sulo Hotel, was kidnapped, abused, then set free. Found wandering the streets of Quezon City, she was rushed to St. Luke’s by her family where she died of internal injuries several days later.

  Immediately after her funeral – which Blogoy was prohibited from attending by the venerable patriarch of the Dimagiba family, General Arturo Dimagiba – the renewed attack on the Tambuk campaign appeared. The loss of any sense of journalistic distance is clearly evident, but as everyone knows, the findings were eventually proven accurate.

  Comments (3):

  Not all the links work.

  KidKonyo | 5:05 PM

  Of course not. They ceased to work when the original servers were taken offline.

  EDM_III | 9:49 AM

  It would’ve better if you’d included them.

  KidKonyo | 3:27 PM

  I’m turning off the comments.

  BatManong | 4:07 AM

  FINALE

  [ BATMANONG | 2:31 AM ]

  The details of Blogoy’s extrajudicial execution are a matter of public record and are available for download from most independent news sites. The video clip that details his last five minutes on earth, while reviled by many modern blogcasters, is quite familiar – it is a staple of all college level courses in blogjournalism, and is often a part of blogcaster circle orientation kits.

  Benjamin P. Macaranas’s legacy to his family was one of love and thoughtfulness, one that will be forever cherished by those of us who knew him. But I am proudest of his legacy to the country – a record of his life and death as the country’s first true blogcaster.

  And so I leave you with this: the last blog of the last member of the Watchful Eye blogcaster circle, Blogoy.

  Adios Patria Adorada

  Three black Pajeros just rolled into the ground floor parking lot. I couldn’t get a clean still on the security webcams, but the license plates are probably stolen anyway. They’re here for me, unless I’m fortunate enough to be mistaken.

  To my family, I wish I had more time to make you proud of me.

  To my friends from the Paterno Memorial Fund – I hope you got the donations I made in the name of Louis and Erlinda. You can thank our re-elected President Tambuk.

  To my esteemed colleagues and respected journalists – I’ve e-mailed the zipped contents of my files to you, and sent other copies to my relatives in Canada, Norway, France and the U.S.

  And last but not least, to my dearest Aileen – wait a little longer, I’ll be with you soon.

  My name is Benjamin P. Macaranas.

  If you don’t hear from me again, keep my words alive.

  AUTO-REJECTION: AN OUTRO

  NIN HARRIS

  All of the Bunian Empress’s lizard bomohs, and all of her crocodile-men, could not make a spell strong enough to get rid of two lumps. 1.5 centimeters in diameter, perfectly shaped and coyly lodged beneath fat and tissue. No, the only thing that would work would be the severing of your head from your body, and learning how to pickle yourself like any good penanggalan would.

  You auto-rejected yourself from communities, from relationships, from jobs that you were sure were going to rob you of your light and your capacity for joy. And now, it seemed as though your body has decided to auto-reject you from life. The light and joy had left years ago.

  This was going to be a tale about you auto-rejecting yourself from love, but that is the same thing, is it not? At least the metaphysical poets that you read in college with all of their Occidental phlegm and authority would have you believe that. You either had love, or you had death. To live meant to be exposed to the possibility of acceptance, and therefore rejection. To auto-reject yourself from one, meant to auto-reject yourself from another. Besides, you’ve always been more terrified of acceptance and all that would entail.

  All of the Empress’s owl-sisters, all of the djinns of the earth, could not stitch your sinew and tissue back together again. All of the owl-sisters with their nightly ululations, male entrails spilled in a bloody trail in mimicry of the penanggalan’s delicately vinegared coils, could not remove the tumor. Surgeons could. Or would. But in your head, the denial had already occurred. There was no way this was going to be benign. The same way there was no way you were going to get that copywriting job at that advertising firm, the same way there was no way Vinod was for real. You had auto-rejected yourself from all possibilities.

  Auto-rejecting from the possibility of living past another birthday was therefore a fitting outro for the LP of your life.

  ×××

  If you can hear them, it is beyond belief that anyone could stay up after midnight in Kuala Lumpur without being aware of the unloving songs the owl-sisters sing. You have never been able not to hear their songs. Not the loudest punk-rock albums, not even the hardcore screamo masterpieces that caused your uncles to howl at you to keep the volume down. Not meditation. Not masturbation. Nothing could stop you from hearing the music of the penanggalans since you hit puberty.

  ×××

  You were born here, and you grew up in Brickfields, poised in-between the gentrification, and the run-down apartments pushed further back by encroaching structures of glass and steel. You walked to college past rank trashcans close by KL Sentral to get to your A-Level classes, where the disconnect between learning the literatures of the Commonwealth and the reality of where you lived became a source of constant precocious amusement for you and your classmates. You lived with your uncles and your siblings because your mother had murdered your father. You lived with your uncles who had trapped your ravaging mother with jampi and pineapple skins.

  Your siblings have all moved to other, more affordable cities. You live in an apartment complex so grimly different from the luxury condominium projects near Pantai that the name “condominium”, emblazoned on a dirt-grimed banner hung between posts at the entrance, is a mockery of the inhabitants. Those inhabitants drag themselves out of bed every morning to perform their ablutions, their prayers, and to move about doing the jobs that rarely get filmed or advertised. Like you, as you silently walk every morning toward the small photocopying and design business run by your uncles, adjacent to your teenhood home.

  You moved out to return to your uncles the privacy they gave up to look after your siblings and you, ignoring the sidelong glances and the gossip, to raise a family as best they could. You spend every day of your life with them. You throw yourself into an existence in which you do everything that needs to be done in a family business, from the typesetting to the balancing of the books, to playing Chinese Checkers with the uncles at coffee break.

  The irony of living a life in which you clear-sightedly believe in horrors is that you cannot bring yourself to believe in everyday wonders, apart from your gentle uncles. It was fine to believe that the penanggalan lurked in the trashcans behind your apartment complex for example, even though the penanggalan were mostly fastidious horrors, and it was logically hard to believe they would sleep there at all. It was fine to believe that a crocodile-man actually lurked in the moss-murked swimming pool in your complex, so dank that no one actually swims there apart from you.

  The crocodile-man does occasionally swim lazy laps next to you while you try to ignore the scaled tail that coyly grazes your legs. This is why you should never swim at dusk, but you’ve never been able to obey such edicts. Nor are you able to observe other injunctions. It was easier to believe that if you were foolhardy enough to want to eat ice kacang after midnight at a certain roadsid
e stall you should never look over your shoulder if there is a soft blowing in your ear. It was easier to believe these things because you could see them, feel them, hear them. It was not so easy to believe in a more conventional afterlife, or in a more conventional love.

  ×××

  There are other reasons why the owl-sisters do not harm you. There is a reason why you can see them, and hear them. There is a reason why the penanggalans leave you alone. They don’t tell you this, do they? That penanggalans had children, that some of those children survived, that the call of the blood reaches out to them. Because penanggalans were humans, or are humans, and detaching your head from your body is a secret that was passed down to you, along with an extensive knowledge of pickling. You could believe in all of those things. Easily. What you could not believe in was the ability of human consciousness to survive the death of the body. That there were other forms of life there was no doubt. But one would always be translated beyond recognition. And there it was.