Thanks to Typhoon Ondoy, the Philippines just experienced what some are calling the country's worst flood in 20 years. I've never seen anything like it, and I hope I never do again.

I have to consider myself very lucky though. The worst that happened to me was getting stranded in traffic for a few hours, which is peanuts compared to the plight of those who had to clamber onto their rooftops to wait for rescue boats that never came. Rescue personnel were trying the best that they could with limited resources, so we can't blame them, but here's a big "fuck you" to the government officials who spent our tax money on useless thing like infomercials instead of, I don't know, rubber boats?

The one lesson I took away from all of this is that we can't count on our corrupt and incompetent government to help us--we have to help each other.

So let's help.

See Google's Typhoon Ondoy page for ways to do so, including donation via SMS and PayPal. If you live in Metro Manila, scroll down to the end of the Google page to find a list of places where you can drop off relief goods. I suggest donating useful items like:

- Bottled water
- Canned goods, biscuits, and other food that don't require cooking
- Old clothes
- Blankets
- Flashlights

Give what you can. Every bit helps.

It's April Fools' Day, and tradition dictates that I should post some kind of lame hoax. But since this site is already full of foolishness all year round, I think I want to be serious today for a change.

And nothing has been taken more seriously by the Philippine blogosphere in the past few days than HK Magazine columnist Chip Tsao's racist article that refers to the Philippines as a "nation of servants." How dare he? Let's kill him! Better yet, let's kill all Chinachinkmonkeys!!!

Ha! April Fools.

As OneTamad, Joseph Dent, Lizz and others have patiently explained, the article is a piece of satire that attacks Chinese attitudes and not Filipinos. But, predictably, the angry online lynch mob responded to the article with assorted racist insults and death threats... very classy.

Enough have been said about how these rabid loudmouths made the rest of us Filipinos look bad, so I won't talk about them anymore. All I'll say is that they're idiots, and allowing idiots to speak is the price we pay for freedom of expression--not much we can do about them. Instead, I want to focus on why many non-idiots (some of them my friends) didn't appreciate the satire.

Some of the more common reactions I saw in the blogosphere go along the lines of "It's not funny at all, so how can it be satire?" or "So maybe it's satire, but it's in poor taste and I'm offended!" To me, this indicates a misunderstanding of the definition of satire.

Satire does not have to be funny. It often is (at least to some people), but it can also be quite cruel and biting.

Satire does not have to be in good taste. Do you find the idea of eating children distasteful? That was what Jonathan Swift "advocated" in his classic satirical piece, A Modest Proposal.

So was Jonathan Swift really a cannibal? Of course not. Yet people jump on Chip Tsao for being a racist despite the clearly satirical tone of his article. Why?

For some people, perhaps it's simply a poor ability to detect sarcasm, which is a frequent ingredient of satire. The detection of sarcasm is a complex neural process that involves both hemispheres of the brain, making it more of a brain workout than, say, "knock knock" jokes. And some people are just better at "getting" it than others.

But the more likely cause of anger in this instance is that Chip Tsao's casual reference to the Philippines as a "nation of servants" felt like a personal attack to many Filipinos. I bet most Filipinos would be okay with an American comedian making a joke about Mexico or India being a nation of servants. The current outrage over the article is less of a principled stand against racism and more of a knee-jerk reaction to hurt feelings. The Wikipedia article on satire said it better than I can:

Because satire often combines anger and humour it can be profoundly disturbing - because it is essentially ironic or sarcastic, it is often misunderstood. In an interview with Wikinews, Sean Mills, President of The Onion, said angry letters about their news parody always carried the same message. "It’s whatever affects that person," said Mills. "So it’s like, 'I love it when you make a joke about murder or rape, but if you talk about cancer, well my brother has cancer and that’s not funny to me.' Or someone else can say, 'Cancer’s hilarious, but don’t talk about rape because my cousin got raped.' I'm using extreme examples, but whatever it is, if it affects somebody personally, they tend to be more sensitive about it."

I guess it's human nature: jokes are only funny when they're not about us. The saddest part about this whole controversy though is that the joke was not about us at all. Chip Tsao's over-the-top racist tone was part of his act. It was a Chinese writer satirizing Chinese attitudes in front of a Chinese audience. I guess we have the wonders of the Internet to thank for turning this into an international incident.

If you understood all of the above and still feel outraaaaaaaaged, you're probably a humorless twit with a big stick up your ass. Lighten up a little for sanity's sake.

Indolent Indio and MLQ3 had interesting takes on the issue. Go read.

The Chicken Mafia will go back to retard mode tomorrow.

Since he threw his shoes at George W. Bush earlier in the week, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi has become a folk hero of sorts in the Arab world. Check out these Palestinian journalists holding a protest rally in his honor.

"You devervet it"? This deverves a fatwa from the spelling Taliban.

The incarcerated Mr. al-Zaidi isn't living up to his hero billing though. While people are rallying to support him, he's already chickening out after a few days--he's now crying and begging for leniency.

Is it true remorse or did he drop his soap one too many times in jail and just couldn't take the pain anymore? Who knows. But you'd think that someone with the balls to throw shoes at the most powerful man in the world would have the testicular fortitude to not apologize. Sounds like someone failed Martyrdom 101. What happened to the unwavering willingness to die for the cause? Tsk... kids nowadays....

No word yet whether the Egyptian man who offered his daughter to al-Zaidi in marriage has withdrawn the proposal.

Good journalists are supposed to stay fair and balanced, but this Iraqi reporter at the press conference during George W. Bush's surprise visit to Baghdad clearly showed his liberal bias.

Shoo, filthy American dogs! Shoo!

President Bush may not be the smartest guy on the planet, but man, he sure has amazingly quick reflexes. If that were me standing at the podium, I would have caught the shoe... with my face. Bush dodged it as deftly as he does with foreign policy questions. I'm impressed. People may call Bush a lame duck, but come on, that was an awesome duck right there.

I don't know what the angry shoe-throwing journalist was ranting about, but I'm pretty sure that he was shouting "Don't tase me bro!" in Iraqi as he was tackled by the always efficient Secret Service agents.

Now that the term of George "Dubya" Bush is nearing its end, we need to find a fitting memorial to remember his wonderful achievements. If Washington has his Washington Monument and Lincoln his Lincoln Memorial, Dubya should have one too! Why? He's the most celebrated president in the history of America! He has close to 23000 videos on YouTube, and he even has a website that chronicles his every word.

It is with this in mind that a group calling themselves the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco started an initiative to honor the man. They racked their brains and exerted every effort to find the suitable memorial for him. And when they found it, they made their move--a move to get voters to rename their prize-winning Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility to "The George W. Bush Sewage Plant."

What a fitting tribute for a man whose verbal diarrhea was so pervasive that it somehow became his personal trademark!

Way to go, Dubya! You shall be remembered every time we poop.

I've been keeping this news clip for about a year now, biding my time until the opportune moment.

Pretty confident huh, Mr. Bayani Fernando? But then Frank happened.

This is a photo taken a few blocks from my home. Permit me to thank the wonderful people from our local water companies for keeping us safe with that line of yellow do-not-cross tape. Now if only you closed that hole up last April when you were done with it.

So now, you're thinking, "A politician promised something he couldn't deliver? Big deal!" Well apparently, he promised the same thing two years ago. I'm not sure what that does to his presidential aspirations. And to think he has started campaigning already. (By the way, why isn't he getting the flak the other senators are getting? At least they don't use public funds to punish us with their faces. Anyone?)

Translation: "The use of the road-rail station is free (no fee)." Okay, why do you feel the need to define the simple word "libre"? Do you think we're all morons? And while you're at it, why don't you define "road-rail station" instead? Thanks.

Anyway, for now, I'll just practice my island-hopping skills in anticipation of the next flood.

In the Islamofascist kingdom of Saudi Arabia, women aren't allowed to drive in cities. Now, one brave Saudi woman is trying to prove that women can drive as well as men by posting a video of herself driving on YouTube, the world's largest video sharing site.

Ahahahaha! Just kidding. Here's the real video, but it's nowhere as entertaining as the one you just saw. It's just a woman driving in a straight line while talking nonstop in Arabic. Boring. Worse, there are no subtitles, so you won't have any idea what she's babbling about.

Snore... um, I meant yay women's rights.

UPDATE: Someone posted this clip of the CNN story on YouTube, most likely without permission. Yay new media.

CNN.com can be really silly sometimes. Just the other day, I saw this headline....

First of all, isn't "six-legged octopus" an oxymoron? You do know what the prefix "octo-" means, right? And why is this under the technology section? Is your six-legged octopus some kind of sinister robot from the future?

The British scientists who discovered the strange creature called it a "hexapus" and named it Henry. "Henry the hexapus"? That sounds so lame. I guess "six-legged octopus" wasn't so bad after all.

Introducing the hexapus: 25% less sushi

The article said that Henry was the first six-legged octopus ever found, but I knew I had seen something like that somewhere before. I just couldn't for the life of me remember where. Then, earlier tonight, as I was digging through old pictures in search for blog ideas, I found it.

You sure this was made in China? I thought the Chinese are good at math.

I saw that "octopus" stuffed toy in a souvenir shop in Subic a few months ago. I took a picture because I couldn't get over how stupid the idea of a six-legged octopus is.

Well, I guess I was wrong. Hail the hexapus!

British singer Amy Winehouse went to rehab the other day. Celebrities check in and out of rehab all the time, but I found this instance somewhat funny because one of her hit songs goes "They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no."

So it's "yes, yes, yes" now? Heh.

Well, it's about time. She's quite talented, and it would be a shame to see her career destroyed by drug use. And although celebrity rehab rarely works, I guess it's still enough to move her down to #2 on my celebrity death list. Britney Spears reclaims the top spot. Congratulations! I hope no one pulls another Heath Ledger and screws up my list.

On Christmas Day, a tiger escaped from the San Francisco Zoo and killed a teenager before being shot dead by cops. Now, investigators are saying that the victim might have taunted the tiger by dangling a leg over the moat. If that's true, the kid deserved to die deserves a Darwin Awards nomination. Messing with one of the most powerful beasts in the world probably isn't a smart thing to do.

I saw the story on CNN while channel surfing this morning. True to its love for hysterical sensationalism, CNN alternately flashed the phrases "TIGER ATTACK" and "PREYING ON PEOPLE" on the lower-right corner of the screen. Oh no! Scary! Run for your lives, people! Run!

I didn't have to run for my life during my own close encounter with a tiger a few weeks ago at Zoobic, supposedly the only tiger safari in the Philippines. Before we boarded the jeep that would take us to the tigers, our tour guide kept trying to sell us a chicken. She said that we would get the tigers to jump on the roof of the jeep if we have a yummy dead chicken as bait, and that the whole experience would totally suck without it. At the last second, Philos decided to pay up, and a guy got in the jeep with a dead chicken in a bucket. No, he's not Colonel Sanders... just a nameless chicken guy.

We quickly came across some tigers resting under a tree. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be in the mood for food. How can I describe the demeanor of those lazy jungle cats? Oh, I know. Have you ever ordered too much food when you eat out with your friends? The meal is almost over, and you're all leaning back with your bellies bulging. There's still one last piece of chicken left, so you pass the plate around, but no one wants to touch it.

Our tigers were pretty much like that. They probably already had enough to eat for the day, and when our chicken guy waved a piece of raw meat out the window, they just looked at each other and went, "You want that last piece of chicken?" "Nah, thanks, I'm full." "Come on, take it." "I said I'm full. Why don't you take it?" "No, you take it."

Finally, one tiger came over and gently licked and chewed at the chicken the way a domesticated kitten eats out of your hand. What the hell? I was hoping to see something fierce--the chicken guy getting his hand bitten off would have been awesome. Maybe I should have followed my instincts and punched the tiger's nose to make it angry. Tigers are so boring when they aren't angry.

The chicken guy extended his arm out the window and tossed a piece of leftover chicken upwards. I heard it land smack in the middle of the roof, and I got a bit excited. This is the part where the tiger jumps on the top of the jeep, right? Well, not quite. The big cat took a long look and wisely decided that the tiny chunk of land tuna wasn't worth jumping for. Or maybe it just couldn't find the chicken. Stupid tiger.

Shou had the presence of mind to take a video of the whole thing. And I stole it. Here, take a look.

Here kitty kitty....

Yes, it was all over in a minute... 400 pesos well spent.