Can't wait for 2008!

"Realization" sums up this day

My Music

been browsing in wikipedia for bands and musicians when a thought suddenly came to me: why not make a list of all the albums that I have listened to? Most of these are in my possession -- carefully tucked away in their respective CD racks or cassette tape boxes. Others were lent to me by my friends. (notably Rona and Corazon)While a few I lent, and then subsequently lost...this list is just a sample of those albums I think are "seminal" and "unique" in their own right. The best of the best 'ika nga...

For those of the more recent generation, this list may be a bit perplexing but try googling them and hopefully you'll like some of the artists that I featured in this list...it's a sample of the music that shaped my life. Most of these albums I've got either in CD or in cassette tape (old fashioned gid ah -- gone were the days when cassette tapes were the rage...they only cost 100 to 150 pesos then hehehe nowadays cassette tapes are practically extinct...)

Foreign Artists

1. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins (had the double cassette AND the double CD...that's how much I love these guys...)
2. Watermark - Enya (LOVE!LOVE!LOVE!)
3. Post - Bjork (I remember I used to play "Army of Me" full blast on the stereo whenever I feel pissed off...second year high school pa ako nun hahahaha)
4. Dummy - Portishead (sad, gloomy, and sexy...)
5. The Joshua Tree - U2 (CLASSIC! what more can I say?)
6. Frogstomp - Silverchair (here is what i feel for you...and I want you to know that I WANT YOU DEAD!...talk about catharsis! hahahaha)
7. Throwing Copper - Live (I Live! I walk! I will! I talk! blah blah blah)
8. God Shuffled His Feet - Crash Test Dummies (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....)
9. Universal Mother - Sinead O'Connor (the rap song "Famine" was required listening in my Imperialism lesson in Third Year World History: "all of the lonely people, where do they all come from? all of the lonely people, where do they all belong?")
10. The Fat of the Land - The Prodigy (scary...)
11. Tiger Lily - Natalie Merchant ("San Andreas Fault" was a beautiful lyric chronicle of an earthquake in San Francisco)
12. White on Black - Texas (a bit POPpish but great)
13. There's No Need to Argue - The Cranberries (Dolores O'Riordan's unique voice catapulted their band to fame in their sophomore album...and to think they brought a sofa to all those places? niiiiice...)
14. White Ladder - David Gray (what got me hooked on him was the music video for "please forgive me" the floating piano and the boy breakdancing -- was he breakdancing? I can't seem to remember...in the rain)
15. Boys for Pele - Tori Amos (one word: WEIRD hahahahaha)
16. Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman (last night I heard the screaming...loud voices behind the wall...galeng! some of the best socially relevant songs she has ever made...all her albums are a must-buy)
17. This Fire - Paula Cole (the word motherf*cker was a classic!)
18. The Cross of Changes - Enigma (chanting, chanting, and more chanting -- wait is that heavy breathing I hear? Music for sex orgies hehehehe)
19. Whaler - Sophie Hawkins (as I lay me down to sleep...)
20. Book of Secrets ( - Loreena McKennitt (the one that was never returned to me! grrrr! new age meets medieval music...plus I love Loreena for making a song about Dante Alighieri -- O, kaya nyo yun?)
21. Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters (reminds me of the Mentos commercials hehehe)
22. X-Files the Movie (Soundtrack) - the best soundtrack album ever...another lost tape...
23. The Craft (Soundtrack) - second-best soundtrack album and must-have for those who wish to get a sample of alternative music during the 90's...one of the songs was used as the opening theme for the TV series "Charmed" -- "I am Human" by Love Spit Love...damu pa di nami nga kanta...
23. City of Angels (Soundtrack) - U2 and Peter Gabriel...whew! grabe!
24. Duncan Sheik - Duncan Sheik (swabeeeeeeh...)
25. Formica Blues - Mono (the song "Life in Mono" is simply haunting; and I think that this album is RARE...I think I'm one of the very few who has this album in their possession in the whole Philippines -- calling all Mono fans out there!)

OPM (I apologize, but my OPM music sense has been fairly limited since then...when it comes to music my nationalism falls short hehe

1. Circus - The Eraserheads (liked the song "sembreak" hahahaha)
2. Rivermaya - Rivermaya (long hair pa si bamboo)
3. Oracle - Sugar Hiccup (use the word "flambeaux" in a song...)
4. plus a smattering of songs from Yano, The Teeth, The Dawn, Grin Department, etc.

Silent Night (Gaelic) by Enya

Let's forget about politics for a while...

I'm posting the song and the lyrics to Enya's rendition of "Silent Night" sung in her native Gaelic tongue. I bought all of enya's albums but I still have to get the album that features this song...think the title was "Oriel Window"...

So if you please dear reader, enjoy the angelic voice of the one and only Enya. Have a Blessed Season...



Oíche Chiún [Silent Night]

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé, [Silent night, night of God's son.]
Cách 'na suan dís araon, [Soundly in slumber, the pair together]
Dís is dílse 'faire le spéis [The pair and love, watching with affection]
Naoín beag gnaoigheal [The small bright beautiful child,]
ceananntais caomh [darling little one.]

Críost, 'na chodhladh go séimh. [Christ, calmly asleep.]
Críost, 'na chodhladh go séimh. [Christ, calmly asleep.]

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé, [Silent night, night of God's son.]
Aoirí ar dtús chuala 'n scéal; [Shepherds first heard the tale]
Allelúia aingeal ag glaoch. [The angels crying out Alleluia.]
Cantain suairc i ngar is i gcéin [Lovely chanting near and far.]

Críost an Slánaitheoir Féin [Christ, the saviour himself.]
Críost an Slánaitheoir Féin [Christ, the saviour himself.]

Oíche chiúin, oíche Mhic Dé, [Silent night, night of God's son.]
Cách 'na suan dís araon, [Soundly in slumber, the pair together]
Dís is dílse 'faire le spéis [The pair and love, watching with affection]
Naoín beag gnaoigheal [The small bright beautiful child,]
ceananntais caomh [darling little one.]

Críost, 'na chodhladh go séimh. [Christ, calmly asleep.]
Críost, 'na chodhladh go séimh. [Christ, calmly asleep.]


I Love Enya 1.02

Raping Justice

Hearing of the news of Jalosjos' release from prison (and the subsequent scandal that ensued) was the last straw for me.

I have consciously avoided posting commentaries on current issues on my blog as I considered it separate from the intended "reality" that I currently chronicle here. But events have pointed out that to render oneself half-blind to what is happening around you would onyl result to a rude awakening.

Today's editorial on the inquirer website (www.inquirer.net) articulates my sentiments on the issue. If I were to put my feelings into words, it would read like an Eminem song -- full of expletives and the fire and brimstone of discontent and anger.

Now, if only I had a Death Note...

The Inquirer Editorial:

Convicted rapist Romeo Jalosjos is said to be ready to leave prison a free man; his victim, who is now in her 20s but was 11 years old at the time of the crime, has been reduced to sending an angry e-mail to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. “She’s very upset. She can’t believe it’s happening,” the victim’s former counsel said.

But this is the Philippines in the year 2007, under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and rapists and plunderers and assassins get preferential treatment. On Jan. 1, in an editorial entitled “Rapist’s justice,” we wrote about the Arroyo administration’s assault on the rule of law, after its agents transferred convicted rapist Daniel Smith—in the middle of the night, despite the lack of a court order—to the US Embassy. The illegal transfer was obviously an attempt to please the United States. But the “same spirit of expediency animates other initiatives that will forever be associated with this administration ... They are all marked by the same attitude to law: What is legal is what we can get away with.”

Rather like rape itself, actually: an act of violence that seeks to intimidate victims into submission, and thus allow criminals to get away with the crime.

The assaults on the rule of law have continued. The absolute pardon granted to deposed President Joseph Estrada remains a divisive issue because it was obviously undertaken for political expediency, and because Estrada refuses to acknowledge any shortcoming or offer any restitution. The conditional pardon granted to former sergeant Pablo Martinez, who was convicted for his role in the assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino, is similarly controversial—it brings us farther away from, rather than closer to, a resolution of the mystery surrounding the assassination, a true turning point in our history.

And now, this: the much-reported granting of parole to Jalosjos, the wealthy ex-politician who is a political ally of the President’s. His early release, after some 14 years in prison, is possible because of good behavior, some officials have taken pains to point out. But that’s like saying that a box of matches in the hands of an arsonist is the real cause of a given fire. The true cause of Jalosjos’ early release, when it comes, is the President’s decision to commute his sentence last April, from two life (40-year) terms to only 16 years. That decision was like putting lit matches in the hands of a known pyromaniac.

No question about it: The Arroyo administration has prepared the groundwork for the once and future politician’s Christmas release. No amount of dissembling from Malacañang officials can disguise that essential fact.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita either deliberately misrepresented the situation or is shockingly ignorant of it. He said there was no recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Parole for Jalosjos’ early release. “There are no papers, no documents,” he said. And then the clincher: Ermita said Jalosjos was not eligible for pardon because he wasn’t 70 years old yet. True, but you don’t need to be 70 to be paroled.

No one disputes the President’s prerogative to grant executive clemency; in legal language borrowed from theology, the exercise of that prerogative is an “act of grace.” But the President is given those awesome powers to rectify the sometimes inevitable errors of justice, not to violate the rule of law. The exercise of that fateful prerogative is meant to uphold what lawyers call the majesty of the law, not to soil the administration of justice with the dirt rags of politics.

What does a rapist like Jalosjos learn from President Arroyo’s act of grace? That this President will take care of her own. If that means launching a fresh attack on the rule of law, then so be it: She will commute a rapist’s life sentence to repay a political favor, pardon an assassin to spite political opponents, undo a conviction to ensure her political survival, transfer a convicted US Marine without a court order to curry US support, feign inutility in extraditing a key campaign financier, issue an immoral executive order to protect her secretaries and generals from a Senate investigation, condone the incendiary policy of a favorite general.

Caught in the web of the law, a rapist like Jalosjos will say: I’m a friend of the President’s. It’s only a matter of time.


My Thoughts:

*hinga ng malalim...*

Putang Ina mo Gloria! Magsama kayo ni Jalosjos sa Impyerno! Salot!