travel, love, romance, geekiness, and all random shit of a former UP teacher

a blog about blogs

This is a personal blog that I initially put up for my close friends’ consumption only, but gradually, by way of coincidence or cosmic accident, strangers land on this space–and blog says hello. Do leave a comment or two, though. Nothing makes a blogger any happier than a visitor’s thoughts. Every comment gets response, of course. Unless you are a robot.

ai’s cracker ®

This site contains

a few years’ worth of

writing, traveling and having chill fun.

Too many theories,

ideologies, dogmas, and other

sorts of wickedness

have frozen us dead,

so we crack em all up here,

and seize another day.

Again, again, again.

This blog is your bag of happiness.

Some of my ~~nonsense~~ academic writings are here, not for you to plagiarize, but for you to pick an idea from, for you to maybe think about. You know it’s nice to think and meta-think.

Here you can also find personal things because I believe in that saying,

The Personal is Political.

Whatever’s going on in some quiet humdrum everyday life of an insignificant person like me is a register of the bigger picture called Culture and Society.

And then of course, since I started as a Culture writer back in college, this blogsite contains reviews or commentary on movies, books, language, art works, pop culture, habits, places, and stuff.

If you agree with my posts, good. Great minds think alike. If you don’t, better. Critical minds are the source of all greatness in this world, don’t you think?

A Word About Blogs, Blogging, Bloggers, and Why These Should Be Tolerated

De La Salle University organized the first ever multi-disciplinary conference of graduate students around the Philippines in 2009 and I presented a paper on blogging. It won one of the Top Ten Best Papers, and I share here my favorite gems.

of blogs

Blog is postmodern writing. It is the territory of the carefree diarist, leeway of careless writers and –opinionated truth be told– a place for posers, too. It transcends rules in composition, it crosses genres and types of writing, it uses intertextuality, it has no editorial policy to follow, it may use various media of communication other than the written word, it knows no limit in choosing a topic, it may digress and never return to its point, it may feign authenticity despite its artificiality or vice versa, it celebrates life or condemn existence (which only shows a desire to live because of the projection of an ideal life lost), and most of all it is self-glorification at its best. In simple words, it is eccentric, playful, and notoriously self-conscious.

of bloggers

Bloggers are invited to just write. Style and mechanics are smashed and the requisites of publication ignored. Significant words and ideas may be slipping through one blogger’s fingers because of laxity but at least there is no haste and waste of budding talent, and the only thing required of bloggers is to take a chance on writing.

of blogging

Blogging is playful because bloggers themselves treat life as a game. It is unpredictably crazy because they are fickle. It is beyond traditional rules of modern writing because they transgress norms and deviate. It is somewhere between revolutionary and indifferent because they are used to confronting pain and laughing about it. It is open to anything because they embrace every new thing that comes along their way; in case something terrible freaks them out or piss them off, the next post in their life could show them having the grand time of their lives.