Netnet Camomot
THE most difficult part of a column is its first sentence. And that’s where I am while writing this. All I wanna do now is sleep. I ingested too much food the day before, for which the tummy is not used to anymore, and this slowpoke Netnet is the result. Hopefully, the mile-wide hips didn’t make a comeback along with that.
Those mile-wide hips that almost got stuck and trapped in Dahilayan’s swings. Oh, I had already lost weight by then. So I guess I have to learn to accept this God-given asset forevermore.
There are barangays where sleep must be a luxury now that Oplan TokHang has morphed to TokBang. Quentin Tarantino movies come to mind. But a non-Tarantino film, “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” also appears in our thought bubble, because of its title.
During chika time, we now wait for President Rody Duterte’s war on drugs to creep into the conversation. And when it doesn’t, we wonder if we’ve gotten used to this kind of war, or have we stopped caring? Neither of the above. There are simply fun topics to discuss, and war is not one of them. You don’t want to be the Debbie Downer of the group.
But discuss we must this war on drugs otherwise all those 600 thousand drug surrenderers or three million allegedly drug-addicted and/or –selling Pinoys would banish from Earth without due process.
Due process in Pinas can be such a long and winding process. That’s the reason for the Bang Bang. No, not Bang Bang Jeans. Bang Bang as in… Bang! Bang!
And now that I’ve mentioned Bang Bang Jeans, feel free to calculate my age.
But if you ask Philippine National Police Chief Bato dela Rosa about the Bang! Bang! victims, they are simply “minalas sila, namatay, naubusan sila ng suwerte, wala tayong kontrol sa suwerte at malas ng tao.” Tsk tsk. Wawa naman. But then, if the drugelated allegations against these victims are true, do they deserve pity?
There’s this video where dela Rosa is singing “All of Me.” He must be referring to his commitment towards their war on drugs which he said is a “war of perception.” He can sing, by the way. So can many of the more than 100 million Pinoys. It’s our nature, I guess.
“’Cause all of me/Loves all of you/Love your curves and all your edges/All your perfect imperfections/Give your all to me/I’ll give my all to you/You’re my end and my beginning/Even when I lose I’m winning/’Cause I give you all of me/And you give me all of you, oh oh.”
And there’s that other kind of singing, say, singing to the cops, with “lyrics” pointing at someone as the enemy. Unlike a song, this particular singing has no tune.
Dela Rosa said that one PNP regional office has a tabulation with these headings: napatay, nadakpan, presyo, etc. Presyo or the “halaga ng droga nakumpiska.”
There are countries whose war on drugs didn’t succeed and many Pinoys are citing this as proof that President Duterte’s war won’t work, too.
And there’s at least one piece asserting that drug addiction has more to do with the lack of a social life. No, not social as in elite, but social as in having real friends one can communicate with, and that’s the reason a war on drugs won’t succeed due to the isolation the drug addict may feel once he’s treated as a pariah. All he needs is a warm circle of family and friends.
Drug rehab always involves the family of the addict. They have sessions which can be difficult for the family whose bond has been destroyed by its member’s addiction. They now look at him as the problem, the black sheep, and they believe they have absolutely nothing to do with that. Hmmm.
The neighborhood in which the family lives in may also contribute to the child’s outlook in life. If he sees his neighbors using shabu the way they smoke cigarettes, then, it’s possible for him to be lured into this habit once curiosity and peer pressure set in. Or he may end up as a smoker only. Which is worse? Any addiction is bad for the health.
Even too much food is bad—it leads to obesity which can cause many health problems, including injuries to the hips, knees, feet. I remember that time in New York (ahem) when one of my toes had a stress aka hairline fracture simply due to walking using flip-flops. The doctor’s advice then: Use running shoes. When I asked if the stress fracture was the cause of my excess weight, he smiled. Yeah, a politically correct doctor.
Gambling as an addiction can deplete one’s millions in the bank. Alcohol as an addiction can destroy the liver. Shopping as an addiction can lead to hoarding which is another addiction.
Addiction has many forms, so please choose the one which can preserve your health. As for singing as an addiction, as long as you’re not waking up the whole neighborhood with your tone-deaf “My Way,” I guess you can have your own way.
I’m now called Lola by friends who drink. I forward to them pieces about alcohol’s effects, and they would pretend, Net, slow ako Internet connection, I can’t open the link. There’s this one information that they did like, about beer improving one’s sexual prowess. And that brings us back to Orlando Bloom’s nude photos and his girlfriend Katy Perry’s song, “Rise.”
If columnists can experience difficulty with first sentences, drug addicts, users, pushers and drug lords also have their own version: difficulty with prison sentences. But the way things are going now in Pinas, they should be happy if it’s only a prison sentence—that means they’re still alive, and merely trapped by TokHang, and not TokBang.
