Morphing on a Sabado

Netnet Camomot

LAST Saturday, there was this new resolve again to stop wasting time with Facebook and Candy Crush Soda Saga. Have you tried calculating the hours you’ve wasted as a netizen? You could have written a book already with that same number of hours. Tsk tsk.

But I watched the Women’s March via the Facebook Live coverage of CNN and Yahoo, so, I’m now caught in between whether to abandon FB or choose the news feed items to waste precious time with. But I would not have learned that our Associate Editor Cong Corrales finally had his birthday gift for himself—a huge tattoo on his left upper arm—if not for FB. Same goes for our EIC Herbie Gomez. No, he didn’t get a tattoo. I’ll miss his singing—he posts videos on FB.

And, with no TV in my room, I’ll also miss the latest “Saturday Night Live” monologues and funny skits which I watch through FB. Well, they’re also on YouTube. Hmmm. Yeah, simply Google.

There are worms that tote around their cocoons on my bedroom’s wall. For many weeks, I thought they were lizard poop. Until I saw one again on the bathroom closet’s door—a worm came out of that “poop” and started to crawl up. All along, I thought an ant was responsible for the “poops” that were crawling on the wall. That’s when my minute brain advised to Google.

The first thing I saw after typing the unidentified crawling object’s details into Google’s search box was a photo of that exact same object. Wow. I thought of the number of days I could have wasted searching for this truth pre-WiFi and pre-Internet. Imagine opening volumes of printed encyclopedias from A to Z desperately seeking the truth on a certain type of lizard poop, with no one guiding you to the next letter, M for moth.

With much gratitude to Google, I learned they’re worms in cocoons, related with moths. I don’t know if they’ll morph to moths, like caterpillars to butterflies. My minute brain opted to stop at the words “worm,” “cocoon,” “moth,” and was not adventurous enough to delve beyond that.

Aziz Ansari is an American actor who I seldom see since, yeah, no TV in the room. But in last Saturday’s “Saturday Night Live,” I saw him morph from a caterpillar to a butterfly. He probably morphed a long time ago, but I wasn’t there to witness that because, again, no TV in the room. His monologue was probably written by the talented SNL writers, but the words do require a good speaker who could deliver.

Ansari was hosting the show. By his name alone, it’s safe to conclude he’s not a white American—his parents migrated from India. He seemed the perfect host a day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president. President Trump has been trumpeting his views against immigrants and to “Make America Great Again” with his “America First” foreign policy. But the “Make America Great Again” knock-off hats were made in China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh which were cheaper compared to the US-made ones being sold through Trump’s website.

Does “America First” mean cars sold in the US should be American-sounding cars, too, like Ford? In this age of the Internet, Facebook, and Google, the US could be on its way to isolating itself from the rest of the world, starting with the wall Trump threatened to build on the Mexican border.

The US First Couple’s first dance at the Inaugural Ball had “My Way” as its Muzak. That song starts with, “And now, the end is near; And so I face the final curtain.” What a way to start the ball rolling.

There are two photos of inaugural crowds—one of Obama’s and the other of Trump’s. Obviously, Obama had more fans. But Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer said the new president had more, which prompted the media to kind of say, You’re lying! But Kellyanne Conway, recently appointed as Counselor to the President, said Spicer was giving “alternative facts.”

Conway should try calling the millions of women who gathered in the US and in other countries for the Women’s March as “alternative facts.” And she has to start singing, “If a picture paints a thousand words…”

The women in those marches wore pink knitted pussyhats. Pussy what?

The Pussyhat Project describes it as a “clever wordplay of ‘pussyhat’ and ‘pussycat.’” It admits that “yes, ‘pussy’ is also a derogatory term for female genitalia. We chose this loaded word for our project because we want to reclaim the term as a means of empowerment. In this day and age, if we have pussies we are assigned the gender of ‘woman.’ Women, whether transgender or cisgender, are mistreated in this society. In order to get fair treatment, the answer is not to take away our pussies, the answer is not to deny our femaleness and feminity, the answer is to demand fair treatment. A woman’s body is her own. We are honoring this truth and standing up for our rights.”

Started as a Facebook event by Teresa Shook, who lives in Hawaii, the march was organized on Nov. 9, 2016, a day after Trump won. He has not been targeting immigrants only, but also women’s rights, LGBTQs, and the disabled. In other words, he has been politically incorrect.

Yes, thanks to FB for helping spread the word on the march. I guess I’m not wasting time with FB after all.

So, there was Ansari and his SNL monologue: “The day after Trump’s inauguration. Mmmmm. Pretty cool to know, though, he’s probably at home right now watching a brown guy make fun of him though, right?”

“Crazy couple of days, man. Yesterday, Trump was inaugurated. Today, an entire gender protested against him. Wow,” he continued. “I’m sure there’s a lot of people voted for Trump the same way a lot of people listen to the music of Chris Brown, where it’s like, ‘Hey, man! I’m just here for the tunes. I’m just here for the tunes! I don’t know about that other stuff. I just like the dancing and the music. I don’t condone the extracurriculars. If you think about it, Donald Trump is basically the Chris Brown of politics. And ‘Make America Great Again’ is his ‘These hoes ain’t loyal.’”

And that’s Trump’s first presidential weekend. Here’s to four more years of pussyhats.