Netnet Camomot “SASARA ang bulaklak, bubuka ang bulaklak, papasok ang reyna, pakembotkembot pa.” Calling MTRCB? Hmmm, no need. Those words are part of this game that children play for pure clean fun. But for a while there, it did sound like the Pinoy version of Playboy magazine. Sasara, bubuka ang bulaklak? O my gas. But even Playboy has morphed to demure with its recent decision to put clothes on its photos’ subjects. The Internet now has all the sex videos that any curious guy and gal want, so looking at nude photos on printed magazines has become boring. Ho-hum. The night life is also suffering from the absence of millennials who prefer to meet strangers through the Internet rather than in bars. Hmmm. I gotta feeling that survey was not done in Cagayan de Oro. That’s the secret to tweaking people's likes––let them have what they want since they’ll eventually get bored with it anyway and will look for simpler pleasures in the end. But, again, that’s so not true in CDO where Cagayanons continue to drink like there’s no tomorrow––the more alcohol, the better, leaving no room for satiety. The only time they will probably stop drinking is during the liquor ban on and before Election Day which Comelec extended from two to five days in 2013. After the election, though, alcohol is required for the losing political wannabes to forget the pain. At a dinner with high school classmates last Monday night, the topic was, Who’s your mayor? For a while there, I thought the question was, Who’s your daddy? Ah, hehe. Well, my, er, your daddy, er, mayor can be any of the three colors––yellow, ube, orange––that have filed their certificates of candidacy in CDO. The violet mayor is obviously sick but miracles do happen, he may fully recover by the time he wins again in 2016. Or he may ask a violet minion to replace him as his party’s mayoral candidate, that is, if Comelec will still allow that as what is expected to happen to the Davao City mayor if ever the latter finally decides in December to run for president. Confusing, eh? Please, no room for confusion here, as you now have to choose a president from the one million hopefuls who trooped to Comelec, with at least one promising to legalize the four seasons--yes, winter, spring, summer and fall--prompting my bro to comment, That’s why diay two seasons ra ang Pilipins: sunny and rainy. Or dry and wet. Or hot and cold. OK, not one million “presidentiables”––please deduct one, and you have 999,999 presidential candidates. Hopefuls as in hope-fools: Hope they're not fools, hope you won't be foolish enough to vote for fools, "Foolish heart, hear me calling/Stop before you start falling/Foolish heart, heed my warning/You've been wrong before/Don't be wrong any more." Sigh. Abraham Lincoln once said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Ouch. There's that one particular candidate in CDO who can't speak English so he should start using the dialect now. Using the dialect won't prove he's a fool, it will prove he can speak from the heart, that is, if he can speak from the heart. Fool in Tagalog is loko-loko, loka-loka, gago, ulol, sira, tanga, hangal. Sounds better in the national language, eh? In Cebuano, it's buang, kwanggol, tonto. Even way much better than Tagalog. So, a foolish heart can be kwanggol nga kasingkasing. Heh heh. But I don't think any of these Tagalog and Cebuano translations are politically correct. Thus, let's stick to English. The candidate who's not healthy enough to survive through the rigors of an electoral campaign can be considered a fool for even trying to run in the first place if he loses despite all the public relations machinery that's propping up his candidacy. Whew. That must be the longest sentence I've ever written. But ain't that true? You're already sick, and you still want to run. A sick person is not even allowed to join a 3K fun run. He has to recover first and should get a go signal from his doctors before he can start running for anything. But, as I wrote earlier, I think Comelec allows replacements as long as the replacement is from the same political party. Mayor pa more! Well, correct me if I'm wrong. But I hope I'm not wrong because, like any Cagayanon, I do want CDO to have a healthy mayor. For if the winner is not healthy, we now have to vote for a healthy vice mayor who can speak from the heart. CDO's political candidates have already jumped from one color to another. From yellow to violet, yellow to orange. Are there any other transferees? Feeling like students, kanang transferee ba. Hehe. But political candidates are indeed students in Politics 101, it's an on-the-job training, they learn about their duties and responsibilities only upon winning. And sometimes they don't learn at all. Tsk tsk. It's on-the-job and not that other kind of job not swallowed, er, allowed by MTRCB. That's the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board in case you're among the clueless who don't know where that for-adults-only rating is coming from. Political wannabes should try playing children's games like patintero if they want to relax and unwind in the middle of campaign sorties. Or how about bato-lata? They can throw rocks and canned goods at their opponents and wish the resulting injuries will keep the latter from campaigning, winning, and holding office as winners, you know, the kind of behavior that may get a for-adults-only rating from the MTRCB. Meanwhile, for non-political wannabes, you may join the more interesting game: "Sasara ang bulaklak, bubuka ang bulaklak." But then, what's this chika that some male political candidates are fond of bulaklak? Either they're the bulaklak, or they crave for bulaklak. And that's not chicharon bulaklak for that's bad for the knees, and a man's weak knees are of course bad news when it comes to indulging in bulaklak. Calling MTRCB!