THERE’S one essential in my reading and writing that may become a collection soon—paperweights. Because the smartphone is now feeling so above-it-all. It’s asking why it has gone down to the level of keeping sheets of paper from flying away.
It’s the smartphone that can do everything, including monitoring my body fat percentage. All I have to do is connect the phone to the body composition scale and—voila—aside from the body fat, I now know my body score, body age, basal metabolism, body mass index, muscle, water, protein, visceral fat, and bone mass data.
So, I understand the phone’s grumpiness and complaints on why it’s now morphing into a paperweight.
Once upon a time, we felt smarter than the rotary phone that had a party line. It took ages to dial a four-digit phone number. Imagine using that to dial a mobile number now.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now the smart one, and it’s even the brains hiding in smartphones.
Even “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” had “The Entity,” an AI that could control, hmmm, everything. Except Ethan Hunt.
The worst part in “Dead Reckoning” was—spoiler alert—the death of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson).
I’m a Ferguson fan, I was hoping to see her in future MI movies. If you saw her in “The Greatest Showman” lip-syncing “Never Enough” as Jenny Lind, then you would have become an instant fan, too.
If only Faust also had nine lives, like Jiuming Zhang (Wu Jing) in “Meg 2: The Trench.” Yeah, dream on. But with “Mission: Impossible” as a title, anything is possible.
We can always wish for a “Showman” sequel if ever Faust’s comeback is impossible.
We love major comebacks of great characters. But in “The Trench,” Zhang’s constant reincarnations became unbelievable, almost cartoonish. He should teach Faust some survival skills.
Pinas has had its share of major comebacks, too, and the most major is, of course, the Marcoses’ return to Malacanang. This was unthinkable in 1986 at the height of People Power. But as the years passed by and Tita Cory allowed former First Lady Imelda Marcos to return to Pinas and the yellows morphed into pinks, I could only look at my yellow souvenirs while wondering what happened.
There was so much hope heaped on the shoulders of Tita Cory and her family. Somehow the Pinoy forgot to do his part in rehabilitating Pinas.
The 1986 People Power was perhaps scripted, too, like a movie, hoping to make the impossible possible. The movie “Wag the Dog” comes to mind. And the impossible did happen. But with the plan only focusing on driving the culprits away, sans any concrete plans on how to change the Pinoy’s mindset, only the government’s superficial color changed to yellow. But deep inside, graft and corruption was still running in its veins, with new names benefiting from all the commissions and under-the-table deals.
The Pinoy doesn’t need another People Power, which has become an abused, misused, and overused scheme in toppling a president. The Pinoy’s mantra now is to give the president a chance, since he is most essential to the next president’s victory in 2028. Wait, what?
