With all the creative geniuses the history of world has produced, the best monster they could ever come up with is a vampire. How lame, I thought to myself. Yes, I’ve seen countless other freakish mishmash of severed body parts, taped together with the same duct tape that holds the scattered aftermath of a suicide bomber’s Audi, form itself into neon colored kaiju or the rubbery primate with the head of a condor. But vampires dominate the brood along with other sinister minions of the undead. They have this enigmatic aura that sends thousands of shrieking teenaged girls drawn, not away but into them.

But what if all the brooding vampires in the world would suddenly drop dead, vaporize in mid air, and never to be heard of again. It would become a sensational history, a romantic mystery. People would talk of the vampires as they would of the dodo. Could their disappearance be the cause of over hunting of vampire slayers, proliferation of garlic in their ghastly Romanian chamber, or to the countless other factors only the masters of the dark realm know of. We may never really know, it will always be the paradox of the death of the last vampire, the stuff mystery books are made of.

After the death of the last vampire, what would the vampire slayers be left to do? They could make a reality show documenting their depression over the death of their arch nemesis. They’d be bored to death. With no vampires left to hunt down and slay they’d be too bored they’d probably resort to killing fellow vampire slayers just for the heck of it. They’d kill each other until all the vampire slayers in the world, too, become extinct.

I see the same pattern in a house without mosquitoes. Without these nasty blood suckers buzzing around, what would the lizards be left to eat, except for the occasional pizza crumbs left in the open in the oven toaster. The lizards would be deprived of these bloody treats they’d resort to eating smaller lizards for their trifling blood content. Yes, some of you would say that even with plenty of insects around, lizards would still eat other lizards, but you wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen these past few days in my own house. These ubiquitous, four-legged freaks are engaging in a free for all skirmishes in my bedroom ceiling. They’d made a smorgasbord out of it. It’s a lizard eat all you can, not unlike the cannibalistic annihilation between warring tribes where the gecko is the ultimo hombre.

These morbid fascinations of grim encounters of the same species have led me to be reminded again of an experiment in natural history which is the Easter Islands. As you all probably know, Easter Island has got to be the most remote habitable piece of rock on the whole world, so remote that when it was settled by unsuspecting Polynesians sometime around AD800, nobody else arrived there until 900 years later. As far as we know, nobody left either, alive or dead. Apparently the last men standing were the gigantic Moai.

They are what made Easter Islands famous, these gigantic stone Moai, the largest of which, weigh as much as three fully grown blue whales. Just imagine all the work the Polynesian islanders have to deal with. They first have to carve the stones from a volcanic quarry, transport them near the shore and erect them in any which position they liked. They did all these without the help of work animals, or simple machines like levers and pulleys. They achieved all these with human muscle power alone. What they have in excess, their human population, gave us an amazing view into what humans can achieve in numbers, but what they have in excess, also resulted in their demise as a society.

When European explorers arrived at that fateful Easter day in 1722 they have discovered the statues that the islanders have erected at such great collective strength were fallen down. How, why and who erected the statues, and why were they thrown down?

The answers to the questions above have mostly been settled in the last several decades by archaeological discoveries. The Easter Islanders were typical island dwelling Polynesians. Now the island is barren and not a likely setting for a development of great civilization. It is a grass land and no native trees appear to have grown since the end of the first infusion of the human species. With the advent of technology, archaeologists doing paeleo-botanical studies on the island had identified pollen grains in the soil and in the lake cores. It showed that when the Polynesians arrived at the island, they have discovered a virgin island, it was covered by a vast rainforest that included the worlds largest palm trees and flowers of tree height and included the largest collection of breeding birds in the Pacific.

The humans settled Easter and they began to clear the forest to be used as agricultural land, they cut down the gigantic palm trees for fire wood, for the rollers of their stone statues and for the canoes in which they used to catch porpoises and tuna in the ocean. The first few centuries were abundant days, for food and resources were everywhere. They ate everything they see. They ate the land birds, they devoured the sea-birds, and they feasted on the fruits of the palm trees. Their population exploded to an estimated 10,000 people, until by the year 1600 all of the gigantic palm tree and all of the land birds were decimated to the point of extinction.

The self inflicted ecological suicide by the humans resulted to some very dire consequences. Without the palm trees, they no longer had shade from the brutal sun, they could no longer erect the stone statues that they had so greatly revered. Without the trees, they no longer have firewood except for their own agricultural waste. Without the trees to cover the ground, the islanders suffered from soil erosion and in consequence, agricultural yield decreased. And then without trees they could no longer build canoes to catch the porpoises and the tuna in the ocean. There were a few land birds left and because they didn’t have pigs, the largest animal left to eat with the disappearance of the porpoises and the tuna were humans. And just like the free for all skirmish of the lizards in my bedroom, the once great Polynesian civilization collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism. The spear points from that gruesome end still litter the ground of Easter Island today, just a brutal reminder of the horror that happened there.

That is why the collapse of the Easter Island society captures the minds of people is its obvious parallel of our world today. It has become a fitting metaphor of what the world is and what might happen still. Easter Island is an isolated scrap of rock in the middle of a vast expanse of sea, nobody to turn to for help, nowhere to flee once it collapsed. An analogue would be our world. What if the acts we do today would result to the destruction of our environment and we destroy the very place that gives us food and life, we have to face the reality that we are alone, we are in the middle of the galaxy with no one to seek help from, and if we get into trouble, there’s no way we can flee.

With these stories in hand, I strongly believe that the end of the world will not be served to us as what the Mayans have predicted. The world might not end in another ice age, from the fiery flares of the sun or from a collision with an asteroid. The world might not end with the shifting of tectonic plates. Doomsday might come from a monster, an intelligent one, with two hands and thirty-two teeth. Doomsday might come when all the humanity of being human just becomes an abstract concept. And the last man standing is the one with a very voracious appetite.

(This is a draft of an essay i plan to submit for a local circulation daily, it is not edited yet)

i haven't blogged for a while because my monitor's flyback transistor blew up about two weeks ago. as a result i've had the worst withdrawal pang experience since the last ice age. i missed a lot on the internet goings on, all the videos i haven't seen, the memes i haven't laughed at, the blogs i haven't read, and of course the porn. yes the porn. sorry for mentioning the taboo which is porn, but the truth is i don't really watch porn. porn is bullshit. i hate hate porn. well who doesn't hate it. but i still regret all the porn i missed. damn you pornographers.

but in consequence it gave me a chance to communicate with my inner self and the road to self discovery opened up before me. the life without the internet is a rewarding choice. i mean a life without the porn is rewarding right?

in consequence, life without the internet gave me a reality check. it means that i wont be able to tend my Farmville. oh no. that sucks.

my farmville withered after two weeks without the internet. the bush over the green spot withered. and the mammary glands stopped producing milk. i became a ghost. i am now a ghost of a once glorious farmer that i used to be. i can't see me. you can't see me.

as i was saying, it gave me a reality check. if i can't have farmville, i can still practice my farming skills with real bushes and real animals on a real farm. i can hire a real farmer to tend the bushes and feed the hens that produces eggs. after forty days or so, i can have an egg already and i can boast that my grass is greener than that of my neighbor who's addicted to internet farm.

the dates are all fugged up but it they were taken two weeks ago.

he's the farmer that i hired. he likes to sunbathe all day. though sunbathing in the philippines would roughly translate to bumming around all day and watching if the grass has grown longer than yesterday. but i like him, he takes care of the hens and the rooster in my farm.

life without the internet is lonely sometimes. it means no more webcamming with my internet girlfriend Svetlana i met on omegle. com. i swear it was love at first type. she gave me a link to her obscure sounding website and there we are chatting all night long. she only wore lingerie all over. but i swear she does the same poses over and over and over. she would move a little, then type, then open her blouse a little again but never giving away a lot. she would repeat the entire routine every few minutes or so. she just keeps me hanging on the edge. but after my monitor went down, i never spoke to her again. i guess thats the end of our relationship.

life without the internet would mean i would have to entertain myself with traditional ways my people would do it. it would mean that i would smoke pot everyday and dream of all the fantasy lands i would journey to. or have poetry reading in the cafe in the corner of the street. or worse, clean the house. but i found another way to entertain my self. as i have said, solitary confinement in my room gave me time to reflect on myself.

a portrait of a kid i made. his mom said that her child looked older than his one year of age. maybe i failed on this one. so i made another portrait.

this is the latest work i made. and quite probably the last. monitor is fixed and so is the internet. back to farm.

Math Test

This math test can predict your all time most watched film, mine was Saving Private Ryan. Try it without looking at the answers. It works!

Pick a number from 1 - 9.

Multiply by 3.

Add 3.

Then multiply by 3 again.

You will get your answer by adding the two digits together to find your all time favorite movie. Good Luck !!

Your all time most watched movie is:

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Answers from Test

1. Gone with the Wind.
2. Aliens.
3. Oliver.
4. Star Wars.
5. Forrest Gump.
6. Saving Private Ryan.
7. Jaws.
8. Grease.
9. The joy of Anal Sex with male goats & leather clad gay boys.
10. Mary Poppins.

I have learned a lot of things today, one of them is, if you eat durian ice cream in the afternoon you would end up burping until late at night with a durian after taste. And the other is, a life in the arts presents huge opportunities for success and even more titanic trip holes for failure.

I was awoken early in the morning by a commotion in our neighbors house. My neighbor was recently discharged from the hospital because of a mild stroke. Apparently sometime between his bath and breakfast he had an accident of some sort or probably just a minor fall. I am the closest thing to a nurse that they could think of so I was summoned to supervise fist aid.

It was a reality check for me, because once there I was completely clueless to what a nurse would actually do. I ended up taking his blood pressure and I slowly made my way out and faded out from the scene.

I went back to my bed and slept on until I was awoken up again by a honk from a sedan. The driver was calling out my name and I was bewildered because I had no idea who would look for me, since I have made myself a vitual recluse these past few weeks.

It was my client who was looking for me and she asked me why I didn't meet up with her at eight in the morning at the designated meeting place. I told her I don't have an idea what she's talking about. She assumed that I probably haven't received her message and told me that she needed my "expetise" on some matter. She then told me that since I am still in my underpants with no shirt on that I should dress up immediately and meet her at some odd place in the city.

"Meet me in Javellana residence in Jaro in one hour, you should know where that is. It's near the Angelicum school", she said.

Oh Angelicum, yes, I know that place.

She was my client to whom I sold some of my paintings recently, a nutritionist from Manhattan who has a taste for expensive abstract expressionist paintings. She's a fifty something and single. It was from her that I learned the term "rogue art peddling".

We had a conversation way back and she related to me a story when she was approached by a struggling Filipino artist who made his way to her New York apartment. She didn't know the guy but he introduced himself as John Santos and he made a painting just for her. She was surprised and though it was a "rogue art peddling" she bought the 4 x 6 ft. sucker out of delicadeza. It cost her some whopping five figures.

After hearing that story, I immersed myself in abstract expressionism and positioned my self as a struggling, starving artist. After a week I had paintings and was ready for some "rogue art peddling". And that's how she became my client.

~~~

In less than an hour, I was already there in Javellana residence drinking juice from fancy glasses with my client, her sister and Doña Maria. The Javellana's are old rich people and the house is full of paintings by the owners children, the floor hardwood and everything spells socialite. I wondered if Doña Maria likes abstract expressionism too.

The whole afternoon was spent hunting for really expensive furniture in the downtown area and there I was strutting beside them offering my "expert" advise on minimal design, what ice cream flavor is best on a hot sunny afternoon, how to make more money from fine art, how not to lose money from fine art and mentioning every now and then how abstract expressionism is the hottest art in these contemporary times and giving a reference to abstract expressionism in almost any topic that they talk about.

They would talk about Junjie Lopez's blue poodle and I would butt in, " oh how abstract expressionist that is". While eating durian ice cream in Crave Misono, I exclaimed with a burp, " this is Abstract Expressionist Josef Alber's favorite ice cream flavor you know?". They would test a sofa and I would say, "this would look good with an abstract expessionist painting, and I have just the right painting for that". I knew by mid afternoon that Abstract Expressionism is finally seeping into their psyche when even the driver would exclaim how cool Jackson Pollock is.

The day went great, though I haven't sold another Abstract Expressionist work. I had an interesting day on what would have been a dismal Monday on an ordinary week, splaterring brutal layers of red paint on an otherwise serene looking canvas and wondering if I could get anywhere painting distorted figures of naked women.

It has always been dark ever since the sun began its collapse. Some say, one day might come that it will ultimately turn itself into a blackhole. Others say it will devour us all for all eternity, engulfing us and transporting the entire galaxy to some godforsaken parallel dimensions. 

It is as if everyday is a twilight.

Today is thirteen thousand years since the end of the last ice age. Today is the beginning of a new ice age.

People roam the streets like they are hundreds of light years apart. Everyone is a stranger. Even to themselves.

I look at the mirror and I see nothing. Only darkness. I am stanger. I don't know myself.

Everyday, no, it is not fitting to say everyday anymore. Humans live by the hour. Hour? Humans don't even have a concept of time anymore.

Every now and then, I would scourge the streets for food. Or anything that might come valuable.

And every now and then, our paths would cross. We would bump into each other. It's dark and I can't see your face. But I know it's always you.

You always carry those books around with you.

Useless! How can you read?

You carry on and I carry on.

~~~

Today, no, this time I'll go fishing for beached whales in the estuary. I might be lucky today. The last time I bumped into you I got lucky and I found a can of tuna from 2008.

I ate half of it and left the rest by your cardboard box house.

But this time I found nothing. Only this baby grand piano that got stuck in an islet in the estuary. I used to play the keys before and tried to remember Beethovens 5th from memory.

I played. It's a little off key.

Dammit.

Something's stuck in the keys.

Oh, just a flashlight.

It reads: This is a flashlight that will illuminate the world. Haha. What a mockery.

I turned it on. It's bright but I doubt it could even illuminate the insides of bathroom.

But I had something. I had a light. I could dive the deepest sea and the angler fish would be jealous of me.

Hungry and rustrated I went back to my shack and I passed you by. Reading books over a candle light in your cardboard box house.

Its the first time I saw your face. The first time I saw anyone's face in weeks. You are a stranger and to me you are beautiful.

I went over to you. And you smiled. I smiled back.

You were reading Gustav Klimt and Renoir. Picture books.

You liked art you said. I thought, what a dummy. Everyone's hungry and cold and you still had some time for art appreciation.

You said you really wanted to see the paintings for real and for the last time.

I held the flashlight over my hands and told you "what if we tour the Louvre before the battery dies. Or before the sun swallows us", I joked. You didn't laugh but you smiled again.

~~~to be continued