The Salamander

In response to this.

I, for one, don’t believe that artists have the right to make mistakes. Oh no. A mistake is an error… an unconscious lapse of judgment. I believe that mistakes are inexcusable in any work of art. An artist is responsible for the entirety of his work and if said work is replete with errors it merely shows the quality of the artist. When a writer, for instance, publishes his work (whether in print or online) and expects people to read it, he immediately becomes a target. His mistakes become the ammunition with which his critics will assault him. Typo error? Okay, we can let that pass as long as you fix it. If you can’t fix it, or cannot recognize what to fix in the first place, then it’s not a typo error. It’s a mistake.

What an artist is entitled to, however, is breaking the rules. Breaking the rules is not an unconscious lapse of judgement. It’s not a mistake. It’s a conscious effort to fuck the established criteria of what’s right and what’s wrong. And before an artist can break the rules, he must know these rules intimately. Look at Picasso. Before he invented abstract painting, his paintings were of the more conventional kind (Picasso’s Blue Period, which, I must say, isn’t bad at all, no… it was actually fantastic, but not as fantastic as his abstracts). Picasso knew the rules enough to break them.

Grammar. Oh, yes, grammar. This is undoubtedly the Waterloo of most writers writing with a second language. There is greater pressure for Filipinos writing in English to know the rules because if we don’t, then we have no business writing in English since we have our own language. If a Filipino writer begs to be given quarter when it comes to grammar since English isn’t his mother tongue, quarter will be given, surely, but he must stop calling himself a writer. He’s just a guy who knows enough English to be able to communicate with it. A writer must excel in his language of choice.

Notice: I said “know the rules” not “follow the rules.” Again I must emphasize that an artist has the right to break the rules so long as he knows them. If he goes on and breaks the rules without knowing them, it will show. Believe you I it will show. Now that was breaking the rules. I should’ve said “believe me.” Instead, I chose “believe you I” because it’s faux Elizabethan English, which gave my statement a slightly humorous twist. “Humorous” being arguable.

Counter argument: I’m just an amateur so get off my case.

If you’re an amateur, then you have no business letting strangers read your work. Show your stuff to your family and friends. Or maybe keep them in a box. Whatever you do, don’t publish them on the internet.

Look, not all of us have impeccable grammar. If you find people criticizing yours but you still want to publish your stuff then get someone to proofread your work first. This is not embarrassing. This is why there are editors. Hell, I’ll even do it for you. Free of charge! All you gotta do is ask. “Gotta” instead of “have to” because I want to sound informal and chummy. And that last sentence was a fragment as my grammar check informs me with a glaring green zig-zag underline. And you don’t start sentences with “and.”

And in case some are wondering why I’m not making too much of an effort to sound like an internet asshole today (as is usually my wont), come closer. Closer. Listen:

Fuck off.

When I was in Grade Three our science teacher gave us an exam about our solar system. One of the questions was:

How many planets are there in our solar system?

Now, at the age of ten or nine I already knew I was a fucking genius so I confidently answered:

We have eight planets in our solar system, you stupid cunt!

Imagine my horror when the test results came and I saw that I had ONE MISTAKE. An outrage, surely! Angry enough to spit nails, I went to my teacher. The dialogue went thus:

SQUID: Teacher, I think you’re a stupid cunt.

TEACHER: What’s that?

SQUID: You heard me. I think you’re a stupid cunt.

TEACHER: Now wait just a minute you little—

SQUID: You didn’t give me a perfect score in the science exam.

TEACHER: You made a mistake. You said there are eight planets in our solar system. We have nine, Squid. So who’s the stupid cunt now? Get out of my sight before I—

SQUID: You’re wrong. You’re SO wrong. A jillion Red Chinese think you’re wrong. You’re so wrong wrong looks right beside you. I hate you I hate you I HATE YOU!

I was very young then but I already knew that I should have gone up to her and kicked her in her ovaries for implying the unthinkable: that I made a mistake. However, I was still a small pup back then. To my credit, I recognized that had I done the right thing, my teacher would have bludgeoned me into the ground. That’s why I ran away crying instead. Eight years later I went up to that teacher’s house with a smile on my face and an aluminum baseball bat in my hand. Sadly, I learned that my teacher just died of cancer. Fate cheated me of my revenge.

Flash forward to the present. Pluto’s demotion to full-fledged planet to try-hard dwarf planet made me realize something wonderful. Aside from being a fucking genius, I’m also a fucking psychic! Goodbuddy Mike, on the other hand, thinks otherwise. He says my powers are negligible since my prediction only came true twenty-one years later. Now, I love Mike. He’s one of my dearest friends. But from what he said you can see how much of a dumbass he is, right? The fact is, my psychic powers are so awesome I foresaw something that would happen twenty-one years later!

I rule, motherfucker!

I posted a bunch of my Jesus LOL pictures in Songs of the Salamander that got a few people laughing. Har-dee-har. No big. I walked away from the computer and forgot all about that post, my mind moving on to other matters not directly related to offending people on the internet.

And then the righteous Hand of God smacked me.

I fell asleep a few hours ago and I had a really nasty dream. In my dream, I remembered all my past lives down to the time of Abraham. Each of these past lives ended with me getting crucified. Literally. And it’s not about saving people’s souls either. I was always just a crook who got the bottom of the suck barrel. It’s like I was cursed to be the man on the tree over and over again. And guess what: in my dream, I just got convicted in my current lifetime. I can’t remember for what crime (posting Jesus LOL pics on my blog?) but the sentence, not surprisingly, was crucifixion.

Okay, God, I got it. No more Jesus LOL pictures.

Exactly 6 years and around 43,830 cigarettes ago today I started out as a Philippine mainstream television writer. While I would love nothing else than to regale you with horror stories of the lean and hungry years that I’ve suffered in pursuit of my muse as the weeping violin score cues, I regret that I must beg off for two reasons. First: my muse is a sadistic sonofabitch who deserves no more space here than is necessary for me to call him a sadistic sonofabitch. Second: I would be bullshitting you as my lean and hungry years weren’t lean and hungry enough to merit your awe. I had it easy. Not as easy as I would like it to have been (like being born the heir of a media mogul), but easy enough to be uninteresting. There were rough patches every now and then, surely, but I never starved for my craft.

What I am about to discuss in this post, though, is the single greatest scrap of wisdom I’ve learned in those six years. Like Prometheus bringing fire to illuminate the world of Man, I, in characteristic benevolence, shall now bestow unto you such knowledge. Listen closely now because this is the sage piece of advice that would ensure that you make it in the business of television writing. This is David Mamet ripping out the final page of the script from his typewriter. This is the O. Henry ending. This is the money shot. Ready? Here it is:

You are not the Second Coming of Christ.

Damn straight, you’re not. You might’ve spent your school days making art in college theater. You might think you’re the dude who’s going to give Shakespeare a run for his money. You might even fancy yourself a cutting edge indie film maverick with a string of digital movies that you believe would Napalm d’Or Cannes. Guess what: no one gives a flying fuck. College theater is sophomoric at best, Shakespeare could fart better than you write, and no one had the patience to see your digital movies except your parents who, by the way, never understood any of it but was too polite to point out that you suck. No, you’re not the Second Coming of Christ and you’re not going to revolutionize Philippine fucking television and make the wretched masses appreciate Umberto Eco. Just because television shows are stupid doesn’t mean the people behind them are the same. The smartest people I’ve ever come across in my life are in the television industry. Hell, my IQ score tells me that I’m sharper than ninety-eight percent of the world’s population but even I still write stupid scripts. Why? Because I am commissioned to do so. It doesn’t matter that I am a fucking genius. I am commissioned to write stuff that will sell. That’s my fucking job description. I’ll make art when I’m up to my eyeballs in money.

The moment you accept that you are not the Second Coming of Christ is the moment you start learning how to entertain the masses. This is the bottom line of television: entertainment. Not education, not values, not public service, not social commentary, and not fucking art. The average Filipino is a poor and poorly-educated schmuck who’s got enough problems that at the end of the day all he wants to do is to plop down in front of the television set with his family and be entertained. He does not want to be reminded of his lot in life. He does not want to learn something new. He does not want to see something he doesn’t immediately understand. He wants to be entertained and if you want to make money in television you’d better entertain that motherfucker. You do not try to respect his intelligence because chances are he hasn’t got much of it anyway. You do not try to uplift him from the darkness towards the path of high art because he’ll never get it. If you must have art, you bastardize it so that the masses can swallow it.

Last note. If you’re a noob writer, one of the things that will shock you is how much people think your writing sucks. You’ve gotten used to friends, family, and peers praising you about how much your writing rocks. Heck, that much praise is one of the reasons why you even thought you’d make it in TV. But here you are in front of your head writer, your temper quickly reaching critical mass as he crosses out what you think are the good parts of your script. How dare this fucking sellout butcher your masterpiece! You explode. You rant on about how your friends and family think that your work is the greatest thing to come out from the mind of man since Yeats. You’re a good writer, you tell yourself. Your boss is just too stupid, or too envious of your talent, or too much of a power-tripper to admit that you are the Second Coming of Christ!

I say stop listening to your friends and family when it comes to your work. They don’t know shit. Unless you have 10,000 of them, their collective opinion about your script won’t affect the ratings of your show, you moron.

Technorati Profile

Trying to claim this blog at Technorati. Don’t mind this post. On the other hand, hey, what the–

…

Well, whaddaya know? It works! The only problem is that it’s a bit screwed up. To illustrate:

Recent links to The Salamander:

• Riting is Easie: Read, Fucker! in FilipinoWriter.com | Empowering the Filipino Writer and Reader (15 days ago)
• Songs of the Salamander (25 days ago)
• Lamentations V.2.0 (51 days ago)
• THE MANLY MAN Part I: We Need Manly Men in Songs of the Salamander (87 days ago)
• The Top Ten Prettiest Things I’ve Seen on the… in Songs of the Salamander (93 days ago)

Recent links from The Salamander:

• Add as Friend (6 minutes ago)
• Notes for the Aspiring Internet Rockstar (6 minutes ago)
• NGINIIIG Paranormal Investigation (6 minutes ago)
• Blogs (6 minutes ago)

Daily traffic to The Salamander in the last 6 months:

Now the inbound links are pretty accurate but the outbound links have been made at various times and not 6 minutes ago! Also, notice the traffic graph. OMG! There is no way that I have this much traffic in my blog, assholes! Else it would totally disprove my long-held theory that I am the only mind that exists in the entire Inter-fucking-net!

Meh. Of course the graph is illustrating Friendster’s traffic (somewhat) and not my blog. Which teaches me that registering one’s Friendster blog in Technorati will present some screwball results, ayuh.On a side note, however, making this post just reminds me that it is really inconvenient to use Friendster blogs. For one thing, you can only modify the template in minor ways. You can’t even put a blogroll or any of that shit.

Okay, enough of this blogger mumbo-jumbo. As it is, I’m already being accused by my wife of being a techie. A techie?! Of course, I’m not a techie. That would be uncool and, needless to say, I am awesome. No, really, I’m not all that convesant in techie stuff. I know enough to blog and offend people on the internet, but that’s just about it, folks.

Delusions of grandeur aside, check out my new retarded article in Songs of the Salamander. It’s The Misogynist’s Guide to Dating Part II: The Risks of Rape. It also appears in The Man Blog!

In the interest of offending people through the internet, I have posted here a few more pictures of corpses I’ve met along the way. Sadly, I don’t have anything more graphic than this.

The episode was about unclaimed bodies. These pictures show psychics Ruel Ruiz and Ayee Domingo examining the remains of a man named Christopher who, like Jerry of the previous post, was stabbed to death. Christopher had been in this Montalban, Rizal morgue for ten months already when these photos were taken. He was being kept in a “corpse-cabinet” along with a couple more unclaimed bodies.

The state of Christopher’s earthly remains was radically different from Jerry’s. For one, owing perhaps to the poor method of embalming in that funeral parlor, Christopher stank a little. Jerry, on the other hand, never smelled of rot. Jerry’s poorly ventilated morgue was filled with chemical fumes that made my eyes water but I never detected the stench of rotting flesh at all. Or maybe it’s because Christopher had been there much longer than Jerry.

Also, Christopher’s skin was similar to a prune’s. My impression was that Christopher looked like tocino. A mummified one. His reddish skin was stretched taut over his bones, his eyes had shriveled away, and his abdominal cavity had collapsed, leaving a gaping hole where his belly had once been. And then there were the fat black worms. They looked like overgrown maggots and were apparently immune to the chemical cocktails embalmers pump into the dead.

Fortunately, some days later we were able to track down Christopher’s family. He was finally buried.

If you’ve been clicking on my photo albums you might have seen this dude before under the I See Dead People gallery:

A lot of people have been asking for the story behind that photo, so here it is.

In the TV show NGINIIIG Paranormal Investigation over at Studio23 we often get calls from people who want the NPI Psychics to use their superpowers to find missing relatives and friends so we decided to do an episode with that as the topic. One of the cases was of a man named Jerry who, at the time of our investigation, was missing for about three months. Jerry, as we learned, ran away from home when he was a teenager and ended up as a laborer in the Quezon City market. His job was to carry heavy boxes and sacks and load them in carts, jeepneys, and such. He made friends with one of the market vendors and moved in with her and her husband. One day, he disappeared. Long story short, we found out that Jerry got stabbed and ended up in a small, dingy funeral parlor’s even smaller and dingier morgue.

Apparently, some parlors are accredited by the National Bureau of Investigation. As part of the agreement between such parlors and the NBI, the cops can dump corpses into accredited morgues. These corpses are usually unknown victims (here in the Philippines, morticians use Mr. or Ms. X to label unidentified bodies) of muggings, human roadkill, and the occasional schizophrenic bum. It seems cops don’t have snazzy morgues like we see in CSI. No great surprise there. Yet the question that begs to be answered is: what the fuck do accredited funeral parlors get out of all this? Any businessman worth his salt would immediately recognize that this is a one-way love affair. Anyway, back to the story…

So we went to a morgue and found Jerry there, pumped full of formaldehyde and crammed in a narrow wooden “corpse-cabinet” with other unfortunates. The cabinet was about the height of a man and the corpses were stacked like a deck of cards. Among the corpses were an unknown rape victim who got chopped up, a couple of convicts whose families couldn’t afford to bury their dead, and some bums. Guess who was at the bottom of that stack? Yep, Jerry, since he’s the corpse who’s been there the longest. The discolored patch of skin on his chest, if you must know, is dried corpse juice from all the bodies above him.

And so we made the necessary arrangements for Jerry’s burial. Finally, after three months, Jerry was buried. The moral lesson of the story? Damned if I know.

Oh, I forgot to put a disclaimer. This post contains disturbingly graphic images. Viewer discretion is recommended.