argument against alighieri (A)

afterlife: i just finished watching a film (won't say the title for spoilery reasons) wherein a character dies but appears in a scene in the end. now i've always doubted the existence of an afterlife but after seeing that, the chance of me believing in life after death has become microscopic. we've been told that when you die, you either go to heaven or hell, depending upon how you lived your life. that idea alone is sketchy. what if you've been good your whole life then did one bad thing and died before you could ask for forgiveness? or what if you've been bad your whole life but managed to ask for forgiveness for your evil ways just before you die? also, isn't it suicide when you know you're going to die but you risk your life anyway to save someone else's life?

and don't give me the purgatory thing. that's an even bigger nonsense than the concept of heaven and hell. it's like, dude, you gotta wait here until we're done reviewing your case. see, you've been such a do-gooder but you masturbate a lot and we don't like that here so we're weighing the amount of good deeds you've done against that number of times you pleasured yourself. and what do you know, good deeds beat masturbation by one point. all we need now is to get at least 100 people to pray for your soul to gain access to heaven. we're at 99 and the last one, your ex, has just knelt down to pray for you. if she finishes her prayer, you're good to go. oops, she was just going to give a guy a blowjob. sorry. off to hell with you, you despicably nefarious miscreant!

but the one i recently realized, thanks to that particular film, is that your afterlife self is supposed to look like yourself when you die. not exactly at the moment of your death (because, you know, everything is beautiful in heaven and there can't be anyone who has burnt skin, a decapitated head or spilling insides even if they died that way) but your best looking appearance just before. but what if you've had long hair all your life and you suddenly decided to go bald, and then you die, will your afterlife self be bald? if you died wearing nothing, will your afterlife self be naked? if not, what criteria does the afterlife use to choose your eternal uniform? if a guy dies while wearing a jollibee costume, will he enter heaven as jollibee? will we all suddenly have white togas when we die? if a person is born with physical defects, will they have the same physical defects in the after life? if not, why were they even allowed to be born with those defects then?

these are serious escathological questions by the way. im pretty sure religious fundies have multiple-bible-interpretation, dodge-the-real-issue answers for these questions. that or they'll just ignore it. i really hate it when anyone dismisses questions due to their faith. it's not even a test of faith. it's about fully understanding what you believe in. but i guess "understanding" isn't part of having faith. you just drink the kool-aid and ignore why it tastes like cyanide.

p.s. everytime there's an exception to a rule, i think there should be no rule.
p.p.s. anyone who puts "leave everything to god" as facebook statuses should start walking around, crossing streets with their eyes closed.

the tranquil monarch

when i was young,the only thing i knew about papang was that he was rich. he was like a beardless santa claus to us. on the rare occasions he would visit, my siblings, cousins and i would line upon his arrival, one hand ready for the mano, the other palm upward for the legal tender. on our birthdays, he'd come and bring the best gifts. these appearances became fewer as we grew up until the tables were reversed and we visited him instead. and we realized that he was not ours alone. he was zeus, who had many wives and fathered many children, who in turn gave him other grandchildren. however, we didn't feel different about him for we had nothing but respect for him.

being a man of a few words, he did not force it upon us; it was automatic. being with him was like being with a king. you had to be at your best behavior. even the drunkards and boors knew courtesy in his presence. part of it as, i guess, his lotharian legacy. but im pretty sure it was primarily because, at his age, he was still hard at work. instead of reading newspapers on a rocking chair, he went to his office and did paperwork and managed his business. (once, i was going home on a holiday and he was in his office signing papers.) and he'd been doing this his whole adult life. he was a self-made man and i admired him for it. he was my don corleone.

that's why it tore my heart to pieces when i found out he had passes away. it was too sudden. i did not know that visiting him in the hospital was the last time i'd see him breathing. he'd been sick before but he recovered from it quickly. some people say that it was his time. i& disagree. it was not his time. i just had lunch with him about a month ago and he was in a great health. on the day he was admitted to makati med, he was still giving detailed orders to my father regarding the business. it was not his time to go. death miscalculated.

when my wife told me on the phone, the tears just burst. i really had no inkling that he wouldn't survive. had i known when i was in the icu room, i could have at least said thank you to him for everything we owe him. which is a lot.

papang always insisted that i was smart. everytime my name would pop up in a conversation, he'd comment how smart i was. i was a very intelligent kid, but he kept this up even when i dropped out of college and basically messed up my life. now that i've pulled myself together with my own family and a stable job, i thought i was on my way to live up to what he'd been bragging about. it's too sad that he'll never get to see me prove worthy of the surname and make him completely proud of me as his first grandchild. it's even sadder that he'll never get to know his great granddaughter better, and vice versa.

wherever he is now, he's probably with mamang and getting the biggest ear-pinching of his life, but happy nonetheless, because the greatest advantage of having many families is the vast amount of genuine love we collectively give him back. rest in peace, papang.

p.s. of course, my grandchildren shall call me papang.

david carradine

you may know him as bill but i remember him best in death race 2000 passing through a hospital to rack up points by killing the old people plus the nurses and doctors that lined them up there. i've always wanted to have an f shirt like his.

r.i.p. frankenstein.