Manny Pacquiao is the greatest boxing champion of all time, so what.

Why is everybody compelling me to admire this primate?

During his fight with Cotto last Sunday, Filipinos gathered and prayed before the holy television the boxed the said shrineworthy boxer. (The TV that boxed the boxer, har.)

All Filipinos were united as one. Again, there was zero crime rate in the country.

At that same time, we were glugging Red Horse beer before a videoke machine in a beach resort somewhere in Batangas. The beach, the resorts, the streets, they were almost empty.

This was after traversing Mt. Gulugod Baboy (literally meaning "pig's spine" :p), a minor climb with just me, Angel, and Mindtwist, the triumvirate.

Migs, the dude we met up the mountain and spent the afternoon drinking beer with us, he was wearing this black cycling shorts that bulged with this curious squirting instrument. He was saying, the gym he goes to is now packed with teenage Pacquiao-wannabes training their selves to death every single day.

Fame or death. Live or die. Life's sometimes like that.

The history of Filipino ambition can be ripped off from there. Pacquiao is an icon for the get-rich-quick scheming morons with nothing but blind determinism to rely on.

Manny Pacquiao used to be poor.
Manny Pacquiao used to be ugly.
All his fifteen years of sadomasochism is condensed into a 1.5-hour substandard biographical movie.
Now he's one of the wealthiest high school dropouts in the country.
Now he's a commercial model for an anti-dandruff shampoo.
Now he's got a trophy wife and trophy kids and a trophy baboon mother.
Now he's got an empire of businesses peppered around the country.

Rags to riches, this is his gay version of the Cinderella story.

Pacquiao says he is doing this for his country. Boo.
Pacquiao says he is doing this for his fans. Boo.
Pacquiao says he is doing this to inspire the future generations of Filipino boxers. Booooooohoooooooooooooo.

Years ago neither of these was Pacquiao's answer when asked why he does what he does.

Years ago Pacquaio said he's doing this because he wants to get rich.
Years ago Pacquaio said he's doing this because he wants to buy a mansion house.
Years ago Pacquaio said he's doing this because he wants to make his mother happy, and of course, filthy mad fucking rich.

His goals have changed from selfish to selfless as part of his marketing strategy. Now he's cropping up terms like "nationalism" and "unity" and "politics" sounding rather like an automated joke from a Bisayan robot.

Who is this Pacman The Destroyer really? Has he any idea what those big words mean when he says them on TV?

Even at the peak of my monkeybrain waves, I have zero idea what this so-called Filipino Nationalism is.

Pacquiao hasn't reached the very atom at the very tip of the kulangot of the intellectual sophistication of Jose Rizal, and yet he gives a flying knuckle punch about this nationalism thingamajiggarrrr.

How does one get socially aware of this concept? I mean, you know, really understand this "Filipino Nationalism" thing?

If there's anything uniquely Filipino you're proud of, what is it?

For me it's this: nada.

Almost all the books I've read my entire life were written by dead, white men. The stuff we study in school, they were thought out by these dead, white men. The ideas we have about the world and the universe, they all originated from dead, white men. All of Filipino art, literature, philosophy, etc. we know today, they all but mimic those of dead, white men. Even the dreams of our country, they aren't ours. They are of dead, white men.

Remember Rizal? All his ideas weren't original. He plagiarized them from dead, white men. And Pacquiao. Who do you think is behind him?

What made Rizal think we're better off an independent country than a colony?

After all these influences from dead, white men, my Comparative Literature professor asks me what is authentically Filipino.

It's not enough that Filipino writers sprinkle their stories with manananggals and tikbalangs and sampaguitas and cogon grasses and carabao porn framed in the mud, no.

I tell my professor there is no such thing as authentically Filipino. All these attempts to separate ourselves from our colonial past, we're like this dog who's ran away from its tyrant master and is now grappling with identity crisis once out in the real world. I didn't tell my prof about the runaway dog part, but I told her it's impossible to write anything about the true, authentic pinoy. Such a thing exists only in fantasy.

Pacquiao is yet another attempt to personify that vision of the "true, authentic pinoy", based on the minimum criteria that he was born here and he looks rather baboonlike.

Besides this, we know that all his ideals aren't his own. That he's spent most of his wealth collecting knockout cars and building his mansions and boxing-glove-shaped swimming pools. And making his mother look like a complete idiot on national TV. We know that he's running for some government position he's underqualified for. We know he's a actor, musician, and commercial model reject. Behind all that glitter and glamor, he hasn't any character. He's just a copycat of all copycats of false dreams around the world.

At the end of the day Pacquiao is just another make-believe summing up our grand illusions of "nationalism" and "unity" and "zero crime rates". Has anything really changed? Nothing. Except perhaps for a battalion of belligerent teenagers who are just as hungry for money, fame, power, the whole nine yards built in at the core of every rotten society.

Wahahar. Drama nanaman.XD I'd like to kill myself with this way of thinking. Think happy thoughts, damn it, happy thoughts. Gaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

Me, Migs, and Will at Gulugod Isawan.:p

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