PARADOXICAL

The Kalokohans of Late (Draft July 2026 Recap/Notes to Self)

If you view everything as kalokohan (naughtiness of silliness?), life suddenly finds meaning. It becomes a sitcom or a comic strip at least.

This early, life entertains because it is by turns funny, amusing, ridiculous, laughable, and hilarious.

The things I was able to passively absorb lately from usually toxic social media content are as follows.

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Europe, a place whose infrastructure is designed to trap heat, is gripped by a deadly heat wave. Thousands have died. But as far as I know, this is rare, but not the first time. Yes, it happened before, but I am not sure if it was this hot.

But, but, but 40-plus degrees centigrade is normal temperature for us here in the Philippines. Or so puffed-up-with-pride Pinoys bragged. As others have pointed out, Filipinos routinely have piping-hot coffee in the middle of a sizzling Good Friday.

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A Pride parade in UP Diliman caused traffic blockage in the area, angering motorists. Similarly, an INC rally apparently in support of an INC senator blocked EDSA with busloads of rallyists. The PNP was on high alert, with MMDA towing the buses. >>> Turning roads, especially EDSA, into another Strait of Hormuz is hardly ever the best way to earn public sympathy, yes?

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A funny word I encountered lately: straightdar. The opposite of gaydar, it is a kind of radar--or internal sixth sense, if you will--that tells you in no uncertain terms that a guy is straight based on little signs like downright ugly fashion sense, etc.

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What appears to be a rare albino Philippine macaque was sighted somewhere. >>> What's with this curious phenomenon lately? Everything that is supposed to be black is turning white in one mutant or two of a given species. The local idiomatic expression "kapag pumuti ang uwak" (when the crown turns white) is invalidated because it no longer means "impossible."

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Ate Gay is back from chemotherapy and immunotherapy (what's that?). The comedian/comedienne whose shtick is to be a "mash-up queen" by mixing two unexpected songs into an odd duet-of-one explains her stuff on the "Eat Bulaga!" noontime show. He says her modus as a comic was inspired by her mother suddenly switching channels on the radio. He merely copied the effect--to hilarious results.

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A new super-typhoon is about to enter PAR. PAR these days means "Philippine Area of Responsibility." Since we are so irresponsible when it comes to a lot of things requiring foresight, what if we changed that to "Philippine Area of Irresponsibility" to make things more accurate? Ha-ha!

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"A Canadian engineer has developed an autonomous flying umbrella that can hover overhead and follow its user without being held." >>> LOL. The very idea of a hands-free umbrella! How hard is it to carry around an umbrella? On second thought, I can no longer count the number of umbrellas I have lost, so this one makes sense. One particular pet peeve of mine is umbrellas lasting only around a few minutes after you buy them. I am particularly still sore at losing my automatic Fibrella umbrella because the frame was made of aluminum. And I went out of my way to buy it at the Landmark mall, upon a friend's tip. It was so sturdy and rust-free that it kept being serviceable for years until I went back home, but it was probably stolen when my mother absentmindedly left it at the grocery store. Remote-controlled hands-free umbrella now! Preferably with QR codes.

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"RP gains upper-middle income status." This is good news--yes, one little step at a time. But commentators are sore for obvious reasons: the majority of Filipinos (that is we, the great unwashed) are still poor and can't relate with it in terms of more affordable prices of food and other basic commodities, low electricity bills and those of other utilities, ease of transport, affordable healthcare, and decent housing opportunities, plus jobs that would make everything within reach. Call me up if this one happens soon.

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Madonna releases a new album at 67 y.o.--meaning as lola and senior citizen in Philippine terms. Most women at this stage would have sagging skin, gravelly voice from GERD, obstinate cough, osteoarthritis, and mobility issues. In a similar vein, the Taiwanese group F4 makes a comeback without looking like they have aged one bit. Whatever magic potion or stem cell with collagen and gluta capsules they are taking, I want some.

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A woman rented an AirBnB in the Philippines and held a house blessing while presenting the property as her own.

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"Neighbors in Indonesia caught two suspected thieves and turned them into Teletubbies." >>> Complete with pointy ears and antennas.

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"A Japanese immunologist spent 20 years proving that chemicals trees release into the air walk into your bloodstream, hunt down your stress hormones, and arm your immune system." >>> If true, then can we can, seal, or bottle these chemicals for city dwellers? No, it makes much more sense to turn cities into forests.

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Word of wit-dom from a fellow "digital creator" - "There should be a medical term for the truly mysterious set of illnesses that strikes Filipino politicians without fail whenever they are arrested on corruption or plunder charges." Can it be called the wheelchair syndrome?

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Chinese scholars claim Batanes and Palawan as historically theirs too. You know what they say about the problem of giving an inch. They ask for a nine-dash line. What a bully, what a naughtically aggressive country. The world routinely condemns bullies and bullying in school and communities; why can't it censure this one? at once? So which part of the Philippines or the world is not made in China?

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Serena Williams: "Alex Eala is a gift to the world." >>> As usual, it takes foreigners to recognize real talent at home before we even get to. ...Because we instinctively look down on ourselves, I've been daring to say. The root of all evil that's bugging the Filipino.

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A poem we were assigned to interpret in high school--"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley--became trending after the veep used a line off it: "bloodied yet unbowed." "It's Senator Delima--a victim of slanderous lies and trumped-up charges and silence from those who should have spoken--that fits the bill," not a few snitched about the use of this famous literary line. As for me, I was brought back to that afternoon class in high school dissecting this particular poem and I didn't understand a thing, and I thought I was a bright student.

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The plant we call lagundi is actually 5 different species. - study. >>> We are easily deceived by uniform looks, turns out. But in ornithology, splitting groups of species once known to be the same is very common, especially in the Philippines. What was once thought to be the same hornbills, for example, turn out to be different or distinct species. One wonders which other species have we mistaken for the same things all along. All species with visible varieties are suspect.

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Rare giant arapaima fish reportedly valued at ₱7-M, stolen and butchered. >>> Another funny part is the alibi: they didn't mean to steal and slaughter it for lunch. Catching the gigantic fish was just an accident. Right.

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"Kawatan, nakiligo sa banyo matapos manloob. Naliligo pa sa banyo nang maabutan ng mga opisyal ng barangay ang isang lalaking akyat-bahay sa Bgy. San Vicente, Tarlac City." - Crime news >>> Hahaha! The comments are hilarious. Sample: "X Akyat-bahay. (Check sign) Akyat-ligo." "Para raw malinis ang ebidensya." "Di baleng makulong basta fresh." "At least hindi nagpa-house blessing." "Go-li bago kulong." BTW, he had exposed man-boobs at the time of arrest, adding additional layer of offensiveness to his crime especially since he didn't wear a bra.

I remember a similar crime in the past in which the intruder had dinner first before leaving the crime scene.

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A new monkey species was discovered in the Congo. I love stories of Lazarus: supposed extinct species resurrecting from the grave of memories, turning out to be not extinct, or not yet. Called likweli thus monkey wears orange lipstick.

Similar: "A fish already being sold at the General Santos Public Market turned out to belong to a species previously unknown to science. Researchers named it Elates saranganiensis, or the Sarangani flathead."

Related: The rare plant Ophiorrhiza biflora, first documented more than a century ago, has been rediscovered in the forests of Mt. Apo, the Philippines' highest mountain. There are other reports of rediscoveries of rarities, including a sighting of a Philippine brown deer and a Philippine collared dove.

It's supposed to be the end of the world, but here we are discovering these species for the first time.

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Senator Robinhood Padilla says he is communist. >>> So what business is he doing in the Senate, one of the highest government positions in our supposedly Christian, democratic, and capitalist society and country? Does he even mean what he said?

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Awra Briguela had a rhinoplasty (nose job), and online commenters had a field day bashing the result. The resemblance to Catriona Gray and Kendra Kramer, as they say, is striking.

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New stupid word alert: 8080 (eighty-eighty). It means bobo or dumb, mentally slow.

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I didn't watch the impeachment trial for the veep -- too busy to do it -- but a lot of people did. The debate between Atty. Poa vs Atty. Dioko was reportedly riveting, but I lost interest right from the start because the impeachment is hinged on the magic number of senators voting for or against it, notwithstanding the argument or evidence. Do we even have that in the first place?

Reduced as entertainment, the trial can be alternately seen as a showcase of courtroom fireworks.

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"Motohiro Hisano founded a religion in 2018 at age 19, positioning himself as a humble, powerless deity whose only ability is granting followers the socially useful phrase 'for religious reasons.' He has openly stated he performs no miracles, seeks no worship, and accepts no financial contributions, describing the project as closer to satire than organized religion." >>> What soba noodle is this guy snorting?

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A 90-year-old Kenyan woman agrees to marry her 95-year-old boyfriend after 64 years together, saying “Men change their minds often -- I had to make sure!”

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The sight of parts of New York City submerged in flood looked intimately familiar. Yeah, like I'm back in Metro Manila.

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Stolen quote: "Eat and be merry, for tomorrow you diet. The problem is tomorrow never comes."

(To be continued based on new kalokohans spotted from the more serious news)

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Not Funny Section

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A Grade 4 student died after deworming. Was deworming actually the cause? Not sure yet. Please answer.

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A beloved regional newspaper, Sunday Punch, "hangs its gloves," a report says. >>> Nothing funny at all about this one. Pass. I'm more of pissed off because we just lost the best print media outfit in the whole of Pangasinan.

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Not funny, but apocalyptic:

In a great flood in China, fearsome snakes swam with the floodwaters, and high school students were stranded in a multi-story building, with authorities evacuating the youth using an impressive vessel technology.

A pub or bar in Thailand was engulfed by a horrible blaze, killing scores and turning the pub into literally a disco inferno.

At home, there were two reports of a series of electrocution after a family member retrieved clothes being dried from a clothesline without knowing the wire was grounded, killing the family member together with those who tried to rescue him in a tragic succession of attempts.

"A landslide in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing buried some residential buildings, trapping an undetermined number of people, state media reports."

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A minute of silence:

Report: "Dr. Kent E. Carpenter, a globally renowned marine scientist whose life's work transformed the understanding of the Philippines' oceans and named the Verde Island Passage (VIP) as the 'center of the center of marine shorefish biodiversity' was shot and killed by three armed men who forcibly entered his home in Negros Oriental." >>> The guy even helped us win the arbitration case on South China-West Philippine Sea. It is sad and tragic that murderers sometimes don't know who they are killing and the gravity of such an individual loss to an entire community and country. You'd want to bump this bunch of jerks on the head when you see them. They moreover just killed an entire industry: the dollar-earning foreign retirement industry.

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State-run China Daily released a social media video depicting Filipinos as monkeys. Looks like it is meant to anger Filipinos all the more. As if Pinoys aren't angry enough.

posted by Resty Odon  # 3:49 AM