Ramblings

One of my favorite authors has been turned into a juicebox. It looks like his heirs have taken advantage of his death by licensing his works to one of the crassest possible things. He would shudder in his grave, seeing this.

Is there anything left in this world that isn't for sale?

It's a rhetorical question, but universal truths such as faith, hope and love have long been commercialized. And now, even the idea of rallies in the mockery of a youth rally that Penshoppe held last October 14 in order to promote its clothes.

At a time when the youth and other dissidents are being hosed down at the foot of Mendiola, at a time when mass leaders are being killed right and left, I can think of no greater sacrilege.

I've just finished leafing trough the British edition of Vogue, the inch-think Bible of the so-called modern woman. And frankly, it disgusts me.

Everything is branded -- we are taught to dress, accessorize and primp according to a single "fashionable" standard.

All the articles, including one on luxury bathrooms, are utterly banal.

All save for one -- an article on the photographer Diane Arbus, who loved to capture freaks on camera.

She killed herself in 1972, leaving behind uncanny photographs of those whom society considered to be deviant.

This is what she wrote in 1959: "What's left after what one isn't is taken away is what one is."

I have pledged to stick to this job for at least a year, in order to prove myself, explore the possibilities for subversion within mainstream media, and for other reasons that remain unknown even to myself.

But I can't help wondering; in a year, what is going to be left of me?