Sex is good; we should have plenty of it, three times a week. To Dad and Mom, Mother Superior and Father Confessor, to all the Rene Josef Bullecers in the world, sex is the ultimate pleasure and what a waste of time it is every time you and your church try to convince us otherwise.

Now, readers, you got there two paragraphs contradicting each other to start this article with, the better to please all of you.

Sex sells because it can be anything to anybody. In the news business, sex can be good news today and bad news tomorrow. Either way, it sells. In today’s newspaper issue, sex drives a lover to blow his girlfriend’s brains out before turning the gun on himself. Tomorrow, sex will be a drug that boosts self-esteem. Sex is about a man of the cloth molesting a minor today, and tomorrow it will be a couple’s well-kept secret to a happy marriage.

Sex was bad news a few weeks ago when surveys (or interpretations of them by some media outlets) portrayed the country’s call centers as the new Sodom and Gomorrah, complete with state-of-the-art equipment, cozy lounges, and dimly-lit smoking rooms. Call center agents were portrayed as sex-crazed youth fresh from college who scream their orgasms out in falsely accented English.

“What’s the big deal?” an exasperated friend said while listening to yet another TV report about sex in call centers. “Asa’y balita ana (Where’s the news there)?”

She’s right. Those call center agents are not kids anymore. Who are we to stop them if they want sex right this very minute and here in this little corner where they have coffee? Can we stop them if that’s how they cope with stress? Who can deny the power of sex as natural stress reliever? And would the results be different if those surveys are conducted on young people working nights as portable toilet cleaners? Who knows, young fresh-from-college portable toilet cleaners are doing it inside portable septic tanks, too.

For sure, like any respectable industry, BPOs (business process outsourcing) have sex-related company policies, which they can post in every wall space available inside the building. “Sex Not Allowed Here.” Or, “Sex Is The Only Effective Stress Reliever That Ain’t Allowed Here.” Or, “Coffee and Yosi Only – No Sex.” Or, “Sex Can Cause Blindness.” Or something like that.

BPOs can fire anybody violating this policy anytime. But give it a month or two, the same call center agent will find himself violating the same policy in another BPO agency. As you said, they’re all sex-crazed, right?

I mean, hey, we’ve all been there, done that, right? You know you don’t need to have a six-digit pay to take a hottie to bed, right? Besides, it’s not fair to our friends in the BPO industry. Call them sex-crazed if you want – and I swear I won’t have anything to do with you – but when they’re not having sex, these young people contribute big-time to the country’s economy. So, chill.

What? No, “Sodom and Gomorrah” is not an 80s band.

( By Insoy Niñal for Sun.Star Cebu )

Of course, Miss Raj would have answered, “My favorite color is World Peace,” and she would have ended up victorious and Baldwin (I think it’s William) would have been declared a national hero in the Philippines for making life easy for Miss Raj.

Baldwin (wait, I think it’s Alec), who hasn’t had any hit the past 48 years, prepared the question ten years earlier and was planning to make it his biggest comeback performance, my research said.

But after Whichever Baldwin reportedly saw the funny footages of Manila Police running round a tourist bus like wet, headless chickens he decided the loss of lives wasn’t funny. And he swore to make life difficult for Filipinos by asking Miss Raj the most stupid question that could be asked a beautiful, wholesome 22-year-old girl: “What is one big mistake that you have made in your life and what did you do to make it right?”

The question is an HR staple since HR was introduced to the regular employment industry. I mean, come on. What’s there for a young woman like Venus to regret about in life big time? She’s already done something at such a young age. Me, I was smoking pot when I was 22.

She has a loving family and friends, and the entire Bato, Camarines Sur took a break from whatever they do up there to watch Saint Venus live on TV. And most important of all in the world of showbiz, she enjoys the support of the country’s influential gay community. See those lovely little boys in YouTube screaming their girly lungs out when Miss Raj made it to Top 15? And did you see Miss Raj in bikini? Dude, she’s hot.

Baldwin (I think it’s Stephen) could have asked, “If your father is Indian and your mother is Filipina (which is what your resume says), what’s your favorite subject in high school and how come?” and Venus would have answered it without any double major incident.

My research says Miss Raj lived in a nipa hut made of wood, bamboo and anahaw leaves with no electricity in the middle of a sprawling rice field in the rural Bato town for more than twenty years, and that she used rice paddy dikes to develop her distinct catwalk. But even if she is an anahaw-clad hottie cat-walking down unlit paddy dikes, that doesn’t count for a mistake.

What do we expect? It was not Kris Aquino whom we were sending to the competition, or the whole Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino wouldn’t be big enough to accommodate all the drama in her life. I don’t have anything against Kris. I’m his brother’s number one fan. It’s just that questions like that are best answered by somebody who can hold a global audience for hours by just ranting about gowns and make-ups and all the men that have come and gone in her life while her parents died for the country.

And so Miss Raj’s answer to Baldwin’s question (it’s William, I’m sure now) will go down in beauty pageant history as one of the funnies in the Question Unanswered portion.

By the way, I sometimes catch myself humming “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn,” a power ballad by American hair metal band Poison. But if there’s anything more confusing than Miss Raj’s answer during the pageant, it was Poison vocalist Bret Michael’s bandanna. Or was it Axl Rose doing the silly hosting up there? How these celebrities look the same when they age!

(SUN.STAR CEBU, AUG. 31)

This weather report for example: “Tail-end of a cold front affects Eastern and Southern Luzon and the whole of Visayas, while moderate to strong northeasterly surface windflow prevails over Luzon and Visayas.” The time required to figure that out is proportionate to the dedication required to understand the Trinitarian Doctrine. It is that profound.

It’s not Pagasa’s fault. There are not enough words to cover all weather phenomena so it had to improvise to confuse us even more. Weather authorities do this by pairing two existing words to come up with perplexities like “rainshower.” It’s our fault for being too dumb to understand that when it rains, it showers.

We are also too dumb to realize that “rain” is water falling from the sky while “precipitation” is the same water falling from the sky. (OK, snow is precipitation, as hail or sleet is. But unless you’re sleeping with a real snowman, be happy with rain. It’s shorter.)

I find this surprising, because Pagasa actually has an idiot’s guide to understanding the weather. It has, for example, classified rain into 13 different kinds and described each one of them. “Very light rains” are “scattered drops that do not completely wet an exposed surface” while “heavy rains” are those that “may cause roaring on roofs”. I told you it’s an idiot’s guide, The Weather for Dummies.

Here’s Pagasa’s list of winds that threaten our tarpaulins. If you think I’m making this up, you can visit pagasa.dost.gov.ph. It’s the website with a collage illustration of what looks like Noah’s Ark waiting for the Great Flood on its home page.

Light wind (19 kph or less). It’s the wind that is “felt on face.” To demonstrate: set your stand fan to 1, move back three steps. The wind that you feel on your face is light wind. Or look outside. If the “leaves rustle,” there’s light wind blowing.

Moderate wind (20-29 kph). It’s the wind that “raises dust and loose paper.” Or it’s the wind that blows away the receipt when you’re dining alfresco. When you’re too broke to dine outside, observe the trees. There’s moderate wind when “small branches begin to sway.”

Moderate to occasionally strong. Pagasa assigns no kph here because “moderate wind mostly persists but there are instances during the forecast period that it reaches strong wind force.” If you’re a woman wearing a sundress, you need to match it with sexy lingerie because this kind of wind is naughty. But if you’re a woman who wears a sundress on a potentially bad weather, you’re nuts.

Fresh wind. There’s such, and it is 30-39 kph. “Small trees in leaf begin to sway” and “crested wavelengths appear on inland waters.” Email me if you figured out both descriptions. And there’s strong wind (40-50 kph). “Large branches in motion.” Telephone lines “whistle.” “Umbrellas are used with difficulty” so don’t bring one.

Then you have “near gale,” “gale,” and “strong gale” with winds from 51 to 87 kph. “Whole trees are in motion. Inconvenience is felt when walking against the wind. Cars veer off the road.” But a gale is nothing compared to a storm (88-102 kph) when trees are not just “in motion,” they disappear along with their leaves and branches and the whistling telephone lines.

What? You don’t know what a gale is? It’s “a strong wind, a very strong wind,” stupid.

( By Insoy Niñal, for Sun.Star Cebu )

It is incongruous to equate the Catholic Faith with bonsai. It is incongruous for cats to step on heads of popes. It is incongruous for cows to act as protectors of women against sexual attacks. It is incongruous for priests to be chased by naked women, or vice versa. It is incongruous for a bonsai papaya to take the shape and form of a naked woman, and it is double the incongruity if you give this as gift to the apostolic nuncio.

I’ve been tasked to discuss the humor of Renato Madrid. But if so far I’ve miserably failed to do so, it’s because there’s more to the incongruity of the things Madrid writes about. And I’m afraid what I might find under the layers of dark humor trapped in each sentence. Nick Joaquin was not joking when he said, “Renato Madrid may look oh so prim and proper but he has got a maniac under his skin.” Now, that’s scary.

Besides, defining humor kills the spontaneous character of the experience. E. B. White said, “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”

I’m no Renato Madrid expert. I’m just a fan, a big one. But even so, I haven’t read all his works, don’t tell him.  I couldn’t go beyond five pages of his novels without returning to the opening paragraph to check if I started out right. I’m still trying. Even if he stops writing, Renato Madrid will forever be an ongoing experience for me.

But this I am proud to say, that I’ve been privileged to experience the incongruity of Renato Madrid as ‘Nyor Rudy, the person, the seminary formator, the genius musician, the “terror,” the man who brought out the best in many us, and the worst in some-–the walking contradiction.

The years I spent in the seminary were made memorable by the experience of listening to the monsignor curse in his homilies; of sitting in the professor’s class perfecting the rules of grammar so I could break them later in my writing career; of being told by the man to quit seminary and shift to journalism, don’t worry about the tuition-–and of telling him flatly, “No thanks, Nyor, I’m going to be a priest;” of beer-guzzling with the drinker during weekends; of touring the countryside with the musician’s Super Special Choir; of seeing my classmates tremble at the sight of the tormentor; of the beloved bully cutting short our meals and our sleep so we could have more time to polish “Te Deum;” of watching the nature-tripper tend to his bonsai collection; of wondering if he had “real friends” other than his dogs?

In one of our drinking sessions, I told him: “Nyor, you’re lonely at the top. Am I right or am I right?”

The man answered, “Do I have a choice?” while handing me my next beer, laughing.

Cheers, ‘Nyor.

(Last of three parts of the talk I gave last Aug. 15 in San Carlos Seminary College as part of the Special Lecture Series on Literature in celebration of Year of Madrid, on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Renato E. Madrid)

( SUN.STAR CEBU, AUG. 24, 2010 )

(I’ve been asked to give talks, mostly in campuses, on how to be an effective writer. For those who made the right decision not attend those talks, the following is a summary of my advice. I’m serious)

NOW a few tips on how to write an effective letter.

1. Keep it short and to the point. Make it concise, factual and focused. Don’t exceed one page or you will lose your reader.

2. Focus on what the recipient needs to know. Imagine him seated accross a table from you. What essential information does that person need to know?

3.Use simple language. Your letter should be straightforward, clear and precise. Use short sentences. One sentence one idea. A paragraph should have no more than three sentences. Use language that is familiar to the intended recipient.

4. Reread and revise. Make a draft then review it. Put yourself in the place of the addressee. Imagine yourself receiving the letter. How would you react to it? Would it answer all your questions?

5. Check spelling and grammar. Your letter is an extension of yourself. Sending it with spelling and grammar errors speaks of a sloppy and unprofessional letter sender.

Below is an example of an effective letter. It was found abandoned in a bar in Manila years ago and has since been preserved in its original form. After a friend from UP Cebu emailed it to me last month, I thought it best to share the classic with you.

October 1996

To Marjie,

I am not surprise or wander why Dennis leave you. Why? What reason you can think about but you’re very fat body. I thought before that dennis can only use me to his toy but sooner and later I’m realize that he really can’t not beared or stomached to be with you anymore because at first, Dennis say he could not stand you’re habit of making paki-alam all his walks [lakad]  and always calling to their house what he go home or this or that. And then he say he get ashame to met iether in school or in his family and then asking you to exercise you’re very very, very fat body. But you hate it. Thoughth your the most preetiest girls he knows about. What do you think you are “Beautiful Girl” of Jose Marie Chan?

Even you are beautiful face (to your think) you do not have the right to called me whatsoever or else different name one time or the other for the real purposed to insults my personality because I’m never call you names iether in the front of Dennis or in the backs of Dennis, but if you start already to calling me a different name, I dont have any other choice but to call you other different name to.

Like you are a PIG, FAT, OBESSED, OVERWIGHT, AND UGLY SHAPE girl. Shame to your body that is to a BUDING. You can’t not blame Dennis for exchanging you to me because I am the more sexier than you when you look to us in the mirror. I’m repeat again that you are like Ike Lozada when she is a girl.

Love,

The Sexiest Girl of D.M.

P.S. You say that I’m the bad breathe but who is Dennis want to kissed.

Me or you? You or me? And the final is me. There you go.

The genius of the humorist allows him to move from the spiritual to the mundane with ease. If one moment Renato Madrid forces us to contemplate our mortality with his black humor, he rewards us the next with pages of visual fun.

In “DevilWings,” the novelist Madrid opens the book with images of six stray cats wangling their way into the apostolic nuncio’s house, “staging occasional forays into unfriendly neighbourhood of huge, vicious dogs, receiving well-placed kicks that landed the poor animals on top of mantelpieces, fireplaces and dusty cupboards.”

At the end of the book, you see the same feline gang demanding entrance to the nuncio’s office by scraping at the door amid hair-raising cries. Once inside, the irrepressible animals started their customary cat-ballet, milling about the nuncio’s feet with cries of protest. Having made their presence felt, the irreverent cats took turns using the head of a plaster bust of Pope Pius XII as stepping stone toward a tall grandfather’s clock before jumping and skittering toward an open window as if their tails were on fire.

It’s “Tom and Jerry” without the mouse inside the Nunziatura Apostolica in Old Manila.

In his second novel, “Mass for the Death of an Enemy,” Renato Madrid further indulges our appetite for the visually comical in the scene where the heroine Aurelia struggles against a prospective rapist, a fight that involved a lot of screaming.

“The man had her pinned with both arms to the ground while he sat astride her belly and was already into some horrid imitation of a horseman in full gallop which she had absolutely no way of slowing or stopping.” Then just as the man was sure of success, a cow came from God knows where to her rescue and flung the assailant against the wall.  Or that’s how it looked like to me.

The huge beast capped its pastoral ministry by licking the woman’s face. “She was being administered to by a cow. A cow had been her salvation!” Madrid wrote. Holy cow! Of course one has to read the novel to appreciate how the scene has all the ingredients of a Joey de Leon-Rene Requiestas classic.

Or is it all symbolism? Like it’s amusing how Renato Madrid used one image, bonsai, to symbolize both beauty and stunted growth, and who knows what else, in one and the same book. The burned-out out apostolic nuncio in “DevilWings” “longed for the simplicity of the catechism now! Those comfortable interrelations of divine and human data, which were all that one really remembered once the fury of theological disquisition was over. Sum and substance. Reduction to the barest essentials. Taken in at a glance…. almost the very definition of bonsai.  The Catholic Faith as bonsai? Renato Madrid gets away with it.

In another scene from the same book, the nuncio receives from a promdi parishioner a naughty gift in the form of a bonsai papaya that resembles a naked woman’s body, complete with boobs, well-chiselled thighs, and all the curves. The nuncio, beaming with the purest pleasure and trembling, asked the gift-bearer:

“Is this a joke?”

“No. It’s a papaya.”

“I know. But they’re worthless.”

“On the contrary. They’re the best.”

(SUN.STAR CEBU, AUG. 20, 2010)

(I gave a talk last Sunday (Aug. 15) in San Carlos Seminary College as part of the Special Lecture Series on Literature in celebration of Year of Madrid, on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Renato E. Madrid. Excerpts are published here in three parts–LPN)

This whole idea of paying tribute to an artist who is still very much alive may actually be a joke in itself, an exercise in black humor only priests and seminarians are capable of doing.

Outside, we don’t honor the living. We honor the dead. We extol the virtues of great men and women who are no longer around to enjoy the attention. Paying tribute to somebody who still has plenty of air to breathe is sending the message that we cannot wait to see him go. And that person will have his revenge: he will outlive us all.

But this is not outside. This is inside. This is the seminary, where young men are trained to laugh at themselves as a matter of survival, where humor can sometimes be the only way to make sense of one’s insane spiritual itinerary. That’s why if there’s one person who wouldn’t mind being made the butt of this kind of joke, it is the man whose work we are celebrating tonight, Msgr. Rudy Villanueva, a.k.a. Renato Madrid.  Am I right or am I right?

“Am I right or am I right” is one expression disciples of Fr. Rudy remember most about him. Rightly so, because it sums up his brand of humor. Because when the man asks us if he’s right or if he’s right, he is not actually giving us a choice, is he? And yet he is not trying to be funny. Instead, he’s making fun of our inability to argue with him. That’s the joke. And while he is enjoying the moment, we suppress an uncomfortable laughter because we know we are laughing at ourselves.

That’s why I can relate to the haciendero in “Southern Harvest,” one of the earliest short stories of Renato Madrid. Consumed with hatred for God after the death of his wife, the haciendero allows a missionary priest into his hacienda. But the haciendero makes sure the priest fails by prohibiting his obreros from attending his masses. The haciendero intends to reduce the priest and the mission and the whole idea of God into one big joke.

The haciendero snarls at the priest: “Don’t you understand? The greatest tribute I can give Him is hate! I honor Him with it! You’d do well to hate Him too, you would! And you are on His side! You are for Him and you suffer! And what does He do? Tell me, what does He do? He does nothing! He just loves it, watching you suffer, as He did me!”

Then one night, the haciendero delivered his coup de grace: He sent his young mistress to the priest’s room. There was noise of struggle inside the room, of laughing, of furniture run into. Then the priest was seen running down the stairs toward the door, followed by the woman. Then the light of the doorway shone full upon her. She had no clothes on.

In the context of seminary formation and the spread of faith, there’s something comical about priests being chased by naked women, especially by one as young and sinful as the haciendero’s mistress.

Struggling with my own doubts about my faith the first time I read the story, I cheered for the haciendero and found the spectacle of naked women running after terrified priests a delightful sight to behold, only to find out deep into the story, and much later in life, that I was laughing at myself. Renato Madrid pulled a fast one on me.

When humor floats in the realm of metaphysical experience, like the scene I mentioned above, it becomes not an end in itself but a means to an end-–we laugh our way to spiritual conversion.

(SUN.STAR CEBU, AUG. 17, 2010)

Capitol has launched what could be the biggest investigation in the history of the Province since its decision to buy an underwater football field in Naga town so many years ago. It’s called “The Search for the Missing Towels.”

Here’s what happened, and this is based on actual news reports: Alarmed by the Cebu City Government’s plan to buy Vietnam War-era airplanes, the Provincial Board (PB) held a consultative assembly last weekend to determine if the Provincial Government doesn’t need antiaircraft weapons to shoot the planes down if they fly over the Capitol Building and other Province-owned properties.

The PB thought, what’s City Hall’s purpose in buying war planes if not to wage war against its archenemy, the Capitol? The message is clear: City Hall is preparing to go to war with Capitol and Capitol should react fast.

What transpired during the PB consultative assembly was confidential. But one detail leaked to the media: towels are missing from the rooms occupied by the PB members. However the discussion went inside the war-room of that posh resort, it definitely inspired the PB members to link arms in defense of Capitol and to steal bath towels if it boils down to that.

But this daring display of loyalty led Gov. Gwen Garcia to launch an investigation to determine if the towels had her face printed on them. If not, the hotel is in deep trouble for violating the law.  Executive Order 211, Chapter IX, Verse III, says: All items found in Cebu that resemble a school bag, a notebook, a shirt, a towel, a tarpaulin, a newspaper ad, a multicab or an electric post must have the printed face of the Governor.

Facing the media after the incident, Gov. Garcia said, “Dili sulti ang pabuhaton, buhat ang pasultion.” English translation: Who says only Michael Rama can write a Michael Rama speech?

Needless to say, I was inspired to do my own investigation, guided by the following extremely scholarly question: What are the items most commonly stolen from hotel rooms? It is important for the PB members to know there are plenty of items they can take home from a hotel room other than bath towels.

In my research, towels top the list. The PB members got that one right. But they could have also helped themselves with (in the following particular order, according to my research) the blankets, pillows, flatiron, blowdryer, coffee maker, alarm clock, TV remote, telephone cord, the bed, the windows, the ceiling, and, yes, the Gideon Bible.

An amateur goes for the shampoo, conditioner, tissue paper, slippers, postcards, pens and notepads, which are giveaways, anyway. But a pro goes for the unusual, like this actual news report my research found online, “Hotel guests on holidays not only steal towels and toiletries, but some of them even take home unusual objects like sex toys, stuffed animals and toilet seats, according to a study.”

“Beyond the usual things, such as shampoos and bath towels, the most frequently stolen items were our sex toys,” said a member of a hotel staff.

Before the wives and girlfriends of our PB members come knocking on Dr. Rene ‘Morality’ Bullecer’s door, the hotel mentioned above is not in Cebu, unless the PB will hold their next consultative assembly in North West England. In which case, the Cebu City councilors will get there first onboard their Vietnam-era warplanes.

SUN.STAR CEBU. AUGUST 7, 2010.