What are the odds? Little Fatty in the slammer? I'll give him a week.

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD - Volunteers seeking refuge and safety at San Beda College were gassed?!?!. As many as twenty of the volunteers who were spending most of the night and day at Mendiola and were brought to San Beda for safety fainted when fellow volunteer Manny Amador took off his shoes and went to sleep. The area around Amador suddenly became quiet. Everyone seemed to be in a comatose state. Volunteer doctors and chemists later verified that indeed the shoeless guitarist had literally said good night to the people around him. However, when the stinky feet were brought to the Mendiola gates of San Beda, the secret weapon had no apparent effect on the Erap fanatics except to make them chew the hollow blocks they would throw at riot police. Amador is not taking any calls regarding this matter.
It is not true that while at Mendiola, our primary line of defense was to wave our socks at the attacking forces.

Mad cow lady makes declaration; Morato applies for lease of the entire Luneta Park for a day. In the light of a senatorial candidate's willingness to get shot if a bet she made was lost, her former adversary asked Manila City Hall for permission to sell tickets to the execution. Mad cow lady hats, T-shirts and hairpieces are also to be sold at the festival.

Amazon forest denudation blamed on Philippine politicians. FORMER Senator, EX-Cabinet Secretary, and ONE WEEK-termer as Executive Secretary Angara--whose wife actually had riot police beat back Ambassadors and respected Filipinos to prevent them from watching a play in the Cultural Center ( HA! and you thought Cardinal Sin was a censor)--claimed that the present campaign move of his political party, nicknamed STOP HELL was actually giving jobs to Indonesians and Brazilians in the logging industry, thereby improving foreign relations.

Movie banned for reflecting hardship in the Island Republic of Bananas? Well, at least there were no banana cutter scenes shown. Funny though that the church, which is responsible in a big way for the gross overpopulation asked the Palace to shut down a movie that could serve as a wake-up call to Filipinos on the hardships poverty brings. Many of our countrymen are enjoined to have numerous offspring yet are not capable of feeding them 3x a day. This movie bespeaks the evils of our society. Who is to blame? Ask the men in robes. A blow by blow (no pun intended) account on the movie's specs. Technicals, Toro Movie (T.T.Mo.). This is one pirated disk you should buy and share, I was told.)
PLDT.Com seeks firing squad for Mad Cow hairdresser. Is she using Manoling's wig or is that a cunning disguise? That is the question posed daily in coffee shops around the Metropolis.

Police, NBI still searching for 8mm. Miriam had claimed that she carries an 8mm pistol for protection against well, just about everyone at this point. So far, the investigators have only come up with Super 8, not a pistol, but a video camera that dates back top the 70's. So please, nobody tell her that the "gun" she thinks she is carrying is just a video camera. We hope to reduce campaign violence so let's start with this one.

Magsaysay certain to win Senate seat. Victory credited to single banner placed on pldt.com. It seems that the single ad banner placed by pldt.com for its IT champion, Jun Magsaysay, swung the election voters in his favor. Survey experts and election officials disclosed during a press briefing last Saturday. Local wags have pointed out that if two ads were placed in pldt.com, then it was possible that Magsaysay would have also beaten Noli de Castro, whose TV and radio presence, and nothing more, made him the first choice for voters.

Upon learning that Noli de Castro placed first because of TV and radio, Manoling Morato is buying 5 new TVs and 12 radios as they may increase his chances of winning the next elections.

Manila's Five-Star Hotels in bidding war to get Estrada account. The bigger Manila hotels are now engaged in a bitter price war to see who can give the government the better deal in housing the ex-president. Only four-star and above hotels are allowed to join the bidding war to win the chance to have Estrada as its "Prisoner-ala-King".

Lucio Tan daughter loses millions of pesos worth of software allegedly "hacked" from her company - Thames International, an international business school. Thames has thrown a challenge to the proponents of the e-commerce law to recover stolen study and course material. A visit to the Thames site on the web seems to indicate that the school is a truly international school where students get to study in different countries. It would be quite interesting to see how the investigation is carried out. What are the odds that this is an inside job. Maybe the "hacker" they seek runs the 'geek' arm of the 'Martilyo' gang. Maybe the owners of the school will get the feeling the Philippine government has been getting for years. The difference being that of being robbed to the tune of not just a few million pesos worth of programs, but 26 BILLION worth of taxes.

The Filipino Palm Users Group

It's official: He's a CRONY !!
Poor old manny! Alleged "victim" is really Presidential bribe-giver. http://www.inq7.net/nat/2001/mar/17/nat_3-1.htm By Michael Lim Ubac,Inquirer News

You want to talk poor? OK, let's talk poor. Say you want the poor to believe you? Then treat the rich who break the law the very same way you treat the poor who break the law. Special treatment. The very term alone illustrates the double standard that is a giant obstacle towards narrowing the gap between rich and poor. Why these guys even get media attention after all they have done to hurt 75 million people speaks volumes of the double standard. The Filipino is guilty of the forked-tongue, two-faced game. With money, one can literally get away with murder. The snatcher who steals a cell phone gets shot dead. Let's start with equality. We have nothing to lose and it will give the Prez a real survey result. Guaranteed.

PLDT chickens out!?! Nah, they merely "postponed" latest hearing. Their witness flew out of the country and will be in Paris (well-known as the IT capital of the world) on the day the hearing date was scheduled. But why? It was just another one of those ordinary cross-examinations by defendant PLDTI and Kaimo lawyers where they usually get creamed. Tsk, tsk...Mebbe they sent him to count how many dotcoms in Paris had corporate names as their domain names. But knowing star witness and lady-killer Manuel Bausa, he might just come home all starry eyed and misty. I wouldn't be surprised if during the next hearing--that is if he ever decides to come home--to hear him mumbling "at least we'll always have Paris-- Paris.com, Paris.net, Paris.org,-- Louie." Who the heck is Louie? manny pangilinan will ask him and he shall say, who else? The guy who started this beautiful friendship".

Minutes from a hearing:
24 April 2001 More comedy from the best and the brightest; as only PLDT Telco can provide.
Yet again, the country's telecommunication monopoly and self-proclaimed masters of convergence today failed to meet the standards their advertisements speak so often about. They failed to produce the correct length of telephone cable for the court hearing. My guess is they needed more time to prepare - they only had a whole month to splice five feet of telephone cord. The RTC at Sala 90 was sounding a bit more irritated than usual as once again, the fourth time actually (but hey, could be third or fifth--it happens so often we lose count) that the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. failed to bring some length of telephone wire for their online presentation to the court. It seems almost impossible to think that this is the same company who can carry out a task that takes some intelligence, like wiretapping for instance, but maybe they didn't actually do the wiretapping (they only supplied the lines?). No mistaking the funnyshadeofmaroon trucks as they roll into the QC court parking lot and teams of techies swarm into the courtroom to prepare to install their setup. Of course, they will wait till court officially starts to begin setting up. No forward planning for the country's most efficient and converged telco. Not half an hour, or even 15 minutes ahead in preparation. They will wait for the Judge to come in and then make the whole courtroom wait. When any job begins like this you know it's gonna be fun and games once again as soon as the problems that come with hastily-prepared projects start to show. This time the Judge was seriously considering his options, as they seemed to be literally mocking him. But hey, they are the PLDT phone company, after all. They seem to "own" the right to piss of any/all Filipinos. It's a cultural thing. It's like our lives were meant to have this particular utility around to make us suffer, to remind us of our days under the Spanish colonizers and the American imperialists. They hold the key to your accessing the world via phone communications and strut about like you owe them your life for it. Much like Marcos when he lifted Martial Law. After kicking us in the teeth, he broke our legs, and we were supposed to be grateful to him for doing so. Duh, I say.
Today we finally heard the official reason for PLDT's failure to register the dotcom - they had other, higher priorities. As their newly promoted, (rewarded, whatever) expert witness stated, they were too busy setting up for the "rollout" and preparing for the "giant convergence" whatchamacallit to be bothered with having to register a domain name. That would have to wait till later. Much, much later was maybe what they really meant, for it was not till years later that they suddenly remembered that they wanted to register their dotcom. But they did not forget to register their dotcomdotPH in 1996!!
And this was not even on the agenda as it was another fellow, some insurance dude - Pollie de los Santos was his name if I recall right - who reported to manny pangilinan about the pldt.com website. Ah yes, I distinctly remember Pollie - the witness who swore under oath that he had no business dealings with Pangilinan Inc., et al. So after all his ranting and raving on the witness stand it was our turn to question him. And it turns out he sits on the board, no less, of Bonifacio Land or one of those many companies they own. Oops! He had this indescribable look on his face when defense lawyer Teddy Cruz showed him the SEC papers with his name and shareholdings on it. Let's see...... how red can a human face get? I wonder what the Philippine Justice system has to say about people who lie on the witness stand? Isn't that what Erap lawyer Serapio did? Hey, ain't he the guy in jail now? Anyway, back to Pollie and his funny testimony. Pollie had earlier also testified--under oath--that he had typed pldt.com and was amazed kuno that he didn't find manny's photo there, but instead saw a different pldt.com (the real one, as we like to call it).