We try to treat ourselves with jokes aside from food. We come from a place exploited and oppressed by centuries by Spain, Japan, then the US. We treat ourselves of a good laugh to ease our cultural pains and anger away. Here are examples of common jokes among Filipinos. This one is a joke that pokes on Filipinos living in Central Visayas or Mindanao that knows how to speak the local dialect of "visaya" or "bisaya".

BISAYA1: P're, unsa'y ibig sabihin ng 'cooling place'?

BISAYA2: Sus! Dugay ka na sa Manila, ignorante pa gihapon ka. Pag nag-ring

ang phone, sasabihin mo, "Helow, who's cooling place?"

No wonder we have such shows on TV entertaining the masses, so popular as it is now in the Philippines, the type of shows that configures the Filipino mind to resiliency, to laugh at themselves. These are coping mechanisms en masse for Filipinos to survive in hard times, where the economy is so battered and national pride and dignity is in shambles. With some people trying to earn their way in such as comedians, they have in fact built their future on this, making people laugh. They are the jesters and clowns of the people court to woo them away from their problems, just as what jesters to a King or Queen in ancient times.

Here is a joke trying to contrast of differentiate the rich and the poor.
( Diperensya sa Pobre ug Adunahan)

-Kung adunahan ka, duna kay "allergy", kung pobre ka, aduna kay "korikong"

-Sa pobre, "nabu-ang', kung adunahan, "nervous breakdown" tungod sa "tension"

-Sa adunahan nga mangawat, ang tawag "kleptomaniac", sa pobre "kawatan"

-Kung pobre mosakit ang ulo, ingnon dayon ug "napasmo", pero ug adunahan "migraine"

-Kung pobre, "buktot", pero ug adunahan "scoliotic"

-Kung maid ka nga itomon, tawgon ka ug "negrita", pero kon adunahan ka ug mas itom pa sa
sulugo-on ang itawag "morena"

-Kung bisan kinsa lang ang imong ika-date, ingnon ka ug "uwagan" o "burikat", pero kon
kwartahan ka ang ilang itawag "game" o "liberated"

-Kung idaran ka nga pobre tawgonka ug "tigolang", pero kon datu ang tawag "senior citizen"

-Kung anak ka kwartahan ug dili dayon makakat-on, ang tawag "slow learner" kon anak ka pobre
ang tawag nimo "bogok"

and a joke among OFW’s in Saudi Arabia and in the US. OFW’s in Saudi Arabia who kill their time living in that desert, earning money to send their children to schools and for their family to have food in their table and in the US trying to be second class Americans only to parry racism around to get those dollars back home.

Mga Pinoy, Intsek ug Hapon sa Saudi nag pustahay kon kinsa ang maka pronawns sa pulong nga "Bulaklak at Paroparo". Ang mga Pinoy mipusta ug dako sa ilang paisano.

Intsek: "Bulaklak at Palopalo", ang intsek pildi kay dili maka pronawns ug litra nga "R".

Hapon: "Burakrak at Paruparu", ang hapon pildi kay dili makalitok ug litra nga "L".

Pinoy: "Buyakyak at Payopayo", labaw pang napildi, kay taga Surigao man diay ang kontestant.

Usa ka barberong Pinoy nga bag-ong salta sa Amireyka dili pa kaayo maka mao nga mo-iningles. Human niyag alot sa kustomer nga nakatulog, nakalimot siya unsa-on sa pagingon ang nahuman na. Sa kalit nakahinumdom siya nga kon mahuman ang sine, sa katapusan sa pelilkula duna'y "The End". Samtang nagba-id siya sa labaha iyang gipukaw ang Kanu ug miingon, "Joe, this is your the end."

Kalovski Itim

Computer

Destroying the ramparts of passivism
and taking an offensive in truth telling is asked from us.
In this cold winter season, in the heart of the beast,
my friend and weapon is my computer.
amid the raging revolution in my homeland,
masses of people in the countrysides
are taking arms
defending what is theirs.
armed goons of the state take an evil dance
killing people, priest, farmers, workers, fathers and mothers….
patriotic and enlightened brothers in the state coercive
machinery calls for justice.
In this cold winter season,
my heart yearns to be in that battlefield
where everything is possible
where the struggle of justice and
peace is real
Where peasants and comrades
are on my side.
But afar I am, in this lonely dark room
thinking how the revolution goes,
the computer is my friend.
When I see the rage in the heart
of the oppressed masses burning
a million times stronger than Mrs. Wains fireplace,
in my computer....
When I see endless, marches in the streets
When I see marches of comrades in the middle of the forest,
in my computer...
I am calmed in my chair, slowly touching
the keyboard, like a guerilla
tiptoing every step of the way
flexing like the wind,
Every key touched in this computer board
is a battle fought
and a battle won.

Kalovski Itim

The political braces that hold Macapagal Arroyo political infrastructure is now quickly erroding and corroded by the acid anger of the Filipino people. Part of the Filipino people are the military men and women , working within her coersive apparatuses are now slowly turning their back against her. To woo them she had to dangle a Php 5,000 (USD 89.00) to the Philippine National Police as Christmas bonus inorder for her to win over their support, just like a candy a child who is crying. Though this
approach would have an effect, would probably calm down an angry child but this would not last long. Its effect just like a a drug will not last long. They will come to come their senses. They will see that they are being duped. It would be foolish for GMA to believe in the lies, the lies she has made for herself. Right now she is already cooking of a scenario where there is no elections. General Abat had quickly pointed out how disgusted is General Ramos. How she had abandoned there agreement of "pie redistribution". How disgusted was the General that there will be no elections and had to say aloud . that GMA is committing a political blunder. The intensity of intra-ruling class contradictions is so pronounced now a days.

The bolting out of prison by Capt. Nick serves as a warning to GMA. It is a warning in that the junior military officials who are in the field are thinking now. Thinking of options either to support or not support GMA taking the helm of power to herself and her family. Thinking that sustaining her to power will further erode us to backwardness in all levels. And how can they not think about it? How hallow are the propaganda of the Generals that the military is "neutral " when in fact they support the wrong doings of evil ans selfishness, of greed and power by GMA? How can the military remain neutral when they go home just to celebrate little time for their love ones they see they can't buy anything to celebrate Christmas. They can not even afford to go to McDonalds with their kids?

The GMA must have forgotten that most military men comes from the basic masses. They are sons and daughters of peasants and workers, only a small portion comes from the middle class. They have joined the military to fight poverty, to continue to cope with the demands of living. Capt. Nick is an example to that. He was a working student and worked his way to school. His life story resembles to that of my cousins on my mother side, most of them joined the military inorder to get out of poverty, to get of the province where there was no work available for them. It was the logical step most youth of most middle class in the province or even the poor have. So without knowing Capt. Nick is now transformed itno an icon for most families who have cousins and relatives in the military, who believes that the military can be transformed and reformed.

The National Democratic Front projections of getting rid of GMA within six month is a truthful projection based on truthful assesment of the political situation. Why do I say so? Because with the confluence of different factors, all are now aligned. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has a new Bishop that is not apologist to GMA. Bishop Capalla is out. He was a rabid apologist of GMA. The groundwell of peoples mobilization will push CBCP to utter those prophetic statements we are waiting for. GMA step down now! For sure they will abandon Capalla's position, of building a bridge starting in the middle, which was impossible. The Bishops would now build that bridge starting from one side, which means to correct things that have caused evil and misery in this world, who must now take sides, the side of the right and the wrong.

For the past month now, our close friend in high school who now works in the intelligence department is silent to us for quite a time. He must have been moved by the messages and emailss we have forwarded to him. His only message to us was wait for us! I cannot blow his cover off as he is silently organizing his friends inside the military.

I pray that their political actions will be quick enough hoping to minimize bloodshed among our people.
I also asked them to guard that exit passage near pasig river at the back of Malacanang. When the moment has come, when that palace is surrounded by the people,0 do not ever let GMA get out through that passage. Erap exited through that passage. Marcos never got to have that exit since he was shoved to the helicopter by special US forces through the order of the US embassy officials. This time lets see.

K.I. is a personal website of mine

My logo capsulized my idea of the world as I perceive it, and probably in reverse you would have your own perception of me though my logo though in general is rather subjective. Looking from afar, my logo seems to characterize a person cutting a tree. That person looks like a K and the tree like an I letter. These two letters are wrapped by a big capital C, which means commitment. The combination of letters K and I was an enigma for a while and still is for me, in that, I just feel fascinated combining them. This combination is so unique that I cannot even fattom and understand what causes it to this very day. This combination has an active ingredient that transforms a static state of word combination to active state, a state wherein words moves, can carry itself even catapulted in commercial environment in the cyberspace .

These words came to me one day. It had accidentally had popped out of my brain. Seeing the beauty and uniqueness, the sound of it I started to print it on two accounts, as my own personal label and brand name. Fortunate or unfortunately K actually is my nickname, a nickname Kalovski. This name comes from my original nickname “Kaloy”. Kaloy was the name given to me long time ago by my brothers. It later have been used by my close friends. They had then, the liberty then to put a tag which I was not aware of till it became a popular tagname. In the beggining I disliked it. I did not like using it to referring it has me. Though though time as it solowly unfolded, I slowly began to like it, the sound it. That liking probably was facilitated and was ushered by the fact I was an avid reader of Robert Ludlums novels. One of Ludlums vallain character was Carlos, translated in Filipino as "Kaloy". Being involved in the student political movement in the 80's having different names was so important. The value of having different names played an important role in an activist life and survival. Adopting different names makes one survive in that tough times amid open state repression. It was tacit method of surviving. Adopting different names was a defying act against reactionary impositions and open state repression. It was ana adoptive mode to evade being hit by tirades of fascist metal sharp balls flying over your head to cut it off. Indeed an effective weapon, a weapon to carrying out the political tasks of arousing, organizing and mobilizing people. Use of pseudo names lends you latent powers to defy the system and puts one in an upperhand position to turn upside down unjust systems, a systems that causes death, destruction and misery to people. The process I have undergone honed and tempered the name and me in it. Later Kaloy later found its normal state. The name as “my name” became my normal name, as it would refer to me as that.

So you would ask me what was your original name then, not the name that later became so used to to refer as "you"? To tell you my original name name was Nonoy a name which sounds a little closer to Kaloy. This name was given to me by my mother. A lost name only uttered by people close to me. But even then the use of my original name had waned in reference to me. Uses and reference of names also connotes the degree of familiarity and relationships. In this case those people close to me would use Nonoy and those not familiar or superficial would use Kaloy. The layering of identity as part of a strategy had carried myself to survive in that turmultous events.

Now comes Kalovski Itim. Kalovski was borne into being out of the urgent need to have a name in the cyberspace. One day I was caught many times denied of registering an email account at yahoo using that word “Kaloy”. Reinventing the work Kaloy to Kalovski in that damn email registration process permitted me to have that email yahoo account granted to me. No doubt the name Kaloy is a popular used by many to register their email accounts at yahoo. Modifying the name Kaloy to Kalovski saw some lacking element on the perception level. I felt loneliness of bringing out the Kalovski name in the internet. Subjective as it is I felt an element lacking. An element that makes a good mix of word sounds when carried and pronounced aloud. Feeling that lacking element I experimented in using the word Itim. Thus I attached Itim after the word Kalovski. Attaching Itim after Kalovski sounds enigmatic to me. So enigmatic, that I even heard the word Kalovski Itim as a label to a new operating system ( OS) which was so ambitious of me, but in any way an imagination. Honestly, Itim is the name of my beautiful wife. It means “black” in Tagalog Filipino dialect. I was asking myself when I met her years back why black when her skin is white? Well, she inherited that name by alchoholic father to different her from her elder sister named Puti or white. His father must have been schooled in an advance system that he had this idea of calling his daughters in a color coded fashion same the DMV colors street signs. Probably when drunk it would be easy for him to percieve and identify her daughters in terms of colors. At any rate, the combination of the K and I words and initial letters sounds good to me. The subliminal implication was vast that it would be easy to use for example in niche penetration as to marketing, product differentiation and even extreme repackaging as to image building. Combining these two words sounds quite amazing. I started to use it in my emails and in e-groups. In e-groups for example they would ask, “who is kalovski itim?” not that they were intrigued by the word or the sound of it but they have no idea who I was. For a while I became anonymous, me forwarding timely and controversial news forwards, press releases to mass media, in the print and broadcast segments. As the name penetrated slowly in that niche market, people slowly referred me as K.I. This instance gave me enormous joy because I proved in this instance that indeed one can redefine the subcultural state by asserting and stretching recognition and thought patterns through repetitive relays, using the internet as a medium. Later, I saw the need of catapulting my experimentation to a higher level, a level of assertion in the realm of relations and marketing, in the real world. Thus early year 2000 I began to use it as a brand name, not just in my email forwarding, news relay but also in the computer industry and website development.

In 2001, K.I was register as a computer company doing small projects for website development. It handled corporate accounts in the Philippines. K.I took off for a while in that industry in that region till early months of 2004 till I transferrred in the US in mid 2004.

The articulation of my personal philosophy (view point and stand point ) is embedded in my logo and banner. A caption on the left side of my banner are two unplug co-axial cables. These plugs being unplugged have their meaning in it, with me sitting on the right side portion. The picture is actually a portrait of my self-unplugged from the world, that is, not real but superficial. This portrait draws inspiration from the movie “The Matrix written by Bachowski Brothers. In the movie Keanue Reeves took the role of Neo. Neo, was lost soul who is wasting his life at work and at home in front of a computer monitor searching the internet only to be drawn to the real world. He discovered that the world in which he was living was not real at all. It was a programmed world. His soul searching perhaps must have been brought about by his feeling that there was something wrong in the way the world works and operates. Later, unleashes his power not by having to contend primarily with the external but the internal realization of himself, that he must conquer himself and that conquering himself would send him to see the beyond, to see the world and transform it. Coming to terms with himself, unplugging himself to that matrix gave him the enormous power. It gave him the power to see the real world. He saw that the world was programmed, that humans where programmed to function as batteries, a source of energy for the system to exist and survive. People where programmed to live in a dream world state of being. Seeing that he then ventured to smash that system. He fought the system and took him to a process of transformation and self realization. He suceeded in smashing the stronghold ramparts of electronic system which disabled people to see what they are into and communicate the self. This story is true to real life, even today. We are entrapped by our classes, our religions, our small gods. People are polytheist. They value more their things, properties, the institutions, the laws, self, and the whole relations of production. They are slavees of the system. They are engulfed with the system that authentic relationships are broken, identities destroyed, layers are made to survive. People relate people as objects and not subjects. People oppress people. People have a short perception of the truth, or reality and deny and engender that oppressive system to florish and exist. As a matter of fact they tend fortify more of it. They justify every inch of the system. They anchore to that system inorder survive with it. Are they different from drug addicts? No, they are one and the same. They protect, justify, guards the system that oppresses them. They put themselves in a continuing dream state of being. They build social relationships and constructs out by defining people and things. By defining others. These are the very same people that uses cooptation, reformism, capitulationism, opportunism inorder to further glue the oppressive state. They entice people to embrace left and right approaches to frustrate the whole change the whole social structure, to trevialize and derail them of seeing there ownselves. They advocate for a stronger reactionary state sends everybody to passivity and resignation.

In the movie Martix, Neo had unplugged himself out of that system. He detached himself out of that system and later integrated in that system to destroy it. An integative approach indeed. That act of unplugging took so much pain in him but it was the only option to fight the matrix, the system that breeds evil. Presently today, unplugging to that system which one is connected required courage. It required of trancending our true self. Of seeing ourselves among others. The question is are we prepared to unplug ourselves, to uplug in that system that puts us to a dream state? Are we ready to be selfless to serve the people with all yuur heart ans soul in. Not secretly still plugged to the system that blinds you and me? Or we just want to unplug for a while meaning join the fray and plug it again later maintaining our petty bourgeois state, vacillating to the fore. Revolutionaries are required to be traitor of their own class. The act of leaving a bourgeois state requires courage. But it is the only way to stabilize constancy in vacillation. The way to empty oneself of the plugs. Pull our that plug, then you see the light. Unplugging is practicing selflessness. Service to others than to your self. Living a simple life combined with hard struggle.

Are we ready to embrace the ethic of propertylessness, of being a proletariat? In Christian language and ethics are we ready to follow Jesus sacrificing himself in the cross?

When Neo unplugged himself with that matrix he was flushed out of that system, he was condemned, he was hounded. He became a wanted criminal to the protectors of that system. He may have been labeled a terrorist. He may have been crossified. But he took no chances to be coopted or annihilated. He fought that system. Today, overturning the system that entraps us, can be risky. Risk of being maligned. Risk of being prisoned and killed. But risky as it is makes us stand above others. Not risking is plugging yourself to that dream state, unable to see the truth.