father figures
Manila, 21 June—Last weekend, I had a bit of a false alarm and started greeting my friends for Father’s Day—turns out I was a weekend ahead! LOL. So yeah, let me do that again: If you’re spending this weekend honoring your fathers and father figures—happy Father’s Day! We’re currently quarantined away from ours, perhaps like many of us currently unable/unwilling/worried about crossing the metro with the stress of the pandemic hanging lowly over all of our heads, so I guess 2020 Father’s Day would have to be mostly online.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to reach out if you’re remembering a father who has since passed on—I hope his memories shimmer gently, to borrow from Cheryl Strayed’s mother’s day greeting from a few years back, which at the time offered me so much comfort. I always like to say we carry them with us.
News. Anyway—this week seemed so long, didn’t it? And it started off with a bang—or perhaps, more aptly, a kick to the chest: Last Monday, Maria Ressa and Rey Santos Jr were convicted of cyberlibel. It was surreal. Several law groups have expressed their disagreement over this decision—for me, what was most jarring was the 12-year prescription period for cyberlibel which the court upheld. Various law experts have already said that cyberlibel, being an off-shoot of traditional libel, must carry traditional libel’s prescription period of one year. On those grounds alone, the case vs Maria and Rey should have been thrown out.
But we live in less than stellar times, and I can only hope we learn our lessons here. The businessman who filed the original complaint has since filed another cyberlibel case, this time over Maria’s tweets, which I believe is merely an effort to test the law against various online publication platforms and perhaps expand its coverage to Twitter. Absurd, yet chilling.
Theater. Here’s an unexpected treat from this weekend: Tanghalang Pilipino’s March 2011 staging of Zsa Zsa Zaturrnah Ze Muzikal is up on the CCP YouTube channel.
I’m not sure for how long it would be up, but I hope you’d be able to catch it! I remember enjoying Carlo Vergara’s comic a long time ago. This staging is 9 years old (can you believe!) but Eula Valdez is ageless as ever.
Games. What games have you been playing lately? I’m eons late to Stardew Valley and Civilization VI. Must be the general chaos that makes me gravitate toward games that let me start from scratch.
I’ve been hitting my stride nicely re: Stardew (I recently bought hens and are naming them after women journalists to reclaim the word newshens lol) while I’m still watching walkthroughs for Civ VI because I have no idea what to do hahaha.
Any game recs or tips? We do what we can to get through.
Thanks for making it this far.
Xo,
K