Nevergirl's

I love Tagbilaran. I love how small it is; how you can go from point A to B on a tricycle that acts like a cab. For PhP6, your tricycle will take you to your destination; deposit you there, to be more precise, just like a cab does. I love the people, too. They’re always polite and they never seem to run out of reasons to be happy.

I HATE one thing about this place, though: the Internet connection.

Why, oh why, must the connection crawl just when I need it to go the fastest? Grrr.

I was stupefied when a friend told me a person we both know dislikes adjectives and finds people who use them pretentious, cruel even. I can’t give you a verbatim quote because I didn’t come by the information first-hand. I didn’t know if it was written or spoken. Just the same, I felt compelled to write this post and defend adjectives, not just because I use them (and I do – a lot!) or like them but because unlike bathroom vanity, they are indispensable.

Adjectives are a part of speech for a reason – they are necessary. Try writing a novel without adjectives and you’ll see soon enough how impossible that is. Even Ernest Hemmingway who wrote with no frills used adjectives. But what of the authors who used adjectives frequently and consistently? On the one end of the time spectrum, you have Shakespeare; on the other, you have Nick Joaquin. Were they pretentious? Cruel to their readers? Did they use adjectives to torture their audience or brag of how expansive their vocabulary is? No. They used adjectives as a literary device and to great effect. They used adjectives frequently and beautifully because they have absolute mastery of the language. They used adjectives to place you at the time and place the story was written, to make the tale so real for you you could almost hear the beating of the old man’s heart in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.

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I seldom have peeves because I have a mosquito’s attention span. I hop from one interest to the next and trance out on all things shiny and pretty. So the moment something gets my goat, you can be sure it’s something really worth huffing two park homes‘ worth about because I’m laidback and lazy – people and their doings do not interest me or if they do, then it’s all for five minutes or so. But here’s a peeve I just can’t shuck off because it bothered me then and it still bothers me now.

I don’t like absolutists. They’re worse than elitists. Elitists simply favor a certain group, person, place, or idea. Absolutists, on the other hand, cling to only one of a certain thing, clings to it so vehemently it’s either their way or the highway. Ergo, if you’re not X, then you could only be Y. If you’re not academically intelligent, then you could only be dumb – which pretty much stomps on Howard Gardner’s multiply intelligences, does it not?

My point is, we would all have been stuck in the Middle Ages if the whole human race had been absolutists. There would have been no theory of evolution, no recognition of the sun or the fact that the earth belongs to a solar system. Perhaps we would still now be worshipping totems or tattooing our bodies every time we return from a headhunting expedition.

Sometime back, a person I know sneered at contemporary authors. “I don’t read them,” she said haughtily, “I only read classics.” I was stunned by the stupidity of that remark. Read ONLY classics? Did she really mean that or did she say it merely to impress? Because if it was the latter, then I was not at all bowled over – not at all. She was 30 when she made that remark. If, at 30, you’re a self-proclaimed bookworm who is only discovering the classics and read nothing else because you feel no other book passes muster, that’s pathetic. I read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in 4th grade. That was the year I learned how effective and beautiful satire can be and I carried that love for satire through adulthood, later on delighting in the works of Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. From then on, from age 8 to present, I learned to appreciate different writing styles, love certain authors, and respect even those whose works I didn’t like. My early exposure to the classics did not turn me into a book snob of sorts. What it made me was a lover of books thick and thin, big or small, famous or obscure, classic or not. I am indebted to all the books I’ve read. They improved my vocabulary and helped me develop a skill I never knew was a skill until much later – speed reading. Most importantly, they taught me to dream. They showed me that in a world as big as ours, anything is possible.

So yes, even to this day, I find absolutism offensive especially where books are concerned. Priceless ancient libraries were burned because of absolutism. Books were banned because of absolutism. The church ex-communicated several writers, philosophers, and scientists because of absolutism. Absolutism is the true mark of a narrow mind. I’m no genius but I do know that the more I learn, the more I realize I still have a lot left to learn – and that definitely includes expanding my reading list to include Banana Yoshimoto, Bob Ong, and anyone else whose work I’ve never read before.

Dear female friends who do not need a man to buy them dresses, diamonds, slinky stilettos, or even a house by the beach:

Have you heard of Dante Moore? If not, it’s high time you do. Moore is the biggest tool to hit bookshelves and worse, his book ‘The Re-education Of The Female’ sold like pancakes in the U.S

In his guide, Moore advices women to “wear sexy clothes while cleaning and cooking and obey men.” He continues, “The fatter you get, the more you decrease your potential single-man pool. Let me give you an example. When you go to the grocery store to shop, do you pick out the nastiest-looking, most rotten, smelliest fruit or meat you can find? Oh you don’t? Why not? It’s the same with men when they see baby-elephant-sized, out-of-shape women. Here’s a little secret, ladies. Men never really ask for anything. They command. And believe me, what you won’t do, ten broads around the corner will.”

I don’t know the demographic of Moore’s readers but I’ll hazard a guess – they’re probably men who bitch about how difficult it is to find a woman who meets their exact requirements, namely: must be thin, have impeccably-groomed pubic hair, wears three-inch heels daily, and is always available for sex, dates, and errands. And dear husband, if you are reading this, do not grin. The day you succeed in making me cook in French maid costume is the day I do a Lorena Bobbit and make salsa out of the family jewels.