Nevergirl's

1. You think it okay to sneak in biblical commentaries in the middle of a Manny Pacquiao interview.

2. You then try to backpedal out of the ruckus your mediocre writing caused by demanding that foreign journalists Weir and Romero (who were merely picking up the information you dropped on the Examiner) apologize to Pacquiao, saying that they, as writers for USA Today and LA Weekly, should have better reading comprehension than you do.

3. You think it likely that Pacquiao, boxing wonder from Gen San, actually memorized Leviticus 20:13, can recite it from memory, and would actually recite it in an interview.

What I find really ridiculous about the whole thing is that people gave Ampong’s article much credence to begin with. Pacquiao can barely utter a complete sentence in English without supreme difficulty. And then he suddenly becomes an English-speaking bible thumper? That quotes the Old Testament at a moment’s notice?

Excerpts of Ampong’s article:
Pacquiao’s directive for Obama calls societies to fear God and not to promote sin, inclusive of same-sex marriage and cohabitation, notwithstanding what Leviticus 20:13 has been pointing all along: ‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.’”.

The word “detestable” alone would have Manny’s tongue in knots. I like Manny, by the way, though I find it painful to watch his noontime show. He speaks worse Tagalog than I do.

But I digress.

Going back to Ampong, this guy is proof just how ridiculous it is that now, everybody “writes”. Let’s forget Ampong’s politics for a moment and pretend this guy hasn’t always been consistently anti-Pacquiao. Let’s pretend that we don’t realize he just wants to show Pacquiao in a bad light in this article (because really, why on earth would the subject of gay marriage come up in a sport interview in the first place?). You know what I believe Ampong’s main crime to humanity is? At the simplest level, just really bad writing. Who on earth would think it okay to use this sentence?

“Engaging a radical shift as manifested by his insights shared during Bible studies which lasted more than one hour, around 10:00 p.m., with a song and his substantive prayer, Pacquiao counsels people to ‘just believe’ what the Scripture says.”

Okay, I’ll stop giving myself a coronary now, and just finish the book I was reading before I got waylaid by the Ampong brouhaha on Facebook. If I give this issue more brainspace, I just might end up dreaming later tonight of a future where Ampong’s writing has evolved into a science and scholars are having as much trouble deciphering jejemon as Ampongese.

What’s with we-speak?

A friend told me it’s from the Carnegie School of How to Be More Likeable. Supposedly, the pronouns “we” and “us” show empathy, immediately establishing yourself as a friend, an ally. This makes we-speak a useful tool for interaction. I don’t know if I subscribe to this idea, though.

A woman I used to work with once had this plural first person phase, and everything she comes up with has a corporate-memo feel about it. For instance, “We would love it if you don’t sing to your Youtube clips loudly.” “We find the idea impractical.”

I can’t imagine We‘ing anybody with the same level of perpetuity unless this person occupies the same body as I. Moreover, I wonder if any parent actually raises a child on we-speak. If so, does the child grow up thinking she lives in a socialist collective?

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Does my eggplant look menacing enough?

For lack of better things to write about, this shall be a recap of How I Spent the Last Day of the Year Chomping. I just had ice cream. And a chocolate doughnut. And lots of eggplant. You’d think that I’d be able to hold off on the eating until New Year when there’ll be even more food than usual.

But no, I could not.

There was cheese last night, and lobsters, and shrimp tempura (which I didn’t have a hand in making, thank God!), and mrs fields cookie gifts which we got from relatives abroad, and so many grapes that the girls and I capped the night with a grape-throwing contest. I chucked the most number into Charlie’s litle mouth.

And then, I bopped around the room and got talked into reading about 20 pages of Shel Silverstein’s Everything On It. If you boil and eat me right now, I’m betting I’d taste pretty foul, like a halo-halo gone three kinds of wrong. You can’t make like the world’s biggest glutton for several days running, and not end up vile-tasting and looking. Happy New Year in a few hours, friends and family! I wish you calories that disappear voluntarily!

I know I flail and fail miserably at cooking, but even I surprise myself sometimes. For instance, last month, I learned to make shrimp tempura—and now I can proudly add that dish to my grand cooking repertoire consisting of tadaaaah—exactly two dishes:

1. shrimp tempura
2. egg in all its glory: specifically fried, scrambled, hardboiled, or done sunny side up

The reaction I got from learning to make tempura is nothing short of ridiculous though. You would think I was trying to feed them a Fedora Hat. Or that I’d shown up in the kitchen wearing a psychedically colored shirt and spreading the gospel of Jesus.

“You’re in the kitchen,” people marveled. “You’re actually in the kitchen, chopping off shrimp tails, and nothing untoward has happened!”

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