Just Some Write-Ups

Photo from CDN Digital’s Facebook page This microessay was submitted as an entry to the Dr. Leoncio P. Deriada Prize for Literature, an internal contest for fellows at the 17th San Agustin Writers Workshop, held from May 2 to 4, 2019, at Iloilo City, where it was awarded first prize for creative nonfiction in English. * * * Most people know Subangdaku simply as Mandaue’s border barangay with Cebu City. The main highway cuts through it, both sides layered by bakeries, banks, small businesses, BPO offices, and most prominently the BIR building, where our office is. From the sidewalks on which we wait for a ride home late in the afternoon, jut electric posts painted in bright, basic colors with their respective Cebuano terms: pula for red, dalag for yellow, lunhaw for green, asul for blue. The flyover on the north end is painted in just as eye-catching a manner, but dust from the traffic that streams through the highway daily has since covered the green and yellow fl...

This entry was originally published under my legal name in the October 25, 2018, issue of SunStar Cagayan de Oro, and can also be viewed on their website . Much thanks to Churchill G. Aguilar for making this possible! * * * We’re a month shy of reaching the end of 2018, this being the second consecutive year I’ve compelled myself to deactivate my Facebook account over a significant period of time. Throughout the course of these “experiments,” I’ve realized that said period’s span can be totally arbitrary. The shortest, if I remember right, was sometime late last year, when I deactivated for a mere two weeks. The longest wasn’t too long ago, when I deactivated between April to June of this year, to make up for my “reactivation” of the three months prior. I reactivated in July, and resumed deactivation throughout August and up until this time of writing. This relative ease with which I flit between activity and “de-activity” feel like a world away from my initial ...

The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. —William Gibson A darkened street slicked with rain and refuse. Rush-hour commuters milling past storefronts, pawnshops, and low-rate gyms like ants along a monotonous column. Their heads are partially concealed by hoodies and jacket collars, but their dour faces, soaked with sweat and drizzle, reflect one of either two kinds of radiance: the green, red, and yellow lights given off by the aforementioned establishments, which are doubly brightened by the muddy water that has pooled over uneven concrete; or the blue-white brilliance of their smartphones hovering at stomach-level. The barks emanating from transport conductors and street-vending merchants resonate across old, grime-ridden buildings and newer, more pristine facades alike. Tires whir, smoke billows from mufflers, loudspeakers from nearby malls boom with news of bargains, and chats among friends and companions are reduced to indiscernible babbles. M...

On one of those lazy Youtube-surfing days anyone with a stable net connection tends to have in this century, I chanced upon this video featuring a comedian (I can’t remember anymore who) joking about American millennials and, among other and of all things, avocados. Now while I was able to grasp the connection with the other items he mentioned (which most probably included house music, skinny jeans, and social media posts), the avocado matter left me somewhat perplexed at the time. My guess was that it probably had something to do with how millennials tended to be more health-conscious and anti-corporatist in their food choices, opting for gluten-free, organic, locally grown produce instead of the preservative-rich and chemically induced food items that are so readily available to us via fast-food chains, convenience stores, and grocery shelves. However, my theory still didn’t feel all that satisfactory, and I decided to do a little more digging to find out exactly how Gen Yers ...

Cartoon characters as hipsters by Matt Lassen Hipsters are this decade’s answer to the pop punk kids of the early 2000s, or the carefree grunge adolescents of the ‘90s. Although its etymology is oftentimes muddled and contested, the term hipster has been used to refer to various trends and subcultures since it first entered the lexicon in the 1940s. Our modern understanding of it, though, is best summed up by Joshua Lipson  in The Harvard Crimson: In the 1990s, social commentators began to use the term to apply to the type of people who listen to independent music, ride fixed-gear bicycles, and eat organic foods. This early conception differs little from the 2010-era hipster, a much more culturally prominent being. Lipson, however, points out the problematics of this definition: the three abovementioned elements—independent music, fixed-gear bicycles, and organic foods—don’t really have anything else in common outside of their stereotypical association with the hip...

Concept art for Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation of War of the Worlds September 11, 2001, was a day that changed the world in many ways. On the geopolitical front, it defined the Bush administration’s policy for the remainder of Mr. 43’s term—with the declaration of a War on Terror , the passage of the PATRIOT Act , an increase in defense spending, the questionable detention and surveillance of suspected Islamic extremists, just to name a couple. 9/11, as it is now often referred to, also had ramifications in pop culture, particularly in the exports out of Hollywood. Curiously, as we shall see later in this essay, this same prolificacy did not seem to be as much in evidence with authors of science fiction (SF) novels and short stories. Movies and television shows in the years following 9/11 bore the tropes of a paranoid populace, the fear of the “other,” and raised questions about the surveillance state, the possibility of invasion, and numerous other threats. David M. H...