The Gift: A short first-person work of fiction

After two weeks, I finally finished writing my first-person work, because the pressure of schoolwork forced me to sandwich my time for writing between both work and time for friends. So here you go, I named it as "The Gift", because I'm so bored and unimaginative tonight I don't want to spend any more time thinking of a good title.

Click here to view my work.

I saved it in Deviantart, because, I expect good criticism there. It's DA for Christ's sake, they have a good reputation of "retard-proofing" their website.

Aldo's birthday special: Resolutions and messages

In case you didn't know, I just turned fifteen. It's not a big event, but it's significant one way or another, because it's something that occurs every year. Like Christmas, but this time the person whose birth your celebrating is real.

Your birthday, as all people generally agree, is the only 24-hour period everybody has where you can make yourself feel important, bitch people around, and do whatever you want that wouldn't normally. However, I beg to differ, and would like to do something people conveniently won't do, which is giving resolutions (that I probably won't do a few days later).

It's not going to be easy, as far as I and everybody else knows. There's tons of wrongs I did, and more I have to do that I haven't even started doing yet. To start with...

Parents - I am deeply sorry for what happened, and what happened is not the case of "freaking-out-because-hands-were-forced-off-computer" but my Anthropophobia (fear of people) taking place. I have had that phobia since birth, probably because my first hours were in total darkness and I started imagining the hospital staff as dark childish monsters (usually in the form of scribbles, since my imagination back then was the equivalent of a 60's computer). Again, I beg forgiveness.
Friends - I'm going to get us all a 18" yellow cab for a blowout. :)
Internets ppl - Imma firin m4h birthd4y l4z0rs!11!
Alter persona - Screw you. You should try to take over more often (especially when I'm taking to people), and stop forcing me to wank every once in a while.
My desktop - I know how you feel because I did not reformat you. Let's face it, reinstalling those 180GBs worth of shit back into you is going to take a really really long time.
My laptop - I'm probably not going to use you anymore in a few months, so enjoy my time in high school while you still can. ;D
My phone - GODDAMNIT NOKIA I WANT MY MONIES BACK
God - Hey, I've been trying to contact you, unfortunately the "prayer" connection does not seem to work, I checked with the saint concerned with prayers connecting to you, however, he seems to act like a dick and hung up. You need better customer support. Anyways, thanks for giving me one hell (Oops, I meant heaven) of a life. I enjoyed it.

Want to be included? Write in the comments!

Nuking your computer to consistency: How to reformat a PC

Just recently I took the liberty of reformatting my notebook computer, a shitty, five-year old and heavily modified HP-Compaq Presario M2000. I've decided to reinstall Windows on it because I seem to have accidentally f-cked up Windows Explorer and I can't get it back without using conventional means. I decided a quick reinstallation would have to do.

A reformat and OS reinstallation is much like nuclear bombs. It clears all the shit that accumulated on your PC, until a timeperiod later they come back again as huge nuisances. It's not unnatural for a computer to have to go through a reformat.

To ordinary people, reformatting is a pain, and they would rather ship their computer back to their manufacturers (and independent geeks) to pay "special fees" to do something that the users can do themselves for free.

You can, right now, reformat your PC. You will need:
1. A backup storage (to backup your important files)
2. Your Windows or system restore disk provided by your computer's manufacturer (try to use the original disk of Windows that came with your computer, do not use another copy)
3. A working brain

STOP! Before going ahead with this, think about why you are proceeding with the reformat. Did your computer fuck up? Is Windows being too slow and unresponsive? If one or both of those reasons are met, you can resort to reformatting. In this case, proceed.

1. BACKUP ALL YOUR IMPORTANT FILES BEFORE PROCEEDING. This is an essential part. Back-up everything that are precious and irreplaceable on your system - family pictures, office documents, your artworks, and porn. Transfer them into an easily accessible storage - preferably a large USB flash disk or an external hard drive.

2. PREPARE EVERYTHING YOU NEED. Yes, prepare your copy of Windows, your drivers CD, and everything essential for the reinstallation of Windows. It would save you a lot of time to go digging your attic for these shit right now than doing it later.

3. INSERT THE WINDOWS CD INTO YOUR DISK DRIVE. Pretty simple.

4. GO TO YOUR SYSTEM BIOS AND CHANGE THE BOOT SETTINGS SO THAT THE DISK DRIVE BOOTS FIRST. Your BIOS is the software your motherboard carries around. To access it, turn on your computer, then start hitting the Delete key or the F10 key or whatever key your manual prescribes. After going to BIOS, select Boot settings or something and make sure that the computer's disk drive boots first.

5. RESTART, THEN BOOT INTO THE CD.

6. WAIT FOR WINDOWS TO PREPARE THE INSTALLATION DISK.

7. AFTER THAT, HIT ENTER TO REINSTALL WINDOWS.

8. AGREE TO THE EULA.

9. DELETE THE PARTITION YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY IN.

10. CREATE A NEW PARTITION OVER THE DELETED PARTITION.

11. DO A QUICK REFORMAT.

12. AFTER REFORMATTING, THE DISK SHOULD BEGIN TO DELIVER THE ESSENTIAL INSTALLATION FILES TO THE HARD DISK. Wait for it to finish.

13. AT INSTALLATION, follow all necessary instructions until the process is finished.

14. AFTER INSTALLATION, the system should restart. You may remove your Windows CD.

15. Windows should boot up and you will be at the Welcome Screen. Get through it and...

16. CONGRATULATIONS! You have just successfully reformatted your PC! Give yourself a pat on the shoulder for a job well done, and prepare for the difficult and time-consuming part, reinstalling all of your previous programs and drivers!

17. GET YOUR DRIVERS CD, then install all of the drivers required for your hardware. If you do not have a CD, look for the drivers online.

18. AFTER INSTALLING YOUR DRIVERS, INSTALL YOUR PROGRAMS. Your computer should now be ready for action.

5 essential things in life that most people fail to possess

It's an understandable and acceptable fact that, the world is filled with retarded people. Not exactly everyone, but the majority of them can't seem to get a grip through life. We see them everyday, they walk mindlessly in school, lurk in Facebook and read this blog post.

Pic sorta unrelated.

Retards and dumbasses are formed when they can't seem to create a stable footing made of wit. Or, if they lack something like...

5. Logical reasoning

A human's daily lives is filled with more logical decisions than a supercomputer. In the morning, you decide if you should wake up or hit the snooze button. In lunch, you decide if you're going to send pissy emails to your supervisor because he's sexually harassing you (even if you're a man). In the afternoon, you decide whether to check that email with the subject line of gay dwarf pornography. Life is full of decisions.

There are people, however, who doesn't seem to be able to perform reasoning with credibility. They can't seem to pick the right choice for everything. Say, one of these people are driving down a road, and meet a fork. One path has a "One Way, Do not Enter" sign, and another has none. 70% of the time, that person will chose the route with the sign.

Above: What happens next.

4. Decent visual perception

Your eyes never lie. Well, maybe except if you got high on weed and drank gallons of alcohol at the same time. However, some people are still high and drunk even when they're not high and drunk. They perceive a world very different from what the majority of people see even if they are sober. Let's say, they see a a dumbass reading this post right now. Hey, that's right, amirite?

Are you seeing double? If so, you need to have your eyes checked.

3. Basic English proficiency

If someone speaks to you in English, would you answer them in Bulgarian? No, you answer them in English, no matter what the circumstances. However, if someone asks you something in Bulgarian, try not to speak English, because you'll only sound like a dick. The former is the main problem of the people here. They can't seem to get a grip at English.

Let's say, you're in a chat room, probably looking for a girl to cam with. You suddenly feel a hard-on for Asians, then you decided to go to the Chinese chat room. You eyed a beautiful petite Chinese girl with a great body, then you try to start a conversation by saying a simple. "Hello". Instead of the girl returning an also simple, "Hi", she says, "heyo me chinese mo no speak english good". You close the window and vow never to go back to that chat room and speak to Chinese people again, unless you have a good reason to.

Like this.

And please, don't give an excuse like, "But they not teach us English in skool" or something. Almost every school worldwide has English in their curriculum. Hell, they even have it in Africa. You probably slept through the whole English class or just too stupid to learn. If you can't speak English and would wish to participate in a chat room, please go to the room of your respective nationalities and/or languages. In other words, if you're Chinese, do NOT go to the USA room unless you are experienced in speaking to other people in English. I hope you understand.

Above: The only Chinese words everybody else can understand.

2. The inability to learn on one's own

They say, "You cannot learn without others". Sure, you won't learn to drive unless you have an instructor, and you can't train yourself to poop in the toilet than in your dog's face when you were three years old, you need the help of your parents to do that. However, there are some occasions where the task is so simple you just need to read the instructions carefully. Like, when you're going to install a game, or if you're going to download something.

This is one of the greatest nuisances in my life, considering it came with my "being awesome and all" package. There's bound to be people there looking for my skills and bombard me to death with their retarded, and ridiculously easy questions. Like, "OMG! I can't see the download link!", when the link is directly visible in the center of the screen, or, "OMG! HALP! I has virus!" when the freezing up is just the usual job of Windows and his shitty computer.

To respond to these entirely annoying questions, I just ignore and close. No use arguing to this shit, they'll just keep coming.

Oh! Jesus thinks you are too!

1. Common sense

The root of everything above. God gave man common sense in order to think logically, perceive things properly, communicate with others correctly, and to not ask Him retarded questions. If you don't have this, you're not fit enough to survive.

5 people we all hate in FPS games

A first person shooter game is a video game wherein you play in a first-person perspective while shooting bad guys, or other players. First person shooters are becoming a popular genre for video games ever since Doom debuted in the early 90's. Game engines supporting first person shooters evolved ever since, from the first Quake Engine to Valve's Source engine.

Like every other video game, there are good players and bad players. However, there are just some players that you can't keep around in your game, because they act like dicks, or just plain stupid. Like...

5. The spammer

The spammer comes in two variations. He can be a fire spammer (firing excessively and unaccurately at people)or a chat spammer (chatting unnecessary words). Whatever the spammer is, he is always illogical, non-thinking and prefers quantity over quality.

Noticeable features: They pick guns with more capacity to spam with.

4. The Rambo or Leeroy Jenkins

A "rambo" is derived from John Rambo in the film "Rambo". Like John Rambo, rambo'ists charge at the enemy with little or no concern for self-preservation. Their chances of killing an enemy is mostly 60-40, but it could be higher or lower depending on the success of their attacks. Rambos usually attack solely on themselves, however, their skills can be augmented if one of their teammates bait themselves to the enemy, allowing rambos to freely attack their distracted enemies.

Noticeable features: Usually they don't listen to you about ambushing the enemy. They'll just charge right in and die afterwards.

3. The Sniper

A "sniper" is someone who is fond of using sniper rifles, or weaponry equipped for long range combat. A sniper usually sits somewhere hard to reach, with an open view of the battlefield, taking out targets as they go. They're usually annoying to people who are involved in the crossfire, therefore some games ban sniping to improve game performance. Nevertheless, sniping is still a popular trade.

Noticeable features: Brags about his AWP or similar powerful rifle and how he kills you a thousand game meters away.

2. The Grenadier

Grenadiers have a special love for grenades. They usually prefers grenades over everything, and strongly believe that grenades are the solution to everything.

Noticeable features: They meet you in close range and decides to lob a grenade at you instead.

1. The Dumbass

Dumbasses in FPS games are characterized by failing in a scale above normal. They usually brag about their skills when they have none at all. Dumbasses can be a fail rambo, a fail sniper, a fail shooter, or a combination of everything.

Noticeable features: It's you.

The Internet saves mankind: 5 ways technology helps us (with respective contrast disadvantages)

It seems that one of the most sought-after subject for a thesis or a term paper is anything pertaining to technology. You name it - cellphones, the Internet, video games - people write shit about them. The recent boom of technology to some is as annoying as an old hobo deciding to live with you in your home. Your first thought would be to kick that hobo out as soon as possible, unless you want look like a dopehead yourself.

Nevertheless, technology, despite Christian groups and your mother trying to forbid it, have always found ways to assist us in our daily nuisances, like:

5. The Internet helps you find something. Really fast.

Hey, if the Internet, together with search engines, didn't exist, then we'll go back to the good old days of having to go to a dust-filled library and find an old book about ancient knowledge of dickery. To give you a perspective of how this works, the process is simple: You go to the cabinet of catalogs with index cards for each book, search for the book you want according to title, author, subject, etc., then, once you're done, you find the book's location according to the information written on the card. Now this wasn't really very accurate. Some dicks might think it's awesome to switch books from their original places. Also, making a card for each and every book in a library is an extremely tedious process. Nobody in the world would enjoy sitting in a dark library all night, printing index cards for each of the 5,000 books sitting there. No, not even the nerds of WoW, they have their elves to level up everyday.

However...

Search engines today rely on the filenames of the files you search. So, if you search for photos of old men, there's a good chance you'll find an emotionally-tearing photo featuring three old gentlemen that we won't be talking about here. Luckily, efforts like SafeSearch have easened the problem by blocking sites that are known to be malicious.

4. The Internet gets you known worldwide.

The Internet has been an ideal place to show your wares. Whether if it is the next Picasso or your nude photo with your 300lb mother, the Internet can get your work on the road, usually without any additional costs. If you have a crack den business, it's better to post it on the Internet - after all, cops are too stupid to use computers, right? Whatver you've got, the Internet can help you shout it to the world.

However...

WTF? Again?

Let's make a list of the good and bad shit people can share online. Good shit include pornography (except the German kind), photos of hot women (also except the German kind), pirated software, and each other's arts and thoughts. Bad shit includes shit itself, German pornography, your mother's porno flicks, 16-year old attention whores on Facebook and /b/. Unless the Internet can magically filter the bad from the good, you have to be careful viewing stuff online. All kinds of stuff online can lead back to your mother, and we all know everything that came out of your mother is shit (yes, that includes YOU).


3. Technology has helped to make communication easier.

The above statement is the main excuse of the many technophilics against technophobes. Technology has made our processes of communicating with each other easier, from the invention of the paper (when people thought delivering heavy clay tablets was enough), to the invention of the telephone, to the invention of the Internet, technology has done its best to bridge the gap between everybody.

However...

During the olde times, the idea of pranking is some chap taking to stroll to your barn, steal your cow, then send you a letter telling that the monarchy took your cow because the king favored it over his fatter-than-a-cow queen. Days after you protest to the king, the prankster sends back your cow - with its body missing.

Today, you can just dial any number, and then, once a lonely voice speaks "Hello" on the other line, you can just fart on the headset and immediately replace the reciever, hoping that the speed of telecommunications can send your gaseous wastes in time. You can also sell "viagra and penis enhancing pills" online and, once a 500lb sucker with a 0.00001in dick gets reeled in, you can send him a kilogram of fresh texan cow shit. In case you're in the Philippines and not in Texas, you can deliver your sucker Fresh Filipino Squatter Shit instead, it's much, much worse than a Texan Cow's, believe me.

We know them nowadays as trolls.

2. Technology entertains us.

When motion picture was revolutionized in the early 20th century, everyone flocked to the magical, moving images on the silver screen. Today, people flock to Youtube, where they watch things go boom in microwaves and the failures of every random person on Earth. No matter how retarded something in the Internet is, it still always manages to make us laugh (especially if it involves your mother).

However...

I don't think there's anything wrong with technology entertaining us right? Well, except if you're the one being picked on.

1. Technology saved us.

Ok, not everytime. Rifles, tanks and nuclear weaponry aren't supposed to kill anybody, right? However, as long as the people they kill are shitheads, we don't really care.

Phones can help us call help in an instant, as long as the 911 operator isn't preoccupied with watching pornography involving your mother. You can defend yourself with easily-accessible firearms. Artifical Intelligence has proven that they protect people from an emergency situation quicker and better than retarded humanoids.

However...

What could possibly go wrong? (Read: Robots)

So mothers, please stop yelling that the Internet is such a bad place, we don't care about your 13-year old daughter camwhoring herself on the Internet. School instructors, please stop yelling cellphones are bad for education, we don't care if your students are not listening to you (because you're boring) and are content texting as the class goes on. Christian peoples, please stop yelling that technology is the evil Satan gave us, because (1) The Devil doesn't give a shit, (2) God uses the Internet and (3) you fail miserably.

My notebook is on FIYAH...

...and no, not in the sense that my laptop is experiencing a deep sensation of ecstasy and adrenaline at the same time. I mean it literally. Fire, red-hot flames are starting to form on my laptop computer, preferably in the area between the battery power and the processor. The computer is threatening to blow up anytime soon and send itself to computer afterlife.

From this:

Holy shit!

...to this:

Holy frickin' shitty laptop of hell!

...and finally this:

Look at that exploding laptop. What an asshole.

What the fuck!? Is this for real? Or am I just seeing shitty photoshop work?

Well, in a sense, no, this isn't real at all. My laptop isn't on fire yet, but I think it will in a couple of mere months. It officially lost the ability to cool itself. The only cooling material it has on its own is the heatsink for the CPU, nothing else. The small fan on the bottom of the computer, designed to cool the area occupied by the hard disk drive and a part of the graphics processor, is now inoperational. Not completely, there are some rare occassions where it springs to life, but most of the time, it just lays there dead.

As a result, the computer has been moving a lot slower than usual. Windows Explorer tends to freeze up, Firefox can fail in some occassions, and graphics processing efficiency is noticeably degraded. You could blame it on the crapability of Windows XP, however, the main culprit here is my dying hardware. WinExplorer (or should I say, FailExplorer) freezing and crashing is just regular Windows business. Nothing unusual about that.

What could have caused my hardware to deteriorate? The main reason is that this laptop is five fucking years old. This is as old as your grandpa's 1953 Chevy, if you convert the laptop's age to car years. The once "great" specs of the laptop, Intel Centrino 1.6Ghz, 512MB of RAM (now 1GB), and 40GB HDD space (now 80GB), is considered measly and is very much like ordinary Filipino computer specifications.

Another culprit would be abuse. I tend to beat the shit out of my laptop every once in a while, but the proper physical and emotional training I gave to it made it extra resistant to everyday keyboard slams and flying off the second floor window. Fans and cooling devices are usually the first once to get destroyed due to stress and abuse. So I partly blame myself for that (and the rest goes to Faildows).

It pretty much fits it.

There are a few solutions to this problem, mainly:

1. Buy a new notebook computer. This is pretty obvious. However, I have to wait until graduation, which is still a bit like five months away. I'm going to buy one between the line of gaming and mobility, since I can't bring my rig in college and I tend to move a lot outside.

2. Repair the onboard cooling system with better ones. There are some solutions on the Internet on how to replace the onboard fans of a notebook computer. However, not all notebooks are dependent on fans, since fans are heavy and noisy.

3. Bring a laptop cooler at all times. Yes, this is an obvious solution, however, my laptop's job is run and gun on different locations (that is, I bring it where I go), not be a fatass sitting on a desk. Coolers are for desktop replacements, and if I have to place a cooler just because I'm taking a vent in Starbucks, I'd rather tape my laptop in front of their airconditioning unit.

If I don't act upon this problem, soon enough, something like this is bound to happen:

MAH BALLZ!!11!

Why Typing Maniac should be nuked

Introduction

Typing Maniac is a free application on Facebook. It is a game that encompasses three skills: Your finger agility, hand-eye coordination and your ability to quickly decide logically based on the visual representations on the screen.

The game itself is a good way to give your fingers a workout, in a non-geek way (trolling on 4chan). While playing the game, not only your fingers are exercising, but also your coordination and logical reasoning. While playing, you have to be quick at choosing which words pose as the greatest threat and look for the quickest solution for that nuisance. If all goes smoothly, you'll win (until you reach total RAM breakdown at levels 35-40).


Implications on society

The game started out as a simple way of bragging to your friends how many hours you've wasted typing nonsensical words falling down from your screen. Scores evolved from the mediocre 5,000 worm to the 600k+ alien. Everything was going fine. Those with overly-stretched fingers due from gripping basketballs too much were defeated by the geeks whose main lives is the Internet.

Like this, but worse.

Until recently, someone at somebody else's bottom of the list got pissed of how much he sucks at this game and how much time his geeky friend has wasted on the Facebook application. He thought of a plan to overcome his suckness. Some call it cheating. Internets people call it hacks, or h4x.

Cheat Engine (yes, they really named it that way) was a cheating tool (duh) that revolutionized how online gaming worked. It gave way to overly-protective game hack protection systems that usually think your defragmentation program running in the background is a hack. Slowly, Cheat Engine was dissolving like salt sprayed with water. However, the geeks who write their code (and not resort to copy-pasta techniques) kept the business alive.

See?

Numerous hacks surfaced the Internet. There is the simple Speedhack, which supposedly slows down the processing of your web browser. Its downside is that it also slows down the game and its responses, so your accuracy will decrease with noticeable results. Another hack is the Facebook bot, where a bad-written piece of code will do the typing for you, while you lurk Rule34 for homosexual midgets and post pictures of children in /b/. Again, the geek types invented more innovative ways to cheat, like the "get-the-same-word-over-and-over-again" hack, and the "score multiplier" hack. To take advantage of the retarded jocks trying to take advantage of those geeks, the geeks added price tags to their bots. That's right - just a bundle of text resembling code for only $9.99 a pop.

Am I pissed?

Now, my measly score of 1,190,872 is beat through underhanded techniques, or, in 1337speak, the h4x0rs. One of my friends posted a score of 2M+ ending on Round 38, method of hacking is probably FB bot, because those bots aren't written correctly or much to even be accurate.

Pictured above: You, while playing Typing Maniac

I'm not pissed at my loss. It's kinda better than being labeled as "typing-maniac-geek-with-elongated-speedy-fingers", or any other childish remark a child would label a civilized person. I laugh at the fact that immature children are trying their very best to beat my mediocre score.

Look, it's just a game. Who cares if you beat me. I don't care. Your mother doesn't care and would rather go as a hermaphrodite dancer than see her son/daughter turning into a hacker with no life. The world doesn't care, especially the Internets, for Internets laws forbids hax0rs. We frown upon hax here.

Only 1 in every 100 children in Nepal gets to touch a keyboard, nor even use a computer. In Afghanistan, it's 1 in every 1000. And in most parts of Africa, the figure goes up to an unbelievable 1 in every 10,000. Sometimes it goes up to 1 child touching a computer per 50,000 other children. Think about it, everytime you finish a word in Typing Maniac, the very souls of computer-less children haunts your very soul. Please keep note of that.

We're in your Internets, damning ur s0ulz.

Sometimes the best option would be to go to the nearby wilderness, get a cup of coffee, and ponder, "Why the fuck am I wasting my time trying to beat measly high scores when I can just get a life?" There's two ways that scenario can end. (1) You shoot yourself in the head or jump down a cliff, because you're too retarded to reflect in solitude or (2) You stand up, go back to the city, get a job, stop living with your parents and actually live. You're doing the human civilization a big favor just by contributing to its growth, instead of sticking yourself in the computer all day, all night, doing your best to beat someone's score on an entirely retarded game.

Have you finished thinking about it yet?

What I was doing before first wave of Pepeng

 20:30 HOURS
Friday, 02 October 2009
Some makeshift shithole in Imus, Cavite, in the Philipppines

So I'm here in my bedroom, my notebook computer on my lap, with my 32" LCD TV on before my eyes, with the news announcing that a hilariously-named supertyphoon (or hurricane in Western terms) called Pepeng is coming to wreak havoc upon the country. I tried my best to keep my fingers hitting the keys on my keyboard as much as possible, ignoring the cold sweat that prevents my palms from getting any grip on the aluminum frame of my laptop.

For now, I wonder if my house is well-protected and distanced from the danger zone. The news also said that it's lights out at 9PM tonight, which means I'll be down to batteries in my house - from AAs to 9-cells scattered about. My internet connection will be reduced to the new USB 3G modem I got when I replaced my shitty PCCardSlot2 modem (since PCCardSlots are obsolete).

I've built a barricade made of scattered materials, preferably plywood, on my doorway, to keep water, strong gusts of winds and faggots looking for shelter from coming in. In addition to the "protecting myself from faggots" part, I took the liberty to arm my Beretta M9 pistol, together with my Mosberg shotgun. If they're going to seek refuge on my home, they should talk to my 12-gauge first before entering.

Wait a minute, I just heard a loud thump outside. Could it be some retard trying to get in my fortress? Or floodwater already coming in when I don't even hear any rain yet? Or worse, it could be zombies. Fuck it, I'll stick with zombies. Defending yourself against reanimated creatures is way more fun than keeping yourself alive from inanimated beings.

I'm just gonna grab my 9mm, peer out my vantage point, and cap any dumbass stupid enough to call for help outside and bang on my wooden barricade. Oh, the hilarity.

5 common Filipino myths (and why they're false)

Religion from early pre-colonial shamanism, together with the Catholicism the Spaniards taught to the Filipinos have all together gave birth to numerous superstitions in everyday Filipino life. These superstitions have shaped how Filipinos live their lives, from pointing to matrimony. However, as usual, superstitions are created through common belief, and are not backed up by scientific evidence. There are plenty of superstitions in Filipino culture, but we are going to tackle only the most popular ones, like...


Pointing is bad luck

What is it?

Filipinos have long believed spirits roam everywhere in their lands. It's common belief that if you point at something, there is a strong chance that there is a spirit standing there, pissed at you and ready to curse you the second you put down your finger.

Why it's bullshit

The idea of spirits roaming around is based on the ancient Filipino religion of Spiritism, where, instead of gods, Filipinos worship "spirits" that inhabit their surroundings. To give respect to these supernatural beings, they offer all sorts of stuff other religions offer to their gods - food, sacrifices, etcetera. When the Spaniards colonized the Philippines, they killed everyone who opposed to the Christian religion, saying, "We got the Bible, bitch, what do have to say about that", and forcing everyone to go to church every Sunday.

Probably, like every other religion conceived, Spiritism's founders found a whole field of weed, got high, then hallucinated about spirits laughing about their failure everywhere. Also, as every other religion goes, they went to towns and scared the hell out of people that damnation will come if they do not give donations for salvation.

The founder of all religions.

Break a rosary and face damnation

What is it?

For a devout Catholic, your rosary is like your balls. Like your balls, if your rosary is broken, you're pretty much fucked. Expect heavy doses of bad luck - car accidents, wild animal attacks, psychopaths coming in your house - all causing serious pain and death.

Why it's bullshit

Because all cases of death after breaking rosaries are purely coincidental and unsolved.

Some people say the person who broke his/her rosary will die in 13 days, but, quite frankly, there is no definite date. Those who died took years before taking the final dirt nap.

Another reason for this myth is because, in the olden days of Spaniards ruling the country, rosaries were gifts from friars, and everybody knows friars were the pimps of the time, they had money, women (no really, they do), horse carriages and big-ass monasteries. Indeed, rosaries were family jewels - passed along generation after generation - until the belief of people dying from passing on rosaries came into the air.

 Pictured above: A friar, although they look older and more Spanish during the old times.

Sleeping with wet hair can cause blindness

What is it?

It is an old wives tale that, if you sleep with wet hair, you will turn blind once you wake up.

Why it's bullshit

Sigh. Slept with my hair wet again.

Like all other Filipino superstitions, this one came up during the days of Spanish colonization, back when washing your clothes isn't just showing up at your local Chinese laundromat and shoving your laundry down a washing machine or dry cleaner, it's showing up at your local Chinese laundrywoman and bitch her to wash your clothes for a hefty price. Bedcloths are also to be cleaned by hand, so it adds up to the bill.

Sure, it may seem like "the cover is only wet, you can just lay it in the sun and let it dry", however, take note that people's idea of shampoo during the good old days include ground insects, urine and salty water, so wet, 18th century hair on bedcloth is a very shitty idea (literally). Old wives probably made it up to scare their children from laying on bad immediately after a game of challenge pissing with friends.

Pictured above: Shampoo

The bride should not fit the wedding dress the day before the wedding day, lest bad luck will befall on her

What is it?

There is a long-living belief that, the bride is not allowed to fit the wedding gown before the day of the wedding. Failure to follow will result in death or just plain bad luck.

Why it's bullshit

You know when ready to wear clothing appeared on the scene? How it outfashioned seamstresses and dressmakers alike?

There are some parents who wants to get their children married as soon as possible, so they turn to ready to wear wedding atires - which were much much more expensive during that time, since mass producing various articles did not involve abused children working in a factory. Also, wearing ready-to-wear's is a big embarassment during the old days, so to avoid shaming their children, parents forbid the bride to fit the gown, lest she sees the price tag on it and her friends grab their Zarazamoras and tweet about their friend being so totally lame.

Pictured above: Zarazamora, the Blackberry of the 19th century

Sukob

What is it?

You may not marry in the same year a family relative has married or died. Doing so will cause bad luck and death among the family. Sukob is the name of this curse.

Why it's bullshit?

You remember the rosary part? Remember it's just coincidence? This is one is too.

The whole concept of "your family members" dying one by one just because one of you married the same year as another member has married or died is just some plot cut by one of Final Destination's screen writers. You think I'm talking shit? Take a look at this.

However, the league of Philippine filmmakers (Pinoyliwood sounds dumb) made a movie about this superstitious belief. And you know how much films can brainwash and affect the minds of Filipino people, especially with the obvious fact that they believe everything they see on the silver screen.

Ok guys, here's what we're going to do: We're going to make a film with extremely false beliefs as a story and fool everyone from their cash. You all ready?

Good job, movies. You official made us stupid and paranoid.

This is for you, Philippine films!