Angry Maude Blasts Get Real Post

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By Maude Garrison

My cousin is Joe America. We used to call him JoJo when we were young because he used to stutter and we enjoyed ridiculing him in the best Filipino tradition. Only we were Americans.

Well, myself, I am only half American. My father snuck up across the Rio Grande to impregnate my teen age mother somewhere south of Wickenburg, Arizona, on a blanket out amongst the rocks and cacti. "Some picnic" Mom used to say.

So I'm without a father, for that scoundrel scurried back to Mexico faster than a rattle snake on a chipmunk when he heard Mom was pregnant. I am also without a mother for Ma bit the bullet in Iraq01. Fortunately, she had already peddled me off to her sister, JoJo's Mom, when I was 11. So I learned to fend for myself. See, that's how come I relate to Filipinos so well. I was a hand-me-down kid, too.

Angry Maude

I went to therapy for a lot of years when I was in my thirties to try to get rid of the anger that seeped up from my bones and out my mouth now and then. I pretty much have it under control now, but some things just stick in my craw.

I live in the Philippines, too, not far from JoJo. It seems that I have taken to following him around the globe, but that's just because he is rich and I am poor, and so I squeeze off of him. This is in the best Filipino tradition, too, if I judge correctly based on how my neighbors live. Half of them have no jobs but seem happy enough, bumming here and bumming there. I'm happy enough, too, except now and then my girdle gets a little squeezed by the nitwits on these anti blog sites.

I don't know if you caught JoeAm's battle with the anti's on that blog site owned by Benny Kritz the other day. "The Weather On Neptune". What kind of name for a blog is that? It signifies space cadet to me, and I'd guess that what most of the visitors to that site are. I thought the article was written by me in one of my tormented moods, considering how emotional it was. Hysterical, some would say, like my sisters when they run riot during their special time of the month.

Benny was ripping on President Aquino for having gone with "Boom Boom" Trillanes as his back door man to China, trying to get those Chinese boats off that useless pile of rocks called Scarborough Shoals. Did Simon and Garfunkle write a song about that place? Funny name for Asian rocks. "Boom Boom" is the name JoJo says he is going to give Trillanes because he is a loose cannon, crashing about insulting people and undermining the best laid plans of mice and Secretary Del Rosario.

JoJo read Benny's blog as he is inclined to do for its normally fresh insights, but fired off an objection on this one, wholly civil in tone. We know how upstanding and polite JoeAm always is. Suddenly all of the Get Real Post followers jumped out of the Neptune woodwork onto Joe's back, screaming their normal generalized condemnation of the "yellows" in very unkind terms. Joe had to fight them off, about six against one. You ought to read that exchange. Joe laid waste to them all. Rambo with a dictionary, that's my cousin. Here's the link: "Shattered"

One thing you can be sure of is that those Get Real people travel in packs. They have to. For support of their flimsy arguments. They shuffle like gangs through the internet, chains rattling, tattoos flexing. They don't have what it takes to step out into the real world and argue like rational, independent real men and woman. Instead, they tromp the GRP intellectual line like cows heading to the barn in the evening, nose to tail with benigno in the front. Ganging up is their specialty. And sticking to the "Down with Aquino" line is their passion, in the face of fact and reason. They'll ride that line to the Get Real grave.

That's what poor BongV did, I'd guess. I visited his Anto-Pinoy site to have a look-see into the vibrant discussion that used to be there. It ain't there, folks. The longest thread I read had three comments. My toenails are longer than that.

I expect Get Real Post to go that route, too. I mean, how much credibility can you hold onto when you hammer the same line for three years, ever bitter that your man Gordon got beat? They're like some of those creatures I'd run into during my group therapy. Out of touch is a nice way to express it. Holding onto their kiddie blankets like it was Mama's teat. Tinny is the sound of their complaint. Or hollow. It is only loud because the pack of them howl together like a herd of rabid coyotes in heat. There is some strange umbilical cord running from brain to brain in that bunch of depth-deficient robots reinforcing each other with spit and venom. Maybe they are all from Neptune, now that I think about it. Aliens from a gassy planet.

Sigh.

I get sad, actually.

Here is a bunch of grown men and a woman who behave like teens. They need to prove their point so desperately they fail to observe that they behave exactly like the people they criticize. Insecure intimidators. Thuggish. An entire month's worth of their polite wouldn't spill over from a sake cup. They behave like Sotto. Exactly like Sotto. Puffed up with self-importance. No personal ethic. Just win win, manipulate and make excuses. And fer chrissakes, never own up to mistakes.

Have you ever noticed that benigno and Senator Sotto have identical core values?

Face it , any blog site that would ban a crisp thinker like Cousin JoeAm has an onion skin. What's the rationale? Joe doesn't swear much. He only gets personal in response to others who get personal. Can benigno be AFRAID of his reasonableness? His way of looking at things objectively? Afraid of the clout he brings to bear on issues with his sharp wordstyle? 

I figure these are courage-deficient girlie men, though I must offer apology to my liberated sisters for borrowing the insult. Arnie Schwarzenegger calls them like he sees them and I merely Sottoized his fine characterization of certain people of certain quality. Or lack thereof.

Benny Kritz of Neptune concludes his article as follows:

• ". . .when a country cannot be regarded as a peer by other nations, it ceases to be a sovereign nation in fact if not in name – a hanger-on in the world community, treated with kind indulgence, perhaps, when it’s to others’ benefit to do so, but taken no more seriously in running the global household than the family dog."

Let me untangle this for you, for it is as knotty as the blanket sewed in a quilting bee by nine elderly ladies under the influence of a couple of gallons of Kickapoo Joy Juice.

1. The Philippines has been embarrassed in the international community because Trillanes was outted as President Aquino's back door man.

2. Therefore, the Philippines is a "lesser nation", not a peer, in the eyes of China, the US, and the rest of Asia.

3. Therefore, the Philippines is no longer a sovereign state, just a hanger-on, not to be taken seriously.

Hysterical. Not in the funny sense of the word.

What did the revealing of Wikileaks secrets do to the sovereignty of the United States, I wonder? Carve America up like the remains of a fiesta pig on the second day, leaving the nation without any gonads, a jolly, ineffectual eunuch hanging on in desperation to the real nations of the world? You know, like that real nation China, for example? Or maybe those real nations North Korea and Cuba and Iran and Venezuela. These are Benny's right-behaving nations, I suppose, which gives you some idea of the legitimacy of his characterization of the Philippines.

These hollow, callow Get Real guys. Boy they prove their dedication to the Philippines every day in every way, don't they? Maybe they are on China's payroll, eh? They seem ideologically aligned, in attack mode.

I'm proud of JoJo. He is able to remain apart from these disingenuous men and woman. He sees the hollow in the  callow.  And he speaks to the heart of things.

Joe's been my hero since Mom dumped me on Auntie's doorstep on a cold Colorado night back when. Joe was always smiling then, and he smiles a lot today. The Get Real people probably can't relate. They only snicker if they have someone at the butt of one of their bitter jokes.

But enough of this. I'm a gonna go out and get real stinkin' drunk. Ease off a little steam. Blow some gas if you catch my drift.

My therapist said that's not really the best way to deal with anger, but she concedes it is better than ripping someone's eyeballs out with a fork.