Compiled by AISSA EREÑETA

… Sino kaya sa kanila ang valedictorian?

• Tambak Primary School (Buldon, Maguindanao),
• Dinaig Elementary School (DOS, Maguindanao),
• Sablay Primary School (Siasi, Sulu),
• Sirit Elementary School (Abulug, Cagayan),
• Bagsak Primary School (Parang, Sulu),
• Bobo Elementary School (Kapatagan, Lanao del Sur)

Bawal ang cheating pero meron pa ring…

• Madaya Primary School (Ganassi, Lanao del Sur)
• Gaya-Gaya Elementary School (San Jose Del Monte City, Bulacan).

Bahala na si Batman sa paghanap ng puwesto para sa mga mag-aaral ng…

• Sicsican Elementary School (Puerto Princesa, Palawan)
• Patongpatong Elementary School (Madrid, Surigao Del Sur)
• Durog Primary School (San Jose, Antique)
• Pisa Elementary School (Tingoloy, Batangas)?
• Pero meron namang Vacante Elementary School (Binalonan, Pangasinan).

Weather-weather lang

• Mga mag-aaral sa Baha Elementary School (Dimataling, Zamboanga del Sur) ay dapat nang lumipat sa…
• Mataas na Lupa Elementary School (San Pascual, Batangas).

Elementary School ng mga Tunay na Lalake

• Siga Elementary School (Sta. Rita, Wastern Samar),
• Angas Elementary School (Sta. Cruz, Marinduque),
• at Lupit Elementary School (Batan, Aklan).

Elementary School ng mga Tunay na Tunay na Lalake

Para wala na talagang duda, dito na tayo sa

• Upak Primary School (Datu Anggal, Maguindanao),
• Bugbog Elementary School (Bucay, Abra
• Sapakan Elementary School (Pagalungan, Maguindanao),
• Binabalian Elementary School (Bolinao, Pangasinan), at
• Nagpatayan Elementary School (Banna, Ilocos Norte).

Pero Huwag Natin Kalimutan ang mga DTNL, o ‘Di Tunay na Lalaki

• O ang mga kagila-gilalas at kamangha-manghang nilalang na nababalot ng chorva sa Bading Elementary School (Butuan City, Caraga),
• Tibo Community School (Panganiban, Catanduanes), at
• Rainbow School (San Carlos City, Negros Occidental).

Sa lahat ng mga parte ng katawan na pwedeng gawing pangalan ng paaralan, ito ang mga napili:

• Kilikili Central Elementary School (Wao, Lanao Del Sur),
• Suso Elementary School (Sta. Maria, Ilocos Sur),
• Dila Elementary School(Sta. Rosa, Laguna), at
• Libag Elementary School (Tuguegarao City, Cagayan).

Pang Demonyo o Para sa Mga Nandedemonyo Lamang?

• Satan Primary School (Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao)
• Sungay Elementary School (Tagaytay, Cavite)?


Photo taken from http://blogphilippines.com/2009/11/best-school-for-alcoholic-students.html




Kabilin-bilinan ng Lola ‘wag uminom ng serbesa sa mga magaaral ng…

• Inuman Elementary School (Antipolo, Rizal),
• Basag Integrated School (Butuan City, Agusan del Norte), at
• Bangag Elementary School (Aparri, Cagayan).
• Katapat naman nyan: ano kaya ang ginagawa ng mga mag-aaral sa Jabonga Central Elementary School (Jabonga, Agusan del Norte) mula gabi hangang umaga?

Para Sa Mga Bata pa Lang na Mataas na Ang Cholesterol:

• Babuyan Elementary School (Sta. Cruz, Zambales),
• Bacon Central School (Bacon, Sorsogon City),
• Bagnet Elementary School (Itogon, Benguet), at

Taba-Taba Elementary School (Basud, Camarines Norte)

Dagdagan na rin natin ng Mababoy Elementary School, picture from http://jayjaboneta.com/?p=387

Paalala: bago umaksyon, proteksyon para sa mga graduate ng:

Muling Paalala: May bukas pang naghihintay para sa mga mag-aaral ng:

Bata pa kayo, iibig kayo muli.

At ang masasabi ko lang, “Lahat ay may katapusan,” para sa mga mag-aaral ng:

Aissa works for a non-government organization, so rest assured she’s a credible source for this kind of information. If it were in her power, she would be more committed to making the world a better place, one unfortunately named public school at a time.

This comic was originally published in Cereal Saturdays.

Regina Bautista recently abandoned a cozy corporate day job, churning out puns for an ad agency, to write and draw her life in comic book form. Rough drafts of ruminations on her daily existence can be found here. In case it hasn’t become dead obvious at this point, she loves comics.

In the little free time she has, she can be found baking and macking on cupcakes (usually in that order). They also happen to be delicious cupcakes.

She has given us her two cents on playing the game as well as illustrated Ria Redulla’s story of high school life spent in a back brace and Joel Darwin’s drunken soundtrack for the angry and the sad.

My education at the Ateneo de Manila University is usually one the last pieces of information I put forward when I meet people for the first time these days. My tenure at Loyola Heights feels like a distant memory now and like most of my batchmates in their mid-20′s, work and the next chapters after the academe became the chief matters that saunter in my head. From, “What’s your course?” and “What year are in you in?” I transitioned into, “What do you do?”

I have a boyfriend who’s still finishing up his final units at Ateneo. When he got home after those three-hour philosophy and theology classes, he would unload everything he learned on me and we would talk. We could spend hours going over ideas about social justice, mores, and meaning. I miss being in Ateneo the most when I remember the sort of discussions that had my classmates and I raising our hands and speaking with our hearts. I don’t miss the apocalyptic oral exams and the turmoil I’d suffer in the hands of my teachers, but I miss their minds.

After a lifetime of friction with the Catholic (and eventually the Opus Dei) education system, I got introduced to the Jesuits of Ateneo. I was astounded with how these priests enjoyed parrying with their students on matters of the Church, God, and existence. They were never afraid of lifting rocks and examining what’s underneath and they embraced exhausting every reasoning capacity you had before you surrender your faculties to faith.

I think it was at my last theology class that I received a prayer card with this prayer by Fr. Arrupe. I remember looking at it for a long time. I was so moved by what it said that I brought it to my desk at home, and stuck it up on the wall beside my postcards and pictures.

At that time, I wasn’t thinking about God. I was and am an Agnostic (a Theist, to be exact) and when I brought home the prayer card, I thought about my art. It was a time when I was agonizing about what I wanted to do after graduation and what I wanted to devote the rest of my life to. For some reason or another, I decided that my art will be my compass and my source of pride, joy, and strength. I was coming off from experiences with religion that have failed me and I was searching for something to orient me again.

I refused the notion of God because I had been hurt. I thought my choice was an excellent one because it would honor my gifts and what I can give to the world. I was giving myself pats in the back for not picking a person to fall in love with because I was proud of my awareness about people, places, and things being transient and finite. I thought the prayer fit nicely and I haven’t thought about it since then.

Years later, I got around to thinking about God again. It took a heart to heart conversation with my boyfriend in his car when we got home after a party. I broke down crying when I described to him what made me pull away from the Catholic Church and organized religion entirely. I had always ranted and displayed my defiance, but never did I ever level with anyone about the alienation and confusion I was feeling.

That was the very first time that wall got knocked down and I slowly began letting people in. I was reading and dialoguing about faith, and from there, I remembered falling in love and what it really meant. My life in between tacking up that card and creating this poster was aimless. I chose to serve art, but really, I was serving myself.

I still don’t have any religious affiliation but I realized that I needed the infinite. I wanted the infinite in my life and I decided to throw myself into that instead, not art, not philosophy. I woke myself to that fact that it’s all about my own relationship with that vastness that nurtures the best in me, humbles me, keeps me in check, and moves me to love. I can even call it whatever I want, and to me, infinity was the notion that sat the best.

“Fall In Love” is one of my favorite prayers and laying it out in my own way allowed for me to probe it in a way that wasn’t there before. I think I’ll always be grateful to Ateneo for this prayer. I don’t know where I’m headed with falling in love in a quite absolute, final way, but my heart is open and my head is willing — and so is my art.

Marla Cabanban is New Slang’s Art Director and is a graphic designer by profession. Apart from dealing with her writer’s block, she’s also trying to raise her design studio from the ground. Alice appears in her profile picture because she’ll be in the US for a month and Marla will miss her. She blogs here (Marla, not Alice).

Notes on ambition:

1. 1) Find something worthy of love.
2. 2) Become good at what I do.
3. 3) Killer abs.

What I realized about abs is that if I don’t have them now, at the tender age of 25, I will probably never have them. I will just keep aging and growing into this floppy, lethargic, ab-less mess. What I want is to be one of those women at the grocery who reaches for something on one of the upper shelves, only to have her shirt hike up a little, just a little, just enough to reveal a peek of–SHAZAM!–why yes, these are washboard abs. And no, you may not touch them (okay, maybe just a little–that’s enough!).

Abs are also a sign that hard work pays off and the good things don’t come easy.

The other two are a little trickier. Becoming good at what I do has a caveat. I don’t want to be good to the point of ridiculous, but to the point where I’m still aware of my vulnerability. I can’t get any better if I lose track of my weaknesses, and this is how we craft our ambitions. It even applies to handbags. This is what keeps us going.

Love is another thing altogether, and for lack of a better way to explain it, here’s a letter from a fictional preacher to a fictional housewife suffering from suicidal thoughts in Ivan Klima’s “Don’t Forsake Me”. This came out in Granta Issue no. 59: France, which was published by Granta Publications, under Rea S. Hederman. Ivan Klima is a novelist, whose work includes My Golden Trades, Love and Garbage, and Judge on Trial. “Don’t Forsake Me” also came out in The Ultimate Intimacy, published by Granta Books in November of 1997.

It would help to read this post while listening to “What is the Light?”–ALICE SARMIENTO

DOWNLOAD The Flaming Lips – “What is the Light?”

The aim of what we do is to find real love. This was said most beautifully by St. Paul: ‘Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. These three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.’

What is one to do, you ask, in order to live in love and freedom, when there is so little of it around one? Do not expect me to speak as one possessed of understanding or capable of handing out prescriptions for how to live.

A life of love is, I suppose, the desire of anyone whose heart is in the right place. What was so terrible about the old regime was that hatred and struggle were regarded as so fundamental to life. To many this seemed to make sense because at first glance, a life of love seems virtually unattainable. It is enough to turn on the television or read the newspaper headlines: terrorism, robbery, fraud, and all those killed in Bosnia or the Caucasus. And that is leaving aside our everyday life. Could we really hurt each other and quarrel the way we do every day if we lived in love? Could we hate people just because they have a different faith, or look different?

Our desires and expectations are often disappointed, however. Instead of striving once again to find love and put it into practice we invent all sorts of alternative goals. We build careers for ourselves and compete with each other, or conversely, we waste time, failing to fill it with something that reaches out beyond ourselves. We often look for someone to blame for our dissatisfaction, not looking inside ourselves, but outside ourselves. We fetter our hearts with many injunctions, taboos and prejudices. Often they are so choked with these things that when an opportunity arises to fulfill something we’ve yearned for, we don’t even notice it. So we just live, become cold, and replace love with apathy or even rancor.

You write about a world that is full of selfishness, money-grubbing, violence, and male arrogance. That’s what the world looks like to me sometimes. I’ve noticed that when people start a conversation with me it is often in order to express some bitterness, not to say something kind. If I offer to carry a woman’s shopping bag she becomes alarmed. She thinks that I want to rob her, not lend a hand. But these are only superficial observations. Sometimes we can become outraged with those who are actually suffering.

I have no illusions about how difficult it is to live in today’s world. Life has never been easy for those who expect it to fulfill their desires. Therefore, every morning I try to reflect on what is really important for my life. If it is to continue to be a life of love, then I will have to act and behave accordingly. It is not easy to enter the hearts of others. But wanting to love and to live in love means trying to do precisely that. Whether or not we try is solely a matter of our own determination, and this is where our inalienable freedom lies: our inner freedom to determine our own actions.

I see I’ve gone on a bit—it’s a preacher’s failing, and yet I doubt whether I’ve said anything you didn’t know already. I ought to add that real love should reach out somewhere. To Jesus, as I believe. That splendid theologian Karl Barth once wrote that ‘human life has no meaning without belief in transcendental truth, justice and love which mankind is incapable of creating alone…

My wish is that you manage to live the way you wish.

By FUCKFACE McFUCKINGTON

DISCUSSED: Talking like civilized adults, The rules you’d have to live by, Knowing your place

Okay, I didn’t say I didn’t want you back period, I said the door is open and it’s your call to get your other foot in, but you’d have to prove you’re worthy of even getting both feet in the door…or something. Do you get it? And don’t blame me for your lack of initiative, I’m not going to tell you how to win me over. Maybe a more accurate statement would be “Why I don’t want you back…yet.”

Obviously, you’re having trouble finding another guy. Once upon a time, you heard that there are plenty of fish in the sea, and you had to break up with me just to validate this, only to find that it isn’t true. HAH! Suck it, bitch. I’m the only one out there for you and you will probably keep coming back.

Anyway, since you asked (yeah, you asked, that one time you were crying outside the club and I was all “Whatever G! Pz.”) here, I made you a list:

The Lack of Manners

1. Okay, remember that time we went to the party at Republiq, and you just went ahead and said “Hi!” to your girlfriends without introducing me first? You did that! You said “Hi!” did the whole idiotic girlfriend kissy-kiss lean in, then you introduced me. That was not cool, especially since you know I want to be a part of your life and get to know your friends and all. You also knew that my friends weren’t going to show up until much later, but that wasn’t enough.
   
   Then you had the nerve to cold shoulder me the whole night just because I called you out on it? What is wrong with you? You even went and reported me to security just because I wouldn’t give you a ride back, and as I was already driving away and just at the gate of my subdivision I get a call with you in the background going all “I just wanted to get my purse boohoohoo!” I’m not sure you’re aware of how embarrassing that is, especially if my dad found out about it. Good thing these people knew my father (hell, everyone knows who my father is) so they let me go, but you wouldn’t. That’s some nerve.
   
   You know what, you’re lucky I’m even talking to you like a civilized adult.

The Look

2. …Also, from that same night, I’m pretty sure I saw your eyes scanning the room then finally resting on some other guy. That’s fine, I mean I understand not being the good enough to be the only person you ever want to look at, but that’s what a relationship is: two people being enough–heck being more than enough–for each other.
   
   Until you realize how patently unacceptable this is, I don’t know how we can get back into old routines or “start over”, as you like to call it. Potato tomato.

The Neckline

3. Look, I gave you a pendant on a white gold chain for a reason: so you’d know better than to dress like such a skank. I don’t even know why you keep giving me attitude about this one, being all “But Boo, it’s just a quarter of an inch!” Remember that MotoRazr commercial? Even a quarter of an inch counts. You are aware that everyone can see everything and I’m not sure if you want that, but I sure as hell don’t. But if that’s what you want, then I don’t see any reason why I should bother taking you back.

The Ink

4. Okay, and to top that off, remember when you asked if you could get a tattoo, then I joked that you can only get a tattoo if it was an anatomically correct heart with my name being spelled out in anatomically correct veins?
   
   I was only half-joking.
   
   I wasn’t half-joking though when I sat you down and tried to discuss why you were being unreasonable and immature by wanting to put something permanent on your skin, I mean, I know you say it’s art, but why put it where other people can see it? What, am I not enough? Is the attention I give you not enough that you have to do something so irrational just to catch the eyes of other men? What are you trying to prove?

The Yelling

5. Speaking of trying to attract attention, stop raising your voice at me in public. And if you ever, ever tell me again that it’s because I raised my voice first, just remember who’s the guy here.

The Sheets

6. And you still owe me for that time you bled all over my goose down comforter. I still have the receipts from the laundromat in case you need them.

Table 1.11

Description: In case you don’t remember, these are the things you said back when you two were just getting to know each other, back when things were great, and right before they started coming apart at the seams. Then, when things got better, despite all the things you had said before, you took it all back and said the same thing to someone else.

Irene Sarmiento is an Occupational Therapist, an award-winning fictionist, and a children’s book author. Her first book,

She is currently the main curator and archivist behind The Open Time Capsule: Things We Want Our Children to Have, stories and artwork encapsulating 2010 for the children of the year 2020.

He has come clean in these pages with 19 confessions about his pseudo-addiction to TV and initiated a public search for his thesis partner.

By PAUL DOBLE

Craigslist Personals Ad, Strictly Platonic Section
I don’t want to meet you. – w4m – 34 (SFV)Date: 2010-11-06, 11:48PM PDT

I’m just looking for an interesting, quasi-intelligent email correspondence with a guy who has a wry sense of humor, little to no ties to organized religion, and a firm grasp on punctuation. I can spot a Fight Club, Big Lebowski, or Fifth Element reference from 50 paces. Test me. Need some advice? I’ll give you an honest answer. It might be the wrong answer, however. Nerds encouraged! I melt for guys who can teach me about astrophysics.

What about attributed quotes?

Terry Pratchett once said, “It’s no wonder most religions are born in the desert, because when men lay beneath that boundless night sky and look up at the infinite expanse of creation they have an uncontrollable urge to put something in the way.”

I saw huge prints of the crab nebula when I was little. When it was explained to me what they were, I remember being flabbergasted. I don’t use that word often, or at all, which should convey to you the gravity of my childhood reaction. In the Great Nebula Explanation of 1994, I came upon the first legitimate use of the word “billion”, as in “billions of miles across”, the awe inspiring albeit completely arbitrary measurement my science teacher used to describe the clouds of energy producing cosmic matter that made up the nebula. I remember trying to imagine the destruction of the star that created this—this something so far beyond me and my Bio-Man lunch box.

If prehistoric humankind saw that instead of an endless black, what kind of a belief system would have been invented? I’d like to think that a blazing nebula god would have assigned more value to imagination and invention rather than, for example, stoning adulterers. I know if I was a blazing nebula god, Nebulon the All-Blazing, I would probably encourage building well-lit rooms, wearing lots of color, and, possibly, heeding the messages I send people in dreams. After all, because of the raging cosmic radiation, my Holy Light will most likely be giving everybody psychotropic night time adventures.

The First Law of Nebulon: Thou shall not be a dick. Seriously. Be cool, guys.

Wishful thinking, I know. But sometimes it’s interesting to think about the what-ifs. For example, there have been hundreds of millions of years between the first dinosaurs and us, right? Our entire evolution from Captain Caveman to John Cusack took how long? Fifty-thousand years? Scientists are trying to tell me that there hasn’t been a species in all that time that have been as advanced as us or more? Pardon my potty mouth but that seems like mechanical bull.

Can you see it? See the proto-reptiloid civilization. They lived in endless swamps where everything ate everything else. They cremated their dead. They grew their city-sized computers, and their cities, from an algae long since extinct. And escaped this world via their greatest achievement: the Dimension Rift Transporter! Or DRT(tm)! Theirs was an organic space-empire spanning a hundred thousand years. No fossils remain. I mean, they were a fastidious and tidy race.

Also, apparently, there’s enough room in the Universe (capital U) for anything to happen. It’s big. How big? BIG. So big, we can hardly comprehend it. As far as I can tell the argument goes thus: It’s either the whole thing goes on indefinitely in which case we’d need something even BIGGER for everything to exist in, or it’s huge but has boundaries in which case we have to ask what’s OUTSIDE it.

Oh! And don’t forget zero. If you think infinity is hard to grasp, absolute nothing is going to kick your ass.

So, there’s ample time and space (or space-time, whatevs) not just for anything to happen but for EVERYTHING to happen. Intellectuals and science-hipsters like quoting the whole multiverse theory thing but I think it’s completely wild that IN THIS UNIVERSE there very well may be another me that didn’t, for example, put on pants this morning, or was born with fully functioning WINGS.

Of course, the great equalizer to this whole “imaginorgy” is the fact that I did put on pants this morning. Also, I have no wings. The bucket of cold water in the face of grand thoughts has always been things that actually happen, also known as the Material World at Hand. No matter how many times some existentialist proclaims that reality is merely some kind of illusion, punching an existentialist in the face will still result in a satisfying crunch.

But think about it for a second. The very same Mister Terry Pratchett shared in an interview that he believes stars are, inevitably, inconsequential compared to street lamps by virtue of value. Stars are, after all, a universal given. They’re so numerable and distant as to be ignored most of the time. Meanwhile, street lamps had to be invented. In a very real sense they are a triumph of long centuries of radical thinking and practical application by a bunch of egotistic monkeys. How cool is that? How unlikely? Turns out the patently real can be just as exciting as the patently ridiculous.

With so much going on, sometimes it baffles me how some people can be bored. I can understand being idle, stuck or confused, but bored is a dirty word in an Infinite Universe.

Anyway…how are you doing?

I will never forget that time when I was about 8 or 9 and I would feel throbbing similar to little pebbles poking out of my chest. I was in tears when my mother and I finally confronted my then medical-intern aunt about it. They had a bit of hush hush conversations following the Q&A. Finally my mother sat me down and told me the key four words that would just set me off bawling: “You’re a woman now.”

It was a very sick feeling, like my stomach just did a -360 degree turn. The way mother handled it was more embarrassing than helpful and at that age, I just really enjoyed being a kid, playing with boys without a care about the bits that set us apart. It was also disgusting, as were my yaya‘s comments about them then (I would thank her now, but the Catholic school girl mentality I possessed then dictated that such thoughts were dead evil and malicious). In line with this, I have had to put much effort into looking “less obscene” as much as I did in trying to perfect the awkward posture it inflicted on me. Harder to forgive and forget were all those blouses/dresses that I’ve had to forego with the heaviest chest (!) just because of them. All of that on top of the pain in what might have otherwise been a comfortable position of lying on my stomach.

These were the things that always kept me from reveling in the teasing that begging girlfriends would throw my way. I liked that it concealed my stomach but mmm… that’s about it. I always thought that I would much rather be appreciated for the other big things I hoped to be in possession of (i.e., eyes, brains, and heart! Aw!).

It went on until I reached that phase in my life when I was doing futsal on Monday and Thursday afternoons, running on Tuesday and Friday mornings, and football on Thursday evenings. Top that with a looming depression that deprived me of pleasure (or meaning!) out of dining or real nourishment and it was the easiest route to losing weight (without much appreciation either, seeing as this phase was my little L’Etanger relapse).

When things have settled down however, I came to find the direct proportionality of losing weight and losing the girls highly unsettling. It’s almost no joke when I pay homage to The Cranberries’ “I miss [them] when [they're] gone”. As it turned out, they’ve become such a crucial component of my identity. That is not to say of course that my pair was the central point of my existence. However they’ve stood for so much more than I had originally perceived until then.

As I have slightly mentioned, its relative effect to my tummy has been a silly but delightful source of the tiniest ounce of confidence in my life during those fat girl moments (e.g., PMBloatedness and/or the aftermath of a 7-round buffet session). Beyond this vanity however are all the joys that they have brought (and will continue to bring) me and some very, very special people in my life! It is such a key part of intimacy after all. With them, I hope to one day nourish little people who grow up to make the world a somewhat better place from when they first entered it. These latent memories work alongside those that were already formed from other sources in increase their value–not to mention how well they’ve contributed to a certain kind of stimulus package. Given all those years of equally increasing measurements and flirty bikini tops that never failed to tease me, I’d like to somehow think that I’ve been provided with the opportunity to do the brassiere industry some good, as I did Keynes proud as well.

Suffice to say (referencing Moby this time)—

We’ve come a long, long way together
Through the bad times and the good

The girls literally stuck by me as I bounced from moments that I deemed obscene to those that are celestial. They were there from the awkward pains of my girlhood to more indulging affairs of my youth, and hopefully, as I relish the fulfilment of being a mother. This idea that I derive this much meaning from them—versus the aforementioned state of absurdism—also points to a full circle in terms of my philosophical quandaries!

As it is it’s hard for me to bear the thought of life without them. I’ve had my moments in the past when I wished they were a bit more [insert anything here]. Yet to call them my friends is now hardly an overstatement, what with all those memories that allow them to become a part of something deeper.

So when I lay on yet another quiet evening with them and I read about the risk of losing my bust buddies (breast friends forever, no more?) to a disease for the mere fact of having them, I knew—

I have to celebrate you [babies]
I’ve got to praise you like I should