Duality

Ever since the publishing of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, fiction has always been fascinated with heroes and villains that have a certain nature of duality. It has been a common recurring element that heroes and villains in modern fiction are two sides of the same coin, with matching personalities, and similar goals.

Such examples include the Batman and the Joker. Both have undergone extremely bad days. Both have lost people they love. Both suffer from a sense of behavior and compulsion that one could describe as psychotic.

It is only in the manner which they treat such things are they different. The Batman is regaled as the hero, using whatever occurred in his past as motivation to aid the citizens of Gotham. The Joker, is reviled by the populace, using whatever occurred in his past as excuses to spread ironic suffering to the people of Gotham.

Another example would be Optimus Prime and Megatron. It was on the old Japanese editions of the Transformers that when the Autobot logo revolved, it would reveal the Decepticon logo. Furthermore, on their former lives on Cybertron, both Prime and Megatron were very respected leaders. Both Prime and Megatron only wanted the best for their fellow transformers.

However, it is how they try to approach their goals that makes them different. Prime wanted his Autobots to coexist peacefully with other races and to share a home alien to them with new, unique friends. Megatron wanted to destroy all life on a new planet in order to build a world all to him and his Decepticons. It would be fitting that both Prime and Megatron (in the old Japanese series) would be destroyed in the final, climactic episode, in a cancelling-out equation of sorts.

These things, are however, never seen in real life. There are always huge differences that set apart people. No matter how similar you say two people are, even twins, for that matter, the sense of duality is almost never present in real life.

That is because in real life, there's always a gray area. Life can never be seen as a two sided coin. Duality can only be conveniently found in the hands of an artist. And that, I guess, is to our blessing and convenience, because if there were any duality in life, well I'd guess we'd have long since destroyed each other.

I'll say that in order for people to coexist peacefully, we just have to accept that other people live too differently from ourselves for us to meddle in their lives. So much for duality then.

I Don't Wanna Come Home to Manila

My mother was in a car accident this morning while she was working in Manila (she goes to Manila every two weeks to work as an insurance agent). Other than the fact that her only two year old Nissan Orvu minivan (I bet the mileage only recently ran out on it) was completely wrecked, she only had a few bruises on her thigh and upper lip. It's safe to say that'll get us some money off of our car insurance (ironic, isn't it?).

The thing is, it happened in Manila, the place where I was born. That sorta thing, I know, is supposed to be common in Manila, but still, it's just wrong nonetheless. I'll go ahead and say, that in the next few months that I have left in high school, I'll dread every bit of going to Manila. Why, exactly? Well,

1. Check the shanty towns. They look like they came out of a dog's ass. Quite a few (thousand) of the buildings contain stuff that literally did.

2. The city air is a giant fart. My father, returning from an overnight visit to Manila was bedridden for about half a week because he spent a few hours on the street.

3. The only nice places to visit are the malls. Every other place is either a seedy nightclub, a high-rise or a place of historical value about to be turned into a mall (take a look at Fort Bonifacio, now known as the high end shopping center, The Fort).

4. The prices are outrageous. Some restaurants sell bottled water for about 45 pesos. That's just about the same amount a grande bottle of beer costs here, and anything that kills brain cells is supposed to be more expensive than anything that doesn't.

5. The traffic is mind-numbing. I live in Lanang, and it takes me at most 35 minutes to get to school. In Manila, it took that much time to cross about 3 city blocks at 7 in the evening.

6. Bombs hit harder. In Davao, the streets are more or less vacant, so if a bomb were to blow, only few would be affected. In a crowded place like Manila, putting a bomb on the street would be like mixing vodka in with water. The device would blend in to the point of transparency, but the effect on the crowd would be devastating.

So I'll just go ahead and say, thanks for all the cool stuff, I could buy, Manila, but in the end, you ain't nothin' but a bitch of a city.

Pissed.

Alrighty, if you're reading this, this means I'm no longer using my first blog, which I made this morning. You can find the link to it and the oh-so-well made post on it in the link below (I'm pretty sure someone like you can find it easily).

It turns out that something got screwed with my login and it won't recognize my password. So I got to thinking, and I hatched a plan to make a gmail account (dtv456@gmail.com if you're curious), use that as my email address, then make a wholly new blog. It's worked so far. Let's just see if those now-billionaires at Google (who sponsor this very blogging network by the way) are really that much dependable.

As for other things, I'm pissed as well, but those are other stories for other times.