08 February 2006
Them stupid cats
This morning, along the National Airport road en route to the office, I saw a rather disturbing scene despite it being quite a commonplace on the Pinoy streets:
A dead cat.
No.
A mangled body of a dead cat.
No, wait.
A mangled body of a dead, stupid cat.
I felt, in such order, pity for the cat, indifference towards the vehicle’s driver who unknowingly killed it, and much resentment to the poor animal’s stupidity (I’m talking about the cat, silly).
I started calculating: If a cat dies on this road every other day (remember when I said it’s common on the Philippine kalsada?), and there are about a minimum ten-thousand roads in the Philippines, then we’re looking at over a million and eight hundred thousand dead cats each year. Wait—over a million and eight hundred thousand dead stupid cats each freaking year. And that’s only a cat per road per given day—excluding those allegedly mixed with Chowking and Hen Lin’s version of sandwich.
Why do they keep on dying senselessly like that? Shouldn’t their unlucky predecessors who suffered the pointless fate have taught them better already? What ever happened to Darwin’s theory of adaptation? Kudos for their bravery in crossing wide city streets, but come on—seven thousand years of death and still nothing is learned? All your friends who wrestled with moving wheels died! What is wrong with you!
Fine, they do have lower intellect than us humans. Fine, it’s not their fault humans could care less to do something about cats dying like that. And fine, feline reflex is apparently not that great.
But what about the Philsports Arena stampede last weekend? Weren’t the poor victims—dead and injured alike, and pardon the next few, uh, expressions—just as stupid as to cause something so tragic?
A friend’s friend’s mother said the tragedy arose from people’s indescribable want to escape poverty, to have a better life. Wowowee promised a mind-blowing 2-million cash prize that day, plus four jeeps and 40 tricycles. With poverty seemingly impossible to eradicate, not to mention, lessen, from our country today, it’s no wonder thousands of Filipinos made February 4 a Sabbath day. For wealth, that is.
I’m not going to babble on what causes that unsung national symbol. Poverty has long ravaged the way of life physically, mentally, and emotionally here in the Philippines. Because of that, the people’s minds and sentiments went crooked. Insane. Corrupt.
There are several accounts as to what caused the stampede. One says the crowd became unmanageable simply because of its magnitude. Another says a security personnel, on realizing that he opened the wrong gate for entrance, closed it quickly just as hundreds were running towards him. And yet another story tells of somebody yelling something about a bomb attack, therefore causing tremendous panic among the attendees.
Here’s my friend’s friend’s mother’s theory. The people were already losing their tempers because of the hot weather and the looong line. Punches followed yells, riot followed the punches. All hell broke lose. Three hours later, 60 corpses were found.
A crying lady interviewed on television said in the vernacular, that they attended the game show’s event because “life is hard”. Because they needed money.
They still need it.
But it all seems pointless now, judging by the pain and regret shown by her tears. She lost someone. When such loss hits humans, some form of selflessness and non-earthly attitude slowly creeps back into their systems. My daughter is dead, what in creation was I doing?
Yet again, when you think about it, they were all still dense. They let their insatiable want for money—fine, for a better life—get the best of them. We are sometimes this pathetic. And these times are sometimes fatal.
Now the government puts up another show and acts like they care for the poor people, when all this time they should have been working together in finding a cure to the social cancer that is poverty instead of pushing one another off the edges. Rich bastards feeding off taxpayers’ money. The big time robbers, never to be caught. Cats playing good, but beats a rabid, stray dog to the core.
Let’s not hope for a better life here in the Philippines anytime soon. Not while the cats here are still stupid.
A dead cat.
No.
A mangled body of a dead cat.
No, wait.
A mangled body of a dead, stupid cat.
I felt, in such order, pity for the cat, indifference towards the vehicle’s driver who unknowingly killed it, and much resentment to the poor animal’s stupidity (I’m talking about the cat, silly).
I started calculating: If a cat dies on this road every other day (remember when I said it’s common on the Philippine kalsada?), and there are about a minimum ten-thousand roads in the Philippines, then we’re looking at over a million and eight hundred thousand dead cats each year. Wait—over a million and eight hundred thousand dead stupid cats each freaking year. And that’s only a cat per road per given day—excluding those allegedly mixed with Chowking and Hen Lin’s version of sandwich.
Why do they keep on dying senselessly like that? Shouldn’t their unlucky predecessors who suffered the pointless fate have taught them better already? What ever happened to Darwin’s theory of adaptation? Kudos for their bravery in crossing wide city streets, but come on—seven thousand years of death and still nothing is learned? All your friends who wrestled with moving wheels died! What is wrong with you!
Fine, they do have lower intellect than us humans. Fine, it’s not their fault humans could care less to do something about cats dying like that. And fine, feline reflex is apparently not that great.
But what about the Philsports Arena stampede last weekend? Weren’t the poor victims—dead and injured alike, and pardon the next few, uh, expressions—just as stupid as to cause something so tragic?
A friend’s friend’s mother said the tragedy arose from people’s indescribable want to escape poverty, to have a better life. Wowowee promised a mind-blowing 2-million cash prize that day, plus four jeeps and 40 tricycles. With poverty seemingly impossible to eradicate, not to mention, lessen, from our country today, it’s no wonder thousands of Filipinos made February 4 a Sabbath day. For wealth, that is.
I’m not going to babble on what causes that unsung national symbol. Poverty has long ravaged the way of life physically, mentally, and emotionally here in the Philippines. Because of that, the people’s minds and sentiments went crooked. Insane. Corrupt.
There are several accounts as to what caused the stampede. One says the crowd became unmanageable simply because of its magnitude. Another says a security personnel, on realizing that he opened the wrong gate for entrance, closed it quickly just as hundreds were running towards him. And yet another story tells of somebody yelling something about a bomb attack, therefore causing tremendous panic among the attendees.
Here’s my friend’s friend’s mother’s theory. The people were already losing their tempers because of the hot weather and the looong line. Punches followed yells, riot followed the punches. All hell broke lose. Three hours later, 60 corpses were found.
A crying lady interviewed on television said in the vernacular, that they attended the game show’s event because “life is hard”. Because they needed money.
They still need it.
But it all seems pointless now, judging by the pain and regret shown by her tears. She lost someone. When such loss hits humans, some form of selflessness and non-earthly attitude slowly creeps back into their systems. My daughter is dead, what in creation was I doing?
Yet again, when you think about it, they were all still dense. They let their insatiable want for money—fine, for a better life—get the best of them. We are sometimes this pathetic. And these times are sometimes fatal.
Now the government puts up another show and acts like they care for the poor people, when all this time they should have been working together in finding a cure to the social cancer that is poverty instead of pushing one another off the edges. Rich bastards feeding off taxpayers’ money. The big time robbers, never to be caught. Cats playing good, but beats a rabid, stray dog to the core.
Let’s not hope for a better life here in the Philippines anytime soon. Not while the cats here are still stupid.
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