don't trust lawyers

to my lawyer friends... PEACE!!! have a great long weekend people!!!

These are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down
and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm
while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep,
he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh...

ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?

ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition
notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead
people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an
autopsy on him!

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

good question

a friend posted this on plurk...

"kung magiging patron saint ka...patron saint ka ng ano?"

hmmmm... i'd be the patron saint of beer-drinkers - for road safety and protection from liver problems. cheers!

patron saint ka ng ano? post or text me your answers.

playoffs time

exciting time of the year... uefa champions league semifinal games are coming up, and the nba playoffs has just started.

i haven’t really been following the nba this year, but i can still say that i’m somewhat updated. thanks to the internet and to my baskeball-addict brother.

i can’t wait for a lakers vs cavs matchup in the finals. it will not only determine the best team, but also the true king of the hardcourt.

go lakers. playoffs is kobe time.

semis!

i’m nostradamus. haha. i got everything right.

barcelona, chelsea, man u, and arsenal are now in the semis!

chelsea got drogba back into the groove. he has proven again that he is still one of the best strikers in the world. chelsea advances to the semis with a convincing 7-5 goal advantage in aggregate. sorry liverpool. at least you guys can now focus on the english premiere league title contention.

i’m certain that chelsea will have a hard time against barcelona. the blues will be competing against, in my opinion, the best team in the world right now. but again, i have faith in the blues. .

man u will easily conquer arsenal. as much as i hate them, i still think that they deserve to be in the finals. man u is that good.

hmmmm... chelsea vs man u in the finals? i hope so... for chelsea, this is their chance to redeem last year’s slippage.


dates to watch out for.

Barcelona vs Chelsea
28/04 and 06/05

Man. United vs Arsenal
29/04 and 05/05

nuthouse

nuthouse is the psychedelic blast-from-the-past sophomore effort of pinoy punk band hilera. the album is reminiscent of good old glory days of punk (remember the clash, ramones, and even rancid???). it’s a brave/risky but rewarding effort for this young band. they were able to pull off the old school punk approach without sounding lame (or trying too hard), and at the same time updating the sound to appeal to the younger generation by adding a healthy dose of hilera flavor.

this album could be my soundtrack of the summer.

why we love watching horror movies?

it seems obtuse that so many people would willingly engross themselves in almost two hours of fear, repugnance, and dread.

"why do people pay for this?" "how is this enjoyable?" these are the questions that we often ask.

being a horror movie junkie, it also baffles me why i love watching scary stuff. over the years, i’ve developed quite a number of theories. most are from doing a little research, and a few are of my own creation.

- scary movies stimulate the natural fight or flight response in our body without having to experience the real fear or danger. our body releases adrenaline and other hormones during the reaction, and we like the rush that comes with them. it’s actually sort of addictive. it’s the similar response that we get from doing extreme sports like sky diving or bungee jumping (of course minus the actual danger).

- we are happy to be unhappy. we enjoy being scared. human beings are innately sadistic creatures.

- we want to experience fear in a controlled setting. such an experience may prove enjoyable, since the fear can be controlled, and is limited to a fictional form of escapism.

- we get the kick out of the special affects used to create a horror movie.

- we watch them for the shock value. people love surprises.

- we want to just lose control. our lives tend to be dull, or at least monotonous. when we watch horror movies, an alternative reality is being presented that plays upon our worst fears. in most cases, the protagonist lives to tell the tale. to a certain degree, we expect we’d respond with the same heroism if we were running away from a chainsaw-wielding killer.

- a badly-done drama or comedy can be too excruciating to endure. on the other hand, a badly-done horror can have one moment, one scene, which can prove memorable, forever etched in your mind. horror movies are usually safe movie choices.

- horror genre is a perfect diversion from reality. it makes our problems seem a lot easier to endure when compared against what the protagonists are facing.

i’m sure that there are more probable reasons, but i think i’ve more of less covered the basic ones. below, i’ve listed the horror movies i’ve watched recently. actually i viewed them during the long weekend. i find it funny coz it was holy week and not halloween.

the descent (five out of five stars)
quarantine (four out of five stars)
28 weeks later (three and a half out of five stars)
thinner (two and a half out of five stars)
john carpenter’s vampires (two out of five stars)

next on my must watch list is t2. i just have to drag or maybe bribe someone to watch it with me.

subic again?!

i got to check out ocean adventure at subic last saturday. the dolphin and friends show was fun. the high dive and sea lion patrol were just so-so. anyway, i was just glad to be outside. two days of dvd watching (thurs and friday) was just too much.

http://oceanadventure.com.ph/index.html

by the way, if you're looking for reasonably priced imported beer around subic, DFS is the place to go. it's just right beside meat plus. they have grolsch, kilkenny, chimay, becks, heineken, hoegaarden, among others. good selection right? beer shopping is always a good way to spend your hard-earned cash. haha.

mvp

nba playoffs is coming soon... and with this, one question has been bugging me for days now.

who will be crowned as this season's mvp?

three names come into mind... wade, lebron, and of course kobe.

wade is the league's leading scorer averaging around 29 points per game. but the heat is struggling to even get home court advantage for the playoffs. usually, team win record matters a lot. maybe next year wade.

lebron is the man of the moment. he lifted the cavs to it's best record in recent years (possibly even franchise history but let me verify). his statistics ain't bad either.

kobe is still the best player on the planet. he can will his team to win. personally, i even think that he is a more talented, more dangerous player than michael jordan. he has proved his worth with his game winning shots, fourth quarter heroics, his 80 point output the other year, and his three championship rings.

so... this brings me back to my question... who do i think will win this year's mvp award?

hmmmm. i want kobe to win. i still think that the best player should be mvp. but that's not always the case (same thing in real life, the smartest people don't get to be ceos right?). the cavs needs lebron more than the lakers needs kobe. and lebron is having an awesome year stat wise. with these facts to back me up, i'm ninety nine percent sure that this year is lebron's time.

why are we poor

a little substantial reading for a more introspective holy week...


Why Are We A Nation of Servants?

by F Sionil Jose

Here we go again, some inconsequential columnist in Hong Kong takes a cheap shot at our unhappy country, calls us “a nation of servants” and immediately an uproar, and magma feelings of hurt are unleashed. Editorials, columnists, politicians are outraged — they demand apology as if one would really salve the bone-deep insult. It was the same sometime back when an English publisher defined “Filipina” as a housemaid. Such insults hurt profoundly but the pain fades quickly and soon after all that enraged outburst, we settle down to the same complacency, we continue sending more of our women abroad to be raped by Arabs, demeaned by Malaysians and Chinese, heckled by the Brits. What has our sense of outrage brought us?

Go to Hong Kong, to Singapore. Visit the Star Ferry environs in Hong Kong or Lucky Plaza, and Singapore’s Orchard St. And there, on Sundays you will see them, hundreds of Filipino domestics, yak-yaking, socializing on the sidewalk, having a pleasant respite from their work.

To the visitors, tourists and the natives, they are a piteous sight, illustrating so clearly and so well how this country has sank. As a Filipino, having witnessed such, I am utterly shamed. I do not blame our poor women for their sorry condition, for I know only too well their plight is the only way by which they can help their families at home and survive.

It is such a boring cliché now, but back to the not-so-distant past: Filipinas was the second richest country in the region, next only to Japan; our universities attracted students from all over Asia, and we had the best professionals, the most modern stores and hospitals.

And what was Hong Kong then? There were slums crawling up those hills on Victoria island, and slums all over Kowloon. Singapore as an English naval base was like old Binondo, with its small squalid shops and equally small houses.

But look at Singapore and Hong Kong now, then look at our country and people.

Sure, you can find in Makati magnificent mansions, the biggest luxury cars, the tony restaurants, skyscrapers. But elsewhere the ugly sprawl of slums, the very poor who now eat only once a day. We must ask ourselves that question, why we became “the hewers of wood and drawers of water” of the world. What happened to us, a very talented and heroic people with a revolutionary tradition?

Once we have answered this question, then we should no longer wonder why there is a continuing diaspora of our brightest people, of our women. It is then the time for us to be truly enraged — not at that Hong Kong columnist — but at the creators of this dismal miasma we call Filipinas. Do not kill the messenger who comes to us to tell the horrid truth about us. Ingest his message, then turn all that outrage, that vehemence, to the Filipinos who turned this beautiful country into the garbage dump of the region: the oligarchs, the Spanish mestizos, the Chinese Filipinos and the treasonous Indios who sent their money abroad instead of investing it here in industries to create jobs for our people. Then it is time for us to rail and condemn the crooked politicians who are the allies of these wretched rich who permitted the relentless hemorrhage of this nation’s capital.

Revolutionary tradition? Ask those rebels why, after 40 years, these leeches are still feasting on our blood!


time to think hard... time to act...

on the mean time, i'm still trying to figure out what to do today besides drink alcohol. i'm hopeless.

time to reflect

Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? If a person lives and dies and no one notices, if the world continues as it was, was the person ever really alive? I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear that our lives will not have mattered. That as far as the world is conceived, we might as well never have lived. What we miss in our lives, no matter how much we have is that sense of meaning

- Kushner


this week is a perfect time to reflect and to reassess our lives.

have a blessed holy week.

pivo

the baby is now a lady... chief's bar is now pivo (same owner, same beer selection and prices). it’s just beside the old location, but bigger and definitely better. it's a perfect place to relax and enjoy imported beer. some of my beer recommendations...

Hoegaarden (belgium) - a wheat beer which is less filtered and retains some sedimentation giving it a cloudy, milky look. yummy.

Leffe Blonde (belgium) - a belgian pale ale that is excellent in quality. this beer is rich and full-bodied, dry, fruity, and has a hint of spices. the ladies would love this.

Rogue Dead Guy Ale (usa) - a man's beer. strong in your face beer taste. it's deep honey in color with a malty aroma, and a rich hearty flavor.


here’s the restobar info.
Pivo restaurant & bar
Ortigas Home Depot Complex, Julia Vargas Ave. Pasig
Phone Number: (63 2) 379-4400, (63 927) 841-5535


life's short. get wasted.

the importance of talking

some people prefer to just shut up. be quiet about things. we have the tendency to run away instead of confronting difficult, questionable situations.

but sometimes i think we should just face the problem, voice your opinion, sentiments, and be done with it.

it is more stressful to just lie down... thinking of horde of scenarios in our heads... this is where a molehill turns into a mountain. pure torture. it’s like being constipated for days. you just want to explode.

we have to talk... we all need to talk.

lazerXtreme

at first... i thought it's going to be boring since i have tried out paintball and airsoft. but i actually enjoyed it. i highly recommended lazerXtreme as a team building activity. it's absolutely a fun alternative to videoke or bowling.

check out http://www.lazerxtreme.com.ph/ for more info.