Don’t talk to me ’bout Manila
Don’t even mention ’bout Tondo
I live in Californ-i-a
Near the Chicanos of East LA
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

Wanna tear out my black hair
Scrape out my brown skin
Gouge out my black eyes
Give me blonde, white and blue
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

So I dyed my hair a diff’rent hue
And I wear contacts of blue
but damn this skin of brown
I’ll just say I’m tanned from the sun
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

Won’t read of PNoy news
Nor even of corrupt GMA
I only like American strips
of stuff like wiener-showing Wiener
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

Don’t wanna hear ’bout the Sayyaf
Or dead Pinoy marines
I just care ’bout my GIs
blown up in the Middle East
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

I sing Stars and Stripes Forever
just like idol Josh Groban
and mangle Bayang Magiliw
as Martin Nievera does
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

I could go on and on
Don’t care whatever you think
I may be short and brown like you
But I’m totally not like you
I’m now a ‘zen of the U S of A

2. During lulls in the Senate, he can have Luningning and her dancers gyrate on the floor. But this won’t be the first time someone gyrates in the Senate. Remember the impeachment hearings of Erap Estrada?

3. He can make a privilege speech and insult anyone and everyone, since he’ll be immune from suit.

4. He can write a bill to make Pau liniment the national balm.

5. He can write a bill to make spousal abuse a non-criminal offense.

6. Hell, he can even write a bill to make women second-class citizens and mere sex toys. Chavit Singson would love him!

7. He can distribute money, not to mention dollars, to the other senators and claim he was doing it for the Senate good, complete with sentimental music in the background.

8. He can cheat his way to become Senate President. He was able to do it in his show; why not the Senate?

9. If the public loses interest in the Senate, he can offer house and lot packages to the public so they can stampede –literally speaking– to the Senate entrance. If anyone gets trampled to death, there’s always Gaby Lopez to defend him.

10. He can be the best example of why we shouldn’t vote idiots as senators.

10. GMA-7 – for publicly feuding with rival ABS-CBN, going as far as suing each other, when they should be using their influence to show Filipinos that there are more benefits in unity and working together.

9. ABS-CBN – See no. 10

8. Citibank – for their sheer arrogance as they harass Citibank credit card holders by calling them on the phone and disrespectfully demand payment.

7. Globe Broadband – for their piss-poor customer service even as they spend hundreds of thousands to acquire new customers.

6. Justice Sec. Raul Gonzales – for being consistently obnoxious while believing he is being witty and snazzy. One example: when reporters asked if there’s anyone the Hultman family can go to to stop the executive clemency given to Maureen Hultman’s killer, Sec. Gonzales sarcastically answered, “jesus Christ.” He should have exhibited a little more compassion, the twerp!

5. Kentucky Fried Chicken – for arrogantly defying our senior citizens laws and shamelessly mistreating our lolos and lolas (read Ramon Farolan’s series of columns about this in the Daily Inquirer).

4. The top 3 petroleum companies –Shell, Caltex, Petro – for being incredibly insensitive (translation: greedy) to the plight of Filipinos by not lowering oil prices even when world prices are plunging. These are the thick-faced twerps!

3. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo – she’s in no. 3 simply because we’re tired of seeing her in no. 1.

2. The Congressmen in the Justice committee who voted to throw out the latest impeachment complaint against President Arroyo – for claiming the complaint had “no substance,” thereby revealing that it is them who have no substance.

And our no. 1 … drum roll please …

1. Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante – for lying through his teeth to the Filipino people and not disclosing who his benefactor is, which brings us to the question: What hold does his benefactor have on him or is he just stupidly loyal a la Fabian Ver was to Ferdinand Marcos?

Agree or disagree? Anyone else that should have made it?

* Antonio Trillanes IV
He could have used his stature as a senator to effect change in the governance of the country. Yet, he squandered this opportunity and trashed the millions of votes that made him a senator when he chose to try to lead an uprising against the government. Many believe in his cause to discredit the Arroyo regime, but not his methods which always carry the specter of violence. Now, he may spend his time, not on the Senate floor, but mopping a prison floor.

* Teofisto Guingona
He showed his mettle when he was a Senator. He was highly respected during the impeachment of former President Joseph Estrada. He was widely cheered when he bravely withstood water cannons trying to stop a peace rally he was leading that was passing through Mendiola. Yet, when he joined Trillanes at the ill-fated stand-off at the Manila Peninsula hotel, people merely shook their heads. Many felt that Guingona should have long retired from politics, remained a statesman and done something more meaningful to uplift the plight of Filipinos. His misadventure with Trillanes was seen as an ambitious albeit subtle move to be President of the country should Trillanes’ coup succeed.

* Benjamin Abalos
Former Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman, found himself smack at the center of two controversies. One, elections fraud in Mindanao; the other, a bribery scandal which also involved stories of romps with Chinese maidens. Because of the latter, he was forced to give up his Comelec Chair. Yet, he loudly vowed to fight for his innocence no matter where it took him. However, to this day he remains deafly silent. Better to just fade away spending those millions and having memories of Chinese virgins.

* Joseph Estrada
He remained defiant about his innocence even if he was found guilty of plunder which meted him life imprisonment. He at first refused a Presidential pardon because he professed that the Arroyo government was illegitimate. To accept a pardon would thus admit to its legitimacy. Later, however, faced with the reality of spending the rest of his life in a stinky, overcrowded, prison cell, he changed his mind and accepted the pardon. Perhaps someone along the way whispered to him that he would be able to do more to try to topple the government if he’s free.

And our all-time favorite,
* Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Should we really explain why?

GLOBE BROADBAND

And here’s why:

Globe Broadband’s service has been, to say the least, erratic for months now, especially in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. They not only have been giving their subscribers slow connections, but at times no connections at all and even lasting for more than a day.

When you call up support, you’re immediately fed with a recorded message weakly explaining that network restoration is ongoing and that the system will normalize "in the soonest possible time" (which actually can be from now until Armageddon). Because you’ve been hearing that same recording for months now, you’re thought is, "How long is this restoration going to take?"

So you’d rather speak to a real human voice to get the real score. However, when a live techie goes on the line, guess what? He/she merely reads the transcribed form of the recorded explanation!

When you try to delve deeper into what the cause of the problem is, they don’t know. When you ask when can you hope for the connection to return, they also don’t know. You feel like you’re a senator in an inquiry interrogating Iggy Arroyo. You’re just not getting any answers!

Thus, instead of being comforted, you get infuriated. Having nothing else to say, all the techie will utter is, "We’re really sorry for the inconvenience," like a broken record (I refuse to say anything that would incriminate me, senator).

The least Globe Broadband could do is to somehow let someone from higher management communicate with subscribers and detail what is the cause of the problem, what they’re doing about it and when is the estimate time of complete restoration.

They can do this through a print ad, through snail mail, e-mail or even telephone. But they choose to scrimp on expenses, remain quiet and leave the subscriber in the dark. Instead, they would rather feed a recorded message or techies reading the script of the recorded message.

Then you start to see all these slick advertisements on TV on how wonderful Globe Broadband is, plus marketing tents cropping up all over the place where sales reps talk about the technology of Globe Broadband; and you just know the costs of these can run up to hundreds of thousands of pesos a month.

Yet, they do little to satisfy the demands of their current customers.

Globe Broadband gives new meaning to the term, "customer service."

For this it is given the distinguished title of "2007 Philippine Twerp of the Year!"