Covington: Roger Miller

NO, PRESIDENT Aquino. You are not responsible for the recent hostage fiasco. You are the head of a nation, the guy who delegates responsibility. Down here in Mindanao we suffered a massacre of almost sixty people for apparent political reasons and yet at no time did I hear then President Arroyo wringing her hands and bewailing that it was all her responsibility.

No. The responsibility lies with all those police brasshats who don't know what the word means and those who are trying to spin the responsibility elsewhere.

Post your reaction to the Manila hostage crisis

But, if you insist on being responsible, how about saving the nation a heap of money by sacking all those brasshats and disbanding the rapid action and special ops teams who, by the look of it, haven't got a clue.

Saturday, I ambled over to Mandug to find the scenery changed somewhat. On the flatlands after that final downhill slalom of a gradient the bananas are gone, replaced with tarpaulins advertising a handful of pack-'em-in housing developments. Over to the left the developers have made a start, pre-fabricated little boxes with little to zero cat swinging room.

There's going to be thousands of dwellings, tens of thousands of residents donating their sewage to the nearby Davao River where it will inevitably seep but wait - we have city planning don't we and a SP who no doubt have insisted that each developer installs a modern enclosed sewage system and sewage treatment plant which will return to the river clean and sparkling water.

You have, right?

On Monday Mayette Tabada asked why, in this age of near-instantaneous transmission, we communicate less?

Precisely because communication is so easy and instantaneous. In the old days we had to sit down with paper and pen and think about what we were communicating. Write it down. Change a word or a line here and there.

No more. We either click on its way misspelled, unpunctuated, semi-literate triviality or we don't click at all. I'll send it tomorrow. And never do.

Wednesday, tucked away in the network roundup, there was an item about Cagayan de Oro banning the use of wire staples to package medicines, groceries or resto doggy bags. I've often wondered about the Filipino love affair with the staple. Go to the LTO with four documents held together with a paperclip and the next day you'll depart with two documents fastened with four staples.

Everybody does it. Buy an insurance policy and it will come stapled into a fancy folder stapled into a plastic bag stapled with another staple stapling - gasp - a receipt.

Roger Miller? He's the guy who sang about "little boxes".