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The entry has moved here- Japanese Women portrayed as Erotica!

Well, this week turned out to be not as hellish as I thought it would be (academic-wise). I owe my gratitude to the wonderful people who fought nobly for our country’s freedom and who gave me an extra day off school.

My surprise long weekend started with something awful during the late afternoon of Friday. It’s all my fault. It was my brilliant idea to come up with a research paper for my Japanese Studies Class called “Japanese Women as Portrayed in Erotica” or some really pretentious title like that. Because I was really excited to start working on it, I began surfing on the ‘net for some information on erotica for the outline. I soon learned that that was a really bad move because I had forgotten how the Internet is populated with the scariest fucktards the world has to offer.

In the 1800s, a Japanese artist called Hokusai made a woodcut illustration called “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”. Her dream, apparantly, was to bang an octopus. Naturally, this piqued my curiousity–not because I want to know what it’s like to have octupus tentacles raping me, but because, fuck. In the first place it’s just weird and sick to want to fuck an animal, but why the octopus, of all non-human creatures? So I searched on.

Thanks to the tentacle-rape hentai I’ve seen, I was able to stomach the woodcut picture. But here comes the truly scary part. Some people actually took this whole octupus sex thing way too fucking seriously. There was a B-movie made on the life of Hokusai that includes some “live-action” octopus porn. But wait–it gets worse.

*assumes fetal position and starts frothing at the mouth* For the love of God, DO NOT CLICK THIS LINK. I MEAN IT.

Fuck. You clicked it, didn’t you?

Well, now we are both traumatized beyond belief. I mean…fuck. There are no words for how wrong that is. I’m not sure I want to do this paper anymore.

Of all the dumbest fads to hit the fashion world, Havaianas have to be somewhere at the top of the list. And in spite of the fact that I’d think you were a moron for buying one (especially if you’re from the Philippines), I can’t help wishing I’d thought of the concept first. Just get some ordinary thing nobody has ever looked at, have some Hollywood celebrity endorse it and–BAM. I’d be rich. Money for nothing.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past year, that’s a Havaianas sandal in the picture. Cute and beachy-looking as they are, a pair costs around $17 a pop (around 935 pesos). And it’s the price that makes me find the whole fad so dumb because Havaianas, no matter how you look at it, are basically the Filipino rubber tsinelas glorified.

What is this tsinelas, you ask? Well, they’re an indispensable part of Filipino culture. They’re basically Havaianas–rubber thong sandals (or slippers, as they’re called here)–except without the hisbiscus flowers and the exhorbitant price. Everyone who’s a Filipino has to have worn them at least once (before the Havaianas craze). When I was a kid wreaking havoc on the streets on my bike, I did it in my tsinelas. And so did my other childhood playmates. Nobody wore sneakers or anything; we just ran around and played our games in tsinelas. What’s incredibly interesting about this whole slipper fad is that two years ago, if you decided to wear tsinelas to a school like Ateneo, people would look down on you or think you were poor or something. Tsinelas are so cheap, even palengkeras and (most) street beggars can afford to wear them. Hell, before the tricycle ban in Katipunan, my school imposed a dress code on the tricycle drivers that could go in Ateneo, and one of the no-nos was–you guessed it–wearing of slippers. (So much for being “men and women for others”) Now everyone’s all “look at me, I’m so cool in my 900-peso flip-flops.”

It’s human stupidity at work. But like I said, I wish I had thought of the concept of making the tsinelas fashionable first. The Havaianas website says that the company has some sort of secret recipe for the rubber but there has to be some sort of Filipino equivalent to that which existed way before this silly fad. I mean, I’ve been wearing the same pair of non-Havaianas tsinelas for four years. Not only have I been wearing them; every now and then I use my poor slippers to whack the occassional ipis (cockroach) that crosses my path. And they’re still very functional.

Maybe it’s just me, but I would never wear tsinelas to school even if somebody gave me Havaianas for free. In the first place, my feet look incredibly disgusting, thanks to my stupid cat’s flea bites. Secondly, I’ve grown to associate my slippers as an informal, household item because I always wear them in the house. To wear tsinelas to school would just destroy the whole cosmic order of things. I don’t really dress up for school–I usually just go in jeans and a non-descript top–but wearing slippers to school is just not right. For me, anyway. Oh, I’m sure 900-peso tsinelas ought to feel comfortable, but there’s always Birkinstocks for that (yes, they’re four times as expensive, but arc support is perfect for my flat feet).

So, I bet a lot of you girls are pissed at me right now for saying that Havaianas are stupid. But before you start bitching at me for being such a bitch about Havaianas, answer me this question first: would you have worn tsinelas (or “flip-flops”, if you may) to school or the mall if it weren’t made fashionable by this ingenious Brazilian manufacturer?