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DANIEL C. DENNET
Where Am I?
Excerpt from Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology by Daniel C. Dennett. Copyright (I) 1978 by Bradford Books. Publishers, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Now that I’ve won my suit under the Freedom of Information Act, I am at liberty to reveal for the first time a curious episode in my life that may be of interest not only to those engaged in research in the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience but also to the general public.
Several years ago I was approached by Pentagon officials who asked me to volunteer for a highly dangerous and secret mission. In collaboration with NASA and Howard Hughes, the Department of Defense was spending billions to develop a Supersonic Tunneling Underground Device, or STUD. It was supposed to tunnel through the earth’s core at great speed and deliver a specially designed atomic warhead “right up the Red’s missile silos,” as one of the Pentagon brass put it.
The problem was that in an early test they had succeeded in lodging a warhead about a mile deep under Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they wanted me to retrieve it for them. “Why me?” I asked. Well, the mission involved some pioneering applications of current brain research, and they had heard of my interest in brains and of course my Faustian curiosity and great courage and so forth…. Well, how could I refuse? The difficulty that brought the Pentagon to my door was that the device I’d been asked to recover was fiercely radioactive, in a new way. According to monitoring instruments, something about the nature of the device and its complex interactions with pockets of material deep in the earth had produced radiation that could cause severe abnormalities in certain tissues of the brain. No way had been found to shield the brain from these deadly rays, which were apparently harmless to other tissues and organs of the body. So it had been decided that the person sent to recover the device should leave his brain behind. It would be kept in a sale place as there it could execute its normal control functions by elaborate radio links. Would I submit to a surgical procedure that would completely remove my brain, which would then be placed in a life-support system at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston? Each input and output pathway, as it was severed, would be restored by a pair of microminiaturized radio transceivers, one attached precisely to the brain, the other to the nerve stumps in the empty cranium. No information would be lost, all the connectivity would be preserved. At first I was a bit reluctant. Would it really work? The Houston brain surgeons encouraged me. “Think of it,” they said, “as a mere stretching of the nerves. If your brain were just moved over an inch in your skull, that would not alter or impair your mind. We’re simply going to make the nerves indefinitely elastic by splicing radio links into them.”
I was shown around the life-support lab in Houston and saw the sparkling new vat in which my brain would be placed, were I to agree. I met the large and brilliant support team of neurologists, hematologists, biophysicists, and electrical engineers, and after several days of discussions and demonstrations I agreed to give it a try. I was subjected to an enormous array of blood tests, brain scans, experiments, interviews, and the like. They took down my autobiography at great length, recorded tedious lists of my beliefs, hopes, fears, and tastes. They even listed my favorite stereo recordings and gave me a crash session of psychoanalysis.
The day for surgery arrived at last and of course I was anesthetized and remember nothing of the operation itself. When I came out of anesthesia, I opened my eyes, looked around, and asked the inevitable, the traditional, the lamentably hackneyed postoperative question: “Where am l?” The nurse smiled down at me. “You’re in Houston,” she said, and I reflected that this still had a good chance of being the truth one way or another. She handed me a mirror. Sure enough, there were the tiny antennae poling up through their titanium ports cemented into my skull. “I gather tile operation was a success,” I said. “I want to go see my brain.” They led me (I was a bit dizzy and unsteady) down a long corridor and into the life-support lab. A cheer went up from the assembled support team, and I responded with what I hoped was a jaunty salute. Still feeling lightheaded, I was helped over to tire life-support vat. I peered through the glass. There, floating in what looked like ginger ale, was undeniably a human brain, though it was almost covered with printed circuit chips, plastic tubules, electrodes, and other paraphernalia. “Is that mine?” I asked. “Hit the output transmitter switch there on the side of the vat and see for yourself,” the project director replied. I moved the switch to OFF, and immediately slumped, groggy and nauseated, into the arms of the technicians, one of whom kindly restored the switch to its ON position. While I recovered my equilibrium and composure, I thought to myself: “Well, here I am sitting on a folding chair, staring through a piece of plate glass at my own brain… But wait,” I said to myself, “shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes’?” I tried to think this latter thought. I tried to project it into the tank, offering it hopefully to my brain, but I failed to carry off the exercise with any conviction. I tried again. “Here am I, Daniel Dennett, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes.” No, it just didn’t work. Most puzzling and confusing. Being a philosopher of firm physicalist conviction, I believed unswervingly that the tokening of my thoughts was occurring somewhere in my brain: yet, when I thought “Here I am,” where the thought occurred to me was here, outside the vat, where I, Dennett, was standing staring at my brain.
I tried and tried to think myself into the vat, but to no avail. I tried to build up to the task by doing mental exercises. I thought to myself, “The sun is shining over there, ” five times in rapid succession, each time mentally ostending a different place: in order, the sunlit corner of the lab, the visible front lawn of the hospital, Houston, Mars, and Jupiter. I found I had little difficulty in getting my “there” ’s to hop all over the celestial map with their proper references. I could loft a “there” in an instant through the farthest reaches of space, and then aim the next “there” with pinpoint accuracy at the upper left quadrant of a freckle on my arm. Why was I having such trouble with “here”? “Here in Houston” worked well enough, and so did “here in the lab,” and even “here in this part of the lab,” but “here in the vat” always seemed merely an unmeant mental mouthing. I tried closing my eyes while thinking it. This seemed to help, but still I couldn’t manage to pull it off, except perhaps for a fleeting instant. I couldn’t be sure. The discovery that I couldn’t be sure was also unsettling. How did I know where I meant by “here” when I thought “here”? Could I think I meant one place when in fact I meant another? I didn’t see how that could be admitted without untying the few bonds of intimacy between a person and his own mental life that had survived the onslaught of the brain scientists and philosophers, the physicalists and behaviorists. Perhaps I was incorrigible about where I meant when I said “here.” But in my present circumstances it seemed that either I was doomed by sheer force of mental habit to thinking systematically false indexical thoughts, or where a person is (and hence where his thoughts are tokened for purposes of semantic analysis) is not necessarily where his brain, the physical seat of his soul, resides. Nagged by confusion, I attempted to orient myself by falling back on a favorite philosopher’s ploy. I began naming things.
“Yorick,” I said aloud to my brain, “you are my brain. The rest of my body, seated in this chair, I dub ‘Hamlet.’ ” So here we all are: Yorick’s my brain, Hamlet’s my body, and I am Dennett. Avow, where am l? And when I think “where am l?” where’s that thought tokened? Is it tokened in my brain, lounging about in the vat, or right here between my ears where it seems to be tokened? Or nowhere? Its temporal coordinates give me no trouble; must it not have spatial coordinates as well? I began making a list of the alternatives.
1. Where Hamlet goes there goes Dennet. This principle was easily refuted by appeal to the familiar brain- transplant thought experiments so enjoyed by philosophers. If Tom and Dick switch brains, Tom is the fellow with Dick’s former body–just ask him; he’ll claim to be Tom and tell you the most intimate details of Tom’s autobiography. It was clear enough, then, that my current body and I could part company, but not likely that I could be separated from my brain. The rule of thumb that emerged so plainly from the thought experiments was that in a brain-transplant operation, one wanted to be the donor not the recipient. Better to call such an operation a body transplant, in fact. So perhaps the truth was,
2. Where Yorick goes there goes Dennett This was not at all appealing, however. How could I be in the vat and not about to go anywhere, when I was so obviously outside the vat looking in and beginning to make guilty plans to return to my room for a substantial lunch? This begged the question I realized, but it still seemed to be getting at something important. Casting about for some support for my intuition, I hit upon a legalistic sort of argument that might have appealed to Locke.
Suppose, I argued to myself, I were now to fly to California, rob a bank, and be apprehended. In which state would I be tried: in California, where the robbery took place, or in Texas, where the brains of the outfit were located? Would I be a California felon with an out- of- state brain, or a Texas felon remotely controlling an accomplice of sorts in California? It seemed possible that I might beat such a rap just on the undecidability of that jurisdictional question, though perhaps it would be deemed an interstate, and hence Federal, offense. In any event, suppose I were convicted. Was it likely that California would be satisfied to throw Hamlet into the brig, knowing that Yorick was living the good life and luxuriously taking the waters in Texas? Would Texas incarcerate Yorick, leaving Hamlet free to take the next boat to Rio? I his alternative appealed to me. Barring capital punishment or other cruel and unusual punishment, the state would be obliged to maintain the life- support system for Yorick though they might move him from Houston to Leavenworth, and aside from the unpleasantness of the opprobrium, 1, for one, would not mind at all and would consider myself a free man under those circumstances. If the state has an interest in forcibly relocating persons in institutions, it would fail to relocate file in any institution by locating Yorick there. If this were true, it suggested a third alternative.
3. Dennett is wherever he thinks he is. Generalized, the claim was as follows: At any given time a person has a point of view and the location of the point of view (which is determined internally by the content of the point of view) is also the location of the person.
Such a proposition is not without its perplexities, but to me it seemed a step in the right direction. The only trouble was that it seemed to place one in a heads- l- win/tails- you- lose situation of unlikely infallibility as regards location. Hadn’t I myself often been wrong about where I was, and at least as often uncertain? Couldn’t one get lost? Of course, but getting lost geographically is not the only way one might get lost. If one were lost in the woods one could attempt to reassure oneself with the consolation that at least one knew where one was: one was right here in the familiar surroundings of one’s own body. Perhaps in this case one would not have drawn one’s attention to much to be thankful for. Still, there were worse plights imaginable, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t in such a plight right now.
Point of view clearly had something to do with personal location, but it was itself an unclear notion. It was obvious that the content of one’s point of view was not the same as or determined by the content of one’s beliefs or thoughts. For example, what should we say about the point of view of the Cinerama viewer who shrieks and twists in his seat as the roller- coaster footage overcomes his psychic distancing? Has he forgotten that he is safely seated in the theater? Here I was inclined to say that the person is experiencing an illusory shift in point of view. In other cases, my inclination to call such shifts illusory was less strong. The workers in laboratories and plants who handle dangerous materials by operating feedback- controlled mechanical arms and hands undergo a shift in point of view that is crisper and more pronounced than anything Cinerama can provoke. They can feel the heft and slipperiness of the containers they manipulate with their metal fingers. They know perfectly well where they are and are not fooled into false beliefs by the experience, yet it is as if they were inside the isolation chamber they are peering into. With mental effort, they can manage to shift their point of view back and forth, rather like making a transparent Necker cube or an Escher drawing change orientation before one’s eves. It does seem extravagant to suppose that in performing this bit of mental gymnastics, they are transporting themselves back and forth.
Still their example gave me hope. If I was in fact in the vat in spite of my intuitions, I might be able to train myself to adopt that point of view even as a matter of habit. I should dwell on images of myself comfortably floating in my vat, beaming volitions to that familiar body out there. I reflected that the ease or difficulty of this task was presumably independent of the truth about the location of one’s brain Had I been practicing before the operation, I might now be finding it second nature. You might now yourself try such a trompe l’oeil. Imagine you have written an inflammatory letter which has been published in the Times the result of which s that the government has chosen to impound your brain for a probationary period of three years in its Dangerous Brain Clinic in Bethesda, Maryland. Your body of course is allowed freedom to earn a salary and thus to continue its function of laying up income to be taxed At this
moment, however, your body is seated in an auditorium listening to a peculiar account by Daniel Dennett of his own similar experience. Try it. Think yourself to Bethesda, and then hark back longingly to your body, far away, and yet seeming so near. It is only with long-distance restraint (yours? the government’s?) that you can control your impulse to get those hands clapping in polite applause before navigating the old body to the rest room and a well- deserved glass of evening sherry in the lounge. l he task of imagination is certainly difficult, but if you achieve your goal the results might be consoling.
Anyway, there I was in Houston, lost in thought as one might say, but not for long. My speculations were soon interrupted by the Houston doctors, who wished to test out my new prosthetic nervous system before sending me off on my hazardous mission. As I mentioned before, I was a bit dizzy at first, and not surprisingly, although I soon habituated myself to my new circumstances (which were, after all, well nigh indistinguishable from my old circumstances). My accommodation was not perfect, however, and to this day I continue to be plagued by minor coordination difficulties. The speed of light is fast, but finite, and as my brain and body move farther and farther apart, the delicate interaction of my feedback systems is thrown into disarray by the time lags. Just as one is rendered close to speechless by a delayed or echoic hearing of one’s speaking voice so, for instance, I am virtually unable to track a moving object with my eyes whenever my brain and my body are more than a few miles apart. In most matters my impairment is scarcely detectable, though I can no longer hit a slow curve ball with the authority of yore. There are some compensations of course. Though liquor tastes as good as ever, and warms my gullet while corroding my liver, I can drink it in any quantity I please, without becoming the slightest bit inebriated, a curiosity some of my close friends may have noticed (though I occasionally have feigned inebriation, so as not to draw attention to my unusual circumstances). For similar reasons, I take aspirin orally for a sprained wrist, but if the pain persists I ask Houston to administer codeine to me in vitro. In times of illness the phone bill can be staggering.
But to return to my adventure. At length, both the doctors and I were satisfied that I was ready to undertake my subterranean mission. And so I left my brain in Houston and headed by helicopter for Tulsa. Well, in any case, that’s the way it seemed to me. That’s how I would put it, just off the top of my head as it were. On the trip I reflected further about my earlier anxieties and decided that my first postoperative speculations had been tinged with panic. The matter was not nearly as strange or metaphysical as I had been supposing. Where was I? In two places, clearly: both inside the vat and outside it. Just as one can stand with one foot in Connecticut and the other in Rhode Island, I was in two places at once. I had become one of those scattered individuals we used to hear so much about. The more I considered this answer, the more obviously true it appeared. But, strange to say, the more true it appeared, the less important the question to which it could be the true answer seemed. A sad, but not unprecedented, fate for a philosophical question to suffer. This answer did not completely satisfy me, of course. There lingered some question to which I should have liked an answer, which was neither “Where are all my various and sundry parts?” nor “What is my current point of view?” Or at least there seemed to be such a question. For it did seem undeniable that in some sense I and not merely most oh me was descending into the earth under Tulsa in search of an atomic warhead.
When I found the warhead, I was certainly glad I had left my brain behind, for the pointer on the specially built Geiger counter I had brought with me was off the dial. I called Houston on my ordinary radio and told the operation control center of my position and my progress. In return, they gave me instructions for dismantling the vehicle, based upon my on- site observations. I had set to work with my cutting torch when all of a sudden a terrible thing happened. I went stone deaf. At first I thought it was only my radio earphones that had broken, but when I tapped on my helmet, I heard nothing. Apparently the auditory transceivers had gone on the fritz. I could no longer hear Houston or my own voice, but I could speak, so I started telling them what had happened. In midsentence, I knew something else had gone wrong. My vocal apparatus had become paralyzed. Then my right hand went limp–another transceiver had gone. I was truly in deep trouble. But worse was to follow. After a few more minutes, I went blind. I cursed my luck, and then I cursed the scientists who had led me into this grave peril. There I was, deaf, dumb, and blind, in a radioactive hole more than a mile under Tulsa. Then the last of my cerebral radio links broke, and suddenly I was faced with a new and even more shocking problem: whereas an instant before I had been buried alive in Oklahoma, now I was disembodied in Houston. My recognition of my new status was not immediate. It took me several very anxious minutes before it dawned on me that my poor body lay several hundred miles away, with heart pulsing and lungs respirating, but otherwise as dead as the body of any heart- transplant donor, its skull packed with useless, broken electronic gear. *I he shift in perspective I had earlier found well nigh impossible now seemed quite natural. Though I could think myself back into my body in the tunnel under Tulsa, it took some effort to sustain the illusion. For surely it was an illusion to suppose It was still in Oklahoma: I had lost all contact with that body.
It occurred to me then, with one of those rushes of revelation of which we should be suspicious, that I had stumbled upon an impressive demonstration of the immateriality of the soul based upon physicalist principles and premises. For as the last radio signal between Tulsa and Houston died away, had I not changed location from Tulsa to Houston at the speed of light? And had I not accomplished this without any increase in mass? What moved from A to B at such speed was surely myself, or at any rate my soul or mind–the massless center of my being and home of my consciousness. My point of view had lagged somewhat behind, but I had already noted the indirect bearing of point of view on personal location. I could not see how a physicalist philosopher could quarrel with this except by taking the dire and counterintuitive route of banishing all talk of persons. Yet the notion of personhood was so well entrenched in everyone’s world view, or so it seemed to me, that any denial would be as curiously unconvincing, as systematically disingenuous, as the Cartesian negation, “non sum ”
The joy of philosophic discovery thus tided me over some very bad minutes or perhaps hours as the helplessness and hopelessness or my situation became more apparent to me. Waves of panic and even nausea swept over me, made all the more horrible by the absence of their normal body- dependent phenomenology. No adrenaline rush of tingles in the arms, no pounding heart, no premonitory salivation. I did feel a dread sinking feeling in my bowels at one point, and this tricked me momentarily into the false hope that I was undergoing a reversal of the process that landed me in this fix–a gradual undisembodiment. But the isolation and uniqueness of that twinge soon convinced me that it was simply the first of a plague of phantom body hallucinations that I, like any other amputee, would be all too likely to suffer.
My mood then was chaotic. On the one hand, I was fired up with elation of my philosophic discovery and was wracking my brain (one of the few familiar things I could still do), trying to figure out how to communicate my discovery to the journals; while on the other, I was bitter, lonely, and filled with dread and uncertainty. Fortunately, this did not last long, for my technical support team sedated me into a dreamless sleep from which I awoke, hearing with magnificent fidelity the familiar opening strains of my favorite Brahms piano trio. So that was why they had wanted a list of my favorite recordings! It did not take me long to realize that I was hearing the music without ears. I he output from the stereo stylus was being fed through some fancy rectification circuitry directly into my auditory nerve. I was mainlining Brahms, an unforgettable experience for any stereo buff. At the end of the record it did not surprise me to hear the reassuring voice of the project director speaking into a microphone that was now my prosthetic ear. He confirmed my analysis of what had gone wrong and assured me that steps were being taken to re- embody me. He did not elaborate, and after a few more recordings, I found myself drifting off to sleep. My sleep lasted, I later learned, for the better part of a year, and when I awoke, it was to find myself fully restored to my senses. When I looked into the mirror, though, I was a bit startled to see an unfamiliar face. Bearded and a bit heavier, bearing no doubt a family resemblance to my former face, and with the same look of spritely intelligence and resolute character, but definitely a new face. Further self- explorations of an intimate nature left me no doubt that this was a new body, and the project director confirmed my conclusions. He did not volunteer any information on the past history of my new body and I decided (wisely, I think in retrospect) not to pry. As many philosophers unfamiliar with my ordeal have more recently speculated, the acquisition of a new body leaves one’s person intact. And after a period of adjustment to a new voice, new muscular strengths and weaknesses, and so forth, one’s personality is by and large also preserved. More dramatic changes in personality have been routinely observed in people who have undergone extensive plastic surgery, to say nothing of sex- change operations, and I think no one contests the survival of the person in such cases. In any event I soon accommodated to my new body, to the point of being unable to recover any of its novelties to my consciousness or even memory. The view in the mirror soon became utterly familiar. That view, by the way, still revealed antennae, and so l was not surprised to learn that my brain had not been moved from its haven in the life- support lab.
I decided that good old Yorick deserved a visit. I and my new body, whom we might as well call Fortinbras, strode into the familiar lab to another round of applause from the technicians, who were of course congratulating themselves, not me. Once more I stood before the vat and contemplated poor Yorick, and on a whim I once again cavalierly flicked off the output transmitter switch. Imagine my surprise when nothing unusual happened. No fainting spell, no nausea, no noticeable change. A technician hurried to restore the switch to ON, but still I felt nothing. I demanded an explanation, which the project director hastened to provide. It seems that before they had even operated on the first occasion, they had constructed a computer duplicate of my brain, reproducing both (he complete information- processing structure and the computational speed of my brain in a giant computer program. After the operation, but before they had dared to send me off on my mission to Oklahoma, alley had run this computer system and Yorick side by side. The incoming signals from Hamlet were sent simultaneously to Yorick’s transceivers and to the computers array of inputs. And the outputs from Yorick were not only beamed back to Hamlet, my body; they were recorded and checked against the simultaneous output of the computer program, which was called “Hubert” for reasons obscure to me. Over days and even weeks, the outputs were identical and synchronous, which of course did not prove that (hey had succeeded in copying the brain’s functional structure, but the empirical support was greatly encouraging.
Hubert’s input, and hence activity, had been kept parallel with Yorick’s during my disembodied days. And now, to demonstrate this, they had actually thrown the master switch that put Hubert for the first time in on- line control of my body–not Hamlet, of course, but Fortinbras. (Hamlet, I learned, had never been recovered from its underground tomb and could be assumed by this time to have largely returned to the dust. At the head of my grave still lay the magnificent bulk of the abandoned device, with the word STUD emblazoned on its side in large letters –a circumstance which may provide archeologists of the next century with a curious insight into the burial rites of their ancestors.)
The laboratory technicians now showed me the master switch, which had two positions, labeled B. for Brain (they didn’t know my brain’s name was Yorick) and H. for Hubert. The switch did indeed point to H. and they explained to me that if I wished, I could switch it back to B. With my heart in my mouth (and my brain in its vat), I did this. Nothing happened. A click, that was all. To test their claim, and with the master switch now set at B. I hit Yorick’s output transmitter switch on the vat and sure enough, I began to faint. Once the output switch was turned back on and I had recovered my wits, so to speak, I continued to play with the master switch, flipping it back and forth. I found that with the exception of the transitional click, I could detect no trace of a difference. I could switch in mid-utterance, and the sentence I had begun speaking under the control of Yorick was finished without a pause or hitch of any kind under the control of Hubert. I had a spare brain, a prosthetic device which might some day stand me in very good stead, were some mishap to befall Yorick. Or alternatively, I could keep Yorick as a spare and use Hubert. It didn’t seem to make any difference which I chose, for the wear and tear and fatigue on my body did not have any debilitating effect on either brain, whether or not it was actually causing the motions of my body, or merely spilling its output into thin air.
The one truly unsettling aspect of this new development was the prospect, which was not long in dawning on me, of someone detaching (he spare–Hubert or Yorick, as the case might be–from Fortinbras and hitching it to yet another body–some Johnny- come- lately Rosencrantz or Guildenstem. Then (if not before) there would be two people, that much was clear. One would be me, and the other would be a sort of super- win brother. If there were two bodies, one under the control of Hubert and the other being controlled by Yorick, then which would the world recognize as the true Dennett? And whatever the rest of the world decided, which one would be me f Would I be the Yorick- brained one, in virtue of Yorick’s causal priority and former intimate relationship with the original Dennett body, Hamlet? That seemed a bit legalistic, a bit too redolent of the arbitrariness of consanguinity and legal possession, to be convincing at the metaphysical level. For suppose that before the arrival of the second body on the scene, I had been keeping Yorick as the spare for years, and letting Hubert’s output drive my body–that is, Fortinbras –all that time. The Hubert- Fortinbras couple would seem then by squatter’s rights (to combat one legal intuition with another) to be the true Dennett and the lawful inheritor of everything that was Dennett’s. This was an interesting question, certainly, but not nearly so pressing as another question that bothered me. My strongest intuition was that in such an eventuality I would survive so long as either brain- body couple remained intact, but I had mixed emotions about whether I should want both to survive.
I discussed my worries with the technicians and the project director. The prospect of two Dennetts was abhorrent to me, I explained, largely for social reasons. I didn’t want to be my own rival for the affections of my wife, nor did I like the prospect of the two Dennetts sharing my modest professor’s salary. Still more vertiginous and distasteful, though, was the idea of knowing that much about another person, while he had the very same goods on me. How could we ever face each other? My colleagues in the lab argued that I was ignoring the bright side of the matter. Weren’t there many things I wanted to do but, being only one person, had been unable to do? Now one Dennett could stay at home and be the professor and family mark while the other could strike out on a life of travel and adventure–missing the family of course, but happy in the knowledge that the other Dennett was keeping the home fires burning. I could be faithful and adulterous at the same time. I could even cuckold myself–to say nothing of other more lurid possibilities my colleagues were all too ready to force upon my overtaxed imagination. But my ordeal in Oklahoma (or was it Houston?) had made me less adventurous, and I shrank from this opportunity that was being offered (though of course I was never quite sure it was being offered to me in the first place).
There was another prospect even more disagreeable: that the spare, Hubert or Yorick as the case might be, would be detached from any input from Fortinbras and just left detached. I hen, as in the other case, there would be two Dennets, or at least two claimants to my name and possessions, one embodied in Fortinbras, and the other sadly, miserably disembodied. Both selfishness and altruism bade me take steps to prevent this from happening. So I asked that measures be taken to ensure that no one could ever tamper with the transceiver connections or the master switch without my (our? no, r~/)9) knowledge and consent. Since I had no desire to spend my life guarding the equipment in Houston, it was mutually decided that all the electronic connections in the lab would be carefully locked. Both those that controlled the life- support system for Yorick and those that controlled the power supply for Hubert would be guarded with fail- safe devices, and I would take the only master switch, outfitted for radio remote control, with me wherever I went. I carry it strapped around my waist and–trait a moment– here it is. Every few months I reconnoiter the situation by switching channels. I do this only in the presence of friends, of course, for if the other channel were, heaven forbid, either dead or otherwise occupied, there would have to be somebody who had my interests at heart to switch it back, to bring me back from the void. For while I could feel, see, hear, and otherwise sense whatever befell my body, subsequent to such a switch, I’d be unable to control it. By the way, the two positions on the switch are intentionally unmarked, so I never have the faintest idea whether I am switching from Hubert to Yorick or vice versa. (Some of you may think that in this case I really don’t know who I am, let alone where I am. But such reflections no longer make much of a dent on my essential Dennettness, on my own sense of who I am. If it is true that in one sense I don’t know who I am then that’s another one of your philosophical truths of underwhelming significance.)
In any case, every time I’ve flipped the switch so far, nothing has happened. So let s give it a to….
“THANK GOD! I THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER FLIP THAT SWITCH! You can’t imagine how horrible it’s been these last two weeks –but now you know; it’s your turn in purgatory. How I’ve longed for this moment! You see, about two weeks ago–excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I’ve got to explain this to my . . . um, brother, I guess you could say, but he’s just told you the facts, so you’ll understand–about two weeks ago our two brains drifted just a bit out of synch. I don’t know whether my brain is now Hubert or Yorick, any more than you do, but in any case, the two brains drifted apart, and of course once the process started, it snowballed, for I was in a slightly different receptive state for the input we both received, a difference that was soon magnified. In no time at all the illusion that I was in control of my body–our body–was completely dissipated. There was nothing I could do–no way to call you. YOU DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I EXISTED! It’s been like being carried around in a cage, or better, like being possessed–hearing my own voice say things I didn’t mean to say, watching in frustration as my own hands performed deeds I hadn’t intended. You’d scratch our itches, but not the way I would have, and you kept me awake, with your tossing and turning. I’ve been totally exhausted, on the verge of a nervous breakdown, carried around helplessly by your frantic round of activities, sustained only by the knowledge that some day you’d throw the switch.
“Now it’s your turn, but at least you’ll have the comfort of knowing I know you’re in there. Like an expectant mother, I’m eating–or at any rate tasting, smelling, seeing–for two now, and I’ll try to make it easy for you. Don’t worry. Just as soon as this colloquium is over, you and I will fly to Houston, and we’ll see what can be done to get one of us another body. You can have a female body–your body could be any color you like. But let’s think it over. I tell you what–to be fair, if we both want this body, I promise I’ll let the project director flip a coin to settle which of us gets to keep it and which then gets to choose a new body. That should guarantee justice, shouldn’t it? In any case, I’ll take care of you, I promise. These people are my witnesses.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this talk we have just heard is not exactly the talk I would have given, but I assure you that everything he said was perfectly true. And now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d–we’d–better sit down”.
Reflections
The story you have just read not only isn’t true (in case you wondered) but couldn’t be true. The technological feats described are impossible now, and some may remain forever outside our ability, but that is not what matters to us. What matters is whether there is something in principle impossible–something incoherent–about the whole tale. When philosophical fantasies become too outlandish–involving time machines, say, or duplicate universes or infinitely powerful deceiving demons–we may wisely decline to conclude anything from them. Our conviction that we understand the issues involved may be unreliable, an illusion produced by the vividness of the fantasy.
In this case the surgery and microradios described are far beyond the present or even clearly envisaged future state of the art, but that is surely “innocent” science fiction. It is less clear that the introduction of Hubert, the computer duplicate of Yorick, Dennett’s brain, is within bounds. (As fantasy mongers we can make up the rules as we go along, of course, but on pain of telling a tale of no theoretical interest.) Hubert is supposed to run in perfect synchronicity with Yorick for years on end without the benefit of any interactive, corrective links between them. This would not just be a great technological triumph; it would verge on the miraculous. It is not just that in order for a computer to come close to matching a human brain in speed of handling millions of channels of parallel input and output it would have to have a fundamental structure entirely unlike that of existing computers. Even if we had such a brainlike computer, its sheer size and complexity would make the prospect of independent synchronic behavior virtually impossible. Without the synchronized and identical processing in both systems, an essential feature of the story would have to be abandoned. Why? Because the premise that there is only one person with two brains (one a spare) depends on it. Consider what Ronald de Sousa has to say about a similar case:
When Dr. Jekyll changes into Mr. Hyde, that is a strange and mysterious thing. Are they two people taking turns in one body? But here is something stranger: Dr. Juggle and Dr. Boggle too, take turns in one body. But they are as like as identical twins! You balk: why then say that they have changed into one another? Well, why not: if Dr. Jekyll can change into a man as different as Hyde, surely it must be all the easier for Juggle to change into Boggle, who is exactly like him.
We need conflict or strong difference to shake our natural assumption that to one body there corresponds at most one agent.
–from “Rational Homunculi”
Since several of the most remarkable features of “Where am I?” hinge on the supposition of independent synchronic processing in Yorick and Hubert, it is important to note that this supposition is truly outrageous–in the same league as the supposition that somewhere there is another planet just like Earth, with an atom-for-atom duplicate of you and all your friends and surroundings,* or the supposition that the universe is only five days old (it only seems to be much older because when God made it five days ago, He made lots of instant “memory”-laden adults, libraries full of apparently ancient books, mountains full of brand-new fossils, and so forth).
The possibility of a prosthetic brain like Hubert, then, is only a possibility in principle, though less marvelous bits of artificial nervous system may be just around the corner. Various crude artificial TV eyes for the blind are already in existence; some of these send input directly to portions of the visual cortex of the brain, but others avoid such virtuoso surgery by transmitting their information through other external sense organs–such as the tactile receptors in the fingertips or even by an array of tingling points spread across the subject’s forehead, abdomen, or back.
The prospects for such nonsurgical mind extensions are explored in the next selection, a sequel to “Where am I?” by Duke University philosopher David Sanford.
D.C.D.
* As in Hilary Putnam’s famous “Twin Earth” thought experiment. See “Further Reading.”
http://www.cs.umu.se/kurser/TDBC12/HT99/Dennett.html

kung itatanong mo kung gano kita kamahal, sasabihin ko sa’yo tulad ng pagsasama ng lapis at papel na mula sa kawalan ay makakabuo ng napakaraming kabuluhan. ako ang lapis at ikaw ang papel. susulatan kita ng lahat ng aking mga pangarap, mga kwentong masaya at nakakiyak. ngayon,  at kung sakaling magsawa ka na at ayaw mo na akong makasama, wag kang mag-alala, dahan-dahan itutupi kita. upang maging isang eroplanong papel saba paliliarin sa hangin.. at kung malaglag ka sa lupa at walang sinumang pumapansin sa’o dahil hindi ka na sing ganda at tayog noong nasa taas ka pang lumilipad. doon ako darating upang kunin ka at muling ialok ang mundong binuo ko para sa’yo. at ako parin ang lapis na walang sawang susulat sa’yo at magiging kasama mo habambuhay. pag naging totoo na ang bagay na hindi natin inaasahan, saka mo ako tanungin kung gaano kita kamahal, huwag ngayong masaya taung magkasama.

-lais at papel

[excerpt 'to sa isang tulang nakuha ko sa rumm8 ko. very romantic pero hindi baduy. ang sarap basahin db? sarap mag-imagine na sinasabi sau 'to ng taong mahal mo. actually, mahaba pa yan. pinili ko lng ung mga parts na gustong-gusto ko.]

09275980799 - e2 n nga la new no. ko.

i actually don’t know what to write. i just dropped by just to tell the words some few things i’ve learned from the few days i’ve been wandering what the hell i’m doing in this damned world.

first, i’ve proven myself that the only permanent thing is changed–a butterfly effect. you change one thing. you change everything. i hate it when a person close to my heart suddenly decided to turn left.. or maybe right. whatever direction she’s into now. well, i don’t have any problem with that especially if its for the better. what i’m against is that, why so sudden? why does everybody do that to me always? why can’t they tell me that they’re going to leave me or even just tell me they’d had enough of me. so that, i’m not like this.. still waiting for someone. thinking that i have someone to turn to when i’m in need just like before. i miss the old days.

change. if that’s what you like then go ahead. but just don’t hurt those other people who care.

this journal is not  going anywhere. this would only lead to greater wounds. and i’m afraid it wouln’t heal.

just for me to have fun..

hehehe…

Top 2 lines you always get from the opposite sex:
- "’tang’na!"
- "getdemit!"

Top 2 things the opposite sex does that piss you off:
- yumakap khit mabaho ang kili-kili
- ang paghintayin ako ng matagal…

Top 2 physical assets a boy must have:
- gandang height
- gandang ngiti din

Top 2 guy names you find gwapo (handsome):
- jayjay (landi)
- larry (heehee)

Top 2 most recent disturbing comments you got from someone:
- "d k mrunong tumanggap ng puna!"
- "ang dami kong problema, poproblemahin pa ba kita?" [getdemit! fuck u! prang d kita nging kaibigan ahh...]

Top 2 sweetest childhood memories:
- ice cream kapg natulog ako sa tanghali
- eminems at three musketeers!

Top 2 feel-good-nostalgic songs:
- yung commercial sa jam na bagay ba sa akin ang kulot?
- yung naririnig ko palagi sa muy-muy

Top 2 most played songs on your playlist (right now):
- kanta ni tori amos
- anak ng bayan (woooo! pra sa bayan!)

Top 2 weird things you do:
- lahat nman
- ng gnagawa ko weid eh…

Top 2 everyday beauty essentials:
- wala
- natural to boi

Top 2 signs that you’re really mad already:
- d nku ngsasalita
- nireregla

Top 2 names you’d give your future daughter:
- althea
- isabelle (

Future Son:
- lucien
- anything italian hehe

Top 2 names you wish you had:
- kgndhan
(anlabo ahahahaha)

lastly 2 things you ought to do before you die:
- travel abroad {khit mababaw lng}

- mglingkod sa bayan {wooooo!!!}

geddem i’m growing FET beyond belief. hmm…

ang tanga mo tlaga. ikaw na ang pinakatangang tao na nakilala ko. manhid ka na., tanag ka pa.

naiinis ako kasi kung tagna ka.,  ibig sabihin lang na mas tanaga ako.,

kz naging sobrang bait ko sau.,

khit na alam kong ubid ng kapal ng muka mo.,

cguro isang factor lang ung naawa ako sau kia mabait ako.,

pero higit sa lahat nagpakatotoo ako sau.,

wala kaong ginawa sau. malakas ang loob mo kz my mga bagong kaibigan ka na.,

d ako nagtampo na nong mga panahong kailangan kita. saka ka wala. wag mong sasabihin sa akin na hindi ako nagsasabi dahil alam mo un.., ilang beses kong inopen un sau., pero dinedma mo lang., agen, inintindi kita. kz iniisip ko na marami ka ngang problema. at nakakahiya naman sau kung dadagdagan ko pa un.,
wala kang kwenta! gago ka.,

anong acceptance ng pagkakamali ang cnasabi mo?
eh anong tawag mo sa bitterness mo ngaun?

ang kapal tlga ng muka mo!

ako, kayang-kaya kong gwawin ‘yang ginagawa mo., eh ikaw, marunong ka ba ng ginagawa ko., kia mo ba un., d nga kia ng utak mo un eh.,

nakakagago ka., kala mo?!

tangina mo tol.,

tinuring kitang isang matalik na kaibigan.,
kahit na walqa ka nung panahong kailangan kita/
KAHIT DI  mo magawang magcare man lang sa akin.,
okay lang.,

pero
you’ve gone too far.,

ths stupidity is enought.,

you’re not worthy to be my friend!

sayang lang tlaga.

wala kang panahon problemahin ako?

wala na taung pakialaman ngaun.,

tangina mo!

ang tanga mo tlaga. ikaw na ang pinakatangang tao na nakilala ko. manhid ka na., tanag ka pa.

naiinis ako kasi kung tagna ka.,  ibig sabihin lang na mas tanaga ako.,

kz naging sobrang bait ko sau.,

khit na alam kong ubid ng kapal ng muka mo.,

cguro isang factor lang ung naawa ako sau kia mabait ako.,

pero higit sa lahat nagpakatotoo ako sau.,

wala kaong ginawa sau. malakas ang loob mo kz my mga bagong kaibigan ka na.,

d ako nagtampo na nong mga panahong kailangan kita. saka ka wala. wag mong sasabihin sa akin na hindi ako nagsasabi dahil alam mo un.., ilang beses kong inopen un sau., pero dinedma mo lang., agen, inintindi kita. kz iniisip ko na marami ka ngang problema. at nakakahiya naman sau kung dadagdagan ko pa un.,
wala kang kwenta! gago ka.,

anong acceptance ng pagkakamali ang cnasabi mo?
eh anong tawag mo sa bitterness mo ngaun?

ang kapal tlga ng muka mo!

ako, kayang-kaya kong gwawin ‘yang ginagawa mo., eh ikaw, marunong ka ba ng ginagawa ko., kia mo ba un., d nga kia ng utak mo un eh.,

nakakagago ka., kala mo?!

tangina mo tol.,

tinuring kitang isang matalik na kaibigan.,
kahit na walqa ka nung panahong kailangan kita/
KAHIT DI  mo magawang magcare man lang sa akin.,
okay lang.,

pero
you’ve gone too far.,

ths stupidity is enought.,

you’re not worthy to be my friend!

sayang lang tlaga.

wala kang panahon problemahin ako?

wala na taung pakialaman ngaun.,

tangina mo!

para malibang naman ng onti…

10 FIRSTS

first best friend: bunso
first screen name: galunggong?!
first pet name: poocie (hanggang ngayon ampota)
first piercing: sa tenga nung bata pako
first crush: si gio alvarez ata., ANG TV., ewan
first school: baptist christian school?! Daycare center!?! (wakekeke)
first house location: sa mabini bago magbasketbolan.. mwehehe. totoo to!
first kiss: ung kaklase ko nung grade 1., pero nakaw un., !
first car: dream on?!?

9 LASTS

last time you smoked: wala pa
last food you ate: lugaw ni ate sa talipapa sa dulo!
last car ride: 020 mins. ago
last movie you watched: the phone
last phone call: kay kres angela
last CD you listened to: alanis
last song you listened to: don’t dream it’s over
last words you said: nadisconnect ata yung internet…

8 HAVE-YOU-EVERS

dated a best friend: d ko sure kung date un pero parang ganun..
been arrested: nevah!
been on TV: dein. tabla nga showbiz!
eaten sushi: yckie!
cheated on your BF/GF: walang nagaganap!
been on a blind date: la pa. blind dates are for ugly peepel. hahaha!
been out of the country: dein pa rin
been in love: naman men!

7 THINGS YOU ARE WEARING

1. sapatos [mala-chucks]
2. pants
3. snoopy na t-shirt
4. panty na mukhang brief na kulay blue (haha! too much info…)
5. bracelets mula sa mahahalagang tao
6. friendship bra
7. MP3 player

6 THINGS YOU HAVE DONE TODAY

1. gumising
2. kumain
3. pumunta sa clinic [sabi magpaospital daw ako dahil sa mga lecheng surot]
4. umiyak para ke tooooooot!
5. tumawag sa nanay ko
6. ipakita kay nanie ang picture ni jr

5 FAVORITE THINGS

1. internet
2. libro
3. tsinelas
4. gadgets
5. xa xempre!

4 PEOPLE YOU TRUST THE MOST

1. titay
2. pusa
3. kyoe
4. si oisst!

3 THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

1. maging kami?!
2. malibot ang mundo
3. makapagsulat ng nobela

2 CHOICES

vanilla or chocolate: tsokolate por layf
hugs or kisses: both!

1 PERSON YOU WANT TO SEE RIGHT NOW?

kasama ko na eh. bukas siya uli gusto ko makita. luv! heehee

• wala lang akong magawa kia heto ako ngaun.,
  baliw sa hangin!!!
  sa wakas….
  makakalipat na ako ng bahay.,
  grabe kahapon mga pare…
  asar!!!
  hehehe.,
  di naman lahat.,
  kahapon kz nagoL kming mga geekz.,
  tapos sbi ni titay sakin.,..
  huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh
  my bespren n xa sa marawi
  si blessie daw..,
  huhuhuhuhu
  tpos sabi ko saknia
  pano nako?!?
  uhuhuhuhuhuuh!!!!
  pro sabi nia…
  bespren pa rin naman kmi eh.,
  simpre iba prenship nmin..
  weeeeeee!!!!!!!
  happy na ko.,
  miss ko na talga ang gaga na un.,
  greabe!
  kamiss ung mga gitarahan blues nmin.,
  shockies!
  ung warning ng greenday
  sobrang ganda mga pare!!!
  pagkagraduatre nmin.,
  sana lng makagraduate po kmi,..,
  gusto ko magbanda kmi,.
  tpos ung tipong sydlyn ko n lng ung pagtuturo
  ung tipong ung mga estudyante ko
  "oi, ung proff ko grabe astig!"
  "vokalist ng *******"
  sorry ala pa name ung band nmin eh.,

  hehehhehe.,
  wanted drummer!
  jok!

  after nga pala nmin maginternet
  edi gutom na gutom na nga kmi ni karl nun eh
  wala pa kz kming lunch preho.,
  kia lang etong c hadrian nman
  ayaw pa umalis sa computer
  at hinhintay pa na maglogout ang mga lola…

  edi ito na nga…
  nasa KFC na kmi.,
  my gulai.,
  sa pila pa lng., super
  bagal na
  grabe… as in..,
  alam mu un?!?
  ung tipong gutom na gutom ka na tapos ang bagal pa ng counter.,
  edi ximpre okay lng kalmado pa kmi.,
  hindi pa nman ako ganun ka eskandalosa noh…,
  tpos nung makapag order n kmi…
  edi ximpre
  meaga wait nnmn kmi sa pagdating ng order nmin…
  lam nu b?!?
  andun kz kmi nakapwesto sa my window banda.,
  tpos kung titingnan mu ung sa baba.,
  medu okay pa kz medu maliwanag pa.,
  pro i understand nman na maaga talaga lumubog ang sun these days because ber3 n nga
  gulai ng ina mo!
  lumubog na ang araw at lahat.,
  ung drinks nmin., mangangalahati na…
  ung no. nmin., mega nakataas na …
  ung mga katabi nmin natapos na’t lahat-lahat..
  ung mga kwentuhan nmin nagsimula sa maynila, hanggang bulacan, nakarating pa ng boracay.,
  hai naku.,
  pucha!
  wala pa rin!

  xempre un na.,
  hindi na nmin kia.,
  edi pinuntahan na nla karl sa counter.,
  ayun…
  nagising din ang mga lecheng taga KFC
  bago pa binigay ung food nmin

  pasalamat sila gutom talaga kmi at tinanggap ng mga tiyan nmin ang mga chicken stake na un., kia un okay na rin.,
  d ako tulad ni ganun… (sekreto)

  tpos edi lakad kmi.,
  nilibre p nga kmi ni karl ng ice cream
  ang damang nmin ni palz kumain.,
  punta kmi baywalk …
  eh mga tanga tanga kmi…
  kumanan kmi
  dapat pala kaliwa.,
  napunta kmi sa pier!!!!
  leche!
  pago ako
  grabe!!
  mga fats ko., Oh my gulai!
  hehehe
  edi nagtaxi n lng kmi..
  pagdating dun.,
  bakit ang tahimik.,
  alang mga party.,
  si karl nagrereklamo na.,
  my midterm kz xa ngun.,
  eh si palz nman nauuhaw na…
  ako auko na sumali sa gulo ng mga lalake.,
  babae ako

  edi ximpre,.
  nanaig din si karlybog.,
  aun., umuwi na rin kmi.,
  nagtaxi ulit., hinatid nla ako sa bahay.,

  tpos un umuwi na kmi…

  kANINA:

  sa greenwhich..
  kmukain kmi ni nhanie…
  bongacious ang lola mo
  at nag mega try ako nung whacky wings.,
  fifty-three pesos lng nman poh ung meal koh.,
  cheap ako eh!
  edi okay nman…
  sweet chili pa nga ung ketchup ko eh.,
  favorite ko un!
  tpos bigalang my lumapit na babae.,
  matandang babae.,
  mega….
  todo na ito.,
  nung una akala ko nanghihingi na pera.,
  ung itpong abuloy…
  ganun.,
  eh my gulai,.,
  ung wallet ko namn
  nakalagay sa mesa.,
  wala kz akong dalang bag.,
  ung rectangle ba na wallet.,
  un!
  tpos sabi ko
  wla poh akong barya…
  sabi ng babae
  nagugutom na daw kz xa.,,
  hihingiin nia daw ung tira nming pagkain…
  sabi ng kasama ko.,
  eh ate nagugutom na kz kmi.,
  etoh nman akong si maawaing birheng maria…
  naawa nman ako sa matanda.
  pramis naawa talga ako.,
  binigay ko ung food ko.,
  kakasimula ko lng pa nman.,
  d nmn talga ako gutom nung tym na un kz kumain kmi ng burger sa skul,.,
  binigay ko na lng.,,
  baka isipin ng mga tao ang plastik ko.,
  pro pramis kung kau ung nasa kalagayan ko…
  ibibigay nju n lng rin ung food nu.,
  kia heto ako ngaun.,
  nag-iinternet n lng.,
  waheheh!!!!!
  wala lang
  wala talaga akong kwenta magkwento noh.,.

  ano ang kaisipang napulot nu?!?
  "arceo kaw b yan?!?"

  hehehe

  luv u ol ang i miss u!

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1.gege
2. giegie o kia palangga (pagnilalambing ako ng pamilya ko)
3. pigiegie, gege, ela (mamili ka na lng kung san jan., pra yan sa mga frenz)

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1. gusto_ko_ng_banda / ako2atwlangiba (un eh!)
2. alena (kalokohang pangkolehiyo)
3. rockprincess (rokista toh ulol)

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. my hair (shampoo lang yan!)
2. my smile (ewan. ayus daw eh)
3. my hands (at hinde retokado yan! mga ulupong!)

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1. my legs (onting haba na lang)
2. my tummy (yes dear i agree… dati lapat to eh. must… stop… beer)
3. my arms (ang laki eh)

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
1. Filipino
2. Mexican (DAW!!!)
3. Spanish (sa apelyido na lang siguro)

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1. lizards! at malalaking butiki.maextinct na kayo mga leche.
2. mumu.para kz akong tanga., natatakot.

3. tsa failures., nakakadepress kia., try mo… (bwiset!)

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1. pera!
2. chibog
3. cell phone., pantxt sa mga prenships

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1. pants

2. shirt

3. shoes (whoa! bago yan!)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS OR MUSICAL ARTISTS:
1. alanis morissette (obvious ba?!)
2. e-heads (ung luma ahh)
3. bamboo (mahilig ako sa kawayan, etnik eh)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS:
1. everything by lifehouse
2. ironic
3. lonely day

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP:
1. matinding katrip hahahaha
2. laughter
3. trust

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE (in no particular order):
1. i love myself

2. i want to be free

3. i’m not bitter anymore

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE PREFERRED SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1. yung tindig nila. (diba camoi?)
2. macho (robin padilla style. yun lang pwede)
3. may utak sana.SANA!

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. reading
2. writing
3. kumalikot ng gadgets (parang slumbook answers amputa)

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1. smoke

2. eat

3. tas tulog uli haha

THREE CAREERS YOU’RE CONSIDERING/YOU’VE CONSIDERED:
1. computer engineer (tagal nato)
2. writer (suntok sa buwan mga kapatid pero sana…)
3. full time bum

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1. anywhere in europe (tas tren na lang kahit san)
2. california
3. palawan. hehe (sama ka saken  pag umuwi ako hehe)

THREE KID’S NAMES YOU LIKE:

Boys:
1. wayne
2. elson ximpre (godfather hits nga eh!)
3. larry  (ginobili’s mah meyn)

Girls:
1. lana (wla lng, pretty nman xa db?!)

2. puta wala

3. ako maisip. yoko ng babae

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1. be published one way or another
2. NGO para sa karapatan ng mga artist dito sa pilipinas
3. travel and try all the drinks na anjan

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A BOY:
1. mahlig akong tumingin sa hot girls (ako rin haha!)
2. sk8 boards, n punk musix… hilig ko rin yan
3. green jokes. patok to lagi

THREE WAYS THAT YOU ARE STEREOTYPICALLY A GIRL:
1. haba ng hair ko eh
2. hilig sa bag (weakness ko toh minsan kia nga reklamo si susan)
3. hilig sa pagpapacute

THREE CELEB CRUSHES:
1. ryan agoncillo (haaay) –> totoo to
2. ira cruz –> eto din kahit anong sabihin nila
3. francis mañalac(mwehehe)

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mga taong taft na masasaya!

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GOD

IF SOMEONE HAD A GUN HELD IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE AND ASKED YOU IF YOU BELIEVED IN GOD, WHAT WOULD YOU DO? SAY NO AND FEEL ASHAMED THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? OR SAY YES, I DO, AND DIE STANDING UP FOR GOD? IF YOU WOULD SAY YES, AND STAND UP FOR JESUS CHRIST, PLEASE READ.

Note: This is a true article that was printed in a southern newspaper less than a year ago

TAKE A DEEP BREATH BEFORE READING THIS

There was an atheist couple who had a child. The couple never told their daughter anything about the Lord. One night when the little girl was 5 years old, the parents fought with each other and the Dad shot the Mom, right in front of the child. Then, the dad shot himself! The little girl watched it all. She then was sent to a foster home. The foster mother was a Christian and took the child to church. On the first day of Sunday School, the foster mother told the teacher that the girl had never heard of Jesus, and to have patience with her. The teacher held up a picture of Jesus and said, "Does anyone know who this is?" The little girl said, "I do, that’s the man who was holding me the night my parents died."

If you believe this little girl is telling the truth that even though she had never heard of Jesus, he still held her the night her parents died.

Funny, isn’t it?

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says. (Or is it scary?)

Funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God).

Funny how you can send a thousand ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Funny how someone can be so fired up for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week. (Are you laughing?)

Funny how when you go to forward this message,you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them.

Funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me. (Are you thinking?)

Pass this on only if you mean it.

Yes, I do Love God