Do you remember the impertinent email featuring a fetus-munching Oriental oddity which circulated the web community sometime in 2001?

I was a terribly neurotic medicated mess the time this godforsaken 'urban legend-posing-as-reality' bull was hot.

A college friend forwarded me the dang email one dog day afternoon. I fumed and my spleen shot up my one nostril that I emailed her back a very sarcastic and contrary 'Nice one'.

I have a problem with obsession-compulsion so on the third day of brewing over it, I did a series of research.

I learned that the photographs of an alleged Oriental man munching on a barbecued fetus were actually created by a Chinese surrealist named Zhu Yu.

Zu Yhu exhibited these photographs in some underground art show after the Shanghai 2001 Bienniale curators slapped the rejection papers to his schizo face believing that such an art is too controversial (what is plain controversial and too controversial, anyway?)

The very controversial piece is entitled, Eating People (literally, mind you) and Zhu Yu stressed, perhaps to only shove himself down further the cuckoo hole, that he stole the fetuses from a medical school and actually feasted on them for "art's sake".

Cute.

Alarmed by Zhu Yu's supposed cannibalism, Scotland Yard and the FBI conducted an investigation (of course, the superhero-compex stricken FBI of America must always be involved or we could all plunge to hell hole). Know-it-alls later argued that Zhu Yu could have easily constructed his 'fetuses' from doll parts and animal carcasses and fooled half the world into imagining that the whole baloney is actually authentic.

My personal conclusion is, Zhu Yu must have seen too much of the Twighlight Zone or he probably was going through his formative years when the Jeffrey Dahmer trial was on BBC every night.

Or perhaps he is just one of them artistes--profound and misunderstood beings from the planet of blah.

Coffee shops in Manila have been turning up like frog stools and spreading throughout the metropolis faster than one can say 'coffee in a copper coffee cup'.

In this cause, I asked a friend, "Is there a growing number of intellectuals in the Philippines?". He asked me why and I responded, "Because of the coffee shops that have been popping out everywhere lately."

Case in point: In The Block, North Avenue, there is a row of coffee shops located by the Hypermart. These coffee shops are Seattle's Best, UCC Japanese Coffee and Go Nuts. Technically, Go Nuts is a doughnut shop. However, the 'intellectuals' come there to lounge and dip their glazed diabetes doughs in capuccino and read the day's paper over cups of overpriced Nescafe.

Fine. People go gaga over coffee shops because of the ambiance. They like tapping fingers to the beat of Milton Banana Bossa Nova. Perhaps some find caffeine intoxication calming. Whatever and ever amen.

I was at Starbucks with Zoo three Saturdays ago. I insisted on having an in-the-house tap water served in Starbucks' little posh paper cup and Zoo had espresso. I observed the twenty somethings and the Brent co-eds in their faux Pradas. I expected to hear a bull session on Plath's obsession over death and rebirth or at least the connection of existentialism with Spear Britney's recent well-publicized emotional breakdown.

Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zippo.

Instead, the suckers for the Starbucks corporate whore coffee were discussing their recent one night rendevouz with some stewed boozehound while the popularly supposed upwordly mobile twenty somethings were updating each other on missed Princess Hours episodes.

Yawn.

Let us face it, label whores: The Republic of the P.I. is facing severe economic crisis. Starbucks is nothing but a slap of mockery to this economically-challenged little nation.

Sure Starbucks serves delicious coffee made from the best godforsaken coffee beans harvested from some faraway Brazilian coffee farm. Sure Seattle's Best employs people with toothpaste commercial grin just so you won't lose a lunch. Blah blah. But do you really have to shell out so much for a caffeine fix?

All right, some would argue "I have the money to satisfy a Starbucks craving." Sure. Here's a Marie Antoinette button you can wear around town.

Maybe I am just being the bitter anti-positive that I have always been.

I am bad.

The Benildean Press Corps (an organization of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde's campus journalists where I work as Editor-in-Chief) launched BLiP (Benildean Lifestyle and People magazine), the corporate issue.

I authored BLiP's book review for this year's release:

[click on the image to read the review]