It is with great pleasure that I present to you the second feature in the Bad Design series: Tuloy Pnoy.

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t about Noynoy^[1]—this tirade is about whoever^[2] designed this website. Designers are hired for their creativity and thoughtfulness—the person who designed this website seems to have neither.

I’d write more, but I have an exam for which to study. So I’ll leave a list:

1. The marquee on the top-right of the page. That is so 1995.
2. The home button on the menu is the exact image taken from barackobama.com
3. I was under the impression that Noynoy’s campaign color was yellow. So why there more blue than yellow? Oh, wait. I forgot. It was ripped off from barackobama.com.
4. See the form on the right side of the page? The country default is “United States”. It should be “Philippines”.
5. What is that in the footer? A call center company? Why? Why not Powered by HOPE? If you were to copy from Obama’s site, it should be that.
6. Did I mention the logo?
7. This makes Noynoy look bad.

I pity the fool who designed tuloypnoy.com. Ugly websites, I can tolerate. Shameless copycats, I cannot. You are an embarrassment to the filipino design community and I encourage you to give up this job (which is obviously too big for you), and take knitting instead.

***
[1] For those of you who are unfamiliar with Philippine politics, Noynoy is the son of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino and Corazon “Cory” Aquino. The former is a national hero (he was assassinated) and the man on the 500 peso bill, while the latter succeeded Marcos after he was ousted by the monumental People Power rally on highway 54, known today as EDSA.

[2] Apparently, this is a “fan”-made website, and isn’t the official campaign website of Noynoy. The fact remains, however, that whoever designed this committed a very dishonorable act. The original text of my error is as follows:

“While I have nothing against Noynoy, I must say that he must reconsider his choice of publicity personnel. Designers are hired for their creativity and thoughtfulness. The person who designed this website has neither.”

Thanks to mlq3 for the correction.

-A Quote from Some Reproduced Essay, from Some Random Grade School Textbook Whose Name I Cannot Be Bothered to Even Try to Remember (Though I Can Guarantee That It’s Reproduced Here Relatively Accurately)

I apologize for the somewhat vague and extremely lengthy quote source. See, that bit of brilliant child-propaganda has been stuck in my head since I first read it in bad old Xavier Grade School way back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.

Every time I think of that 32-word sack of shit, I get pissed off. Severely.

The first time around, I was pissed because, well, come on man, this school book was attempting to talk shit about two of the greatest heroes of my young life. The Dark Knight and the Ultraelectromagnetic Machine were not characters you wanted to mess with, if you wanted to stay on the good side of Mr. Kenneth G. Yu, Professional Grade School Smartass.

I knew who Darna, Lastikman and Captain Barbell were, but I didn’t really care. All I knew was that some arse was trying to use them to one-up the two fictional beings I worshipped more than GOD, all in the name of trying teach kids to be nationalistic.

Today, I am still a proud Batman fan, and an extremely unapologetic Voltes V fan. (Back when I was a kid, I nearly kicked some other kid’s ass because he reviewed Voltes V, and claimed it was “shallow, and derivative.” If any of you try to tell me the same today? It will no longer be “nearly.” Trust me. I. Will. Kick. Your. Ass.)

But when I come back to thinking about that quote, I get pissed for a different reason. I understand, now, that the essay itself was just some sad, lame textbook writer trying to call attention to his crass attempt to trick children into loving the sariling atin, by putting down two famous foreign characters.

Normally, I can forgive that. Folks gotta eat, y’know? Sure, this poor dude was making his money by selling crappy arguments to parents who couldn’t say “no,” and children who didn’t know any better, but what the hell, right? I prefer to leave the creation of anti-shitty-schoolbook-tirades  to the true textbook crusaders.

The more I think about it, though, the more that quote bothers me. See, it’s in the logic of the thing.

First of all, what exactly is wrong about enjoying a character that does not have origins in your native culture? Good fictional characters are effective, in part, because of their ability to tell stories that are universally appealing; hating a foreign character that has thus ingrained itself in your country’s consciousness just because he’s so effective is nothing but straight-up jealousy.

If it’s such a sin to love hearing stories about Batman, just because your own country didn’t cook him up, then I’m afraid that many, many people around the world are guilty as all hell, and have concretized their guilt in the squadrillions of dollars spent on the character over the years. I would argue, in fact, that both the Batman character and the stories written around him have a number of aspects that are extremely resonant with the Philippine culture and condition. (These include the fight against societal corruption, and the triumph of the oppressed but cunning underdog, but I’ll probably save further discussion on this for another day.)

Voltes V is an even more interesting matter. In his case, I’d argue that Voltes V has become more of a Philippine idea than a Japanese one. The Voltes V episodes that Filipinos grew up with was redubbed into English and our native language, from the original Japanese. When we hear the characters of the story speak in our head, we hear them speak in either Filipino, or English. When we refer to the humanoid characters by name, we say the Filipinized “Steve, Big Bert, Little John, Mark and Jamie,” and not the original “Kenichi, Daijiro, Hiyoshi, Ippei, and Megumi.” We love the story because it talks to us about our freedom, our fight against invasion and oppression.

We love the story even though the Japanese don’t. Funnily enough, the Philippines is one of the only places where Voltes V is still remembered in the popular consciousness. In Japan, he’s long-forgotten, buried under a bajillion metric tons other of giant-robots-beating-the-metal-crap-out-of-one-another. The only thing non-Filipino about the character, in my mind, is where he was originally thought up. The rest is pretty much ours.

But the real killer comes in the second sentence of the quote, when Sir Shitty-Textbook-Writer starts name-dropping Darna, Lastikman and Captain Barbell. These are his arguments for the sariling atin. By his logic, these characters are what we should be reading about, instead of badasses like Batman and Voltes V.

This is highly, and I say, even painfully counterintuitive.

Let’s start with the least painful. Darna is, quite obviously, is a Filipino Wonder Woman pastiche. You have the flowing black hair, the star motif, the golden headdress, and the impractically skimpy costume. You also have the powers of flight, super-strength, speed, and relative invulnerability. Some would even argue that you have the vaguely fetish/bondage overtones, what with both Wonder Woman and Darna getting tied up by villains in so many of their stories (the difference, of course, is that Wonder Woman grew out of this somewhat; if modern Darna covers are to be believed, Darna has grown into this, and not the other way around). But I say that Darna is pastiche and not shameless freaking rip-off because at least some of the character mechanics are different. For one thing, there’s that weird stone she has to swallow. For another, there’s the lack of background in Greek mythology, replaced by vaguely Superman-like references to aliens and other such fluff. For another, Darna seems to have none of the heavy-handed feminist message written into the original Wonder Woman character.

So, OK, maybe Darna is not so bad. Maybe Darna, we can let slide.

The other two, however, are a different story.

So, Lastikman. Here, I do certainly call shameless freaking ripoff. In fact, had the internet existed at the time of Lastikman’s creation, Mars Ravelo may very well have been slapped with a rather large copyright infringement case by our friends over at DC. If they actually managed to give enough of a damn, anyway.

Dude, seriously. Lastikman. Add a P. Change the “k” to a “c”.

OH HAI there American-made DC comics hero who also happens to have stretchy powers, goggles, and an annoyingly comedic attitude. To explain further would be to risk having this post degenerate into a messy, useless litany of expletives, so I’ll just stop right here. And move on to the next sad motherfucker on the list.

Captain Barbell. He’s a small, thin lampayatot dude who lifts a magic barbell, which turns him into a half-naked, circus performer-lookin’ dude with super-strength, flight and invulnerability. He also needs to hold on to the barbell while superheroing apparently.

Now, concept-wise, Captain Barbell is a little harder to trace to the original American hero he was mercilessly ripped off from. Super-strength, flight and invulnerability started, of course, with the original superhero, Superman. Since then, however, nearly everyone and his dog gets to have some level of strength, flight and invulnerability, as long as they exist in a superhero comic. Most heroes in such world presumably wish that they don’t get strength, flight and invulnerability when they jump into that stewing vat of chemicals, or take that weird green-glowy serum, or irradiate a pet so that they can have it bite them, if only to avoid inevitable comparisons to the Big Blue Boy Scout. So, our half-naked “sariling atin” hero gets off free on that count.

The need to use a magical artifact to transform, and to hold on to that artifact nearly constantly, as both power-source and weapon may draw comparisons to the Marvel character Thor, but I’m not sure that this is intentional.

No, this is what I’m relatively sure is intentional: let’s play the letter-switchy game again.

Captain Barbell. Change the first “B” to an M. Change the second “b” to a v. Drop the last “l.”

For those of you who are not familiar with the character, he’s the DC character who wears red and yellow, smiles a lot, and yells SHAZAM! to transform.

“Transform from what?,” you ask, expecting the worst.

From a small, scrawny, little kid.

At least this Captain Marvel doesn’t fight crime bare-chested.

Does the transition from “Marvel” to “Barbell” sound like it’s gone beyond shameless ripoff, and directly into shamelessly weak parody? The name “Captain Barbell” belongs in an issue of Mad Magazine, not in a children’s textbook.

Now, I almost want to apologize to Mars Ravelo. I, of course, don’t know the guy, but I’m sure he was just a normal dude, trying to make something that Filipinos could enjoy when he came up with the three characters discussed here. And, to be fair, I’ll say that, sure, he made people happy. He told them stories they liked. He tried to teach kids that we need heroes, and that everyone needs to break out and just kick some bad-guy ass once in a while. Fair enough.

But who I really wanna tear apart here is Sir Shitty-Textbook.

“Children shouldn’t love what is made by other countries. Children should love Philippine-made things. Even if said Philippine-made things are actually shameless copies of things made by other countries. This is the way to become nationalistic.”

That is the kind of back-asswards logic you are trucking.

That is the kind of blatant, unforgivable bullshit you are feeding to our children.

Some of you may know that I generally do not watch TV. When I do, it’s usually when I pass by the living room while either one or both of my parents are watching. It just so happened that they were watching the Miss Universe beauty pageant the other day. It unsettled me.

The day after, while listening to the radio over breakfast wherein Chico and Delamar talked about Miss Universe, I decided that I didn’t like how pageants went about.

Apparently, for the Q&A portion of the pageant, the contestants are given all twenty questions beforehand. The “challenge” then, is that nobody knows which of the twenty questions will actually be asked. Supposedly, this is to give emphasis on the confidence aspect of beauty pageants.

This made me furrow my eyebrows to the point that for a brief moment I must have resembled a bulldog.

Why do people give such a premium on confidence? Confidence is only a good thing when it’s backed up by skill and ability. Otherwise, it’s just overconfidence.

When I heard some of the models’ answers to the questions given by the judges, I heard mechanical answers—memorized and plastic. And then there were the other models who simply gave red herrings^[1]. But hey, they all answered with confidence and their frozen smiles, so no problem right?

What many people see as harmless fun seems to me a social detriment. I have no problem with “carrying yourself with grace”, nor do I have a problem with beauty. What unsettles me is the lack of attention to other things like intelligence^[2] (though I’m willing to let that slide) and more importantly, sincerity.

These contestants—and to a much broader extent, the contest itself—are highly influential to the youth. They affect the values that our youth have and, in turn, the values of the society they will create.

Beauty pageants are contests that judge beauty. It would be foolish and asinine of me to say that the physical beauty aspect of these contests should not be considered—but I think it’s perfectly sensible to say that the other aspects of beauty should.

[1] Senseless speech used to divert attention from the inability to answer the question.
[2] wrong message. token importance on intelligence

On the way to the university, I fell in and out of sleep, and finally decided to stay awake at the last major stoplight before entering university property. We had stopped because the light turned orange right before we could drive through the pedestrian lane, and Richard felt it prudent not to rush given the weather.

A few minutes after we stopped, I noticed a young girl about the age of ten or eleven run from the sidewalk to the car. It was no ordinary street urchin. It was a street urchin with a bucket^[1]. Richard started to frantically knock^[2] on the door’s windows to ward her off, but it was ineffectual: this one was particularly desperate. As soon as she reached the car, she let out a grimy rag with soap and started wiping at the windows. By this time Richard was already getting visibly upset^[3], telling her loudly to stop, and knocking even louder.

And then she covered the front windshield with soap.

And then, she took her bucket full of tea-colored water and started rinsing the car.

With her job done, she walked to the driver-side window and held out a hand. When Richard politely refused, she started knocking on the window with a ringed finger. When Richard started raising his voice, she began shouting at him and cursing. Convinced that she could not get any money from him, she dipped her rag into the bucket and ran the rag along Richard’s window and ran away^[4].

After that, the stoplight turned green, and we went on our way.

As we neared the university, we saw a whole section of the road submerged in water that suspiciously had the same color as the water in the girl’s bucket. Bad morning indeed.

[1] Street urchins during rainy days are far more dangerous and cocky than during sunny days. This is because of their almighty buckets, which grant them the power to block a driver’s windshield with dirt and then rinse it with dirt. And if the driver doesn’t pay up, well… there’s more where the dirt came from.

[2] Knocking is an unspoken rule between motorists and urchins. It means “no, you aren’t getting money from me, so move along.”

[3] Would you like it if someone washed your windows/windshields with dirty soapy water?

[4] Okay, I am aware that street urchins are urchins because they don’t have money/family/love/candy so they do what they do to get by. But see, what they don’t get (and I really really sincerely wish they did) is that when you’re asking another person to take pity on you, the best way to do that is to not piss them off. And the best way to earn anybody’s ill will is to try to pull extortion on them.

But that’s not the point of this post. If you would scroll down, you might see a little guy named Carl being a bit of a troll, declaring it a “complete toss..!” and “all that glitters isnt gold”^[1] . Normally I wouldn’t really care about trolls, but I noticed the guy had a name-url, so I clicked it. As soon as the page loaded, I was flooded with a mix of emotions and reactions and it took me quite a while to parse it. Should I scoff? Should I laugh? Should I wince? Seriously? You give unconstructive criticism on a design issue and you give me this? Canidesign.com? Can/i/design?

No sir, you cannot.

While not as atrocious as other websites out there, the sheer gall of this guy’s reactions coupled with the pretentiousness of this site causes me to react. That is, to start an entire category based on bad design^[2]. And this guy has the distinction of being the first awardee. Kudos, mate.

»canidesign.com

[1] Complete logic fail. “all that glitters isnt gold”? When you want to use an idiom, make sure you use it right. When you try to modify an idiom for your purposes, make sure you don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

[2] From this point forward, I will post objectionably designed websites, objects and printed material because I am mean. Non-pretentious subjects gain immunity. (i.e. people who don’t go about marketing themselves as some sort of design competition resource, and at the same time demonstrating that they will unequivocally lose whatever design competitions they organize.)

To SVA: Guys, when you write a textbook with exercises, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are if the problems make no grammatical sense. Please, review problem 4.39, and if you can’t find any logical/grammatical error, go back to high school and relearn english.