The crab.

It's much easier to stay silent, and sit by yourself in the imagined cubicle you erected - walls impenetrable by people who don't like to be dealt with.

When we were young, and unsure of ourselves, we preferred to remain quiet during recess at school and on class hours, we acted prim and proper and listened to our elementary school teachers with ears and eyes wide opened. We never bullied anyone, even if "slum boys" pestered our girl school mates.

But as we grew older and saw  the real world for what it was, we couldn't help but stand up noisily for that was what was required to be heard and seen.

Especially for small or short people, being heard is a hard task. With big and tall people, being heard is even harder if the meat of the message is a dung.

Politicians in the Philippines, a lot of times, don't need height nor weight to be heard, seen or get elected. They simply need to have the right network of manipulators and vote buyers. Sad but true.

In ordinary people's lives, there are manipulators, instigators, and provocateurs working behind the scenes. They are the destroyers of dreams, visions, projects and lives.

They act vile because they want to get the credit for your work, they have been paid to do the dirty job, envy you and your family, or they are just simply mean and evil ( like rude drivers who drive you crazy, thieves, hold uppers, car jackers, rapists, those with crab mentality,  and pork barrel scammers).

But in simple, community environs where proper decorum and etiquette are still required, there are still scums who ignore "hellos and hi's" and smiles and small talk as if wealth is the only yard stick for returning the greeting and the warmth.

Pets, especially dogs are man's best friend, indeed. They may have the brain of a pea, but they respond warmly to man's simple gestures of care.

Private View

Private view (ing) is defined by MS Encarta as " preview of a film or an exhibition that is only open to invited guests."

In today's very global and very public communication arena, men and women, private and public personages and corporations have to contend with the issue of privacy. In hundreds and thousand cases, the floodgates to people's privacy had been forced open.

To avoid costly lawsuits, especially from among the "sue-loving" North Americans, social networking sites try to enforce "rules of the game" and etiquette. This includes verifying whether one has permission to post a picture of another individual; a lot of times, it happens when putting up group pictures, say, of weddings, outings, or big events.

Tons and tons of websites and blogs contain countless photographs which are easily downloadable by any one. Camera cellphones simply snap people and places without the permission of the one being photographed. And then, there's the innocent capturing of tourists into one's camera or video, when you just want to film a landmark. Take the Eiffel Tower - you can't seem to find a view or angle of it without heads and bodies bobbing up and down your camera; or maybe, try to snap a photo inside any Greenbelt, and you'd know what I mean.

Which brings me to my point: Edit.

In one episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond," Ray suggested editing the wedding video of brother Robert and sis-in-law Amy, in order to splice the scene where mother Marie tried to stop the wedding.

Edit. Yes. Books, magazines and films get to be edited before publication and showing.

This same technique should be applied to websites and blogs. The author must be vigilant to preserve the privacy of others. Just recently, for instance, I had to edit a picture which I posted in this blog. It (Statue of the Navigators, Lisbon) prominently showed people in the background - people I did'nt even know; they were "accidental tourists" in my photos. So, right away, I pulled the picture and cropped out the "tourists" fast, lest I be questioned or be held liable for it. The beauty of blogs, you can edit even after you published a post.

In one organization, where I worked a couple of years ago, we even had to ask students and clients for a "release form," before publishing their photos in the website, annual report or the newsletter. Some people won't sign; they just want private viewing of their images.