FULL DISCLOSURE---“Much Ado About Nothing”

I am not doing this because I am being made to do so at gunpoint. I am not compelled whatsoever to do this by anything except that I am intending to do this anyway in the near future, although it wasn’t in my mind before that this disclosure would have come so much sooner than I expected.

Just a month ago, Decrepit Old Fool had make a disclosure that he was in fact one of the contributors in the much-read site “The Zen Diaries” and was I glad for that disclosure? I felt just okay and thought much ado about nothing.

But this disclosure may leave a bad taste in the mouth of some, but I guess that may be inevitable.

When I started this web log----Where Now Is The Citizen On Mars?---I had conceptualized it as a political avatar with of course the attendant expression of my own socio-political opinions and see how readers react to it. As it progresses along, it was turning into a vibrant forum for the opinion of others instead of being absolutely the portal for my own worldviews. This progress is not entirely a bad thing to me. Moderating a forum may just be one way for me to help other bloggers express their own personal opinions of the world. In this light, I had even created segments like “The Blog Review” and “What Other Bloggers Are Fretting About” just in order to help ventilate the thoughts and meanderings of my fellow bloggers.

There is another thing to the conceptualization of this blog. I had patterned it to the very famous web log titled “Where’s Raed?” whose author writes in the screen name, Salam Pax. There is so much mystery in the person of Salam Pax and everyone reading this Iraq war-themed site had been asking all along who Salam Pax was and some even thought she was one American petite woman. I do not still have an inkling who Salam Pax is until now. Maybe someone could help me find out.

So I said, if a foreigner could make this kind of blog, and be world famous, I wondered if a Filipino like me could also do that? Do we have double standards here? I don’t believe so. If others can create this sort of thing, why can’t a Filipino like me do likewise? If you surf through the international blogscene, in America most especially, you can find a dime a dozen site that has mysterious authorship and still it thrives although most of these sites, upon public demand make some sort of public disclosure of their true authorship and some don’t even bother despite the urgings of many of its readers to disclose and yet, they continue to be patronized.

Now did I fool anyone? Did I intend in any way to maliciously mislead my readers? I do not think so. If you were my constant reader, my writings here are all temperate, rational and logical that I did not in anyway have posting that would create confusion and bewilderment. Now of course, you might say I have fooled you on my true identity. But as I explained earlier, that was screen names that I used---Major Tom or Thomas Rivera---just like Salam Pax. In the local blog scene, one of my most favorite blogger is XP, the operator of the highly-acclaimed blog EXPECTORANTS!!!. If you check this site, it has no personal profile to view and there is nothing there whatsoever to lead you to know more about the true identity of XP, although XP says that many had already known his true identity. But a newbie like me has no idea whatsoever. But I did not mind this and I continue to read Expectorants!!!---I guess that’s the prerogative of XP if she do not want his true identity known, I mean, caveat emptor---or buyers’ beware.

In fact, despite the screen name or my use of a secret identity, I have really intended to tell my real identity anyway later this year, like in June, and if many would have asked for it. But I have to tell these things to you now my fellow bloggers and I think it is just about the right time.

My real name is Y.B. Masdal. I am 32-years old residing in Zamboanga although I have been in Manila lately so that explained my previous area of consignation. I have four kids and I am Christian by conversion, upon a recent spiritual awakening. My other blogsite is known as “The Daily Prophet”, it is my personal web log.

Now you might be wondering why at times, The Daily Prophet comes here and comment? That may lead you to laugh or be aghast at me. A stalker of mine says it was perversion. The explanation is like this. It was exactly because of this stalker of mine named Lieutenant Dick that I made those comments in the name of The Daily Prophet, so that she would be a little taken out of sort if Major Tom was really The Daily Prophet, I did not want her to know of course, because exactly, she is my stalker even from the beginning. My comments here as The Daily Prophet was a desperate attempt to hide my true identity when I felt that Lt. Dick was starting to realize that Major Tom is The Daily Prophet himself. Lt. Dick is smart and by the way she is a female blogger that is so well known in the blogscene. We all know her and she hides sometimes as Lt. Dick, a screen name she invented just for me. You know, I felt special somehow that despite of her being such a well-known blogger, she had went down to such low level just in order to harass me. Whoah! Am I that special?

And besides, one of the blogs I frequent is the famous blog of Batjay and Mr. Nicanor David has created there some personas that interact with each other like THE GENTLE READER and PINSAN NI BATJAY and we all like that ven though we have an inkling that all along, it was Batjay that was making them interact with each other. It’s like an artistic expression and it works so well.

For propriety reason, I would not tell you who Lt. Dick really is but I have ample evidence of who she is. If you go to her new blogsite Where Now Is The Citizen On Neptune?, a spoof of Where Is Now The Citizen On Mars?, you wouldn’t miss knowing her true identity because the manner she write there is so eerily familiar. You would know immediately who she is, with all that fuzz about bloggers being plagiarists and having screen names and pseudonyms that you thought she own the blogosphere that she don’t want any blogger to use screen names. If Jose Rizal were a blogger now, she would even point him to the Spaniards because Jose Rizal has pseudonyms. She hates that. I don’t know why she thinks that I have used a screen name to deceive people when I did not in anyway did that. Oh, this one you should know. In one of the more famous blog here where I use to comment, my screen name Daily Prophet was misused by some “unscrupulous” manipulator that it was shown that the Daily Prophet had commented something when in fact I didn’t. I did not point out already the misuse there in order the issue to die down. But if she continues to misuse my screen names, hers would be misused too. You could tell that it was not I because my tone is usually respectful. If ever from now on you could see some comments in other blogs in the name of Major Tom or The Daily Prophet and its nasty, just disregard them because most probably, Lt. Dick is behind it.

Now I do not feel right apologizing but I will apologize just the same to you who might have felt something bad. Major Tom is just a screen name as well as Thomas Rivera and let’s admit it, in the blogscene, screen names are all abound. I am Y.B. Masdal.

In truth, I have great esteem and respect for my readers and many of you must have felt how I speak to you with enough candor and respect. I made sure that I help them get exposure and when they comment in this site, I make sure that I return their comments and visit their blogs and react also to their views and opinions, unlike other forum moderators who does not respect her readers by giving a visit and making comments to their blogs, even just a simple encouragement would have been enough. I am not like that and I make sure that my readers have the same attention. I have no prejudice and discriminate in favor of more famous blogs only. For me every blog is equally important in their own right and unique by its own. This Lieutenant Dick says in her blog that some sites are “plain gibberish and immaturity talks.” I mean, being gibberish and immature is not a crime and if a writer wants to be that way, that’s his or her own freedom of expression. Apparently, Lt. Dick is not only self-appointed blog censor, but she is also a self-styled dictator. You think she owns the local blogworld? I think we do not need censorship here and Lt. Dick must be brought down for interfering in the personal rights of other bloggers. And if she is brave enough, she should also make some disclosure like I did. I am sure she won’t and her name is not Roderick Ramos because Lt. Dick is a woman. If some Roderick Ramos actually appears, that’s always possible and can easily be done but I doubt it because we do not know anything about a certain Roderick Ramos in the blog scene and how come “he” knows many things about blogging. But as a Christian, let’s us just forgive her and ignore her disturbed soul. She’s a catholic-hater by the way and we just hope and pray that Satan can give her a colder room in hell when Judgment Day comes. But if she won’t let up, then I won’t let up also because I have top defend my self, my blogsites, and my life for that matter. Stalkers tend to be psychotic and God knows what they can do.

I will continue to use Major Tom despite you knowing that I am Y.B. Masdal in reality. My other blog The Daily Prophet, is entirely different from this forum site because it’s more personal and I want to make some healthy separation between Mars and The Daily Prophet site. I have other blogs and you can reach them by just checking the links in The Daily Prophet.

This disclosure is a little risky for me since many of you might shun me from now on but I assure you that I will go on even if I only have one reader a day because a reader is worth writing for like most of you guys here, you know who you are and I feel so blessed that my readers here are all intelligent, witty, rationale and smart souls who all have smart sites. If you check out all these people, you’d be so surprised how good they are although most of them are newbies like me. I hope you all stay guys. If you all have questions about me, feel free to ask.