How do you solve a problem like Kris? Here's a literary solution . . .

*****This blogpost is not meant for those who are continually enamored with and fascinated by the public persona of Kris Aquino*****

This blogpost was spurred by the post the last word on kris aquino written by Ian Casocot in his blog (http://eatingthesun.blogspot.com/).

While reading Ian's boycott measure, I was immediately reminded by the anticlimactic confrontation of Merlin and Fairy Queen Mab in the TV movie Merlin (shown on Hallmark Channel).

After using their magic powers during their last confrontation between Sam Neill (in the title role) and Fairy Queen Mab (Miranda Richardson):

Mab: What are you planning to do? Use your puny sword?

Merlin: I'm not. I'm just going to FORGET you. (Turns to leave with the rest of the humans)

Mab: Merlin? What are you doing?

Merlin: (Glances back at her) You can't fight us or frighten us. We forget you Queen Mab. You'll join your sister in the lake and be gone.

Mab: LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! (Calls after former minions joining the leaving humans.)

Mab: Don't forget me Merlin! I . . . love you as a son! MERLIN! MERLIN! (Starts to disappear, to become invisible as Merlin and the rest leave her castle)

Merlin: (Voice-over of his older self narrating in the whole film) I had won. I was trying to smile, but it was a smile of desolation. Inside I felt only the pity and the terror and the waste of it all. Everyone I had ever loved, and who ever loved me - all gone . . . all gone down . . .

It has been said and written about that anything supernatural/paranormal only happens to those who who believe in it. That's why "unbelievers" debunk it as "just a dream, a fragment of one's imagination." Fairy Queen Mab slowly disappeared when Merlin and the humans walked away from her presence in firm resolve not to LOOK at her and eventually to FORGET her.

In counterpoint to Ian's boycott measure, I propose preliminary, simpler, more commonsense measures just as Merlin and the humans did:

• switch channels or just turn off the TV every time Kris appears on it. TV viewers have to remember that they have this POWER.
• if you see "that woman" in the pages of the newspaper/magazine you're reading, flip to another page or article. If she's in the cover, tear it off, ball it up and throw it at the nearest trash can (make sure it is segregated). If you have a marking pen, blacken out her picture. If her eponymous magazine is on a rack, skip it over.
• when stuck in heavy traffic, ignore her ubiquitous billboards and instead conduct a survey on the thingimajigs that car owners in front and in either side of you hang in their front and back windshields.
• if you hear her colegiala accented voice on the radio, turn down/mute the volume or switch stations.
• if she is the topic of chitchats in the office, school, canteen, fx/bus/jeepney or anywhere, whip out and turn up your ipods, mp3 players, portable radios, and cellphones with mp3 player/fm radio. If you want to be bitchy, just tell the talkers to just shut up.
  
• ask your techie friends to write a computer program that will block/filter any item referring to "that woman."
• if you receive phone-survey callers, tell them you don't watch shows/read newspapers or magazines/listen to radio programs that feature her even if the survey question is about how many times you've gone hungry in the past month.
• when someone initiates a conversation with you about her, just say "Whoooo?"

If these Merlin-inspired measures to ignore and forget this Frankensteinish public persona snowball, followed up by Ian's 1-2-3 combination boycott punches, may be, just maybe, the media and advertising moguls will sit up and listen to the loudest whisper we multi-media-soaked Pinoys can muster.