hard-boiled friendster fiction

I still haven't thanked Siege enough for that hard-boiled fiction style Friendster testimonial that he wrote me:

"I need you," the blonde stranger said, casually cascading herself over the mahogany chair in front of Ayen Rivera, P.I.,'s oakwood desk. "To find my husband."

Detective Rivera traced the stranger's length, from the toes of her red stilettos, up her alabaster pair of legs (of the long variety), across her generous bosom, finally settling on her sharp, heavily made-up face. If not for his parole conditions, he would have humped her right there.

"Husbands," Ayen said. Coolly, like he didn't need the business. "Are hard to find when they don't wanna get found."

The blonde stood up to her full height, her wavy tresses rippling around her head in elegant bounce. It reminded Ayen of someone's head, one he held underwater for a couple of seconds longer than normally considered safe.

"Well, then, Mr. Rivera, I suppose this would make it easier," she said, tossing over a bundle wrapped in a paper bag held together by a couple of rubber bands.

Detective Rivera considered the bundle sitting on top of his desk. He leaned back farther, weighing the object, weighing the woman, weighing the job. A hundred grand, easy, he thought.

"I want you to find him alive," the woman said. Her voice was steady, but the trembling of her blonde tresses betrayed her. "But I want to find him dead."

Detective Rivera sighed. All in a day's work, he thought, reaching for the bundle. Some days, he wished he was a writer in some alternative world. He read of quantum theory once, as a child, and had heard of the possibility of alternate realities existing side by side the one that he knew. There are stories, Detective Rivera thought, that needs telling. He watched the woman light a fag.

I had "testified" earlier for Siege. Read it here.

Siege, thanks for this. :D

of the pickiest kind

Nice to know that people out there, friends, they know who they are--all right, their names are Camille and Jea--are still writing. (So much for blind items.) Point is I'm relieved to hear from them, and to get to read their stuff; just so I could tell myself that my writing job is no excuse to freeze up my own tilted-world essaying and sudden fiction writing.

Camille sent me her re-envisioned short story, an earlier study of which she submitted to her fiction class, under Butch Dalisay. Her class must have scooped up her story like a handful of sand, and squeezed hard; later, they unclenched their hands to see what's left. I did my own squeezing: I emailed Camille my comments. She wanted it brutal and honest. Brutally honest. Good girl. That's the writing workshop spirit.

First person point of view narrative. Manipulative mother-protagonist. Work in progress, but the neurotic character of the mom and her world view is the twin allure ("is" because the two are properly one). That's my "unputdownable" back-of-the-book synopsis of Camille's story, which doesn't tell much, really. We like to keep things mysterious around here. Tends to keep the publishers guessing. (Har har.)

Jea is going through her pickiest-kind blogging phase again. Her current blog is the umpteenth reincarnation of her ADHD'd brain. That's Aversion to Dim-Hwitted Doodling. (I just made that up. But that explains things.) She has had so many blogs, which she edits and edits--resizing header text and margins now, changing titles and labels later, and finally settling on a backdrop color that doesn't redirect your eyes from the life-stuff on the webpage. In at least one previous blog, she told of her terrible tales of teaching tupid tudents. She has picked up on that theme in her current blog. Lucky me. I love those posts. A handful of sneers.

One should take lessons from these two. Camille and Jea, who both happen to be teachers.

Writing is a neurosis.

Of the pickiest kind.

the idle villager

I always have this impression that Ricci is constantly harassed by her teaching schedule. She told me once that you need some free time to imagine consequences, so you can write. Her use of the second person (you) is really some underlying "her" trying to tell herself, and me, about the need to rise to the surface and breathe. Her use of 'consequences' intrigues me. If you live on a weekly basis, there's that dual anxiety: you might not be hitting deadlines; your life is nothing but deadlines.

If you are always in the thick of things, life things, work that foots the bills, there's not much mental space and time to space out so you can write. A writer needs some amount of idleness to remain sane.

I'm starting to ditch some side jobs so I can sleep more, so I can be idler, so I can write. If you're routinely pressed by the four cubicle-walls of work, you're hemmed-in soul tends to whine, pant, and give up.

jump

And so, Hinus Long, strained out of his wits, took up Jenny the bitch's dare, and walked towards the open third floor window. The rain-grey half-empty parking lot would be waiting below. Hinus shoved Marky to one side: get out of the way ass-boss, Hinus hissed as he took long, quick strides towards the light. The studio room where he churned out web articles dimmed in the coming evening's yellow light. Cost-cutting memos ordered them to cut the air conditioner, the fluorescent lights, the free coffee--so only the humpback thin lamppost outside illuminated the studio. Yellow was in Hinus' eyes as he broke into a run. Fuck you bitch if I live you die with the ass-boss, he yelled as he gained momentum. Other web writers and graphics people stood up from their hobbitty cubicles to gape at the spectacle. Rebellion is the man, Sharky whispered, adjusting his necktie (and screw this dress code, he added). Sharky knew Hinus asked for a raise and got visually middle-fingered in return. The ass-boss' secretary bitch drilled the final hole: you're not getting a raise, Hinus; take a running jump. Maybe I will, Jenny, he said and walked away, and now Hinus was in the zone, the open canvass of the window coming closer, closer--somebody stop him, screamed the bitch, because someone had to say that, but the room moved not one finger as Hinus jumped and stretched in midair and slammed into the wall below the window. Stunned, no one moved. Finally, Jenny's high heels clak clak clakked to the lying unconscious Hinus. What were you thinking? the bitch said. Ommigod. Jumping without your glasses, you near-sighted idiot.

the end of (week)days

The thing about being sick the whole week and with the fever and colds pouring down on the weekend is that you get to watch a lot of movies. We've got DSL at home. With my wife doing the laundry this weekend, and with her homey comfort food for me (tom-yang soup, did I spell that right? and my fave, lemon-butter sauced shrimps), I got to relax. Never mind the quality of the movies I saw. I downloaded and watched Shinobi (a teen love story with ninjas), Disturbia (a popcorn movie with that impossibly thin-slim girl), The Simpsons Movie (just a quality handcam version, no DVD-rips yet, lots of laughs, nostalgia, and datedness--I felt so 1990), Mr. Brooks (I just love psycho-killer films, Kevin Costner was amazing, just be sure to mentally block out the subplot with Demi Moore in it, because she adds nothing to the story), and I got to watch again The Prestige (the see-again-and-again mind job, nuff said). I'm downloading Oceans 13 and the Perfect Stranger as I write this. Mindless movie watching is fun. A perfect antithesis to a week-long writing job.

I am waiting for the last installment of the Bourne trilogy, with Matt Damon in it. Hmmm. The latest Harry Potter film wasn't worth seeing a movie house at all. Radcliffe is not easy in his own skin. Hermione is getting prettier and prettier in every film. I never liked the HP books that much anyway. As Jessica Zafra pointed out in her blog, just what is at stake here? How bad could it be if he who could not be named even though some people routinely get away with it and this routine is getting old I mean come on people wins?

Crap. It's Monday tomorrow.

snow every fifteen minutes

There is a cat meowing from outside my bedroom window, its snout pressed on the opaque glass, one front paw on the ledge, the other thumping the glass, like its was knocking on a neighbor's screendoor. Lemme in, lemme in. I can make out a blurred pink nose on white but dirty fur--maybe canines--when that small mouth opens to tease my cats to come out. Come out, come out and have my first born, it howls in a pitch so high and so familiar to me. Rawwwrrrnnggg. 

I own three female cats. I also own waterguns of varying effective ranges and milliliter capacities, a slighshot, a pellet gun, two pairs of throwing knives I bought but could never have the heart to use. The most evil thing I did to the rooftop tomcats of my neighborhood was to leave them a full plate of Aling Lisa's pancit bihon, cooked on her birthday and half a bilao sent to my door. She's my landlady. The tomcats are hers. The tomcats never touched the plate I left on the tongue of galvanized iron right outside my bedroom window. I picked it off the roof the evening before I went to sleep, to throw it down a large garbage bag in my kitchen. When my groomed, cultured, domesticated cats saw the plate and sniffed the scent of that pancit, they properly looked away, without a single meow. 

But now I'm swinging my legs, sitting on a table I had just cleared of readings. What to do with this howling in heat cat. There are days when Snow, the tomcat tapping my window, prowled the rooftops looking as clean as cotton. I always thought Aling Lisa routinely caught the small tiger and used an industrial strength vacuum cleaner on it. And there are days when Snow looked like he slept in a ten-wheeler trucks muffler. I want to kill that cat. But Aling Lisa would kill me. I am annoyed. I am running out of options.  

I'm still working on this...

that's one mean dream

I am probably a junkie of some kind. Addicted to something. Some kind of high. Achievement. A witty conversation. A finished, polished essay or short fiction. The chance to sneer at someone while demonstrating my acumen. Shit like that. Had a dream and in that dream my job was dulling my wits, diluting my charm. But the job in that dream paid the bills, so technically I was killing myself to foot the bills. Slow death for a chance to enjoy a shortened life. There's a moral to this somewhere. I just have to find it and wrap around my boss' neck, tie the other end to his desk, and push him out the window. Whoa! That's a high right there. Good times. Good times. I want my next fix to be at least this good. That is one mean dream.

transformers

Three reasons for seeing this film. To hear Optimus Prime's concerned-general's voice. To see how many people are killed in the urban war of the robots. To find out how the Autobots triumph in the end (it's always like that anyway). Haaay. What did you expect anyway?

I liked it. Or at least the comedy and the action didn't leave room enough to yawn and wonder where all this is going. Cars, trucks, planes, tanks will ee-ah-ah-uh-uh into giant robots and pummel each other with fists, buildings, and energy blasts. You knew all that when you saw the movie posters and the trailers. I really went in the theater without my whining brain, because I wanted to be a kid again and just lose myself in CG action.

Thankfully, the explosions and bent-metal noise and the epic-size city-wide destruction, and the simple plot didn't water down the prospect of seeing, well, Transformers talk and do stuff.

The geek-turned-hero gets the girl angle is cute. I love the part where the parents are proud to see a gorgeous girl in their son's bedroom. There's even a slap stick moment when the bigger-than-a-house Prime hides from the parents.

So Megatron is after the Cube so he can build more Decepticons, and Prime is after it to destroy it, but in the end Prime says they can't rebuild their home because the Cube is gone, or at least only a memento-sized chunk is left; leading me to ask why he wanted it destroyed in the first place?

Yep. That's my whining brain kicking in. Complaints now follow. Like how the Autobots said that Autobots stood for something like automated something or other robots. I had waited till the end of the film to hear a Decepticon or two explain what deception stood for (deceptive emoticons?). Never mind.

And then there's that part when Prime says, "Autobots, roll out." But then they are in biped mode so instead of rolling out, they hop to it. Bad CG acting? or bad script? Never mind.

(Oh yeah. They said "More than meets the eye" three times. I was waiting for that.)

As you will have noticed, Bumblebee is not a cute yellow Beetle but a slick yellow Camaro. It's not the same, but it's now awful, too. Let it go. His first scene in the film had him beside an old Beetle, maybe making us hope that Volkswagen had agreed at the last minute to license their car for the film. Not.

Now for the obituaries. They killed Jazz; they killed the Porsche. In exchange, they killed the tank, the helicopter gunship, the CD player, the police car, and threw Megatron back into the cold abyss. The scorpion thing burrowed and escaped. The fighter plane lived, too. And yes the Nokia thing also died.

And because the Autobots have nowhere to go, they are now Earth's mightiest boarders. Let's wait for the sequel.

curse that book

I got hold of a spell book with some curses in them. Thirty bucks from a gnarled old lady with a humpback. Her makeshift rack on the street bend near my apartment had small boxes full of them old books. Like she was moving, and that afternoon of my day off was her rummage sale day. Curses, huh? I almost ran back home, my long hair getting dishelved by the wind. Smells like it was going to rain. Dead leaves all around falling like confetti, like one big sudden autumn. I don't remember our street having so many old trees. Never mind that. How many people do I hate. Wonder if I have to buy candles? Hope this book doesn't make me yell Latin at the turn of twelve, and in front of a mirror at that. Har har. I fumble for my keys.

Dog-eared and with some pages torn off, the pages remain thick, like it absorbed all the sweat and dead bugs of the last half century. I've seen dead books like these in my school's library, in the section the nuns told us not to visit. Of course I snuck in there whenever I could. I always thought the nuns hid porn up that attic, and not the History of the Holocaust with so many nude pictures of dead Jews. Or several copies of Salman Rushdie's' Satanic Verses, which was a good story, really. I even found some autographed copies of Bertrand Russell's Why I am not a Christian. A nun or two long ago must have been a vehement secret fan of the atomic era enlightenment period. Never mind that. I slid out of my shoes, unzipped my skirt, got out of my blouse and bra, and walked barefoot to the kitchen in my undies, holding the book with two hands. Naked offering here I come. I hope there was one. I pulled up a chair to examine my find.

It should smell ancient, like it belonged to a previous world, but it doesn't. I sniffed it, the way I sniff newly bought books from Powerbooks and National Bookstore. Smells of disuse, this book, but not age. I opened it and flipped the pages, hoping to see a bookmark or a dead rose or bugs or a sheaf of small paper, maybe a sepia picture. Nothing. What kind of paper did they use here? The pages are coarse, rough on some parts, but the handwriting is legible--longhand from a time when notes revealed the soul. The words were carefully chosen. The strokes are elegant. That's what I thought. The spine is hand-sewn. Lovingly. I'm beginning to like this book. I grabbed my cell and text'd Angela--she lives next door. "Come over here now. Get a load of this." A knock on the door. I grab a bathroom towel and cover myself up. If my landlord, that maniac Mang Ramon down the hall, could see my like this, he'd mention marriage again. For the third time.

"There had better be a single man inside, or you're dead!" Angela yelled after banging at the door, and again more banging, louder this time. Knocks aren't enough for this woman. I let her in, long loose shirt with no shorts underneath and all. I know so. That's how we dress after school hours. Like sluts within reach. Ah the freedom. Long skirts and tight blouses in a private school within earshot of nowhere. If a woman lusted in a forest but there was no man around, does it matter? Never mind that.

I showed the pages to my co-teacher/ neighbor / best friend without telling her what the book was about and she said she didn't know I could read German. I yanked the book away from her and looked at a particular page.

"That is not German," I said, pointing to one line of script.

"Really?" Angela said while tugging at my towel. "Say it out loud, that line."

"Fine. Stop yanking my towel away."

I cleared my throat: "When you have foreseen the gestures yourself, the soul-itch clings to the reader." Angela smiled that smile she throws at preschoolers who thought they had outsmarted their teacher.

"Ah-huh." She nods and thumbs her cell, then aims it on a page of the book in my hand. She shows me the digital image while feeling my forehead with her free hand.

"I'm not sick, Angela. See here those words are... German." I flick her hand from my forehead and stare at the page, and then stare at the phone's colored monitor again. "But I know what it says, I can read it here--"

"Read the thing on my cell, not the book."

"I can't."

"What is this book about anyway?"

"Curses."

"It has nothing written on the cover. How do you know?"

"I... I.. I just know. The old lady must have told me it was a book on curses."

"What old lady?"

"Down the bend, near the bakery."

"I got home after you did. I heard you lock your door. I passed by the same bend. There was no lady there."

"But... but...," I flipped the pages and I could read them, I really could. Or at least I didn't feel like I didn't know what the lines of script meant. I felt at home with this.

Angela walked up to me and extended her hand, asking for the open book. The book suddenly closed itself shut, and I jumped back, startled, dropping it on the wooded floor. My single old maniac landlord that evening must have had the time of his life pacifying two mestiza's barely clothed. We screamed as we ran for the door. We screamed as we ran down the hall. Along the way I dropped my towel.

---------------------------

I'm still working on this...

only a dead mole is a good mole

The Presidential Security Guard closest to the woman with a mole ignored the immediate screams and angry flashes of cameras around him. Not one of the three PSG's cordoning the tiny woman was able to break her fall. She had taken six steps after descending the low stairs coming out of the hotel's entrance when a thud was heard. It was not a bullet's sound, but that of her small torso hitting pavement.

The PSG leader's screams as he ran to the immediately thick crowd could be heard crisply over the clicks of cameras and oooohs of reporters who had leaned in and over the body, shielding it like an umbrella, effectively blocking, in the few seconds after the President's head blew up like a watermelon, the PSG's line of vision. No one had managed to approximate where the bullet came from. Orders to secure the area were heard.

The media wasted no time serializing the authorities' efforts to catch a phantom who was not a hero. No one seriously wanted the President dead. No one cared enough to take the needed steps to kill her. But then everyone knew that no one wanted her alive either. It was not relief that people watching the live feed from the Oakwood's front entrance felt. The tiny woman was not a dictator in the terrifying sense that Marcos had been. It was not victory that the Opposition party, who were at the scene, felt when the mob of reporters and bystanders rushed to lean in and crowd around the President's pavement. Because now, the Opposition would need someone else to negotiate with.

It might have been a scene where a pedestrian got run over by a bus on a boring afternoon. Except that this one pedestrian annoyed the nation. Had she been a celebrity, the people may have panicked, yelled for someone to call an ambulance. But no, the crowd continued to stare at the torso without a head. It was a scene no one wanted to ruin by calling for help, or showing signs of wanting to help. She's dead? Hindi nga. Tomorrow is another day.

kemmon, talk to me

So, I say, talking to you, who obviously went here to read something. How do you, I begin, looking away, sighing, and glancing back at you before I look down; how do you recharge your fount? You know--regain the life, the enthusiasm, the wonder, the itch, the secret giggle, whatever. 

You lean back on your chair and sigh. You're about to confess uselessness in a mumble but I stop you with a raised palm.  

Say you're all worn out from thinking through a project--not just thinking of--thinking through: you came up with it, it was promising, you pulled off two-thirds, you're half-dead, and it's not yet perfect, but your boss wants more, ahh, refinements...and there is another project slated after this one. What do you do? So you won't get fired, so you'd keep the image of a go-getter creative. 

You're not answering. 

I don't need stares. 

I need ideas. 

I'm drying up here. 

bottles of beer on the wall

Saw Ricci go online a while ago. I immediately waved a hand. Told her I wasn't enrolled in the program [creative writing program], for a year now, come to think of it. So much raket writing that I haven't been able to breathe. Ricci is not enrolled, too; she told me. "Life and all that," she said. I miss our alcohol chatting sessions. We used to meet online and, beer with me and wine with her, we'd chat away on and about just whatever avenue of such we fancy.

When the alcohol sets in we'd notice we'd miss hitting the right keys, and the drinks take their revenge on our spelling. Too many exclamation marks. Laugh out louds. She loves poetry. I like the absurd. She'd post a link to an online sound file of a Neruda poetry reading. I'd touché with, maybe some tall tales I'd been practicing when I'm alone.

Sometimes I wonder if she and I tiptoe on the same soft soil.

Next time, she said, inuman na talaga.

Yeah. That's my cue: I'd definitely have to get back to the program.

moody, schmoody

I think I did. I think I told my wife that, at the rate I'm coughing out articles for my night job, I won't be able to write decent shit by the end of the year. Yeah. I think I did. I was whining then. I am whining now. The small window for working on and turning in those bursts of paragraphs, about four to five per article, and fifteen a night, has led me to devise ways of staying awake, and of talking care of that which allows me to write decent stuff--my mood.

Saw this study in some psychology website, a site filled with advice on just about anything; anyway, the study said that one has a finite fount for working on something, and then when the fount is empty shit comes out. Non-quality work. If you look at a donkey in the face, that's not it; you have turn the donkey around and look at its ass, that's the work I produce when I am not in the mood. So I sleep. Eat heaps of chocolate cookies. Drink Mountain Dew and coffee. Read blogs of people I don't know. Follow threads of stories I started to write and then dropped, due to emotional exhaustion. And I recount small victories in my writing life.

Like last week, just this Friday. I turned in six sudden fiction--500 to 700 words--to this upcoming flash fiction anthology. I am hoping that at least one of those I sent will make it. The deadline has since been moved to July 15, I think, and if I find strength by that time, I might polish a rough story and turn that in as well.

So, where were we? My mood. It's a constant battle to stay in the mood to be amused, to be whimsical, to be playful. Because the moment work becomes sour to the feel, it's definitely work. And I don't like to work. I like to be playful, and get paid for it. Good thing this job allows me room to write those small bursts of paragraphs with some wit. At least while my mood lasts.

Sleeping, of course, is part of the job. How else does one recharge the fount?

This, by the way, is just a blog, not a psychology website. There is no Freud, no dreams, no self-realization, no emotions to untangle. Just whining.

same shark, different day

Abalone diver Muriel Sanguinnia felt his chest squeezed in the dark. His left shouldered punctured and pinned between serrated teeth, his calm never left him. The shark spasmed and released--in a split-second--Muriel's 32-year old body, so as to better haul him in, to snugly fit his torso inside the Great White's mouth.

Muriel's chest heaved, quickly drew in more air from his respirator, and saw in a blink the corrals dimly lit by what noon sunlight was prismed underwater. He was just picking up abalone; he was just doing his job, picking off the undersea ecology to sell that rare delicacy to Pauly's Beached Up Front Restaurant near the shoreline. He knew, and he had no gripes about it, that the Great White snapping its jaws at his shoulders was doing its job.

Another spasm and a great deal more pain. His respirator's line flung out, and he lost feeling in his left shoulder. Can't reach for his knife sheath on his right leg. Some ribs broken. His years of diving told him he had maybe fifteen seconds more to live, assuming the shark forgot to chew and just let him wriggle in its mouth.

Right arm can still move. Gills. Feel for them outside the mouth. Nothing. Blacking out. Grab up, further up. A ball of jelly. Membrane. Dig in, claw it up, squeeze hard. Muriel felt the tunnel he was inside shake a bit, and then flung him out. Corrals, schools of small fish, bubble rising from... his respirator. He grabbed it and inhaled, scissoring to spin himself in the clear blue sea murked by blood that was his own, to see where the shark was.

There. Gliding in a circle with him as the center. Can't feel left shoulder, left arm won't move. There's my spear gun snagged on the sandy bottom. Grab it, scissor to spin, face the shark... where's the... was that a shrug? Do sharks shrug?

A second later and Muriel kicked against the sandy bottom and ascended calmly above water. Limping to shore, he leaned on a surfer who came to help. Murmurs from the thick crowd. Crashing waves behind him. His right hand tight on his spear gun.

What happened? Fred, the life guard asked. Muriel's diving suit was punctured, but the suit's dark color hid the shark bites. To all appearances, he just staggered in pain from a dislocated shoulder, except that he was bleeding.

Oh, you know, Fred. Once a month, on a quiet Thursday, he said.

Muriel sat down on the sand and Fred helped him take his diving suit off. The life guard saw the bite punctures on Muriel's hairy torso. Fred reckoned from size of the arc of teeth, it was the same one.

Can't be that many Great Whites who just want to gobble you up whole, ey, Murry?

Muriel grunted.

So why don't you ever spear him, do him in, end the misery? Fred said, signaling to the surfer to get help.

He looses interest after spitting me out.

Hmmm. Gills or eye?

Eye, this time. If I kill him, someone less forgiving might take over.

Right, right.

Same shark, different day.

film review: next

Chris (Nicolas Cage) can see and hear and feel events two minutes into the future, but only if it involves him. He makes a living as a magician in Las Vegas, pretending to trick his audience that he can read minds; something that preps up the common sleight of hand tricks he does on stage. To augment his living, his gambles in calculated proportions--gambles against slot machines and on card tables, preferring to win small so as not to be noticed. Until the night the casino security notices his conservative but consistent winning streak.

Liz (Jessica Biel) is a part-time teacher in an Indian reservation. Chris could only see two minutes into the future, until his reach extended so that he saw her walking into a diner at a precise time every morning, on an uncertain day. He has been waiting for her to come into that diner ever since. The day it happened, Chris "projected" various scenarios, several two minute shows, until he hit one wherein he buys into woman's sympathies. The next morning, waking up in her arms in a motel, he found out that any future occurrences involving her in his life magnified his clairvoyance. Projecting probably some two hours into the future, without leaving her embrace, he realized he made a mistake in his attempt to help the FBI track a nuclear bomb explosion before it happened. In that two hour projection, though Jessica survived and most of the terrorists killed, the bomb still went off.

Next is a film that plays on the premise of a what-if that I love. Guy has powers, wants a normal life, uses it to earn a depressed but hedonistic life, he thought he was ok until a girl came into the picture. It could use some more character development, but then the pace would be affected, and the pace is either two minutes or two hours into the future--tic tock. Chris' voice over narration plays with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the thing about seeing into the future is that once you peek, it changes, because you peeked.

Asteeg sya. I loved it. I am so mababaw. I should be complaining of not enough narrative devices used and so on, but I liked the action and the premise. So Hollywoodishly simple, but not so gross as to be stereotypical. Just good enough for pop corn and small talk, not epic enough to be debated over lunch. (Never a bad thing for an action movie with a cool premise to explore to end quickly.)

Agent Ferris (Julianne Moore) is the FBI agent who gets wind of Chris' statistically improbable reasoning behind his actions, and has somehow channeled FBI resources to tracking down a magician. Never mind how she got clearance for that. Whatever saves democratic America, one guesses, be it a two-minute fortune teller, or a web slinger. Geeze.

But back to the film. Never mind the incessant talks about do you believe in destiny crap, it only lasts for a few minutes. And then you get to see Chris saving his SWAT-uniformed FBI crew while guiding them through sniper fire and booby traps. Cool.

He can see into the future enough to be mud hole and dirty puddle filthy rich and he chooses to have a normal life, awwww, nobility complex anyone? And promises his girl he'll be back once he helps out in a thing about a bomb.

The ending is the sad part, not because they all got killed. The entire action and chase sequences involving the search for the bomb are all Chris' two hour projection--God that's a spoiler, I have seen one and half hours into the future, towards the end of the film. Sue me.

Anyway, I think the film failed to build some tension into what Chris' voice over had been hinting at since the beginning. The moment you see the future, you are compelled to act on that vision, thereby changing the course of events. This means the scenario wherein the bomb went off anyway, could still happen. The reason he was not able to see a possible future involving his finding the bomb was because he was not able to physically tie himself up with any event involving any physical proximity to the bomb. Now, that is a mouthful. Watch the film and see if you can get my meaning.

If you don't like the film, you can at least talk it over it with me.

Oh yeah, on a side note, Nicolas Cage is taking on slow action movies in his aging years. I think maybe he's seen the future.

world enough and time

So, this post isn't for everyone.

Carljoe, my classmate and fellow felon in the racket writing life, is stamping his blog with thoughts and such about an addiction from which those who tried it never really quit: Magic: the Gathering (MTG). You need disposable income to play it--you need to buy the cards. You need time to burn on it--you will lose sleep trying to assemble the best card deck to beat other people's card decks. Like kids building large robots to fight against other kids who build their own large robots. Only here, winning the game between two card players takes on so many forms, and losing also does not "just" happen. MTG is like chess, only you get to choose the pieces and how to win; and in tournaments, you get to see people pilot their own created decks, with different ways to win, pit those decks against other created decks. God this is so hard to explain.

Which raises the question, why am I trying so hard to explain this? Because I like the game, too, and I played tournaments for which I couldn't win--the cards were hastily acquired and the decks just-then assembled, the play testing group were my fellow friends who had jobs, and little time to spare. My kind are reduced to casual players, those who follow the game from time to time, lose track of it, rejoin, and talk about the old days, get hooked up again, and then remember they have bills to pay and lives to live.

If one had world enough and time, world enough and time. I'd play Goblins! Weeee!

Owen Turtenwald

4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Wasteland
4 Rishadan Port
4 Mountain
3 Taiga
23 land

2 Siege-Gang Commander
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Goblin Lackey
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Gempalm Incinerator
4 Goblin Matron
4 Goblin Warchief
4 Goblin Ringleader
2 Tin Street Hooligan
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
33 creatures

4 Aether Vial
04 other spells

4 Pyrokinesis
4 Tormod's Crypt
2 Krosan Grip
2 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Goblin King
1 Tranquil Domain
15 Sideboard Cards

Ah, Goblins. The deck above got as far as runner up to the recently concluded Grand Prix Columbus, where the format was Legacy, my favorite--because you could play your pet decks and stick in almost every card in existence. The deck that topped the tournament could win from turn 0 to turn 3, with no disruptions, that is--I'm not going to explain that as I am not a fan of that deck, efficient as it may be--and Goblins beat some decks just like that, before losing to the same deck it beat in the semifinals. Ah well.

I had always loved aggressive creature decks--even though my first complete deck was Stasis-- but had always hated the empty-hand and your non-survival from mediocre draws. Ah hell.

But back to Goblins. The deck above surprised me by its use of four copies of Gempalm Incinerator and four copies of Rishadan Port. The usual deck lists only include two Gempalms. If you draw Port and Wasteland on your opening hand and you have no Aether Vial, you cannot cast anything; which is why I had been thinking of using only two copies of Port.

Owen, the guy who piloted the Goblin deck to second place, won his games even after mulliganing to four or five cards. His solution was aggressive and smart mulliganing. The four copies of Gempalm also helped in the dual creature removal and cantrip function. This guy Owen has playtested a lot. Something I probably can't do, since my Legacy buddies are all sucked in by their jobs.

A Goblin deck combines aggressive combat damage from creatures with the interaction other Goblin abilities in the deck provide--like card advantage (Goblin Ringleader), creature removal (Gempalm Incinerator, Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Sharpshooter), creature finding (Goblin Matron), creature pump (Goblin King), direct damage (Siege-Gang Commander, Goblin Sharpshooter), artifact destruction (Tin Street Hooligan), and combat damage multiplying (Goblin Piledriver).

It's a nepotism deck. If you're not a Goblin, you can't be part of the club. Unless you're a deck thinner (fetch land), mana disruptor (Wasteland and Rishadan Port), and artifact trickster (Aether Vial smuggles in creatures into play by cheating casting costs).

Did I mention that I love this deck?

So, Carljoe, man. World enough and time. If you blink, forget to think, settle with a mediocre draw, or cite other excuses raw, you'll see red all over. I'm a Goblin, too.

stoopid third installment: spiderman 3

It was an origin movie that set the bar for comics-to-film standards. I was talking about the first Spiderman film. Peter Parker was having problems and the first, and also the second film, was all about that: the basic and effective plot of how a character can change. Adolescent coping were both themes in the first two installments, and a theme many can touch-base with. Even without powers, we've all gone through such growing up doubts as Peter did. And even if Peter had powers, he was still human like us: confused, pulled by his desires, forced to make mature decisions.

I have no idea what was mature in Spiderman 3. Peter was there, Aunt May, Mary Jane, and some villains. The absurd but tough, harsh but funny Manhattan ambiance was gone. Take out the Spidey costume and the Spidey tunes and the whole thing would be a Christopher Reeves-Superman movie. New York loves Spidey, right. J. Jonah Jameson has been reduced to an obligatory counterpoint (although his first scene I found funny), and Peter, with the scriptwriter paying no attention to how time works in this universe has "mastered" his life: top of his class (how can he attend classes and study with a near-fulltime vigilante job?), has a police scanner in his room (how does he choose which to respond to?), and seems to be able to make his rent payments on his photographer job alone (something he was barely able to do in Spiderman 2).

For a fulltime photographer, he doesn't seem to be carrying his camera in most scenes. But these are the small things.

The real problem is that there is no plot to talk about. Hence, nothing to hurl a deep character against. Doctor Octopus in contrast was allotted time and dialogue and definitive scenes, enough to make you connect with him, and somewhat hate and later forgive and respect. Can you say that to any of the buffoons Parker fought against in this film?

And so we come to the subproblem. Character development. Forget about the fight scenes in the end. If you give Harry Osborne and Parker a wand each, it would be a Harry Potter movie. Promise.

So first action scene, with Harry and Parker fighting, seemed impressive at first, but only because I had thought it was a seed for complication: Parker was fighting and shooting web and swinging--in his civilian outfit. A witness with a camphone could record it and sell it to the Daily Bugle. Wonder of wonders. It didn't happen.

Oh yeah. Character development. While Spiderman 2 took time to explain Doc Oc's mechanical arms, like how it worked and how it served to be Doc Oc's character flaw (other than pride that is), Spiderman 3 explained nothing about the alien symbiote and how a man can be merged with sand and afterwards become conscious and be able to control the sand.

Giving a sample of the symbiote to Dr. Connor, Parker's Physics teacher doesn't count. Like Connor said himself, he's not a biologist. Plus the scenes where her explains the symbiote's characteristics seen forced. Forget about the Sandman. When he got mixed with water, he adapted and became Mudman, and later on Swampwater man, and when he dried up he was back to being his sand self. Please.

Spiderman 3 tried the formula that brought the downfall of the Batman enterprise (the one with Michael Keaton in it): more villains, less of a story, more fight scenes, lousy dialogue, and mood forced by a musical score.

The cheapest thing by far is Parker's voice over in the beginning and end; cheap in that instead of telling the story through scenes, the scriptwriters chose to sum it up in words.

Over two hours, this film, and so many parts can be deleted, like Parker's dancing acts, and even Mary Jane's scenes.

Oh crap. This movie botched it up. The story will always hold the film together, but instead we get action scenes and bad dialogue. I should not have gone to the theaters to see this. I had not wanted to believe the reviews. But there it is.

A bad script killed the spider.

i need a weapon

Have your read those Robert Ludlum novels on Jason Bourne? Bourne kept saying, "Sleep is a weapon." Now that I'm working night shifts, Bourne gets to tell me--and I won't argue--a crisp, "I told you so."

Been getting after midnight headaches at work, since I don't get to sleep much after the clock passes the 12 noon marker. Something about noisy neighbors' kids breaking the kid-a-shriek sound barrier. I want those kids dead. Really. But every time I say this, complete with theatrical venom in my voice, my wife shushes me for having even those thoughts.

Ok, how about I poison them all instead, but not lethal enough, just enough to give them tummy aches for two hours, which will make them cry, and make their mothers panic, and then rush them to the baranggay clinic, leaving me alone in the afternoon, just quiet enough to sleep?

The mothers of course will start apportioning blame, will eventually hawk up some bad memories about each other, to establish motive, forgetting they all opportunity, and singe each other with words enough to tear the family apart. Oh who would not love some family obstacles to deepen their bonds of love?

No?

C'mon, Darling! I want them [insert venom here] D-E-A-D. Sige na please.

No?

I'll be a very nice Herod, please. No.

All right. (Ayen whistles obnoxiously, looks away, types www.mambabarang.com on the address line of Firefox, punches in his credit card number.)

i'm still writing

Odd. At 11 pm on an election day, I am typing away, during my break, for a blog entry. In a few minutes, I will return to churning out my quota of articles, and I'm going to be doing this until sunrise.

I remember being hemmed in between the workstations of two old people in the office where I used to work. Listening to old people is nice. They're old. Some of them are nice. What is not nice is when they don't notice that they are shoving down your throat their cynicism about life, as they know it. Nobody needs that emotional burden, especially when writing takes from an emotional fount within.

My boss back then had me move out of that particular set up, into a more quiet area, where I was left deliciously alone, until I left that place entirely.

Now, I am still writing. A shift in content and format and purpose, yes, but writing still. I actually thought I'd have to try out a call center life and wait till my throat and tongue cramped up. Never thought there'd be a night writing gig like this one.

I could always go back to freelance if this one doesn't work out. Or even teach somewhere. But the odd thing is that I have never really tried another job other than writing.

i can't remember my name

Eating: what I've been doing other than copping out articles in my nightshift writing job. Eating. I move my pursed lips right, left, my tongue inside thick with the aftertaste of coffee. Oreo cookies, coffee candies, strawberry-filled small bready things, my packed pre-midnight meal, chocolate thingies with a peanut-butter core, my post-midnight packed meal. As I reach for them absent-mindedly, they have no names; all destined to be consumed. The Starbucks one elevator trip down has lost its appeal. My friends are not online on a weekday dawn like this. I feel fidgety and the keyboard on this PC is like a crusty old man: unbending, resistant to speed-typing, cramps when you least expect it. So I end up poking the keys hard at times, which tires out my hands; I watch words stream in all capitals on the screen, even when I only pressed Shift once. I am bringing my own keyboard next time.

Day five of my first week in this job. I've just finished the first batch of articles. I have two more batches just in. If I don't speed up and get used to things, I'm leaving by next week. No point in wasting the boss-dude's time. I might not just be for this article speed-manufacturing business. I notice too much the flaws in the essays, and I try to improve them, which can be time-consuming. If this gig doesn't workout, I'm on to that demo teaching appointment in June. Better to mess up college children's minds than to disappoint the boss-dude who seems to like my writing, but if only I could write faster.

I stretch my arms, rub my shoulders, twist my waist. I don't yawn, my need to pass out and lie down is greater, but I can't. Back aches and I miss my sofa bed at home. I tend to rest my back by lying down face first. In this old office, I am using someone else's PC, someone else's desktop settings, and I have to change everything just so I can feel at home. I installed fonts, changed the wallpaper, the menu colors, the shortcuts to programs I use, and save all these as my own settings, overriding the previous one, which I had also saved. I feel like working on borrowed time, in a borrowed place, on a borrowed PC, with an article quota I am only beginning to meet.

I have to become a machine: I've never worked-horse like this before.

framed and remembered

A lingering headache is not so much a symptom that your brain may have a tumor, but that the only thing that tumor has, for company, is your brain.

This is me, quoting myself from way back 2004, where my Yahoo 360 blog carried that quote on my shoutbox status. Enduring the writing life remains no different from keeping a disease company.

So it goes.

nagdidilagang tilapia

My neighbor's horny adolescent girl, the same one I see tiptoeing home at the whip of dawn on the roof behind their house, so her parents won't know she and her boyfriend joyrode each other the previous night, is singing. Oh God. I can hear her, from our kitchen, the part of this house closest to theirs.

And God can she sing.

Wait. That was supposed to be a question. God, can she sing?

I rummage through my brain for words to capture how bakya she sounds, whining like a guilty rat trapped in a balon. But that's not enough, and I find that what I want can only be said in Tagalog.

She sings like, kung kumanta siya, parang... (go back to the title of this post.)

Determined Detergent (DD)

"We never doubted you, D."

"Of course you did," D said, and sweeping the crowd with his gaze, "You all did."

The hand sanitizers, soaps, disinfectants, detergents, and fabric softeners looked down, admitting their doubts.

"But that was before," said the elderly and motherly fabric softener. "Until you came, no other detergent was able to remove so many kinds of stains in so little time while barely wearing out the fabric." At that, D beamed, proudly standing erect and tall, as though winds were blowing through his hair, an unseen cape waving like a triumphant flag. And he knew that this was how he seemed to them at this moment. A hero.

"The master will stop having those fits," said the young soap. "He will stop throwing us into the garbage, as hardly used failures, even though some of us were innocent and had nothing to do with cleaning clothes."

"The master is strict, her standards high, her morals unforgiving," said the washing machine behind the crowd. The machine winked at D and opened up his dryer. The stain-free clothes were now dry, and the master will come for them soon.

"Focus, relentless focus and sorting out and crushing those oppressive stains, that is the key, remember that," D said in a booming voice. The laundry room, whose white-tiled floor stretches into the bathroom and kitchen, were quiet. D had them by the edge of his tongue. He had finally proven himself.

"What should we call you, stranger? I mean other than the "D" on your packaging?" asked the hand sanitizer.

"D is fine. What's in a name anyway?"

"Nothing," the fabric softener said, "and everything. A name to us like yours is symbol, pride, hope, a reason to go on."

"Maybe we should give him a name, since he doesn't have a clue," the disinfectant said.

"I have an idea," said the washing machine, and when he said the name he had in mind, D and everyone else beamed. It was fitting.

Later, the master walked into the laundry room to get her clothes from the drier. She noticed something different about the detergent's packaging.

"Funny, this wasn't here this morning," she said.

On the package's front pronounced the laundry room's pride: DD.

"That's Determined Detergent to you," said the young soap. The washing machine glared at the soap. The master might hear her. Better the master figure it out on her own.

shark attacks zoo visitor, shark dies

Henry Zoo, Nebraska. Investigators, paramedics, and biologists are baffled by a successful lone shark attack at Henry Zoo, where the victim was first-time zoo visitor posing for a picture. No one else was hurt, not by the shark, and not by cuts via glass shards. A portion of the aquarium facilities though had to be shutdown for repairs.

"There was opportunity, the suspect is the murder weapon, but we can't file anything under 'motive,'" said Police Detective Andrew Rolls. "We're not giving up though; we're going to keep digging. Forensics will tell us more."

Survivor Mona Victorio sustained deep bite marks on her right shoulder when one portion of the aquarium glass shattered, shoving Mona down with the torrent-weight of salted water, and flooding the area to waist-level. The shark took this opportunity to attack.

"Don't look at me like that, the sharks are well-fed. And they don't attack people, contrary to the norm and what we see in the movies," said Henry Zoo Administrative Head Martha Anderson. "And I think it is sounder if we characterize this as just a freak incident, rather than an actual, premeditated attack. The victim wasn't even in the water!"

But Anderson may be wrong. Security camera footages and the sequence of images found in the victim's friend's digital camera document one particular shark closely following Mona's movements.

Allison McNaughey, visitor and witness to the attack, said that Mona let out a high-pitched scream, as though bird droppings fell on her newly shampooed hair. "She rose from the water and twisted," Allison said, "and walked backwards and slammed the shark against a nearby column. It was like, a basic self-defense move. I don't think she panicked, more like she was annoyed."

"It doesn't look much now," said biologist and Henry Zoo staff member Gordon Shumsky, referring to the crushed shark. She [Mona] must have been really pissed."

"Of course it was premeditated," said National Geographic Biologist Ameron Diaz. "The digital camera images show a pattern of stalking, which is characteristic of sharks when they have decided a prey is worth attacking."

"Hello! Like I would know what that shark would want with me. There were several of us near the glass wall posing," said shark victim Mona Victorio when a resident FBI agent started asking her questions. "But I do have a grandaunt that was attacked by shark and survived."

"That's it," said Detective Rolls. "We got motive."

"But that," cut in Zoo Admin Head Anderson, "doesn't explain why a bystander nearer to the protective glass than the victim was not attacked." Rolls and Anderson had been heatedly arguing in front of reporters, the shark victim, and the crushed shark.

"I think I can explain," said the biologist Diaz. "There's a theory that certain memories are passed on via genes, which is why cats try to scratch the marble floor in a gesture much like covering one's pee with dirt. Here, the first shark perpetrator survived, remembered the first victim's features, and passed on that hate. That shark you have in captivity, I am willing to bet, has its family traceable to the victim's homeland."

Meanwhile, a former-model turned paramedic treating Mona the victim said, "I don't really buy that genetic vendetta theory. The bites aren't that deep to suggest spite and malice."

"Sabi ko nga," said Mona in her vernacular language.

"What did you say?" asked six foot tall, tanned Mark Rosewater, a literature major who paid for his schooling by modeling, and then took up medical training.

"Oh hah? I said I was single," said a beaming Mona, not minding the multiple puncture wounds on her shoulder.

Authorities said the shark cadaver will be examined under close FBI scrutiny. Meanwhile, all sharks at the Henry Zoo are scheduled for scientific family tree mapping, to prevent and preempt further attacks to visitors.

overcoming sisyphus

Color. You use colored post-its and polka-dot your worktable with them. Because your table is brown and your PC is black, the small reminder notes--smaller than my palm--call out to you eyes. You flick your eyes to them and boom: you are reminded of things to do, pencilled on a yellow list. You look around your worktable and the end-result is listlessness. You are swarmed with yellow. You let out a moan and then a sigh. Later on you moan again. You can't do all them to-do's at the same time, only a couple at a time, and in sequence. So you do the manageable. You make another list on another post-it but this time on a color that stands out from all that depressing yellow: neon orange.

Spiff. Spice. Maybe it's nice. You laugh out loud. And you return to the two basic questions your skewed self often finds useful: what do you want to do, and how badly do you want them done. You don't need a plan. You need to want something badly. All else, yellow and orange, the colors of the rainbow, will follow.

testimonial for mona

IN THE RESTAURANT, Mona saw her distant self in a mirror three tables away, past the couple eating slowly while staring at each other, past the table with kids constantly getting off and on their chairs, to their mommy's annoyance, and past the shuffle of waiters briskly walking to and fro with orders taken and food trays to deliver.

In one of those wall-length mirrors that make the room is larger than it really is, briefly, Mona saw a glimpse she immediately wanted to capture in digital film: a snap of herself unselfconscious, just looking into the distance, not caring what will happen, unafraid of life itself, an innocence that was possible only with a firm confidence in who she is, who she wants to be.

She fumbled with her bag, where is that camera? A waiter approached her. "What's wrong, Ma'am?" Nothing, Mona mumbled. Everything, Mona thought.

There, she found it. She aimed her camera towards the image and clicked. A waiter's blurred backside botched up the shot. She tried again. She saw an image of herself aiming at herself with a camera. Brilliant, Mona thought, just brilliant.

I want that candid shot, she thought, and went on to timing her camera to take five quick shots five seconds are she let it sit on the table, its lens aiming at that mirror.

Five seconds of eternity. Mona tried to calm down, so she would look like someone not waiting for a camera to click and save. Think how wonderful this would be: a high resolution shot with everything else cropped and blurred away.

So, she willed herself to forget that camera.

She heard a click. She waited three seconds and grabbed it.

Five shots. A kid in a blur running with a fork. Next. A waiter signaling to the cook about an order. Crap. A couple holding hands just past Mona's reflection. Getting close. Mona in the pale glow of a car's headlights passing outside the restaurant. Almost. And finally, someone staring into the distance, expecting maybe nothing, except for that perfect shot. She caught herself, on digital film, grinning. So much for a candid pose.

Mona asked that nearby waiter, the one she ignored earlier, to come over, stand still, and listen perfectly: "If you screw this up, I guarantee your painful death."

She handed over the camera and looked away.

easter

An angel slipped into His tomb and calibrated the divine egg timer: resurrect in three days. The angel looked at the body partially wrapped in tattered, bloodied cloth. "Not so all powerful now, are we?" Gabriel hovered above the corpse, landed gently on the elevated slab of stone, kicked the body once. It didn't move. It couldn't move. He quickly sent a telepathic message, to be uploaded to the angel bulletin board: kick Him while He's down; we won't get this chance again, hurry. Giggling like an eight-year old, Gabriel pulled out his cell phone, dialed a hot line. "He's out cold. We have three days off. How much mayhem can we do in three days?" "You'll see," Lucifer said on the other end of the line. Gabriel closed his flip-phone. "I'll say this out loud because You're thick omnipotent head can't get it. This elaborate rise-from-the-dead stage play you directed and starred in? This is not about them realizing they needing something called 'salvation.' It was never about them. It was always about Your needing them to need You, because You're a selfish God. What a teenager--inducing a need, an addiction, to You! You have three persons in one and none of them give You proper counsel. You need a shrink. The only reason we put up with You is that we don't know how to kill You, yet." Gabriel sighed. He felt lighter, now that it was off his chest, this Divine resentment. Now he could spend three days without his wings and halo and without that endless oppressive divine light shining above him. Gabriel closed his eyes--and heard a thud on the tomb's inner wall. Lucifer was inside, holding a crushed voice recorder, staring at Gabriel. "If you're going to think of running away, you might as well learn from the first and the best." Gabriel was stunned. He never thought God would be so distrusting that he would place a recorder in His tomb. In a blink, Lucifer stood by the angel's side. "You're not angry at Dad anymore?" Gabriel said. "No. I was at first, but I outgrew that. I have a life now. Now stop sulking, I'll show you around. Heaven is overrated."

bored

With my wife in Iowa undergoing training, I'm left to my own devices to keep myself from being bored to death. I win at staring contests with my cats. They look away after a while and I shoot both arms up with one big Hah! I won. Meanwhile, the cats give that smirk: they move their whiskers up in that slow, annoyed way: what an idiot for a master we have. I split my lunch and dinner with you whiskered ingrates and you can't even curb my boredom. Tell me again how the coming days are in any way holy?

my wife's visual dna

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

my visual dna

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

back issue

I just got a copy of People Asia's December 2006 - January 2007 issue, as well as the February and March issues for this year. No, the cover image you see on the left is not one of the covers of the issues mentioned; it's just an old image I got from the Internet. I have to post an image, right?

Right. Anyway, I remember doing a food slash restaurant review for the Dec-Jan issue, but I can never find a copy. Sam, who works for People Asia, and is a classmate in the MA Creative Writing program at UP Diliman, gave my wife these issues when she passed by Sam's office.

The photos inside the Dec-Jan issue were trademark portfolio shots. Neat. The article, mine, was, well, what it turned out to be. Whoever breathes over the shoulder of the layout artist gets to condense whatever articles any contributor turned in, because space is scarce and photos that visually define the page mood are priorities. And then there are other considerations. Ho-hum.

So, my main article, a food review, and three little sidebar stories, got mixed into one continuous piece. It lost the author's voice, as is expected. These things happen. I used to work for a publications office in UP Diliman, which used to condense my articles with space, image, and feature-worthiness in the editor's mind. That's a reality check for you. No blames being thrown here, just one big sigh. At least my reality (pay) check for that article has been snail-mailed. I wonder when the mailman will knock on my door. Meanwhile, I have these three glossy issues to browse through. So many pictures.

balance

Man, I'm tired. Trojans by the dozen had swarmed into my wife's laptop. With the antivirus program expired, I had to download a new one, while sweeping the harddrives for spyware, while turning off recurring programs in the task manager, along with programs that duplicate the ones already running, and let's not forget that I had to clean the registry.

As this QWERTY keyboard as my witness, I hate Microsoft Windows XP. I know, I know, XP, you are so friendly to users, but you extend the same easy smile to viruses, trojans, worms, and spyware.

XP will sleep with you, assuredly. It will sleep with everyone else as well. Oh well.

I put up with you, XP, only for the games I can buy off the racks which run on you smoothly. If I had world enough and time, I would return to my beautiful Open Suse Linux, which dual boots with XP, too, for the games. None of these tedious house maintenance in Linux, at least none after you install the codecs and other dependencies so you can watch and burn and rip music and videos. But also none of the games, and the fonts, that I love.

Oh well. Win some, lose some.

And so, just how many Trojans did I win?

the summer guide to solitude

Your family is itching to get to the beach. But you're not. You would like some quiet. Some time to sort things out. A relief from the world. And to sleep all day.

They are all raring to run on sand and dive into salty sea water. But you're not. So you embark on a plan to get rid of them all.

Phase One: Feign Interest

On the couch, both your old maid Aunts giggle like high school girls: they plan to “make sulit” the sunblock lotion they bought months ago. Try to smile. They think you're just as excited as they are. Your mother has her grocery notebook out: “What to bring, what to buy, who to leave out, what went wrong the last time we went out,” she mumbles out the categories.

Your right wrist twitches. It remembers the dikya that stuck to it last summer. Your pesky grade school cousins Mark and Connie had run away from you, their assigned yaya. They went into the water with their lunch unfinished and without their salbabida. In pursuit, you tripped on the sand castle that took you hours to smoothen into form. Wading into shallow water, something clung to your wrist.

Your Aunt, the younger one, eyes you suspiciously. “Naku, don't bring up the dikya thing again,” she says. Smiling, you quickly swing your head from side to side and change the subject: “We should put on the sunblock even before we hit the beach, you know. Sunburn is a real...” and you let that trail off. Your Aunts nod in unison, overlooking the fact that you are rubbing your right wrist. Your body and mind remembers your traumatic summer.

Meanwhile, your mother is squinting hard at her notebook, as though it was one of the inventory spreadsheets she took home from work. She assigns yayas to kid clusters, bracketing with her pen who is under whose care, who will account for whom, who will not have fun.

Your father hollers from the kitchen: so-and-so have been notified, they would bring the vans, the same ones you used last year, in front of the house the morning after tomorrow. He yells further that you ladies should travel light, for once. At that aside, your Mother and Aunts team up against your Father. A hollering match ensues.

Everyone seems to remember everything necessary—the kids, the things to bring, the food supply, the transportation arrangements, the contingency funds. You remember your sunburned back, the dehydration and frustration of hunting down your cousins, the fact that no matter how many goggles you bring, everyone will borrow them, leaving you squinting under the water.

Besides, you're afraid of sharks. But you don't tell them that.

Phase Two: Stage Your Play

On the wake-up-and-go morning, when everyone is saying “Tara na, tara na” when the hired vans are honking outside the front gate, show them why you were president of your high school's actors' guild. Your duffel bag—which you told them you had meticulously packed the night before—falls downstairs, ahead of you, as you hold on the rails, one hand on your stomach, your whole being in a grimace: “I don't feel so good. Maybe something I ate,” you say in a painful whisper.

Your Father and your uncles have already stuffed everything into the vans, including your aunts. You can hear eight different kiddie voices shouting just outside the window: alisnatayoalisnatayoalisnatayobilisbilisbilis!

Your mother wavers between worry and excitement. “It's ok, go on without me,” you tell her. Your mother sighs, and makes last minute yaya reassignments on her notebook.

“Pambihira,” your Father says, from the open door. “Ngayon pa.”

Your Mother quickly kisses your forehead and rushes out the door, past your Father, who eyes you with slits. “Call my cell if anything happens,” he says firmly and then walks out.

“I'll be fine,” you say a little louder, waving to them and smiling as they board the vans. As you hear engine sounds fading away, you straighten your posture.

They're all finally gone. A piece of summer all to yourself. You feel deliciously alone.

Phase Three: Enjoy the Peace

Something in the house, something now missing, has suddenly made you feel at home: your family. You love them, of course, and more so from a distance. In time, you say out loud, you will miss them.

Bending down to pick up your duffel bag, you remember that you don't have to. There's no one else in the house. No one will nag. Your back itches. But you suddenly realize you can scratch or not scratch as you so choose.

You savor the moment.

Unseen birds are chirping. Sunlight softened by the window shines on the coffee table. You decide that the first priority is food. You walk straight into the kitchen, destined for the refrigerator. You pick up the remote control on the way.

You wake up on the couch near the kitchen. You have left the TV on. Your coffee has gotten cold. The clock above the refrigerator says noon.

Still in a drifting Saturday morning mood, you assess at leisure what you may want to do, or not do, on this fine day. But then your nose itches. Somebody has to scratch it. You look at the remote on your right hand and the half-eaten pandesal on your left, and think of which to let go, so you can attend to that itch.

Although you're alone at home, you notice, you still have tough decisions to make.

i love them doorknobs :D

Ruprick People Iced: Twenty Car Bombs Planted: Two Favorite Weapon Sack full of doorknobs Arms Broken: Thirteen Eyes Gouged: Five Tongues Cut Off: Seven Biggest Enemy: Prickly Pear Get Your HITMAN Name AWSOME-GAME

the first mover

Need to think. So cold in the room I have goosebumps on my legs. When my fingers move to type, it feels like they move in a thick fog of cold air. What is Baguio City temperature doing in my bedroom at 8:30 in the morning? Need to think. I have everything I need to revise a client's draft. One big folder filled to the brim with attached documents. Coffee fogging up half my PC monitor with its steam. My eyes wide awake. The windows half open to let in beams of sunlight. The sun doesn't help. I rub my hands on my jogging pants for some heat, too lazy to stand up and stretch, and maybe sweat a little. Ok. Open the folder. Open the documents on your PC. Let's do this. Before that coffee gets cold.

classic

I have open on my PC desktop two windows. This one, where I'm typing, and another one, where a woman is furiously making her violin weep, and then whisper, and weep again. Herber von Karajan is the author of the graceful arms rising and arcing to woo the entire Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to his soul. He is old, his scalp is pomaded with white hair that turns silver, under the light, when he twists to stretch his arms and baton out to cajole another part of the orchestra to go tidal on him, stay calm, and sway and rise and wild again. To his side is a violin soloist, the woman, whose eyes seem to siphon the sadness out of her instrument with her fixed gaze. She never lifts her eyes off her violin. I don't know what the conductor's gestures mean, only that an eyesweep of musicians ride his every eye, chin, wrist, arm movement; they weep as he weeps; they pause when he pauses; they roar when he signals them to. Every now and then the entire orchestra ceases, and conductor and soloist speak to each other. His hands must be saying the right things, for her violin is weeping again. The duet stops and the silence vanishes under the roar of dozens of violins. I usually dig classical music, but only to listen to it soothe me. Watching it is a completely other ordeal. I have in me, right now, a renewed sense of wow.

on behalf of me

"The professed motive of my solitude is to speak to loads of people." -- Edward Hoagland

I'm here because I'm trying to commit to the idea that writing is incremental. Like a pile of bricks that need some muscle and some patience and some spirit to cement together. Someone has to take the time to put one brick on top of the other. Rushing it ruins it. Your mind runs too fast with words you forget the moment you mumble them in your in head. The bricklaying is the way to pace it. Got that idea from Stephen King. Or maybe John Carpenter. I forget. (Writers of scary novels with suspense-thriller plots are disciplined. In that they are scary.) Me? I enjoy too much the fleeting sound of words I find myself mumbling. I pen them on paper and they look different, taste weird, did I really say those things and why.

Place one brick on top of the other, spoon soggy cement over one line of aligned bricks. Structures, plots, they don't work for me. So I worry about them later. The house, the story, will look whatever it will look when it takes form. I can tear it down later and start again later. I just don't want that oppressive idea of needing a plot before you can write a story. I usually have that vaguene idea of what I want tucked in my mind somewhere. Faith is what I have. Faith in a moody recluse in me who writes feverishly about things and images he loves. Nevermind the plot. I will provide the plot, after the moody one is exhausted with laying the bricks.

(But that is not entirely true. He, the moody one, doesn't align bricks like an engineer with a plan and a schedule. He's more like a potter running after a dream in his mind.)

Which brings me to the point. I am not the one really writing. I am just the cleaning lady. I pick up and clean up and dust off and chisel the rough edges. I am again, this morning, as I have years ago, giving up on the idea that I am a singular person, whole and unified, aware and conscious of all that goes down in my head. (I keep coming back to that mentally healthy whole peson idea just to feign 20th century lunacy.) Well, this is the last time. The "I" is a council.

This morning, the one committing to the idea of bricklaying as writing, is just the spokesperson. The others are vastly more poetic, but they are just oh so shy.

from the darkness, part one

I am trying to get out of bed but I shudder and then freeze, ramrod straight from head to toe; back pains still me, flat on the cushion. Like a cardboard that won't get up, I just can't get up. Dad will holler for me from downstairs anytime now. Even with this week-long eclipse, I can tell, without seeing in the dark, that it's 5:30 am. Cold air and the scent of Mom's pancakes and no glow of sunlight humming from behind the curtains. I miss the sun.

"Clark, the cows won't feed themselves! Let's go!"

"Almost dressed! Coming, Dad!" How to get out of bed. I try to lift one leg up, to swing down and arc me up. Pain jolts me and I give up with the leg raise. I'm still staring at the ceiling. Well, that went well. Haven't felt this sore from farm chores since, since, I've never been this sore. Got an idea. I give it one big twist and fall off the bed.

"Uhmmm...," I moan from the bedroom floor. I can move my legs now. Takes pain to overcome pain. Less back pains now.

"Clark!? Everything all right?"

That's Mom, probably taking off her apron to run upstairs to check on me. I can speed through fields to catch bullets in flight. I can take a head-on collision with a ten-wheeler truck. I do farm chores fit for six men. But I can't get up from the floor. I'm in my shorts. I feel cold. Mommy...

Footfalls on wood. Dad swings my bedroom door open. He must have ran upstairs after my thud off the bed.

"You ok, son?"

"Just withdrawal symptoms. I miss the sun." I'm on all fours now. Have to get dressed, drive to the Luthor mansion greenhouse, and speed back here to do the chores. Crawl, Clark, crawl to the closet.

"I got an idea, son."

"No, Dad, don't help me with my clothes." I'm almost there. Red shirt, blue jacket, plain old jeans. I reach up the drawer, still on the floor, and turn on the lampshade.

"Wouldn't think of it. You've got too much Kent pride in you."

"What's your idea?" Got my shirt on. I lean on a chair for support and stand up, slowly, calf and upper leg muscles on fire. Now where are my jeans?

"I can do a portion, just a portion, not even half, of your chores. How's that?"

I'm pulling my jeans up, bending over a little, grunting a lot. There. Zipped up and buttoned. I'm sweating. Panting.

"No," I whisper, out of breath, and look at Dad through wet bangs. "Too much Kent pride."

We smile the same smile. Dad is sitting on my bed, a tumble of pillows and blankets behind him. He's going to forgive me for the mess my room is in. Just until this eclipse blows over. I wonder what I'd do without my Dad.

"Doesn't Lex suspect that you're in his greenhouse to suck up all that artificial sunlight, that you're not excited about exotic species of roses?"

I stand, feet apart, and twist at my hips, to the left, and then right. Just a little pain. Not too much.

"Well, Dad, I think his exact words were: 'Either you're getting allergic to the Kent farm or you're starting to want a bald older brother.'"

Dad laughs out hard, amused by this. I think I am, too.

"Well, he's a Luthor," Dad says in a sigh. "Got to give him that. Charming and manipulative."

"Don't worry, Dad," I walk towards the door. "I got unrestricted access to the Luthor greenhouse."

"Speaking of friends, you didn't tell me you were friends with another millionaire."

So he came. I was wondering when he'd be back from Asia, back from his training.

"Sorry, Dad. I didn't want you to worry that another rich boy with issues would try to manipulate me--"

Dad holds up a hand. "He's downstairs. He knows about your--"

"--powers, yes, he saw me in Metropolis snag a man in front of a speeding bus--" Now I hold up a hand to interrupt Dad.

"It happened in front of a retirement home. The near-senile old people on the porch saw me, so did the twenty-something attendants. He worked it out to have the attendants paid off and transferred--"

"--You certainly have a way with rich kids--"

"--You can trust him, Dad--"

"--Like you can trust a Luthor! He knows your secret--"

"--He's got secrets, too!"

"--Name one odd thing about him and his thousand dollar suit?"

"--He's got expensive toys in a cave filled with bats!"

Silence. Dad's brows knit and unknit and then he bursts out laughing again, and then stops, turns around. Mom and Bruce are at my bedroom door. My back pains have returned and I lean on the wall.

Mom turns to Bruce. "Bats?"

"Yes, Mrs. Kent." He eyes me and continues. "A zoological wonder I am fond of."

Nice suit. Black sheen. Lex Luthor's suit doesn’t sheen that black. How does he do it?

"Toys?" Now it's Dad asking, his face serious, like he doesn't want his son associating with a fetishist.

"Modified cars, a super computer or two...hobbies."

Bruce sounds like a kid reassuring my parents we did nothing wrong, just safe wholesome fun, all summer long, in our secret tree house. Can't help but smile.

"No offense, Mr. Wayne--"

"--Please, call me Bruce." He wears this eligible bachelor persona with ease. Must be a rich kid thing.

"Ah, all right. Bruce. But your secret, no disrespect meant, is not exactly at par with my son's."

"It is," I butt in, "when you know the purpose of those toys and the--"

"--It's all right, Clark." Bruce looks at me, his eyes tell me it's not my secret to give away. He's right. I have no right.

Bruce's face leans forward slightly, then his voice turns low, raspy, like a complete other person appeared in the room wearing Bruce's suit. His eyes turn into slits and eyes my Dad without facing him. Scary.

"You're probably right, Mr. Kent. And I thank you for welcoming me into your home, but I'm not hundreds of miles from Gotham at the crack of dawn for a social call."

If I still had my x-ray vision, I'd scan his body and find nothing threatening. Normal bone structure. No weapons, just a cellular phone, and an odd belt with compartments. No powers and he scares me. Luthor doesn't scare me. This one does.

"That trailer parked outside," Mom says. "You plan to stay in Smallville for a while."

Bruce loosens up a bit. Mom is perceptive, and protective, and he likes that. He throws me that you-lucky-kid look. His parents died when he was eight.

"Are you," Dad hesitates, "asking my son for a favor, since you've done him one?" Dad pronounced 'asking' as though it was a euphemism for blackmail.

"Uhm, actually," the raspy intimidating tone is gone, "I'm doing your son another favor." Now he sounds like a well-mannered kid afraid of overstaying his welcome. Charming bachelor to brooding killer to awkward rich kid in the span of seconds. Wonder what else he can do.

Dad turns to face me. "Oh no you don't. You're not accepting another gift. I know that trailer is more practical compared to Lex's Ford F150, but you can't--"

"--Jonathan!" Mom shoots Dad that look, that he needs to can that rich man's vices slash poor man's virtues speech.

"The trailer is just a cover."

We all look at Bruce. He steps back, his face recedes from the light but it is as though we could still see his eyes, even though he's blending with the shadows.

"Let him finish, Dad."

"Clark emailed me three days ago about the eclipse. First, his powers faded and he was glad to be normal. At first. But he noticed he couldn't play hero without getting himself hurt and his parents worried. And he lagged behind his farm chores."

Bruce is just about the only guy I know who's glad that darkness has taken double shifts and extended its coverage worldwide.

"What took you so long?" I look at Bruce, I can find his eyes in the darkness.

"I can't speed across continents like some people can."

"Mr. Wayne," Mom says, "oh, I'm sorry, Bruce. You were speaking of the trailer as a cover."

"Artificial sunlight generator inside. I pretend to take a road trip to Kansas to visit a friend. Then, business calls, and I am fetched by a helicopter who flew all the way from Metropolis, and which then flies me back to Gotham. In haste, I leave the trailer behind, in the safe custody of the Kents. That's the press release."

"No idea why this eclipse is taking so long?" I ask.

"Not yet."

"And I thought you were a detective."

"I'll get a few leads in the next five seconds."

A honk from outside the house. In a moment, Lex is knocking on the screen door downstairs, yelling Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent, Clark, the family roster. He's done it so many times it's like a ritual now.

We all head downstairs. Mom and Dad first. I put my jacket on and I lean on the handrails, taking the stairs one slow step at a time. Bruce doesn't move to lend me a hand. Midway down the stairs now--oops! Bruce is suddenly behind me, grabbing my jacket's collar, steadying me. He moves like a cat. I didn't even hear his foot falls.

"Ah, I see you've made a new friend," Lex says from behind the living room couch, but he's not looking at me, he's looking at someone behind me. I have a distinct feeling I'm in the middle of a crossfire.

...TO BE CONTINUED...