may ilaw na!

Ohai sparkles!

I think that cauldron-like thingy is supposed to symbolize knowledge (or something), but it just looks sinister. Ergo, cool.

(This, on the other hand, is sinister and not cool.)

Friday was dinner and then Quezon Hall to view the lights, Saturday was dinner and a short visit to Sarah’s. There was a man there at another table; I was pretty sure he was a writer and that I saw him at the Palanca Awards, but fuck me if I can remember. I’m so bad with names. (I can’t even recall the names of the people we were drinking with.) (Oh, I remember Bai – did I spell that right? – and Melai – did I spell that right?) (Melai worked in the media too and knew my Journ friends at GMA so that’s cool.)

Somewhere between Friday and Saturday was a marathon of True Blood and Sex and the City and a quiet break with The Beauty Myth and Holidays on Ice and a gazillion notes on three stories (one in-progress) and a poem. So, so, so many notes. Now if I can only string them fragments together.

BUT I’ve heard that Jaykie’s sister left a bag of chocolates with my name on it, because you know if you like it then you should definitely put your name on it, so life is good. Thank you.

rosemary’s baby

The genius of Ira Levin’s fiction is that his prose is so lucid, so simple and straightforward and true, that you can never imagine anything evil happening to any of his (read: ordinary) characters.

And then halfway through you’ll get slapped by a line like, Rosemary found herself chewing on a raw and dripping chicken heart in the kitchen one morning at four-fifteen.

Like I said, genius.

Photo from fantasticfiction.co.uk

a game of thrones

Photo from belfasttelegraph.co.uk

There is always magic in the worlds of epic fantasies, but in the world of the Starks and the Lannisters and whatever is left of the broken House of the Targaryens, magic brings with it a sense of doom, and the smell of spilled blood. The dragons have fallen, the king has turned into a fat drunk who likes hunting more than figuring out how to save a kingdom deep in debt, and the gods are mere silent faces carved in the bark of trees. You can pray to them, but they do not answer.

This world, like most magical worlds, has a forest, but the forest is kept behind a Wall like the wild creature that it is. The phrase “to take up the black” means to be one of the men who guards the Wall. These men do not take wives nor sire children. The punishment for desertion is death. Not surprisingly they’re having serious budget and manpower problems.

All of the Houses have honor, and follies; all of the Houses have pain. They’ve all fought in a war where they’ve lost parents and siblings and children. Every House yearns for revenge, yet every House has also sinned.

In A Game of Thrones, the summer has lasted for years, and now everyone is fearing the bitter cold. The longer the summer, the longer the winter, they say.

The Stark words are, Winter is coming. To paraphrase: We are all going to be seriously fucked.

Oh, yes. And soon.

in bruges, and elsewhere

In Bruges – After a hit gone horribly wrong, two hired assassins – one experienced, one much too young – are sent to Bruges. Ray, the new guy, is not too pleased. “Ken,” he says, “I grew up in Dublin. I love Dublin. If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn’t, so it doesn’t.”

I cannot think of a more delightful, more heartrending film. Colin Farrell should make more movies like this.

Also, Bruges looks lovely.

Punch-Drunk Love – Oh, you all know those Adam Sandler comedy films. Sweet, soft-spoken guy, then he goes all crazy on your ass. Barry Egan is like that, but his violence breaks your heart. He has seven sisters, people are on his case all the time, and there’s always this incessant fucking drum in the background. Barry just wants to have someone in his life to slow things down. Is that too much to ask?

Tres Dias (Before the Fall, Spanish) – Ten minutes into the film, we hear that a meteorite five times the size of the rock that fell to earth during the time of the dinosaurs will hit the planet soon. No one will survive. Now what? Do you confess your love to another person? Do you begin killing people and hanging children from trees? Do you eat ice cream? Closure comes in so many forms.

horrific developments

- Early this month, the Comelec denied Ang Ladlad’s petition to run as a party-list group in the May 2010 elections. Ang Ladlad aims to defend and protect the rights of Filipino homosexuals. The Comelec thinks its members are immoral:

The Comelec Second Division—composed of Ferrer and his fellow commissioners Lucenito Tagle and Elias Yusoph—last week rejected Ang Ladlad’s petition to be allowed to run as a party-list group in the May elections.

The division said the group’s espousal of same sex relations violated the Civil Code and Revised Penal Code’s provisions against immoral doctrines and those on decency and good customs.

Wow. The Comelec’s logic just made my brain walk out and hang itself.

And of course people are furious. One brought up a wonderful point: “Gay citizens pay their taxes too.”

Okay, Comelec and the other members of this vile, prejudiced society: Since you don’t want gay people to marry, adopt kids, or to exist, even, what if – and this just an idea – what if we stop collecting taxes from them?

Hm? What do you think? Imagine. Boy Abunda, for example, has a wonderful career, lives with his partner and is unbelievably happy, and above all probably pays the government hundreds of thousands of pesos worth of taxes - but he’s gay. Ugh. Ohnoes. And you don’t like gay people right? I mean, you see them as second-class citizens right? I say give him back his money.

Just an idea.

- Maguindanao Massacre. As of press time, 46 bodies. I attended a public high school, and I remember there were 46 of us in one class. Imagine entering that room, and firing at every single person there. Every single one. And for what? In this case they say, political power. One of the victims reportedly was a father of seven. Another victim was a 67-year-old woman. There were at least 12 journalists. There were women. There was mention of rape. And I have no more words.

warning: cheesy post ahead

Month number 1 on the 17th.

♥

Thank you. The flowers looked amazing.

* * *

We went to UP on Friday. Ah, UP. You shall remain beautiful to me forever and ever.

I got him a book (a book, yes, because I am cool like that). I was planning to get more dangling earrings, but the jewelry selection in the Christmas tiangge this year underwhelmed me.

Passed through AS. Amazing how everyone looked so young. Amazing how everyone looked so young now, to me.

a haunting

Photo from coverbrowser.com

You may remember Shirley Jackson from her excellent, excellent short story, “The Lottery”.

You may remember this book as the source of that rather disappointing CGI-feast of a film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson. (That’s a remake; they say the original film adaptation is better.)

There is a haunted house. They call it Hill House. A scientist wants to write a paper about psychic phenomena. Three young people come with him: Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke. Mrs. Dudley, who cooks for them and cleans the house for them, insists that she be out of Hill House before the dark descends. The doctor’s party stays inside the mansion for roughly a week.

Consider the novel’s first paragraph:

Chapter 1

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

really quick

Today, in the (e)mail:

 

Dear Eliza,

We are delighted to accept your story, ‘Monsters’, for publication in Philippine Speculative Fiction 5.

Kindly accomplish and submit the attached

I’m on it, I’m on it!

(Howee.)

♥

book swap!

More photos here

Tagged along with Kate and Andrea to meet up with Kat (known online as purplerevolt – I believe she writes really well). Book swap night! I got Kat Revolutionary Road and Big If, and I got Clinton Palanca’s Landscapes and David Sedaris’s Holidays on Ice.

* * *

While rummaging through old notes (I was looking for my earlier jottings for a story I wanted to write) I found the notebook containing the very first drafts of the Reportage poems.

It’s funny how you forget the amount of work that went into your pieces. How in the world was I able to survive writing all these lines?

It boggles the mind.

How easily the land accepts departures

The Christian God brought ten plagues

Perhaps there is beauty in holding your daughter close

The reporter stands

what my dad says

So I just discovered this cute Twitter account, right:

Eliza: i should probably do this experiment. write down everything my tatay says.
Eliza: panalo siguro.
Kate: alam mo pwede
Eliza: like one time may inabot na malaking walis sa tatay ko. as in mas malaki pa sa kanya. Tatay: Liit naman niyan, wala bang mas malaki?
Eliza: also he sometimes refers to himself as Fernando Poe. To wit: Gutom na si Fernando Poe, anak. I wanted to say, Tatay patay na siya. Never na siya magugutom.
Kate: LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Kate: FPJ = DAD
Eliza: truly.
Eliza: hahaha
Kate: pwede
Eliza: =))
Kate: alalahanin mo lahat at itwit mo
Kate: twitter.com/sabingtatayko
Kate: ganyan
Eliza: HAHAHAHAHAHA