Flunky Pickle

2009-05-02T02:41:00.003+08:00

Who's Been Watching?

Five years ago, when I signed up for Blogger, I saw a tiny little blurb inviting me to sign up for Gmail. I knew it was a new free email account, but OH MY, I sure didn't know how big it was.

At that time, 1G mean A LOT of free space. The biggest storage medium we had were CDs and what we called a Zip Disk (RIP), which had a whopping capacity of 750MB. So when we heard that a company was giving away 1G of FREE space, we all went nuts.

Suddenly, everyone wanted a gmail account. The only problem was, Google suddenly closed the free sign-up and made it strictly invite only. Which meant, the precious few (thousands?) who signed up suddenly found themselves with a hot new commodity: Gmail invites.

People were selling them on eBay, leveraging them for dates, and up at the gmail-swap forum, traded them for all sorts of things. Magic tricks, friendship, books, letters...Most popular offerings came from soldiers in Iraq, who needed the extra space so they could send pictures to their families. They offered pictures of the desert, momentos of Bagdhad, and other little things, such as you name scribbled in sand or a picture of a tank with a big, green bottle with your name on it. But most popular of which were the offers of LETTERS. That if you agreed to swap an account, you could get your own, certified, American soldier as a penpal.

Someone should call Google, because I bet a few marriages resulted over those transactions.

One could say that I used my horde of ten invites wisely. Made a couple of bucks on ebay, had my name stamped somewhere in Baghdad, or even my own military penpal (although that would not have settled well the boyfriend, even if I wouldn't meet him until two years later)

I wish I could have called myself the nifty early adaptor, but no. I decided to be pretty magnanimous with my stash and shared it with friends. When I got down to two, I decided to hold one to one, and swap the other. And what did I get?

I got...A card trick.

Yep, one of the hottest commodities at that time, and I bartered it for a stupid card trick. And not a good one, either.

I wish I could have said that I was an early adaptor, instead of a naive dolt who signed up for things. I settled for "semi-early adaptor", and vowed not to repeat that mistake again.

Until a few months ago, when I realized that before I took a hiatus from blogging, I signed this account up for AdSense.

Imagine the irony when I started earning a few extra bucks out of SEO a few years later.

We all know that the first people who managed to figure out AdSense made a killing. I was, sadly, not one of them. I would have, if I had the time. Instead, I fell in love (and you're more than a few thousand dollars sweetie! Because I know you still google me!)

Even when I found out I had signed up for AdSense, I kind of...ran out of things to say. But I was happy that I managed earn 49c--the result of 2 years worth of rants. So I decided that this way way too much work, and just went on my way.

So imagine my surprise when, after the Google keyword tool, I decided to check out my AdSense account and found a jump to $4.00.

Now, four dollars might be chump change, but it get's a little suspicious when $3 came from earnings made in February. Just February, and not a single penny since. Again, $3? Chump change. But $3 also translates to a couple hundred page views.

And considering that I haven't updated this blog for months, and has since dropped from the Google stratosphere...Who has been reading?

Sad that I haven't integrated any tools to track if this was a single visit from one person, or there's been a spike for a single keyword. Perhaps someone who thought my 24-year self's rant on Valentines Day funny...I can only hope.

2008-12-12T18:42:00.002+08:00

Rally 2008: Here's a Brick, Let's Hit It On Our Heads

This rally at Makati seems to be inspired by the recent stand-off at the Thai Airport which, having learned anything, is something that we can't afford.

The whole world is in embroiled in a global financial meltdown, investors are fleeing to protect their assets, and what's our answer? BAD PR.

As someone who's been directly affected by the crisis, I feel fortunate that the Philippines has been able to hold up much better in this financial storm. Given that there seems to be someone complaining at the government rafters every month, and a whistleblower hoots every week, I think we're still doing pretty good.

But a shoutout for a major rally? This isn't something that we can afford.

Given our past history with Former President Marcos, I can understand our paranoia with any instrument that might extend a presidents term. Remember the hoopla over President Ramos' Cha-cha? Didn't we all bitch about that too? We thought he did so good, that he wanted to over-stay his term at the palace too. So scared were we of another dictator that we took to the streets and stopped that too, giving way to the Erap's laughable term in office.

Hindsight maybe 20/20, but it must have been some dumb luck that we booted out the one president who actually dragged us back to the black after the Marcos administrations lavish spending put us in the red for so many years, only to vote for someone who spent even more on his mistresses. Say what you will for Marcos, at least the guy was smart enough to have at least three US Presidents fooled. With Erap at the palace, we might as well have sent a monkey to work, because it sure as hell seemed that no one went to the office during those two years in their term.

And now we have the this: our country has seen the best growth in decades; we have been so far insulated from this financial contagion, that NEDA Dir. Gen. had the gall to tell the World Bank that it's growth forecast for the Philippines was just too conversvative. Moody's and S&P might have a gloomy (moody and poor?) forecast of our country, but considering how Wall Street bankers danced around them with the poorly structured housing market for a decade, I don'tquite know just how much I should believe them.

All I know is, for the first time in a long time, our country has produced the numbers, even if the people haven't stopped whining. Which isn't difficult, since we place the same obsession over our politicians as others do with Hollywood. I believe that after the hell we've put her through, the President will step down in 2010 and make room for change. It's just 365 more days, and there are more things we could do with them than to troop to the streets for another rally.

We should focus on further protecting ourselves from this financial turmoil. To asking ourselves how, in our own little way, I can help my government succeed. Because the government is US, and we need to know how to be able to help ourselves. It's time to just SHUT UP, and roll up our sleeves, and stop complaining and do the work.

And to the people at the rally...here, have a brick. And smash it on all our heads while your at it, then tell me how that helps solve any of the problems we're having now.

2007-09-27T23:23:00.000+08:00

Return of the Meme...and I guess me too

After a long hiatus, I am resurfacing with this short survey culled from the bulletins of Friendster. I'd post a longer update, but I'm lazy right now and a bit ornery. But for the people who are looking for me...here ya go:

Have you had your birthday yet?
>> Yep. Three days ago. This is the fifth year that I'm turning 22.

Are you the same person as you
were at the beginning of 2007?
>> Nope. I'm glad to say that I am a pound heavier and about 2 lbs closer to my 100 lbs goal. Yezzzzz.

Are you still in the same job?
>> Yep.

Is your favourite colour the same colour?
>> Always been, and I think will always be, unless there's drastic changes to my skin tone.

Have you got the same style/colour hair?
>> Yes. It just keeps getting longer.

Have you bought a new car this year?
>> I wish.

Have you been involved with the police this year?
>> Nope.

All time drinking place for 2007?
>> I think I consumed my annual allotment of alcohol at Laarni's two weeks ago. So I'm gonna have to go with "Laarni's condo".

Is your best friend still your best friend?
>> Yep, yep!

Got any tattoos or piercings this year?
>> Nope. Still my ears and my navel.

Had a hair cut?
>> Just once.

Been in hospital this year?
>> Yes! Went to the ER for the first time in in 12 years.

Lost someone you cared about this year?
>> No.

Been on a holiday this year?
>> No. And I damn need a vacation.

Been in love this year?
>> Still am.

Been kicked out of a pub this year?
>>No.

Completed any studies this year?
>> Sadly, no.

Read a book this year?
>> The Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Currently wading through "I am Legend". Yet another vampire story, but this time with more cred since Stephen King loves this book.

Worst thing to happen this year?
>> They'd kill me if I told.

Best thing to happen this year?
>> They'd kill me if I told.

2006-05-28T22:32:00.000+08:00

One down...

The spawn of Brangelina is here: Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt. Born in Namibia yesterday.

Oh well. At least that's one thing crossed off my waiting list. Next up...dazzling the world with my brilliance. Now I just have to add the brilliant part on my list...

2006-05-20T16:11:00.000+08:00

Just a quick shoutout...

1. I am still flat broke, but I at least have two projects that I am working on. Will it bring money? Heck, I hope so.

2. I do have one contracted writing project that's supposed to bring me money. The only down side is that I feel like hitting my head on the keyboard every time I do it...

3. Back to school for a short while this coming June...fuck.

4. Still waiting for Brangelina baby (so's the rest of the world, I hear)

5. Lamenting that Elliot Yamin is now out of the running on American Idol.

I'm not much of an AI fan, though I did watch AI3 because two pinoys were competing.

But Elliot, wow man. This is the first time i've actually rooted for a contestant. I so cannot wait for his album to come out.

I must say though, that if he had to lose the AI prize to someone, no one deserved it more than Taylor Hicks. That guy can really sing!

2006-03-19T13:31:00.000+08:00

Yep, It Looks Like Up From Here

Sometimes, some things in your life make you stop and take inventory of the things you have.

Going hungry for weeks is one. Talking to my friend Jason about how frail life can be in a very positive (and he is one of the most positive people you will ever meet) is another. Editing the footages that came in from Leyte, is the latest one.

Life is beautiful. It's fucked up, but it's still beautiful. And sometimes you have to see the bad to reflect on the good, and hopefully wake up thinking "My life is shit...and today is the day I start fixing it".

So, as I start looking up again in my life, I am remembering--and appreciating--all the small things that makes me happy...or occupied...or just amuses me.

A bit of warning though, a lot of them are terribly MUNDANE.

1. Brangelina and their much awaited bundle

Not quite an obsession but c'mon, have you ever seen a more perfect celebrity couple?! Not only do they look good together but they're activists. And as is the case when two beautiful people get together, you just can't wait to see their offspring.

2. Keyword searches on dating sites
This cures my writers block. Popular words are "Star Trek", "Star Wars" and "Monty Python". Believe it or not, the word "Pickle" actually generates more than one profile, and in a Catholic website! Who the hell knew.

3. Videoke Videos

Do they have direction? Who the hell makes them? Why do they never make sense? Why are the women always rolling on some bed and the men all look fucking gay? And with considering the overwhelming amount of unemployed but incredibly talented, not to mention DROP DEAD GORGEOUS actors out there, why do they have to use people who look so damn plain?

4. Buffets

Especially free buffets. That come with dessert. Usually also comes with the money to pay for the cab ride home many hours later.

5. The 4400

Specifically, Chad Faust, the latest addition to the constantly expanding collection of Templates.

6. Clark and Chloe fanfiction (a.k.a. "chlark)

C and C. Not that I don't like Lana. I just have a soft spot for unrequited love.

7. Kitty-watch

"Kitty" is now past the four week mark and also has a name: Scheherazade. Besides having a taste for gold and a penchant for getting into anything electrical, she is--after many hours of hand-feeding--in the process of being weaned (THANK GOD).

After getting up every four hours for feedings, and coaxing her to try something besides milk, here she is finally eating solids for the first time. I am so proud! (and it's about damn time.)

2006-03-06T10:59:00.000+08:00

Wag The Dog

It's been that way for a long time. In fact, it's an "unwritten rule". The Philippine Cinema makes movies for the masses.

I have a hard time determining what exactly "the masses" are.

Economically speaking, it's that big chunk of the pie chart that's well below the poverty line, with a small slither of the lower middle. They represent about 60 to 75 percent of the population: the underfed, underpaid, and under-educated.

Survey says that they also like to watch a lot of television and even, on occassion, spring some of that hard earned money for a movie or two.

So it makes a lot of sense that huge portion of the industry caters to them.

What doesn't make sense is this beliefe that the industry has that they are stupid, because here's the thing: they're not.

Yep, here ye comes the new generation of masses. The public school kids who grew up with camera phones, the internet and the Knowledge Channel in their classrooms. Somewhere along the way, they got smarter. Too bad The Powers That Be got stuck in the upgrade, because we are still batting out the same tired plot-lines to pacify the people.

I once got locked into a debate at my union office about what exactly the masses wanted.

Technically, we couldn't make a TV show like The Practice because no one would watch it. You're Honor came out and it flopped. It's too brainy, and the upperclass is already busy watching...well, The Practice.

Damn.

You have to give Richard Gomez some credit for pitching something new, and maybe ABS-CBN for actually letting him do it.

Now here's the deconstruction: You're Honor flopped because it spent most of it's time focusing on the courtroom drama. It's aim was to show passionate lawyers and titillating cross examinations. Judges aghast at clients' hysterias...

The thing is...there is no such thing as courtroom drama. It's all bullshit. Lawyers stutter, clients rattle off answers like robots, and some judges sleep if they're not fining the lawyers for excessive dialectics.

In real life, court cases are boring, that's why the lawyers from The Practice only spend about 5% of their time there. And even then, it's always in a direct one minute closing argument/speech.

Poetic license be damned, there's only so much that you can make up.

The real drama happens behind the scenes, with the clients and among the lawyers. It's not the court cases that make the story, it's the people that make the story. A case is a piece of drafted paper, it's the people mentioned in it that bring the conflict.

And for a country that usually handles it's cases by settling out of court, it would have made for a lot more interesting stories, not to mention shed light on the process.

The writers of the show should have made it more episodic than serial, writing each one like a stand-alone movie with a snippets of courtroom drama.

That doesn't mean though, that the show and the format couldn't have worked. I think the network dropped the ball too early, way before the writers could've re-tooled and improved.

Writers are dynamic, they would have re-worked it. Writers aren't stupid and neither is the audience. The only people dysfunctional in this system are the people who make the decisions.

I understand that network TV is scared to lose their money, we're not like Hollywood that can afford to pop out pilots the way they do Vicodin pills.

But for Kahless sake, grow some balls dammit. Try and match the growing independent movement done by cinema.

Yes, we get the fact that soaps work, but do they all have to be soaps? Take a risk and stop coddling your audience! They aren't monkeys in bars, they've long ago started thinking.

A great example of this are the Hong Kong OFWs. Karen recently marketed our TV show there and it was--surprisingly--well accepted. We had hoped they would love it, but we never actually thought that they really would, especially that much. Their reason?

"We're sick of watching movies with the same stories over and over. We'd like to see something new, and even see some documentaries in there."

We're a country that has a basic literacy rate of 96%, but a functional literacy rate of 86%. That's a sad number.

So dog darn it people, we already know we can bite, now give us something that we can actually chew.

2006-03-04T02:20:00.000+08:00

The Upside of Pissed Off

1. Caught a very good writing break.

2. Am 1/4 done with my first pilot/pitch script.

3. Donning battle armor as I pitch--or is it re-pitch since he's heard this--my (first) feature. If he likes it, then it's onto the next step: writing.

4. Have new cat. It's now 14 days old. Rescued it when it was 3 days old. Kitty has no name in case it dies on me.

5. Due to the drastic reduction of meat products to my diet, my skin has gotten better...

6. A really cute guy that I saw that matched "The Template"

2006-02-25T11:10:00.000+08:00

Are you doing homework?

For some reason, traffic to my site spiked today because a bunch of people were asking "What is a flunky?". I kid you not, those were the exact words and they landed on my site.

Well, you won't find it here. I suggest you go get a dictionary...although I think it means lame-ass sidekick. Or idiot followers. Kinda like a posse, only this time it's some bully and his stupid lunch room crowd...Cobra and the bad guys in blue...Megatron and the rest of the Decepticons...Barbie and friends!

2006-02-21T15:00:00.000+08:00

21 Days and Counting...

This is week three of the enforced "hunger strike", proudly brought to you by my sponsors: "my mother".

For the past twenty or so days, my mother has taken up the much worthy cause of forcing me to go take a corporate job by refusing to feed me. Or rather, refusing to call me to the table to eat and never leaving leftovers...but let's give her credit. She did during the first week, but when she found that I wouldn't cave, she stopped.

So now, it's either "starve" or "come to the table and eat your pride".

Now pride is an interesting meal. It has no taste, no texture, and after 48 hours of subsisting on just one piece of bread, hardly filling. Yet for something unsubstantial, you'll be amazed at how much this can fuel you through the days. It opens your mind to new possibilities (or is it delusions?) and be a source of motivation.

Hunger, on the other hand, is something quite different. I suppose it can mean many different things to several kinds of people. For one, I can't tell what it's like to be a hungry homeless guy. Neither can I tell you what it's like for an anorexic who is desperately trying to miss her next meal.

I can only tell you what it's like for a near 26 year old writer still at home with her parents and still be hungry.

1. Pride and hunger come hand in hand.

When what's being served is your pride and self-worth, you will find the will to work and still skip that next meal.

2. If what's being served is your pride and self-worth, it becomes easy to quantify what exactly they're worth.

Is it worth four hot meals, peppered with well-meaning but painful advice? Is that piece of chicken worth the insults that you're going to take when you eat it? How long can you last with just one small meal in a day so long as you can live out your ambition?

3. When you have none, but live in a place that has a lot, it becomes easier to be hungry.

Like I said, I can't describe what it's like to be homeless and hungry. I don't know what it's like to live day by day, not knowing where your food is going to come from. But if you can't afford to go out to eat all the time, and table scraps from your own table is pretty much what you rely on, it's pretty easy for you to want more.

4. Sleeping becomes a wonderful option.

Hunger takes a lot of energy, not just physical but mental. You really can't think. Your hands ache and your arms become heavy. You wonder if you'll be able to stand up. When you get to that point, it's easy for your brain to succomb to that mental exhaustion. Forgetting stuff you thought about five minutes ago, retracing your steps to remember what it is again. Being tired for just thinking what it was you were thinking about. It gets easy to be beaten by your own body, and without any food, you do the next best thing to recharge. You sleep.

5. Remembering that dreams are for free.

I used to be able to control my own dreams. I still can to a certain extent, but not as lucid as I used to. It's a skill, and just like any other skill, you lose it when you don't use it. It's not like riding a bike. But the good thing about it, is that you can pick it up again, and depending on how your going to deal with yourself when you wake up, it's a great place to stow hunger: You can eat all you want. You can be wherever you want to be.

I don't dream about McDonalds, but I have dreamt about eating. I try not to be disappointed when I wake up. But then again, I usually go to bed praying that i'll dream about solving the kinks in my storyline.

6. Pity is your number one enemy.

I can't speak for other circumstances, but I think this is pretty universal. I used to have this question, of whether or not it was better to beg for food or beg for money when you were too poor and hungry.

I'm not munching on Oreos from a trash bin yet, but if you have to give up eating even if it is to follow your bliss, you can feel pretty sorry-ass fucked up for yourself. It's not easy being hungry, especially when you know that there's food. It's much easier to be angry and sorry for yourself, and tthat requires a lot of mental energy. Which is why you constantly have to remind yourself: you're following your bliss.

7. Food has new meaning.

Last week Xarra and I ate at Triple V's Ultimate Buffet. It was the first real meal I'd had in four days and having been a big eater, my mind went into shock. But I just had one plate and coughed down four pieces of salmon sushi. One plate. Xarra thought I was dying, she'd never seen me eat so little. She also fet like I didn't get my money's worth.

But I did. Sitting there, I wanted to cry. I'd had rice and kare-kare, and by the time I reached the sushi I wanted to throw up, I was so full. Having nothing for so long, my stomach couldn't handle the sudden rush of food. Everything looked so good, just smelling them filled me. If we hadn't been in a hurry maybe I would have thrown up, because as Xarra said, when would I get to eat that much again?

I have no idea. But I have to say that it was worth it. Because for the past three weeks, that's what it's been.

How much is your bliss? What exactly is your dream worth? What are you willing to give up just to get there?

I know I can't afford to move out. I also know that I cannot afford to have a full time corporate job. Not if I want to get to where I want to.

Right now it seems like I am looking at the rest of my life. I don't know what's going to happen, but I do know that I have a choice when it comes to where I want to be career wise, and i'm making a decision.

If that choice means skipping another meal, then i'll do it. If that choice means living another year at home, i'll take it. If that choice means losing my parents respect, then i'll do that. Although if this is how they're judging me, I don't think they ever did respect me in the first place. Or whether I want that respect.

I've seen way too many people reach the end of their life regretting that they never made that sacrifice. Because when you're at the precipice, staring at the void, things like a hot meal and what other people think suddenly have very little meaning.

Follow your bliss, and everything will fall into place.

2006-02-17T21:49:00.000+08:00

The glass is half-full...I hope

Things I learned in the past two weeks:

1. Man cannot live on bread alone. Instead, he needs more of the following staples: meat, vegetables, meat, fruit, meat, desserts, meat, a cocktail of vitamins, meat, a combination of wheats, and meat

2. When a fully sworn meat eater (such as myself) does not get her daily ration of tender lovin' protein, she will start to feel hungry, no matter how much bread she consumes.

3. And will ostensibly be more hungry the lesser bread she consumes.

4. Skipping meals, bread or otherwise, will lead also lead to being hungry. Skipping a succession of meals will thus make you hungrier.

5. If you've reached the ier stage, then no amount of bread, breadsticks, bread crumbs, chocolate covered or otherwise, will alleviate that hunger. It will only get rid of the ier.

6. Being hungry for more than two days will result to a headache.

7. Being hungry and sitting in front of the PC for a long time makes you ultra sensitive to the light and will result into a bigger headache.

8. It sucks to sleep hungry.

9. It's worse when you wake up hungrier.

10. The headache is a lot worse too.

2006-02-14T19:03:00.000+08:00

Where does it all go...

I was reading the interview of Eddie Romero on last Sunday's Starweek when it hit me: the Philippine filmmaker of the decade made a string of US B-movies.

Granted, he hated it, but it brought on an unexpected cult following. Something, I guess, that he never really expected.

So the guy is now somewhat of a legend here and abroad, which is a feat that a lot of local directors have always dreamed of but found it hard to achieve.

I had the privilage of meeting Eddie Romero when he was the assigned guru for the Directing Class at the Tagaytay Film and Television Workshops.

It was lunch time, me and some classmates from the screenwriting module were scrambling to gobble up a meal so we could get back to work when we saw him sitting at the table across from us. He and his wife were talking to some of the other gurus and looked to be having a great time.

Shocked to be in the same room of such greatness, we pushed ourselves to take in more bites even as we deliberated on how to approach him to say "hi".

None of us had ever seen any of his films in tis entirety, but can you blame us if there's no damn copy of any of his movies?

If there is one thing that I have come to hate is that there seems to be no way to purchase old Filipino movies. Sure, the latest ones are all in DVDs and VCDs, but what about the classics? The ones done by Sampaguita and LVN? Where are they now?

I'm sure film students get access to these in film school, but what about the rest of us?

Me and my cousin Lianne used to get our fill of BWs by watching it on the local channels as weekend afternoon specials. After all the variety shows were done, they would usually showcase a film--usually done by Sampaguita--before the gossip shows. (Some of them also came out during the middle of the week which I saw in lieu of my afternoon nap)

I'm not saying that all romcoms produced nowadays are crap, but there is a certain romanticism that was present in the old black and white films that's just missing in what i'm seeing today.

Maybe because all the women are so assertive that it borders on angry and aggressive, and that the men harbor so many issues that they all come off as angsty and mental--even the ones that ride the motorcycles and the thuggish leather jacket.

The dramas are still up to par, but the romcoms? There's a certain magic that seems to have gone.

Anyway, the problem of how to meet Eddie Romero was solved when the guru saw us choking while we gawked openly at them. He called us over and gave the necessary introductions.

Standing there and shaking his hand, all of us probably felt like spewing the banana that we just ate as a sign of our utmost awe, but our throats were frozen as he wished us goodluck in our writing careers.

Back then, I only knew that he directed "Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon". I probably would have spewed had I known that he directed a string of B-movie cult classics.

After all, we can make romcoms and Pinoy can most certainly make a good drama. But a B-movie with a cult following?

Even Hollywood has trouble producing that.

2006-02-08T14:24:00.000+08:00

The Wonderful World of Levelers

Josh Olson, the guy who wrote A History of Violence, is nominated for an Oscar for " Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published".

Now, A History of Violence is a wonderful movie, and I like it. For a character based writer, the way he lead us through the story was amazing.

But that's not why I like him.

I like him because he wrote Infested, one of the GREATEST B MOVIES OF. ALL. TIME. It's got guts, gore, the hilariously cheesy lines, a little of the required nudity, and a soundtrack that's designed to tranq you into sitting there and watching the whole thing. (Not to mention leave a hard case of Last Song Syndrome)

I picked it up because a) Robbie McNeill is in it, and b) I love B-movies, they're perfect if you just want watch something ridiculously entertaining without ever thinking too much, when your brain just wants to sit there passed out on a bean bag or lazing around with cola and a bag of popcorn.

I couldn't stop smiling when I accidentaly found a copy in my video store, looking like a total idiot when I paid for the most expensive VCD i've ever bought ($10.00!) I didn't care, I didn't even know it was going to be sold in the Philippines.

I originally watched it for the McNeill factor, but boy, that movie sure fuckass surpassed my expectations!

At the back of my head, I wondered why the hell Robbie did this. I mean, it's funny as hell, but it's a B-Movie. Maybe the director was talented?

Turned out that the writer and director was Josh Olson, who'd written some shorts and a TV movie, but nothing big so far.

So him being nominated for an Oscar is just mind-blowing. That is like the fuck-ass golden ticket. You can't get anymore diverse than having A History of Violence and Infested your resume. It gives us hope.

Josh man, YOU ROCK.

2006-02-03T18:09:00.000+08:00

To Meme Again

Stuck at home with the flu. Missing yet another awards event, though this time for the Bayaning Filipino awards and not something film related.

Going to all these awards nights makes me wonder if I will one day get up there and get an award of my own. The last award that I got was...gee. A medal from a debate competition.

Anyway, here I am catching up on a couple of emails. Probably the first time I have been home for a whole week without going out and ever worrying about anything (insert sigh of relief here)

This meme is taken from Josh Friedmanns blog. Because I find his cynicism so damn inspiring.

ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:
1985. Santa Claus with Dudley Moore. The first movie that I remember seeing in the theaters. I went there thinking I was really going to meet Santa. Got a candy cane instead.

TWO (2) favorite lines from movies:

I only have one and it's the mother of all Pinoy movie quotes.

"You're nothing but a second rate, trying hard, copycat!"

Some people wait their whole lives just to be able to say that line. I can't even remember who said it (Cherry Gil?) or what damn movie it was. That quote is so popular it needs it's own media kit.

THREE (3) jobs you’d do if you could not work in the “biz”:
NBI Special Agent
JAG Lawyer
creative writing teacher

...What the HELL happened.

FOUR (4) jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
-Admin Assistant for an American consulting firm
-Technical Assistant for an American consulting firm
-Marketing Associate for an American marketing firm
-Korean ESL teacher

...heh. they're all foreign firms.

THREE (3) book authors you like:
Jay McInerney
Ray Bradbury
Arthur C. Clarke

TWO (2) movies you’d like to remake or properties you’d like to adapt:
Loreto Paras-Sulit's The Harvest (Someday I will)
Macross live action movie. I'm a big dork, okay?

ONE (1) screenwriter you think is underrated:

Josh Friedmann!!!

2006-01-29T17:43:00.000+08:00

Sign-Posting

Just chilling out and resting for the first time this week. So much stuff has happened this January that my mind is reeling. I've barely been home these past few weeks, and when I am, I spend most of it sleeping or catching up on some personal work.

Looking back on the past four weeks, I have to say that it's been pretty tough. Not so much mentally, but that it's been physically demanding. After spending most of 2005 cooped up in my house, the amount of travelling that i've done just for this month has been somewhat exhausting.

The status of my bank account is also a bit annoying. I have to bring some maintenance money in otherwise I'm going to be in deep shit in a few months. Although with me being more disciplined now, I am confident that I can find a way to get the cash. Probably not as much as I made last year, but good enough to keep me afloat as I try and establish myself.

So...first month assesment of 2006?

It's been good. I haven't had much time to sit down and take it all in yet, but so far things have been okay. I am learning a lot about the craft of TV and filmmaking--at the same time! It is literally learning by doing, and it has it's pros and cons.

For one, everything is a baptism of fire. You literally learn from your mistakes and then hope that you get the opportunity to do it again. It hasn't been easy, but i've seen so many aspects of the industry in these few short weeks. Had I been in film school, i'd probably still be reading about this insead of doing it.

But! When I'm standing there in those moments where I have no idea whether i'm doing the right thing, I do kind of wish that I had some sort of previous academic background. At least something to reassure me that I am not going to end up being the missing nail that will ruin this production.

The challenge of learning two seperate fields at the same time, in many different arenas is also quite wearing. Most people focus on one aspect of it, whether it be production, direction, or writing, for film or television. I don't have that luxury. I just grab whatever oppurtunity for me to be on the set.

For the most part, I am anxious to just sit down and start writing. Although production is fun, it isn't something that I would want to do for a very long time. The schedule is extremely demanding, and it would have to be a very special project for a homebody like me to do it.

Every day is an adventure though, and so far, it has been wonderful.

2006-01-05T04:05:00.000+08:00

Meme Me

I am, sadly, addicted to memes. I think answering theme reveals a lot about yourself and others, thus saving a lot of time and energy if ever any one of you want to kill each other down the road. Also, when I was teaching, meme's were a great way to break the ice and get students to do their exercises.

Mostly because Korean or no, people like talking about themselves, or at the very least love to know that others are interested in them in some way (even if it's just teach-cha avoiding making a formal lesson plan by using a "radical approach" that involves students just writing essays and answering meme's)

This one comes from Dignan's 75 Year Plan. It should prove amusing to some of my friends who'll read this, but even I still get a laugh from the answers that I give. Sometimes it just takes the right question from other people to make you learn something new about yourself.

1. What did you want to be when you grew up (WYGU) while you were a kid?

I wanted to be a robot, the Blue Lion from Voltron in particular. Not that I wanted to be like Princess Alora, I just thought that the Blue Lion was cool. So I spent a lot of time pretending I had all these weird powers when I was around six or so. Then when I went to school, I learned that I couldn't be a cyborg and like most girls in Catholic schools, I wanted to be a nun. When I learned that they couldn't carry guns (???) I thought i'd be a scientist or a lawyer.

2. What did you want to be WYGU when you graduated from High School?

Sadly, science was not one of my strong points during high school. I still enjoyed learning about science, but I never was--and never will be--an academic. So I thought i'd be like my dad and be a lawyer. Though looking back, I was more interested in the title than I was with the job. I thought being a lawyer was too passive, so to be more pro-active--and to force myself to be more disciplined--I thought I would enlist in the Philippine Navy and become a JAG.

3. What (if anything) is your college degree in? (overachievers: feel free to add Graduate degrees)

I was a psych major. During the latter part of my college years, I thought being a lawyer was too boring for me and fell in love with the study of human behavior. Since I wanted to help people, I chose a career in criminologyy, particularly behavioral profiling. But a nervous breakdown prompted me to seek a career in something that wouldn't take too much toll on your psyche.

4. What do you do for a living now?

I was an HR Admin Assistant for a while, then went on to become a technical assistant. Then reeling from the constraints of a nine-to-fiver, left to persue screenwriting. I moonlighted as an ESL teacher to Koreans to pay the bills before working as a virtual assistant/market associate. Then I finally quit that so that I can be what I am now: a slave.

Hehe.

Seriously. I am a struggling screenwriter moonlighting as a PA/Production Designer/talk show host producer for sh!t pay. Right now, I am trying to learn everything I can about making movies without ever going to film school. It's hard work, especially for someone who wants to spend her life working in front of the computer creating stories that will hopefully inspire or help people.

2006-01-02T13:49:00.000+08:00

Monday, Monday

Getting ready to leave for the second post-production meeting of Big A's first project, a short film adaptation of an award winning play.

I'm on production design on this one, what a way to start. Halfway through reading the script--which is just twenty or so pages long--and I was close to tearing up. My first time out, and I was going to Vegas. Literally.

Loud, bright colors, that just grab you from the screen without making your eyes hurt. Years ago, Dario Argento achieved this effect by dressing up the set in Pucci colors, adding some '85s, and then double treating the film.

As a result, we have a breath-taking Susperia, which is a horror movie in it's own league. It looks so damn good that even someone who hates horror might be tempted to watch it.

And that's our goal. Moulin Rouge meets Bad Education. Susperia sans the horror. PDs on E. Considering how tight our schedule is--and how low our budget is--this one is going to take a hecka lot of work.

So i'm a bit of a nervous wreck right now. Five days to create a whole new world.

But it's exciting and scary at the same time. Certainly a new challenge. And damn, I cannot wait to start.

2005-12-26T22:59:00.000+08:00

The Lazy Blogger Meets Her Resolutions

I don't think I ever made any resolutions last year save for "wake up earlier" and "lose that gut", both--sadly--a losing battle. And both--sadly--are on top of my list again this year, which will be extensively longer.

But looking back, a lot of things that I had hoped to happen in my life did happen, regardless of any written resolutions.

(this list comes from David Anaxagoras' site: Man Bytes Hollywood. He's funny. Go read him.)

1. What did you do in 2005 that you’d never done before?

Let's see...became a poor english teacher, then quit to become highly paid net marketing associate, then quit that to become a struggling writer/filmmaker/TV producer, which is remarkably my goal in life.

Also travelled sans parents on my own money. And in case I forget...I also ran away from home!!! (though I think the technical term would be "moved out")

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I think I gained weight, or at the very least I think I gained weight...(okay, so maybe that wasn't a resolution)

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No. Everyone who gave birth this year are people that I never really cared for in school, but just decided to add me to their friendster list to make it seem like they have more friends.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes. My tita Aleli died New Years Eve. She always wanted to go out in a bang.

5. What countries did you visit?

None. Was either too busy or too poor to leave the country. But I did leave the city and travelled for close to 15 hours. Does that count?

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?

My license. A date (which seems like it's gonna happen next year) A time to date (seems like it's gonna happen next year too) A paying writing gig. A screened movie. More peace and goodwill.

7. What date from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

None. It all passed by in a very slow blur.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Producing three episodes of a talk show for under $400 dollars!!! And it will actually air!

9. What was your biggest failure?

I don't think I had one for this year...or maybe i'd rather not remember...

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Had more migraines allergies but nothing serious

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I was gonna say my mini-DV camera, but that conked on me. So i'm gonna say my new computer upgrade...

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

My parents and me, who--by virtue of "running away"--suddenly defined new rules and a better understanding of each others roles. Yay family!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

How Katrina was handled appalled me...

14. Where did most of your money go?

Living expenses, upgrades, small splurges like "movies I must watch", "dinners", and cab rides...tons of cab rides.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

My new outline. Some PA oppurtunities. And "three girls with no media backgrounds producing a psycho-spiritual talk show on the catholic channel"....at $200 per ep!!! Ha!!! We also have advertisement spots for $40 dollars per ep, so if you'd like some exposure...

16. What song will always remind you of 2005?

Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing, the one by John Legend. Towards the end of 2005, I lifted everything up to the Lord, and things just took off.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? - I would say happier.

ii. thinner or fatter? -Fatter, I think.

iii. richer or poorer? - I was richer for awhile, but am slowly creeping back to being poor again. Somebody hire me so I can get off living on my savings?

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Work out more. Saved more. Talked to my parents more. Exerted more discipline in writing. And had more fun.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Stressing, stressing, stressing.

20. How will you be spending New Year’s?

Eating. Then later on probably working!!!

22. Did you fall in love in 2005?

Does "the thought of Ty Miller" count?

23. How many one-night stands?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

24. What was your favorite TV program?

For this year, House MD. Love, love, love that show.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Hate is such a strong word. But no. The same people who were on my shitlist in 2004 were still on it on 2005.

26. What was the best book you read?

Honestly didn't have time to read. But I recently bought a book of poems by Rilke that really makes me smile. And "Making Movies" by Sidney Lumet reminds me that making movies really is hard work.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

A lot of local bands!!! "bayang Barrios", "Urban Dub" and "Orange and Lemon's" in particular. Been listening to a lot of Puccini lately, some Stevie Wonder, the Grateful Dead, and (hehe) Jason Donovan.

28. What did you want and get?

New creds to me resume. It's definitely a lot heftier this year than it was last year!!!

29. What did you want and not get?

I would rather not focus on that.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

"Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros". Go Maxi!!!!

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 25 and...I think I was working...had lunch with a friend then worked again...

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A finished screenplay, a by-line, and a paying gig.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?

I dress in a manner that will match my shoes...which is always something I can run in.

34. What kept you sane?

GOD.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

After a Vin Diesel 2004, I would say Ty Miller and a slight recurrence of Robbie McNeill. Just can't break from the good-boy stereotype.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

The damn "Oust GMA" shit. I am pro-government. I say shut up. Everyone called in to find out the status of the votes. No one is ever satisfied with the current president. And stop trying to reinstate the guy who got fucking tried for PLUNDER and robbed the government--read: YOUR MONEY--of Billions. And quit bringing up FPJ. He's DEAD.

37. Who did you miss?

My friend Ate Sally...

38. Who was the best new person you met?

There are a lot of great new people I met this year. But just because he was the most recent notable one, I must say that Danton Remoto is a hecka lotta fun to hang with.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005:

Nothing can go wrong if you lift it all up to the Lord.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

"What a long, strange trip it's been"
Trucking, by the Grateful Dead

2005-11-11T11:42:00.000+08:00

The Meeting

So I had a meeting. Big deal...Really, big deal.

I am happy to report that the reason why I haven't been blogging too much is that my career as a screenwriter is going pretty well. Quite well, according to some of my friends. Still not up to my standards, but fucking great compared to what's normal. And since it's actually taking me beyond the gates of my house and into a place that takes an hour to get to by cab, it can at least be considered a major difference (and a slight annoyance)

So the meeting...it was good.

It wasn't spectacular. Spectacular would be New Line Cinema begging me to write for them for a shitload of money. But since I haven't finished a screenplay yet, spectacular would be a major local studio begging you to share your God given talent to help rescucitate the Sleeping Giant which I call "The Philippine Film Industry".

Fun thing about the The Philippine Film Industry. Everyone who works in it is perenially late.

I know, I know the joke. That Filipinos are always late.

But seriously. Anyone who is someone in this darn industry is late. Whether it's ten minutes or an hour, if they're not late for something, then they're not that fucking important. Something needs to be off, nothing is ever as you see it on the schedule.

So that's a problem.

I'm always late. And unlike early birds, who's only choice is to get there on time, we late people come with a little variety (and a hell lot of excuses).

Considering that as a coping adult, I am still working on getting to places on time (never mind early), this new factoid seriously throws my agenda off. Because while Film People are always late, a lot of kids from my generation are now getting into the habit of being early.

Or maybe that's always been the case and I was always just really late, but anyway...

The Meeting, which has been cancelled once and rescheduled the day after, was running late. Really late, in fact. What should have started as seven started at 8:15. And since I wanted to rub in the fact that they cancelled on me the night before when I was halfway to the designated meeting place (thus spending Php 250.00+tip) I got there really early. Never mind that I was late the night before, I was pissed.

And ended up in the wrong Starbucks. Imagine that. But considering that Eastwood was built around yuppies seeking to relieve themselves of their incomes through clothes and expensive coffees, maybe I shouldn't be surprised that there was more than one Starbucks within a fucking quarter mile in the area.

So I get there--the wrong place--early. Which was fine, because they were running late.

After making a call to JP, who works in the area and thus picked me up and delivered me to the right Starbucks, I became officially late. Not that it mattered. They were later.

Which means that in this situation, I was the Floundering Fish.

After having bumped into two college friends and having coffee with them--with JP coming in to check on me from time to time, to make sure I wasn't ODing in Mocha Fraps--they finally came in. After around...gee, an hour in a half.

Which means the meeting ended up sometime during midnight. And though I do sleep at the wonderful hour of 2am, I do prefer to be within striking distance of my bed come the primetime hours. Besides, my mouth starts craving for the taste of my Melatonin sleeping aid at around eleven. Nothing like a burst of cherry to send you off to lalaland.

But I sucked it up anyway, and had one of the first totally business-like meetings ever. None of the "we're friends and let's have a business meeting over pizza, while we gossip and talk business on the side"...

So it ended well...and just like a date, a good meeting almost always ends up with another meeting.

And just like a girlie girl who needs a whuppin in a head, I was fucking early for that too.

Note to self: meeting for tonight set at seven. Be there at eight.

2005-09-10T14:48:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, the 80's

I grew up in the 80's. Tragic, sad, but true.

When I was six, one of my older cousins sat me on a chair and nearly suffocated me with hairspray. If that wasn't enough, she put mousse to keep my bangs up on a two inch wave and wings to either side of my head. To make sure no one missed it, she put glitter gel on the wave and brush-on color on the wings. One side was electric blue and the other was this dark, hot pink. You wiped it on using a stick, and if I had the sense then I probably would have poked her in the eye with it.

But I didn't because I was six and I was wearing the mismatched Punky Brewster outfit with an acid wash denim skirt. I also had a mock red Micheal Jackson Thriller jacket...and I just keep mentioning that jacket, don't I? Probably because I really liked that jacket. Probably the only piece of clothing that I really liked from the 80's.

But enough about one of my favorite rants. I'm sure if we all relegated our 80's stuff to burn, we'd drill a hole through the ozone layer. Besides, not everything from the 80's should be committed to a bonfire (except the clothes. burn those.)

Maybe it's an age thing. With a birthday coming up (damn), I've found myself missing certain...things. Specifically, my 80's TV shows.

Yep, I was a boob tube baby. I knew the line-up on all the channels, from the big networks, to the channel 4 public access, and that channel we somehow got from the Clarke Airbase (Square One!)

Of course, with the advent of DVD's, you no longer have to pine for them. Unless you're poor. Like me. In which case, you have to get a torrent. Or leech them off Kazaa.

But sometimes you get to be unlucky. These shows aren't up for leeching and even if you were to cough up a few hundred bucks (thousands, in my case) they don't have it on DVD.

In that case, you're up to some fans mercy. Hopefully there will be another fanatic like you out there whose got a stash of VHS tapes, a DVD burner and the time and generosity to provide you with a copy.

...But i'm spoiled. Really I am. Damn the new millenium for raising me with such comforts. I can survive without a cellphone (for a few days at least) but I can't do without my damn DVD extras.

So, in honor of my current melancholy which can be attributed to my coming birthday and actually moving to another age set, here are:

Kriszia's List of TV Shows that she'd like to see on DVD:

1. Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future (1987) I really wanted to be Pilot and since then, i've always been a fan of Jessica Steen. The storyline was really cool, but being a girl, it was really the love story that drew me in. Sure, it was a tragic ending, but it set a precedent for what would become the girl-dies-guy-suffers kind of stories that I wrote when I was 12.

2. Bioman (1984) Ha! Take this, Power Rangers! Any kid who grew up on this show would see what the Mighty Morphin duds ripped-off. Granted, the storyline was a little weak but when you're five, who the hell cares? I remember going around the neighborhood with my friends, pretending to be the Bio Team. I was Yellow Four.

3. Shaider (1984) So sue me. I'm asian and Japan happens to be our neighbor. Besides the lulling chant (shigi-shigi maka nu shigi choo-wah!) that everyone just had to sing when Lay-Ar had to produce...an egg...I really, really, really want to find out if Shaider and Annie ever got it on.

4. Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories (1985) If you like unique shorts, you would love this show. Steven Spielberg said that this show was where his ideas that were too short to become a movie ended up. As a storyteller, this show is fucking it! There were rumors that this show was going to be released soon--but they've been saying that for two frigging years already. Hurry UP! Mr. Spielberg! War of The Worlds sucked, but this should redeem you!

5. Homefront (1991) Okay, so this was 90-ish, but I love it anyway. And since it's Post WWII, you don't see any of the trashy haircuts or clothes. I love shows set in the 40's and 50's, and the way how everyone deals with being home after the war is a very unique take on the whole subject. Also, Kyle Chandler was amazing. And just as a bonus, Jessica Steen was also there and was paired with--drumroll--Robbie McNeill.

6. The Young Riders (1989) Yet another period piece to avoid the clothes and haircut, this time a Western. I must confess, I never saw this show when it was originally aired, though I don't think it ever aired here. But it was shown on the Hallmark Channel about five or six years ago and I just fell in love with it. The writing was pretty good, and I thought the love story (I'm a girl, okay?) between Kid and Lou was charming. And besides Ty Miller, it's also got another thing that I adore: horses!!!

The rest of the shows that I watched were pretty popular and have already been released on DVD, like V and the Ray Bradbury Theater.

There are some shows that i'd love to see again, like Free Spirit, Out of this World, and The Equalizer, but I wouldn't go so far as to buy them...well, maybe i'd buy The Equalizer because Edward Woodward reminds me so much of my grandfather.

There is one show that I can't remember that I wouldn't watch but would love to know the title just because it had a plot that could only have been pitched during the 80's...

Does anyone know that TV show where Snow White and her Prince fall into a well or something, and she along with her extended family--Wicked Stepma and Dwarfs et. al.--wake up and it's the 80's and they have kids and are now living in suburbia?

I need to make sure this thing is real, because I refuse to admit that my childhood imagination could have conjured something that would suck this much.

2005-09-05T22:03:00.000+08:00

1984

I actually thought about that title. A lot.

I thought about calling this entry "Dance of the Monkeys", but I didn't want to come across as racist. Then I toyed about "Ba-ba-baaddd Sheep", but that's just too damn corny. Considered using Laarni's "Who fucks who" over my own "Who wants to be a slut".

But I thought 1984 was the most glib.

Don't know what i'm talking about? Good. I suggest you cover your eyes or skip to the last entry. Better yet, wait for my next entry. Or you can use the Google search engine on the side and google up "stupid morons" to see how high this show is on the list while making me a few cents on the side.

I'm already doing the show a favor by talking about it. If I weren't so annoyed I'd have ignored this small blip in my pissed off radar, especially since I haven't seen it.

Oh yeah, I hear it now. Some sarcastic pinoy reporter/journalist/columnist/random googler thinking i'm being totally biased because i've been conditioned to think that all Filipino shows suck.

Well, they don't. I happen to want to work for this industry, and though we went through a slump (read: late 80's, early 90's) we actually are having a marked improvement.

Except for this one. Nope, not this show. This show sucks. The fact that the network who bought this paid millions not just indicates how desperate they are, it also exacerbates their stupidity.

I'm not being blunt, i'm being gut wrenchingly brutal. There's a difference. The former is just caustic melodrama, the latter happens to be a major rant with teeth.

And all this for a show that I haven't even seen. Not once.

So how, you may ask, can I hate something that I haven't even seen?

Several reasons, the major one being that I'm not really fan of reality shows. It not only fucked writers and actors in the television industry, but it also made a formerly annoying fetish into a fad: voyeurism. Hate that.

So maybe I hate them on principle...though I do watch some. The Adoption series on Hallmark seems to have grabbed my attention...oh wait, that's a documentary. My bad.

Well, Colby from Survivor: the Outback was kinda cute, and I was kind of hoping through my brief skimmings that he'd end up with Elizabeth. But dude, that was so four years ago.

Besides, America may be on some Reality Show kick, but we Filipino's already have two pretty good reality shows on top of our daily dose of noontime variety shows. And with only two (competitive? Decent?) networks, i'd say that's enough.

Or I could be wrong. Because why the hell would they buy a canned American show that wasn't even so highly rated in the first place? Did they hope the western infusion would revilatilize an industry that is nursing it's way to good health with it's own asian remedies? Or were they hoping to rack up a few through some clever merchandising, which has no doubt been pushed by the people who sold the franchise?

If you don't know what i'm talking about, you either a) haven't heard of Orson Wells, in which case you're deprived, go back to high school, b) you haven't seen any of the ads, which makes you lucky, so I suggest you bail now while you still can, or c) you have but you don't care and you're erasing it from your memories and damn-you-kriszia for fucking reminding me.

We're talking about Pinoy: Big Brother. And no, I am not linking it. Screw.

Maybe i'm shooting myself in the leg and the head here for saying this, but I really don't know what possessed the network to buy this shit in the first place.

So what exactly have I heard about P:BB (you only get a nick because I hate the Orson Wells association and it happens to be one of my fav books)

That it sucks is pretty much the general term i've heard.

I know I haven't seen it, but reviews from TV shows like this pretty much work like a torrent. One friend invariably watches one episode, ends up hating it, tells you. Never the same ep, and only just one. After all, you only need to see one ep and you've had enough.

Why see it in the first place? My friends are smart. They should have avoided it. They had a stand: they often hate reality shows on principle.

But they also thought Elizabeth should have gone for Colby.

They saw it because the amount of media exposure it got made them curious. They saw the stink and thought "this smells" and just to make sure, they fucking smelled it.

Why the scathing remark? Obviously, I came into this opinion already biased. Ms. Hate on Principle, right?

It's bad enough that we actually bought other people's garbage, but even now we can't even get the proper stench.

In short, it may smell bad, but let's turn it into that bad smell that you can't help but keep smelling, thus transforming this into your own perverse pleasure.

Instead, this show is so bad it can't even be perverse, let alone bring in any sort of pleasure.

Who the hell fucking populates a reality show using the same people? And we're not talking about them being attractive, but i'm talking about them wearing the same brand of Moron™.

We saw the ads, we all know they're cute. We have no issue with that, it's a TV show, and cute people sell.

But if you have a show whose theme is "let's see how different people will react and interact after being trapped in a house for 100 days", you might want to get Different People™. Or maybe even Different Attractive People™.

After all, that seems to be the all important element in a show like this right? And while you're at it, you might want to make sure that you get people who correctly represents your society, or maybe just your culture. I mean, they aren't calling this Pinoy: Big Brother for nothing, right?

So it's only prudent to actually see all kinds of Filipinos.

Except i'm not seeing them. I don't even think I see anyone prudent, nor anyone Filipino. Either that or i've been cooped up in my room for too long that I missed a nuclear war and the surviving roaches all mutated into asian sluts.

And I use the term to encompass both genders.

Was hiring young attractive liberals from one extreme of society in order to ensure live sex the network's subtle plan to hike up ratings? Because newsflash: it ain't so subtle.

Neither is the whole cast spontaneously breaking out into a musical, nor constantly parading around in swimsuits because all the challenges happened to be water sports.

Saying that you're first time was age 12 on camera doesn't even make you a liberal, it only showed that you were an underaged bitch. Where the hell were your parents during this time? And are they cringing while you all make this revelation?

Let's save this pre-pubescent Sex in The City talk for a scripted show shall we, maybe then it can actually be witty. Maybe then it can actually be taunted as "fiction".

Because let's not forget that reality shows bring with it one stigma, that people think it's real. And if you have a show with the word "Pinoy" in it and it's crawling with oversexed yuppies, people around the world are going to think that the current generation of Pinoy's are composed of nothing but oversexed yuppies.

Much like how the world thinks that all American schools are like Boston Public. Only they get a little leniency, they're a primetime drama. People won't feel like idiots when they think it's a bit exaggerated.

Oh wait, but reality shows are scripted right? Or what's the new PC term...ah, creative editing.

So they just all edited it to make them look like they're horny individuals who want to have sex because their trapped in a house for a hundred days.

Right. They're all saints.

But seeing as this is a reality show...am I even supposed to care about that? Shouldn't it be easier for me to just forget this one small factoid?

Am I being a moralistic bitch? Yes, I am. And I like the view from my fucking high horse, so you can forget about asking me to go down.

This could have been a good show. It could have told us how different people interact in a certain type of situation. That would have been interesting, and we may even walk away from an episode learning something about ourselves and others.

Instead, we have scantily clad people exchanging sex talks when they're not playing Marco Polo. And let's not forget about the 24/7 internet coverage. Believe me, any hopes you had about playing the "subtle card" were thrown out as soon you mounted the cameras on the bathrooms.

Yes, let's all patronize this fetish for watching people in bathrooms. And please, let's be honest by admitting to ourselves that when the people tune in to the private rooms, they are not hoping to catch these people going peepee.

Let's set a standard, shall we people? Like if we want hard hitting reality, let's just stick to a documentary. Better yet, have Lav Diaz handle the ball.

We're already sick of pompous foreigners thinking that some Filipinas are sluts, we don't need a show that will further mislead them. Or do you prefer pervs jerking off for free on your 24/7 webcam?

The sad part is, with all the money spent there's really nothing we can do but run with it. Let's make the most out of our buck rather than admit defeat.

Or there is one thing...

We can rename the show and give it a different rating. It can still be a reality show, but this time it won't be so equivocating.

I'm thinking "Who Wants to Sleep their Way into being a Millionaire" is a good title. Throw in a couple of condoms and a PG13 then it should do good in pay-per-view.

2005-08-26T11:35:00.000+08:00

The Art of Googling: The Rise and Fall of Blogs Everywhere

There used to be a time when the net was pretty safe.

Now, due to our own vanity and a mighty, mighty search engine, our somewhat average lives got their 15 seconds of net fame.

Don't tell me you haven't done it. I'm sure you've Googled your name. Some of you probably do on a regular basis. Googling full name first. Then first name and last. Then getting desperate you google just your last name, thinking maybe "look! that a. anderson might be me!"

(No, I never google my full name. I don't relate to my middle name so it never gets mentioned. Much like Chandler never mentions he's a Muriel.)

But all of us have been sluts at some point, and if we're not dropping our names in the blog (or other names such as KAREN Va--...nah. just kidding, Karen Va--)

OR

Using ever popular ad words in order to drive people to your site, like Joss Cola, D'Anothers, Pinoy Scripts, anything that remotely ties in to the Philippine Movie Industry, and just because I want a plug "hello to my teacher Roy Iglesias!"....

Though I'm not entirely sure he googles my name. Or even his name. Probably someone out there does. Who hopefully works for the industry, and may realize one of this Universe's possibilities: a nice note in my comment section inviting me for a job.

Of course, that never happens. Much like how the Screenwriting Guild of the Philippines never send out their union members their SGP card (which we paid for. reality is, the guy working the secretariat is pretty old. I saw the stash of ID's in his drawer, all waiting for pickup. I'm damn sure there ain't that many writers signing up, seeing as most of us are starving.)

Am I shooting myself in the foot here? Hmmm...let's try for the head.

The good and the bad of Googling is that there will always be that person who will search for the weird words, and will end up having your site or your blog strung with a host of others, who have no idea how they got lumped in that category.

Fortunately for me, the weirdest i've ever come across when I got googled is "Kriszia I am not an Ax Murderer". That wonderful webspace that had said words has forever dropped out of webcrawler botspace, and is thus no longer googable (is that a word already?) Now it's just Pickle Minded.

But that's a marked improvement, right?

2005-08-21T11:27:00.000+08:00

Holy shit! Was that (like) a decade ago?

It always amazes me when those little things happen...You know, those little things, the ones that remind you that you're older.

And i'm not talking about that pair of jeans from high school that no longer fit you, but more like "What the fuck? Jagged Little Pill is ten years old now?"

Luke Walton--could you put him in some more, Phil?--is my age, Reality Bites has already released a ten year anniversary box set, the 80's are coming back, and teenagers not knowing what The X-Files is.

I can just see it "Yeah, that show used to be a really great hit during my day. So yeah, the remake has some pretty big shoes to fill."

The only teen show that I can somehow stomach is...One Tree Hill, and that's because I think Lucas and Sawyer should hook up because they look so....blonde together. Sort of like a teenaged version of Brad and Gwyneth, the power blondes when I was a teenager.

Let's not mention the fact that every damn day now something happens where I just have to be "responsible".

Freelance deadline job. You have to make that. Check.

Writing deadline. Must absolutely make that. Exert newly forming kung-fu discipline. Check.

Make sure cat is not wrecking the house. Even though technically, the cat now owns the house and we just live in it. Check. Check.

And a hundred other things that I suddenly have to do otherwise the world falls apart...and it's sick because if I really don't do at least one, some part of the universe might actually sag from my irresponsibility.

Wonderful how we're all connected, isn't it?

Sometimes, I still find it weird when I look in the mirror and think "wow, that's me". Because in my mind, even though I look a little bit different, I don't feel that much different than I did when I was a kid.

Yet everyone expects you to be this someone else. This...whatsthosewords...ah. A "responsible adult". There you go.

Once in a while, i'll get a glimpse of the "repsonible adult". When she's off running errands, when she cleans the house and her room without being told, when she's lecturing a teenager, when she's counseling a friend...sometimes she comes out and I get to meet her.

But most of the time, she's shy and reluctant to show herself. Probably fearful that when she's out, people will just want her to be out all the damn time and leave behind "the kid".

And the years between "responsible adult" and the "the kid" is already growing. Next thing you know, she won't remember ever knowing the other.

Now had sad is that?

2005-08-19T12:18:00.000+08:00

SSDD? Go check the calendar again...

It's one of those difficult weeks.

When you're so busy that you have to skip on working out and taking a shower (shit), when you absolutely must find something in your room--which you were desperately re-organizing and now looks like ground zero, when the household help needs to take an emergency break, when your cat takes a shit at the wrong place and you need to clean it up at four in the morning, when you have to do a rewrite on an assignment that's due oh so soon...all of this had to happen when my hands were poised on a script that wants to get out of my brain.

And you think: why the hell does shit always happen at the same time? Why the hell does it always have to be localized in a week? Why the hell does does it even have to happen to me? Or at all?

Why, dammit! Why?!

Because it's a full moon week.

Before tearing my hair out in frustration, I took a quick peek at the calendar, which immediately confirmed my suspicions. Full moon week again, when crap seems to wash up my way along with the tides.

We are not happy.

If possible, I would hybernate for a week every damn month until the week was over. Never going out, never talking to anyone, not doing any fucking thing. Staying propped up and useless
because everything will be on fifty percent for so long as the moon is in maximum illumination.

The only upsides to this week was: a) finding the missing pieces to my old script outline, which needs to be revised anyway; b) talking to a really good friend from HS over the phone who is now based in VA...but forgetting to get her contact details so I now cannot talk to her, c) getting a fresh new idea for a script but not having the time for it until next week...when the moon is back to normal.

Damn, really.

Oh well, at least I got to watch House, MD. Last Tuesday was the Asian season premier and I am now addicted. I've always been a fan of Hugh Laurie, so even though he's shaken off his british accent for this show, I still love him. Excellent writing too.

At least I got one silver lining.

2005-08-15T12:13:00.000+08:00

tRailers

Ever since I got DSL i've been addicted to one thing: trailers. Not because it's an accurate discription of what the movie is going to be (case in point: The Jacket) or even tell me whether or not it's going to be a good movie, because let's face it people, sometimes the damn trailer is better than the movie itself...Or the trailer is the damn movie itself.

But it's still an excellent promotional tool, and I watch it simply because I can. I get this evil grin on my face every time I log onto Video Detective watching clip upon clip, remembering the days of (woe) on dial-up.

Once you're on DSL, you can never go back. Never.

Anyway, I recently came across two clips that really piqued my interest.

One is the UK TV promo for Lost (thanks to John August for the link) who does this really cool noirish music video that tells you nothing on what the show is all about...but who the hell cares really, because at this point, everyone's heard of Lost. Even the people who don't watch it have an idea of what it is.

And thanks to this video, I am looking forward to watching the second season, this time with the addition of Michelle Rodriguez. You go, girl.

Second is the trailer to Crispin Glover's movie (thanks again to John August for the link) What is it? This is probably the most confusing and disjointed trailer that i've seen that actually gives you an accurate idea on what the movie is going to be like. And yes, after seeing, I do want to know what the hell it is and would be willing to sit for the next 120 minutes just finding out what.

Crispin Glover was the Thin Man in the Charlies Angels movies. I first saw him way back in the River's Edge when it first screened here on cable (like i'd watch it in the theaters when I was six) and his performance really stuck to me. After previewing this, it now makes me wonder what the hell was going through his head when he made this, when he wrote this...fuck, when he even got the grain of an idea that turned it into...this.

It looks like it was shot using your regular home DVD camcorder, but the effects of it all really just blows you away. And none of them seem like CGI too, just honest to goodness smoke and props. It's like the old 70's sci-fi movies with a little bit of porn thrown in. It's disgustingly and perversely amazing.

And I can't wait to see it.

2005-08-09T16:09:00.000+08:00

Is it because it's real?

I recently read some reviews to Irreversible, the 2002 Gaspar Noe film that "shocked" several viewers from the film festivals and the theaters it was shown.

Some got nauseous, some fainter, while some demanded that they stop the screening due to the violent nature of the film. They just couldn't take it.

Honestly, I am pro-censorship...when it works. Most of the time it doesnt, but I don't think you should junk the idea all together just because the system needs improvement. And with parents taking a more active role in controlling their childrens viewing, I think we're on the right track.

What's not right is this ridiculous high horse that some people are getting onto.

Irreversible was never shown here. It probably would have caused quite a controversy, but it may have been shown with a strictly enforced NC-17 rating. Mostly because in this case, the violence in the movie was superceded by art.

Since the story centers mostly about rape and violence, and it's impact on society, you really can't cut that out and expect the film to be a success. The 11 minute rape scene and the brutal scene in the club might be hard to stomach, but it's not a reason for it to end up on the cutting room floor.

Nor is it a reason to stop screening the film.

Is it truly nauseating? I think it is. Is it really violent? You bet. Is it porn? Not on your life. The only people who can walk away from that movie turned on are the ones who have a hard hitting fetish for it.

But does it turn your stomach? Will it make you cry? It does and it probably will. You might even leave with a fear of walking down deserted underpasses at the dead of the night. This isn't your usual drama. It's a hard hitting movie that expects you to walk out disgusted and open your eyes to the depravities of the human condition.

So why this rant?

Because I don't get how some people will be able to sit through Passion of Christ and not demand it be shut down but not this. Sure, it's GOD, but it's the bias of foreign censorship rearing it's bigotted head once again.

I've seen films depicting orgies and violent shootings, most of which aren't relevant to the film but are merely decorations. Eye candy if you will. Something to stimulate a viewers senses.

So why show such an averse reaction to this one? Because it looks real? Because it was too real? Because it affected you? Because instead of turning you on, it frightened you? Because it opened you to the possibility of certain violence out there?

That doesn't make any fucking sense.

I would rather have something real presented to me with a heavy warning, than to let two people macking each other after showing violence under the guise of "entertaining and mind blowing action" with a PG-13 rating.

This is a wrong time to be prudent, especially when you have music videos with half naked girls gyrating their asses to some rappers face.

Forgive me but if you let PG-13 films that promotes violence and promiscuity into your home on a daily basis, then I can't figure out why you can't sit through a hard hitting NC-17 film designed to prevent it.

That just doesn't fucking compute.

2005-08-07T17:02:00.000+08:00

That Sweet Working Vacation

For a lot of people (and that probably includes YOU) the term "work from home" becomes synomymous with "a working vacation".

Coming from a person who's been doing this on and off for more than a year now, I believe that i'm more than qualified to tell you that the analog is crap.

First off, I don't even really get that term "working vacation". The only way that oxymoron could have existed is if it was developed in the 50's (or 80's), where everyone trooped to "an office" to work for "eight hours" and then "went home". So any sort of "work" you invariably did while you were out of the confines of "your office" and under the sun--preferably with Martini in one hand, shaken and not stirred--falls under the category of a "working vacation".

Nowadays, it's not the same thing. With the advent of a laptops and WiFi, there's really no excuse for all that working to stop. And if you're pretty smart and have made yourself (studpidly) inexpedable to your place of work, time spent sunbathing while sipping exotic libations can be considered "billable".

But if you're just like the rest of us expendable drones, it's probably considered "overtime". Most likely "unpaid". Meaning, it's work that you would have missed and brought with you so that you could take that vacation, which you desperately need because you were going crazy "at work".

Ha. Bet that changes your mind about brining your laptop to the beach with you, huh? Did you tell your boss about the SMS function on Yahoo Messenger? In fact, did you (you fool!) even tell your boss about Yahoo Messenger?

Because if you did, he will never. let. you. go. NO.

Much as I love the convenience of being "wired" and "connected", there are some days when I most definitely do not want to be wired or connected to anybody.

And if you think that's bad, then try doing that when you work from home. Where your job and your house is all located in one place, where your daily grind starts a mere few paces from your bed.

Never looked at it that way, huh?

Sure, you can go to work dressed in your jammies or even buck naked (though it can be a bit drafty). You can take an extended lunch or even work while watching HBO (which hardly works) You can bail whenever you want and go to the mall, or sleep when you feel like taking a nap. And you never, ever have to worry about getting dressed and putting on some make-up and taking that annoying drive to work.

Those are the perks and believe me, they are wonderful perks. But like all things, there's a downside with working from home. And they are mainly:

A) You actually do have to go to WORK. Like, sitting down and doing what you would have done in the office, only this time you have more comforts, or as we call it: distractions. It takes an awful lot of discipline to not spend the day eating, watching TV, or surfing the net.

B) Errands. You still have to do them. Usually in the middle of the day, and at the most inconvenient hour. But you know what' worse? Other people's errands, and them asking you do to them. They figured that since you just sit at home, watching TV and only occasionaly do some work, you have some time to take their car to the garage or do their shopping. Basically all the things they can't do because they're at work.

C) Breaking momentum. With all the distractions going around, any sort of break will take an awful amount of dedication just to go back. Mostly because these breaks tend to be fun, like a really nice BW movie on Replay at Cinema one, which you absolutely have to watch because studying the language and cinematography is monumental to furthering your writing career.

D) Three letters: ADD. It's not a good idea to have this when you work from home, but if you're like me and your home job rakes in a hecka lot more than a regular office job, your just going to have to suck it up and wear blinders to your computer.

E) Longer hours. Not only do you feel like the hours extend to forever, but working from home often forces you to work more hours. Why? Because you get paid more. Work from home jobs are usually paid by the hour, unless it's a packaged assignment. In which case, you try and finish the job as soon as you can so you can ask for another assignment. Thus, alloting it more hours.

F) Paid vacations. We don't have any. Since we are contracted, we only get paid for the hours we work. So no special benefits like pension funds or health and group insurance. You pay your own benefits, go out of the house and to the government agency to pay for said benefits, and yea, you (cringe) take the trouble of computing for your own monthly income tax.

G) Paying for your own equipment. Unless it's in your contract, you probably will end up paying for your own equipment and utilities. And sweetie, that electricity bill sure jacks up if you've got that PC on 24/7.

H) It gets lonely. Humans are a social creatures (and yes, that still includes me) At some point, you do miss just turning around and having an officemate to talk to while working. You can turn on the television, but you'll probably end up watching it. You can make a phonecall, but the desperation will probably make it last a few hours. Besides, who can you call? Everyone's at work.

In the end, working from home is great, but it may not work for everyone. If your social and love going out, staying home is probably not a good idea, especially if your only reason is to avoid rush hour commutes (after all, what else would it be, hmm?)

It works for me because as a (struggling) screenwriter, I need the flexible hours. I don't make my living writing scripts yet, so I spend most of my days in my paying writing job, while using the free hours to polish my script or do some networking or research. So if you look at it, I pretty much work all the time.

It also helps that quite a bit of my friends work odd hours or work from home too. So most of the time it just requires clearing a day and making up for it tomorrow or next week, or meeting them early in the day before they go to work. It doesn't take as much planning as it would if all my friends and were in a regular nine to five schedule.

Bottomline is, think very hard before you quit your nine-to-five for a work from home job. It may not be what it's cut out to be.

Better yet, stop telling me that I got the better end of the stick because I work in my jammies (which, for the record, I no longer do) and get to sleep until noon (which I can no longer afford to do either). Let's have you sitting in my chair when the ceiling feels like it's closing in and you start talking to the walls.

Now if you'll excuse me, the plaster has spoken. It says I need to go out to the mall and go see that movie.

2005-08-01T12:14:00.000+08:00

Crawling Towards Salvation

Yesterday I took the two boys out to watch "D'Anothers", one of the few pinoy movies who legally ripped off from other movies.

In short, this was one our first Pinoy spoofs.

I saw the trailer and seeing as I will be working in this industry, I went in to watch--dragging a protesting Mark and JP.

Mark is pretty open minded but JP made this credo that he would never watch a pinoy film (ahem) ever. Ever? Yeah, ever.

But since he has me for a friend now, he has no--or rather, he HAD no choice--but to follow me in.

Granted, it wasn't a 10, but it was a 7 and it was awesome simply because it was not only passable, it was GOOD.

We already know that Vhong Navarro has great comedic timing, but Tony Gonzaga was a steal. I don't watch Wazzup, Wazzup, so I may be a bit delayed in knowing something that everyone has already seen, but damn that girl's funny.

Of course, most of the jokes were still pretty much slapstick. And there were some supposedly funny scenes which didn't really sell, along with the requisite "dance-off" that was supposed to be entertaining and hilarious but didn't really deliver.

But barring all that, this was hands down really hot damn funny. I might buy a copy of it just to see if the jokes would sell again, but if you haven't seen it, I suggest you do.

The Philippine Showbiz industry might have been on a downslide, but I say we're back in business baby and we are on the way up again.

2005-07-29T17:02:00.000+08:00

Is that a Swatch?

Just got my DSL back today. After getting my motherboard replaced, by router decided to conk out on me so I had to wait again for another whole day before getting mah net.

So just coz I was uber happy for surfin' broadband again, I cut in on my writing time and took in a bunch of writers blogs.

Imagine my surprise when I saw one wearing a Swatch watch.

Not that they've stopped making them, but I haven't seen anyone wear them in years! Save for one girl who had this nice looking Pop Swatch with what looked like a quartz bracelet, but anyway...

Most of the Swatches I see in stores look pretty...normal now. It used to be that a Swatch watch made your eyes scream. I remember my cousins wearing some really loud (annoying?) colors. Ah, the 80's.

2005-07-27T13:15:00.000+08:00

Paranoia, anyone?

When does a joke stop being humorous and start being offensive?

Muhammad Hassan--real name Mark Copani--is a WWE wrestler. His shows got cancelled because his actions (or mere presence?) was deemed offensive in light of the London bombings.

The American Anti-Arab Discrimination Committee also thought his carousing around the stage beating up the undertaker and then having his assistant--who acted dead--be carried out over their heads like a martyr before rushing back to choke the undertaker was done in severely bad taste.

Frankly...I don't get it.

Sure, it could be indelicate. It could be offensive. But in light of how people have reacted in the past...isn't this just another day on the ring?

Aren't wrestlers supposed to beat each other up? If he'd been, say, some random white dude wrestler named Saw, would he have receieved the same kind of negative attention?

Was it because he was portraying an Arab? Are the people so dumb that they think some wrestler who goes by a Muslim name beating opponents up on national television is how every Muslim believes?

Maybe. We are talking about people who suddenly thought Muslims=Terrorists after 9/11.

Had it been against their religion, I would have understood it. I would have found it annoying if a wrestler named The Priest came up there then started saying mass while beating people up. But some Italian American dude who just took up an Arab screen name...

What's next? Maybe we should just pull out every Muslim show on TV because it might offend somebody. Let's alienate all of them, because their terrorists. Flush them out, because their too violent.

It's so easy to go from one thought to another. It's so easy to build hate just by planting a small seed of doubt in an already scared populace.

By not wanting to offend one nation, you've managed to offend a whole lot of others. Just goes to show where the priorities lie at the moment.

2005-07-24T15:10:00.000+08:00

Enter: The Timeline Zone

Since I quit my job last Friday, the past two weeks have been spent doing something more paramount than drunk and crying with celebration, and that's called: adjusting.

Being back to my own timezone certainly is enough to laugh myself to hysteria. But tons of things happened in the past weeks that caused me to get used to some new things:

1. Windows XP. I've been on Windows 2000 for the past years by choice. I just don't feel anything for Microsoft and valiantly put off the upgrade until my PC crashed and I had to get "the upgrade' that i've been telling myself i'll be getting.

2. Dial-up. My lan-card took a dive, so while my PC is off being serviced, i'm back to 56 kbps and am having a bit of a DSL withdrawal.

3. Daylight. I haven't seen daylight for awhile, except during "daybreak". Usually I wake up because it's gotten too hot to sleep due to the midday sun. Then I cloak myself off to watch TV or work, until darkness comes in and I emerge to---work some more.

4. Free time. Now that I've quit one of my jobs and am no longer married to my PC, I have more time to go out, move up in my DVD queqe, teach debate, read, and all that other fun and gooey stuff.

5. Write, write, write. With several outlines and a script needing to be done, this is now my fulltime job, which--sadly--could eat up number four.

6. Working out. I'm back to my fitness routine. I didn't have any energy before, but I will now!!!

2005-07-09T15:03:00.000+08:00

The trouble with language...

Last Thursday I went out of the house to meet up with Xarra and to sign up for my union: the Screenwriter's Guild of the Philippines.

After paying the requisite fee, I stayed for awhile at the office talking to the Guild secretary. I was trying to explain why my script--which I copied onto an open source scriptwriting program--didn't have page numbers.

I was apologizing and explaining the dilemma that I ran into when I decided to transfer this to another scriptwriting program after the old one I used (a beta) had somehow crashed. I was telling him that the new, open source one didn't print page numbers, nor did it print a production/shoot script. Or maybe it did--never did have much time reading the manual.

He was 80 or something and just didn't get it. I kept explaining what a scriptwriting program was and why I ran into some problems and couldn't produce a shoot script because I ran out of time and paper just printing.

"It's called TrademarkedScriptwritingProgram. It's kind of like MS Word, but for scriptwriters...it auto formats your script...I know that's the format, the problem with this one was that I didn't know that it didn't print a production script...yes, I know it's supposed to have page numbers. It even has to have scene numbers, and that's a production script, but the program...I understand the format, I've seen it. The program does....Yes, I work out of a computer, and I know what a script looks like, but the problem was....Yes, I was wrong. I didn't know it was supposed to look that way. Next time, I will put numbers there. I was stupid because I didn't know a script was supposed to have page numbers."

Isn't arguing with old people fun?

We also had a nice debate on language.

I think there's a problem with some filipino writers in that the way they write is just so...old school. Which is nice and pretty and phonetic, but the thing is no one talks like that. Not even politicians talk like that. I've heard a few activists talk like that to make it seem more "masa", but the deep technical words only come out because there was simply no way to translate it.

But I don't agree with writers who want to translate to formal filipino because that's what they claim the masses understand.

First of all, old school filipino language isn't easy. It's pretty complex, and just the fact that no one speaks it makes it damn hard to understand.

Second of all, the masses aren't stupid. My grandparents generation are all well educated. My parents generation bred activists. The 80's...well, they're a stretch. But with the internet, my generation and those that followed suddenly got pushed.

Knowledge is cheap nowadays, and the kids show it. There's an edge there that wasn't even present when I was their age.

So it frustrates me that some writers and producers think that they should baby the filipino movie going public.

About twenty years ago, we were the third largest movie industry, right next to India and the United States. We had quality movies because the people who wrote and made movies didn't treat the audiences with kid gloves.

Deep issues were hashed, without thinking that the publuc might not get it. They weren't worried about offending anybody, but instead told what needed to be said.

Granted, it was a difficult time. The economic and political atmosphere of the country was tensioned at best, and you didn't need to look very far for inspiraton. Movies were an outlet and a reflection to what was happening.

When things settled, we joined the American media in becoming PC.

Let's be politically correct and not say anything to offend the masses, who will hate us anyway for the simple fact that they're poor.

Bad words, I know. But it's the truth. Just like it's the truth that any poor person living in a thrid world country hates their government. Or even in a first world country.

It sucks being poor and they rant. Fuck, i'm not even poor and I rant.

But the fact of the matter is, they are poor, not stupid. Some are misinformed, many are desperate, but they aren't dumb. They can go beyond the cliche drama's and improbable action and kitschy romantic comedies.

People wonder why we can't produce more quality movies, and the reason is expectation. For a short while, that was the trend: a break from the politically ridden movies of the Marcos era. Enter the days of 80's excess.

But those times are over. And thus the industry should change.

I say stop insulting the public by sugarcoating it all. Get some balls, say what you mean, then accept the results. Who knows? We might get to like it.

2005-07-05T18:36:00.000+08:00

Hello First Day of Forever...

My supervisor said it best: after your last day of work begins the rest of your life...

Although this time, it began a little early. Like, last Saturday kind of early, where for the first time since the Tagaytay workshop, I acted as a production assistant.

For two days at the workshop, I was a Production Manager. The job didn't really sink into my head, it was just sort of something that I had to do in order to get through the five days. An output. A requirement for graduation.

This time, it was for a legitimate production to be aired at a specific venue. I was doing it for no money and solely for the experience.

Honestly? I was expecting it to be like another Tagaytay Workshop experience...

Instead, it was an eye opener. The place we went to was an eye opener. 36 hours I spent propped up doing a lot of the grunt work was an eye opener. The people I worked with was an eye opener.

And suddenly, we are reminded why we want to be writers.

I knew that it was a lot of work, I was expecting it. But even though I readied myself for the physical demands of production, I forgot about the psychological strains of working with people who are already incredibly stressed out because of pre-production.

For someone who doesn't eat chips or drink much caffeine, I have consumed more Iced Mocha Fraps Venti's, sodas, energy drinks, Extra Joss!, and Redbull in the past two days than I would in at least two months. I even had the nerve to shovel in some junk food.

When I came home mid Monday morning, my body was still so pumped up that I was tempted to run around my room just to take the edge off.

But all it took was me staring in front of the workload left in my PC and I just quit. Crawled into my bed and just died on it, hoping to escape my responsibilities for even just a few hours.

I woke up at around ten to check on things. Chatted a bit with my friend concerning business, then passed out again an hour later.

It was exhausting.

I learned a lot. More on directing than production, though I learned some of that too. But mostly, I learned the process of handling people (or in some instances--how not to handle them). It was a bit of an eye opener.

Not the most brilliant 36 hours, but it was an educational 36 hours. Totally humbled me. Totally schooled me.

2005-07-02T00:37:00.000+08:00

Shouldn't I be wistful...

I've done it, it's official. I've handed in my resignation and it's bye-bye hugh paying job.

There's a part of me that's saying "idiot" for walking away from all that cash...but a bigger part of me is asking "honestly, besides that vacation...when have you ever felt the money?"

I'm sure I did. I have...when I look at my bankbook, I see the numbers. But the thing is...the numbers never add up. Not really. They never go up to the amount that I have in my head.

So i'm sad. For the money. For the weirdness that I will feel in the next few days, when I have to sit down on my chair at 1am two weeks from now and not be logged on for this job.

Everything has happened so fast this year. I went through two jobs in just seven months. I've met so many people and learned so many thing yet we're barely through the year. It's amazing.

I don't know what's going to happen after July 15th, nor after I make my first short. Hopefully a paying job will turn out. But so far, with everything happening right now--leaving, being a production assistant, writing...everything is happening so fast, that i've yet to really sit down and clear my head and just...digest it.

Ah, to be busy. Maybe somewhere down the line and I'll finally get the time to have another one of those things...you know, a vacation?

2005-07-01T01:53:00.000+08:00

Great Expectations

Semi-enjoying an unexpected two day vacation...well, maybe not a vacation but more of a breather. A cool 48 hours where you aren't expected to fucking reach for a deadline or just do some work.

Today, I spent most of my time sleeping and just reading, not really doing anything. Which I don't mind since the next few weeks are bound to be really busy.

The re-writes to the script should come in a few weeks, then after that it's a couple of hours of sitting with the translator, trying our best to flip it without losing anything in translation. Then there are the long hours in pre-production, the (hopefully) two day shoot, the long grunt to post production. Then finally, that last push to get it to the theaters.

It hasn't quite sunk in yet. Making the movie. I guess i'll believe it when i'm there shooting it.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I will once again be poor for the next frigging months. Right now, i'm pretty lucky that i've got some money to spend. But knowing what it's like to not have any money, i'd like to put a little padding besides the allowance that i've given myself. After all, there's still next year that I am looking at.

Making movies is fun (and hopefully profitable) but since reality states that 90% of local indies never generate any bucks, we are all using the movies we cut as a calling card.

The goal for this year is to "make a name for yourself". To do something that will hopefully land us a paying job that will allow us to make more movies without ever having to look at our bank accounts every two seconds. To finally, finally be allowed to work our asses off for something that we completely love.

2005-06-30T15:07:00.000+08:00

And that's the way things go...

Yesterday I spoke with my supervisor to tell him that I would be quitting my job. It was a sad and emotional experience but something that I really had to do.

It was a difficult thing, turning away from all that money. If I could juggle both, if I could do the job and then write, I would have loved it. But as things stand right now, there is no way for me to be able to write two full length scripts then co-produce some of them at the same time if I have to be tied to my PC every 9pm.

I was still a little iffy about it--after all, who hell wants to lose income--but when my script for a short got picked up, it was all over.

I just took a peek at my tentative sched and realized that there was no way I could make this work. With everyone from the crew having a day job and lonely me with the only night job, I wasn't going to fit in. Not with rehearsals and production meetings happening at 5pm, and weekend shoots with call-times at 6am.

In a way, it hurt more because of the money. I didn't want to have to lose any. Because for a time, I was a kid who earned a ridiculous amount. I got to go on vacation without ever thinking of how much I was spending. I indulged myself with cab rides and designer coffee and mini shopping spree's ate wherever the fuck I wanted.

And I got to treat people to boot.

But for the past few months, I was never really happy. And if what makes me sad right now is walking away from the money and not losing the people from my job, then it makes sense to walk away now than to continue being miserable because I had to pass up the oppurtunities that are coming into my life.

Career wise, things are really picking up for me now. The production company that we're setting up is seems to be making a name--and just on it's first outing. That's a pretty big deal (considering that we haven't even registered)

So here's to moviemaking--hopefully this is just the start of things.

2005-06-24T09:40:00.000+08:00

Things I will Never Do on a Full Moon Week

1. Accept an additional project--be it for more money, for fun, for games, to help someone out. Nothing new, no additional work.

2. Get out of the house...not to the nearby mall, beyond my gate and just wandering within the subdivision. NO. At this rate I will most likely be run over...or worse, bump into someone I do not want to see.

3. Family Intervention. This is the last time I am fucking talking to my w!tch grandmother just to tell her that maids are people. Let her be accountable to the All Mighty.

4. Phonecalls. Have less of them. Fuck, avoid them. Don't have them. Any conversation you'll have for this week will no doubt get sucky through the week.

2005-06-21T02:52:00.000+08:00

McBusy

1. ulcer

2. headache

3. anxiety

4. new glasses

5. vertigo

2005-06-13T23:37:00.000+08:00

Spark My Fanny

Yes, here I am again, blogging while on the clock.

I would have said that this is a nice side benefit to working at home, but honestly? I didn't much care about that when I was working in a real office (awaaaay from home) either.

It keeps me from going nuts.

Anyway, at "work" I am calling people like crazy again. Which is what I was hired for. I am "the phone girl" and it has just occured to me that I have been "the phone girl" for close to...well, maybe not years.

But I just realized that for every job that i've been hired, it mostly has something to do with answering phones. At least, it starts that way.

So by now, i've worked at a callcenter, been a "receptionist", then a "virtual receptionist".

Of course, I did/do more stuff other than answer phones, some of which even required some neurons (though not much of that lately), but it always starts with me getting hired for my accent.

Looking back, it has--at least, collectively-- provided me with a job for close to...well, two or three years. Since I left college.

Imagine that.

2005-06-11T14:41:00.000+08:00

Fucking Riddles

My friend got me hooked into this. Too bad I don't have enough fucking time.

Go here and try and solve this. It's suppose to be fun.

I suggest you cheat.

2005-06-10T21:39:00.000+08:00

Contagion

There is a contagion of anxiety-ants crawling in my head right now.

I'm blogging on the clock--again--to keep myself from going crazy. I keep telling myself that this is my last month, but everytime I look at my bank account I cringe.

All that hard work going down the drain for the next few months. Not seeing movies, going out for dinner, or DVD splurges. No clothes shopping, no salons, and absolutely no way to travel.

That really kills me.

But whenever I take a look at the other things, the stuff that i'm giving this up for...it makes me want to pack up my bags and just go. Leave now. Take the leap and just sit in front of my PC again and just let things fly.

You save money...for what? You save time...for what? If the world ended tomorrow, what would I have to say? About myself? And of my accomplishments?

I have no idea.

Would it really kill me to skip those dinners out? To not see those movies? Would it really kill me if I downgrade my net subscription a few kbps? And how the heck would I travel anyway, when I don't even have the time to!

What am I really giving up?

It all seems so frivolous. A few months ago I didn't even have this much money to spend, I didn't have all these privilages. Now I can afford a lot more. It's pretty ridiculous...I should be thankful for what I have.

Laarni was right in asking "How long can you hold out?" Because money can only take you so far. If everything starts to weigh on you, and it starts eating on your morale, then maybe it's time to cut your loses and go.

I have 14 more working days until I reach a decision, on whether or not I will go this month.

The money makes me wish that I had longer, but my sanity thinks that it's just one day too far.

2005-06-09T21:23:00.000+08:00

Done, Done, Done

I finally finished my assignment for my second job. I'll probably take a weekend then do it all over again.

Karen insists that we splurge on a fancy dinner--but that's if the client pays us. Unsatisfied client=no payment. And that happens.

Such is the life of a starving writer.

2005-06-09T11:24:00.000+08:00

Ground Zero

My room looks like it's been hit by a tornado.

The last time I needed a cleaning spree this badly was two years ago in my old room, where I spent three eight hour days just dumping stuff out.

Right now, I am in the process of throwing out a lot of stuff and moving things around. I'm creating a workspace for when I start writing again, as well as a place to store what appears to be my make-up. I didn't think I owned that many lip glosses, but between my sudden obsession to get the right color and gifts from my students, I seem to have grown quite a collection.

I'm also setting up a nice editing bay for myself.

Hopefully my second job works out, because I do need a no brainer job that will provide me with some sort of income, and this is as good as they get. Pretty good pay and telecommuting for not a lot of hours. Boring as hell but they pay is worth it.

Anyway, my room is progressing quite nicely. I've been pretty busy these past few days so I haven't had much time to be nostalgic. I am just throwing out whatever crap I won't be wearing again and shit that I am now sure I won't read, or don't need to keep.

I am running up a deadline and things have been pretty hectic with my day (night) job, so i've been a zombie these past few days.

I have a meeting with the crew next week that is making me nervous. The script isn't progressing as fast as I want it to, but now that i'm looking at it, I am just on time with it. It takes a long time to write a draft, then redraft. Patience is the key word here, though it's a bit hard to be patient when you've got a camera crew attached already.

Anyway, maybe this weekend will provide me with enough reprieve to sit back and study, not tp mention shop and make some very important phonecalls.

Hopefully by August things will be set up.

2005-06-06T22:17:00.000+08:00

Would You Kill Me If...

Since I am about to quit my job and feeling particularly destructive, I feel like I should come clean...

I work for a spammer.

Before you all troop down and spam my blog to pieces, let the record show that I am--truly, honestly, bleeding at the bottom of my heart--sorry for all the people that I have spammed in my previous jaunt (sorry Karen) and the executives we are spamming now (we only spam the big-wigs!)

Although I don't own the finger that presses the send button, I do own the voice that follows up the people who are interested in our services.

Yes, we have a product and it's real. At least that I can be somewhat proud of, because the product is pretty good.

So I am just a spammer by association, a meek lemming hovering in the sidelines.

That small fact is the only thing that allows me to sleep at night, though lately I have been sleeping much too often...way too often to warrant a mental alert in my pysch radar.

My other job...well, my other job has me on a non-disclosure agreement, so I can't really talk about that lest they fly over the Atlantic and drag me to the local poh-OR-simply sue my ass until there is nothing left except...um, let's not talk about that.

Anyway, for someone who is about to get the rug pulled under her, I am feeling particularly happy. I didn't get as much money as I wanted, but I was able to buy the necessary equipment that I do need.

The funny part is, according to Hollywood standards, I am doing things right: work odd jobs. Quit often. Be a cheapskate.

Or in my case: Stay away from Starbucks. Close your eyes when you pass by the shoe section at the mall--in fact, avoid the shoe section and shoe stores in general. Same goes for shops that carry pretty XS clothes. Wake up on time so you can stop taking the taxi to wherever you need to go in order to make that meeting. Be happy with one burger, and for God's sake, stop it with the food!

Three months teaching english and five months of this--not bad, I guess. Eight months is a pretty long time for me to be away from my real job, which is writing.

I think it's time for me to put in that the necessary eight hours a day again that I need to write my stuff. It is, after all, WORK.

2005-06-06T17:22:00.000+08:00

Bloody Red Carpet

Last Saturday, Laarni and I got all dolled up to go to the 28th Gawad Urian Awards which is the Philippine version of the Critics Choice Award.

It was fun, exhausting, and exciting as hell.

We received the invite the eve before the event, spent the following day shopping for a dress and getting our hair and make-up done, then tackling the torrentous rains that followed just to get to the event.

We got there right as it was about to start and ended up having a superbly inspiring time. The mother of the guy who co-produced the movie that won best picture was sitting right next to me. She kept crying because the movie took ten years to finish (it was Rebolusyon ng Pamilyang Pilipino by Lav Diaz, who also won best script even if there was none)

Her son dropped by the orchestra after he won to leave his awards with his parents, and we were drooling just by looking at the trophy.

Ah, so near yet so far away.

We left as soon as the Best Actress Award was given away, because our ride was already waiting for us and we absolutely had to go.

It was an amazing night, plus the lady sitting next to me (the mom!) said I had pretty feet which is one of my biggest insecurities.

Laarni and I went home, smiling like we'd just won something and vowing to just go for it.

I can't quit my job yet, I still need the money for this month. But as soon as I make the upgrade and bank enough to pay for my net bill, it's buh-bye first job.

I have two screenplays lined up to be written, one with a full storyline up for a draft and rewrite, and another a treament up for expansion.

Both are way overdue, and if it weren't for the money, i'd be hammering away right now.

Looking at it, I could quit my other job right now and it would be okay. But another months worth of salary won't be too bad, and I just...I have no idea how to send in my notice. I've just been in this job a total of three months and i'm already moving on.

I thought i'd last longer, but somehow it just isn't a fit. Hopefully, I will be paid the remaining balance that he has with me (which will take care of my net-bills for the rest of the year!)

I'm really excited with moving on.

I've got a ton of things to do, and since I already have that crew attached, I am itching to begin that journey.

I was initially afraid to make the sacrifice, but there are people counting on me now, so it's easier to let go of some things. The pressure is much higher for me to produce that first draft, and for the first time in months i'm welcoming it.

I guess being at the awards, and just...realizing what I truly want, despite the money, makes pushing myself much easier.

I don't know what will happen in the coming months, but I have a feeling that it will be all good.

2005-06-04T10:09:00.000+08:00

LUKKKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

It's pretty annoying that Luke Walton is going to be in a concert at the Araneta Coliseum and I have to be...someplace else.

I love Luke Walton, and not just for his basketball skills. He just seems like an all around geat guy from his interviews (not too bad on the eyes, either)

For him to even breath the same air and stepped in the same airport that I did is just...wow. It's really...damn I wish I could go!

Funny part is, I will be in the area. I don't know if he'll stay until tomorrow, but even if he did, I couldn't do anything since I have my second job to attend to and deadlines to meet this wednesday.

Why couldn't this have happened next week?

2005-06-04T02:05:00.000+08:00

Coming through!!!

My schedule these past few days has been grueling.

Laarni and I just had a discussion on the "horror script", since with two scripts now entering development and both just about to go into page one...I certainly cannot do both.

And since "script two" is closer to who I am right now, it will be easier for me to focus on getting dialogue for that.

So, as of now, the story for the "horror script" will be mine, with translations--and thus, probably a bulk of the dialogue--will fall in Laarni's capable shoulders. Rewrites will be from the both of us, and with some nods and modifications coming from "the crew".

In the meantime, I have a few things lined up. They're still a few months down the road and barring complications, all of them are pretty permanent.

Let's cross our fingers.

Right now though, I seem to be busy going to, setting up, and hoping for "meetings". Or going to "events" that will hopefully further my career.

Laarni is psyched while I'm exhausted.

But at least it's going out, right?

Karen recently mentioned that if I should go on to take two jobs, I should at least make the second one remotely social.

Right now, everything happens in my bedroom: sleeping, eating, working day job(s), writing, and pleasure reading. Movement is restricted to my bed, my pc, and my desk, all of which are a mere feet from each other.

All three of us are pretty much hermit crabs, wherein you need to poke us in order to get us to move or even come out.

Karen has a job that takes her around the country (and out of the house), Laarni has a boyfriend who drags her out, while I have these...events.

Here's to "events" then. Thanks for showing me daylight.

2005-06-03T16:23:00.001+08:00

Kill Me Again, Why Don't You?

I am in the process of producing a supernatural thriller.

It has a killer premise, a production crew attached, and if we can pull off the opening scene, the possibility of backers.

Which is why I am writing a supernatural thriller...The sad part?

So's everyone else.

The most frustrating thing right now is making your story stand out from the slew of horror/supernatural thriller/slasher/plain old thriller that seems to have come out since The Ring.

Sure, no idea is original. It's all a trend. But do I really want to wear the damn cropped up jeans at a time when everyone seems to be wearing the exact same cropped up jeans?

Only when the powers that be tell you I guess, and right now that's called my "production crew a.k.a. my conscience".

2005-06-02T18:48:00.000+08:00

It's All About The Money

I might just be able to afford that PC upgrade that i've been wanting--as well as a new TV--without having to dip too much into my bank account.

It seems pretty funny, because I don't necessarily know what i'm saving for.

I know I need to have money in the bank for...whatever. I also need a bunch of other stuff--fix my car, uy a laptop. Money for when I don't work next year...

You have to make sacrifices.

But thinking of what I went through last year, of running out of money...it was pretty horrible, and I wasn't even out on the street.

It's scary, being poor. Being in debt. And I wasn't even starving, I was no where near the gutter and yet I was panicking.

My friend Karen and I were talking about that last night. How we both lived in Ivory Towers and didn't seem to know what went on in the world around us. What was normal, what everyone else felt.

I think, in being the observer, we somehow ostracized ourselves from the crowd. We spent a lot of time living inside our heads, parsing the information we just saw, and as a result, just...stayed there. It's really not uncommon for any one of my friends to just say frozen for a few hours, processing an obervation or an idea.

I guess i'm just frustrated right now.

Success doesn't come overnight, I know that and although I am working pretty hard, I still don't think i'm working as hard as I should be. There are a lot of things that play into writing a script. Much as I'd want to say I'm a natural at it, no script is ever really done that way. It's mostly just made to look that way. I honestly can't even get the language right.

I don't speak Filipino as much as I should, I don't use it as much as I should. But now i've gotten better at it. So for that, i'm pretty thankful.

I'm just going crazy right now. I hate thinking about money, but I imagine that people think about it more than 50% of the time. Between that and sex I guess the human mind can be a bit of a sleazeball.

Oh well. Dinner.

2005-06-01T20:37:00.000+08:00

Somewhere in Between

I'm having an okay week.

I'm doing pretty good in terms of finances--at least for this week. I'm in this kind of limbo where I'm just...resigned towards a lot of things. I don't really know what to feel, it's like having frostbite on your emotions.

My mom and I went out for lunch and saw a movie today. It was pretty fun. I haven't been out in almost two weeks so it was a change for me. Went to the bank too.

So it was a day full of errands where I just walked around the mall with my mom feeling somewhat disassociated.

I honestly don't know what to make of that.

I know I should be happy that things are going well...maybe i've grown complacent? I'm comfortable with my life, there are some who wouldn't be able to say the same thing.

2005-06-01T02:04:00.000+08:00

Happy Holiday

Today is Memorial Day in the US. It's technically a holiday for me, but since both my bosses are out and I have no idea if this is also a holiday for me, I am--alas--working.

Though obviously not as hard as I should since I am blogging.

It should be noted though that I am getting more emails and even a phone call today, which was deferred to voicemail since I am supposed to be "on vacation" along with the rest of the citizens.

Oh well.

I just found out that Memorial Day in the US is similar to "All Soul's Day" here in the Philippines. This is a new thing, because I always thought that Memorial Day was a Veteran associated event. Kind of like a war thing. Guess not.

I did some studying tonight regarding "my craft" and got a headache again in writing. I think I need a vacation, but I really do know that I'm just thinking too much.

I think it's because while my movie was pegged as "horror" it really is just "fantasy", thus my muse is rearing her (ugly?) head due to this false identification.

One of the advice that i've been handed down with was that I should first start with a genre. Sure you can get creative if you want to, but later. Right now, you want to be pigeonholed and stereotyped. Let them label you and remember you.

Uh-huh. Got that.

When I came out of the Tagaytay Workshops, I was labeled as a "horror writer" and since it's the "in" thing right now I got a nod over that.

But the thing is...I don't think I am a horror writer. At least, not in the Asian sense, which is the current trend. I think I can do it, I think I can come up with a story on that, but I don't think it's something I'm comfortable with.

I think I do fantasy better. Ray Bradbury stuff.

The funny thing is, a lot of people praise stuff like Scream for being absolutely brilliant. I remember after it came out that it resulted in a slew of slasher movies.

But for me, the real slasher movie is something Dario Argento would make. Sure, the film grade seems old, the narration is cheesy, but it's really fuck as scary.

You don't want to buy it when you first see it, but it's after you see it that you start getting scared.

Is there someone out there to get me? Is that tub of water safe? What happens behind me when I am not looking? What hides in the dark?

That's what horror is. And I think i'm just too much of a scaredy cat to make that.

2005-05-31T03:22:00.000+08:00

Excorsising the Ghost: Send Your Inner Critic Packing...Quickly

This must be the best piece of advice that i've heard in months:

"It is the job of the first draft to be written. Not to be brilliant, not even to be good, but to be written."

It's from a screenwriter named David Anaxagoras...really, that's his name. (Yes, it's the name of the wizard from The Wizard's Apprentice)

It's really...wow. Thank God for that line, because I am going nuts writing my first draft. I've turned that story so many times in my head that I feel like my brain is going to come out of my nose in a fried pieces of mush.

The demand that i've been putting to myself to be so brilliantly perfect is driving me up the wall.

I have this thing with doing things spectacularly the first time--not good, not pretty good, but fucking nova.

It doesn't matter whether it be sports or cooking, I go into it thinking I will bloody revolutionize this thing on my first try even if it kills me.

And it's killing me right now.

I think, what I need, is just to get my story out of my head. I think of it every moment of the day. When I shower. When I eat. Before I sleep. First thing when I wake up. When I take a shit. It's like having a fucking boyfriend.

So all goes to taking those few words out to the page. My script writing is software is already loaded, now all I need is the fucking script that goes with it.

Time to hammer and polish some drafts.

2005-05-30T17:25:00.000+08:00

That Thing You Do

I hate being left out of the loop.

My friend Karen and I were talking business the other day when she brought this up. It's something that's true but not immediately obervable in my behavior.

If it's a work situation, I like being in control. In the instances that i've had to work in a group, i've found myself placed in an executive position.

Sure, it doesn't always happen. There are times when other people are more qualified to lead, or you're much better off as a follower.

But I hate being left out.

Which is probably why I like writing, it gives me complete control of an environment, even if it's not real.

I like working in a group for a movie, simply because I can see the results. I know that if I do something this way, I can immediately see something happening that way. It won't take me long to do see it.

I wonder how I would have done with that marshmallow test?

Pinoy kids have the fear of God put into them, so when an adult tells him not to eat something, then he won't eat it. He'll throw a tantrum, he'll cry, he'll do something annoying, but he'll wait until the adult comes back and tells him he can eat it.

It doesn't matter that he'll get two mallows in the end, the only thing running in his mind will be "I eat this right now, and he'll come back and whup me"

Violent, maybe primitive, but it works.

Sure, it skews the result of that mallow test, but what the hey, right? Those who were impatient as a kid are still impatient when they grow up and those patient still wait. The only difference is that Pinoy kids won't eat them because some unknowing adult tells them that a manananaggal (a really fugly version of a vampire) will come eat him.

That's Pinoy Discipline for you.

2005-05-26T01:00:00.000+08:00

Nuts

Amazing what job dissatisfaction can do to ones psyche.

I am on the verge of growing nuts. I am earning (or technically earning) a lot of money in this job, but I still loathe it to pieces.

My mind feels like it's being sucked into a wormhole of stupidty and frustration. The funny part is, I know exactly what to do with it, I'm just fucking guilty to move.

I hate having to inconvenience people. Someone once stepped on my toe and bled for a good fifteen minutes but I still didn't say anything because I didn't want to cause a fuss at the party. Just the way I am.

But really, this is ridiculous. I don't care how much I earn now, I feel like it's either go nuts or get out of this job. It's ridiculous. It's not worth it.

2005-05-20T05:59:00.000+08:00

Self Destruct in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

It's all set. I'm counting down the days when I have to bail from this job because it's driving me nuts.

Thus, after hoarding the necessary amount of cash I will be taking the frightening but exciting leap into filmmaking full time, this time with my parents blessings.

All I need now is time and the money in my bank account.

I'm pretty surprised at how things are turning out this year. I totally expected to stay in this "cushy" job for close to a year. But things are happening at work that is making things a bit difficult for me.

So today, after I finish the first draft of my treatment, I am off to do some screen tests for my first pet project.

Really. I can't wait.

2005-05-17T14:37:00.000+08:00

3 Month Asylum

Curse the fact that I go crazy in any job I don't like after just three months!!!

Some things I figured out which is really shitty:

1) I top out at 90 days in any job that I don't like. Granted, everyone fuckass hates to go to work, but there's a difference between "having problems at work" and "hating the work itself". I happen to be on the latter.

2) Shitty bosses. I have problems dealing with authority to begin with. It was my former boss (and thank God she's still my former boss) who remarked that I was probably one of those people who were born never to be an employee. I think it was her way of saying I had problems with authority, but through the years I could never seem to rectify that. Mainly because out of five jobs, four of my bosses suddenly sprouted fangs and turned into SHIT.

3. Paycuts and low -paygrade. I've been in a high paying job, then a low paying job. I don't think it makes much difference. If you truly don't like what it is that you do, you just...you fucking hate it. Sorry. There is no compensation. If you're ultimate goal at the moment is to shape your career...then you have to be there. They could pay me a hundred right now and i'd stay just a month at the frigging job just to get the hundred. And have I mentioned that my high paying job just got me a 50% paycut?

It pisses me off that I have such a short attention span. But what I can't deal with right now is all this stress.

Everyone can put up with their job because they have this tangible goal: wanna buy a house, wanna buy a car. Need the money to pay my bills, have to put my kids to school.

My goal is to make it into films...but i'm not into films. I think it's time that I hoard my money and make that leap into the uber low, no pay realm of Production Assistant.

Oh well, here goes, right?

2005-05-15T11:48:00.000+08:00

Scrambled Eggs

Whoever wished to be stuck between two jobs is crazy, especially when you happen to love one more than the other, and that "other" happens to be the one that makes money.

My brain is slowly turning into Jell-O. I have double deadlines right now, and have no idea on how to get around it. I'm going crazy.

I had one of the worse weeks of my life. I feel somewhat lucky that I work from home, otherwise I could have met all sorts of misfortunes had I stepped outside.

At this point, it wouldn't be unlikely for me to cross the street and get hit by a fucking scooter that will give me amnesia.

But it's a Sunday, I am trying to finish up my Monday deadlines, and hoping that tomorrow will be better.

For my dayjob, I am compiling a list of speakers for our seminars.

I always thought that they were a great, inspiring lot, but right now I am just sick of them. What I once thought were guru's just turned out to be a bunch of businessmen, where they have a product, and you are the sucker that has to buy it from them.

They have publicists, and PR sheets, sell books and CDs and have websites with streaming video's. They have headshots and some have specialized stationary emails that just annoy me.

Maybe it's just the work that has soured me towards them, but one more motivational speaker out of two thousand is just one speaker too many.

And strange how some of them can be so snooty in email, especially when they teach stuff like "Tact and Diplomacy in everyday communication."

2005-05-02T15:58:00.000+08:00

Aren't You Supposed to be Busy?

Despite the now full fledged cold and cough, I managed to wake up at my early hour of 11am and call Karen, one of the producers and soon to be actor in our wonderful movie enterprise.

Of course she signed up, it's her movie. But as director, I felt like I needed to cajole her a little more into loving her part as an actress. After all, like JP, she can act, she's just shy about it.

I don't know why, but a large part of my friends are "Actors". I don't mean wonderful theater actors who can replicate human emotion at the drop of a hat, but creative people who don't seem to mind others watching their ornery. In fact, they love it. They'll not only be honest about their rants, but they'll give you gut wrenching emotions at pivotal moments while giving you good blocking too.

And Karen is one of those.

It took a long time. Not as long as the seven hours it took for me to losen up JP, but long enough when two people on the phone are both sick to the gills and half doped from cold medication.

Before calling her, I had this dream that I had already called her up and had given her the idea to the whole movie. I thought it was real.

Of course, in my dream, I was also living in some apartment in an area that i've never seen, on the way to a wedding of someone I have never met but I am supposed to be closely related to, but was worried as hell because I had to pitch a movie to Karen, whom I had talked to the night before (this part is real).

Right before we were about to leave for the ceremony, Karen drops by the apartment, bitching about the fact that she was sick, and late, and she wanted to kill her doctor because he made her search all around town for this one special flu shot (in a yucky, puss yellow color) only to be told that he had prescribed her the wrong thing.

It was a lot to take in, especially when you passed out earlier in the dawn before you could start some work on your day job because of a migraine.

Dreams are supposed to be my way of escaping from reality, right?

Anyway, when I woke up and realized that all that work was for naught and I had to call the real Karen with my hair sticking out and with a cough ridden bedroom sexy voice, I realized that I had a very full day ahead of me.

I have two jobs to work on, which I seemed to have procrastinated all through the weekend, and later on just got too sick to start with.

For some reason, I can never really do work that I don't like when the whether is hot. It kills me. And when I do, the computer shuts down because I need another fan to cool my AMD chipset, and when I get it rebooted a some 15 minutes later, the cold meds would have hit and I need to shut down in order to reboot myself.

It a vicious cycle of laziness and slacker persistence (now there's an oxymoron)

So here I am, having just finished reading my film book and getting all set to work, when suddenly my brain feels like it's all been shoved at the back of my head and my ears feel like i'm underwater.

I have mountain of things to do, but no viable braincells to do them.

The funny part is, it's only when my brains are limping in gray mode do I get this urge to blog and write. It's like the remaining cells get creative just to prove that they can survive.

And good luck to them, because the rest of me is shutting down with this heat.

2005-05-01T21:50:00.000+08:00

Workin' It

I just hired my first actor yesterday and it felt awesome.

Of course it was my friend JP but it still felt great. He mainly signed on as a favor for a friend and was terrified of disappointing me. He kept telling me over and over that he didn't have any acting experience, but I told him that he was going to do fine.

The emotions that I require from him were already close to the surface, coupled with the fact that we were very good friends, so it would be easier for me to give him directions.

He was reluctant at first, so even though he'd signed the release forms, we talked more about the work that we were about to do. After giving him a description of the scene and what I required of him, I asked him for his opinion, noting several signposts to his emotions.

It took seven hours of talking, but I finally loosened him up in order to get the confidence to play the role.

By the time we left, he looked like this matinee idol who just couldn't wait to get to work. He's excited about the project, but is fuck assed enthusiastic that he would also get to choose the music for the scene he's going to be in.

We spent the whole day at the Petron gas stations mini stop, hydrating ourselves with caffeine and munching on a can of Pringles chips, but it was great.

It finally felt real, when he signed that contract. Just two weeks ago, Laarni and I were making plans about the production company, and setting up projects, and found ourselves booked until next year. Well, hopefully.

2005-03-12T00:06:00.000+08:00

SPAM

I just got this spam in my email: 2 Day Slim Subject: Hey there fatty.

If it managed to piss me--a 5'5 1/2 94 lbs Jughead--I wonder how someone with real weight and self esteem issues would react?

2005-03-09T14:44:00.000+08:00

Mental Real Estate

My mind is like a towering apartment complex.

It's this tall, futuristic sky scraper that engineers would love to build and something which sociologists and psychologists would love to study, thinking that this contained community will drive it's residents nuts.

There's a mall in one floor, various restaurants, a couple of entertainment centers, maybe a botique, a salon, and a health clinic, a gym, and a spa that I never go to.

And right above, starting on the 50th floor, are the residential apartments.

And on the 75th floor, you have my space, where I rent all the rooms but only live in a few of them.

There's a two bedroom, a one bedroom, a studio type, a loft, and a penthouse. All other rooms are empty. I don't go there. I have a schematic, I have a sketch of what they are, how they look like, but I don't live there.

Maybe one day, when I need a new space, i'll move in. I'll think about what to do then.

Since there's just one me, moving from room to room, looking at each place, wondering where to live next.

The One bedroom country style, the chic art deco style loft, the family oriented four bedroom with the 2.5 bath, sunken living room and rec room, or the hovel studio type where I just have a table, a chair, and a bowl of mangoes, a pitcher of water and a laptop computer with cookie crumbs edging into the keyboard.

The walls are white, and all lighting is provided by this black lamp. It looks like any black lamp you see in a store. It's cheap and it's easily replacable.

That's the plce i'm thinking of moving into for a awhile.

Just get my keys and leave the two bedroom. With the yellow walls and the shabby chic furniture. Leave the Paulo Coehllo book unread, the alternative rock on it's CD cases, and listen to the sound of creaky pipes and electricity in my studio apartment.

Where the walls are blank except for the images projected by my troubled imagination.

2005-03-02T23:04:00.000+08:00

Text Hole

For some weirdass reason, I am not getting any text messages at all. None. Nada.

Normally this wouldn't concern me, since I've always been vocal about my distaste for being "reachable" in the past.

But then, that was in the past.

This is one of those things that come bite you in the ass.

I haven't had a single text message in two days. Not a single forward or Sun Cellular textcast. My phone has been so silent that it fucking freaks me out, because it has never been silent ever since I started pre-prod for my indie.

Maybe there's something fuckass wrong with my cell, or people really are too busy to reply or say hi, but i'm finding this bit of silence...odd.

I don't miss it. But it's so abnormal that you can't help but feel uncomfortable. Not to mention the fact that today hasn't really been such a hot day.

Oh well. Maybe in a few hours from now, things will be better.

2005-02-19T09:12:00.000+08:00

Straight from the mouth of babes

According to a new study, women in satisfying marriages are less likely to develop cardiovascular diseases than unmarried women. So don't worry lonely women, you'll be dead soon.

Tina Fey, Head Writer, SNL

2005-02-16T12:42:00.000+08:00

A Year and A Half

It has occured to me that this blog has been in existence for a year and a half. Hey. Imagine that.

Since people I know actually find me in this blog, I now make an effort to trackback once in a while and check is someone left some comment in my old posts.

There hasn't been much of a difference in the before and after except that:

a) I think I was funnier before than I am now. Or maybe I just ran out of material. A lot more things to bitch about when you're actually sitting in an office somewhere with a bunch of gossip mongers than in your room, typing away on your keyboard.

b) I'm a lot more serious now. Heaven help me, I actually grew up these past two years.

c) I actually managed to admit to myself that I want to be a writer. Hopefully not forever be a starving writer.

Hmmm...It is now 1:32 pm. Breakfast. (I am now on EST time)

2005-02-15T04:55:00.000+08:00

Weirdness

You ever get that sudden feeling of weird discomfort in the pit of your stomach?

I'm not talking about a bathroom run here, but this feeling of...unsettledness, like something is wrong and you just can't figure out what.

I'm getting that feeling right now.

I hate that feeling. I hate not being able to tell what the hell is wrong, and what I can do to fix it. It's like those weirdass food cravings that you sometimes get, where you feeling like eating a particular food...you just don't know what?

I hate the feeling of uncertainty that this represents.

2005-02-14T12:04:00.000+08:00

Matt Schulze

I've always been careful never to get sucked in by stereotypes, but this guy just blew me away.

Matt Schulze is probably one of the most underused actors in Hollywood. Seriously. He's one of the few people that I would love to see in a leading role (romantic leading role?) just so I could see where he'd take the part. Every time I see him in a movie, his acting just screams "I can do better".

Imagine my surprise to learn that he was Christian.

You don't hear about actors like that anymore. Usually, when I read an actor talk about their faith, it becomes a tool, or a quote. The answer is so standardized that you wonder if they really mean it, or if they just use faith not to lead them into a brighter path but for some gratification, like jerking off or going to a spa.

Religion has become a trend, like the new fad diets.

But this guy...whoa. He really stuck to his faith, and I admire him for that. Considering the image that they made up for him, it was really unusual for me to read about this.

"Even though you may lose faith. God never loses his faith in you."

When I read it, a part me just went "Whoa. Chupa said this...fuck, Vince said this." (He played Vince in The Fast and The Furious")

I know this happens a lot in Hollywood, but this case, the difference between actor and the real thing is amazing.

Matt, you ever do a movie outside the box, I'll be the first one there.

2005-02-12T15:42:00.000+08:00

Teacher

Yesterday was my "official" last day in school. I haven't been going to school all week, but technically, my last day was yesterday.

In the course of my three month teaching career, I have gone through four student changes, five substitutes, six steady students, and gotten two close new friends.

One is a girl my age, Isabelle, who is like a 24 year old Korean version of my mother. I mean, it's weird. I always thought that I would never be friends with my mom, but this girl is so much like her it's uncanny.

The things we have in common are the things me and my mom have in common, and she likes bands that my mom either likes (my mom likes alternative rock) or I know she would have preferred.

When I left, I only went to school just for her. Then she texted me and told me that I wasn't just her teacher, I was her friend. That even though she didn't want me to leave, it was selfish of her to ask me to stay, especially since I had better benefits in my new job.

Then there's my twelve year old Ron.

That kid is a whiz. Grew three inches from the time he went here last December. He was abrely up to my ear when he came here, now he's close to my height and about to leave in two weeks.

He borrowed a teachers cellphone yesterday and texted me, asking me how I was and telling me that he missed me. I nearly cried.

That kid is so special. He is so smart, and he is so motivated. He is the smartest kid in his level in Korea. When we were bored and didn't feel like going by the book, we played word games, mostly code games.

He's so different from the other kids in that he is so introspective. He likes to observe. And he stuck to his own reasons for not using that damn e-dictionary and actually made it with a regular paperback dictionary (which he claimed was not only cheaper but better).

The two of us sort had this weekly ritual. I'd measure how much he grew in the week and we'd mark it up my classroom wall.

I felt so sad when a friend and co-teacher told me that he wasn't enjoying his new teacher, and that he kept coming to my class asking what time i'd be there.

I didn't think i'd ever get attached to these people, but somehow I did. Didn't think i'd be friends with them, but somehow we are now.

Ah, to be a teacher.

I told my friend Jonathan that most of the time I felt like a fake teacher, since I didn't have any teaching experience nor an education degree. He looked at me like I was crazy then pointed out "Well, they learn don't they? Then you're a teacher."

Just to be fair though, I don't think I was a very good teacher. I think I was better as their friend.

2005-02-09T21:58:00.000+08:00

The Ride

My life, for the past month, has been like a frigging rollercoaster.

So many things has happened that I'm amazed that it's just February. I feel like a whole year has passed, and i'm stuck in the middle of some week.

I've got my fingers crossed over so many things now, that some days I wonder if it's all real, or this is just a joke: delays over my new job, fear over not being able to write, anxiety over not being able to deliver...failure.

There are days when i'll wake up in the middle of the night wondering if what I just had was a dream, or a dream connected to a memory. Days pass by so quickly that it's taking me longer to distinguish what's real.

Some days I can't believe that it's all happening, but I don't want to let go of any of it. I'm scared that i'll open my eyes one day and realize that it's all been a dream, and that I have to go through the next few weeks again.

It's exhausting, but I have so many things happening right now that I can't give up. This is the year where I know I have to push myself to my limits, just to see what I can do.

As my new boss is so fond of saying: cross your fingers.

2005-02-09T08:54:00.000+08:00

Sacrifices...

If you could find true love--in it's most perfect and complete sense--but knew you'd die five years into the relationship...would you still have it?

Just a question brought on by a song and a really sucky (but smarmy) action movie with a really hunky guy...why else would I watch it, duh.

Blurry
by Puddle of Mud

Everything's so blurry
and everyone's so fake
and everybody's empty
and everything is so messed up
pre-occupied without you
I cannot live at all
My whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
you could be my scene
you know that i'll protect you
from all of the obscene
I wonder what you're doing
imagine where you are
there's oceans in between us
but that's not very far

Can you take it all away
can you take it all away
well ya shoved it in my face
this pain you gave to me
Can you take it all away
can you take it all away
well ya shoved it my face

Everyone is changing
there's noone left that's real
to make up your own ending
and let me know just how you feel
cause I am lost without you
I cannot live at all
my whole world surrounds you
I stumble then I crawl

You could be my someone
you could be my scene
you know that i will save you
from all of the unclean
I wonder what you're doing
I wonder where you are
There's oceans in between us
but that's not very far

[Chorus]

Nobody told me what you thought
nobody told me what to say
everyone showed you where to turn
told you when to runaway
nobody told you where to hide
nobody told you what to say
everyone showed you where to turn
showed you when to runaway

[Chorus]

This pain you gave to me

You take it all
You take it all away...
This pain you gave to me
You take it all away
This pain you gave to me
Take it all away
This pain you gave to me

2005-02-06T13:54:00.000+08:00

Target Practice

Went to the shooting range today for target practice.

This is the first time I've ever fired live rounds. My dad gave me an air pistol when I graduated high school, and went through a couple of practice rounds until my mom told me to quit.

I did okay withthe air pistol, so naturally I expected to be somewhat good the first time I fired live. I was with my dad, a police officer, another shooter friend, and his ten year old son-Amos- who just happened to be a recruit for the RP Speed Shooting team.

I had a bit of performance anxiety before I started. They lent me Amos' gun, a .22mm pistol with a compensator, just to give me a feel of what it was like to fire live. The gun was so light that I felt like I was holding a toy, but the recoil definitely reminded me that this wasn't just another air gun that I was playing with.

They were all rather surprised that I did pretty good with my first round, except for maybe my dad.

He told me before I went up to the range that we all had to start somewhere, that he didn't expect me to fire dead shots, but I could see in his eyes that he wanted me to hit my marks.

I did better when I moved up to my dad's pistol--a Star .9mm--and was about average when I used my gun--a .22 revolver.

Of course, I had to suck at my own gun. The instructor told me that revolvers were pretty hard to aim, mainly because they were so heavy and I just wasn't used to the sights.

I've always been pro-gun. I'm still a fence sitter when it comes to other social issues, like stem cells or abortion or divorce, but gun control is something that I am totally sure of.

It's expensive, but I really do believe that if you want to own a gun, you should get it licensed and you ought to know how to use it. This was the first time I fired my revolver. Had I used it on an actual shoot-out, I probably would have hit a couple of bystanders or maybe a stray pot. Out of eight, I only got three dead on shots.

They told me that I should probably get a gun of my own and start practicing, since I was a pretty good shot, and right now I am really thinking about getting a .22 pistol for christmas. Or a .9mm if I can afford it.

They're thinking of going to the range again next week, and my dad is considering taking me there again. He wants me to get used to my gun, and I want to try the .45.

I need to build on my upper body strength though, and I really need to learn my gun. I'm not really after the speed here, but more of the accuracy.

Much like in cars, i'm not really after the speed, but more of precision driving. How to be a good driver.

I'll probably bring my rifle next week, see how I do with that. I much prefer sharp shooting, it focuses you more, and I think you can do that better with a rifle.

Ermm. We'll see.

2005-02-03T19:16:00.000+08:00

It's been a long road indeed...

2005-02-03T18:23:00.000+08:00

It's been a long road...

After four (long?) years, Star Trek: Enterprise is coming to an end.

...

I'm going to hide behind a multi-phasic shield and pretend to be surprised. Seriously, was there a trekkie out there who didn't see this coming?

That show was doomed as soon as the opening bars to their new "theme" started playing.

And if the sucky music didn't give it away, the addition of the name "Star Trek" soon after they boldy left the airwaves with just "Enterprise" confirmed that the shows, indeed losing.

It's a matter of formula, really.

Some viewers absolutely hate formulated shows, where everything happens to be predictable. But Trek--like always--defies this reason. In the same way that Trek, no matter how improbable it may currently be, still manages to convince millions of people that they are cadets living in the 24th centery and even get them to pay for the illusion.

Trek is like no other, and I think the producers made a mistake by trying to make it "just like the other shows".

So what if shows like the X-files and CSI and fuck, even Smallville, present some semblance of drama? It's still not Trek. Sure, Voyager and Deep Space Nine may not have lived up to the expectations of The Next Generation, but looking at the time and their respective demographic, who the hell can?

TNG was the only sci-fi show featuring something close to a ship at that time. Now you have at least two or three same themed shows to choose from, and there's also the other Star Trek reruns to compete with.

Personally, I thought the crew was just...boring. I understood the producers need to do something different, but I think their completely revamping the show just put a shocks to a lot of fans systems.

As for bringing in new viewers...why watch a semi-palatable space drama whose technobabble you can barely understand when you can stick to watching just plain ass drama in CSI? Sure, there's still those scientific mumbo jumbo, but you've got nice character drama on the side to give you your bit of soap and the cool 3D scientific explanations to cure you of the technobabble.

Plus, the Trek formula of bringing in the romance in the fourth season may seem a little cheesy, but fucking hell, it sure ass worked!

Not that Enterprise didn't try. But marrying T'Pol off when most of the people were holding out for a Trip-T'Pol union after they've been assured (and disappointed) that there will never be an Archer and T'Pol union just majorly pissed fans off.

Oh well, they've already hinted of something better. And hopefully there will be one.

Here's to ST: Enterprise. Who, after four years of boldly going where no Trek franchise has gone before, finally caved to the networks.

2005-01-27T23:43:00.000+08:00

Pimp My Ride

I don't care if it looks like an old steel iron. This is one slow ride that I do not want to have pimped.

This baby's gonna dominate the desert!

P.S.

I'm not kidding. I want one for christmas. Donate, I can ride it in the lahar infested areas of Pampanga.

2005-01-27T23:41:00.000+08:00

From MK

"We don't make the best of who we are and what we've got because our society encourages us not to be responsible. The system really reduces individuals to a minimum- but that's not how you make a better future for the world. The world needs artists. Because artists wake up your sense of wonder, the wonder of being human, of being alive together. Artists give you faith again, faith that society exists, and that dreams are real."

2005-01-24T23:01:00.000+08:00

1+1 always equals 2

My parents just bought a new microwave for 32,000 Php.

No, it doesn't spit out gold, it's not made by any popular manufacturer, and it was originally sold for 27,000 Php.

Do my parents feel like idiots for being cheated out of five thousand bucks? Not really. Not when the microwave, a set of knives, and a bunch other bullshit all came for free when they purchased a set of pans worth 35,000 Php. But since the store was new, it only cost them 32,000 Php.

A supposedly ridiculously huge amount of savings, except we don't need a new set of pans.

My dad thinks i'm a moron that can't add, but I really do feel like they've been fleeced.

They really did want to buy a new microwave, but they could have gotten one for five thousand bucks. Granted, this is a "newer" and "better" microwave...

But if the point is to just heat the damn food, why the hell do I need a friggass expensive one for? So it can bake, big deal. You can bake in other microwave ovens, provided you get your water ratio right.

Of course, it's never going to do shit like Angel Food cake, no matter how "new" the microwave is. I think you need something like a "baking oven" for that.

I asked my dad why this one was ridiculously expensive. I mean, does it fly? Does the food multiply? If I put my cellphone in, will it come out new? Does it tell fortunes? Or do something even more amazing, like cook an honest to goodness egg?

I don't get it.

2005-01-18T22:44:00.000+08:00

Burnout

I'm done with teaching.

Nope, it's not my students. In fact, they provide me with a lot of entertainment, considering that I have one male student just hitting puberty (shot up two inches in the past month), a boy crazy 14 year old, a lonesome 30 year old who's girlfriend just went back to Korea, and a 14 year old who thinks i'm his stupid nanny.

The rest of my students are great, and heaven knows that these nutcases I have in between are okay too.

So they aren't the reason why i've had a burnout. It's more off the low pay, this one fucking teacher with delusions of grandeur, and the fact that I am a filmmaker, I cannot stay in that job forever.

Hopefully, I'll have enough dough to pay my next insurance premium and then get out by the end of February.

I'm done with teaching, i've gotten rid of that teaching bug I had in me. Today, I found myself teaching Earth Science to one of my students, because she needed me to double as her science tutor since she didn't understand a word of it in her Filipino school.

So far, i've taught songs, story writing, science, and have been a counselor. It's fulfilling, but not enough to make me forget that i've got a ridiculously low paycheck.

Now that my grandmother's in the house though, i've been motivated to do more filmmaking stuff. So i'm making all the phonecalls, will be writing all the emails, and checking on all projects that I left pending last year.

Heck, i'm even working on my Filipino. I bought two tagalog romances, none of which I can relate too because the characters are just...of a different caste.

Ah, to learn a language. Just thinking this reminds me of what I use to tell my students: practice, practice, practice.

2005-01-16T10:17:00.000+08:00

Zoning Out

I finally got off my lazy ass and solved one of my life's little mysteries: Is Brini Maxwell gay or not?

On a bad day, that lady scares me. As my friend put it, she's a cross between a Drag Queen and a Stepford Wife, and I have no idea why they put her on TV with her Jackie Kennedy act giving advice to a million stressed career women. Though I have to admit, I did see a couple of episodes just to see if she had an Adam's Apple.

She doesn't.

But her real name is Ben Sander, and he's 35 years old, and he was born in Massachusets.

Now i'm stumped on why she doesn't have an adam's apple. I mean, he just plain ass looks like a guy who got sucked into a wormhole with a Barbie doll and came out the other side with their molecules fused.

No amount of surgery, make-up or bleach can get rid of it, but he is so damn delicate that my grandmother would probably trade me in for him just for the way he holds a napkin. It surreal.

2005-01-09T09:07:00.000+08:00

Day Eight

We're almost done with my aunts nine day novena/wake.

My head is reeling from all the melodrama, and i'm not even the adult involved. This has got to be one of the nastiest business affairs I have ever been in...and I don't even care if my aunt haunts me for saying it. If she does, I'm going to have to sit her ghost down and ask her a lot of questions, and maybe even whip out a couple of documents that she oh-so-forgot to sign.

To anyone who reads this...take my advice...have a will. If you don't have a lawyer or don't want to bother with the taxes, go write it down have it notarized. Better yet, there's this site that will walk you through it for 20 darn dollars.

Oh well. Nothing brings out the best in people more than money.

Speaking of which, I have been making the rounds introducing myself as the family's next starving artist/part time enlgish teacher.

Saying that I was a filmmaker was no problem. My aunt was such a great artist that they'd half expected me to pull the next FAMAS out of my ass right then and there--but it was their enthusiasm with me being a teacher that really surprised me.

They all seemed rather proud that I chose to be a teacher--though I can't really take that much pride, since I teach Koreans how to speak english instead of imbibing fresh young minds with much needed knowledge.

I still feel like a fake teacher most of the time, and even though I enjoy it, I still don't want to have it as a career. If anything, it's the students that I'll miss.

My term closes at the end of February, which means I have some serious decisions to make come March.

I don't know why, but this is the year that I feel totally committed to what I am, who I am, and what it is that I want to do. I have a lot of things to follow through on now, and after telling everyone I have a fuck ass responsibility to live up to the expectations they all placed on me for being my aunts niece.

Not to mention the responsibility that I have placed on myself...

What fucks me is that I actually like this. The pressure. Now what does that make me?

2005-01-01T11:10:00.000+08:00

Day One

Woke up late. The `rents are back out taking care of business.

Me and my mom had a long talk last night, and will probably have an even longer talk tonight after things have settled in.

Lots of shit to work out, now that my aunt is gone. She's going to be cremated this Sunday, so there won't be a funeral, no viewing.

I've only been to two family funerals, and even though i'm no veteran of these things and I always kind of thought of it as uneccessary...i'm beginning to understand how being surrounded with some family members is essential for closure.

My aunt was a very popular gal. She had tons of friends all over the world. Even though she didn't look her best in the end, she kept her cheer up, and I want people to know that. She was always happy, never wanting to inconvenience any of her friends, and in the end...she died a few hours before the new years so that 2005 would be easier for all of us.

I feel like telling people that even in the end, she kept her game face on...but without the funeral, I have no idea how to do that.

It's almost like she's here...and she's gone.

The last time I saw her was last week, Christmas morning. I couldn't go near her because I had just come from a cold and I was really fuckass tired. I hadn't slept, and I had some work that I needed to finish.

I stood a few feet from her bed by the door and said goodbye as we were leaving.

She kind of turned to me and waved, saying I love you and telling me that although she was happy that I was "employed", that I should do what I want and that she was going to help me. She called me baby and blew me a kiss.

I knew that was it.

When she died, I was in the bathroom taking a bath. I'd just finished a project that hung me up for four months, and it had finally ended and I was celebrating it with a much needed shower.

My other aunt called at around seven to ask about my aunt, and I told her "This is it. I don't think she's going to make it out of this one. I think it's going to be tonight", not knowing that she'd died in that hour.

...

People have said that it's wrong timing, that it's the new year and she could have picked a better time to die. That it sucked that I spent the New Year on my own at home, with no dinner and not even able to call for a pizza.

But the thing is...I don't really care. It's just another day. I feel better that she's done resting now. She's been fighting for a long time, and I saw just how things were for her. How worn out she was getting in the end. I think, for the last month, she was just fighting for us than for herself.

So I don't mind sacrificing my new year, just so she can rest. It's just a holiday, a reset on your calendar. And at this point, i'm beginning to realize one thing.

You can celebrate everyday.

2005-01-01T01:36:00.000+08:00

There's Always The Next Year

My aunt just died today.

She's been sick for two years, and today at 7pm, she finally gave up her fight with breast cancer. My parents are at the hosptital taking care of business, while I was here wrapping up some left-over projects.

So yeah, i'm home alone this New Year. But it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when your aunt is dead and you're really just...melancholy during New Years.

I tried ordering some pizza for myself, but alas. Even Pizza Hut was closed for the holidays. My other aunt invited me over to their house, but I just didn't feel like dealing with people today.

So I made some hot cocoa and popped in a DVD of Love Actually and got even more smarmy over my New Year.

At midnight my parents called me from the hospital to ask me how I was doing. I told them I was okay, but I called my mom "auntie" twice because I couldn't hear her and was just going thought the "Greet anyone Happy New Year" mode.

It's been surreal.

No new year's eve dinner, no plans for tomorrow. Probably start on my next project while I wake up early and help out at home, since my parents will most likely come in at around 6 am.

Anyway, when the fireworks started I thought of just staying in because...I just didn't feel like coming out. My neighbors all bought these kickass fireworks, but I told myself "Well, there's always next year"...until I realized that maybe there wouldn't.

Who knows what can happen, right? My aunt knew she was going to die, but she didn't know that it would be this new year. I bet she thought she could squeeze in another fireworks display, or another dinner.

So even though I didn't want to, I came out and just...looked. Watched as my neighbors honked their horns, made some noise. Watched more fireworks.

I just kept thinking "What if I don't have a next year?"

So I watched. If not for me, then for my aunt. And for everyone who just didn't make it for another New Year.

2004-12-24T16:43:00.000+08:00

Yes, it does fucking bother me

Why is it that some people think that others want to see a picture of them naked?

I just checked my friendster account again after months of neglect and suddenly, pictures of people in Playboy poses pop up on my screen.

It's annoying.

I mean, here you are, quietly logging in the network to scour the bulletin board, when you see this idiot who thinks they've got what it takes to bare skin...and let's face it people, most of the time, they don't.

Yes, you're proud of your body, you're not ashamed of it, I get it. But posting it on a network where people can't help but see your ass and possibly lose their lunch...c'mon dude, be reasonable, some of us are delicate.

I mean, i'm not being a prude here, but there is a reason why the "no provocative pics" rule was established in tjat sight. It's to keep people like us from having their day ruined.

It's enough for me to find out that my sweet little friend from high school has now got it into her head to morph into a skank and show everyone...but I just had to suffer through the pic of a particularly annoying girl and her boyfriend in post coital bliss.

Hello, too much information?

We didn't even want to get to know her, much less know what she looks like after sex.

The ridiculous part is that she's doing all this to be all macho. The "look at me, i'm liberal and free" stand to the world.

So what, she has sex and wants everyone to know it? She should have at least just passed a text filled flyer, at least some of us would have had the option of throwing it out. But no, she had to go push the image of her and her boyfriend in bed.

And it's always the annoying girl that does this, always the person whom you never really liked but had the misfortune to know, spend most of your time being civil, and was just too polite to turn down her invite on friendster.

And you can't really say "don't look at it", because it's right fuck in the middle of the screen.

I say, if she wants this kind of publicity, then she should just post a message once in the bulletin boad on how she wants to have it and stop harassing us witht those pics.

We already have to suffer through some people's nudie pics, have pity and don't add any more.

2004-12-18T23:58:00.000+08:00

Discipline

When I was 12, I got this whacky idea that I should be in the army.

I saw this movie about a kid who went to military school and thought he looked so regal. I asked my dad if I could go to military school when I started high school the next year, and his response was to tell me that if I went in, he wouldn't take me out--even for summers--for the next four years.

In short, he said no, but I'm pretty sure that if i'd asked harder, he'd had said yes.

Now why such a dumb request?

In the early days, I wanted to go navy because of the uniform. Then later on, I wanted to get in the army because I wanted the discipline.

I knew even then how hard it was to push myself. That if I really didn't like something, there was no way in hell that i'd be able to do it. I'd go nuts. But I thought that if maybe, just maybe, if I went in the military, i'd be forced to do even the most basic shit that I absolutely hated to do.

Stuff like making an incredibly neat bed, being obsessively organized and clean, being on time, sitting ramrod straight and eating in under ten minutes. That i'd learn how to take orders and respect authority and all those small things that the military requires out of your common soldier...stuff that I couldn't do unless you told me point blank that my fucking life depended on it.

Now I feel like laughing at the whole situation.

Twelve years. If I hadn't been rejected for being underweight at that military academy, I could have been a lieutenant by now, probably entering my second year of law school after wrapping up my two year tour of duty.

Or I could have been an enlisted soldier, or just a counselor in the Psychiatric Services center.

I still want it sometimes, though for the life of me, I think I would have gone crazy had I gone in. There would have been a point where i'd be tearing my hair out if I had to put on that uniform for another fuck-ass day.

I still think about it...what would my life be like, had I chosen that path. A career soldier. What are the places that I would have been, what are the things that I might have seen, what would I be like?

Would I have lasted long? Would I really have gone nuts? Would I be successful at it?

A professional soldier makes less than 20 grand a month. A lieutenant probably makes the same amount I do now and does double the amount of work. There would be tons of things I couldn't buy, and even more things I wouldn't be able to experience because of my schedule.

...

I just find it amazing to think that my life could have been incredibly different. That I could have gone in an entirely different direction become someone else.

I wonder sometimes, about all my decisions. So many of them are big things. I could have gone to any direction, done so many different things, that I could have been...a whole different person by now.

I could have been a soldier, a lawyer, a profiler, a psychologist...so many things.

I wonder how I would have been like if I'd chosen a different path.

2004-12-15T21:30:00.000+08:00

Getting Up

It's weird how life sometimes takes your hand and leads you someplace you never once thought to go, but just had to see.

I fucking like my students. Right now, I actually enjoy what I do. The pay is dirt cheap, but despite the politics that is starting to go around, I actually like teaching.

There's something gratifying with being able to see some of your students progress.

And though some of the people there that you meet are fuck ass weird, some are real gems. The kind that you knew you had to meet, somewhere in life, for a reason.

I met an honest to goodness friend in that school. Seriously. It's like Big Me and Mini-Me with us. He's the absolute after and i'm his frigging before. He's looking at me right now (yet again) as his little sister, and tries to tell of all the mistakes that he's had before and is warning me not to follow.

It's weird right now, how...fucked up things are, but how ridiculously calm I am. It's like "yeah, it's shit, but here. Have my goat. I'm going to move forward."

My friend and I...we both have the same problem...well, he had it, i'm currently into it.

It's the whole "I can't get nothing' done" issue. I just can't buckle down, and I can't fucking finish anything. It's all frigging weird.

It's just...most days, it does take a long time to work with things you really don't want to fucking do. And the way my brain is wired, it just cannot process all that well when it's suddenly formed itself in a shape of a block and the rest of the world is a a triangular slot.

He sat me down and just went "Look, this is what I think you can do, based on some of my own experiences..."

He was frank, and really honest, and very optimistic. He talked some things over with me and just went "Look, I know things really suck right now, but the thing is...they could get worse. Still. And you're just going to have to look up from that, keep your head afloat, and get through it. Coz your only other option is to sink..."

I think it's because he just became a new dad, that's why he's so optimistic.

I've never met anyone who's been so encouraging in my whole life, and someone who I couldn't out-talk, out-smark, and comepletely weazel out of...and he's completely nice. Most of my friends are into some hard love, so if you suck they tell it to your face that you do.

I think I give him cred because he just...he knows where i'm coming from because he's been there.

When he asked my if I thought it was time to buckle down, I just thought "Well, you know what...this is it."

I just...this isn't really bottom. This is one of the ledges that's close to hitting bottom. But this isn't it.

I once told myself that i'd rather waitress than sell-out. Well, i've got a nice job. It doesn't pay well, could eventually pay well, but it's okay.

I don't have a lot of money right now, and I just found myself handing my mother 3/4 of my paycheck, partly to pay her back for the things I owe her, and some of it as just...her spending money.

Buying some of the students--who can afford a hecka lot more than I do--drinks, because it looked like they needed a little happy that day.

I got a bonus that I wasn't technically entitled to because the Filipino at accounting thought we teachers were underpaid as it is, and just...gave me extra money. So I decided to just...spread the blessings.

It's weird how, when you decide to suddenly look forward, things do change. You stop looking back, and just keep going forward. You right your mistakes, and even when you think some bridges can never be repaired, you at least make an effort to try and mend it, and just...move on.

It's pretty funny.

In my fanfic, my character lead told everyone that she didn't like thinking about regrets, that she loses more time that way.

It's true, you do. But I never really took my own advise. I'm fucking myself up blaming shit that happened in my past.

Sure, they inspire me. It's okay to think about it, but not to wallow in it.

I'm done. I'm moving again. I'm picking myself up. I'm in the gutter, now I can just try and move myself from the gutter again, and onto the street that will take me to where I am going to go.

2004-12-12T22:12:00.000+08:00

Joss Cola...

I die, you die, we all die
Just not now...

Now, we have to work

We have to meet deadlines
We have to have relationships
We have to respect our society
We have to answer to our beliefs
We have to set a goal
We have to meet that goal

That is our concern

No one fucking cares
that you could die tomorrow

Just remember

To do the job before you go
To leave insurance, before you die
To croak in a reasonable way, to not offend people
To make the proper arrangements...let's not forget ourselves
To measure how long we got to that goal
To see if we even made that goal

So right now do the fucking work
you get to live tomorrow

it's always tomorrow

2004-12-12T09:31:00.000+08:00

Once more...with feeling

It's the annual fight-fest with the 'rents, though I can't recall it ever being this bad.

It's absolutely no interaction, and zero tolerance in the house. They no longer bug me in my room, tell me what to do, or hassle me out to dinner, simply because they are not talking to me at all...

Okay, maybe they are, just a little...like, you're going out? Hmm. 'Kay.

This is partly good news, since this will make my decision of moving out in the next months much easier.

Yeah...i'm going to move out. Finally. I think it's time. Living at home is great simply because you don't have to pay much for anything, but it also has a lot of tradeoffs.

Not being able to do things your way, how they still treat me like i'm a kid in high school...or maybe more like college...

I honestly just want some space to breathe. Maybe i'll be able to do more things if I was out on my own, without them hovering behind my back. I want to see what else I can do if I were to make a lot of my executive decisions.

In any case, i'm excited to see just how far I can go if I really follow my dreams. I mean, the oppurtunity has always been there. But I don't think i've ever been given the chance to try.

2004-12-10T14:40:00.000+08:00

Really?

"Daddy use to say I was like little baby Moses, a gift from god."

"That's not what he meant, sweetheart. He meant that you shall grow to bring plague and misery upon us all."

I'm having an interesting time in my new job. The most amusing characters are housed in that teeny-tiny school.

2004-11-24T22:14:00.000+08:00

Teacher, Teacher

I am now a teacher.

...Yeah, big laugh track here. I didn't see that coming either.

Since i've run my account to it's maximum low and am now officially out of cash, I decided to get a pick-up job that will provide me with some cash to last me a few months while I work my ass off making money for my movie.

I was thinking of being a barista for Starbucks or even just plain old waitressing, but at the last moment a friend of mine roped me into teaching english to Koreans...

And though I never really thought about of becoming a teacher, the job is rewarding and frustrating at the same time. Most times I feel like a fake teacher, since I don't have any education or english units, but it feels great to be able to sit down and just struggle with these people.

Since my school provides mostly for one on one education, I only work with five people for the whole eight hours, though I should be getting the full eight people when December rolls in.

The pay is dirt cheap, but since I'm flat broke I took advantage of it while working and waiting for my other checks to clear.

So far, all four of my students are adults, save for one, Kim, whose twelve. Sweet little kid, except he's still a bit nervous around me and doesn't really feel like trying all that much. There are times when I feel like reaching over and just throttling him, but I think that has to do with the fact that he usually slacks off when I feel really bumfuck tired. He's kind of like a baby that way, reacting to the energies of the adults around him.

He likes animals and wants to be a veterinarian, so I'm finding out ways on how to teach him. The remaining three's ages range from 22 to 30, but i'm lucky that they're all pretty much in the intermediate to semi-advanced levels. They're pretty good, so we're not like two idiots who are trying to guess each other's words.

I like my students. :)

They think i'm cool for whipping their asses into working. One of them actually studied until 2am. But they like me, which is nice.

It's a nice fun...hobby, I guess. I always wondered what it would be like to be a teacher, but here I am!

My grandparents were teachers (and my dad moonlights as a terror professor at a local business school so he doesn't count) so I always wondered why they worked this kind of life for such little pay...

I guess it's because of the instant gratification that you get when you're students discover a new word or watch them get better and better...

Or it could be that when I'm teaching them, I feel totally in control and mondo adored!

2004-11-17T11:28:00.000+08:00

Is This a Joke?

I'm addicted to imdb. I swear. I have to use it for my job, to play six degrees of Kevin Bacon, or just to find out if that blonde in sitcom A was the same girl from that drama b that I saw during the 1980's.

So i'm always there. I zone out there. The facts of the stars relaxes me...

Out of bored and dumb curiousity, I decided to check on Jessica Simpson and found this:

Though she plays a dumb blonde on her hit TV show, according to the August issue of Vanity Fair, her I.Q is in the 160s. That would place her in the "genius" area and she could apply for a membership to the brainiac club Mensa.

Wow Jessica, if that is true, where did all those points go? Your hair? Do you bust a few when you sing high octaves?

Or could it be--gasp!--that all that crap in the Newlyweds is just for show? That she's really just pretending to be a dumb blonde (Oh God, I can't look)

My mom--who is fond of her "antics"--defends her by saying she spent most of her life working and not really focused on studying. Kind of like leaving a kid in the wild, eating nothing but berries and being raised by apes.

You have your average American youth left to the mercy of pop culture...so this is what happens? Shit, and here I was expecting something like Nell.

She went to high school, she must have absorbed something there. I mean, with a 160 IQ, you would have at least figured out that if you take a hansom cab in New York, it will stop at a red light, and it does so when a driving pulls on these leather straps called reigns.

I'm baffled, I truly am. I mean, I don't expect to do cure cancer, invent a theorem or even write a critical play. I just want to see her speak Enlgish or figuring out that a pedicure, manicure, and a full body massage takes more than an hour. Or that dry cooking mushrooms need to be...well, cooked.

Maybe she's good friends with the writer...maybe she's got one hell of a publicist...

Or maybe it's her plan.

To make everyone including her husband think that she's dumb. To sing cover songs while caressing herself just to get you to buy them. Then actually acting dumb on TV shows and Movies, then getting a nice MTV contract to convince even more people that you're a moron.

Then, when we're all convince, when we least expect it...she'll drop the bomb and actually say she's smart.

Like, really smart. Like, she's built a bomb. Like, a nuclear bomb. Like, to kill us with. Like, to rule the world.

2004-11-13T21:09:00.000+08:00

Preproduction

It's funny how some things just...happen.

Laarni and I are meeting some deadlines for this week, then officialy beginning pre-production by January of next year. We'll probably be spending most of December streamlining the idea before we finally put them on nice, shiny, expensive paper.

....

Sometimes i'm amazed that Laarni and I get along so well. Don't get me wrong, we have a lot of things in common, have exact to similar ideas, but there's still that one outstanding thing that somehow keeps the two of us from being total pals.

But I am happy to say that I can totally see myself rooming with her.

Pretty good, considering that we are going to room together when we do our documentary. It's a planned three month immersion/working vacation.

Of course, our parents will probably think we're nuts and people will try and stop but who the f cares?

We're at this point in our lives where were sick of people patting our heads and discounting our ideas just because we're young. Or insulting our intelligence just because they've lived longer.

It's annoying...

Well, one things for sure. We're tired of working for other people. We've had some shitty bosses (boy, have we had some shitty bosses) and what we went through is enough to last me a decade.

If I have to work a nine to fiver under some chump who thinks they're god or with gossipy geriatricts who have nothing better to do with their lives...they can just shove it.

My mom says it's worse in other offices since my office was pretty small, but I think all that shit was excacerbated because we lived in a fish bowl.

So i'd rather bust my ass being my own boss, and hang by a nail and hope I make it, than be a pee-on for the rest of my life.

...

Good grief, i'm pissed again. Must learn to forget about those people.

2004-11-09T01:11:00.000+08:00

Making A Movie

Yesterday I made my first move to being a filmmaker: I made a successful solicitation.

Granted, it was to my uncle, and he only gave me a hundred dollars to start me off.

But a hundred dollars converted goes a long way, and for a ten minute film and a filmmaker who still can't figure out where she's going to come up with the rest of the $1,400.00 to buy a nice semi-pro camera...a hundred dollars is a good thing. A hundred is a hundred less of the big pic.

He's also buying me books that I need, and is thinking of helping me out with the camera.

My other uncle is willing to lend me a hand and teach me some lighting techniques, while the rest are considering shelling out some cash--though probably not as big as a hundred dollars.

I know they're all family, but I can't help but feel a bit proud that they actually listened to me pitch and bought the idea, even if only one of my uncles pulled out his wallet.

Laarni and I (who's the other half of this enterprise) were pretty happy to get some money in our "film fund" that we didn't earn. As it is, what we're making right now is going to go to equipment and production costs for our documentary.

I'm looking for other possible jobs to make more money to fund this thing, but of course, i'm going to have to find more sponsorships.

I don't know whether my family was moved by my passion or stumped by my sheer stupidity to learn everything along the way.

Either way, we made our first hundred, and which brings me a step closer to realizing my dreams. It may seem small, but for a girl who did't really expect anything big, it's more of a giant leap.

2004-10-20T13:00:00.000+08:00

Old Friends

Sometimes I'm reminded of how age can so relative.

Just when I thought i'd heard everything that my old boss (thank God) had done, something new crops up that has her sinking lower.

Okay kids, can you say "pathetic"?

It's both annoying and amusing to find a 50 year old woman trying to accuse a 23 year old girl of spreading rumors that she herself started?

The funny part is, she think she's right because technically, I did say those things...even though it was more in agreement to most of what she said. Woman even had the gal to quote me by verbatim on shit that I never really said.

Who the hell does that?

And I thought I was whacked in the head. I've heard of dirty politics, but this is downright ridiculous. Part of me is somewhat flattered that she would consider me as a sizable threat, but to actually sink so low as to make shit up...man, that's commitment.

It kind of scares you into thinking that some people never really grow out of some things.

My great fear is that I will never grow out of being a clutter. I guess I'll find out when I get my own place, but see, you sort of hope you'll change. You want to change.

This kind of attitude...damn, it just blows me.

For one election year, I was part of the UST political scene. Not as a major player, but as a campaign supporter. I saw what it was like to have high school kids squabbling over a position that never really held much power--at least, not in my opinion.

Nobody cares about the UST student government. We somewhat care about our college student government, but we don't give a shit about the major electoral council. We never saw them, didn't know them, didn't care to know them...

And yet here were college kids, sending death threats via text, voicemal, email and plain old paper, to active party managers and candidates. Smear campaigns were carefully and tastefully launched, posters were ripped, rumors were spread, court cases were filed...and it's just the fucking college government. Ours doesn't even have as much pull as UP or Ateneo, as there are no future politician vying for the roles. (they were all busy training on the debating team)

I thought that was the lamest...and now I have this.

I never thought anyone that old could be capable of doing something like that to someone two decades younger....it's frigging unbelievable.

2004-10-12T10:18:00.000+08:00

Game On

I must admit, i've never been much of a gamer...oh heck, I've never been a gamer period.

My gaming life started and ended with the Nintendo family computer, where I played one airplane game so much that I heard the soundeffects in my sleep.

My parents were heavily into Galaga, quietly displacing me from my perch in front of the console with orders of homework, then starting their nightly wager on who could trump who (and the bets aint low either, 1k was a lot in those days)

But when everyone moved on to the Ness, the SNess, and the Nintendo Ultra 64--which I secretly longed for, thank God I didn't get it--I was left severely behind. I wanted to play them mainly because I wanted to play Macross games (I was obsessed) but I really couldn't afford the systems, much less find the time to play them.

I moved on a bit to arcade gaming with yet another flight sim game. I didn't get Daytona, don't get it still, but one hot sumer day I poured some money into a flight sim game and actually ended up finishing it. I wasn't in the top three, but somehow this earned the respect of several gamers who ended up watching me as I passionately blew up binary planes.

Love affair ended when the mall sold the game off to make way for new ones...none of them flight sim (sigh)

When the PC revolution started, I picked up on Heretic, mainly because it was bundled free with my CDROM. The whole first person thing did somehow enthrall me, but not enough for me to pour some money into it, even in a bunch of pirated CDs.

Then Star Craft and Red Alert came out, and I was still docked in the shadows. I think I was into debate. I played Outpost though, which is a cheaper spinnof which my cousin bought in the states for--well, really cheap. Caught my attention for a little while before I moved on after a span of...gee, a month?

I think I would have picked up on a PS2 or even an Xbox if I wasn't sure that I would be seriously addicted.

Games are an ADD kids way to sanity. All that noise and fast action gore melt into this focused goo that most people would have found distracting. We're used to everything happening at once, so when you have shit coming in from all direction, we assume that everything is normal. And for kicks, we load up on caffeine, to better concentrate on our games.

And since I can neither afford, keep up, or even have time to spare for a game, I've decided to steer clear from game systems and end the affair even before it's begun.

Though I regret not getting a joystick for my PC and not playing the microsoft flight sim game...or any PC flight sim game, for that matter. It's an addiction. I think in my past life I was a fighter pilot blasting away in some biplane.

Now...well, now I am seriously looking into the Chronicles of Riddick PC game spinoff.

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay is an Xbox release now looking at a new life in PC. It's supposed to be a far cry from the film, though with Vin being a huge gamer, i'm sure he tried to make at least this right.

I didn't really like Riddick all that well. I think Pitch Black was a good movie, but I think the jump they made from PB to TCoR was just too much of an ambitious leap.

Most people complain of Vin's lack of acting skills, but fuck, who the hell watches this kind of movie for the acting? You watch it for the action, the story, and (for the women) some gratitious looks of a delectibly sweaty Vin.

(Though for the record, I sincerely believe he can act, he's just been stereotyped in these kinds of movies)

I don't think the story made that much sense. I think the setup was too...rushed. The jump from this dark sci-fi thriller to fantasy was just too extreme. It's like the Kia selling off it's blah as the new Benz.

Sure it looks like the Benz, it somehow even performs like the Benz, heck maybe it even smells like the Benz, but see, it's not a Benz. Never will be. Deep down it's still a Kia, and who the hell wants a fake Benz?

And Riddick came off as that...fake. The story was okay for the most part, but with the way it was hyped up, it just didn't live up to my expectations.

But Vin was there, and we like Vin, and come on, who the hell wouldn't watch the sequel after that cliff hanger ending? I'm sure people went out thinking "Maybe things will get better once he goes back to Furia. Maybe next time he'll get a better girlfriend...heck, maybe he'll end up with Thandie Newton"

Though for a franchise, this movie sure batted a hundred. Toys, shirts, books, comic books, animation and game spin-offs, hell bumper stickers, this film just primed it up and cooked it to a turn.

I heard TCor: Dark Fury was great, maybe because the writer for it was great (see how important the writer is, even though he's the least mentioned?) and now TCoR the game turns out to be quite the hit.

Okay, so I'm contemplating on getting it because I like Vin. But I geeked enough to at least check the reviews for this and it all went pretty well. I'm not sure i've developed enough screen-keyboard-mouse coordination for me to be any good at this, but with me holed in my room, who the hell cares?

Maybe it will get me playing again. I'm already addicted to Flash 2's Virtual Drag Racer (v's 1 and 2) and that Bounce game is just damning....Yeah, I'm a sucker for free games.

All in all, with my new life working from home and being one with my PC, I need something that will improve my motor skills besides working out, and since i'm not much for badminton--which is taking the country by storm--this looks to be a great alternative.

If not, I can at least stare at the graphics. The lead looks so much like Vin it's fucking scary.

2004-10-07T10:14:00.000+08:00

Another Day At Work

I'm supposed to be working right now doing some research on the internet as a money-job.

Of course, with my transportation needs, it doesn't even come close to paying the bills. I need to finish it for this week, but for some reason, I can't get myself to do it.

I know I will, I have a deadline. This has been hanging over my head for the better part of the week, but with other career stuff and errands, i've had to put it off until today.

So now here I am, stalling the inevitable. I really should do something about my habit of procrastinating. I like to do things at the last minute, but at this point I don't think that kind of behavior is possible.

I'm doing a lot of growing up this year. I don't know what that means really, except that things have taken a more serious turn. More complicated decisions, more dire situations. I keep wondering when things got to be so serious...heh, maybe when I left Ecogov.

There's so much work to be done--personally and professionaly--that I keep wondering why I never realized this when I was younger. Though I don't know if I could have handled this if I was a teenager.

I still don't regret any of things that I've ever done. I wish i'm making more money now, mainly because I need it, but if I had to do things over again, I would--strangely enough--do the exact same thing.

2004-10-04T21:29:00.001+08:00

Aspirations

I'm doing penance for this week. Today is day one and it's killing me.

I was thinking of fasting, but considering that I now workout for an hour and a half day--40-60 minutes of that aerobic--I don't think it's a pretty good idea to cut down on food for the next nine days.

The last time I did this, my mother nearly dragged me to a shrink to see if I was anorexic.

In fact, she's still convinced that I'm anorexic, even if I do gobble up twice the amount that she does. Though now I am beginning to understand that whole working-out=gratification thing.

Maybe it's not instant, but with my weight and metabolism, it sort of can be.

I usually start shedding the pounds in two weeks. When I first started running-30 minutes every other day-I started noticing the difference within the first week. When I quit, I gained them back--worse this time--but I quickly found out that I was pretty efficient in losing fat.

I'm not going to be obsessive about it, but looking at it now, it's easy to see why some people can lose themselves with the whole weight issue.

I don't count calories, since heaven knows I burn pretty fast. Though because of my MVP and my parents ages, we do try and watch the cholesterol.

But it's weird when you start seeing the results and the first thing that comes into your mind is "I can do better".

That my stomach can be flatter if I stretch my cardios, or do more crunches. Or spotting the flab quicker than usual. Your mind goes nuts and you begin to ask yourself whether your body really does need the additional workout or this is the beginning of some serious disorder.

I don't know if it's just me, since no matter how good I do in something, I always end up saying "I can do better".

I don't think i've ever been completely satisfied with something I've done. Not to say that I am discontented with other people's work. I give credit where credit is due. I'm proud of my friends accomplishments, and I never critisize their work unless they ask me to.

But it's different if it's my work. I go nuts if i's something that matters to me. Even if people are pleased with the results, I always think of all the mistakes I made and how I can do better the next time. How the next one can be 100%. I'm kind of Borg that way.

So it's a bit mind bending to look at yourself and say "gee, yeah, that little pouch is still kind of there...and hang on...is it worse?" when you're probably trimmer than you were a month ago. Only now, you're just...more critical of your body.

I can see why some people say it's a control issue. How some people will go to extremes just to try and get that cardboard cutout figure. It's easier to tell yourself to skip a meal, maybe an 30 minutes more to the routine, or maybe eat less when the rest of your life is crap and severely out of your hands.

I'm kind of thankful that I love to eat, because it's pretty easy to get fucked up when you're in my position.

Writing takes a lot of ego. Submitting your work is almost like auditioning. You go around peddling your work, even though they tell you it's not personal, it's hard to pad yourself against all rejection. So it's all a balance of pleasing yourself and the editors at the same time, since you have to eat and sell your work.

If you find an outlet like working out, and see the immediate results, you do kind of get addicted to it.

The exercise itself brings a natural high. Endorphins race, you feel detoxified, your heart is pumping and adrenaline surges through.

It's a legal drug.

I hope I don't read much into this thing. Luis didn't show any major results in his stepper routine until six months, so I oughto be doing pretty good if I'm showing a lot of improvement in a month.

It's a nice way to get your sense of gratification, though hopefully it won't be my only sense of gratification--nope, not if I can help it.

2004-09-30T15:15:00.000+08:00

Power Tripping

Karen and I are being pulled to coach some UST teams. Between the two of us, we can probably end up coaching a third of the colleges in the school.

The weirdest thing about this is that Kenneth--my egomaniac ex-coach--used to be my age when he started coaching us.

The way we looked at him was so extreme. It's like he was ten years older and was so balanced and thought out and sure because he was fucking older. In retrospect, it was just four or five years, but your that young anything over 20 is considered ADULT.

And now here I am, in the same position. Nearly all the debaters i've lectured to think i'm sort of diety (or, as Karen is fond of putting it, "debating god-dess") and they have that bright eyed look when they listen to me talk.

It's amusing, but at the same time I remember how I was when I was training for my first competitions.

Of course, I wasn't as enamored as they are. I was a cocky shit of a debater who thought she was fucking good the first time she made a speech.

My first time out, Kenneth's only comment was "Pretty good" and I told myself i'd make him eat his words...and he did.

But that's not the point.

Having these kids look up to me like i'm this genius is weird when I feel like such a runt.

I'm good, I know i'm good, but I never once felt that I reached the level that I dreamed to achieve when I was competing. Though in retrospect, even if I did stay in the sport, I don't think I would have anyway.

I was always afraid of that one girl who was better, which was why I never really made an effort to be the best. Because if your number one, the expectations go higher, the stakes get harder, and I didn't want to deal with being the best in one hand and having the possibility of losing in another.

I think I deliberately made myself miss a debate on my last dialectics simply because I didn't want to be number one. By losing the 1st position, I didn't have to perpetually worry about that girl who would have been number one except she didn't compete.

Of course, by sabotaging my chances, I managed to give the new Number One a complex. Everyone knew I deserved that place, and she spent half the time in the awarding ceremonies wanting to give me the fucking medal and started telling everyone why I should have gotten it afterwards.

Maybe I could have done the two of us a favor by winning and sparing us those stupid thoughts of "what if"...

Now i'm 24, and i'm older, and that privilage card called youth that gets me through a lot of scrapes is deathly close to expiring.

And I am fuck-ass freaking out.

To be honest...i'm scared of turning out like my coach, who spent most of his days power-tripping with us and messing with our psyche's.

And I'm scared that these kids will look up to me, and expect me to be this person which doesn't really exist. This uber debater, this really great person, this...adult.

Because really, if this is adulthood...then damn, there's a lot of shit to be worked out before Ault-Kriszia will truly be me.

2004-09-27T13:30:00.000+08:00

Ring of Evil

Just got the navel ring yesterday. Finally!

The Twin Towers (a.k.a. Mark and JP) went with me and took pics of the whole thing. I kept worrying that my tummy wasn't flat enough, since I ate a lot beforehand, but from the pics it looked okay. Not nearly as bloated as I thought.

It didn't hurt much, not as bad as Luis told me. But then, the tatooist placed a little Novocaine to help. Mark thought I was robbed of a memorable experience, but if you feel that needle going in for that three to five seconds, you'll know that it's one bitch of an experience that i'm thankful not to have.

To celebrate, we all set to watch The Exorcist. I was voting for Feng Shui because of Roy, but alas, I was out voted.

Except for that disturbing scene of the kid being eaten by hyenas (wherein the sound of crunching bones will haunt me forever) it wasn't as bad it seems. I think the original one with Linda Blair was more shocking.

My parents told me that after the first time they saw it, they couldn't sleep for close to a week just thinking about it.

It's just a movie, but if you're a Catholic who's had the oppurtunity to witness a posession, or even be in a place where there was one, you tend to freak out.

Both my parents went through that same period where a kid in their Catholic school was possessed/rumored to be possessed/or just plain saw ghosts and she extrapolated.

I had the same thing in second grade, where we were all given holy waters and taught to pray the Prayer of St. Micheal the Arc Angel. (me and the mum went to the same Catholic girls school, btw)

So I pretty much stayed away from the first Exorcist. I had some qualms watching this one, but horror being my new genre, I thought i'd give it a try.

I admit, I was a bit disappointed. As with most American horror flicks, it had very little horror and just had a lot of gore. Your fear is based on disgust of torn body parts and maggots crawling out of your skin, as opposed to whatever shit that may come and grab you in the darkness.

Happy at the same time that I would be granted a good nights sleep (though I didn't, since I had an essay due for $21 dollars--yes, hawking english papers again)

My mom was surprised that I actually had the guts to see it.

Though she was more surprised that I fucking got the navel ring. She didn't completely freak out, mainly because I started my sentence with "Don't be mad at me, I did something..." and all her guesses were infinitely worse than having a frigging hole on my tummy.

She did ask me if it was evil though, which really disturbed me. Where the hell did she get the idea?

I think she expects me to be somehow possessed and just start sleeping around, drinking, or boosting cars or start doing random fuckingly stupid things because of the damn ring.

It's annoyingly ridiculous.

After assuring her that my head would not start spinning and I wouldn't be off doing pagan rituals, she's now on a mission to make my dad find me out.

I haven't told him. At this point, doing so would earn me a smack in the head and i'm too old for that.

Better wait like a month, after i'm neck deep in the script, and his only reaction will be "Why the hell did you that for? Did it hurt? Shit...okay"

My dad's side of the family like to keep their reaction to the bare minimim. Those few words are already a five on the richter scale.

In the meantime, the thing hurts like a little bitch, I have to put up with drinking the anti-biotics and bothering with the anti-bacterial ointment...but damn, the thing does make me smile.

2004-09-21T01:10:00.000+08:00

Self-Assesment

I just took a "Dyslexia Self-Assessment" Questionnaire where I was made to read a lot of questions where I was asked if I had: difficulty in ranking instructions, problems with mathematical tables, if the letters swim on the page, do I skip a line...etc. etc.

I was halfway done when I realized...if I was really dyslexic, then I wouldn't be able to read this fucking page at all....?!?!

2004-09-20T22:33:00.000+08:00

V5, Big Bert, Little John, Steve (at the mighty frigging center), Jaime, Mark, and two disturbingly naked babies who are in no way affiliated with the show

2004-09-20T22:13:00.000+08:00

Gifts for X-Mas: Kriszia's Wishlist for the Voltez V Crew

Little John: Ritalin, a sucker, and a PS2. Maybe a playboy subscription

Big bert: gym subscription, diet pills, a self-helf book, and maybe a few Pilates lessons

Jaime: a Haagen Daz certificate, the neck massager, a pile of Vin Diesel movies

Mark: certificate for Malboro clothing line, a blow-up doll, a my little pony, and the access codes to Jaime's room

Steve: a fucking mirror

2004-09-16T13:47:00.000+08:00

Vinspiration