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Tuesday, November 30, 2004 If ever there was a dark side to Queer Eye, it would be Clive Barker. Make-overs? Sure. Starting from the inside. Interior decorating using whatever human anatomy's available. No waste. More body bags please. Clive Barker has always been a topnotch mind-flayer.Between two sweaty palms, is my precious hardcover copy of the latest from the dark, dark genius. His version of fantasy. Abarat, book 2. Hardbound. Just the right size, the right weight, with it, I could beat any unsuspecting Harry Potter fanboy to pulp.
posted by Alexis at 9:10 PM Monday, November 29, 2004 Dismal is how I would put the state of affairs of my previous employer. It used to be gravid a couple of years ago, you know, pregnant and heavily lactating, with proverbial opportunities and the upper management's favorite closed-door, one-on-one by-line "room for growth."Those words echoed on from upper management, until my eight year tenure, which is exactly a fraction of my life. Until I came to realize that you find echoes almost exclusively in hollow spaces. ---------- After that, the compulsion of moving on had such a bracing imperative urgency like a male feline in estrus. The sentiment was community-wide, en masse, migratory instincts at the fore. ---------- How this suddenly concerns me, considering "the past is past" and somesuch, is based on two things: First, eight years was enough to form a granite-solid opinion that advertising is not in league with anything that has a semblance to words like "long-haul", "for keeps", and "Labor Code". It is a transition device, from here to there, points A to B, advertising being "to". While making a living out of it. In those eigth years of perennial ups and downs, year-end cliffhangers as certain as sinning, I have formulated exit plans, one of which is to open my own internet shop and take on every walk-in LAN gamer with a soft spot for Warcraft. Or do a 180 degree turn, head for the hills, and make a meaningful living on the countryside. Of course, along with the creature comforts of cable TV, the net, DVD, my hammock, and Pepsi Twist. ---------- Second, concerns a paisano affiliation. Eight years is not without alliances, friendships. Solidified down to the core in the course of plus or minus a decade. The so-called Old Guard, by merit of tenacity, witness to comings and goings in time lapse. When the last exodus happened, I took the trip ticket out, and some stayed. Admirable, after a fashion. To eke out a cursory bi-monthly living or other reasons I'm not privy to, I'm quite sure it is not an acquired taste for sado-masochism. But they too have exit plans of their own, which has fermented long enough in time for an ex-employer who has grown overhead bulimic lately. One of the old guard is relinquishing the mouse for a paintbrush, another is going to go back to his alma mater as an art guru. And the last, has a broad spectrum of options matched by brass-quality cojones. His blogspace Is It Safe speaks volumes. Bon chance, then. Opportunities abound. ---------- Right after this, I will continue page 165 of A Dog's Life. Authored by Peter Mayle, a long retired copywriter. This book is but one of his many exit plans.
posted by Alexis at 7:25 PM Wednesday, November 24, 2004 Faith uprooted. Centuries-old faith indoctrination quivers and grows weak at the knees. The effect of Dan Brown's paperback cash cows. Making absolute gnostic experts, in quotes, out of the typical badminton enthusiast. Dan Brown's getting richer by the minute. And richer still, his book soon to be given a word-made-flesh Hollywood spin. Rejoice, heretics.But, dear spiritual vagrant, your religious quandry, thanks to your fanatical Dan Brown zeal, is nearly at its end. Back into the fold, you know what I'm saying. No? Listen. Dan Brown's primary resource, the Priory document, allegedly unearthed from a small abbey, the Rennes-le-Chataeu, in the heart of France, is nothing but an elaborate hoax. Proven. Confirmed. And aired over the news channel BBC. The Bible is as good as it gets, folks.
posted by Alexis at 6:30 PM The title of the blog right below is portentious. Stillborn. MIA for a few days. Caught the flu. Viral. Heck, even a lowly bacteria can get sick of viral causes, too. Now, back to the proverbial saddle. Heigh-Ho, Silver! Friggin' away!
posted by Alexis at 6:05 PM Friday, November 19, 2004 Behind our backyard prowls a white leghorn with a harem of five or six hens. He is in his prime, and so is his vocal chord. He crows his virility during the most ungodly hours of the morning, sleep-deprivation to the poor souls within the immediate radius of his sonic mayhem. Insomnia that walks on two legs.My morning mantra of respect for animal rights, which covers poultry too, grows more and more meaningless each time I'm jolted farther and farther away from slumberland. One day, my family is going to feast on chicken curry. This particular leghorn should ... watch out for falling debris.
posted by Alexis at 2:59 PM Thursday, November 18, 2004 How many blogs have I consigned to a fate harsher than binary limbo. So many have gone belly-up in an instant quicker than a blink. Damn this Back net-browser button.
posted by Alexis at 1:26 AM Just how do you improve on perfection? Mamuro Oshii's techno-existential foray into a future where digital intelligence attains lifelike sentience returns. Make that sneaks in, tiptoeing, straight to shelf-spaces reserved almost exclusively for bootleg stuff at MCS. Ghost In the Shell: Innocence has not lost the breadth, atmosphere and scope of the first. So, back to the timeless existential question of "what is man?" The answer is, hold your breath, "Rowdy." The subtitles are nauseatingly way, way off their mark, like entrusting the congenitally blind to hit the bull's eye. Finishing the movie, from credits to end credits, with the subtitled word "rowdy" sporadically sprouting all throughout, was a true tensile-test of spiritual fortitude and endurance. And yes, I pass the test. None the worse for wear? Absolutely ... not.
posted by Alexis at 1:05 AM Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Hot on the heels of Talepono, Kokomban, Dabal U and Beintsinko is the Christmas jingle "Jinggumbe" sung on AM band by a little boy carried away by the spirit of the season.
posted by Alexis at 9:13 PM Man. Chimp. Opossum. Toad. Guppy. Bug. Slug. Bacteria. Pond scum. Human evolution, nutshelled. But no matter how eminently we figure in the evolutionary scheme of things, man has not completely forsaken the ways of his primordial ancestor. Case in point, advertising. (Scum should not be confused with Scam, which are, quite so often, interchanged.) MRT passengers, yours truly included, are suckered into a regular free diet of scum. Front cover ads pretending to be front cover news on Libre. Madison Avenue calls it below-the-line advertising. Strikethrough the word line. Replace with belt. Deception. Scum. ---------- The self-righteousness ends there. Anti-static is guilty of scum-like ways. A front cover ad I penned into existence a few months ago has been voted by Philippine Daily Inquirer as one of the best of its kind this year. Awarding will be on November 19. I hope there is a prize. And, fingers including toes crossed, convertible to cash. (snicker... snicker... snicker...) Scum? Grade A.
posted by Alexis at 6:50 PM Monday, November 15, 2004 Hit the ground running is the cliche that aptly applies. Fresh from a 3-day sabbatical, still recovering from a holiday-lag, I find myself caught in the middle of a maelstorm of compres and storyboards. I hear the accounts boss shouting "We're going!" while everyone's still a-bitching. Typical.So here I am, still in a mild state of catatonia as the clock ticks to an office exodus conclusion. Someone's playing the Brand New Heavies' first album. Detonation in 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
posted by Alexis at 11:07 PM Pixar, I salute you! For weaving stories that dwarf the technological breath of life. Echoes of the classic-status comicbook Kingdom Come, a bit of a homage to Star Wars and the Fantastic Four, all without leaving a powdery residue of bad taste in my mouth. I rate The Incredibles as original DVD-worthy. And that is saying much.
posted by Alexis at 8:26 PM 24/7 is not exclusive to motherhood. Woke up so early in the morning to tap my little one back to sleep. It was still dark, the constellation landmark of the nocturnal, Orion, still twinkling feebly overhead. The chill seeped right through the skin, to where rheumatism and arthritis lie in dormancy. Inhale. Exhale. Cryogenic breeze imported from Siberia.
posted by Alexis at 8:09 PM Tuesday, November 09, 2004 Is it still possible for a chicken to die of old age?
posted by Alexis at 10:10 PM This geeky genetic aberration fact is brought to you by none other than Discovery Channel. "One in every four million lobsters will be color blue." Stupid Question # 1: When cooked, will it turn red? Stupid Question # 2: Will it taste as good as the average crustacean? Stupid Question # 3: Did marine biologists really count them?
posted by Alexis at 10:05 PM Blog under construction. In perpetua, actually. Guest blogs and website links will take up residence along the sidebar. Eventually. But the look has to go. Hunger pang for new eye candy, in a way. May last a lifetime. Also depends on whose lifetime. I'm too old to be this finicky. Macho bull, notwithstanding. Somehow, happy to be this way. Regardless, the parchment blog medium will be around for the meantime. For some time. That's it? That's it. Now, back to blog business as usual.
posted by Alexis at 8:58 PM Monday, November 08, 2004 Director for a day. I held that titular privilege once, megaphone as scepter, folding chair as throne. I have once dabbled into the world where Kodak makes a killing on a regular basis. The client cum subject was an Ayer's Rock of a mall. The monolith stretched to almost a kilometer, the camera would have a field day.How I wound up sitting on the director's chair was another director's doing. For kicks. A maverick film director during his time, Jun Urbano had a penchant for playing with fire. He chanced upon a pyromaniac. The rookie, whose only experience in film was seeing it on big screen, rampaged for an entire day, followed by a film crew, from the DP down to the setmen, unflinching, shooting three scenes, huge ones, from one end of the mall to the other. It was pretty much a hands-on initiation into that minute circle of men who get paid at a rate of 24 frames per second. At the end of the edit, director J.U., his inner arsonist deeply satisfied, chose all my good takes, which were really a precious few. It aired a couple of months later. Floodgate opens. There were immediate offers of apprenticeship from upstarts who would one day become big names in the industry. But my one-day directorial stint, debut, whatever, ends with just that -- a one day dud. My heart was somewhere else. That was over a decade ago. I could be filming horror-flicks right now.
posted by Alexis at 8:20 PM Samuel Jackson as Mace Windu. Subtle mandatory black guy Hollywood formula. So much for blacks-and-scifi-don't-mix. I'm not complaining. Just saw the trailer to Star Wars Episode 3. And realizations galore. Chewbacca walks around buck nekkid. Yoda does not need a cane. And, James Earl Jones does not sound black.
posted by Alexis at 7:20 PM Today's desktop wallpaper features an adorable, wee furball looking down the street through an apartment window in the morning. But the saccharine-rich, feel-good imagery ends there, as little turns to lethal. Sitting on its haunches, the kitten aims a high-caliber, death-dealing sniper rifle on the street below.
posted by Alexis at 6:39 PM Sunday, November 07, 2004 "match plus box, matchbox."A highschool philosophy teacher explains how a new word is formed by fusing two, separate words. "type plus write, typewriter." I can not picture Socrates musing "bull" plus "shit" equal to sophia. Will this lesson have life-altering significance? "Ball plus pen, ballpen." None. Zero. Philosophy can be a very boring subject. 60-minute catatonia. This day, philosophy would be anything but boring. "basket and ball, basketball." The teacher, a priest, a rector, Father Feniz, careful with the pronunciation, carried on with his blackboard-written homily of two words equal one. "ear plus phone, earphone." I have a different philosophy. A name possesses such gravity that it could shape personality. Imagine the inertia behind a name like Father "Feniz". "dog plus style, dogstyle." The room fell so silent I thought heard gnats flying. Or the perfunctory afternoon crowing of a solitary rooster perhaps three blocks away. An uproar of uncontrollable laughter teenage boys make followed a few seconds later. Mortified, he herded us out of the room, giggling, to bask under the sun. But that didn't matter anymore. Only Sigmund Freud mattered.
posted by Alexis at 10:44 PM The great American infidel won. Those Americans. Such fools.
posted by Alexis at 7:51 PM Just saw MTV's Pimp My Ride. The geniuses of West Coast just saved a fast-fading Mustang convertible from the clutches of the junkyard. It came back shiny and new in armour-all and turtlewax and Pirelli tires. But, unknown to the American motoring public, that somewhere halfway across the globe, natives of a war-torn archipelago within the Pacific rim were already pimping G.I. retired jeeps almost half a century ago. Alas, Pimp My Ride is an old, old concept.
posted by Alexis at 7:26 PM |
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