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Why I Think I Am Little Edie's Incarnate Ergo Jackie O's, uhm, Relative
2008-06-06 01:29:00
After viewing Grey Gardens for the nth time, I have a funny twitch in the gut that says Edith Bouvier "Little Edie" Beale may well have been my most recent past life. Here's why. 1. Little Edie's ongoing mantra is all about getting out. 2. Little Edie has to think things up, you know. 3. Little Edie thinks the world (East Hampton) could get you for wearing red shoes on a Thursday. 4. Little Edie asserts she is a staunch character. S-T-A-U-N-C-H. And they don't know they're dealing with one. Staunch characters never weaken. 5. Little Edie has a revolutionary costume. 6. Little Edie has a deep sense of being one with nature. She understands it. That's why when she says it's a sea of leaves, she is sure that if you lost something in it, you can never get it again. 7. Little Edie is certain that there are always second chances. 8. Little Edie believes that mothers are created to thwart you from making the most out of such second chances. 9. Little Edie's understated campiness is ...
More About: Jackie

Love Moves In Paraplegic Ways
2008-06-06 01:09:00
She's my first and early in the morning tomorrow I will fetch her at the airport. Our first in sixteen years. Glancing at my freshly-cropped hair, the one which had her swooning on our first date, I said smilingly, "God is a good curator. Some specimens He keeps the way they are with a special dessicant." Suddenly I feel some paraplegic twitch kicking somewhere inside my body. I couldn't get my motor skills to coordinate with the my brain. I am combing my hair with the mobile phone. Now my feet are both lefties. My eyes register different panoramas. My hands are stranger to the concept of spatial intelligence. I wonder what she's doing now. Could she be going through the same? Please don't strike her with momentary amnesia, dear God. I paid more than a meal's worth for my new haircut.
More About: Love , Moves

Let me gather you
2008-05-01 07:47:00
What are you still doing here? I am right here at http://mnyano.gather.com.
More About: Gather

"Make Me!"
2008-04-01 00:13:00
Per specification from my persnickety 9-year old niece who will receive a couple of academic awards at their Recognition Program this afternoon, I need to dress "properly". Not that I am known as the family's fashion black sheep of sort but, her mother told me that by dressing "properly" the girl means wearing something that should coordinate with her dress. And when I asked what she will be wearing to the occasion, her mother unpacked a freshly ironed pink satin sunday dress. Neat. I am like I have never had any recollection of myself close to being pinkishly dapper. But as the day is rightfully hers, I oblige but not without the grim prospect teasing my jaded mind - that of reminiscing the past with a couple of pink-hued snapshots in a not-so-distant future. Anyhow, I chose a calming ash blue Tom Wolfe and explained to her how this color is supposedly within the pink family. But she would not be badgered into believing that blue and pink are coordinating colors. Tough luck. I w...
More About: Make

Tot's Sheer Torture
2008-03-30 00:50:00
By special request, I will escort my niece to their 2008 Recognition Day where she will receive a special award for being the most industrious aside from snagging 2nd place in the honor roll. Woot! The rehearsals would have been a completely idiotic non-event with the scorching sun, dust, smelly kids and snarky teachers and all, when suddenly in the sidelights was a scene which I suffered in utter disbelief. "You will wear that thing honey and I will not have a problem with that!" "It hurts me bad, mother, please. I am having blisters, look!" "Shush it! Go go go!" The daughter wobbled pitiably in stylishly humongous footwear looking way way older than her tender age of 6, while the mother looked overbearingly on, obviously feeling divine in her own outlandish attire. Will the real fashion victim please stand up and be recognized?
More About: Torture , Sheer

The Case of the National Costume with Tell-tale Shirt-Tails
2008-03-14 07:44:00
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. - Jean CacteauI had the opportunity of wowing the attendees of my cousin's wedding to a white male with my special occasions Barong Tagalog.Pristine in its off-white piña fibers, the style I chose from a European catalogue. From out of the two cuts that I clipped, I went for the classic casual over a Bohemian number. My deciding factor should be my stubborn Vandyke beard that I have to shave off on a regular basis. If I dressed my looks, I would be committing the worst fashion faux pas of all. Overstatement is as heinous a crime in fashion as prolixity is in writing.One has to strike a balance between skin and style, cloth and climate, and where most of us fail, between appliqués and age. By balance we mean the deliberate blending of form and function, or simply, substance and style.My barong for special occasions is spe...
More About: National , Costume , Shirt , Case , Tale

Fowl Existentialism
2008-02-07 09:26:00
I am not trying to be philosophical. Believe you me, I was busy doing the kindling at the back of our house one afternoon, so positing a philosophical theorem was unlikely the main idea. But hell, the chickens just presented themselves. So I was like, okay, fowls too need a shot of cyber-fame.

Dear Old Uncle Howard
2008-01-17 04:01:00
I?m not sure if I had told you of my plan to go on a trip back to the country to pay my oldies a ? longish ? visit after a long, long while.My last visit I guess was way before the crazy notion of building an ?ancestral house? ? if you reckon I fondly referred to it as ?The Shrine? right on my Gather homepage ? had gloriously taken over my curious mother and, before that ailment that dwells in the dark recesses of the brain or the nervous system had first manifested its debilitating stirrings.That was all of ten years ago. I was well into my second term as a College Instructor ? a welcome aberration to my career plan which I thought I had originally designed to start and end as an advertising copywriter.Ten published short stories later, a couple still in the dummies, I finally mustered the gumption to head for home and face whatever incriminations would be to a much-hyped homecoming. Courtesy of an excited mother whose giddiness, I can only imagine, must have throbbed with every ti...
More About: Howard , Uncle

The Soundtrack of Sinking and Then Some Snapshots
2008-01-02 06:34:00
Siquijor is this small: one can take a full trip around the island with just a single cigarette stick. And since there is no snarling traffic to thread through, by the time one gets back to his point of origin, the cig is still workable.So it is told.Right about where I am, folks have a unique way of cataloguing people and that is by the vroom or zoom of their vehicle navigating through the steepest part of the national road that presents itself as a landmark before one gets to our very own barrio.This unique trait leaves me wondering how on earth are they able to do that when they couldn't even tell who fathered each and everyone of the barrio's fatherless kids. Certainly on an island touted as the world's witchcraft capital, the dynamics of sex is way more mysterious than the murderous psyches of the island's revered sorcerers and faith healers.For added touring pleasure, though, I found out that the "Flower Duet" is compatible with the breeze swishing through your ears as th...
More About: Soundtrack , Then

Dumalaay at Dusk
2007-12-24 04:08:00
Never experienced this in a long time.Is this magic or what? Or is it just plain old sappy me?
More About: Mala

The Academics of Homecoming
2007-12-21 06:35:00
Last time we saw each other was some fifteen years after I transfered to Manila. That was during the town fiesta in Y2K.We never really got around to talking that much since we only bumped accidentally into each other on one of the busier streets of the muggy town of Larena.Yesterday, we finally had the time to ourselves and boy was it as zany as it used to back then in the early eighties...you know, that acneed epoch in life when you don't know what to make of the irrepressible strain of Little River Band's "Mom, I'm Coming Home" as the rising pig-tailed Sharon Cuneta all too saccharinely sings "Cross My Heart". And then there's your burgeoning sense of wonder why your heart skips a beat each time you're near an equally bepimpled someone...All my friend remembers is that we really connected when it comes to laughing matters. A look, a sigh would send us both to laughing fits."Ayy, kasadya gyud nato!" (We were truly ballistically wacky.)"Bali sa, hapit isuspend atong section fo...
More About: Academics , Meco

Home Yay!
2007-12-16 12:27:00
As the rickety pedicab trailed along the highway that coasted Dumalaay shoreline, I suddenly remembered the roadrailing that my best friend and I scratched our names on way way back in the elementary years.Ah, the burden of listless memories...
More About: Home

Raging Against Ranting Machines
2007-12-09 08:54:00
The first time it was brought to my attention, I shrugged it off as just another cyberpunk trying to exercise his burgeoning sense of self-expression.Second time, I was like, well, it's just another online perv lashing out at decent surfers for not getting enough stimulation.Third time around, and with some really serious accusations that cast aspersions on my character ("you are a dressmaker's son, it figures...hahaha!!!") and my craft ("tell me what kind of fun you get out of copying other people's blog?"), boy did it get my hackles up.What gives?When my friend reported that the perpetrator is one and the same, I sensed a serious case of cyber-stalking. And this time I am singling it out of a deluge of pesky sleazeballs because, thank God, a scatterbrained female has finally presented herself for a shot of my brand of humor.Really, must I oblige?No!I am and she is not until I say she is. And that is that. Period.But just a note on my friend. He is the brains behind every promo ...
More About: Machines , Mach

Pack Me
2007-12-05 04:33:00
I am all primed for a long ride back home for the holidays.Last baggage in, I took one last long look at the room that used to be my art studio, psychiatric ward, and playpen for like half of a decade.A pained cliché instantly flashed before my eyes ? my dear lifeless life.With this yet another journey in the offing, I thought packing is about the most exciting part of change.
More About: Pack

Happiness
2007-11-25 16:08:00
Latest feature on the NBC's The Today Show, according to a study, in the case of Homo sapiens in pursuit of happiness, females on the average are more unhappy compared to their male counterpart.According to two studies by professors at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, the results are in, and it turns out that men are happier than women.On average, the studies showed, women are unhappy about 90 minutes more per week than men.This means that one female family member is more likely to feel glum or remotely unaffected even while watching a comedy show.Reasons vary from fretting over laundry getting wet, her gaining those extra pounds, or stupidly putting on the wrong shade of mascara.I really don't know but looks like the male is still the stronger sex if by stronger we refer to the ability to reel in negative emotions and feelings that are incongruous to any real-time situation.Staying focused and being in-the-moment essentially require strength. I mean, for c...
More About: Happiness

The Write Challenge
2007-11-19 03:37:00
Studies reveal internet readers don?t actually read word for word, they only skim through a page picking up words here and there like a busy shopper always willing to give up a grocery list for something better or new.Let?s say you are a writer, no, a storyteller of note. How does the finding affect your life on the internet?
More About: Write , Challenge , Halle

Audio to go
2007-11-04 19:19:00
Part IDon't look now. This blog comes with an audio powered by odiogo.Yes, every post now has a "live" version that you can plug in to in case you noticed your boss has caught up on your ruses out on cyber.So easy. Plug in your headphones, click on the link (follow arrow) right below the post title before minimizing the blog window. Voila, you can get on with your official tasks while listening to an audiocast of your choice.Yeah yeah, I will stop at nothing to empower you dear blog-hoppers more than ever in your quest to be the best multitasking corporate slave that you can be.Do you hear me?Part IIEither I've been out of the loop or I'm just a shoo in for the Miss Slowvakia crown when it comes to things blogging, but right now I think Odiogo is about the most interesting phenomenon going here on blogosphere.Not one to be left out, I have to jump into it rightaway. The thrill of plugging in to the sound of my "voice", as it were, is too tempting to pass up on.I have often wonder...
More About: Audio

Going Japanese
2007-11-03 17:10:00
So The Hellhole is located at the back of this eerie Castillan type house. Except for that cranky old lady caretaker, The Lover and I are the only roomers here.Yesterday, while the whole world trooped to the cemetery to celebrate the Festival of the Dead, including The Lover, I took the rare chance of exploring the house without the firestarting stares of the said caretaker.The living room is an unfathomable underworld teeming with paintings, dusty chairs, and these Japanese dolls. I was awestruck by my finds- antique furniture, curios, painting and the dolls which are individually stored in glass boxes. Lovely, lovely.I thought I overheard the caretaker talking to a visitor once about The Houseowner's plan of selling some of the items here particularly the dolls. The price range is from PhP 5,000 - PhP7,500. At the current dollar-peso forex rate, that's roughly $100 - $150 apiece only. Anybody interested, particulary those who live outside the Philippines, volunteer to add $25 fo...
More About: Going , Goin

Festival of the Dead at The Hellhole
2007-11-02 16:00:00
I wake up to a pained silence pervading through the tired walls of the Hellhole.The living room welcomes me to the world of the undead and the restless.An eerie calm echoes with every breath and rustling of feet.The furniture sigh on each of their designated stations. Their cushions cold from the weight of desuetude.Everybody, including the cranky caretaker, has gone to the cemetery.All Souls? Day. My favorite day of the year.Paintings wink at me.Dolls dance.Outside is one big desolate city.Doorways flicker with candles lit to welcome the spirits.The gate squeaks.Is that a groan of despair I hear coming from behind the dusty drapes?
More About: Festival , Dead

A Yardful of Birds
2007-10-31 12:52:00
[My first attempt at horror genre. Sked to hit mag-stands next week.]Starting off from the fringes, it manifests itself as a slow, yet progressive concentric ripple that dampens down every perky petal on its path. Now, the sunny flowerbeds of May slowly begin to take on a more somber mood which portends only one thing ? midyear monsoon, that fearsome maddening clash of wind, rain and anxiety. In just a couple of weeks, this merry meadow awash with blue, red, and green will be an eerie field hushed with brown, gray, and black.I know I would do well with a little fixing around here in preparation for the stormy months ahead. That hole on the roof needs tarring for one. Then too, there?s the leaking eaves, the clogged-up sink pipe, and then some around this goddarn rat-hole.?That ring-back tune about blackbirds?it?s a dead giveaway of your current state of being.??What?s wrong with being dead and giving, Mother???It?s not amusing.??I told you this was temporary.??Temporary my April Sho...
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Harvested by Gather
2007-10-27 17:47:00
Boston, USA, 7:58pm EDT - TWD's biographical tribute to Rosalinda, a Puritanical matriarch who raised, nurtured, and steered to Godly path her children, make that eleven to be exact, all from three marriages almost single-handedly is the featured article on Gather Homepage under the topic on Family."Yano...I feel like an extension of the family....the affection and cherished details of each relationship magically warm me with your heart's embrace of every memory. The culmination of this wide-breadth familial embrace is honed with a keen intelligence, a mind obviously thrilled by sound and orchestrations of words and a curiousity that delves deep within every nuance to find the shared resonance....the evolving genetic epic that you craft with such magic. I savored every word...thank you." - Laura M., Oct 27, 2007, 12:58pm EDTGather is an international writing and social networking community that offers a lot of opportunities for writers or non-writers around the world through a pl...

Reading for Rice
2007-10-27 03:33:00
Free Rice has two goals:1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.This is a truly creative way of campaigning against poverty. So far the most effective yet by going where wordsmiths are best at: vocabulary, you know, words, semantics, lip service...get the drift?Imagine, you get to play and feed hungry people at the same time.Here's how:Click on the answer that best defines the word.If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word. For each word you get right, Freerice donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. As of 25 October 2007, they have donated a total of 263,565,050 grains of rice."How does the FreeRice vocabulary program work?""FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In...
More About: Reading

Shit hits fan, lits up lit lover
2007-10-25 13:32:00
Holy crap this is revenge of the shit people.So the Glorietta 2 blasting was caused by methane gas from people's shit killing 9 and leaving 100-plus others badly injured. No trace of terrorist bomb whatsoever. Just plain shit. Period.There goes your 2020 Vision for RP, GMA, splatting all over your face.Jesus I thought it was not kosher to go all the way with in-your-face metaphor.And then there's your literary scene which is not that remotely less shittier.Load up some of the shit here:"...the current condition of the Philippines and Filipino writing both in the Philippines and in the world...that ignorance surrounding the Philippines' role in world literature history is one barrier to the serious study of Filipino writers around the world. A second, larger barrier is persistent attitudes toward the Philippines and Filipino writers themselves. These negative attitudes, coupled with persistent attitudes the world literature has toward itself that such study challenges, serve a cri...
More About: Lover , Shit , Hits

From Siquijor with Blog
2007-10-24 15:04:00
Mabuhay! I am a storyteller from the mystical island called Siquijor , the bellybutton of the Philippine Archipelago.By experience, I am relatively a newbie, if one were to base it on the date when my first story hit the magazine stands.How can one forget it? It was my first baby thrashing for attention at the crossroads of two important events - Supertyphoon Yoyong and the start of campaign period for presidentiables. Other literary publications eventually flipped open their pages for me since then.Looking back, my publication also came as a tailender of sort to the illustrious career of Philippine master storyteller, Nick Joaquin. I was one of the last few voices he had freed before he moved on to The Great Beyond. ------This all-new fully-pimped blog is now primed to keep the passion burning which Mang Nick had started if not as a fitting response to the challenge of modern storytelling - blogging, that is.Moreso, this is to let every fine writing Filipino fellow know that I am al...
More About: Blog

Hello, World! from Siquijor Island
2007-10-23 14:21:00
Mabuhay! I am a storyteller from the mystical island called Siquijor , the bellybutton of Philippine Archipelago.By any writing standard, I am relatively a newbie, if one were to base it on my first published short fiction, which happened in 2003 on the literary pages of Philippine Graphic.Looking back, my publication came as a tailender of sort to the celebrated career of Philippine master storyteller, Nick Joaquin, as I was one of the last few voices he had freed before he passed away. Needless to say, Mang Nick was and still is the first homegrown genius I truly look up to.------This blog is an attempt at keeping the passion alive, thanks to Mang Nick, if not as an impulsive response to the call for modern storytellers - through blogging, that is.Moreso, this is to let every fine writing Filipino fellow know that I am all for any literary artform or, non-art which he may ingeniously employ in this struggle to get our very own Philippine Literature right on the map of World Literat...
More About: Island , Hello World

Attention: Philippine Literary Sentinels
2007-10-20 11:42:00
Stumbled into this under "Rant".Heavens, I never thought I could be this virulent. Now I am posting this here for the first time so that every other fine Filipino writing fellow would know that I am all for any literary artform which we, you, he, she, it, they may think of in our daily struggle to get our very own Philippine Literature right on the map of World Literature. And I mean big time like what Gabriel Garcia Marquez's had done for his embattled Colombia, Pablo Neruda for his Chile, or Yukio Mishima for Japan.Until then, mga pare at mare (ladies and gentlemen), this is a free-for-all penpushing game yet for all of us, young and old alike, girl, boy, bakla (faggot), tomboy (lesbian.Dear Editor,I chanced upon Krip Yuson?s literary column today.Of all topics apropos to a multi-awarded literary figure who should be well in his nurturing and generative years, he had to pick on a migrant Filipina?s winning at the recently concluded international poetry contest held in Las Vegas, ...
More About: Attention , Lippi , Tent , Literary , Hili

A confession
2007-10-18 12:20:00
Am I a heartless pilferer? A big time sociopath? An inveterate cheat? A spineless ne'er-do-gooder?I don't know what to make of this but I am pretty much engaged in an interesting form of book filching. And I am no respecter of time or place. Just get me to a bookshop and I assure you I could walk out of the place with a couple or three important printed matters in my hand. All with proofs of purchase.I simply change the price sticker to the least possible price I could find waiting to be plucked out of misery from yet another glorious book cover. Usually they're stickered on the most important part of the cover you wonder why of all places must they ruin that part of the book where Melanie Marquez, Philippine's premiere catwalk diva, had malapropistically launched one of her many stupid quotes on. But I'm digressing.The thing is, I get a special kind of rush whilst in the midst of this rare avocation.How does one do it, you ask.First you saunter into your bookshop of choice wit...
More About: Confession , Fess

Unmiseducate me
2007-10-16 11:09:00
I don't know what, but I think education is one of the factors, if not the only, to be blamed if the rating of a country's global competitiveness is low; and, I don't know why, but somehow I also think that the University of the Philippines, as the country's premier academic institution, must be the first to feel alarmed about the sad fate of our country's performance in the global arena.An article, "Losing Our Competitive Edge" by George Macabenta of Filipinas Magazine asserts that Henry Schumacher of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) has empirical proofs that Filipino-English for the dang life of me is not competitive enough.Referencing the latest Global Competitiveness Index rankings of every country conducted yearly by the World Economic Forum and published by Forbes, if you are not arithmophobic, on with 10 being the highest, the Philippines's Global Competitiveness Index Score for 2006 is 3.74. That's way lower than Ghana, Namibia, South Africa,...
More About: Duca

Fluffing
2007-10-15 06:23:00
Staged my nth death last night while The Lover took to one of those periodic movie marathons.Pulled out the journal rather surreptitiously after nibbling at bars of Goya dark chocolate. Then scribbled down a thought that structurally looked like a misshapenly belabored haiku."Burn thenthrow my ashesto the windon a rainy daywith a rainbowin the horizon.Go thenmy loved onesmove loving on."Eventfully, it will soon find its usefulness as the Dead Writer Writing's last word.Took the heftiest of pillows then fluffed it up leaving a dent in the middle.If you should know, I had done it a million times before but all in vain.But decided to try it with a new twist. Instead of usually hugging it close to my face until I turn indigo, I burried my face smack right down the dent.That way I metaphorically turned my back to the world. Lovely.Total darkness engulfed me. I became a flotsam weightlessly drifting through a vacuous space. Even saw my lifeless life swimming past me. I didn't mind takin...

The Writing Dead
2007-10-13 11:38:00
Apparently, someone got there first. Mrat."But Borowski's suicide can also be read as a final act of rage against a world that turned out, in his estimation, to be little better than Auschwitz itself, a world filled with robbers, swindlers, and murderers, and governed by similarly corrupt codes of conduct. A. Alvarez has famously written that "around Borowski's stories there is a kind of moral silence, like the pause which follows a scream." But the scream, for Borowski, was the essence of his work. If Elie Wiesel was the great mystic of the Holocaust and Primo Levi was its great analyst, Borowski was its angry young man, a pent-up vessel of pressurized fury that could do nothing in the end but explode..."The Writing Dead by Ruth Franklin.