The Fat Man Today

Boom! said the kuwitis. Damn! That's just kuwitis. As I type, fireworks are blasting away just outside our house, courtesy of the rowdy party palace this neighborhood of ours turns into every time the New Year comes around. We have thick concrete walls and good windows with metal bars, but all that padding seems to be doing very little in keeping the blasts at a minimum, since every subsequent explosion is enough to rattle the wind chimes hanging on the inside of the front door. I don't know what they're putting in local fireworks these days, but we could start a war with some of them, methinks. I almost had to celebrate New Year's eve with a bum leg due to a traumatized callus on the sole of my foot, but a quick trip to the hospital took care of that. Now I can positively hobble faster than a tortoise, which means that I don't need a cane to move about the house - which makes this a pretty damn good way of capping the year. Happy New Year to you folks, and don'...

Just to fill in dead air between now and New Year's eve, I'd like to talk a bit about my recent geekery. My Satoshi Kon addiction aside, and that brief Kemonozume high, I've been watching - and in the case of I Am Legend, anticipating - several other geek-worthy programs that blow a hole right through my I-am-not-a-geek proclamation. (Just to make sure nobody forgets, though: I still maintain that I am not a full geek.) Although I like to stress that I am pretty much a self-made man, sometimes evidence that my geekery is something built up by my two sisters, Yeyey Cruz and Caridad Cruz-Salonga, pops up. The list is long and almost endless; from Fraggle Rock to Lord of the Rings (I read the entire trilogy by the time I was ten three times thanks to my sister), I owe most of my tastes to the years wherein my decade-older siblings sat me through films and shows like A Christmas Story (which I still, for the life of me, cannot remember), Ghostbusters , The A-Team , and the...

It's amazing. Christmas always has that really amazing vibe (Anna D. calls it that citrusy, zesty smell in the air) that somehow makes sure things all end well in the end. Exhibit A: my friend, Pao. Read his recent LJ / Multiply to find out why. Exhibit B: me. The past few week(s?), I've been more or less sick and unable to do anything short of filter feed and breathe. Things worsened last week when my throat decided to squeeze itself close to shut, so much so that the very act of swallowing water was torture. I spent the better part of the week fast asleep, shut away from the rest of civilization, eating the occasional bowl of arroz caldo. Due to this, I wasn't able to join the Christmas shopping crush during the last week before Christmas Eve, up until the 24th itself - which was, in a hilarious act of God, when I did and completed my Christmas shopping for the insular family. Seriously. I went to Robinson's Place on Christmas Eve to get a check-up (didn't make it...

It sucks entering the holidays when you're as sick as a rhinoceros with dysentery (resurgence of the word courtesy of Jon). Just to clarify - I do not have dysentery. What I do have, however, is a bad case of engorged, pulsating (albeit pus-free so far ) tonsils, that have been messing with my body both physically and mentally. Physically, because I haven't been able to work out at all since the damn thing hit me, not to mention the confabulous headaches and fevers I've been having. The word confabulous is taken from Bruce's stint with desktop widgets with the same name; the name sounds very condescending in a grand way, and should be used as sarcasm. So I command it, so shall it be. Anyway . Mentally, because the fevers have been giving me the most amazing dreams that are mixing my days back in high school with my days in Cagayan de Oro and marketing. Just now, before I woke up, I was discussing purchasing planning with a bunch of long-forgotten friends from LSGH in a...

Man was meant to fly Icarus was just an idiot. After seeing this video, I now want a wing suit. I've always been fascinated with flying. I'm one of those few people who were given the chance to take their first flying experience alone, and I enjoyed it - and each subsequent experience - immensely. You won't catch me looking over the edge of some precipice, since I still have that annoying case of acrophobia, but I'm more than willing to try something that's liable to make me shit in my pants but will give me more than enough of that adrenaline rush that you just can't find in daily living. I wonder what material they use for the wing suits. It'd have to be something really sturdy to survive something close to re-entry - at least I'm assuming it'd be somthing like re-entry, since I can pretty much see the curve of the Earth in some of the shots. Is kevlar sturdy enough to survive re-entry? Urban legend says that the older - and less reliable - wing su...

There is an orange on my desk. It is waiting for lunchtime. For want of a real post - since the past few days have technically been unbloggable, but not due to the lack of developments in my personal and social life - I will now post a couple of photos I took with my crap camera phone. A couple of days ago, this was how our living room looked like. My sister was fixing up an office for one of her clients, and she had to order a whole bunch of office chairs in the process. Since she didn't really have any place to store them in, the entire lot - around twenty or so chairs - were dumped in our living room in the meantime. The temptation to use one of them was rather great, and only the plastic covering the plush seats kept me from delivering weighty justice. My nephew and niece, however, weren't as easily dissuaded, and clambered through the aptly named "forest of chairs" as if the durned things were theirs. This photo is a winner, except for the obviously bad quality....

Title is taken from Adrian Arcega's status message this morning. And I totally agree with him. I didn't really like how the second season of Heroes spiraled out into its almost anti-climactic end; there were way too many plot holes, and some of the newer characters were just way too lame. Take the wonder Twins, for example; they were a horrible addition, although granted, their purpose as a device to bring Sylar back into the U.S. was pretty sound, but plot-wise, Maya and her brother could very well have been nothing more than bystanders who just happened to be a minority. I mean, they had to replace Mendez with another chicano. Status quo and all. The Takezo Kensei / Adam Monroe character was made of pure win, though; and now, both the heroes and the villains have an indestructible force - season three should be phenomenal , if you're going to have Peter and Claire on one side, Sylar and Kensei on the other. All Hiro has to do is teach Claire battojutsu, and they're al...

Okay, just a quick one: The Zeppelin's Mezzanine is now the 18th result when Googling for the terms "Martin Cruz" with or without the quotation marks. Take that, Martin Cruz Smith! Although the Yahoo SERPs are a different story altogether. I am also the 14th result when Googling for "Uwak." "Kilawinguwak" is a no-brainer, since the pseudonym's more specific than Jehovah. A meatier entry next time!

If you're the type of person who has the attention span of a goldfish, can't imagine stories without pictures, and generally are the type of person responsible for the slow decline of intelligence in the Pinoy society, then don't read this. If you are the type, but still venture forth to trudge through this text, then you are a visionary idiot, and any attempts to refute my thoughts will be met with equal - if not greater - force. If you are a kindred spirit, then feel free to trade ideas with me for the good of the written word. These are just my thoughts, not gospel truth. Dissect them, question them there is no right or wrong for those who know. I was never a fan of Butch Dalisay. Wait, let me correct myself - I was once a fan of Butch Dalisay, whenever I read his Penman articles on the lifestyle pages of the Star, but back then, I hadn't read any of his 'serious literature' yet. Which is to say, that I was just reading him as a columnist, not as a writer - ...