The Fat Man Today

The problem with this unusually cold weather we’ve been experiencing in Metro Manila is that I have discovered that I do not like the cold. I am a warm weather person. I like basking in the sunlight. I like swimming under the sun. I love soaking up rays. In short, the cold has been terrible to me. I’ve been feeling it in my knees and my knuckles, and that’s saying a lot since I’ve just recently turned thirty! I am, however, apparently old enough to feel the cold seep into my bones. Another way the cold has been terrible for me is mainly because of my asthma. I don’t have weak lungs, but I do have allergies and the aforementioned asthma, and the occasional ear infection producing a lot of snot in my right ear doesn’t really help much. It’s really weird how the cold is affecting everybody I know. Suddenly, everybody’s carrying around a sweater. Everybody’s suffering from a cold. And some friends are even resorting to using the heater option of their vehicles (something unheard of in t...

My line of work affords me a lot of opportunity to watch TV shows while I’m editing or writing. I don’t stray too far from shows that i started watching at least two to three years ago; perhaps the most recent thing I watched was Hannibal or The Following , which were pretty interesting as far as TV shows go. But I was nowhere near prepared for the 2013-20114 midseason shows. I don’t think I’ve never made a conscious decision to follow this many new shows in one go, since I’m very picky of about most everything in my life. I’d like to think that it’s because I’m a scintillating man who’s not that easy to please, but then again I watch Family Guy and American Dad , so I can’t really say for sure. Back to the point, however; i don’t know if I was just really bored with most of the shows this season, or if there was something else that piqued my curiosity. So far, my favorite new show this season. Taken from the show’s IMDB page . So far, my favorite has to be the Amazon Instan...

This is a story in progress. I will post it in chunks, for the next few weeks, as I complete it. A warning: this tale is definitely not for children, so parental advisory is advised. Or don’t let your kids read this. At all. The Furious Muse in the Room Upstairs By SDiRam, with an afterword by Kilawinguwak Part 4   “Don’t bullshit me,” said Juan Carlo Añonuevo as he dug into his tapsilog. He’d just finished a nighttime drinking session with SDiRAM and some people from the publishing house, and a midnight snack was warranted before the two of them headed home, so they took a trip to the nearest Tapa King in JC’s Volvo. SDiRAM wasn’t bullshitting JC. In fact, that was the true story of how he published the now-legendary short novel Aurora, he said. Unbelievable as it may sound! But JC wouldn’t budge. “Dude, so you’re telling me that a sexy, Nordic woman claiming to be a muse moved into the apartment above yours. This woman then proceeded to help you write the story that woul...

I like listening to metal. And rock. Mostly rock. But melodic metal is awesome. And I’m a fan of almost anything Maynard James Keenan (who should have played Voldemort) is part of. Naturally, this includes Tool. The evolution of MJK. Also, WTF. Taken from his Wikipedia page . The fact is, I like Tool because of the really heavy rhythm section. The combo of the bass and drums makes me want to break things. Specifically, the strings of my bass. I’d give a lot of things to be able to play something like Parabola (from Lateralus) live, just for the coolness of it all. That, and because kids these days probably wouldn’t be able to get what it was all about. But maybe I’m wrong. Andrew O’Keefe certainly proved that I could possibly have things ass backwards with his school of insanely gifted kids. I’ll end my post here, and leave you guys with the video since—despite having seen this same vid around ten times in the span of two months—I am still terribly impressed. ...

Some time ago, a friend asked me for my opinion of old Pinoy writers. Suffice it to say that my opinion isn’t worth much; I have this dislike for most of the old guard. My reasons for disliking them aren’t really that deep, but I can’t help but think that they’re the reason why we’re caught in a vicious cycle of sub par local entertainment. Nick Joaquin. National artist. Beer Drinker. Taken from Bulatlat . Which isn’t to say that I dislike all of them. I have great respect for Jose Rizal, especially after I read his works in English (my mind processes the English language better than Tagalog). And by far, my favorite Pinoy writer of all time is Nick Joaquin. My very first encounter with Joaquin’s work was, as you would expect, required reading when I was a freshman in college. This was May Day Eve , a story about passionate love turned bitter. You know how each writer has a flagship work; Hemingway has either For Whom the Bell Tolls or The Old Man and the Sea . Vonnegut has...

And now here’s a vignette. Enjoy, folks. FLIGHT by Kilawinguwak   She stepped into her room, peeled off her orange jacket, and slammed the door. There wasn’t much inside, neither her jacket nor her room, to speak of. The furnishings were bare; a simple wooden bed with a thin cushion, thin white sheets, and a pillow. A table with a chair on one side, with a cheap plastic lamp in one corner of the tabletop. Which was dusty, as if it hadn’t been used in weeks, but the bed was creased, as if she’d been lying on it just recently. A thin layer of dust could be seen on the small headboard. She pulled out her chair, and eased herself into it. There was hardly a creak when she sat. She was very, very light. From a small purse hanging from the back of the chair, she pulled out a notebook and a pen, and started writing. From outside her second floor window, she looked like she was studying. She looked like a college kid, a freshman, and she hunched over her notebook as if it were a term...

I like to listen to Pink Floyd. Theirs is a weird, psychedelic brand of music that doesn’t lend itself well over the generations (I can’t imagine my nieces or nephews listening to “The Wall”, for example) but if you were at the right place, at the right time, and into the right music, Pink Floyd is epic. Cool. Just cool. Taken from Last FM . One of their best songs, in my opinion, is “Money”. It’s a total departure from their sound in “The Wall”, which is what every new listener expects them to sound like all the time. In my opinion, it’s very old-timey, with a cute till sound effect at the start of the song (or throughout; I’m not always very sure) that drives the point of the song home. And the point is, man. Money. And that’s really the point of what I’m writing right now. Money is probably the most depressing thing in the world. Not that many people will agree with me, of course. Cash is just a means to an end, and it shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of your life. But whe...

I had a more incensed post about Facebook planned earlier today, but Live Writer is a genius. It ate the whole thing when I tried fixing its HTML code. Bravo Windows Live Writer. You are made of 100% win. And by win, I mean you fail. In life. Terribly. Like Macaulay Culkin. Anyway. I was on Facebook earlier today—one of the few times I’m on the service—and I notice how there are only three kinds of posts: People trying to be cool. People trying to be witty. People trying to hide the fact that they can’t stand some things about their friends so they’re attacking them from the side without their knowledge. Because they can’t stand confronting the friend, so they think this is a smarter move. Because time changes everything, time heals all wounds, and if they don’t do anything about it, then it might fix itself like a miracle. And pigs might fly. People have way too much access to online social media. And half of these people have no idea of what to do while they’re there. Hell, s...

Yesterday, Davao mayor Rodrigo Duterte publicly stated that he will hunt out rice smugglers in his city, and he would kill them. I find this ironic, since the good mayor seems to be trying very hard to sound like Liam Neeson’s character in the first Taken .

Dear Steven Moffat, First off, Happy New Year to you and yours! I hope you had a great celebration of the turning of the years. Goodness knows, your year-ender—a fantastic shift from Matt Smith to Peter Capaldi—was fantastic, to borrow Christopher Eccleston’s catchphrase. There’s every reason for you to celebrate 2013.