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...