Some Musings on the Blogboard...

I remember asking my friend Jay months ago whether having both a comment feature and a message board at his blog was redundant.

A friend of his replied saying that the two had two different functions-- one dealt with responses to individual posts while the message board was for general, catch-all responses. At that time, I posted my feeling about having a feedback mechanism around here as something I wasn't really going to get into.

Later on, I found this blog (I forgot where I picked this up) detailing some thoughts on whether or not to add a message feature to your online journal:


On comments and weblogs

posted January 22, 2004 at 02:06 PM

I've thought a lot about comments on weblogs over the years, and for a mailing list I'm on, I finally summarized some of my thoughts. Since it might be useful for others, I'm reposting them here. They're a few questions I ask myself related to enabling comments on weblogs posts I make. With the proliferation of commenting-ability in today's weblog tools, it might make sense for people to think a bit before blindly turning on comments, whether for an individual or group blog.

1. Do I want feedback on what I'm writing?
I never turn on comments on megnut unless I specifically want feedback, and I'd encourage people to think about this when they're posting to their sites as well. Are you writing about something that can engender a discussion? And do you want to have a discussion about it? Not everything needs a discussion, and if it doesn't, think about disabling comments for a post, if only to avoid spammers and trolls.

2. Do I have time to manage a conversation right now?
It's easy to turn on comments, it takes work to host a discussion. Especially when the post is controversial or inflammatory, the poster needs to be prepared to stay on top of the thread. Do you have the time to nurture that discussion and keep on top of it, delete the trolls, refocus the discussion when it gets derailed, etc.? If not, perhaps posting, or turning on comments, isn't such a good idea. I know I try and help out if I see a thread going awry but I believe it's the poster's responsibility to make sure her thread stays on target and remains as civil as possible.

3. Is this conversation over?
There comes a point in every thread when the conversation is done, either because posts have petered out or because it's gotten so out of control and unpleasant that it needs to end. Either way, the poster should go back in and set comments to "Closed." This will prevent people/spammers/trolls from posting in old threads, and keep the discussions alive and active on "current" posts.

Rather than just having a blanket rule -- whether that's "comments on" or "comments off" -- it would be nice if we could consider these questions before posting. Turning on comments is an opportunity and a responsibility.


Now recently I've found some wonderful reading in the discussion threads of other people's blogs (really long discussion threads in Making Light, Electrolite and WHATEVER). Sometimes, I'd get so caught up reading these discussion threads, I'd forget to do my work at the office-- the arguments, debates, snipings, jokes are that compelling.

Because of this, this post and discussion thread from Electrolite caught my eye:


The persistence of lunchmeat.

Now here’s an interesting new comment on an Electrolite thread from last month:

Tastes differ. I can’t agree with you, sorry… Anyway I like your writing. I find it sad that people have sunk into such intellectual decay as to find fault with a difference of opinion.

Following the text of the comment is a URL for the homepage of an “air ambulance” company.

As you can see, the comment itself looks for all the world like a typical entry in an ongoing online argument, complete with familiar elements such as the Defensively Self-Justifying Tone and the Pissy Parting Shot. What’s interesting is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion into which it was posted—nor has the poster ever been seen in Electrolite before.

What a surprise: the IP address from which the comment was posted turns out to be in Belarus.

All in all, a pretty artful piece of work. I wonder how many such comments this operation will manage to parachute into less suspiciously-minded weblogs. I wonder if as time goes on we’ll see even greater sophistication, as spammers devise ways to simulate entire typical online personalities, using elaborate algorithms designed to emulate not just random weblog trolls but entire ongoing interactive personae. All in pursuit of that ever-desirable bloggy Googlejuice.

Indeed, are we sure it isn’t already happening right now? I mean, I know I’m real, but where did all you zombies come from—?


Interesting, no? Creepy too. Next thing you know, you'll be questioning your existence in the blogworld like something out of a Philip K. Dick story.

As one poster in the discussion thread that followed said, I think you are pretty accurate in describing the evolutionary process that is taking place.

Or as another put it:

Despite what Jeremy says, in his very judicious and proper tone, I do insist and concur with Avram and others: this is evolution in the best sense:
spambots create garbled test, which we delete.
More spambots come, v1.2, that create slightly less garbled test and on-topic posts. We delete.
Spambots v3.4 attack with their witty and accurate vision of the blogosphere, having traversed it all, and are able to debate our points and make a coherent argument.
We are deleted.

You doubt? Have you seen the subject headers of those virus and spam mail you get in your email? You ever wonder if those were automated or manual?

In the end, maybe this is the future of blogging. Maybe this is the future, PERIOD.

Food for thought...

Mellow, Funk and Soul, part 3

Geez, I've almost forgot to do the last part of my 3-CD review. However, I was finding it hard to do Joss Stone's "The Soul Sessions" since I'm not really conversant with soul-- except for what I've heard from James Brown and the movie, the Committments.

It also took me two tries before I could really get into the album. (Nothing bad about that since I did the same with Norah Jones' sophomore effort.) However, it might deter other listeners.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, despite Stone's good voice, I think her best selling point at this point is still her age. After all, it's not everyday you get to hear a sixteen year old sing soul that well. (Of course, when I first heard her voice, I kept thinking "A white girl is singing Motown?" Ah well...)

But this girl has talent, no doubting that. Once she grows up, I'm sure she'll do great wonders for the wide world of soul. Right now though? Nothing I'd get into at the moment.

Very Zen

A little change again.

Just thought that after reading a notebook of pseudo-zen koan sayings last night, I figured life's lessons are there for us all to see if only we open our eyes...

...

Yeah, right.

Anyway, here's to [Stating the Obvious]...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Expand Your World...

...learn a foreign language, they said. Well, what's the best way to learn one? Why, you go for the... um, unorthodox, more common terms! For example, in Cantonese, there is:

ah si (verb, 1st-pers. sing.)
+ I need to shit; I need to take a shit Pronounced ah-see, with the "ah" nasalized and a singsong up and down. Just not very nice, especially in front of one's parents

...while in Russian, there is...

bl'adki (noun)
+ fuck session The underlying meaning is that the person is gonna fuck with whores or with occasional partner (maybe he gonna find some chick in a bar) or with somebody he knows but who has low moral principals. It isn't used if man gonna have sex with his girlfriend.

...and in Yiddish, there is...

vashnukad
drunk; FUBAR; shit faced It is good to be Vashnukad!

... And so on and so forth. They even have one for Tagalog though it's currently empty as of yet.

Don't you love it when the whole world can be united in even the small things? (Thanks to Neil Gaiman for bringing this up.)

In the aftermath...

*dusts off hands*

...Well? What do you think of the redecoration?

I think I'm getting the hang of this desktop publishing courtesy of Blogger. I put up a new section on quotes on the sidebar, added a few more links (too lazy to get Blogroller), and put up a general quote (stolen from one of Nick Mamatas' posts) above everything else as a kind of marker.

Still debating though on whether it's worth it getting a Friendster account just so I can put my own pics on this thing. And though I've done some changes here and there, I'm still techno-illiterate that you won't see color or Flash anytime soon on my blog.

Anyway, back to work...

*sound of hammers and saws*

One Life Down, Eight to Go

Bloody hell.

While I was on my way to my girlfriend's place after work, I got into an accident last night with a 12-wheeler cargo truck that rear-ended me somewhere in the streets of the City of Manila .

I was alright though my car didn't fare so well: the left side of my rear bumper as well as the rear left light was smashed up though the brake lights were fortunately still working. Likewise, there was some structural damage to the rear left side of the car and I now can't close the trunk (which I should have left alone to begin with).

However, what made the whole situation stink was the fact that the truck (owned by the RM Bautista firm with truck license plate number WPX 394 and a trailer plate number PUL 271) had a 'police' escort. As I was haranguing the truck driver for his stupidity, a beat-up Nissan Pathfinder/ Patrol (?) pulled up and a guy in a dark blue collared shirt with a "Manila's Finest" design on it came down saying that they were personally escorting the said truck.

The guy, whose name I later discovered to be 'Carmelito (?) Soria', claimed he was a member of the police SOG (Special Operations Group?) and said that they were in a rush to deliver the cargo of the truck somewhere in Sta. Mesa and that I should just follow them there to sort out the details of the accident.

When I demanded an ID, he showed me his wallet that had a Manila City Hall ID detailing him as a police non-commissioned officer. And when I tried to get the wallet from him to get a better look, he refused to give it from me. However, he had no badge to back up his claim that he was a cop.

Despite my protestation to wait for a traffic cop to get the details of the accident (for the insurance report at the very least), this guy adamantly told me that since he was a cop and that they were in a rush, I should just follow them to Sta. Mesa. Sensing the futility of the moment, I finally agreed and followed the two vehicles.

However, as we were heading towards Sta. Mesa, I had my misgivings and I decided to call up a number of people to relay them my situation and my doubts. Suffice to say, they told me to forget about following the convoy and get the hell out of Dodge City.

After all, what was inside the truck that it had to have a police escort? And why did it need to be delivered to Sta. Mesa as soon as possible at eight o'clock in the night? It didn't take a genius to figure out that there was something shady involved in the matter and a little problem like a traffic accident might not become a problem if the cargo's owner decides for the problem to go away.

Paranoia? Who wants to risk it? After all, smuggling's a big business in these parts, especially since the Manila port area is just a few kilometers from where the accident took place. And after all, being paranoid is part and parcel of living in Metro Manila.

Anyway, in commemoration of last night's event, I decided to change again the title of the blog [The Cynical Eye]. You have been warned...

A New Name for an Old Face

Well, it's that time of the season again wherein we feel the need to slough off the old and bring in the new in our lives. And if that means changing a blog title or two, well why not?

Here's the first one... [silent//running]

I want my Google Mail!, part 2

Well, I've finally managed to set up my Google Mail (or GMail).

Unfortunately, my computer has an aversion to general search engines, hence its refusal to show the Google website and Google Mail. Heck, it doesn't even allow the operation of the Yahoo search engine either. (Though it's fine with specific search engines like Amazon or Dictionary.com.)

Anyway, people who want to contact me via this blog can now reach me at estranghero@gmail.com. (And if this thing starts getting spam mail, at least I know some people are reading my blog!)

And unlike my friend Rhoch, I'm not bothered by Google's specific-ads:

You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They're placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.

Not that I'm selling out, mind you... though I have no idea what I'm selling out to or what I'm selling to begin with...

Not just Dragons and Rocketships

The list below doesn't include writers I figure to be touched by the Divine Writing Pen, authors whose works I'm always on the lookout for. And so:

1. Graham Joyce.
2. Sean Stewart.
3. Arturo Perez-Reverte.

SFF ain't just about dragons and rocket ships, my friends. These favored authors deal with a lot of strangeness and hefty doses of Magic-- both in style and content.

Check 'em out with a will, yes?

There's Specfic in Your Eye

Since I'm in a list-making mood, here are my top three books in the field of speculative fiction. Though I've read tons of these books, these were ones that blew my mind:

1. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. In the aftermath of the Lord of the Rings, most fantasy books dealt with quests for magical swords or rings. Tigana was the first book I read that dealt with a quest-- the struggle-- to recover a name. In particular, the name of the nation. This is basically a story of revenge against a foe who has tried to destroy your legacy.

Ironically, when Kay was going around Poland and Croatia for book signings, the single most common recurring question asked him was, ‘Were you writing about us?’

When I toured for Tigana, which is about oppression and the eradication of a culture, the importance of naming and language to identity, they stood up in Zagreb, Warsaw, and Cracow, and asked me, ‘Were you writing about us?’ I was deeply moved and touched, because I was and I wasn’t. I was writing about all such scenarios.

It was this idea-- the use of fantasy to look into ideas and concepts that we encounter in the real world in stories without being limited by reality as mainstream literature or literary fiction is-- that knocked me for a loop.

2. Imajica by Clive Barker. From the author/ creator of 'HellRaiser' and 'Nightbreed' (yes, they were short stories/ novelletes made into movies). How do I describe this one? From Kirkus Reviews:

An astonishing feat of the imagination, immensely engrossing despite its demanding--at times indulgent--length, running riot with ideas, fantastical inventions, graphic sex and violence, soul- terrors, and emotional and intellectual resonances.

Barker's horror has almost always veered into the fantastical and the very, very weird. That is why I like this-- how do I say this-- first-rate metaphysical fantasy: it shows the boundaries of horror and fantasy as being quite thin in places.

3. Hyperion by Dan Simmons. Simmons, a prolific writer of different genres, won the Hugo-Award in 1990 for this (his first outright, I think) science fiction novel. This is a space opera framed in a 'Canterbury Tales' set-up, with tales ranging from the epic, to military fiction, to religious, to a detective tale complete in tone and style. With a lot of literary allusions to Geofrey Chaucer and John Keats, too.

Hey, what more can you ask for?

Of course, this recommendation is the only one among the three that can't be read alone (its finale being Fall of Hyperion and the story later taken up in Endymion and Rise of Endymion). Still, if you want to see where science-fiction is going, this is a good place to start.

All in all, good representations from the field of speculative fiction.

Installing a Linux on a Dead Badger

Interesting how-to article in Strange Horizons about creating your own "Linux-powered badger zombie." (See April 5 entry.)

At the bottom:


DISCLAIMER: No badgers or Macintoshes were harmed in the course of this test installation. Your results may vary. Please note that zombie badgers are banned in many municipalities in California and Wisconsin; zombie badgers must remain leashed at all times in Texas. Zombie badgers can move at great speeds, and are prone to sudden acceleration; use proper caution when driving your zombie badger. Do not allow your zombie badger to consume mushrooms or African snakes, or your badger may emit catchy techno music. Do not taunt zombie badgers. Prolonged use of a zombie badger may cause acne, insomnia, leprosy, unusual weather, or the end of time. Please dispose of your zombie badgers properly; consult your local recycling company for proper disposal protocols.


And for other badger weirdness, see here...

I want my Google Mail!

Drat. Blogger's offering me to test Google Mail-- or GMail-- but it won't show.

Talk about a tease.

5 Movies

(subtitled: My DVD wishlist, just in case you want to make me happy.)

... And that's not necessarily box-office hits or popular movies. Hell, everyone loves Star Wars, Alien, Godfather, or Indiana Jones. These are the less-known movies I like.


1. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). Saw the last half of this movie last night on cable. Fantastic, paranoidal story of a group of scientists trapped in a storm-frozen camp in the middle of the Antartic with a shape-shifting alien hunting them. Never get tired watching this one. Based on the novelette "Who Goes There?" by renowned SF editor/ writer John H. Campbell.

2. Payback (1999). Based on a Donald Westlake (under the pseudonym of Richard Stark) novel, a thief is double-crossed by his partner and his wife and seeks revenge. The amount being contested? Small change of US$70,000. But its the principle that counts so bullets start flying and blood starts flowing. Also, the best movie ever to advertise cigarette smoking.

3. Dog Soldiers (2002). Another hunter-hunted movie, this time involving a pack of werewolves. Kind of like "Aliens" meets "An American Werewolf in London". A routine military exercise turns into a nightmare in the Scotland wilderness for a platoon of soldiers. At times very funny because when you're scared, all you can do is laugh. To quote, "There is no spoon."

4. Better Off Dead (1985). A teenager has to deal with his girlfriend dumping him among family crises, homicidal paper boys, and a rival skier. Slap-stick but at times something out of the "Pretty in Pink" or "Some Kind of Wonderful" genre. I loved this movie as a kid. And ironically enough, John Cusack as the lead adds heft to this lightweight movie.

5. Kicking and Screaming (1995). Following graduation, a handful of college students do nothing and talk about it wittily. The best talkie movie to come out during the late '90s; the fact that I just graduated at that time also helps. Likewise, the first time I heard this great song by Freedy Johnston, "Bad Reputation."


I probably might revise this if I come up with more good movies but as it is, this is the top five for me.

The World's Most Powerful Person

As related by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the United States of America has a great leader in President George W. Bush.

In reply to the question “After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?” posed by the media during a press conference, Bush answered:


I wish you’d have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.

John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could’ve done it better this way or that way. You know, I just—I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn’t yet.


Eh... words fail me. Apparently, so did Bush.

A Word from Our Sponsors...

From Martin Amis:

"... What is a correspondence? Younger readers know what a phone message is, and what a fax is. They probably know what a letter is. But they don't know what a correspondence is. Words are not deeds. In published poems (we think first of Eliot's Jew), words edge closer to deeds. In Celine's anti-Semitic textbooks, words get as close to deeds as words can well get. Blood libels scrawled on front of doors are deeds. In a correspondence, words are hardly even words. They are soundless cries and whispers; 'gouts of bile', as Larkin characterized his political opinions; ways of saying 'Gloomy old sod, aren't I?' or, more simply, 'Grrr.' Correspondences are self-dramatizations. Above all, a word in a letter is never your last word on any subject.

Out of the Cave

Well, we finally moved at the office to a new room slightly larger and well-lighted than the old one. Cleaner, too, with larger desk spaces and dividers separating work areas.

Our old office was a pretty cramped number, with loads of computers, the television and the radio, a big airconditioner that conked out every now and then and some cabinets-- all jammed into one room. It also didn't help that half the room lights were busted and the door knob had broken off.

Of course, we're now sharing space with the MIS department's tech section (adjacent and connected to the main MIS room) but that's okay since the room's pretty big. At the same time, it'll bring us closer to the MIS people. After all, as an internet website firm, we're pretty much dependent on their aid when shit happens.

Hehehe. Easier to call, "Fire in the hole!", during lunchbreak when it comes to that...

The Pinoy Strikes Again!

Anak ng tinapa!

Remember my earlier problems with a virus in my computer? Well, I managed to clean it up by installing a Norton anti-virus program (my McAfee proving worthless in updating its files). However, it still left me with the problem with cleaning my girlfriend's PC, from which I got the virus originally.

Unfortunately, updating the Norton program in her computer proved to be futile since it knew there was a virus in the computer but it couldn't get it out via the usual methods of clean/ quarantine/ delete.

So: a friend of mine suggested that I look it up in the Internet and I came up with this from the Sophos website:


W32/Aidid-A is an overwriting virus that overwrites all files on the floppy drive. The extension .EXE will be added to all overwritten files.


...and...


At the time of writing, Sophos has received just one report of this virus from the wild.


However, what blew my mind was the last part of the virus analysis report:


W32/Aidid-A may also attempt to create a file on the floppy drive called i.did. This file contains the text "<----- BUTI NGA SAYO! ----->".


I wonder if non-Pinoys know what the above means. And I also hope the creator of this virus has his balls rot off and eaten by dogs, that fucking shit-head.

Mellow, Funk and Soul, part 2

Well, managed to listen to Maroon 5's album Songs about Jane yesterday afternoon and then followed it up with Joss Stone's The Soul Sessions this morning.

Let's start with Maroon 5. First of all, the hype being generated about this band seems well-founded with their funky tunes taking over local airwaves: This Love, She Will be Loved, Harder to Breathe and Must Get Out. With their deep funky grooves, Maroon 5 jumps into the slot left by the popular Incubus song Are You In and Jamiroquai in the Filipino listening public's ear... and it works. Of course it helps they have all the right moves: songs with hooks, lead singer Adam Levin's swaggering delivery, and a great bass line that can send you running towards the dance floor.

Also, some of the last songs in their album have a tendency to sound like certain boy bands trying to jump and jive but that's just me, I guess. As it is, my only thought is that: is this band a one-hit wonder like Hootie and the Blowfish and Third Eye Blind? I'm sure everyone remembers these bands (and a whole lot more)-- those bands who blew everyone away with their fantastic first album but seemed to disappear afterwards. (Granted the aforementioned bands didn't but their succeeding albums made you wish they did.)

A good recommendation, all in all.

You've Got to be Kidding Me

Try this. Complain later.

Is that a Fact? part 2

Here's something I picked over at Rhoch's links concerning more euphemisms. Quite fun trying to wrap your mind around their phrases, actually.

Enjoy!

Mellow, Funk and Soul

Hmmm, my girlfriend and I recently bought three CDs for our listening pleasure:



D'Sound's Doublehearted



Maroon 5's Songs About Jane

and



Joss Stone's The Soul Sessions


I haven't heard all of the albums yet but I did just finish listening to D'Sound this morning in my car on my way to work.

Now, I haven't been able to listen to this group's first album, Talkin' Talk. However, a single of that album had been played over the radio way back before, the melodic and catchy Tattooed on my Mind, which was one reason why I was open-minded about listening this group. Funny enough, I first thought that this was a local group since their lead singer, Simone (no last name given), had a similar voice as that of local female acoustic singers around. Whether this is good or bad for the group, I don't know.

Anyway, listening to this-- their 2nd album-- reinforced my opinion about this group's rather mellow approach. As of present, three songs have already been given airtime over the radio: Do I need a Reason, Dancing into the Moonlight and People are People. All the three are-- I think-- the best of the lot: soothing and catchy (that word again) with Simone's plaintive voice coming in strong (paradoxical, I know, but there it is). In fact, Dancing into the Moonlight is such an upbeat song, you can almost feel your foot tapping to its beat. (However, not to the point that you want to shake your booty. This is a mellow album like I said.)

As it is, these three songs are representative of the lot in this album. To give you an idea of their songs, if you like Lisa Stansfield and Everything but the Girl, you'd probably like this group. However, my only complaint is that though their songwriting is superb, their lyricism needs a little work. I know a lot of groups that have great songs despite their weird lyrics but it works because they fit each other perfectly (EBTG and 10,000 Maniacs come to mind). For D'Sound, their songs are catchy (third time's the charm) but I feel sometimes that Simone is trying to fit a clunky phrase or two into the song, making me go "eck" as it throws me out of the music's loop.

Anyway, back to work for me. I'll try to review the other albums in the coming days...

Is that a Fact?

In commemoration of Black Saturday, here's Rhoch's contribution in the Euphemism for the Day list:


Spoiling the Bald Turtle.


Stay tuned for further updates to Euphemism for the Day!

Eerie, Creepy and Just Plain Fucking Scary

Auuggghh.

Just finished reading this... journal and I'm not exactly sure if this writer was pulling my leg. In this site, a spelunker (or a caver?) details his adventure into a mysterious cave.

Is it real? Is it fiction? It's definitely something out of the realms of metafiction. If so, I applaud the effort. (For me, one very impressive way the narration proved its non-fiction-ness was how boring it was in relating the caving sections. I mean, in fiction, you can't fake that. And I've read some very boring stories.)

Anyway, try to skim the boring parts where the narrator describes the cave and look for the eerie section.

Trust me, you will never look at a cave the same way again.

(From The Daily Column.)

Proof of the Passion

As a Lenten week offering, here's something for believers: FRESH CLUE SHOWS TURIN SHROUD MAY BE GENUINE!

(Courtesy of The Anomalist. Sorry, I'm too lazy to cut-and-paste at the moment.)

The Return?

It seems that fans of the cult classic Farscape have some cause to rejoice yet after the show's abrupt cancellation by its producers.


SCI FI Brings Back Farscape

SCI FI announced it will be bringing back Farscape with an all-new miniseries — called Farscape: Peacekeeper War — slated to air in the fourth quarter of this year. The four-hour miniseries picks up where the cliffhanger series finale left off and will reunite John Crichton (Ben Browder), Aeryn Sun (Claudia Black) and the rest of the Moya crew.

Farscape creator Rockne O'Bannon and executive producer David Kemper wrote the miniseries, which was directed by Brian Henson. Peacekeeper War was produced by the Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment, and executive produced by Robert Halmi Jr.

SCI FI will make the official announcement at noon on Monday, April 5, during the channel's advertising sales "upfront" presentation.


(From-- again-- Weirdwriter.)

Information is not Knowledge

The title above was the first thing that came to my mind after reading this. Now, I haven't actually read the book where this came from, Caleb Carr's Killing Time, but my girlfriend had great praises for it.

She especially passed on this fascinating idea declared in the book that "information is not knowledge." Considering that we're living in the Information Age what with the Internet, it's interesting to see the aformentioned article in the light of Carr's idea.

Or, as one Amazon reviewer of the book (which didn't get too many fans) said, "any attempt to cure the ills of a (dis-)information society must address people's love of information and their equal dislike of any serious contemplation of information."

Or simply: think, dammit.

(Hmmm... forgot where I got the article, probably Weirdwriter again.)

Random Acts of Paintball Violence

Here's a nice site to relieve that bad, bad office stress.

I particularly liked the use of the paintball gun in the game because it reminds me of that time when the guys and I tried out the paintball scene somewhere in the hinterlands of Rizal during our high school days.

I remember how Bob managed to shoot one of his own teammates, Philip, during a battle after the latter made the mistake of coming up behind our resident gunmeister. (I guess you gotta be careful with Ateneo Rifle/ Pistol people, itchy trigger-fingers and all that...) And there was that scene wherein Xander was raising hell to the high heavens because someone kept sniping at his head, which was forbidden. (You know who you are!) Likewise, there was one time when Woo-- now dearly-departed-- took convenient cover behind little ol' me during a firefight after I unfortunately dropped all my ammo...

Yup, those were the days.

Red Ice Cream Anyone?

This takes a bit of imagination.

Imagine if you're an artist and you have 780 gallons of red paint, three fire hoses and a 20-member crew at your disposal. What do you do?

Why, you paint an iceberg!






Iceberg Off Western Greenland Painted Red

JAN M. OLSEN
Associated Press

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - An artist with 780 gallons of red paint, three fire hoses and a 20-member crew at his disposal went to Greenland in search of a blank canvas large enough to accommodate his creative impulse.

The result is a blood-red iceberg now sitting off the country's western coast.

"We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all us," Danish artist Marco Evaristti said Thursday. "This is my iceberg; it belongs to me."

Just how Greenlanders view his masterpiece isn't clear yet. There was no immediate reaction from authorities, who are generally very protective of their unspoiled environment.

Evaristti and his crew sailed in two ice breakers from the small town of Ilullissat, Greenland, on Wednesday, and zigzagged among icebergs for about 30 minutes before they found the perfect frozen canvas.

Working in minus 9 degree weather, it took about two hours for the 40-year-old artist to paint the exposed tip of the iceberg, a volume of nearly 10,000 square feet.

The team sprayed the iceberg with the same dye used to tint meat, diluted with sea water, Evaristti told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Ilullissat, which means "Icebergs" in Greenlandic.

The town of 4,000, a tourist destination because of its scenery, sits at the mouth of the Kangia fjord, which is 25 miles long and five miles wide.

The fjord is filled with hundreds of icebergs_ previously all of them white.

Evaristti, who was born in Chile, drew widespread attention - and disdain - when he displayed 10 working blenders filled with goldfish in a Danish gallery in 2000.

He invited guests to turn the devices on and someone did, grinding up a pair of goldfish.

The gallery director was tried on charges of animal cruelty, but acquitted.


Now if only the artist had used the color mauve...

(Taken from here, courtesy of Weirdwriter. The artist can be found here.)

It's an Amazon World

For another use of the blog, check out this site for funny things people put in Amazon book reviews.

For example, in reaction to reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, a reviewer says:

When the Bill of Rights was written, cruel and unusual punishment was banned. The cruel and unusual punishment invisioned was not as cruel and unusual as being forced to read this book!

After which the blogger responds:

Plus they took away our right to arm bears!

Hehehe...

Another One Bitten by the Blog Bug...

Hoo-wah! Another one of my friends has started his own blog and even has his own website for his restaurant.

Welcome aboard to the community of writing something and saying nothing, Rhoch!

Thursday Redux

As usual, I feel like something a cat dragged out of the sewer.

This morning, I'm tired, lacking sleep, hungry, my tummy is off due to two glasses of rum-coke last night... what else is new for mid-week blues?

One consequence of this crappy month (as well as a shitty week) is that I haven't blogged since last week. Not that I haven't got anything to write, just no time. No push either since I feel so exhausted.

Lemme see. The highlights of the HellSpawned Day that was Last Tuesday:

1. My home computer got a virus and my anti-virus system (McAfee) is seriously way out of date.

2. I came in early that day since it was color-coding (6 a.m.) but eventually found out they lifted it due to the jeepney strike.

3. I had to rush a job for my girlfriend and it was almost seriously fucked up because of the virus and trying to figure out this scan-to-text program at the office to beat the virus thing.

4. After having some dinner and drinks at Eastwood with my girlfriend that night, the restaurant told us that they were having problems with their credit card machine and I thought we would up washing dishes since I had no cash at all.

5. This one book I saw in A Different Bookstore was gone after I decided to get it.

6. I'm still catching up my zzzs from Monday (since I didn't sleep at all prior to Tuesday).

Fuck. At least payday has come and I don't have to worry about money for a while.

Exeunt, stage right, chased by a big mug of hot coffee.