In Media Res: Necromatique

Okay, so forgottenmachine gave me a quiet nudge about Story-crossing, an on-going collaborative story started by his friend, Lucretia.

Normally, I'm kinda shy about joining collaborative stories since I'm not exactly sure if all the contributors will be amenable to the ideas (or direction of the story) I'll be contributing.

I know, I know... that's just me.

However, I particularly like how this story is going-- especially how the contributors seem to be ensuring a well-written story. For example, they change character viewpoint of the story to get a larger picture of the situation, they add sections in order to enflesh the characters, etc.

So I figure, what the heck, right? Here goes Word Vomit (part 2)...

In brief: In what seems to be a near future time, our protagonist Mike is being harried by his former lover, Kira, after the latter was resurrected by R.E.S.C.O.R.

Unfortunately, ever since she was brought back from the dead, Kira has been different and Mike is running scared. More unfortunate is the two have caught the predatory interest of a bounty hunter, Brian Cane.

What is happening to Kira? What did R.E.S.C.O.R. do to her? And what is R.E.S.C.O.R.?

Edgar Bersford, vice-president of Onyx Unlimited and head of R.E.S.C.O.R. subsidiary, was fretting again.

Edgar looked at a number of files before him. He sighed. Ever since they started their public operations, there had been no end to problems. And now reports submitted by the company investigators were threatening to get his ulcers going again.

He looked at the files again one by one.

Somehow, after their resurrection, some of the R.E.S.C.O.R. clients had been showing unsettling behavioral changes. The percentage was still small-- around fourteen percent-- but the numbers were slowly growing and Edgar was a realist enough to know that the problem wouldn't just go away.

Bzzzt!

Edgar looked up as the intercom buzzed and Mari, his secretary, said in a voice made electronically inhuman,"Sir, Dr. Witt wishes to inform you that the A.I. platform has become unstable again after the last insertion. Likewise, the Vatican investigator wants another appointment to visit the lab again."

He shook his head and realized that Mari wouldn't have seen the gesture.

He pushed an intercom button and replied, "Ah, tell Dr. Witt to start the program but to pass the confirmation sequence to me. I'll be the one to welcome the personality. As for the priest... give him the usual run-around."

He ground his teeth. If not for the benefits, he hated his job. Not only did he have to deal with settling in the new A.I. personality every time it went insane-- always a disturbing process-- but he also had to deal with people like Father Ambrose Callow, the Vatican representative sent to check R.E.S.C.O.R.'s resurrection pogram.

Callow: now he was a cold fish. If not for the fact that the priest was a Jesuit scientist and extremely curious, Edgar could have sworn Callow was jealous in behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Like it or not, the Church had never been happy with R.E.S.C.O.R.'s promise of 'eternal life' for its clients. Bad for their business, Dr. Witt had once joked.

Edgar wouldn't have told that to Callow's face. The priest looked dangerous.

"By the way, Mari," Edgar said, thumbing the intercom, "Tell Dr. Witt to prep the A.I. for another dimensional insertion. We're way behind in resurrecting clients as it is. I'll talk to the A.I. before it's sent out."

"Alright sir."

He pitied the A.I. personality that would be facing the omnivorous beings that ruled behind the dimensional gate in the lab. But between facing the chairman of the Onyx board on why they were behind schedule and over costs, and making deals with demons even older the world, Edgar knew what choice he'd make.

So. Are the hints enough for the story?

Conspiracy Theorist

Taking a break here. Thanks for all the kudos, folks.

I'm not sure whether or not to expand the last vignette though if I do, I'm thinking of submitting it somewhere. Maybe Strange Horizons (following in the footsteps of the venerable Dean), I think. Am I selling out? Why not? *wide grin*

Seriously speaking, I've been getting some weird ideas about the spate of deaths as reported by the papers.

For example, the former head of the government agency dealing with volcanoes and earthquakes was killed when his helicopter crashed somewhere north of the capital. Prior to that, the teenaged daughter of a local congressman quickly sickened and died due to-- of all things-- E. Coli bacterium. Another, the daughter of the Speaker of the House, died tragically last December when their home caught fire. Earlier this month, a doctor somewhat related to the first girl was slain by unknown assassins. Likewise, an ex-congressman was also killed by a lone gunman while eating lunch a few weeks ago.

I know everyone dies but of course, not everyone gets front-page treatment like those above. Still, it made the wheels of my imagination spin as I wondered if there was a connection among the five deaths.

If I was really paranoid, I would have proclaimed that all the deaths could be-- more or less-- manufactured. A helicopter crash? Sabotage, of course, but easily made to look like an accident. Some contaminated food for one victim while setting a house on fire for another. As for the two slain in cold blood, well, it's easy to hire assassins here-- last I heard, a case of beer and a ream of cigarettes will get it done for you.

In the end, I suppose, maybe it's just a part of my mind that's looking for answers about such senseless deaths. But then again, is there such a thing as a 'sense-full' death?

As Dean says in a heart-felt post about grief and the act of creation on the part of the writer:

There is a certain helplessness that accompanies the experience of those whose lives are touched by the death of someone known. A swirling anger at the inevitability of things...

What if it happened to me? What would I do? Would I say that everything happens for a reason? Would I believe that God has a perfect plan for everything that occurs? Will I find enough strength to carry on and not collapse into tears when I see another father embrace his child?

Maybe the best answers to questions like these are the ones we can come up. After all, no one else will answer it for you.

In Media Res: The Word-Eater

Well, I've managed to finish the draft of the Boracay Cup article and I'm letting my boss see if it's comprehensible. This leaves me with two more articles for this week (one really since it's more or less the same thing) with the rest set for next week.

Excellent.

In the meantime, here's Word-Vomit (part 1) detailing one of a few stories that have been knocking in my head this past week. Sorry about this. Likewise, I'm not implementing a 15-minute limit to this thing but don't worry about length. I've got too many things to do (and write about) to make my audience's eyes glaze and roll up.

This one came out of the blue: I was having my first smoke and cup of coffee for the day when the opening line blinked into existence in my head. To paraphrase a saying, sometimes you get the idea and sometimes the idea gets you.

In brief: There are parasites and there are parasites. Or, if you like, there are vampires and there are vampires. They have to have normal lives, too. And of course, one of them happens to be an English instructor at the state university...

He lived on words.

Literally, he ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes he had them for snacks, too. For example, the word 'effervescent' was a tasty morsel a bit on the spicy side with a light tinge of sweetness. Or the words 'cavalcade' and 'arboretum' were good together, the basil after-taste of the latter combining well with the saltiness of the former.

He loved the feel of them on his tongue before he swallowed them.

Of course, he ate and drank like what normal people did. No point in letting other people see what you really are and fear what you did. Like now, sitting with his fellow teachers at a bar in Katipunan avenue, drinking beer and eating pulutan dishes like sisig and tokwa't baboy, exchanging gossip about this department head or that assistant vice principal. It was sometimes fun for him.

"So Cherie goes and tells him to pass the student even after the little brat flunked all his exams..."

"Well, what do you expect?"

"Yeah. It's all politics, you know. And you don't get on Cherie's bad side, not if you want her hounding you all the way to the teacher's bathroom..."

But he couldn't resist every now and then to snatch at the words floating around him. For example, he heard a couple talking dirty to each other at a nearby table. Erotic words like 'thrust' and 'massage' were an aphrodisiac to him... until he heard someone say 'orgasmatory' and he lost all appetite.

Eh. Artificial words always left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I still don't get what the new curriculum program is all about..."

"Tell me about it. All I understand is that I'm overloaded with students clamoring for one class."

"You're overloaded? Almost all my subjects have been cancelled because there haven't been enough students enrolling for 'em!"

He always wondered if there were others like him. Or if there were others who shared his preference for the English language. For example, were there those who liked the taste of Cyrillic? French? Or even-- wonders of wonders-- Bisaya?

"Fuck!"

"What's the problem?"

"I'm trying to remember this poem by Neruda. But there's this word at the tip of my tongue that I can't... Aggh!"

He smiled. Especially at the sweet taste that blossomed on his tongue, like grapes that had been slightly fermented in the sun. Or a claret of good wine.

Ah, melancholy.

Hmmm. Time for a late lunch, I do believe.

Damocles' Sword A-hanging Over My Head...

Talk about impending doom.

I've just confirmed that I'm supposed to submit three articles for this week for the launch of our re-designed website, four if I include the Boracay article I was supposed to have done two-three months ago.

One article is supposed to be for the print edition's supplementary section, another is supposed to be the online edition, while a third is a special feature (also for the online). I'm actually supposed to do two or three articles for the special feature, something of the current events mode.

Of course, stories for The 15-minute Theatre and forgottenmachine's challenge at Story-crossing have also been banging at the door of my imagination. Damn, and I have such a good one for the latter, too.

Naturally, instead of working on these, I'm blogging.

In this case, it's an article about the state of Philippine publishing industry. (Thanks to Dean for the link!)

Some snippets:

How are book sales? Book sales, of both imported and local titles, contribute only 15%-20% to total store sales of the National Bookstore chain (a local chain)...

Bookselling in this country is severely hampered by costly yet inefficient postal and freight services required to move books around within an archipelago. An optimistic count of bookstores nationwide is 2,500 outlets for all of 75 million Filipinos, thus, about one bookstore for every 30,000 people...

Of the 40 to 50 full-fledged publishers, 95 percent are textbook publishers who produce for a captive market in basic education, in both private and public schools...

Next to textbooks, the biggest seller in the country today is the romance paperback or romance pocketbook...

No surprises in those statements.

Interesting enough, my impression is that the publishers still put out local literature not because of any bottom-line consideration but they have to (whether out of national or cultural pride):

Literature is indeed the lifeblood of publishing and whether it is serious or popular, or once in a rare while both a commercial and literary success, it must be nurtured and made available to the widest sector of the population...

It is this kinship between literature and books, between literary writers and publishers, and between writers and their audiences that motivates us to keep allocating budgets, no matter how small, to literary titles. Always, it pays to publish good literature.

What's more, the biggest bookchain, National Bookstore, also runs Anvil, one of the biggest publishing outfits in the country. Now, that's veddy interesting...

Real Monsters

Had an interesting conversation at Sarah's (a drinking place near the state university in Diliman) with a few of [identity-protected]'s friends. Basically, one of them was narrating a story about encountering something out of local folklore, a monster called manananggal or wack-wack.

The guy, a tibak (activist) and law student, was relating how he had holed up one night in a small hut with an old man while in the province. Hearing a noise outside, he took hold of a machete and peered outside to see the said monster, complete with sharp fangs and long tongue. Fortunately, the old man hit the guy on the back of the head and the latter backed away from the window. The old man, said the guy, was warning him not to provoke the monster further.

The conversation after (translated from Filipino) went something like this:

Me: How did you feel when you saw the thing?

Activist: I was afraid of course! But I had the machete and I was a true warrior! (Sorry, that's more or less how what he said!)

Me: So how did you manage to reconcile what you saw-- something that had both a supernatural and evil nature-- with your being an atheist and a Marxist?

Activist: Good question! It was something that bothered me the morning after. How could I relate what I saw with the writings of Karl Max? In terms of historical material, there was no problem but in matters dialectic, ah...!

Another guy at the table (a fervent mountaineer) in turn related his own experience of the supernatural. It seems that while on one hiking trip with three other people in Mount Banahaw in Quezon province, the group had been threatened by a ten-foot tall being.

At first I thought he was describing a kapre but he said it was a 'guardian', possibly because there was hallowed ground nearby. He added that there were signs prior to the event that the 'elementals' were not happy with their presence in the forest (like they had forgotten their tent posts, etc.).

Likewise, he said that despite his long experience in hiking and mountaineering, he had gotten lost from the group for a solid two hours. He presumed it was a kind of punishment set on him by the 'guardian'. It was that experience, he said, that more or less made him a believer of the supernatural.

Me: So you didn't believe before?

Mountaineer: I did. I already saw other stuff before, like a white lady and a tikbalang. But being lost and seeing that 'guardian' reinforced that belief.

Me: So how could you have seen those things and not believe in them?

Mountaineer: Well, it's one thing to see these things from afar. It's another to be directly affected by them.

Me: Ah, like violence? We know what violence is but unless we're direct recipients of that violence, we really wouldn't know?

Mountaineer: Exactly.

Hmmmm... personally, I keep an open mind about these things. As the quote by William Shakespeare goes, "There are more things on Earth and heaven than are dreamt off in your philosophy."

Know Thy Enemy

Last Saturday, was out drinking with [identity-protected] and some of her friends. One of her friends just so happened to be a regular at local literary workshops and contests and obviously, one of the topics for the night was the ins and outs of the literary scene.

Some of the gems I picked up:

• Costs of Publishing: You know how much it costs to have a book printed here? At a minimum: For 150 pieces with 300 pages each, it costs 30 thousand bucks. With the US dollar exchange rate of PhP 55 to the US dollar, that would be US$555. Now, I don't know if this includes marketing and artwork or if this is just the bare bones cost. I presume that the price quoted above is the one given to the local literati when they want to have their books published, including the essay-collections I mentioned in a previous post. This I guess explains the similar book-format of local literature. At the very least, I'm checking how local publishing rates against the various forms of vanity publishing. For a more explicit look at publishing, check out Tor editor Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's Follow the Money as well as celebrated author Neil Gaiman's Everything you wanted to know about literary agents...
• Selection Process: I also learned how some literary organizations pick the candidates they want to participate in their writing workshops. My friend said if the literary group is set to get four participants, they normally get two who they perceive have talent but whose material needs work. The other two slots they award to candidates who already have recognizable talent as a kind of 'reward' (for what, I don't know). Obviously, knowing each other is still a big factor. I still don't know what the criteria is for winning in contests though.
• What To Write: Interesting enough, the friend kept mentioning social commentaries inherent in the stuff he submitted to these workshops. Because of this, I presume these literary groups rate social commentary as an important factor in any written work they receive (something I've always suspected). My question is: Wouldn't the works run the risk of becoming out-dated because of the so-called social commentaries?
• Pressure: The top story that night was how one of the workshoppers broke down after first coming face-to-face against the deluge of group criticism. That and the quote that was engendered: "It's not psycho if it's sweet."

As these things go through my mind, I'm more serious in going after Dean to pepper him questions, especially after I hear that he's shopping for his first novel.

After all, I would seriously love to set up a small press firm locally but I don't know where to start.

In Heaven There is No Beer...

... but I sure really need a drink now.

(In response to Jay's assertion that nobody's blogging at the moment...)

Seriously, so what's been happening around here?

Well, was really busy yesterday since they announced a new Pope in Vatican City. Unfortunately, since we're not a 24-hour shop like our competitor, we weren't able to update our website on the latest news. What made it worse was that our print section did a page one reformat (at fucking two o'clock in the morning!) so our front page didn't match theirs.

Doubly-unfortunate, our night-shift editor couldn't get back to the office and I was at home already. Obviously, when I came in the morning, I had to do something about that, including waking up one of the tech officers in the next room and finding the correct text to upload.

Huh, I remember the last time this happened: the September 11 attack in the US several years ago. Since I was handling the night shift at that time, I remember I had to go back to the office 'round 11:30 p.m. just so that there would newsflash updates in the aftermath of the event.

One of the disadvantages working in media, as I would always point out. Oh well...

(And yes, I know the right end-phrase to the post title should be "... and that's why we drink it here." Thank God there's always coffee.)

Ex Libris: Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist

Though I've read Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist only recently, I thought the book has been under the radar of the reading public so much that I thought a review would be an 'act of shedding light'.

But that's not really correct: a check on the blurb inner pages says that Whitehead's first book has been Esquire's Best First Novel of the Year, USA Today Best First Novel of the Year, and GQ Best Book of the Mullenium among others.

Likewise, The Interstitial Arts Foundation even gave high marks for this book.

Interstitial? What's that, you say?

As academician and memoirist Heinz Insu Fenkl says here:

The word 'interstice' comes from the Latin roots inter (between) and sistere (to stand). Literally, it means to 'stand between' or 'stand in the middle.' It generally refers to a space between things: a chink in a fence, a gap in the clouds, a DMZ between nations at war, the potentially infinite space between two musical notes, a form of writing that defies genre classification.

In this case, Whitehead's hard-to-peg novel is interstitial for its use of speculative fiction mixed with noir particulars to address social and racial issues.

To wit: In an unnamed mid-century high-rise city that may or may not be New York City, Lila Mae Watson is a top elevator inspector for the Department of Elevator Inspectors, the first token black female inspector to be admitted. Likewise, Lila Mae is an intuitionist, which riles off the good ol' boys in her department who are mainly empiricists. (The Intuitionist school of thought uses "senses" through meditation to determine the condition of the elevators. On the other hand, the Empiricist school of thought focuses its attention on literal mechanical failures.) Unfortunately, it's election time at the department and Watson has been accused of incompetence when one of the elevators she just inspected came crashing down. As Whitehead writes in the aftermath of the elevator's destruction:

...there's nothing left but the sound of the crash, rising in the shaft, a fall in opposite: a soul.

To prove herself innocent of the crash, Watson goes underground to avoid both intuitionists' patronizing concern and empiricists' murderous attentions, as well as mob gangsters, government agents and the department's own internal affairs investigators. In the course of her quest, she discovers life-altering secrets about the Intuitionist's Founder, James Fulton, a visionary known to have been working on a "black box'' that would revolutionize elevator construction and alter the nature of urban life forever.

Recently, literary wunderkind Michael Chabon said: "Genre isn't just a box to be stuck in; it's also a window to look through." This is quite true in Whitehead's first novel. In The Intuitionist, Whitehead creates an idea of a parallel-universe-- a New York City with 19th-century politics and mores but with 21st century technological advances-- in order to probe at racial differences.

Whitehead does this perfectly through his creative look at elevators: the constant search for verticality and upward mobility in society despite its supposed architectural goal. This is symbolized through the different schools of thought, the high-rise buildings, and the actual fixation on elevators. As Whitehead pointed out succinctly:

"They looked at the skin of things." Lila Mae offers...

White people's reality is built on what things appear to be-- that's the business of Empiricism. They judge them on how they appear when held up to the light, the wear on the carriage buckle, the stress fractures in the motor casing. His skin.

Personally, this is what attracted me to the idea of speculative fiction in the first place: to address issues through imagination, to attack indirectly through speculation, to question tradition through subversion.

And that's why I read this stuff in the first place.

This is 15-Minutes: Business Magic

Heh. Looks like the inscrutable Hobbes is picking up the pen too. Coolness.

Moreover, he posited a set of rules for this 15-minute madness that I thought might be useful. That is:

For this one, the rules followed were:The basic plot was thought of beforehand.Spelling and basic grammar was corrected after. No rephrasing or rewording.

On one hand, gabe's style is more of a 15-minute free-for-all writing. On the other hand, the 15-minute technique I've seen around here has evolved into challenges: given an object or idea, write something about it, like JP's call-and-response.

Also, the incomparable jenn see made a good analysis of the whole thingamajig in the comments section:

the thing here is you're combining two literary games--flash fiction, or sudden fiction, which is basically a really short story, & a timed writing exercise. so each has its own thingies. but i is intrigued by the idea & will meditate further.

I await with baited breath, pun intended.

But I'm just digressing (I do that a lot here). So without further ado, here's another friend of mine for your entertainment...

People don't know Rhochie B____.

An affable, good-natured guy, Rhochie runs a family restaurant in Pasig City. He's pretty serious about it, trading time between being with his lovely young wife—who teaches at a nearby school—and managing the restaurant.

Still, he manages to spare some hours surfing the internet or playing computer games. Or building models. He's pretty good at that.

Right now, Rhoch is just waiting for the general manager to close shop downstairs. It’s a Wednesday night, a slow night for the restaurant so he’s letting the guy handle closing time. He does that every now and then.

In the meantime, he’s downloading something on the internet. It’s slow going despite the bandwidth he’s got. But no worries: he’s not going anywhere.

He doesn't have children yet. Not yet the right time, Rhochie would say. But what people don't know is that it's all about priorities.

You see, Rhoch—as his friends call him—is actually straight-up serious about running the restaurant. He does catering for functions like weddings, debuts and graduation parties. He's had a videoke machine installed for those who feel like singing, drunk and all. He's also scheduled ballroom dancing two nights a week for the older set.

Just then, Rhoch’s cell phone rings. It’s his wife, asking what time he’s coming home. He reassures her that he’ll be home soon and tells her to go to sleep. She has classes early in the morning and he doesn’t want her too tired. He tells her he still has work to do.

He looks at the download screen: 80 percent left. He really wants to see if he can learn anything new from the Malleus Maleficarum, a book he heard from other references.

Moreover, Rhoch dabbles in magic. Black or white, it really doesn't matter, Rhoch would say. But Rhoch uses it with a practical purpose in mind.

For example, two restaurants—his competitors—have shut down after several months. Rhoch would say it's just market forces at play. That, and he has better service.

However, he isn't saying anything about the incantations in the moonlight, the graveyard ceremonies, or the dead animals sacrificed in the attic of the restaurant. Likewise, he's quite mum about how his restaurant-rivals have encountered bad—almost deadly—luck.

Rhoch also has a secret weapon.

You see, there's a reason why they don't have children yet. Oh, Rhoch definitely loves his wife. But as one who uses magic, Rhoch needs something that only a... virginal woman can bring to table. So he did the best thing he could think of: he married one.

Just then, the download is done. As he prints out the book, Rhoch takes out his small blood-letting kit: syringe, rubber tube, etc. He thinks that his wife is probably asleep by now, thanks to the small dosage of tranquilizer he leaves in her meals.

In fact, he probably has enough time to get a little blood and try out a new spell from the tome he downloaded earlier. In the meantime, the book once called the ‘Witch Hammer’ will continue printing.

You might say that the old adage-- behind every man's success is a woman-- is quite true in Rhoch's case.

... And time's up.

(Edited to add: Damn it people! This is just fiction! Fun fiction, yes, but fiction nevertheless.)

This is 15-Minutes: Leap Year

Well, here's the start of a series of 15-minute small stories dedicated to my former high-school friends.

It's a bit hard writing a short story (or even sudden fiction) within 15-minutes so this is really more of an excerpt. Kind of like This is Your Life but with me adding lots of weird stuff in the mix.

Anyway, here we go...

Dino P____ was celebrating his birthday today.

Dino was 25 years old but technically, he was older. That was because he had been born on February 29 and only celebrated his birthday every four years.

As time went by, he had fleshed out to become a solid-looking young man. This despite being gangly for most of his existence. Likewise, his baby-face had eyes that looked old-man tired and bookended by crow's-feet.

Dino stood on a hill that was part of the Loyola Heights Memorial Park in Metro Marikina.

Around him, squarish crypts and mausoleums rose in irregular stands throughout the estate, scattered in a haphazard pattern like grotesque cement dice. He remembered a time when the memorial park had only been a green field interspersed with marble patches memorializing the dead.

Now the dead were everywhere and the lapidas, their headstones, had grown up to become houses.

Dino looked down at the marble marker at his feet and thought of the lives he had led and met.

"Shit, pare. This is getting tiresome. Four years and I'm back again. You'd think they would clean up this place."

With that, he sat down, lit a cigarette (one vice he had never really kicked despite the years), and proceeded to tell the marker—the only thing left that reminded him of his best friend—of the past four years.

One day every four years. One year for every four years.

For Dino P___, time passed very, very slowly...

...And time's up. Not an auspicious start but it's a start.

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll be able to include zombies somewhere.

Word for the Day

Heh. You learn something new everyday.

Last Monday, was reading Joey's article (great stuff! check it out!) about a group of female online gamers when I came across this word: chicksilog.

Female gamers also have to deal with online stalkers, including male players who pretend to be women so that they can become close to female players. This is one reason the Clan of the Shadowmaidens requires all members to post their photos and profiles on the site for everyone to see.

"Why do we do this? It’s pretty simple really. We want to make sure that people know that you are what you say you are. No chicksilogs, no tanso, no crossdressers in the guild. And, if you’re female and you’re playing an MMOG, you’re quite a rare item. Wearing that guild emblem is like some sort of certification that you are indeed a real girl," Merano said.

Serendipitously, on my way home, I heard this song on the radio by a local band, Kamikaze. Their song? Chicksilog, of course. A part of its lyrics go this way (taken from this site):

Chorus:

Chicksilog, ako ay nahulog/ Nilinlang, niloko, alam ko na'ng sikreto mo/ Chicksilog, ako ay nahulog/ Nilinlang, niloko, alam ko na'ng sikreto mo

Walang saysay mag-level ang pantasya ay nasira na/ Ang iniipong lakas naglaho parang bula/ Kaya pala ang husay mo sa espada/ Si Maldita ay lalake pala

Translated, the song goes: Chicksilog, I fell for you/ I was deceived, I was fooled, now I know your secret (repeat 2x). There is no point in leveling up as the fantasy's destroyed/ all my strength is gone like a bubble/ No wonder you're so good with a sword/ The Bad Girl is actually a guy.

Whew! Translation's a fucking bitch, you know.

Anyway, a quick check over at google came up with this (just scroll down):

There are also the types of players who are called "chicksilog" or something..they're those RL males pretending to be girls by making female avatars. Some of them are actually roleplaying and have no other intentions besides that, but there are SOME, who are EVIL and asks for zenny/tank/heal/equips/etc. They're also much like those lazy n00bs.

Okay, that's pretty straightforward.

Am sure that the phenomena of males using female identities on the internet (and vice-versa)isn't anything new. However, this is the first time I've heard of a word describing such an individual.

Now, the term chicksilog can be derived from the Filipino's penchant to use the first letters of a number of words to create a new word. In this case, the -ilog suffix describes a variety of Filipino dishes that includes a viand, egg and rice, i.e. tapsilog is tapa (beef strips), itlog (egg) and sinangag (fried rice).

Unfortunately, this is where I come to a dead-end as I'm not sure how the suffix applies to the description above. Anyone out there know anything?

Ex Libris: Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a motherfucking big book.

Clocking in at 800-pages, Clarke's first novel is ponderously heavy: it weighs on your hands and wrists as you leaf through the first few pages, startlingly white against the book's black cover (barring the etched white raven, of course). To describe the book as a tome would not be too far-fetched.

Likewise, the book is considered a real heavy-weight with the publicity onslaught delived by Bloomsbury, the publishing house that hit the multi-million-pound jackpot with J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and publishing rights sold to 12 countries for simultaneous worldwide publication last October.

And did someone say Harry Potter? Clarke's book had that magic word tagged to it also, being billed as "Harry Potter for adults" (despite the number of adults who adore reading about the child-wizard). Then there was writer-wunderkind Neil Gaiman who described Clarke's work as "the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years."

If one were of lesser nerve, one could probably collapse from all the weight of praise and expectations heaped on this book. But after finally finished reading the damned thing, I thought that it delivered and quite nicely too.

Everyone has heard or read the summary for the book: an alternate history wherein Mr. Norrell, a reclusive and the last real magician in early 19th century, decides to bring about the Revival of Magic by helping the English Government against Napoleon Buonaparte. However, Norrell's act of opportunity unwittingly brings about a real Revival of Magic and he suddenly comes face-to-face with his first--and only-- apprentice, the arrogant-yet-brilliant Jonathan Strange.

As with all fiction, the two magicians become antagonists on how magic should be used in this New Age. Yet how they become enemies and why becomes important as well as England (and Europe) suddenly find themselves in an uncertain world now filled with magic once more.

It is this round-about element of Clarke's story that will make (or break) readers. For the book, it is-- as the saying goes-- the journey that matters and not the destination. (Not surprising then that it took 10-years to make!) Yet what is perceived as a weakness in editing is actually one of the strengths of the book. Primarily, Clarke delivers not only a story but a virtual experience. As Michael Dirda wrote, "Many books are to be read, some are to be studied, and a few are meant to be lived in for weeks. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is of this last kind."

For example, ladened with an astonishing array of explanatory footnotes, Clarke gives her early 19th-century England depth comparable to J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. However, footnotes is a such a dry term to describe the elaborate mini-essays on folktales, 7th-century gossip, and prissy corrections of popular misconceptions about the history of English magic and magicians.

Plot-wise, the best and only way to describe it as 'meandering' as the book chronicles not only the lives of its main characters, Norrell and Strange, but the travails of other characters like the toady Drawlight, the caddish Lascelles, the courtly Stephen Black and the secretive John Childermass. Fortunately, this adds to the appeal of the book as it shows not only how magic has affected (and effected) the two protagonists but the rest of the people around them.

Clarke further ups the ante on the experience by relating the story as if voiced by a mid-Victorian narrator, using tone and words straight from Jane Austen and Charles Dicken. For such an effect, even the fastest reading speed slows down in order to appreciate such ambience:

"Can a magician kill a man by magic?" Lord Wellington asked Strange.

Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never could."

There is also Clarke's use of Victorian-style words like 'chuze' and 'surprize' with offhand charm, adding a bit of authenticity to the reading experience. In the light of such prose, a reader can either musingly chew on Clarke's love of language or blithely swallow it whole without the proper appreciation.

In totality, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell demands a lot from its readers though not in the same vein as a book by James Joyce or M. John Harrison. Rather, Clarke's opus calls on the reader to find time to kick back and relax to savour the work: no shortcuts, no fast read allowed here. Anything else and the reader will not get the full effect of travelling through the world created by Clarke.

All in all, an interesting reading experience.

Harmless Writing Advice

And Kraken answered a question of mine very astutely about whether or not to re-write older stories that don't seem to work anymore...

There are always examples that contradict my typical writing practise, but on the whole I believe that if my earlier work looks wrong to me, then it's far better to go and make something new with what I've learned than try to make the old stuff fall in line with my current thoughts...

...You can't "fix" everything you create, or you stop creating new stuff, and then your work would stop changing. You'd stagnate.

Something I should keep in mind whenever I feel like tearing up older stories in a fit of pique.

Now I really must get back to work. Gotta eat lunch first though...

15-Minutes of Infamy

Went out with with some friends last Friday night to Powerplant Rockwell for a round of drinks, a bunch of guys I've known since high school. It was the usual session: passing the time razzing each other, strengthening bonds, updating each other on our lives, yaddah-yaddah.

(Also wanted to raise a bottle in honor of Jim, who managed to pass the bar on his second try. Huzzah! To paraphrase the Abominable Snowman in Looney Tunes: Our very first attorney!)

Anyway, near midnight, Jay dared me to write a short story on Jim. Giving it a second's thought, I decided to up the ante: I dared back that I'd write a short story on each of the guys in the group.

Of course, I added with a grin, I'd put in a little speculative spin to the stories like zombies or something. Dino piped in something like that they have to survive in the end. Alrighty, that's not a problem, I agreed.

Not that I'm running out of things to write about. Hell, I'm way behind schedule in my plan to write at least ONE SHORT STORY A MONTH, dammit. And way, way too many things to read, including one each from Mahesh and Dean.

So here's the deal: I'll start a series of short 15-minute stories or excerpts about one of the guys (maybe in the vein of Jeff Van's Secret Lives). It'll have something weird or wacky or scary about the story. Of course, I'll let the guys live in the end but aside from that, everything's free-for-all.

Heh. The things writers do to their friends.

Notes from the Trenches

Observation #1

The meme about a deserted island brought a thought boiling up from my subconscious, an observation I had while I was in Boracay a couple of months ago. While I was going around the island, I noticed that there were very few people with reading materials on the beach. Aside from a couple of young Filipinas with magazines, there were specifically around five people with books in hand. And all of them foreigners.

Of the five, two were middle-aged women (white) and both had non-fiction books. One was a young white man with Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code while another (same) had Angels and Demons. The fifth was a middle-aged black man with Jude Fisher's Wild Magic.

And I thought: that's not so bad, right? Given the percentage, speculative fiction readers comprise 1/5 of the reading population.

Heh. I wish.

Observation #2

Yesterday, I was at National Bookstore in Shangrila Plaza when I saw a familiar name on the Filipiniana bookshelves. That is, Bud Tomas, a former classmate of my older brother, had come out with a book on essays about-- well, nothing really. Supposedly Tomas wrote these essays that he would e-mail to his friends concerning observations about the world around him.

This in turn reminded me of Charlene Fernandez, a state university teacher who had come out with her own book of essays. If I remember the write-up in the book correctly, Fernandez had printed this book as part of her masters thesis but the essays really were part of a weblog she had. Or something like that anyway.

Anyway, this made me wonder: is there a wave of published essays-- I'd say online but it's more internet-derived than anything else-- that's coming out in this country? I surmise that it's relatively cheaper to have a book published here (having the public read it is another matter altogether), thanks to Anvil and other publishers. On the other hand, local published essay collections from the print side have been a regular staple on Filipiniana bookshelves. I myself started out with Jessica Zafra's Twisted series and Karen Kunawicz.

Not that I'm making any generalizations here. Just a thought...

One of these days I have to pick Dean's brain on how the local comics industry publishes their stuff.

And All I Can Do is Read a Book to Stay Awake...

Here's a meme grokked from Mark at clickmomukhamo:

Books at my bedside: Right now, it's my priority books-to-read at my night-table which includes...

1. Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip
2. One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead by Clare Dudman
3. The School of Night by Alan Wall
4. Phantom Islands of the Atlantic by Donald Johnson

Sorry, no pictures.

I'm currently debating whether to get John Clute's Appleseed, which I saw in Books for Less Pearl Drive. Clute's well-known as a SFF critic and scholar coupled with his regular column Excessive Candour at Scifi Weekly. However, what's not as well-known was that he wrote a science-fiction novel. Let's see how he does...

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? Not that I advocate book burning. But if you're going to do it, do it right. In which case, I'd be Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Burn, motherfucker, burn!

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Nup. I have a vivid imagination but not for people.

The last book you’ve bought is: The Swords of Night and Day by David Gemmell

The last book you’ve read: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke.

What are you currently reading? The same Phantom Islands (my non-fiction bent), Viriconium by M. John Harrison (taking a long time but rich with things to ponder), Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (highly recommended by JP), and Leviathan 3 (for some short fiction).

Five books you would take to a deserted island: Mervyn Peake's opus Gormenghast (if you're going to go gothic, why not on a deserted island, right?); Harlan Ellison's The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective (a massive tome that, at its size, will double as a weapon); Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy (another big book that can serve as a pillow); either a complete collection of Ernest Hemingway's short stories or William Shakespeare's works (if I'm on a deserted island in the Mediterranean, I'll take Hemingway, if not, Shakespeare); and the Bible (my first book of adventure/ mystery/ horror/ drama, I swear).

And like Mark, I need lots and lots of writing material.

Who will you pass this quiz to? Anyone who hangs around here. Hey, if you didn't like books, then you'd probably find most of my stuff boring, right? *winks*