For Your Viewing Pleasure: Luisa, Luis and the Wolf

Here's something creepy, two short films that's part of a series called "Luisa, Luis and the Wolf" (Lucía, Luis y el Lobo). They're pretty good.

Start here (or the other one, it doesn't matter I think):



Lucia

Luis from diluvio on Vimeo.

I got a nice story idea out of this one.

Some Things That Interest Us

That's the nature of the Internet: something out there will always attract our attention one way or another. In my case, I have a tendency to keep and collect links of the stuff I find online around until my interest dissipates like perfume.

The problem is that I usually forget where I source these links. Ah well. So consider this as a kind of looking-into-my-Internet-pockets-to-see-what-I've-got-kind-of-thing going on...

1. You know you've got it made when you're Neil Gaiman: you're rich, you have several books in your name... and you have a bookstore disguised as a library in your house.



2. Look! It's an interview of G.K. Chesterton on the latest Dan Brown, opus, The Lost Symbol. What makes this more fun is the fact that Chesterton's been dead for some time now. I'd like to see our interviewers make the dead speak like this!

3. Scriptwriter Josh Olson rants on not reading other people's scripts. SF Grandmaster and resident curmudgeon Harlan Ellison tops this by reading it Dr. Seuss-style.

4. This is so true (and the whole extent of my tech knowledge):



(From here.)

So what's inside your pockets? What are you people collecting?

Just A Dream

... and he shut the vault door behind him to hide, to seek shelter from the undead outside and I see him slam the bolts close but there is a struggle and I see how he tries to wrestle the other man down but the dead ants (ants?) are moving towards us and he screams "don't let them get to close!" and we draw a line of gasoline on the floor in hopes of lighting a fire and...

... I wake up to the sirens of fire trucks racing to their urgent destination and I think: is this it? I think of the undead rising and emergency teams trying to answer the call of chaos in the streets, failing miserably because the dead do not lie down like all proper dead people should be doing. I lie in bed thinking and fearing the time has come and I can barely move. Time seems to stretch and more sirens can be heard outside. Am I ready? Where do you run when the undead are after you?

When I get up, I go to the window and see the crimson light of fire and black smoke spewing from a spot in the city. I remember that to distinguish a real by-god-houses-are-burning fire and a small fire is how large the base of the smoke is. This time the base is large enough to tell me that this is a real fire and not just someone burning a tire or a pile of dead leaves.

Not yet time. Not yet.

Nothing to See, Everything is Normal

Taken from karl, something... interesting for your viewing pleasure.




Ganked from the Inquirer site. As another karl(o) says, "uy, win".

Two thoughts about this video shot. On the question of its veracity, the camera-man doesn't pan back to the same location, which makes one think that the camera-man doesn't know he'd caught something on his camera. And as video shots go, this one's a pretty clear shot, unlike the blurry, shaky stuff one can find on Youtube.

As for the idea of staging the scene: sure, but the idea of veteran soldiers doing something like this in the Bacolod countryside where the statistical probability of enemy encounters is higher than you or I meeting a ghost (which in this country is still higher than other countries)... I don't think so.

Twi-Meow (or Twilight, with Cats)

Because I think everything is better with cats, I thought a re-imagining of Twilight the movie was in order. Here's my version (or vision!) of some pivotal scenes:



Isabella: (in the car with Edward) Your paw is so furry...



Isabella: (on confronting Edward in the forest) I know what you are. You're impossibly fast. And strong. You have long whiskers, a long tail and small ears. Your eyes change colour and you climb trees a lot.



Edward: Say it, say it out loud.
Isabella: Cat...
Edward: Are you afraid?
Isabella: No.
Edward: Then ask me the most basic question... What do we eat?



Edward: (while having dinner with Isabella) Money. Sex. Money. Sex. Cats.



Isabella: (upon waking up) Do you do that a lot?
Edward: I like to watch you sleep.

Pictures sourced from here, here, here, here and here. For other thoughts on watching movies and getting crazy ideas, see Star Wars: You're Fired!

(And yes, I did watch the movie. *wink*)

I Love How My Brain Works

Just popping in to post this interesting article (found in Vandermeer's blog, courtesy of Felix Gilman). It's an article from Cognitive Daily on taste synesthesia:

The most common forms of synesthesia involve associations of words, letters, or numbers with colors. Some estimates say that as many as 1 in 200 people may have word-color synesthesia.

By contrast, there have only been five documented cases in the past century of "word-gustatory synesthesia," where hearing or seeing a word evokes an involuntary taste association.

Logovore anyone? (Now if we could only live on the words themselves...)

Have A Nice Astrological Day

Yesterday-- last night actually-- was a rare, once-in-a-lifetime occurrence of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon all in the same area of the night sky.



(excellently-timed pic by TJ Dimacali)

Fortunately, [identity-protected] and I managed to catch sight of this while we were driving down Katipunan highway on our way to the Happy Mondays poetry reading at Mag:net Katipunan. To be precise:

[identity-protected]: Look, a smiley-face!
me: Where?!? *looks up through the windshield, sees barely-glimpsed occurrence*
me: Whoops! *swerves to avoid hitting a crossing mother and child on the street*

Now that's one lifetime occurrence I want to avoid! Reminder in the future: try to avoid drinking too much coffee during cosmic events.

Hide and Seek

Why I cannot listen to Imogen Heap's lovely song "Hide and Seek" anymore without thinking about Saturday Night Live, The OC, and montage drama...

... better yet, watch for yourself.

The scene from The OC:




The SNL skit:





Damn funny. That is all.

Planet of the Cats

We all know that in a few years, us cats will eventually rule the world. It's inevitable. So it's nice to know that there's a website that's actually admitting this fact. In fact, they're already showing how our dominination has spread across the world and all the protests against the Beijing Games won't stop it.

What? What do you mean they're rioting over Tibet? And who's this Dalai Lama?

Oh... urhm. How embarrassing... Anyway, I just love the products on this site. Anyone want to spring a shirt or poster for me?

Heh.

You Know THEY'RE Watching You

Am currently reading the quite fun Bad Magic by Stephan Zielinski and one of its conceits, the third eye, made me stop and think for a while.

In the story, characters who have their "third eye" opened are vulnerable to the dangers of the supernatural world (whether old gods, demons, elementals, etc.). This reminded me of that scene in the movie Constantine, wherein the young John attracts the attention of demons because he discovers the other side of Heaven and Hell.

Obviously, this idea tickles me pink given how local stories also concur: opening one's "third eye" is not a good idea unless you want to see spirits and ghosts haunting each and every third street corner.

My own friend, who had his supernatural sense developed in college, relates that it's hard driving with one's "third eye" open sometimes as it can cause accidents. I can see his point: are you sure the person standing in the middle of the road and you've just avoided while driving is a real person or a ghost? What's more, he says that spirits and ghosts can "see" you once you can "see" them-- like some kind of a supernatural radar.

This brought me to my fourth thought: Amelia, one of the characters in John Wright's Chaos Trilogy is an extra-dimensional alien being. In our dimension, she is just a nubile young girl but in the fifth dimension, she is actually a winged, goat-feeted being. Obviously, there is some advantage of seeing things through an extra dimension but for Amelia, this is not the case as being able to "see" through the fifth dimension makes others see her.

In other words, you really don't want to do that. (Unless you really, really, really want to.)

I Lack Sleep Because...

(Very good artwork from here)

Dammit, I've been dreaming of zombies again.

At the Tip of Your Tongue

Gah.

Spent the past week trying to remember a video game of my childhood and finally broke down to google it. (Digression: so does that mean Google is now a verb?)

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember key words except for the fact that it had stick figures for characters, your character is being chased around a big chamber filled with tunnels and ladders, and you have to cross from the bottom right of the screen to the top left.

The game? Lode Runner.

(Picture from here.)

I hate it when that happens. Must be getting old. Though what was funnier was that everyone I asked also remembered the game... but not the name. Good to know I'm not the only one whose memory is going.

Here's An Idea...

(Picture from here.)

I've constantly been suggesting a drinking game for writers based on the concept of The Six-Word Story. So far, no takers yet.

Essentially, you get two or more people around a table with a bottle of alcohol (could be tequila, vodka, whiskey or rum) at the center and they offer six-word stories. Those who can't come up with such stories or suggest lousy stories-- as per majority's ruling-- have to drink a shot. Obviously, the more you offer lousy stories, the more you drink. And the more you drink, the possibility that you'll offer more lousy stories.

Another variation is that whenever someone offers a good story, everyone drinks. The above conclusion obviously follows.

And who says writers can't be fun people?

The Reason

So you're wondering what the hell the why-for was last Thursday? Read on...

(Three military officers being charged for coup d'etat meet in a Makati City court.)

1st military officer: Hey, I need to get out of here. What's the best way to do it?

2nd military officer (higher-ranking): Well, we can create a diversion?

3rd military officer-turned-senator: But what kind of diversion? It has to be good enough that the government won't notice he's gone until hours, maybe even days later.

2nd military officer: Well, we could always walk out of here and lodge at a hotel nearby. I've always been preferential of staying at Manila Pen.

3rd military officer-turned-senator: Yeah, and we could call everyone's attention and nobody will notice that he's gone.

1st military officer: Great! So, shall we go?

And the rest, as they say, is a madcap notch in our crazy political history...

Dream Proposal

I was there at Subic when this guy proposed with the help of Neil Gaiman. Read it, it's really funny and heartfelt-sweet.

Here's the girl's version: it's interesting to see the 'he said, she said' perspective here.

Yes, I know, I'm such a sap.

(Link via Neil.)

Update: Here's the video!

Incommunicado

...Sort of.

It's been a bit of a madcap hell with my cell phone yesterday. I woke up with an enticing terminal message from the telco services in the morning and found out that my postpaid phone line has been cut off for lack of payment. (Well, I do have priorities, you know-- like eating and living!)

So, like any Filipino surviving on skills gained from barely-enough wages, I decided to buy a new prepaid sim and use that while I earn enough money to resurrect my old phone line.

Surprise! Surprise! In the afternoon, my phone crashed on me.

*sigh*

So this should serve as a warning: if ever you text me and I ask WTF (as in "who the fuck"), don't take it badly. The great phone crash of 2007 probably included your cell phone number.

Are We Afraid of Uncertainty?

Serendipity rules.

In reference to what kind of fantastic literature I like below, fantasist Mark Chadbourn pointed out this 'uncertainty avoidance index' which... well, here's the money quote:

In Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind, Geert Hofstede says, “Marieke de Mooij has pointed out that cultural values can be recognized in both the subjects and style of literary fiction produced in a country. As examples of world literature from high-UAI (Uncertainty Avoidance Index) countries, she mentions Franz Kafka’s The Castle from Czechia and Goethe’s Faust from Germany. In the former the main character is haunted by impersonal rules; in the latter the hero sells his soul for knowledge of Truth. Low-UAI Britain has produced literature in which the most unreal things happen: Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.”

Later in the book he suggests that countries which have low uncertainty avoidance are more likely to have “literature dealing with fantasy worlds” and those with high uncertainty avoidance are more likely to have “literature dealing with rules and truth”.

The index is here. Interesting to see that the Philippines is rated a 44, which is not so high (near to the United States' 46 actually)-- but then again, a bit too near to Germany's high 65 given our cultural and historical background. And Singapore has an 8!

So what does that tell/ mean about us, hmmm? Hell, does that also serve as an indicator on my current apathy to elves and dragons and what-not?

Waiter, Waiter, Percolator

I was reminded of this song of Manhattan Transfer when I saw this in an episode of the Korean television show Coffee Prince. And given my own predilections, here's the opening of the song, "Java Jive." *winks*

I love coffee, I love tea

I love the java jive and it loves me

Coffee and tea and the java and me

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (boy!)

I love java, sweet and hot

Whoops Mr. Moto, I'm a coffee pot

Shoot the pot and I'll pour me a shot

A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup

...

The rest of the lyrics here (with the picture from here).

In the meantime, coffee anyone?

Bloody Manila

I know movie director Quentin Tarantino's visit to the Philippines for the Cinemanila 2007 has come and gone but [identity-protected]'s sister pointed this out for me. And to commemorate my first time to embed a youtube video in my blog, here are two ads for his visit here.

Here's one:

...and another one.

The last one was pretty hilarious actually.