Happy New Year, everyone!

Gods, it's been awhile since I've been here. Yeah, I'm ashamed that I've neglected my blog last year. I hope to remedy that this 2015. That's my new year resolution - to blog more.

So to start with, I'd like to write about what I have been doing this holiday season. It's been two weeks of no work, so you'd think I should have been productive, right? Well, that's partially true. The first week and a half had been hectic on the home front. I've been cleaning the house, cooking for my contribution for Noche Buena, and cleaning a bit more (with a bit of TV watching on the side). It's just this past few days that I've have allowed myself some crafting and reading.

So anyway, here are the stuff I've found myself doing this past two weeks:

Watched some old TV series. This included CSI season 6 (2005-2006) & some of season 9 (2008), Criminal Minds seasons 1 & 2 (2005-2007), and part of Fringe season 2 (2010). Yeah, I don't really mind not watching in order. :-)

Fringe is the best out of the three (not surprising, as it's a JJ Abrams show) and I'd like to get a hold of the entire series (which is doable since it has only have five seasons). CSI is a favorite of mine so I don't really mind the plot holes, wonky technology (the things they do with images and video are crazy!), and outdated themes. Criminal Minds is okay but their tech girl is terrible.I don't mind the tech girls-as-weirdos stereotype but for goodness' sake, practice good internet security! Any novice techie knows you don't use computers with weak security and plug it into a high-risk network to play mmorpg. And for goodness' sake, she got to keep her job in the end?! Sheesh. :-P

Caught up on some Pinoy movies. Well, just two. The first one is Shake, Rattle & Roll 15. A decent compromise, considering my nephews watched to watch either Praybeyt Benjamin or Feng Shui (*shudder*). MMFF is the Pinoys' annual Christmas perya and SRR is its regular haunted house booth. This year's SRR is okay. Of the three, I like the middle one because of the ambiguity in the story and ending.

I also finally got to see She's Dating the Gangster, starring KathNiel (Kathryn Bernardo & Daniel Padilla to you oldies). The local movie industry has a strange way of using books for story material. To them, adaptation is synonymous to 'very loosely based', to 'somewhat inspired but not really', to even 'we just got the title to dupe the fans of the book into watching'. The result of this treatment is diverse: some were very good (Hihintayin Kita sa Langit for example, based on Bronte’s Wuthering Heights), some were very bad (Once a Princess which is based on Angel Bautista’s book with the same name), and some were just okay (e.g. ABNKKBSNPLAko?!, based on the Bob Ong book). Star Cinema’s ‘adaptation’ of She’s Dating the Gangster was entertaining, and was a teensy bit above being just okay. It had also helped that the original book material was very terrible (I was going to say unreadable, but then I remembered that a lot of people had bought and probably read it, making it a wtf-why-is-this-a-runaway-hit-are-they-nuts kind of thing).The liberties that Star Cinema had freely made with the material really helped. So yeah, the movie is better than the book.

Brushed up on some Tolkien. To me, the holiday season is the best time for reading Tolkien stories. I've decided on two books: The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters. I'm not much of a fan of Christmas, so reading stories from this master fantasy writer is my way of putting some magic into the season. More of this in my next post.

So that's it for now. How about you guys, how was your vacation? Has it been fun? Boring? Long? Short? Do tell me.

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One of my book clubs, The Filipino Groups at Goodreads, invited me to moderate a discussion this August. I'm quite honored to accept their invitation, especially since this is going to be my first time to host a book discussion with them. The TFG people has such refined taste in books (and no, I'm not brown-nosing or anything :-P ) so I'm really crossing my fingers they'll at least find my discussion interesting.

So anyway, TFG asked me to pick a theme and three books. Out of these three books, they're going to vote for the one they'll want to discuss in August. The theme I chose was erotica. But looking back at the books I chose, I think the better description would be "semi-autobiographies with some sex". The primary focus of erotica is, of course, eroticism - that is, to sexually arouse the readers, with some aspirations (or some say, pretensions) to look like high art. The foci of the three books go beyond eroticism, and their themes go beyond sex.

But rather than talk about each book in my own words, I rather go the pathetically easy  (and a potential copyright violation) route, and quote entire entries from the book, "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" (published by Cassell Illustrated, and edited by Peter Boxall). 

(TFG peeps, this was going to be the one I would have shown you guys had I been free to attend last month's To The Lighthouse discussion.Sorry about that. :-P )

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Key event: Tropic of Cancer is banned in the UK and United States

Henry Miller's depiction of his life in 1930s Paris ushered in a new way of writing about sex. Gone were the euphemism s and covert and peripheral references that had previously sufficed: now sex was a focus for discussion and a new language, direct and aggressive in tone, was evolving for the purpose.

 This is a supremely misogynistic piece of writing and there is still something shockingly brutal about Miller's prose. His comments about his friend's wife Ida Verlaine are indicative of his: "I didn't give a fuck for her as a person, though I often wondered what she might be like as a piece of fuck, so to speak." This reductive and objectifying attitude is characteristic of the narcissistic and egotistical narrative voice that seems implicitly to be addressing a male reader. Women are described to be a little more than the facilitators of male desires, animalistic and available, and sunk in a base physicality without agency.

Although originally published in 1934, the novel was prohibited for decades in the United States and the UK. After its release in the United States in the 1960s, charges of obscenity were brought against the publishers, Grove Press. It went on to develop a cult following and was particularly influential for the Beat generation. Their eagerness to shun convention spawned a desire to experiment with extremes of experience and the licentious freedom of Miller's narrative appealed to this desire.

 Despite the problematic gender politics, Henry Miller's work made an important contribution to the development of modernist fiction. With its experimental mixture of confessional autobiography and fiction, and passages where the narrative constitutes a "stream of consciousness", it was both innovative and dynamic. Juliet Wightman

Date: 1934

Title: Tropic of Cancer

Author: Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Nationality: USA

Why It's Key: Tropic of Cancer was a landmark publication that tested the boundaries between erotica and pornography. In the 1960s it became the focus of a famous and influential obscenity case.

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Key Passage: Fear of Flying

"My response... was not (not yet) to have an affair and not (not yet) to hit the open road, but to evolve my fantasy of the Zipless Fuck."

Erica Jong, young, beautiful, and blonde, appeared in her publicity photographs to be the antithesis of the 1970s feminist. In fact, Fear of Flying could with hindsight be read as the first "chick-lit" novel; at the height of the women's lib movement its cheerful raunchiness certainly came as a shock. But it is a book which is more serious than titillating. To those women who were coming of age at the time of its publication, taking the newly-available contraceptive pill, enjoying - if that's the right word - "free" love, and struggling to be granted the same respect and freedoms as men, Fear of Flying and its heroine, Isadora Wing, told it like it was.

Isadora, attending a conference abroad with her emotionally cold psychiatrist husband, muses on the situation of women, the drawbacks of marriage, the nuisance of mensuration, and books, politics, travel, and sex. John Updike compared the novel to Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint for its sexual honesty.

Jong defined the famous "Zipless Fuck" as "more than a fuck... Zipless, because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff... For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never get to know the man very well... anonymity made it even better."

 The serious point of the book lies in its attempt to discover a post-liberation way of living with men, while managing to retain a separate identity. In fact it is worth reading if only as a social document which describes women's experiences in the 1960s and 1970s. Felicity Skelton

Date: 1973

Author: Erica Jong

Nationality: USA

Why It's Key: Fear of Flying treated women's liberation with humor - a rarity at the time. It is also famous for the frankness of the descriptions of bodily functions, especially sex.

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Key Book: The Lover

Marguerite Duras' semi-autobiographical novel offers subjective and impressionistic reflections upon a precocious childhood. At 15, the narrator has an intense sexual relationship with a wealthy 27-year old Chinese man. Set during the inter-war period in Sa Dec, French Indochina, their relationship is, on many levels, taboo. The intoxicating sensuality of their heady affair transcends and disturbs the boundaries of cultural acceptability, but even in its own terms, the relationship is transgressive and disturbing. It subverts traditional assumptions about the dynamics of sexual, racial, and onetary power, which is shown to be in a state of continual flux, endlessly subject to subtle realignment. Through this unorthodox love affair, and in her depiction of a family deeply troubled by a mother's divisive behavior, Duras provides a timely exploration of France's colonial past, and subjects the nebulous notion of "otherness" to renewed scrutiny.

The short novel is demonstrably a product of Duras' association with the Nouveau Roman, or "new novel", a French literary movement that sought to break the traditional dependence on plot, characterization, and conventional narrative modes. Critics have been divided on the novel's status as autobiography but she undoubtedly makes self-conscious use of the form, questioning the constructedness of memory, its luminescent quality, and the inevitable investments we all make, at both conscious and unconscious levels, in the process of remembering the past. The most commercially successful of Duras' works, it won the coveted Prix Goncort in 1984. Juliet Wightman

Date: 1984

Author: Marguerite Duras (1914-96)

Nationality: France

Why It's Key: Remarkable for the frankness with which one of France's most respected - but difficult and avant garde - writers offers access to a sensational aspect of her past, this novel catapulted Duras from left-wing intellectual to bestselling author.

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For posterity's sake, I'm throwing my dignity to the wind.

This blurry video was taken using my phone camera using unsteady arms - not to mention we were in the general admissions section. If you hear some fangirls shrieking, that's just me and my friend Joko. :P

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This blog post is not about books. It mostly contain boring pictures of an empty house. You've been warned.

Last year, I moved out of the city and bought a house in the countryside.

To say that everyone was surprised is a big understatement. You see, I'm a city girl through and through. I know Metro Manila almost like the back of my hand. I never had a province to go to during the summer break. I know how to cross a street filled with vehicles by the time I was seven. By the time I was in elementary, I sometimes go to school without adult supervision via public transportation. And my school was in Tondo, Manila two and a half miles from my home in Valenzuela, near Bulacan.

So anyway, I had always dreamed of having a place of my own, at least someplace to stash all my stuff away. The story of how I got this new house can fill out two or three long blog post, and would probably bore you to tears (actually even *this* post is probably going to bore you tears). I'm just going to show what the place looked like when I first moved in.

The stairs and my uber-mini kitchen from the living room. And since the kitchen is small, I'm going to do my actual cooking in the dirty kitchen at the back of the house:

I have two toilets: one for myself and one for my cat. How cool is that? :)

The partial view of the living room from the top of the stairs.

Second floor: On the left is the room I'm using now as the main (i.e. my) bedroom. On the right is a small room that's supposed to be a guest room but I won't since it's embarrassingly tiny. I'm currently using it as a storage room. In between these two room is the stairs to the attic.

The attic. Which I've now filled with books in their nice new bookshelves. After I solve the problem of making this space less stifling hot during the afternoons, I intend to stay here for the rest of my spinsterish life. Yeah, maybe I'm serious. Or maybe I'm not. Who knows?

The exteriors. This is actually a duplex (if only I have enough funds to take over the other half!). Taken from the space that's supposed to be the garage. It will be filled with a brand new car, hopefully soon.

I dedicate this blog post to Blooey who said I should write something about my new home, sort of like a blog of the (mis)adventures of a "city girl moving to the countryside setting up a house of her own". Oh come on, I'm not anything like Max Skinner (the protagonist of Peter Mayle's A Good Year - I suggest reading the book to know the connection). And I think it's too early to say that the province of Rizal is going to be my personal Provence.

What do you guys think?

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... blackbody scours the hottest things in the World Wide Web so you won't have to. Yeah right.

By being too curious - not only did I googled it, I looked it up in wikipedia. So, because I lost, I'm going to make sure everyone who'll read this blog post will lose too:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/430703-if-you-read-this-youve-lost-the-game
or
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-game

www.LoseTheGame.com

I'm not worried though; I'm sure I'll forget it soon. That means I'll be able to play again. :-)

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... So excuse me for a very brief advertising.

Want to win some Fully Booked GCs? Go to this site: http://winthegc.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/three-easy-steps-to-win/

and then follow the instructions.

*Crossing my fingers*

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I learned the truth at seventeen.

That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen.

A brown eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce said
Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich-relationed home-town queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company and haven for the elderly.

Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you in
Dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen.

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me.

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen.

Lyrics: Janis Ian; Artwork: Eliza Leahy

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Note: I would've liked to post this info in my book club's forum but Shelfari, for all its nifty gadgets, don't even have the ability to put images & links in the post. Sheesh!

Selection process consists of going to the Random.org site and using their list randomizer program. If you doubt the randomness of their program, I suggest reading their FAQ and explanation of the science of random generation. I personally like the site because the creator (a Dr. Mads Haahr from Trinity College in Dublin) had, at one time, used a cheapo transistor radio and lots of whiskey for generating randomness. The current system phased out the whiskey bottles (reluctantly, I would think) but still have that lovely spirit of cheapness by using a probably old IBM machine with a Pentium III processor. He still uses that cheapo transistor radio though. Combined with the info that his favorite authors are Paul Auster, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Carroll and Harlan Ellison, I think Dr. Haahr is wonderful.

Okay, back to the exchange gift thing. Here's a screencap of the generated list.

I tried to do it exactly at 12 Noon PST but I think I'm off by a few seconds.

Here's the resulting partners:
Mommy/Daddy - Baby (I know, I know, the labels are sorta embarrassing..)
1. Peter - 8. Blooey
2. Maydayeve - 18. Hannah
3. Cecille -7. Maydiwayatangnawawala
4. Marie -2. Maydayeve
5. Czar -1. Peter
6. Fantaghiro23 -3. Cecille
7. Maydiwayatangnawawala -5. Czar
8. Blooey -14. Sana
9. Islandhopper -12. Kwesifriends
10. Welski -15. Aka Shy
11. Dyoklako -19. Geze
12. Kwesifriends -10. Welski
13. Joel G. -22. Oel
14. Sana -4. Marie
15. Aka Shy -9. Islandhopper
16. Skirmish -21. Ceejay
17. Jan -6. Fantaghiro23
18. Hannah -11. Dyoklako
19. Geze -20. Iyadls
20. Iyadls -16. Skirmish
21. Ceejay -13. Joel G.
22. Oel -17. Jan

Protests? Violent reactions? Make three copies of your formal complaint in the form of a 1000-page essay, have it notarized, and send it to the Comelec. :)

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During a Friday night-out, a friend told me that if I were to make a essay, it would be in bullet-point. I agreed with him; I could've also added it will also be in power-point, and with charts.

That same night, I had been in a car crash. It was one of the worst night of my life because I had never felt so useless. I will never allow anyone to bring me home again.

I am so sorry.

Just a few years ago, I liked being awake at midnight. I had felt invincible then - no amount of sleep deprivation can topple me.

I don't want to be awake during midnight nowadays, not because my body can't handle the loss of sleep. I hate midnight because it's then that melancholia tend to creep up, threatening to smother me. And often, it succeeds.

That last one sound hokey, even if it's true. I roll my eyes at myself.

I am a fraud. I am skeptical of the sanity of people who listen to my ramblings. I applaud people who are skeptical to the saneness of my ramblings.

When I was in elementary, I won a few awards in essay-writing. During the second to the last contest - the regional level - I lost. I asked one of the coaches from other schools why. She told me that I paint detailed picturesque essays, the sort that makes one imagine the scenes vividly in her mind's eye, which will then coaxes a smile or two. But there is nothing beyond the nice pictures. My pieces don't have depth, they have no soul. I don't inject myself in them. She asked me what am I afraid of.

I still don't know the answer to her question.

I need to sleep (even if I had escaped and slept most of this weekend away). I am glad to go back to my cubicle tomorrow. I don't want to think dangerous thoughts anymore.

Image is Melancholic Tulip, NY by Andre Kertesz

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The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is in dire need of volunteers assistance in repacking relief goods at the DSWD National Relief Operations Center.

I knew about this a week ago when they sent a memo to our office asking for help - I just didn't realized how badly until a friend posted a blog in Facebook, reporting that the relief goods in their warehouse are spoiling.

Photo is from Jenni Epperson's blog

They also need volunteer counselors who are capable of conducting trauma counseling to the typhoon victims.

The DSWD have an online volunteer registry if want read more information on volunteering with them. Here's the contact info from their homepage:

"If you are interested to render volunteer work to do repacking of good and/or provide stress debriefing session, please click here and register online, or call DSWD - SWIDB at telephone number (02) 951-28-05. You may also call or text Dir. Ma. Suzette M. Agcaoili at 0928-505-9108 / 0928-479-3523 or Mr. Tony Binalla at 0921-219-3646."

You really don't need to register first before volunteering. You can just call them up to get your schedule and which DSWD location you'll be assigned and that's it. You can also call Ms. Nolee Macabagdal at 951-2805 and 931-8101 loc 405.

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.. of my new layout. I was annoyed at how much tinkering I need to do with images in the former one, not to mention that I'm forced to make it small enough to fit the narrow window. That means no travel blogs (all those photos!), posts look longer, and few cute kitten pics (heheheh). This new layout is slightly larger, not to mention way more dramatic. Nice no?

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My cat, Shadow, hates Edgar Allan Poe. Of all the books lying around my apartment, it's the one she decided to punch holes into - much to my despair because I like the title of this particular anthology: "Selected Prose and Poetry of Poe" (nice alliteration, don't you think?).

She probably thought I'll get an idea or two of cat-torture from the book. Sheesh, if I were that cruel, I would've named her "Pluto". *rolling my eyes*

By the way, she does have this strange white patch on her chest... hmm, doesn't bode well for me, no? :P

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One of my New Year resolution is to make a database of the piles and piles of books that I own. It's not so much that I don't like organizing things but for an supposedly IT techie, I hate encoding stuff, even for personal reason. And it's not helping that these piles strangely grow on their own in places where I live - namely my apartment, my cubicle, and my room in my parent's house at the suburbs.

It was the Earth Hour 2009 last March 28, that spurred me to action. Aside from watching the short but nice concert, we (well at least I) bought some books from Booksale, including a highly wanted Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Went home tired and sleepy. The next day I tried to go out of the bed - only to find out that the floor had been suddenly flooded with books that toppled the night before. Sighhh.

Jailed by books wanting to be databased. Behind me is the kitchen sink.

So anyway, I found out that I buy a disproportionate number of science-fiction and fantasy. Not surprising, since it is an incurable habit of mine to escape from reality at least once a day (not including sleep, of course). Next on the list is science non-fiction. How nerdy of me. I'm surprised that I don't own that much romance though; must be because most of them are with my mom. Other tall piles are crafts and sewing how-tos (I do some knittings, crochetings, cross-stitching and paper crafts), historical fiction and non-fiction, classics (surprise, surprise) and adventure fiction.

Lesson learned? I really need to cut down on those sci-fi and fantasies.

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From this site will rise blackbody's lists. Check it out in about a day or so.

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