observe & retort

woke up, couldn't return to sleep, decided to blog... but with two conditions. the first one is i must write ten sentences or more. the second one is to be kept secret, which hopefully visitors will find out themselves by the end of this post. this exercise might be difficult for some but those with clever minds or keen eyes will surely spot the puzzle quickly. if you know the solution, put it in the comments. you win nothing, however, except for the pride of figuring the mystery out.

i'm not sure i'll write enough so i'll just include some nonsense. 1 to 999. i love odd numbers. crocodiles on tv. dinner tonight is porkchop. the bell curve sucks. sherlock rules!

googling isn't prohibited. not sure it would help though. unless someone else did this before me, which isn't impossible. how to look for it, now there's the tricky piece. still, i don't think i'm the first one to do this on their blog, but if so, then the better it serves my scheme. so people of the web, i implore you, use your intelligence to decipher this condundrum. the clock's ticking. time limit: one week.

p.s. i dont know where i got this from. someone committed suicide in my subconscious world then i opened my eyes to this concept which would not let go lest i digitize it. do i think it's cool? yes. will it be news/link worthy? i doubt.
p.p.s. guessed it yet? do not give up though. clue: something very common is missing from this post.

ii

day after tomorrow, my daughter turns two years old. day after today is when we'll celebrate it. day after yesterday, i post my blog opener for the year and as i flip through my memory tome, i realize how much has changed. iaine has grown a lot as a little lady and i have grown a lot as a man.

during my bachelor years, i often questioned my purpose. i went from job to job, none of them lasting for more than a year. i'd withdraw my salary and spend it all. then i'd be broke and alone and i'd space out contemplating my life. i was trapped in that cyle for too long with nary a penny put aside for the proverbial precipitation period. even when jeean came into my life, i still lacked that special skill to cope with workplace bullshit.

when iaine was born, something was triggered in me. when i saw her for the first time, i knew the answer. suddenly, my life had reason. that i had to man up and take care of this child. it was my chance to prove i was worth something. no more impulse buying and pointless splurging. no more happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care attitude. no more quitting when the corporate heat is unbearable. iaine is my north. iaine is my bottomless hero drink. iaine is my gravity. iaine is my 42.

now, i have a stable job and i could provide for my family with more than enough to spare. i have had two promotions and very much inspired to pursue the next rung on the ladder. it has been two years of watching a slice of evolution unfold before my very eyes, of bragging about her early milestones and pwning parenthood copycats, of going home tired and sleepy but staying awake to watch her dream, of feeling complete. im sure that as time goes by, she'll have more ways to make me happy, amazed and proud as a father.

happy second birthday, iaine. i love you very much.

perchance to dream

the other day, my dream was in english. also, it was an episode of walking dead. some of the characters from the show were there. some were my real-life relatives. and they were speaking english. it ended with rick grimes turning into a zombie himself. then his head grew really huge and he started eating everything up a la langoliers.

i dream of having a dream with subtitles someday

a sticky situation

lately, traversing the information superhighway has been a bumpy ride. our dsl at home has long been disconnected (4k bucks reactivates it, which i'm actually contemplating on). my sister's myfi is luck-based. and the wifi in my dad's office is no faster than dial-up. seriously, all it needs is the modem sound and im back in '90s.

and so halfway through no-shave november, i decided to get globe's superstick. after several trips to the local mall, i got the sleek gizmo the other day. but i didn't get to use it until today because of the sim activation period of 24-48 hours. and when i did finally get to use it, the laptop i was using (my dad's) shut off by itself. turns out, the power adaptor went kaput. so i went out and bought a new one. and when i did finally get to use the darn superstick, the connection kept breaking that i couldn't even finish a speed test.

do you know when it finally worked glitch-free? when i was dressed for work and about to leave. with less than half an hour to enjoy the fruits of my labor, i watched my downloads disappear from the queue. the speed wasnt as high as advertised but it was fast enough, faster than that time when it was raining hard and flooding everywhere and the bandwidth gods gave me magic internet for a day.

hopefuly globe holds their end of the bargain and keep it up. else, this thing is getting shoved up someone's pooper.

uno dos stress

in the movies, when someone wakes up from a nightmare's climax, they usually bolt up in bed screaming. never happened to me. usually i stay in the dream to find out what happens next but sometimes it would be so scary i'd have to wake myself up. and it's not even like when it's an extreme close-up of the eyes and they suddenly open up accompanied by a sound effect. nope, i simply slowly open my eyes.

anyways, when i woke up today, i didn't want to go to work. not that i hate my job (excluding that one guy, i love it). it's just that lately i've been feeling so stressed. sporadic headaches, abnormal crankiness, irritable bowel syndrome, and tired feeling even after enough sleep. i contemplated texting my team leader about not coming in. instead, i put on my glasses, got up and dragged myself to the bathroom. it used to be so easy use the big invisible book of excuses and skip work. but things have changed and i now earn the dough for my family. so yeah, screw my shitty sick shtick. off to the beehive i go.

but seriously, this stress thing is getting way worse than i can handle. so much that as a person who hates depending on medicine and doctors, im actually open to the idea of taking vitamins.

(the text above was typed on the blog post date but i was too stressed out that i never finished it. so now i am.)

as always, time with my beautiful family cured me. i remember a few weeks ago, jeean and iaine came to manila for my youngest sister's graduation lunch. when i came home from work that morning, i opened the door to a very happy iaine running towards me saying poppa. and that was it. that was all i needed. i had to man up and survive the stress week, go home and find solace in the sweet loving limbs of my wonderful wife and disarmingly cute daughter.

monochrome optique

my ludovico project is near culmination. i actually feared i'd fail to hit the target what with the scarce personal free time of a working family man. i managed to finish the movies during bathroom breaks, idle time at work and several moments pre and post sleep. right now, the focus is on black and white movies, squeezing in one or two colored ones. if you're bored, interested, or insane and want to check my progress, you can flutter by my twitter by stabbing the chocobo on the right with your mouse pointer.

anyways, i bet this one's never crossed your mind: when people do countdowns, say 1-5, why do they always count like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/2, 4 3/4, 5? why not 1, 2, 3, 4, 4 1/3, 4 2/3, 4 3/4, 5?! why do they always skip 2/3?

i seriously think that a law against giving atm cards and driving licenses to idiots should be passed. what a quick cash withdrawal and diaper purchase turned into an expletive-laden test of patience due to these intelligence-deprived creatures. these imbeciles have some sort of belief that they're special and important and so they make you waste your time waiting for them as they struggle to accomplish a supposedly simple task. typical atm routine of a moron: insert card, check balance, get card, look at receipt, decide on amount to withdraw, insert card again, take a while to figure it how much to withdraw, time runs out, get card, look at receipt again, insert card again, withdraw cash, get card, look at new receipt, decide to withdraw again, insert card, withdraw cash, get card, look at receipt and for some apparent reason these motherfuckers have exclusive knowledge of, they complete disergard the long queue of irate people behind them and insert the atm card for the last time to check the balance again! somebody please murder these people.

p.s. yes. random shit again. but this relaxes my earlobes.
p.p.s. hmm i guess hard work does pay off sometimes. i hope this goes on so i wouldn't have to leave this country and my family.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER by jaiskizzy

gist: after many failed attempts to join the military, steve rogers' patriotic persistence and self-less valor make him the perfect candidate for the super soldier program. from scrawny to brawny, he becomes captain america, the country's bellwether against the nazis. mighty shield in hand and the howling commands right behind him, the star spangled man takes on the menace known as the hydra, led by the crimson craniumed agent schmidt. all together now: america, fuck yeah!

reaction: does anyone else rememer the old captain america cartoon with the stiff movements and the very catchy theme? how about the low-budget captain america movie in the '90s? beyond those two and a few comic issues, i really didnt know much about the guy with the capital a on his forehead. wasnt really into the character, probably because im pinoy. so, when the news of this movie being made broke out, other than solidifying the possibility of an avengers movie, i didn't know what to expect. will it be a great comic book movie in line with its marvel predecessors? will it be an indiana jonesy adventure flick? will it be chock full of action but story anemic or vice versa? will i stop asking questions and get on with the review?

it's really good. it's one of the best comic book movies ever made, with just the right amount of pulp and camp, action with impact, and a story that's rich and compelling. joe johnston directed the rocketeer, which was awesome, and he was able to infuse into captain america the positives that made rocketter one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. much like the super serum, he took the thin pages of the comic book and injected it with his vision and made it come to pulsating life on film. i love that he took time with the origin section to really capture the essence of steve rogers' character and give meaning to his every move as the blue boy scout. a satisfying spectacle from start to finish.

i admit, i wasn't initially convinced chris evans would fit the role. he's the guy who wore the whipped cream bikini in one movie and played human torch in the other, hard to take him seriously. but i guess i underestimated his acting skills because the dude delivered. with the help of seamless cgi tinkering, he embodied both versions of steve rogers to a tee. i cant even imagine now what the movie would have been like if will smith had been cast. also worth mentioning were the performances of tommy lee jones and hugo weaving.

speaking of mr. weaving, red skull was just superb. apart from the other obvious uses, the visual effects on the villain was amazing. the texture, contours, the lip movement, menacingly creepy but glues your eyes to the screen.  also, this is one of those films where you wonder if anything was left to gather dust in the cutting room floor at all because the narrative was smooth and fluid, with beat-perfect transitions between scenes instead of a firm chapter-based structure. heck, even the montages gelled well with the finely-tuned story progression.

marvel has done it once again. captain america is a testament that respect for the source material and the audience are the main components to a successful comic book adaptation. your move, dc.

good: the adaptation, pulp, chris evans

bad: peggy carter

ugly: hugo weaving

verdict: 9 vials of super serum

fucky barnes.