climbing mount molehill

day three of my battle with general sniffles and his mucous army and i decide to pick up my imaginary pencil and make the blinking cursor vomit words into a blog post. with the digital dust and web cobwebs cleared, i type the first thing that comes into my mind:

i hate the duke of bloomberg.

don't want to talk about that so let's move on to the second thing that enters the thought theater:

"practice makes perfect. nobody's perfect. so why practice?"

contrary to what you might be thinking, i do not approve this piece of flawed logic. i have seen and heard it countless times and frankly my dear, i think it's a crock of bull. the first time i encountered it was in grade school, read it off a pocketbook of jokes because that was the stuff i was into during those years, along with burning paper edges and discovering porn. back then, my young smoke-filled and porn-baptized brain believe it was brilliant. it was right. it was three puzzle pieces perfectly connecting. and then i grew up and realized i've been misled, round the same time i found out santa claus didn't actually exist.

anyway, i hated it when the gears clicked and rang "bullshit" and i hated it even more when it got passed around through text messages. (and may the flying spaghetti monster have mercy on the soul of any person who deems it proper to use as a facebook status today) but the instance i hated it the most was when a local movie used it in the main character's speech because the writers couldn't come up with their own and simply hoped someone who had lived under a rock would at least giggle at it. but the movie's facepalm-worthiness did not end there. i did not watch the darn thing, so how did i know that the quote was in it? because they had the gall to put it in the trailer. yes, they honestly believed that the most effective way to sell the comedy movie to the public was to use an overused quote that wasn't even funny.

so what makes this logic wrong? the fact that it assumes that the things described as perfect in the first two sentences are the same. let's look at the second one first. nobody is perfect. what this simply implies it that no "person" is perfect. now, to the first sentence. practice makes perfect. what do you practice? singing, dancing, murdering, etc. with enough time and effort, you can perfect the singing or dancing of a particular song. sure, the perfection is subjective to the viewer or listener but that song was made in a particular way and that by achieving the same level of performance the song was meant for is considerable as perfect. so practicing can in fact help perfect a certain "action".

so sentences one and two don't really connect as perfectly as i had once thought. both are true but do not contradict one another because they do not pertain to the same thing. practice makes perfect because you can keep practicing until you perfect an "action" but no one can't practice being a "person" because that's just who you are. so even though nobody is perfect, it has no relation to the question practicing because you still have to practice to be perfect at something.

yes, this is me overthinking the mundane. and yes, this was a long and pointless exercise, apart from the idea that i needed to update this decaying blog. so,  thank you for wasting your time with me.


p.s. most trailers of pinoy movies are badly edited. especially comedies, where they pack all the jokes they have in them. i admit to have watched these kind of movies before but when i did, i definitely did not laugh at the jokes previously showcased in the trailer. a large majority of the moviegoers did, however, and i was like, wasn't that in the trailer that was on tv every fucking hour?!
p.p.s. my blog has risen from the dead. it is now a zombie blog. or a zomblog.

every saturday i have home planet sickness

most of my dreams are weird. me flying is a common thing, even when im quite sure it's against the sandman's predetermined script. i once had a dream where the world was ending and the only way to stop it was to speak a word written on a cave wall. i have since forgotten what that word was so sorry, world. another unforgettable dream i had was what i called the loop where i kept waking up into a dream (predating inception by more than a decade), the scariest nightmare i've ever had.

anyways, the one i had last is right up that alley. in the dream i slept and dreamed another dream that was somehow connected to the first layer dream, and i was discussing it with someone i cant remember who. but the one thing that latched on to my consciousness was what was written on the shirt i was wearing which i saw when i faced a mirror (which is weird in itself because even though i was facing a mirror, the words weren't backwards):

EVERY SATURDAY I HAVE HOME PLANET SICKNESS

to me, it's a year's worth of wtf. i'll never know how my brain came up with that or where it picked that up. first thing i did when i opened my eyes was get up, of course, and then turn on my father's laptop, sit on the swivel chair, click the chrome shortcut and search the exact sentence in google. zilcho. so i sought refuge in reddit and asked for help. first reply i got was the most obvious explanation: you're an alien. well, im not. some said it could be a mnemonic thing like every good boy does fine. some said, in support of the alien theory, that saturday means saturn's day, and so i have home planet sickness on that particular day because my home planet is saturn. some said it's the result of my brain just putting a bunch of subconscious data together, which i already know.

overly long sigh. i guess i'll never get a definite answer to this riddle because i think that would mean trying to make sense of the mysterious ways the brain works. i just thought maybe it was something that already existed and my mind just plagiarized it. i'll be content with knowing it was an original subconscious creation.

p.s. what im quite sure of is im gonna have that printed on a shirt. yeah.

a thousand words

i'm not a photographer nor am i an expert in photography. im not even sure if they're the same thing. but i do know shit from gold. also, i hate trends. so when this picture-taking trend exploded, i saw shit everywhere. suddenly, every person with a dslr hanging from their neck is a photographer. suddenly, they're watermarking their snapshots and offering their services online. it's like these people bought a sword from the store and started calling themselves warriors. well, money can buy happiness but it can't buy talent.

sure there are workshops and trainings out there, but those can only do so much. oftentimes, these gatherings produce only by-the-book photographers who can't think beyond what they've learned. as i've said before, true talent is inborn and it can't be replicated by wannabes.

so what do these incompetent buffoons do? they turn to photoshop. what their photos lack, photoshop provides. didn't have proper lighting? tweaking curves and levels will do the trick. boring background? add some royalty free clouds. lines on subject's face? airbrush that crap out. airburshing gets the most abuse as some magazines have covers sporting mannequins. what is wrong with these people? great photographers plan and prepare for their shots. they don't just push the shutter button and let photoshop handle the rest. a little color correction and editing some unwanted stuff is okay. but beyond that is a subtraction to the photographer's credit.

i knew someone who photoshops every picture taken and actually proud of it. they'd add grunge effects, filters, textures and the like just to make the photo "better". they'd take a picture and then make it black and white in photoshop. why not shoot it in black and white in the first place? what's the dslr for then? it's acceptable to do all of these digital manipulations on a photo from a point-and-click digicam. a dslr is expensive for a reason: there are things you can achieve with it that you cannnot with a digicam and you should spend time to learn them instead of depending on software to cheat and fool your fans/clients.

so to anyone who owns a dslr, print this and stick it right below the viewfinder: great photographers don't rely on photoshop.



p.s. there are only 373 words on this post.
p.p.s. christopher lao: if you are so goddamn smart as your allies say you are, you should have admitted your mistake of turning your car into a buoy instead of being a total douchebag idiot and blaming others for not telling you what's already obvious. fuck you.

year two

for two years, you have endured my existence and forgave my shortcomings. i am a slob, a deviant and an occasional asshole, but you've put up with me every time. a medal forged from a meteor won't even suffice to represent how awesome you are. i love you, m'lady. for everything you've been/done/given to me, thinks.

the tranquil monarch

when i was young,the only thing i knew about papang was that he was rich. he was like a beardless santa claus to us. on the rare occasions he would visit, my siblings, cousins and i would line upon his arrival, one hand ready for the mano, the other palm upward for the legal tender. on our birthdays, he'd come and bring the best gifts. these appearances became fewer as we grew up until the tables were reversed and we visited him instead. and we realized that he was not ours alone. he was zeus, who had many wives and fathered many children, who in turn gave him other grandchildren. however, we didn't feel different about him for we had nothing but respect for him.

being a man of a few words, he did not force it upon us; it was automatic. being with him was like being with a king. you had to be at your best behavior. even the drunkards and boors knew courtesy in his presence. part of it as, i guess, his lotharian legacy. but im pretty sure it was primarily because, at his age, he was still hard at work. instead of reading newspapers on a rocking chair, he went to his office and did paperwork and managed his business. (once, i was going home on a holiday and he was in his office signing papers.) and he'd been doing this his whole adult life. he was a self-made man and i admired him for it. he was my don corleone.

that's why it tore my heart to pieces when i found out he had passes away. it was too sudden. i did not know that visiting him in the hospital was the last time i'd see him breathing. he'd been sick before but he recovered from it quickly. some people say that it was his time. i& disagree. it was not his time. i just had lunch with him about a month ago and he was in a great health. on the day he was admitted to makati med, he was still giving detailed orders to my father regarding the business. it was not his time to go. death miscalculated.

when my wife told me on the phone, the tears just burst. i really had no inkling that he wouldn't survive. had i known when i was in the icu room, i could have at least said thank you to him for everything we owe him. which is a lot.

papang always insisted that i was smart. everytime my name would pop up in a conversation, he'd comment how smart i was. i was a very intelligent kid, but he kept this up even when i dropped out of college and basically messed up my life. now that i've pulled myself together with my own family and a stable job, i thought i was on my way to live up to what he'd been bragging about. it's too sad that he'll never get to see me prove worthy of the surname and make him completely proud of me as his first grandchild. it's even sadder that he'll never get to know his great granddaughter better, and vice versa.

wherever he is now, he's probably with mamang and getting the biggest ear-pinching of his life, but happy nonetheless, because the greatest advantage of having many families is the vast amount of genuine love we collectively give him back. rest in peace, papang.

p.s. of course, my grandchildren shall call me papang.

cornholio

holy tp for my bunghole, batman! beavis and butt-head have returned! yes! three exclamation points!!!





i remember first day in college and some guy was having us go around the school and do get-to-know-each-other-better stuff, one question everyone had to answer was: what's your favorite tv show? 90% of my classmates said friends. when it was my turn, i said "beavis and butt-head" and they all laughed like i was joking. and so i was like "duh, it's like the best fucking thing to ever go through cathode ray tube. for your insolence, i should all scoop your eyes out with a spoon and wear em like a monk's bead necklace!" in my head. (and that, my friends, is your pre-facebook years useless memory story for today.)

anyways, ive been a big fan of the deviant duo ever since i saw their first short "frog baseball" on liquid television. cant wait for october and find out which music videos they'll critique.

p.s. another one who needs to come back: migraine boy.

TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON by jaiskizzy

gist: after saving the world twice from decepticons, life seems to be back to normal for sam "ladiesman217" witwicky with a new out-of-his-league girlfriend and a struggle to find a job. meanwhile, the autobots have been doing some freelance asskickin and on one of their 'con hunts, they uncover a government secret that would make conspiracy junkies crap bricks: the old space race was caused by a cybertronian ship that crashed on the moon. earth is once again the ring for an all-out robot royal rumble that will finally determine the fate of mankind and the franchise's fourth film.

reaction: the needs of many outweight the needs of a few and the many disappointed geeks who watched revenge of the fallen needed a better movie, myself included. part two wasn't a piece of crap but it was near the raped-my-childhood level, particularly with the devastator bullshit. so explosions expert, michael bay, was given a chance to close the trilogy and redeem himself. end result: although this threequel is far from the excellence of the first, it definitely makes the second one forgivable.

michael bay is the go-to guy when you want to blow stuff up in movies. he has mastered the art of mayhem. every action sequence with the bots was pitch perfect. i couldnt imagine how he sets these up. you see a decepticon flipping cars over and a car that transforms then reverts to car mode and you believe it because it looks real. that alone is a testament to michael bay's distinct destruction direction. sure, he needs to do a lot of homework plot-wise but lots of other directors have that covered. only a completely misguided moron would come into a michael bay film and expect the profound and the pathos of kubrickian scale. the same idiot would easily get bored at the non-action parts. it's mike's weakness, yes, but these scenes are there for a reason. one is so that you could catch your breath. they dont require you to cerebrate, you just have to pay the same attention you gave the pyrotechniques and listen. (and if you did, you'd actually have known what a certain character was going to do long before) i really think there should be a sign outside to leave your elitist snob hat or the adhd cap of your inner child at the entrance and enjoy the mecha porn.

in the first two films, sam is thrust into the fray mostly because he cant opt out. here, with the world oblivious to his heroics, he involves himself by his choosing, making the character more mature, and i believe shia did really well portraying that. backing him up are some new faces, great actors in silly roles. malkovich as a crazy boss and mcdormand as a quirky government agent. but i liked the addition of tudyk the best. dutch needs a movie of his own. and so we arrive at the meat of the matter, the switcheroo issue that everyon's fussing about more than the film itself. am i alone in liking carly better than mikaela? megan fox has the two-movie, fantard-following edge, she's sex appeal in the flesh but she cant act to save her life. rosie huntington-whiteley, although nowhere near oscar material, had greater range as a first-time actress. also she had something megan fox doesnt: charm. and that british accent easily disqualifies her as a skank. case in point: in part one, the first time sam's parents sees mikaela, she just stands there, exuding the trophy-gf vibe to stress how lucky sam got. here, everytime sam introduces carly to anyone, she's so bubbly and affable. bottom line: cameron diaz clone > ms. stubby thumbs.

other things i liked were how real world events were incorporated into the mythos, the flying squirrel scene, and the comic relief. and i'll say as little as i can about the cgi cast to avoid spoilers. it's still good to hear peter cullen voicing optimus prime. it was cool to hear leonard nimoy as sentinel prime who looks just like him. liked the new ferrari autobot but not the wreckers. was still hoping to see starscream (my fave) as the scheming sycophant but alas he's underused yet again. still no sign of the dinobots or unicron. and when optimus prime said they had a ship that can take them to the moon, i thought sky lynx? omega supreme?!? but nah. it was astrotrain. (just kidding) also, absence of gestalts was a big minus.

anyways, transformers: dark of the moon was not the best way to end the trilogy (kinda abrupt) but it's entertainingly satisfying. the long queue an hour before screening, the applause when the credits roll and the growing profit from ticket sales mean only one thing: even if there's a decepticon that transforms into a toilet and rosie huntington-whiteley sits on it for two hours, people will come to watch. actually, that's a good idea if you think about it.


the good: the bots, the mayhem, the new chick
the bad: lack of strong story and character development
the ugly: john malkovich
the verdict: 8 energon detectors



sentinel grime