micro-blogging

for the last few days, i was just glued to the computer screen. rather than write something decent or study, i've been infiltrating the pop culture blogosphere. i can't remember what i've been reading anymore -- reviews, gossips, relevant news, profiles, the meanderings of the A-lists and wannabes. i've been surveying celebrity blogs, more like stare at their photos really. some of them post a select gallery of their travels. i couldn't paint singapore with all the trimmings and romanticism as regular tourists like them do. to me, there's no such phantasm as a poetic vision of the london tubes, specially not during the peak of the rush hour. the outsider point of view is always straight out of a van gogh work of art. but those trapped within the confines of the ghoulish structures and behaviors are jaded from the persistent encounters not only with some emulous specifics but with the paradigm of baby jane hudson.

high school trekking

as it has nearly been 20 years since i've graduated from high school, i've been snooping around the web trying to track down all my classmates to show interest in our alumni activities. it's not an easy job considering we're scattered all over the globe and live in different time zones. it's not actually quite 20 years yet but we have to get down to business in preparation for hosting our silver jubilee. with the influx of a variety of technological innovations since we were in our teens, the communication process would be deemed much easier to conduct and operate. but it's not. e-mails are left hanging. texts evaporates into thin air. in this age of social networking, one is acutely aware the last time a friend last logged-in unto their friendster profiles. but there are those very few who responded with unbridled fervor and enthusiasm. with the warm response, i'm immensely grateful. there are reunion photographs from the centennial six years ago i couldn't trace. the hours i'm laboring unearthing classmates details and photographs pins me away from specified chores and errands.

our class has a yahoo group since may 2002, all the messages are intact but the photo attachments from that year are all gone. the methods in saving photos merely half a decade ago are already primitive compared to today. if only our previous homepage is still running. yes, we had a website before. but you know how registered domain names work. starting over from scratch isn't like learning a new slang, more like embedding a new language in one's consciousness.

i was looking at websites of the younger batches. i chanced upon one of my brothers. he's six years younger. the site was talking about stars and constellations and such. we were three years or was it four years removed from such curriculum experimentation. but then we expect the younger generation to be more tech savvy than older graduates like us who were schooled in the milieu and rudiments of snail mails, typewriters and unreliable telephone landlines. however after undergoing a fabulous makeover, a sense of rejuvenation pervades the air. the work would ultimately be rewarding and well worth it.

web totterings

it has been a while since i've clicked the buttons for some E! channel fix, add to that some news conduits i just loved to focus on with laudable reports and documentaries about the state of the world. but with deluge of the number of television channels available for all of us to spend our much-valued idle hours, to be stuck on just one is rather limiting our growth as observers of current and historical events.

however pinoy showbiz is moving on a reversed path, it's still embedded in the dark ages of the studio system. people are drawn to network rivalries much more now than ever before. i can still recall in my youth when no such thing as a hideous network war exist, fans weren't as mean and derogative. these followers with web connections have been molded into a malevolent cluster of denigrators in forums and comments sections. i've tackled this subject before. draped and hidden in anonymity, detractors freely post noxious remarks. there's no excuse for crass comments.

however fans are eternally deluded despite negative publicities on their favorite stars, just as i still watch mel gibson movies. at the end of the day, one's body of work says it all. our views will always differ, as we're divided by hemispheres in this planet. east is east and west is west.

ploning

one of the obstacles of being far away from home shores are the months of waiting to watch a local pinoy film on dvd. the film's home page is arresting. the finish product, recorded through live sound and based on the trailer is well-crafted.

i can't wait to see the whole lot.

this one's for me.

witch hunt

a day before the masters last week, the papers were proliferated with all things tiger woods. it was a bit too much, really. he didn't win and despite finishing second, which for any other masters-less golfer, a guarantee for a slot next year, wasn't really in contention. i miss all the drama in the final as i scheduled an extra workday on a monday.

there was also the london marathon last sunday, good for charities. i saw some photos of friends who didn't actually ran but donated their much-valued time and energy in lifting up generous causes. but were all the kissing and hobnobbing sincere? does singing spaghetti pababa or something to that effect, that therapeutic? the same person who shared to me the sex bomb song anecdote likewise thrashed a sports fan by a quick remark against a gooner. it may have been in passing but it never fails to sting me.

i know some people don't follow sports. but for those of us who do. we are not that bad. we just know our michael phelps from our brian jouberts to the pau gasols of this world. reading about bode miller lights up our day, mine specially and he's got party-boy presence. europe and america are in stark contrast with their sports priorities. asia is a whole new planet. england may have spawned the current world pool 9-ball champion darryl peach, however his huge victory in the philippines was not covered in the papers. but we swore over our batas and our djangos.

obviously, david beckham is worshipped by women more than men. but other than his worldly good looks he's actually an excellent right-winger. his corners are amongst the best in the universe. so what do women talk about aside from coveting the latest louis vuittons? american idol, the last night out, the latest gossip about a common enemy are never out of the list. the bitching has to stop.

peripheries

one of the upsides in maintaining a blog is not only the opportunity to connect with friends and strangers but also to rant about our daily lives; whine and complain about the nasty fiend who made an impact that one fine day or for the rest of our lives.

vile encounters aren't always easy to avoid. it's not often an argument. but it could might well be a simple comment or an adjunct answer to a query that hits the glitch and makes one examine the aftermath of her goofs.

i don't really read enough, especially the science and rumblings of work. endless domestic chores get in the way of scanning and skimming theories and mechanisms of the myriad of organ systems that generates life.

caught unguarded without the defense of common sense, i did get decimated this week. but the good part of every bad experience is we learn from condescension and prejudice. i don't reckon those members of the faculty do blogs or write as good as my friend joy. they might be in facebook with fixtures of them hammered from planned or random functions with mr. pinot and madame merlot. it's unlikely the duo would be in the top ten of flixter's never-ending movie quiz.

just as i am struggling to add laugh-ins while i'm typing these morsels, i'm mulling over gender-based sense of humor. on the basis of jim carrey or bill murray and the dearth of women comic talents in the mold of julia louis-dreyfus, tina fey, amy poehler, jo brand-- women at the top of the hierarchy or those in the slightly lower rungs but enamored with their bourgeois specialties needs to lighten up a bit. sneak in a droll or two in formal lectures and demonstrations or when just in the same room together exchanging ideas and opinions about bringing up the baby. humor, in a way, makes female bosses less of a tyrant.

time to hit the books. i'll try anyway.

football fight club

trapped in a swirling mood pendulum last week, two dvd's aimed at the macho market caught my fancy. films about gangs are not for the squeamish and the fainthearted. the scenarios portrayed in movies are actually milder compared to the real thing. sports are a mere backdrop for the passion for violence. do real men crave for the fight club to feel good about themselves?

the football factory, directed by nick love, adapted from a novel by john king, delves into the core of a group of chelsea fans who experience a rush in unearthing their inner id, whether it's with the feud and rivalry within the firm, the fued and rivalry with rival firms or the one-off turmoils within the narrator's conscience.

the firm, (not to be confused with the film adaptation starring suri's dad), is a 1988 bbc release with gary oldman as a real estate agent sporting an authentic working class accent, depicts thatcher's britain in all it's petulant glory and in the mode of director's alan clarke's study on social realism. it's more of the same as the former, as rival football fans battle it out in the streets week in and week out. the firm has a more defined edge than love's offering as it focuses on the main plot rather than on subplots on world war 2 veterans and a morality tale on one prejudiced tosser.

as shown on the real football factory on bravo, a documentary hosted by danny dyer, the actor who plays the central figure of the movie version, the reality is even more petrifying than any prudish imagination could conjure. besides england isn't that bad at all. in brazil, they shoot each other.

tweaks

now i feel sleepy. i woke up so early this morning with the thought of going to work. but the calendar i was glancing was one of make-believe rather than the actual copy that stunned me when i was immersed in the rush hour.

but the dates were clear. still i didn't go back to bed.
i trawled the web. i hoovered. i frolicked in the kitchen.
the twinges though are just being delayed by a few hours,
not entirely abandoned for the day.

the masters awaits this weekend. certainly not a hot topic amongst the broads in the circle.

introverted blurbs

back in the days of my youth when the web was still science fiction, i would read tons and tons of banal romantic paperbacks. that was my alternative lovelife. i wasn't the dating kind, not in the mold of some of my friends who attracted suitors like sports illustrated swimsuit models. by the time i was 14, i've read all my mom's mills and boons collection and joined a book club thereafter until i reached 20.

in those enchanting pages, the men were always gorgeous and loaded. the women maybe feisty, sometimes mousy but were a tad bit conservative. i may have outgrown those shrivelled novellas after graduating from formal learning. but i'm still grateful it laid the groundwork for my constant craving for the erudite terrain. but all the page-turning, in some ways, also turned me secluded from the social scenes of my immediate circles --- an ascetic freak rather than a recluse? waht's the difference?

with all the advancement through the years, from youtube to recorded television, ipods and high-powered cellular phones (we didn't even have a landline in my teens), e-mails and social networking sites, the information overload shouldn't drag us into boredom. attending a soiree once in a while shouldn't be distressing, as long as it's bereft of bitchiness. better said than done. but possible.

deviating warps

london never fails to remind me of manila. during rush hour in the tubes, the stations are always awashed with the thickest fog of bodies. the main difference is that the coterie at victoria station are more spruced up than the crowd at MRT cubao. i got into a gibberish mood with a colleague last week and i recommended watching ballet as a source of relieving stress. she gave me a riposte along the lines of "why should i choose ballet over the drum beats of my culture?"

i've never thought of ballet as too western an influence. i always think of shakespeare as my own kin. or of hollywood as my hollywood and madonna and michael jackson as filipino icons. despite that, i love filipino balarila and tagalog movies. but i cherish hiligaynon more as it's the language of home. bacolod is home. negros is like a magical place with its vast sugarcane plantations and the dust that never fails to settle when one ventures to the far north to escalante. filipinos amongst themselves are collectivist by nature, engaging in spirit, amiable in mindsets.

albeit despite embracing all things foreign, we have to weather a few disdainful stares from the elite G8 citizens. it seems the first world folks never fail to look down on the lowly peasants of the impecunious realms. but burrowing deeper, every person regardless of race are on even keel. there might be rich-poor allegories, but no greater-lesser persons. anybody with a sprinkling of awareness knows that. but some unfortunate souls don't and they would give you the stare. so it's better to equip ourselves with all the armories and stare back, if not pepper them with unbridled charm and sweetness and namedrop literary figures.