hello pipol!
tagal ko ring nawala. hehehe.
musta na?

dami rin nangyari sa akin nitong nakaraang taon.

una sa lahat, di ko na na-update yung ibang website ko.
busy kasi.

anyway, ano ang costumes ng block sa kasal ng ating beloved diva? tuloy pa ba ang baul plan o bean bags na lang ba?

may sako yata kami sa bahay...

Nagkita kami ni Dennis just before kami umalis ng Baguio kagabi. Had to fill him in sa mga workshop chismis otherwise baka daw "bumula" ang aking bibig. More kwentos later.

I'm looking forward to Astrid and Arlyn's visit on Sunday. Jessel are you coming? I'm sorry I forgot to bring in Last Order sa Penguin from LB. I hope to remember next time. I'm worried that they won't let us out after lunch. I'll just text you guys. I'm glad you made Myke's acquaintance. Roy, Caloy, and Chu was my adoptive circle back in Ateneo. Except for Caloy, they all got to see my cubicle in Los Banos when they went there for Myke's stuff.

Let's see. Before I leave, a few items. Book 21 is A Pedagogy for Liberation which was a dialogue between Ira Shor and Paulo Freire on anti-brick-in-the-wall education. The dialogue format is nice. I'm used to the interview format as in Foucault in Power/Knowledge (if I remember right). Dialogue is good fun. I got so engrossed that I spilled iced tea all over my pancakes in McGonads. And all over the book. It's probably food for the ants now in LB.

Book 22 is Three Great Plays of Euripides: Medea, Hippolytus, Helen as translated by Rex Wagner. Say you you remember Medea? Phil-am theater? Monica even remembers the accent and the actors, features and all. All I could really recall was the morning and the queue. When was that? Six, seven years ago? Damn, I'm getting old. You first though Astrid, and before you, Arlyn, harhar!

Book 23 is A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt. The play's about the last years of Sir Thomas More. This play gave me an interesting intertext to The Night Thoreau Spent in Prison. Both were splendid studies of compromise and conviction. However, A Man for All Seasons felt much more grave and the character of Thoreau felt almost chilly contrasted with this take on More. I wish I saw it staged. They staged it here, I know, because I can still play the radio ad in my head. That was back when the William J. Shaw Theater was up. (Have they fixed the place? What's in its place? Repertory calls RCBC home now, I think.)

I hope to see you guys on Sunday, if ever.

Oh well. Is that the cat blog? I already found that through Dennis some time ago.

In other blog worlds, I'm trying to make sense of Movable Type and I still need to read the freaking manual.

Musta ang Baguio mga iha? Mukhang lumalabo ang aking chances to go there dahil I have a balikbayan friend who's here for the weekend lang.

yes bading si mykel. but a very very talented bading. he blogs, too. check out my blog for the link.

Backtracking din. Gasp! Whaddayamean exactly na magaling siyang bading? Tell me it isn't so. Wala lang. *charing*

Honga dennis, nilalamon mo ba ang mga lecheng libro? Singit lang din: Am reading The New Yorker's compilation of New York stories. I was thinking more along the sentimental "I heart NY" stories, something more Woody Allen-ish slash Carrie's Sex and the City NY bit. But no, unang salpok pa lang sa istorya ni John Cheever harassment at stalker na agad ang bumungad. Nakakailang kuwento na ako and still none of that breathlessness and adoration that I've expected. Kahit yung selection from Woody Allen, "The Whore of Mensa," it's kinda wry and and it's poking fun at all the pa-intellectual ka-ek-ek-an. Well more on that later. I'm not counting the book down for the list yet kasi di ko pa tapos. Just got it on loan kasi mahal yung libro.

Also on my floorside table (if there's such a thing) is The Onion's Dispatches From the Inner Circle. I don't know if it's just me, or I'm not as amused as I used to be with Da Sibuyas Chronicles. Oh well.

Btw, mga ka-angas, I'm meeting up with PosterBoy tomorrow so he can hand me our invites to the wedding. And no, wala pa akong costume. And yes, delikadong makaakyat ako ng baguio this coming weekend because I'm an indentured slave and I've been sentenced to attend the grad ceremonies. Feh.

Haven't even blogged decently in a long while. There will be changes soon, but that's after the dust has settled. So a t, tell me more about this baguio bit when you come back.

Lastly: Done with Book # x, All The Right Moves by Tara Sering. I never did get the happy ending I so wanted, or maybe not. Got the book for Php50, which is really a bummer since I got another book from the same series for a more exorbitant price. Paying through the nose, as always.

pucha dennis! malingat lang ako ng sandali ke dami dami mo nang binasang libro!!! andito ako baguio. singit lang internet. oks naman. saka na ang chika. pwede ko pang ilagay na books # ang mga manuscript namin niluray luray ng panels? grabe, sobrang elibs ako ke andrada. galing galing ng bading! will be back in a week. me costume na ba kayo?

Okay so we'll hear from Astrid next week or next, next week? Jess, are you teaching this summer?

Book 17 is my Holy Week reading, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus by the existentialist Karl Jaspers. I liked the study of the philosophical consequences of the Paradigmatic Four.

Book 18 is The Facts, the first autobiography of Louis Althusser. It was written in 1976, four years before his strangulation of his wife, nine years before his more thorough autobiography came out, and fourteen years before he himself died of a heart attack.

Book 19 is Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince. I just realized I haven't really read the thing save for excerpts and this abridged volume that covered only the last chapters. I reflected on faculty politics as I read this one. Fun read, harhar. Book 20 is Labyrinths by Papa Borges.

I hope you guys are well. I'm short of load again.

Dahil ako ay naooverwhelm sa inyong mga binabasa lately at naiinis dahil wala akong matapos-tapos na libro kahit na alam kong bakasyon na ang all. Ibo-blog ko na lang ang mga movies na napanood ko na mga books turned to films.
Una, ang Last Temptation of Christ dahil in the spirit of the season. Pangalawa naman ay House of Sand and Fog. Kapansin pansin kung napanood mo na ang iba pang mga Jennifer Connelly movies, meron silang recurring motifs tulad na dock by the beach at may bath tub scenes. Makikita ito sa mga pelikulang Requiem for a Dream, Dark City at House of Sand and Fog. Alam kaya ng mga director ang mga ginagawa nila o sobra silang fans ng mga Jennifer Connelly movies na gusto nila paulit-ulit ang mga ganitong scenes? Who knows?

Gusto mong mag join? Punta kami sa bahay ng friend ko sa Morong. SUper nice yung house at mahilig magluto yung brother niya. Ang tripping ay i-explore ang Rizal-Laguna area.

Ano'ng mga balak ninyo sa Semana Santa?

By Means of Pos(t)ing

See that title? The pa(ren)thetical pseudo-Derridean form is a Collegian favorite. Sorry, I just had to pull one off. I'll try not to make it a habit.

Okay, book 8 is the first part of The Epic of Humadapnon. That's 8,000 lines out of 53,000. The Hinilawod (a kinship of epics in Central Panay subsuming all the stories of the brothers, Labaw Donggon, Humadapnon, and Dumalapdap) is the longest recorded folk epic in the Philippines. The chanter Hugan-an was old at the time of the recording: 40 years ago. I wonder if her successors managed to appropriate all the lines? I wish I could get my hands on the entire thing. Unfortunately, the good Dr. Jocano has only published this first part.

My 9, 10, 11, and 12 are books 2, 3, 4, 5 of the Sandman. That's A Doll's House, Dream Country, Seasons of Mists, and A Game of You. I don't know if I got those in order. There's already much press on Gaiman pieces so I don't see need to note much here. I just note the fact that I finished 4 books on the list in 3 nights because graphic novels are allowed. Now I know what to get and read in case I get desperate for the 50! Harhar.

I also finally got to finish two volumes off the Borgesiana. Number 13 is a Universal History of Iniquity which tells you just how much one can get away with global 'Wanted: Dead or Alive' lists and notorious modus operandi if you know some good philosophy and neat paradoxes. The pieces here are more visceral than the usual Borges in that you see more guts spilling on the floor. Or off the cliff. Maybe I could claim that Borges foresaw violence as our generation's new porn? Well, multiple orgasms all around. I relished the take on the 47 ronin ('The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke') and Billy the Kid ('The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan'). If prompted to pick a favorite (rereadings usually shuffle the ranking), right now I'd say it's 'Man on Pink Corner'.

The next volume, my 14, carries two collections, The Book of Sand" and "Shakespeare's Memory". These are counted as his geriatrica and often overlooked as the old man Borges writing just to get left-over ink off his pen. The labyrinths of Borges, like Kafka, elicit the same range of emotions. What can you feel in a labyrinth? He is an acquired taste (that I will force on my students next semester, harhar), and it's entirely understandable to dismiss him after a few stories off El Aleph and Ficciones. I think that's what the venerable (or insufferable?) Bloom did. For me though, old man Borges is not old man Gabriel Garcia Marquez (whose Strange Pilgrims failed to stimulate me). Marquez seemed to write of different things but it's the same flavor. Inferior, I even venture. In The Book of Sand, you'd think Borges is just at it again with his riddles. I found in them a nice feeling of being told stories by an erudite anti-grandfather who is resigned in many ways but remains inextricable from his own haughty, intricate labyrinths. I'd say the wine has aged, but hell, I don't drink.

Shakespeare's Memory has three stories, 'August 25, 1983' (where Borges attends his old self in his suicide-bed), 'The Rose of Paracelsus' (where an old mage reminiscent of the wizard of the The Tempest keeps his erudition and magicks to himself), and the title story (where the scholar receives the gift of the Bard's memory). Despite the pleasure these afforded me, I am unusually silent about them. Harhar.

Number 15 is By Means of Performance, a collection of performance research and theory compiled and edited by Richard Schechner and Willa Appel in memory of the late, great Victor Turner. Some pieces are quite literary (if there is anything that is really not literary to define this against). Still, it is a textbook in last semester's subject. I'd rather not talk about it until I get my classcard.

Which brings me to book 16, 'Postmodern Culture' edited by Hal Foster. I read the essays of Habermas, Baudrillard, Said, Ullmer, and Jameson. I will not discuss these because I labor under the belief that 'postmodern' is something a poseur mentions in Starfucks and Shittles' Best conversations with hopes that someone from the other table will get oh-so-excited and ask to get laid. Oh well, maybe 'Borges' and 'Gaiman' belong somewhere on the same list. Maybe I put in a self-orientalist, tokenist reference to folk epics to get the guilt out of the way?

Perhaps. Ah well. The only way to get around posing in pose-modern culture is to pose as a poseur. I bet Holden Caufield never saw that possibility. It is actually worse though, I think. Facticity makes poseurs of us all. Salinger be damned! Better quit while I'm behind. I leave with one note on the last book then: interestingly, Pluto Press published Postmodern Culture in 1984 under the series title Pluto Classics.