Freeze Frame Hall of Fame

Nerve's Freeze Frame Hall of Fame tests your knowledge of Hollywood's famous sex scenes.

You are Steven Shainberg's Secretary.



You know how to ease a nervous partner into kinky scenarios. And you're smart enough to know that 9 1/2 Weeks is way overrated.

The Art of Travel

The Art of Travel is Alain de Botton's rather philosophical meditation on the allure of travel. This is a more introspective take on why we travel: the excitement of impending alienation, our curiosity at new cultures, and how we are finally disappointed when we finally get to our destinations.

De Botton explores museums, wheat fields, motels, gas stations, airports. Each section is an illumination on the views and insights of various authors--Edward Hopper, Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh--on why exactly, we pine for adventures in places that are not our own turf. But be warned that this is not Lonely Planet or National Geographic. It's not even about postcards. One of the last essays even examines "travels in [your own] bedroom." If you're looking for adrenalin rush and extreme adventurism, this is not the book for you. But if you're into enlightenment and humanist enthusiasms and all that, then perhaps maybe.

The Art of Travel is my Book #5.

Everyone has had more sex than me

Phunny Bhunny in this hilarious pseudo-rock video: Everyone has had more sex than me!

Line drawings in Flash, pero super funny grabe!

Crumbs

Sabi ni DepEd Sec Florencio Abad, maging happy na raw tayo sa P3k
matatanggap (di pa dumarating, kaya wag usugin) na "Valentine's Day
Bonus" simula bukas, 14 Feb na galing sa kabutihang palad ni PGMA. At dahil mga 75% ng Team Angas ay government workers,heto ang report galing sa inq7:


Be happy you're getting P3,000 bonus, Abad tells workers

Posted 04:07pm (Mla time) Feb 13, 2005
Inquirer News Service

GOVERNMENT employees should be thankful they are getting a belated
P3,000 bonus this month considering they were not supposed to get
any cash gift at all, Education Secretary Florencio Abad said
Saturday.
"I'm happy with that (P3,000) because for a while I thought there
would be no bonus at all," Abad said.

He said Malacañang had been considering not giving a bonus anymore
to the 1.2 million state employees.

Several state-employee unions had balked at the amount of the bonus,
P3,000, as it fell short of the P5,000 they had received in December
2003.

The head of the DepEd non-teaching employees union, Domingo Alidon,
said the amount was too low considering that salaries had not risen
over the past four years.

Abad said state employees should look at it as a case of the glass
being half-full instead of half-empty.

It was "something positive" that should be appreciated, he said.

With 500,000 teachers and non-teaching staff, the education
department accounts for nearly half of the entire government
bureaucracy.

Malacañang announced in December that it was scrapping its
traditional practice of handing out a P5,000 cash gift to each state
employee at the end of the year, known as the productivity
enhancement pay.

Confronted by protesting employees, the Palace promised to give the
bonus in February.

Last week, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the government
could afford to give bonuses of from P1,000 to P2,000 only.

But the employees again protested, and the President raised the
amount to P3,000, calling it a "Valentine's Day bonus."

"The reason it got so delayed was because the (Department of Budget
and Management) had to compute the savings generated by all
departments," Abad said.

The bonus is supposed to come from the savings of each department or
agency.

Abad said the bonus was meant to thank all employees for helping to
bring down the budget deficit. Dona Pazzibugan

Sunday Bloody Sunday

The only good thing I could say about today was that while I was feeling sort of sick (noodle knees, headache and cold and all) I sat through Penelope Gilliatt’s screenplay of Sunday Bloody Sunday. The film directed by John Schlesinger was about love in London, circa 1971 and had as a backdrop London’s union strikes. I don’t know what it is about British films, but they always have strikes of some sort. Off the top of my head, I can think of Brass Off and even Full Monty.

Like what the blurb said, Sunday Bloody Sunday was “about 3 decent people. They will break your heart.” It was about “love in London,” and yes, they totally broke my heart. I fully expected a bloodbath or at least some action, as the film title promised that. Alas, there was no violence, and the characters were too polite and unconfrontational for their own good, I wanted to clobber them all on the head to save me from falling into a coma.

The characters in question, the young divorcee Alex and the handsome forty-something doctor Daniel had never met each other. But they did share one common interest, 25-year-old Bob Elkin. That alone pushed me to give this book a chance. A love triangle! Involving good looking Londoners with presumably good teeth! Afternoon delight it was not. So Bob was having an affair with both Alex and Daniel, and everyone seems to know about it.

Alex and Bob were friends with a couple of academics out to spend a weekend out of town and could they please look over their brood? Their baby sitting skills were tested when the kids started smoking pot, and the kids ask them back: "Are you bourgeois?" Then the little revelation that the kids watched mum and pop take a bath together. Alex hinted that their hippie couple friends wanted her and Bob to get married, Bob got bored and left Alex so he could join Daniel. Everyone goes about avoiding each other. It’s really a problem of whether Bob could continue living like this and have them both.

The solution was for Bob to be such an ass and just leave everyone hanging on air. He left for America when he couldn’t stand it anymore. Forcing both parties to sulk and get sullen. But Daniel and Alex did get to meet each other in the end, as it turned out that Daniel was also friends with the hippie couple. It was this really awkward moment where they shook each other’s hand and said, “We haven’t really met, but I do know who you are.”

The only interesting character here, and the only one who gets some real action, was the girl from the answering service. Apparently, in 1971, there were no automatic answering machines. There’s something like an operator to whom you can leave and retrieve messages. Message Girl knew all along that Bob Elkin kept two lovers. It’s the sort of vicarious living pager operators must have had. At one point, Alex calls Bob and there was no answer. She was getting really frustrated and Message Girl suggests they call Dr. Hirsch’s number, as Bob was almost always there. One could imagine the cattiness in her voice. Naturally, Alex declined.

Sunday Bloody Sunday was a misnomer. The film might have been better but I wouldn’t know. I only had the screenplay to judge it by. And oh, there's a very nosy "Aunt Astrid" in the movie. But still. So there you go, Book # 4 was a bust.

Hothouse

Hothouse is a collection of photographs with an accompanying essay detailing the rise and fall of the daring young men and women in Hollywood and the music business. All images were culled from Rolling Stone. This book came out in 2000, so some of the people there might have gathered moss, decayed or just plain disappeared from plain view. Would a lichen covered Ricky Martin do for you? Maybe not now, but when His Cuteness Ricky Martin splashed his way through a pool and across the stage during the 98 World Cup, that was news.

The cover image is Angelina Jolie rising from a pool. I don't know what it is with the photographers and their fascination with water, but well, if you're hot, you need to cool off? That sort of rational, err....

But my favorite portraits in the entire collection are those of Christina Ricci (the really close one wherein she looks like she just woke up, all wide eyed innocence) and of Leonardo di Caprio (smoking in a rundown New York hotel room). Both portraits were by Mark Seliger.

So there you go, Hothouse is my Book #3.