From one weekend to the next. If I find a suitable connection in the gorges I'll update The White Papers. And to get the NaNoWriMo thing started. I will be *very* back on the second week of November.

I've seen some women swoon, throwing virtual panties at his page. I felt like reading straight from an FHM Philippines Mag, and now his blog, Mr. Pogi Points can't be found.

For those of you too young to know, Argee was the former Collegian writer who coined the term "pogi points".

I'm in. Good thing that Eleanor is around.

I hope it's the same as mine.

Seems that everybody is complaining of the heat except us here in Laguna, and yet we don't have an ammonia atmosphere. Am I sure I'm on the same planet as you are?

Memory is a funny thing. By its very nature, it is only something that you can appreciate when all is said and done. During the time that the memory is being created, when the very event itself is unfolding, you are in the moment – the ever-real present, the actual, the “now”. You are in the midst of life, your life, and more important than storing something as a future recollection is actually enjoying that instant of unfolding time.

--from an introduction by Dean Alfar

Click on the image to download or click here. A million thanks to Dean, and Oliver Pulumbarit for the cover artwork. And of course to the participants. See you in WB4!

hugms. Some bluetooth-enabled hugging machine.

December 10.

Soon you'll know.

(not WB3, fyi).

I think I've written "soon" too much. It's written on my forehead. I'm marrying it. Soon.

Just when we were discussing about LCD technology, electronic graffiti and moving postcards, check this out: paper-thin TV screens.

And coming out soon to a keypad near you: TV on Mobile. Speaking of, something which would dress my Eleanor up to the nines.

***

You thought we had lots of time in our hands.

me: may naisip lang ako
some engineer who wants himself called MTP: anu?
me: going back to filipinos being special...
me: parang masyado tayong busy na i-assure ang sarili natin na ok maging filipino
me: pero ang mga kapitbahay natin global na ang view nila.
me: mag-ka-college sa new york, magre-research sa italy about the renaissance.
MTP: childhood interrupted kasi tayo e
me: kasi inisip ko, masyado tayong busy maglinis ng bahay yung iba lumilipat na
MTP: nakikita ko ang tuldok mo
me: kitams
MTP: pero in a way the article says a lot of things about how pinoys are already global...
me: tingin ko marketing lang ang problema talaga. sad to say, di nag-a-apply ang bad publicity is still publicity sa atin.
me: Panspermia is the theory that seeds of life exist throughout the universe and that life on Earth arose when those seeds landed on our planet eons ago.
MTP: marketing nga lang. tingnan mo ang thailand at malaysia. ang galing magmarket ng tourism industry nila
me: true
MTP: saka dun sa book na 1000 places to see before you die, 3 lang daw ang galing sa pinas. mas marami pa ang thailand at vietnam
me: anong book yan?
MTP: 1000 places to see before you die nga
me: 1000 lang?
me: In evolutionary biology, the Red Queen Hypothesis states that a species must constantly be moving (adapting and evolving) in order to stay in the same place (remain in existence).
me: pwede na akong promil kid
MTP: pwede
MTP: nabasa mo na ba ang childhood's end?
me: hindi. parang ayoko.
MTP: why?
me: parang harsh eh
MTP: anyway. may view ako na parang ganun nangyari sa pinoy kaya ang worldview niya hindi global in the western sense
me: please expound
MTP: the title of the book implies that the human race is a child. and the overtakers came here to nurture that child
MTP: tapos nung ready na yung child, they welcomed that child into the wider galactic community of beings. kaya childhood's end
me: may mga concept din syang ganyan sa rama
MTP: oo nga. paulit ulit lang naman siya e. ganyan din sa 2001.
me: oo nga paulit-ulit. kainis.
MTP: anyway, back to pinoys, ang tingin ko naman hindi childhood's end. childhood interrupted nga
me: in-interrupt ni bonifacio
MTP: pwede, pero sa view ko in-interrupt ng mga colonizers
me: yung isang tingin ko naman, benevolent ang mga colonizers. benevolent assimilation remember?
MTP: kasi watak-watak noon, tapos pinag-sama-sama under one banner ang mga islands. hindi hinayaang either magdevelop into an archipelago of nations or an archipelago of one nation on its own
me: isang libo't isang tuwa
MTP: mula appari hanggang jolo
MTP: ayun. so walang integrated worldview ang pinoy ngayon. hilaw
MTP: di tulad ng japan, na archipelago rin, pero may sense of one-ness
me: there was a time na naisip ko what can possibly change the philippines is a civil war, or any event at the cataclysmic level.
MTP: sino ang maglalaban? tagalogs vs others?
MTP: hehe
me: pwede.
me: tapos sasamantalahin ng mindanao ang kaguluhan para magkaroon na ng bangsamoro
me: para madali nang mangibang-bansa di ba? sakay ka lang ng bus, nasa ibang lupalop ka na.
MTP: maganda yan. tapos in the end may leader na mag-yu-unite ng united states of the philippines
MTP: united islands
me: hmmm...mas gusto ko ata greater east asia co-prosperity sphere. he he he.
MTP: tapos magiging philippine dollar na ang pera
me: baguhin na rin ang pangalang philippines. kasi the civil war will be a time of high patriotic emotions.
MTP: Hinirang!
MTP: revolutionary president si dean. yihee

At last, the preparations for the third installment is drawing to a close. I was getting inquiries from every other blogger when will WB3 come out. Hold on to your horses, kids, it will be this October. Quite a tedious preparation pala, this anthology activity. I learned the ropes from Dean Alfar, by actually participating in his call for spec fic.

The editing process in itself is exhausting, since some of the participants are within six degrees of separation from the editors, so assigning them to a neutral person was the way to go, except for one participant that all three of us knew personally. We ended up getting her entry more for the je ne sais quoi. I mean, how it elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia galore, remember?

Letters of acceptance, for the first time, were also sent, and reading how happy the participants felt, I placed my hand on my chest and breathed a sigh. We made someone's day. We weren't able to send letters of rejection because we've been busied with editing already. Er, honestly, we're in denial. We don't want to reject but it has to be done, except that we don't want them to know, or maybe we will send them as soon as WB3 gets published. We really don't know. We even have qualms if we really have the right to reject, given that we are just a bunch of believers in the literary potential of the Philippine blogosphere.

Now if WB3 comes out, don't be intimidated with some of the names. They're not there for the purpose of validation. Tangentially, yes because that is the way of the world but all we wanted was to cast the net wider. Think of it as alignment--no need to feel small even though you're standing side by side with giants doing the do-si-do. Smell the bromide?

To all the participants, readers and lurkers, thank you. Because we're a living organism there will be changes again. Soon you'll know, but first let us give birth to this third issue.

*Push*

While sighting those uniformed crew with Lancel luggages at a Kaohsiung airport lounge two years ago, I blurted these words to myself:

In an alternate universe where I am still single, I am a male flight stewardess.

Eleanor of Aquitaine has brought a profound change in my life. She is my new Undo.

I am adjusting now to the smell of new electronic gadget. She hasn't replaced my olfactory affinity towards ink on bookpaper and freshly-dispensed tape, but she comes close very much like the scent of a lemon on the verge of ripening. A newly-opened box of Nokia smells just the same.

Then there is the adjustment between pulp and electrons--and voices. On a clear day, I'm friends with the TPB's: Karen Haber's Science Fiction: The Best of 2003 and Asimov's Foundation. Or James Patrick Kelly's The Best Christmas Ever and The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy audiobooks.

For those times when I have to seclude everything from my prude born-again Christian creationist homophobic New-Orleans-deserved-it-because-it's-gay carpool driver, particularly Anne Rice' The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and a solitaire game (anything with cards would probably mean gambling to him), Eleanor is ready to lend her veil of discretion.

I think I am suffering from sequel fatigue after Rice. The novel is one big BDSM play--I am left with nothing on but a hard desire and not getting any in the end, ergo wanting for more which will come in the second installment, which will go on till the third. I hate her now more than ever when Interview with the Vampire and The Mummy or Ramses the Damned left me with sensual flatness. Every point in the curve is a climax that rising to a climactic climax is like pissing into the ocean. Not a bit up in the saltiness level. (But why am I coming back to Rice?)

Not reading The Garden of Rama in Clarke's The Rama Chronicles did not make a dent either when I topped it off with Rama Revealed. Monmouth may be right anyway. Like Gibson's Idoru, each sequel can very well stand on its own. But it doesn't make me grab the nearest 2/3 of Rice' Sleeping Beauty.

So I'm off to reading electronic shorts and anthologies starting with Philip K. Dick's The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories. Or standalones like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which I've put on and off from the time I acquired Eleanor.

Interactive. A soon-to-be published spec fic was edited inside her, while a dragon fic and a slipstream are next in line. And so are selections for Warm Bodies 3, finishing touches on the way. Did I mention that she gives me space?

4GB oh boy I could marry her.