Anthony J. Crowley's Resolution #4:

I must encourage greedy people to use the term, "Low-hanging fruit," because that's just like old times.

I won't be surprised if my name ends up on the wrong side of the Book of Life.

While waiting for the carpool this morning, I was able to capture on digital the tarp that's been on my radar for days. The taglines however, didn't do justice to the whimsy so I suggest the following:

Security patches available.
Dirty clothes? We'll undo it.
Where do you want to wash today?

And my personal favorite:

We also hang.

Just finished Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Sans the suburban dryness I usually get from reading T.C. Boyle's After The Plague, it felt good. Although I'm not the type who can dissect for a book report the dry Brit humor Pratchett (and to some extent, Douglas Adams) espouses, I am one with the masses who love a happy ending and I'll leave it at that.

And so I chanced upon another wiki entry for Going Postal, which is

used as a verb meaning to become extremely angry, possibly to the point of violence. The term derives from a series of incidents from 1986 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed in at least 20 incidents of workplace rage. Following this series of events, the idiom entered common parlance and has been applied to murders committed by employees in acts of workplace rage, irrespective of the employer; and generally to describe fits of rage in or outside the workplace.

Come to think of it, aside from getting the insides of our forearms sexually sensitive from hogging the keyboard all day, there really are instances when we could have also gone postal, jumped the couch, or snapped our wirings. The closed workplace (cubicle) within an enclosed environment (the manufacturing campus) within an enclave (science park) plus the fact that 99% of us are men with pent-up reptilian urges, the recipe is quite perfect.

I don't know how we manage the rage. Entertainment perhaps, like juicy office rumors. Or maybe we bottle it up until good old Death collects them, lovingly labeled Stress, Hypertension, Heart Attack, and another one reserved for the reaper himself.

Good Omens is next.

While looking for factoids on the film Totoo Ba Ang Tsismis? on the net, I found this great blog.

If my aimless wanderings on the web are right, the movie Karnal was based on a short story written by Teresita Anover-Rodriguez published in Mr. & Ms. Magazine in the early 80's. Ms. Rodriguez is known as Tita Dulce, the advice columnist at The Inquirer.

Karnal was shown when I was six, or maybe seven. These days, like John Mayer, I wish I was six again. The only downside being I can't enter For Adults Only movies at that time, it wasn't as bad as sitting through a hyped-up film at an overpriced cinema. Or waking up to work just to pay the bills, in general.

It took me more than a decade to see Karnal and Scorpio Nights, uncensored and uncut, with stampedes at the entrance. I've yet to watch the camp classic Temptation Island. There's a slipstream element in Ibalik Ang Swerti which reminds me of Murakami's The Second Bakery Attack (not that exact, though). I believe Belle Epoque and Like Water For Chocolate are the bastard children of Lino Brocka's Oro, Plata, Mata.

My manager looks like Tony Ferrer. A suite of electric guitar riffs, Pia Moran wearing a 'fro and blaxploitation films come to mind, as well as Eddie Romero who has directed Black Mama, White Mama (1972--haven't watched it, obviously). Said film had a great influence on Quentin Tarantino.

On another note, I don't know why we scorn the song-and-dance numbers such as those seen in Bote, Dyaryo, Garapa (an early Joey Marquez starrer, said object of scorn shot entirely in Quezon Circle) when today it's a staple in cartoon movies like Madagascar and Robots. And in Christmas parties too. I have a hunch that the Pinoys employed by Disney and Pixar are behind this.

W rings a bell. I'm sure I've watched a Mad Max-style Pinoy action before and it may be this. The baddest leather daddies and the raddest souped-up Toyotas that moonlighted as yellow taxis in Recto. Unfortunately the person who carried me through this ride is already dead and there are no witnesses available who can tell me what I've seen in Fame Cinema back in '83.

At that time I didn't feel the waning years of the so-called Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema. Or its death knell sounded off by mass-produced massacre films. The vintage black-and-white LVN pictures on Channel 9 every afternoon didn't feel nostalgic either on our similarly black-and-white TV set.

Yet with the movies on offer today both local and Hollywood (with a few exceptions, of course, plus the so-called arthouse), the past generation chants in my ears that they've had better.

*Images from Dumb Distraction.

WAAAAH! Ayoko nang maging Mr. Congeniality!

New title, same old penchant for drama.

I didn't find my old title cloying, and the new one, still about the same authoritative thingy, is more ancient, like what I will be next month.

Let me have the liberty of assumptions. I assume that everybody's asking what happened to me during the last few months of silence. I had issues. I had, well, drama. I've been published, was to be published and didn't get published. The Palanca rush I never felt as on the deadline I was 30,000 feet up in the air. I've travelled and untravelled. I've been better than most of you and I've been through the worst too.

I spent a night in Paris and made the airport my hotel. I smoke half a pack a day now. I got curious. I closed deals. I will be in Caracoa 2006 and A Time for Dragons. I've been rejected by Ideomancer and Silverfish. I made poetry out of a Taiwanese bathouse (the, you know, decent kind) and clouds that look like pools of semen or mammary glands.

I finally received my Silver Elite NWA mileage card. I was supposed to fly to Berlin the week after Paris but my boss beat me to that. I found talking about travels abroad pretentious, but proceed talking about them anyway.

I bought a domain that is sitting idly for 6 months now. I had bouts and doubts on the sincerity of blogging.

I admitted I am a pathological liar and made more lies. Made more secrets. Made even more money, though not necessarily in that sequence.

I've been searching for the perfect car.

I signified my stand against self-righteous organized religion and I glorified paganism.

I have this illusion that I am the virtual lovechild of Jing Pantoja-Hidalgo (voice momma) and Martin Amis (grammar daddy) with Dean as my plot godfather.

Or that I will be.

If you thought that the number in the title is the name of the movie, you are right. I so wanted to see the word sutras every now and then plus a descriptor which defies any criterion.

If you ask why, or if I assumed you asked, it's nothing.