Inviting discourse

Well, i had an intersting chat with kael the other night, and i thought there are some pretty good ideas here. Hope y'all sift through it, and i'm hoping for at least a few comments and reactions to the discourse...



Carl Javier: tanong tungkol sa pagsusulat. ayos lang, busy ka?
mikael co: deyn naman shot
mikael co: shoot
Carl Javier: ok, so, medyo may mga shit akong naiisip recently about writing, example
Carl Javier: naisip ko, minsan dami kong excuses hindi magsulat
Carl Javier: tapos nagisip ako, what could cause it
Carl Javier: tapos kunwari, performance anxiety
Carl Javier: like sa sex
Carl Javier: na hindi ok yung gawa mo
mikael co: o go on
Carl Javier: so idea ako na connect ko ang lack of writing to sexual dysfunctions
Carl Javier: tapos yung isa, yung idea lang na punong puno ako ng narrative
Carl Javier: naisip ko lang kasi kanina nanunood ako ng olats na pelikula
Carl Javier: naghahanap ako ng narrative threads
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: tapos naisip ko, parang medyo napapabayaan ko na ang buhay ko
Carl Javier: at kwento ng buhay ko
Carl Javier: dahil engrossed ako sa mga ibang narratives, nalimutan ko na ang overall thrust ng sariling narrative
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: so yun, medyo writing oriented tong topics and dilemmas na gusto kong isulat
Carl Javier: tapos ang iniisip ko, at eto na ang tanong
Carl Javier: meron ako dating thing na, don't write about writing, kasi ang yabang ng dating
mikael co: o
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: so, mayabang nga ba masyado?
mikael co: hmm.
mikael co: ganito, sa tingin ko lang, a:
mikael co: kung sabihin kong malaki ang titi ko, mayabang ba?
Carl Javier: sige,
mikael co: minsan, oo. minsan, hindi.
mikael co: depende sa pagkakasabi.
mikael co: there are ways of writing about writing
mikael co: na hindi arogante ang dating.
Carl Javier: ok
mikael co: so you want to write a narrative, a story about writing, ganun ba?
mikael co: tapos what's keeping you is that pakiramdam mo, mayabang ang dating nu'n?
Carl Javier: oo, pero writing about not being able to write
mikael co: hmm.
Carl Javier: kasi yung issues ko about writing fiction
mikael co: how about, write it as non-fiction?
Carl Javier: yeah. iniisip ko kasi, medyo threshold point sa akin to
Carl Javier: having to establish a career as something else and decide how to continue the creative writing career
Carl Javier: kasi nga ang issue minsan, that i worry about, bakit ka nagsusulat tungkol sa pagsusulat? anong karapatan mo?
mikael co: hmm. i get that all the time too.
mikael co: i totally understand.
mikael co: pero hmm.
mikael co: i'm trying to articulate how i approach it...
mikael co: i guess, hmm,
Carl Javier: i mean, kaartehan lang ba? kasi nga eto ang project na interesting, pero eto ang worries to it
mikael co: no way around it. bok.
mikael co: i mean,
mikael co: if you feel compelled to write something,
mikael co: even if it would sound arrogant, or self-aggrandizing, and maybe at times even stupid,
mikael co: you have to get over that fact. embrace all those apprehensions,
mikael co: and tell yourself, to hell with this.
Carl Javier: work them in?
mikael co: in a way, yeah,
mikael co: that'd be a way to approach it,
mikael co: work them in, in a tongue-in-cheek manner,
mikael co: or overdo it, para magtunog na sarcastic at self-reflexive
mikael co: so in the end, it'd have a self-deprecating tone.
mikael co: but still, pag binasa siya, depsite of that,
mikael co: may mapupulot ang reader.
mikael co: mas okey ang ganun, rather than sound
Carl Javier: yeah. hmm, sa bagay, mas mahirap na project, mas malaking potential for something to happen
mikael co: pretentious, or trying to affect a fals modesty or something.
mikael co: interested ka recently sa science, right?
mikael co: have a look see:
Carl Javier: yeah
mikael co: http://poetrymagic.co.uk/literary-theory/the-new-science.html
mikael co: mas buo:
mikael co: http://www.textetc.com/theory/the-new-science.html

mikael co: mas okey yung 2nd
Carl Javier: hmm, baka makatulong sa akin to. gumagawa ako ngayon ng paper about schiller, and science, and drives, yung nasa blog ko ba
mikael co: saw it, yeah
mikael co: schiller...
mikael co: old german dude, dead, ka-bathc ni heidegger?
mikael co: o si scheller ba yun?
mikael co: i think you have to read scheller too, if you're reading science.
mikael co: i mean,
mikael co: read *about* scheller, max scheller,
mikael co: kasi medyo mahirap siyang intindihin. haha.
mikael co: pero--
Carl Javier: ah, friedrich von schiller ang gimik ko e
mikael co: ah
mikael co: well, si scheller di scientist
mikael co: he was championing the idea
mikael co: na ang science is just another rationality in a vast multiplicity of rationalities,
mikael co: and that
mikael co: i dunno
Carl Javier: thanks dude, makakatulong yung article sa paper ko
mikael co: parang siya ang "god" metanarrative
mikael co: ng traditional times.
Carl Javier: yun nga lang, kung multiple rationalities, well, pwede rin.
mikael co: parang science took the place of god.
mikael co: isang araw let's talk about this.'
Carl Javier: hmm. oo nga. ang galing kasi nakikita ko maraming overlaps ng science and literature
Carl Javier: recent, lecture ako about zombies and shit
mikael co: like?
Carl Javier: tapos napagusapan, how do you define the undead
Carl Javier: sabi ko, one of the primary definitions of the undead is something that cannot procreate
Carl Javier: so unnatural ang means ng pagpaparami niya
mikael co: o nga no.
Carl Javier: say, zombies bite
Carl Javier: and vampires turn people
Carl Javier: tapos sa evolutionary biology
Carl Javier: pag-baog ka, you are considered genetically dead
Carl Javier: so medyo wasak yun
Carl Javier: if you cannot procreate, if you cannot pass on your genes, you are already considered, in a way, dead, scientifically
Carl Javier: tapos may new scientist who are turning to hume and his epistemological theories as a starting point for new studies in neuroscience
mikael co: o nga.
mikael co: ah.
Carl Javier: e yun. tapos we see writers like david foster wallace starting to write science books
Carl Javier: so ang ganda ng overlaps para, sobrang exciting. wala lang. yun
mikael co: oo oo.
Carl Javier: sobrang salamat dun sa link. magagamit ko sa paper
mikael co: oo oo. ako rin gagamitin ko 'to.
Carl Javier: swak yun
mikael co: may incomplete pa ako sa crisis of contemporary reason, e.
Carl Javier: ginagawa ko pinapasadahan ko yung science books uli para ma-identify yugn parts
mikael co: nice
Carl Javier: shit. na-eexcite uli ako magsulat
Carl Javier: feeling ko medyo olats yung nangyari dun sa script ko for khavn
mikael co: check out mo yung buong site, ang galing din dude
mikael co: http://poetrymagic.co.uk
Carl Javier: but it lit a fire up my ass
mikael co: bakit?
mikael co: okey nga, e!
Carl Javier: so may mga iba akong gustong gawin na shit
Carl Javier: o?
mikael co: ah
mikael co: i mean, okey yung script for khavn.
Carl Javier: eto, dude, may gimik ako naisip for cha
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: gagawa kami ng album, title niya romantic comedy soundtrack
Carl Javier: so yun
Carl Javier: kasi may mga instrumentals siya na maganda
mikael co: okay
Carl Javier: tapos fill in with other stuff
mikael co: you mean, the two of you lang
Carl Javier: gusto mo mag-contribute?
mikael co: di ko gets
mikael co: kanta?
Carl Javier: yeah
mikael co: tula?
Carl Javier: song lyrics
mikael co: ako? i don't write songs, dude. never written them.
Carl Javier: well, that's ht eplan
Carl Javier: ako rin dude
Carl Javier: i've never written a song, or not one worth playing anyway
mikael co: me too
Carl Javier: pero the situation calls for songs
Carl Javier: i mean, she needs them
Carl Javier: so nagisip na lang ako ng structure that i could work with
Carl Javier: na ok ang love songs
Carl Javier: tapos invite some friends to contribute lyrics too
Carl Javier: yun
mikael co: ah
Carl Javier: nakakaisip ako ng projects, thanks dun sa sinulat ko for khavn. if anything, yun ang tulong nun
Carl Javier: kaw ba nag-translate nung script?
mikael co: yep
mikael co: wanna see my translation?
Carl Javier: sige. nakwento ba ni khavn sa yo?
Carl Javier: sinulat ko initially in filipino?
mikael co: eyng?!
mikael co: di nga....?
Carl Javier: tapos sabi niya, english na lang, hahaha
mikael co: tapos, what happened?
mikael co: ahahaha
Carl Javier: yun, sinulat ko na lang in english kasi naramdaman ni khavn na hindi ko masabi ang gusto ko
mikael co: a okey
mikael co: so paano ka ba inapproach ni khavn dito? binayaran ka ba?
mikael co: alam mo, umabot na sa puntong nahihiya yata akong magpabayad kay khavn.
Carl Javier: nakikinig ako ngayon ng new album ni kanye west, off topic. wasak dude, may umiikot sa steely dan riff and vocal melody
Carl Javier: ibang klase tong animal na to
Carl Javier: walang bayad
Carl Javier: alala mo painom mo?
Carl Javier: sabi niya collaborate kami. sabi ko oo
Carl Javier: set kami meeting sunday
mikael co: ah
Carl Javier: kita kami sunday afternoon, akala ko naman exploratory shit lang
Carl Javier: kasi usually ganun, usap usap, bato ideas. after a few meetings like that, saka pa lang gawa ng script
Carl Javier: after namin magusap, tinanong niya bigla, anong oras ko mabibigay yung script
Carl Javier: wasak
mikael co: hahaha
mikael co: ako tinawagan ako tuesday.
mikael co: sabi niya kailangan wednesday night translation,
Carl Javier: yung ano pare, yung nagkita tayo sa ateneo
Carl Javier: dapat meeting yun
mikael co: sabi ko di kaya. gimme till thursday 6am
mikael co: a okey
mikael co: eto pala nagnyari--
Carl Javier: sabi lang, inglesin ko na lang, tapos sabi mas wasak
Carl Javier: tapos send sa yo
Carl Javier: o sige
mikael co: kasi i've been translating a lot of poetry recently, kaya akala ko mahirap magtranslate ng iba-- yung attention sa line cuts, language, etc.
mikael co: e di ba medyo mahaba ang script mo
mikael co: anyway, i thought it'd take me the whole night to get it done
Carl Javier: ok
mikael co: pero pag-upo ko, pare, ang natural ng flow ng sentences mo, kaya ang daling i-translate. and of course, may license naman ako kay khavn
mikael co: na magbago at magdagdag at agbawas, what i saw fit
mikael co: pero wala naman akong ginalaw sa substance niya,
mikael co: dire-diretsong translate lang
mikael co: so i got it done in under an hour.
Carl Javier: pare wasak nga ang mga nabago mong lines. yun yung hinahanap ko na hindi ko nalagay
Carl Javier: actually, madali ko lang din nasulat
Carl Javier: first draft mga three hours
Carl Javier: tapos one hour of revision
Carl Javier: madali ngang isulat
Carl Javier: ok nga ba? i mean, ako natatakot ako lagi sa gawa ko
mikael co: oo pare
mikael co: par natuwa ako galing
Carl Javier: nahihiya ako humirit kay khavn kung ok e
mikael co: tangina ba't ba tayo kailangan pang dumaan kay khavn, e kaya naman nating mag-isip nito...
mikael co: kung magsulat kaya tayo ng sariling mga screenplays?
Carl Javier: oo nga e
Carl Javier: actually, pare, kahapon nagaaral kami sa class ng romantics
Carl Javier: preface to the lyrical ballas
Carl Javier: ballads
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: tapos so wordsworth, will take the natural and defamiliarize it
Carl Javier: and coleridge will take the supernatural and make it natural
Carl Javier: so meron 2 corresponding, complementary tracks of poetry
Carl Javier: naisip ko, gusto ko rin ng ganung project
mikael co: not really well-versed sa kanila, pero go on
Carl Javier: naisip ko, either ikaw o si adam
Carl Javier: well for example si wordsworth
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: kukuha siya ng simpleng bagay, tapos he will elevate it so that it is magical
Carl Javier: on the other side, so coleridge kukuha siya ng magical or supernatural thing, and he will write it as if it were part of our lives, or told something of the ordinary life
Carl Javier: so they attack poetry from two opposite directions, but they are complemetary
mikael co: ah
Carl Javier: nagiisip ako, astig ngang project yan, contemporary na ganyan, but instead of the natural/supernatural, siguro meron naman tayong ibang pwede tulaan na makabagong dichotomy
mikael co: hmm, resistant ako sa ganyan, pero the way yuo put it, parang workable
mikael co: i mean, galit ako sa dichotomies, e
mikael co: hahaha
Carl Javier: kasi outlines lang siya pare
Carl Javier: the idea of wordsworth and coleridge is that they saw the poetry as a whole, organic things
Carl Javier: thing
Carl Javier: pero para mapakita ang pwedeng gawin ng tula
Carl Javier: they showed the extremes, the two poles that you could come from in creating it
Carl Javier: so, hindi siya two opposing things na dichotomy
Carl Javier: but rather they saw a whole thing
mikael co: off topic for a while...
mikael co: "Nor can we get outside language to some purer mode of understanding. No doubt words mirror objects imperfectly, but it is on their multiple reflecting surfaces that truth become visible."

Carl Javier: and decided, how can we divide this among ourselves
mikael co: from http://poetrymagic.co.uk/literary-theory/hermeneutics.html
Carl Javier: hmmm
mikael co: sorry ha, multitasking ako, and that line just struck me sorry hhaa
Carl Javier: shit, diyan pumapasok ang bagong neural mapping
Carl Javier: galing ng line
Carl Javier: image of multiple reflecting surfaces. wasak
mikael co: heto ang buo:
mikael co: "And whereas Habermas sees language as a sedimented ideology, full of undisclosed corruptions and prejudices that analysis must bring to light, Gadamer finds these corruptions and prejudices as constitutive of understanding. There is no language free of them. Nor can we get outside language to some purer mode of understanding. No doubt words mirror objects imperfectly, but it is on their multiple reflecting surfaces that truth become visible."

mikael co: hahaha read up on gadamer and habermas na lang bok, hehe
mikael co: sorry
Carl Javier: wasak.
Carl Javier: yun nga lang hindi ganyan ang approach namin ngayon e
Carl Javier: mas epistemology shit kami e
mikael co: okay
mikael co: this is hermeneutics
Carl Javier: pero wasak yan a
mikael co: not so different
mikael co: epistemology, the nature of knowlege, parang ganun, no?
Carl Javier: yeah ang alam ko sa semiotics how the symbols becomes and changes
Carl Javier: parang ganun
Carl Javier: epistemology, yung how we perceive
Carl Javier: sa epistemology, subject ang mahalaga
Carl Javier: it is how we perceive the thing that defines it
mikael co: ah
Carl Javier: ganito, parang yung may tiningnan tayong dalawa
Carl Javier: you will see it in one way, say blue
mikael co: gets ko
Carl Javier: you are not sure that i perceive it in the same way as blue
mikael co: o
Carl Javier: pero nagkakaroon lang ng universality because there are certain things that are immutable
Carl Javier: for example, sugar
mikael co: hmm
Carl Javier: no matter how i perceive sugar
Carl Javier: we will always agree that sugar is sweet
mikael co: hmm...
Carl Javier: based on that premise, there can be certain universal aesthetic and moral tenets
Carl Javier: kay kant naman, ang subjective universality
Carl Javier: kumbaga, it is something you do because you believe it is something that should be enacted as law
mikael co: ah kabisado ko si kant.
mikael co: i know,
Carl Javier: for example, di ba i will not lie
Carl Javier: oks
mikael co: three formulations ng categorical imperative, etc.
mikael co: pero...
Carl Javier: yup, mismo
mikael co: universality, well, problematic talaga para sa akin.
Carl Javier: so ang ginawa ni coleridge, kinuha sina kant, tapos inapply sa english poetry and philosophies
mikael co: hmm.
Carl Javier: oo, mahirap ang universality sa post-modern age lalo na
Carl Javier: pero astig pa rin siyang isipin
Carl Javier: at pagisipan
mikael co: yeah
Carl Javier: ok tong translation a
mikael co: ikaw rin yan, e, haha
mikael co: dynamic equivalence hinanap ko, at kasi sabi ni khavn, dagdagn ko ng mura, haha
Carl Javier: oo nga. sarap nga e.
mikael co: hehe
Carl Javier: labo nga ng instructions for revisions
mikael co: pare nakita mo blog ko?
Carl Javier: "basta, wasakin mo pa. gawin mong wasak na wasak"
mikael co: HAHAHAHAHA
mikael co:
Carl Javier: di ko pa na check lately
mikael co: sa blog ko pala,
mikael co: tinry ko itranslate isang poem ni zagajewski
mikael co: it was about poland,
mikael co: pero ang galing pare,
mikael co: kasi while i was reading it,
mikael co: i was imagining poland,
Carl Javier: hmmm ok yan a
mikael co: and zagajewski just hit me, may sentiment talaga na parang binabalot ng tinik ang dibdib ko,
mikael co: at sa transaltion, i tried to live that sentiment,
mikael co: tried to create it, from my own experiences, my own images of pilipinas
mikael co: so nagbago ang images, pero ang form, ang syntax ng tula, pibnilit kong iretain
Carl Javier: hmmm, galing ng idea na yan for translation
mikael co: ang lumabas, ayun. not sure if it was a good translation, pero it felt damn good.
Carl Javier: teka, before i go over it, naisip ko lang ang dati kong gawain
Carl Javier: before i would write, i would retype the whole first page of either araby or something by hemingway
Carl Javier: to channel that
mikael co: o
mikael co: nice!
mikael co: in a sense, everything is a translation of something
Carl Javier: and sabi nila, to go further into that kind of mindset, try to find handwriting samples and emulate the handwriting
mikael co: wow
Carl Javier: because handwriting is a manifestation of certain neural patterns, and if you write the same way as someone, you can channel that person's neural patterns
mikael co: a bit... too scientific (universalisitc?) for my tastes, but i see what you mean
Carl Javier: kumbaga pare, when you translate, you are not taking, you are literally trying to form a brain synapse that connects your brain patterns to another's
mikael co: i get that
mikael co: o nga
mikael co: pero to reduce emotion to brain patterns, well.
mikael co: i guess that's one way of perceiving things, haha
Carl Javier: well, we can't be the same, but we can emulate. galing din kasi ng concept ng brain patterns
Carl Javier: kasi for a while, when they started neural mapping, people were afraid that by taking brain scans you could "read minds"
Carl Javier: but the fact is each person's neural pattern is unique, like fingerprints or DNA
Carl Javier: so these are different because we each have different emotions
Carl Javier: feelings
Carl Javier: experiences to draw on
mikael co: mismo
Carl Javier: levels of sympathy and empathy
Carl Javier: galing lang
Carl Javier: kasi nga, with new technology, we come to understand these things
mikael co: infinite ang human experience, malawak ang uniberso
Carl Javier: but we come to further understand the mysteries of the depths of human emotion
Carl Javier: shit, parang magandang ilagay yun sa paper a
mikael co: have you read socrates, apologia?
Carl Javier: apologia? parts, yung nasa readings namin
mikael co: well yun.
mikael co: kasi, ang main thesis nun, parang,
mikael co: ang tao nagiging tao lang kapag inamin niya na may limitations siya, na masyadong malawak ang uniberso para alamin ng isang tuldok, tulad natin.
mikael co: i guess the attitude na "i know only that i don't know," yung humility, yun ang essential to learning, essential to being a human.
mikael co: being.
Carl Javier: parang the wise man knows that he is ignorant
mikael co: being a human being. haha.
mikael co: yeah, siya ang nagsabi nun.
Carl Javier: yup
mikael co: pero siya rin ang nagsabi na
mikael co: "ang buhay na hindi sinasaliksik ay hindi buhay-tao."
Carl Javier: kasi nga, ang wasak, when you read the scientists, you realize that the more you learn, the more you need to learn
Carl Javier: An unexamined life ba yun?
mikael co: mismo
Carl Javier: wasak, off topic, duet pare kanye west and chris martin
mikael co: pero, about the scientists kasi, a lot of them purport to have found the answer to everything, or to be seeking it-- the answer to evything
mikael co: sino si chris martin?
mikael co: wrestler?
mikael co: hahaha
Carl Javier: wazak! vocalist ng coldplay dude
Carl Javier: wala e
mikael co: ah oo asawa ni gwyneth!
Carl Javier: actually, in the late 20th century the physicists thought they were approaching a unifying theory
Carl Javier: pero kung mahanap man ng physics yun, kulang pa rin daw yun to explain other things
Carl Javier: and it only opens up more questions
mikael co: i know!
Carl Javier: wazak talaga no?
mikael co: and, and...
Carl Javier: well, medyo olats na string theory
mikael co: kungmay sagot ba, kaya nating i-encase yun in a language we'd understand?
mikael co: the way i see it, ganito:
Carl Javier: and the concept of the multiverses is looking to not be something to rely on at all
mikael co: if ever someone met god, and asked for the answer to everything, then god would, like, touch him on the forehead or something. then all of these expereinces would come rushing, everything, light and matter and energy, parang dadaan sa katawan niya. tapos sasabihin ni god, "o ayan ang sagot." pero di masasabi nung taong yun sa ibang tao ang sagot,
Carl Javier: pwede
mikael co: kasi the answers would have to be in terms of a concrete human experience. or experiences.
mikael co: that is, if god existed at all.
Carl Javier: hindi sapat ang numbers and abstact computations of these things
mikael co: hindi maipapasa sa kapwa ang experience, e di yun mai-reretell. that's one of the attractions of art, i think,mimesis, the retelling of experience,
mikael co: pero even then, art always come short, kasi no language can ever duplicate the experience itself.
Carl Javier: yeah, but then it's the art experience where the person experiencing interacts and engages the text that brings the text to life in a new way
mikael co: so if ever there were "the answer," it can't be retold. di kaya ng language, kasi language, always, is limited. fractured.
mikael co: mismo, mismo sa sinabi mo.
Carl Javier: the whole idea isn't merely the creation of the art, but also the interaction with the art, kung paano nabubuhay ang art dahil sa bagong nag-experience sa kanya
mikael co: so art, then, i think, isn't the retelling of an answer to life's questions. di siya moral lesson shit. isa siyang recreation.
mikael co: i mean, re-creation.
Carl Javier: i mean, we bring shakespeare to life every time we read him
Carl Javier: lahat sila, binubuhay natin
Carl Javier: pero ang pagbuhay, sa paradigm natin
mikael co: "may naramdaman ako, hindi ko masabi kung ano yun, pero heto, isa pang pakiramdam. baka pareho." yun ang approach, i think. may certain humility, and an admission of the fractured nature of language.
Carl Javier: parang si sandman di ba pag nagpakita siya, the one who sees him fills in certain gaps
mikael co: mismo
Carl Javier: and it's in these gaps that we find new creations
Carl Javier: hmmm, naisip ko dude, with some minor editing, pwede ko ba publish to sa blog ko?
mikael co: oo ba
Carl Javier: i was watching a bruce springsteen DVD of his new album, yung we shall overcome the pete seeger sessions
Carl Javier: and he was talking about recording songs that were, some of them, more than 100 years old
mikael co: pero wag mo tanggalin ang mga off topic shit like chris martin and kanye west, a!
mikael co: yun yun, e!
Carl Javier: and he said that the whole thing is about understanding and recontextualizing
mikael co: intersting case:
mikael co: (off topic)
mikael co: http://www.netsdaily.com/blog/?p=385
mikael co: mismo!
Carl Javier: which is why, by rerecording songs written, some of them in the 1800s, he manages to make a commentary on contemporary life and times
mikael co: galing talaga ni boss, haha
Carl Javier: oo dude, wasak na wasak
Carl Javier: tangina dude, oden out for the season?
mikael co: ngayon mo lang nalaman?!
mikael co: haha
mikael co: oo dude
mikael co: wasak nga e
Carl Javier: kanina lang ako nakacheck ng shit
Carl Javier: wala e. wasak na wasak ang buhay ko
Carl Javier: may balita ka ba about the shoot?
mikael co: alaws, e
mikael co: text mo si khavn baka gising pa yun

Finally, an Update

As usual, when it's been a long time since I've updated a blog, I'll put up some excuses which really serve to make me feel better and whittle away at the guilt of having left this thing hanging.

Work is, as usual, work. It amazes me that my students have to learn grammar lessons that I have managed to go through life without. This and I've snagged myself an English degree, am very close to a master's, and I think in general write well enough to be grammatically correct at least. I spent a night laboring over how to teach the restrictive and non-restrictive clause. It was said to me that an understanding of the restrictive and non-restrictive clause is essential to our appreciation of literature. While that may get some people off, I found myself struggling first to understand it, and then how I would convince others that this knowledge was of utmost importance. 'Course it's much easier to say, it'll be in the exam, so study it.

It's interesting that in subjects like math or science there are things that you just have to know. It's that simple. This knowledge is essential, so learn it. Even if you won't become a chemist, each of us has at one time or another had to memorize or at least manage to navigate their way around the periodic table of elements. Or remember all those postulates and theorems we had to learn for geometry? Well how about English? Sadly the approach to English is veering further towards the functional. End product: people who can work at call centers. Our pop culture isn't helping with this at all. We enjoy laughing at people who muck up and go barok. anyways, there is a movement away from teaching literature as literature, truly and purely, at least from where I stand. I know, I know, there are educational theories to support this and blah blah blah, but how great it would be to select the best poems, stories, and novels and just discuss them. It would presuppose the teacher's good grasp of literature and maybe more difficult the students' ability to read and respond to literature. At least where I teach, the responsibility to motivate is on the teacher, and more often than not my students don't bother to read the texts that are required of them.

It makes me terribly sad when I come to class prepared to discuss a text, let's say I'm really excited to talk about Lord of the Flies because it's just great material and there's so much there to mine, and the class looks to be dozing off and it's obvious that most of them didn't read. You give a quiz that's over 20, and you're lucky if even a few students get ten items right. and then there's the great reasoning, this doesn't have anything to do with my life anyway.

they don't see the relevance because we have failed to remind them that these are the humanities. these are the things that make us human, our appreciation of beauty and the ability to feel and sympathize and understand and question. Whose fault is it? I suppose we English teachers are partly to blame for making the study of English a functional one, where language learning is the goal and not the greater appreciation of literature. Literature is seen as a tool through which language can be taught, it is not taken as literature itself. Just see how long we have had to labor over literature selections, how difficult it is to get them approved. And in the end, the language is also seen as just a tool.

This brings to mind a lot of the recent discussions in my literary theory class. One of the great ideas was Kant's purposeless purpose, which is what things of beauty should have. their purpose it to be beautiful.

What I've been thinking more of and wanting to blog about, but been trying to digest first, are some of Schiller's ideas. He says that because of society, we have become halved, between two drives. There is the sensuous drive, which binds us to our understanding of the physical world and which is rooted in change. There is constant change that we can observe. then there is the formal drive, which pushes us to understand things as their forms, which has us moving towards things that are constant. Basically, we can see these two drives as the gap between the natural physical sciences and the humanities. And Schiller goes on to say that our society pushes us to devote ourselves to one or the other, but a devotion to one will make us incomplete and near idiots. A full understanding of the sensuous drive but negligence to the formal drive makes us robots, vice versa and we blabber about a world we fail to understand. However Schiller believes there is a third drive which marries these two drives, that these two drives do not necessarily have to be in opposition of each other.

For me, what's exciting is that lately I've been reading a lot of science books, and we see these scientists constantly turning to ideas in literature, philosophy, and the social sciences or other liberal arts and humanities, to provide frameworks which they can work with. I believe, with this kind of thinking, and how we see the proliferation of interdisciplinary studies and the mixing of these two drives consistently. I believe that we, at this point in time, may be moving towards reaching that third drive. all over the place we see the synergies and connections, and all it takes is our development of brain synapses that would allow us to process so many things.

the great irony is that now, in the age of information, when everything is a click away, lots of people are even lazier in their search for knowledge. Hello, my students, this may be a wake up call.

As I write this there are tears in my eyes/ways to know you're getting older

On a literal level, my eyes are really all welled up and teary. Terrible bastard sinusitis. Been under the weather the last couple of days. So most people get stuffy noses under the circumstances. It's not enough that the stuffy nose is terribly irritating, plus this feeling that there's something pinching the bridge of your nose. I get a bonus irritation. My eyes start going red and they tear up uncontrollably. That or one eyes turns into a leaky faucet and just keeps going all day, as it has done today.

I've been taking pills for the sniffles and so that I'll fall asleep and hopefully sleep through all this. The pills don't help at all with the eyes. I've finished up a bottle of Visine or Eye-Mo or something. Provides only temporary relief. My eyes clear up, then after about fifteen mintues they start going again.

Needless to say I'm in no real state to work. I'm having trouble focusing. This entry comes because, well i Feel that i have to write something. can't write creative when i'm sick and i can't work either.

bummer too because the work is becoming another shitstorm. After narrowly averting the big trouble just a month or so old, here comes another reason to get in trouble. The past couple weeks have been rained out. One would expect that schedules would adjust. they do not. we are expected to submit grades on time. oh, and if you aren't done yet, well the faculty room's open during the holiday. and you can also go to the faculty room when there's a friggin' super bagyo.

I can't work with being under the weather. normally i'm a trooper I can work through the limp and I've even taught when I lost my voice. But it's so terribly hard to check papers when your eyes are making like faucets. i don't know. doesn't really make sense to me why we can't get some extension. but then as too many friends have told me already, i should just keep my head down on this one and not fight back.

so i guess that when i'm well enough to work i will be swamped and trying to meet deadlines which are, well, they can be accomplished. they are possible. that doesn't mean that they are sensible. you could, conceivably, stack enough playing cards in such a way that mathematically, you could build a bridge to the sun. it is also possible that you put a bunch of monkeys in a room, and based on theories of possibility, one of them will type Hamlet word for word. Given an infinite amount of time these monkeys in the room will, according to laws of possibility, type all the great major works of literature.

Of course we're talking possibility. And as that optimistic saying goes, anything's possible. Probability is a totally different matter. Being sensible is yet another thing to consider. But as far as the work I have to do is concerned, I am pitted with the theories of possibility.

Way to know you're getting old: when you have to buy appliances and furniture.

Sometime this week as I woke up to stretch I heard something in my bed tear. There was this large rip and the stuffing of my mattress was coming out like somebody's innards when their stomach had been gashed through with a scythe.

Then just last night I was asleep and then I woke up because I was sweating badly. I looked over to the electric fan, which wasn't turning at all though I remembered it being on when I had fallen asleep. I checked and found that my fan had died on me.

Even with the terrible condition I was in, I had to head to SM with my mom to buy replacements for these things. I had an extra handkerchief along just for the eye perspiration. You can wipe away the tears, but you can't help the weird way people will look at you because they think you're crying and your eyes are all red.

It's such a mundane thing to do, go to the appliance store to buy an electric fan. In all the drama of the past months I had dedicated myself to a life of beauty and intellect. I was trying to find something beautiful about looking at various elecric fans, me being an idiot at this and my mother asking about wattage and other things that I should really learn to understand.

Then it was off to the mattresses. Another similar process. I mean, it's very weird. I normally buy things and I'm very excited about them. Usually it's either books or music or movies and I'm in my zone, I understand everything. Here these were things that were simple and mundane and everyday. It just reeked of domesticity.

I remember going out with Anna a few months ago and I went with her to look at furniture for their new apartment. A few weeks back we were drinking at Cos and Cel's and Cel and Anna got to talking about furniture and the like. I got up to get a glass for a drink and there were still price tags on their stuff. The conversation was steered to living room furniture and I saw a bean bag. There was a time when I believed that a living room full of bean bags would be awesome. Actually at times I still suffer from that belief. Then Cel mentioned that a friend of theirs had mentioned that they and their friends were all getting on in years and maybe the bean bag may not be the best piece of furniture for your sala set.

I had to think, hell no, I'd love to spend the whole night in a bean bag in front of the TV with a controller in my hands. but we all are getting older. Think of the kinds of old man's diseases my friends and I are started to get, or are in dread and scampering wildly to avoid. Those bean bags would do our backs no good. Sturdiness, stability, security. You see people with solid wood furniture or strong metal to serve them and you can't help but consider the metaphorical possibilities when you juxtapose these things with the limp, formless bean bag.

And still as we move neared to our 30s, some of us much closer than others, there's still time to go back to being a kid. Yesterday was Anna's birthday party and a good part of the time was spent with us huddled around a TV and PS2 playing or heckling each other at various fighting or wrestling games.

Me and My New Pal Tea Tea

Yes the title is as it is to provoke the reader. And though friends know I am more than capable of the most base and crass humor, this actually comes from a video game that I've been playing, video games being the great excuse for the long gap between the last update and this one.

I was chatting with Kael, who should be congratulated once again for taking home first place for poetry in this year's Palancas. He told me to update, and how could I say no? Along with Kael, a student of mine will also be going to the ceremonies; she won first place for the Kabataan essay. Wow, man, wow. I haven't heard yet who any of the other winners are, but I've got my fingers crossed for other friends.

So back to my friend Tea Tea. The past few days have rained us out. On Wednesday, when we were sent home early, I was riding a trike to school. As we came around the U-Turn slot near mini-stop an SUV came down the flyover from Katipunan extension and it sent a wave the size of something you'd see at an amusement park water ride straight into my face. My jacket was soaked through and so was my polo shirt. bummer. Rain water tastes nasty. I have ingested all kinds of liquids and chemicals and other crap into my body. Rain water coming from tire splash of an SUV goes straight to the top of the undesirable column.

We were sent home and the last two days have been spent here at home, trying to write, getting a few paragraphs in before succumbing to the call of the Xbox. Yes, and that is where I found my new pal. Very weird. I start this mission in a game called Ninety-Nine Nights and it says, "You and your new pal Tea Tea head to the blank blank mountains to face the enemy forces." Hmm, ok. Let's go Tea Tea. Who picks these names? In Gears of War I'm Marcus Fenix, in Splinter Cell I'm Sam Fisher, those are normal, sort of. So why this? I don't know.

In between bouts of gaming I find myself delving further for answers in terms of cosmic questions and philosophical inquiry. The temptation to declare myself a bright (which is the word they are trying to get people to use when referring to atheist, to avoid all the negative connotations that the word atheist comes with) is becoming stronger as I read more of contemporary science. The books I'm reading have so many scientists declaring their disbelief, non-belief, or whatever. I wish I could take Kael's stance which is I don't care if there's a god or not. But I do care, and this, for some reason, troubles me terribly.

I had turned my head away from all these things before. I hadn't really thought about it, just kind of drifted away from the church and hadn't cared to much about it either way. But I suppose teaching in a Catholic school, plus the philosphical inquiries on the nature of beauty and concepts of transcendece to a higher One in class, and all the science that I am bombarding myself with, make this question inevitable. What is it that I really believe in.

It's interesting to document what belief can do to people. Just look at the holocaust, the crusades, and contemporary terrorist threats based on fundamentalist notions, both Christian and Islamic. I found myself thinking about whether a soldier in, say, the NPA would have the same guts to be a suicide bomber.

The suicide bomber's eagerness to sacrifice himself to his cause is based on the premise that his belief is the one true belief and that he will be rewarded in the afterlife for making himself a martyr to his belief. Now if we were to talk to someone who didn't believe in an afterlife, let's say if you're a Marxist that doesn't believe in one, then would that soldier be just as willing to die for his cause? Or would he fight harder to stay alive, knowing that this life is it.

Apparently, according to one of the psychologists that I read, one of the problems for us in accepting that there may be nothing for us after we die is that there is no way for us to simulate that utter loss of consciousness. Most of us are dualists, believing in a separation between the body and the "soul" which the scientists prefers to refer to as consciousness or the mind. the mind is different from the brain though. So he says if you're a dualist you believe that after you have shed your mortal coil your consciousness lives on. However if you are a monist you accept that the consciousness, coming from the mind, is inextricable from the brain processes. There is no way for us to simulate this, thus we cannot fathom the idea of not having consciousness, and that is why the belief in an afterlife persists.

Again it's the beliefs that we have that drive us. A belief in the afterlife influences how we act now, thinking that if we can right we build towards entrance to a desirable afterlife. However, if we do not believe, then our precious, short time here on earth becomes that much more precious because this is it, there's nothing more than this, and we must make the most of it.

The turn two Troll Ascetic will redefine the Metagame!

This title refers to all this thought I've been giving Magic:The Gathering even though I haven't played in a couple of weeks. I haven't even gotten my hands on any 10th edition cards. Which the title also refers to.

I've sold off a lot of cards and all that's left of me are two decks, my Time-Spiral block U/B/w teachings deck and my Standard Mono-Green Aggro. So, it's the Troll Ascetic that becomes essential in the MGA deck. For those unfamiliar with this guy, he's a three to cast 3/2 that can't be the target of spells or abilites your opponents control, and he regenerates. That's just an overpowering card.

So how does it come in? Turn one elf. Turn two Troll Ascetic. Turn three, moldervine cloak. Cast Might of Old Krosa. The troll Ascetic is now pumped into a 9/8 monster. If your opponent doesn't draw, or doesn't have Wrath of God or Damnation, then it's pretty much over next turn. Turn four, the 5/4 ascetic can come crashing in again and if you've got a good old Stonewood Invocation it's time to clean up and start shuffling. This of course is the God Draw, but then I've managed a turn 5 or 6 kill with the Silhana Ledgewalker, a puny 1/1 comparted to the Troll Ascetic, and with the acceleration I could drop the Troll Ascetic on the same turn as I normally bring in the Ledgewalker.

Ok, so there's just one hitch in this grand plan. According to Yol the Troll Ascetic used to go for around 150. So getting a set would run me around 600. Not bad, no prob. But Jeff went to Sta. Lucia recently and saw it going for P500! So that nixes my plans for putting together a set. I sold my mono-white weenie for how much a set of troll ascetics would cost.

And in case people haven't noticed the updates on this blog are getting fewer and further between. It's a lull time because there are new issues happening at work. Can't bring them up here. And there's a fair amount of other things to occupy my time. And biggest time-occupier: Xbox 360. I'm playing Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Gears of War. Diwa, who sold me this machine of God, was kind enough to inlcude all his games. This should render me invisible for a while.

Kind of like Leaving Las Vegas

I remember when I first started watching movies seriously, one of the dark, beautiful films that came out that year was Leaving Las Vegas. I'm still trying to find a copy of it for my personal collection. Well, I get to thinking about it because the premise has a guy who gives up on his life, fills up his suitcases with liquor, and decides to drink himself to death.

I think of this because, as I was embroiled in that thing with my job in the balance, I was planning to go on a massive bender. I decided that I would see the whole thing through sober, and once I had resigned I would spend at least one week waking up at 10am, pulling a bottle out of my closet, then drinking until I passed out and it was the next day. There was a time when I hit a much lower point than this, a few years ago, but all of the stress that came with this recent thing, along with all the personal issues I'd been facing made me just want to lie down and attach an IV drip full of whiskey to my arm.

I weathered the thing sober, following a friend's advice. She said that I had to be all there to be able to get through it. And after I still have yet to recover from all these things that have happened. I haven't made the conscious effort to go on a bender, although it turns out I have been on one.

When things are happening normally, you don't really notice them. For example, I used to weigh about 120 pounds. I did not notice that I was gaining weight. I mean I saw the same face in the mirror every day. It wasn't until someone I hadn't seen in a long time saw me and said, "Tangina, ang taba mo na!" I weighed in and saw that I had increased by a good number of weight divisions. Similarly, you don't feel old, until let's say, your favorite bands from high school start getting played on MTV classic. Man, how did I feel when I was listening to the classic rock station and they played Pearl Jam's "Even Flow"?

So this morning my mom saw me out of it. I passed out last night and woke up without a hangover but disoriented, trying to piece things together. My mom accepts a lot of the things I do. When I failed math she said, "Anak, ok lang yan. Sa UP ka naman e." She's nice to my girlfriends. When I bring friends over to hang out or drink she always does something nice for them. She's just that kind of person, terribly nice. And when I start to get weird, she will dismiss the behavior as something I have to do to write. But I think she has seen something I hadn't.

Not in an angry tone, but in a disappointed one, she asked, "Uminom ka nanaman?" And I said yes, and was embarrassed to say so. Like I said, she accepts the drinking, but there was genuine concern there. You don't have to say much to express certain important things. Her bringing it up meant that she had noticed something.

So I sat back and started thinking. What have I been doing this week? and here's what came out: Monday- Happy Mondays, downed most of a 350ml bottle of gin (with Marge, Kael, and some of the TWG boys taking a few swigs) and somewhere around six beers; Tuesday-movie premier, no drinking; Wednesday, was supposed to just stay home but wound up heading to Blu Fin and having somewhere around 8 beers; Thursday-dinner out no drinking; Friday-went to a birthday party, drank maybe a quarter of a bottle of tequila straight from the bottle and had more than ten cups of beer (there was a keg! and i lost count somewhere after the eighth beer); Saturday- one-on-one drinking session with Anna, we downed a pitcher of margarita and a beer tower. that beer tower was massive. so i passed out. today I'll be in the recording studio laying down tracks for the last song on our album/EP, and most likely after that we'll be downing a few beers.

See the thing to be noticed here is the frequency and intensity. Out of six days, I was drinking four nights, and this wasn't like having a beer or two. This was real, hardcore, hit the bottle like there's no tomorrow drinking. I've told people, as long as I don't drink, I'm fine. But once I get a taste, well, it's a downward tumble. The thing about it is that I haven't noticed. I mean, someone asks me out, and normally the people who know me know that when they need someone who'll have a drink with them I'm their man. I just go. But not until my mom expressed concern did I realize, whoa I have been drinking way too much. It's time to turn this around.

As I write this I'm feeling something in my back, this twitching inside and it frightens me that it could be my liver or kidneys making complaints. These could just be ghost pains that I am imagining because I am thinking of this. But a good number of friends are getting sick with all kinds of things. Our pasts are catching up with us.

Easy and I get to talking sometimes about how we used to feel immortal. In your early twenties you feel like you can take anything on. Nights of mad drinking, going home as the sun comes up and getting up for class or work, shrugging it all off as if the body were adamantium. No more these days. I make a wrong step and my knee pops, I'm afraid it will get dislocated again at the slightest movement. All these things I've done to my body; I feel that my body betrays me when I get hurt, but I can't help it, perhaps it is the body's revenge for all the abuses I have subjected it to.

Without being conscious of it, I've already gone on my post-crisis bender. It's early morning now, the sun has come up while I wrote this entry, and now maybe I should try and turn things around.

Thinking about Fear

It's been rather fun teaching horror this quarter. Like I said before, it's great to be in a room and watch something and get that overwhelming reaction. It's different, in terms of say writing. When I write I'd like something to happen with my audience, but I'll probably never see that unless I stand in front of someone as they read my work. That I could not bear. Just last week I was with a friend and to play with the writerly insecurities she got a copy of a book I'm in and started reading it aloud in the book store. I had to tear the book from her hands because I felt that I would melt as the words were read.

However, having these film viewings is more like putting together a good mixed tape. Wow, I've written a lot about making mixed tapes, and I'm sure that many of my friends from the cassette generation will have their own nostalgia trips about it. But the whole idea was you take careful consideration in crafting this tape that plays a certain mood perfectly. You enjoy it when you play it and the person you made the tape for really likes it. Some level of music appreciation. Similarly, I'm getting a kick out of putting together a set of readings made to scare. And then picking just the right things for my class to watch.

Now the question comes: will I get better at this as the year progresses, considering that I'll be working in genres that don't generate such an apparent and immediate effect as horror does, or is this the peak since I'm very comfortable with this genre.

Teaching in genre has many challenges. I have taken on something pretty big. I think I went for horror since I've been thinking a lot about teaching it, and that results in it being the first thing my mind went to when I was pressed to come up with something to teach. Soon enough I'll be raiding my book closet looking for all of those old anthologies I picked up and making my selections.

Yesterday a co-teacher lent me a book on biopsychology. After she sat in on my class to watch the horror show she heard my mini-talk again about fear and the like. she recommended that I skip ahead in the book and read about the fear reactions.

So during some meeting yesterday I was reading and it turns out that a lot of the studies on fear are really interesting when it comes to the basic responses. One of the interesting things that came out there was that animals, when fighting intra-species, will not go for any lethal moves. Hence, the fighting stances of animals will allow certain weak points to be exposed because they know that those from their species won't hit them there. Interesting, parang yung usapang, sige pare sapakan, pero walang sa bayag. Possibly interesting too is this notion that in the animal kingdom, there's this implicit, unspoken agreement, probably brought about by evolution and the need to propagate the species, that you can hurt each other to establish social order, but you can't kill each other. Now line this up against man and our development and really, how easy it is to kill someone.

Another thing I read, which I wished I had read before, when the shitstorm was coming down on me, was about defensive reactions to aggression. It said there that in systems with a developed hierarchy and pecking order moves made by superiors are considered aggressive. And the common reaction to that kind of behavior is a defensive attack. If I had this information, then it would prove that my reactions were only normal. When the big bad wolf came at me, I had no choice but to mount a defensive attack to protect myself. Amazing what a study of science and behavior can reveal, how our most basic reactions are driven by evolutionary models developed over the millenia.

I can't help but be interested in evolution and these new theories in various fields that allow us to understand ourselves and how we function. Reading up on neuroscience, evolution, and all these trends forces us to consider that, no we are not merely products of our personal experiences, but the development of countless generations, genes passed on, behavioral traits and beliefs that ensure the propagation of the race. While we feel so much as individuals, and I personally have this tendency to think about my various failings, we are all part of this massive human project moving towards the highest and most efficient and developed forms possible. The immensity of evolution and an understanding of how large things are, a realizing of how large a scale things could possibly operate on, and how limited an effect we have on these things on a literal level, can be overwhelming. I'm thinking of a Flaming Lips song, "The Stars are so Big, I am so Small...Do I Stand a Chance?"

And so we can still turn to art, that imposition of form on the artwork, the creation of something, from materials already there, be it statue from stone or poem or story plucked from the language of the social subconscious. These are things that transcend space and time. With the immensity of it all, our collective understanding and knowledge, the awareness of how large the world is, sometimes, it's just a three minute ditty or a few beautiful lines from a poem that can allow us to transcend this world and enter some higher level of consciousness. Even with all our knowledge, there's still something mystical out there.

i'm getting to rambling, but now i have to start questioning, how do I reconcile all of this reading on science, the systematizing of knowledge, while at the same time holding onto these beliefs of transcendence and the mystical experience. In class, we were reading about Plotinus and the "A ha! I've got it moment" where it's not this conscious thought process that leads you to something, but at the snap of your fingers you just suddenly have this moment of understanding. I believe in study and science, but you can't deny that moment of sublimity. I guess I am deciding to live a life of inquisition and constant thought and understanding, in pursuit of that transcendental moment.

Christmas in July

A side note before I get started. As I typed in the title of this blog, two other titles popped out, so it seems that I have a tendency to use Christmas in my titles. Lots and lots of entries with christmas references. Makes me wonder how that season seems to always inhabit my subconscious.

These days have been a blur. Still reeling from this great crisis concerning work, disaster seemingly averted. I'm not out of the woods yet, but people are reassuring me that the worst of it is over now.

I've been looking for things to brighten up about. One thing I think is this new project I've undertaken with Adam David. It's usually bad luck to talk about it or pre-empt things, I've seen since I started working for real that usually I give up on a lot of things I write; but if I say I'm writing something I feel this obligation to show people that I actually finished it. So if I announce I'm going to finish it, I somehow find the willpower to.

Again this new project I find very exciting. I won't claim to be a T.S. Eliot fanatic. In fact most of the stuff of his I've read I've gotten from various anthologies and collections. Still I consider Prufrock one of my favorite poems, and I really enjoy reading him. Enjoy so much that a couple years back I wrote that series of weird dramatic monologues in the vein of Prufrock. So the new project has us working with some of Eliot's poetry and kind of updating it. I think that the source material is so sublime, and the kind of interaction between text, old text, new writer, it's very experimental and makes a lot of room. Some will remember how Ricky de Ungria's Pidgin Levitations tried for this kind of reaction, with him revising, as an older man, poems that he had written in his early twenties. Now here we are engaging one of the greatest poems, and one of the greatest poets of all time. There's a measure of conceit here, for Adam and I to think of engaging Eliot in this way. And it seems very ambitious. But I haven't been writing anything else and this seems so large and challenging that I can't say no to it.

There's that, and in teaching I find myself always excited about teaching my advancement class. I'm having fun because I'm teaching what I want. Going genre based and mixing up TV, film, and literature, I think I'm plunging my students into a critical study of forms that will enrich their understanding. I like to think of things in terms of The Matrix where Neo sees the world as if it were normal, but as his consciousness of things is raised he starts to see the binary code, the structures that are in place, all of them underlying the seeming reality that surrounds them. I think that an understanding of forms allows you that kind of vision.

This brings us to the whole Christmas idea. This quarter so far all I've been able to get in is a detailed study of horror. This friday we watched The Descent. On my own, watching these films helps to pump the adrenaline and allow for some intellectual engagement. But watching with the class one remembers the joy of communal viewing. Just the screaming, the tension everyone suffers from, and the inevitable laughter at the reactions, which always has to seem a little uncomfortable.

So I'm thinking of other genres to jump into. And I think one of the most ignored genres in terms of criticism, is the action movie and the action story. Its popularity at the box office is almost inversely proportionate to its critical reception. But I grew up on action movies, and I love the good old gun fight and explosion. So I'm hoping I can find some way to get them into my class. In an effort to see what I can do with them, I've picked up two of what I consider to be genre defining films. The first installments of the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard franchises stand in my mind as landmarks in the develpoment of the action movie. These films ushered in a new kind of action movie during the 80s, each providing the prototype for two different strands of the genre. I can't specify here yet, since if i'll be teaching i'll be pre-empting, and according to the format i'm supposed to teach in I can't give it, I must elicit or something.

So I spent the first half of this day watching these two movies again and the funny thing is that they are both set during Christmas. For the first two Die Hard movies, the Christmas setting was well defined. They dropped it in the later two though. I still can't remember though if the second Lethal Weapon movie was set in the yuletide season.

I mention these things because as the different parts of my life fall in and out of place, there's this need I feel to do things that will make me feel like a child again. Many people have called me both child-like and childish, and they are probably right. But as the adult world and its responsibilities impinges on mine, I think I want to feel like a child again.

I mention this because when I was maybe ten we bought a new VCR because the old one had been broken. The new one stayed in the living room. The old one I took and tried repairing. I don't know how I did it, but I managed to fix it. Among the few videos we had at the time were the first two Die Hard movies. I watched these over and over. So seeing it again now brings that back. Other things that help bring back the child are my watching Transformers. The first time I watched as a critic, but the second viewing I watched as that child who cried when Optimus Prime died.

Lately I've wanted to go somewhere with a rollercoaster. As a kid I spent a lot of afternoons at Six Flags getting my brain shook in and out of place. I don't think there are any rollercoasters here that would provide that kind of extreme rush, but if anybody knows any that might up the adrenaline level, drop me a comment.

Call for Links

hello friends,

well, since the closing of the old blogspot i kept, i kind of lost all my links. so please visit here and drop your blog addys or send them to my email so i can start linking you here.

With all the things going on these days all I want is either a long vacation or a return to some semblance of normalcy, before everything going weird.

Tonight I headed to the Harry Potter premier. and I hate to pre-empt my own review, but well, it was a pretty long yawn-fest. I've never been a Potter fan, and this doesn't do much to win me over.

I am hoping that the students I have in my advancement classes are getting as excited as I am about it. Thus far we've been talking horror, and I can't help but get excited about certain stories and ways to look at them. I've been throwing my favorite classic stories at them. Not too sure yet how they are taking it all, but the discussions have been pretty good, though not everyone participates. This has always been a problem with me. But sige lang.

And tonight, with time to kill in the mall, I went to the video store and picked up copies of Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. Buying these things shows my openness to the idea of still teaching I guess. I hope that I can stay on now and at least teach some of these things.

The merchant is in business. After getting screwed over by my last blog being found, i've decided to start up again here in blogspot. attempts at anonymity will be made. so hard to manage a blog, writing things about your personal life and worrying what evil may come of it, like say losing your job.

anyways, here's the new stuff. i will post things as they come. back to the good old stuff that you read in the bayaw site.