we (me and kristian, not me and the many voices in my head) watched weekend (the 2011 movie, not the godard) last weekend; i thought it was ok.

one of those movies where you hear one tiny voice in your head (i lied. the we would include them voices in the head, tiny and booming) say, yeah this is actually how it works in real life (ew. what is real life? is not our idea of real precisely an idea? is not the cinematic more real than our idea of the real? i'm hungry).

my problem with weekend was the excessive drug use of the characters. you guys are ruining your bodies. which are gifts from god. and ruining your lives, too. don't do drugs. censor movies. and stop that second lady gaga concert tonight. there's still time.

of course, i'm not being serious.

i guess my problem was i was expecting something more rohmer-esque. which is a little unfair because, well, there's no one quite like rohmer. and there'll never be. and he's one of my favorite directors. right up there with jia, visconti, lubitsch and bernal. and just last week i watched the last few minutes of le rayon vert. again.

in weekend, people are confused but they're very, well, articulate.

but, see, and i write this again, when people talk they don't always say the right things. i don't know if that's more saussure than rohmer, but we see that in le rayon vert (rohmer's best film and his most annoying protagonist, as per kristian) and all the moral tales and everything rohmer has done. those i've seen at least.

god, sana weekend na ulit.

"languishing, half-deep in summer, soul-sick and under-friended, i decided to find love. so i zipped over to the new-suit store and bought me a giorgio armani rig, unbacked, and a little skinny nothing tie to go with it, and some face bronzer by daunt. thinking: o mistress mine, where are you hiding? are you at the whitney museum, cheek to cheek with the george segal retrospective? are you at crazy eddie's, bent over the grover washington, jr. bin? are you at paragon sporting goods, in the killer-knife area? have you got your thumb stuck in a dark green avocado at balducci's fruit and produce? are you riding a japanese ten-speed the wrong way down sixth avenue, with friends? with a whistle in your mouth? whistling, whistling, wildly whistling?" - donald barthelme

* * *

since they'd never met before, they're sure
that there'd been nothing between them.
but what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways-
perhaps they've passed each other a million times?

- wislawa szymborska, love at first sight

* * *

"kumain ka na. ang ganda mo!" - matet, a very special love

kaye and i watched wicked last saturday.

dahil holy week, penitensya ko na lang yung flight. ang bumpy pareho. tas ako lang ba ang kinakabahan pag may tumutunog na telepono sa plane? sabi palagi di ba turn off all electronic devices as these may interfere with the aircraft's systems. eh yung biglang merong tumugtog na we found love in a hopeless place!


we got free easter gifts. hihi.

anyway, we loved wicked! it's got one of those themes, let's call it the "anti-pretty woman," you know, because no transformation from unpretty to pretty (elphaba remains green) happens; is that not the case in real life? tsarlot.

a few other examples of this: pearl s. buck's the good earth* (o-lan dies with large feet) and cyrano de bergerac (my favorite film adaptation of which is hiroshi inagaki's life of an expert swordsman starring toshiro mifune, and yup his oversized nose remains oversized).

just so we're clear, we're calling it the anti-pretty woman but the best example of "pretty woman" stuff is not that julia roberts movie.

i give you now, voyager starring the screen goddess bette davis ("don't let's ask for the moon. we have the stahhs.") who does transform from an overweight spinster into a beautiful woman who wears hats. but when men start wanting her, she don't want them no more.

eto pala ang analysis ng "the wizard and i" ng kaibigan kong si glenn:

and since folks here, to an absurd degree
seem fixated on your verdigris
would it be all right by you
if i degreenify you?

naiyak ako dyan. kasi feeling ko green equals kabaklaan.

four for you, glenn coco.

*the good earth was one of my favorite books growing up. there was an old almanac in the house and the book was in the list of pulitzer winners for fiction. ms buck's name was in the nobel winners list. i made my mom buy the book for me. this is, by the way, also how i got into toni morrison's beloved. i had to read it several times before i understood a thing. i think it's one of the best books i've ever read. also from that almanac list, anne tyler's breathing lessons.

sabi pala ni mario vargas llosa, magbasa ng libro para daw di matakot sa flights. chika mo, mario vargas llosa. eto pa rin ang pinakamagandang piece na nabasa ko re fear of flying: airships ni javier marias.

i am currently very much in love with this short story by vladimir nabokov (incredible writer and butterfly expert: just last year his theory on butterfly evolution, which few professional lepidopterists took seriously during his lifetime, was proven correct by dna analysis) called symbols and signs.

when they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last dregs of the day were mixed with the street lights. she wanted to buy some fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to go home. accordingly, he returned to their tenement house, walked up to the third landing, and then remembered he had given her his keys earlier in the day.

in silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when, some ten minutes later, she came trudging heavily up the stairs, smiling wanly and shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. they entered their two-room flat and he at once went to the mirror. straining the corners of his mouth apart by means of his thumbs, with a horrible, mask-like grimace, he removed his new, hopelessly uncomfortable dental plate.

the story is called signs and symbols in the collection nabokov's dozen, which i'm extremely proud to say i've a really old copy of. the change in the title was apparently a decision of the new yorker which first published the story.

nabokov tells the story of a young man "incurably deranged in his mind" who "imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence" thus devoting "every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things."

but the story itself is populated with various signs and symbols, inviting readers to read significance into these, to actually over-read and over-analyze. like the deranged young man? the ending is spectacular.

random list of some of my favorite short stories.

- me and miss mandible (donald barthelme)
- the gourmet club (junichiro tanizaki)
- kew gardens (virginia woolf)
- so much water so close to home (raymond carver)
- a hunger artist (franz kafka)
- roman fever (edith wharton)
- the moment before the gun went off (nadine gordimer)
- midsummer (manuel arguilla)
- the lottery (shirley jackson)
- a good man is hard to find (flannery o'connor)
- may day eve (nick joaquin)
- the dead (james joyce)
- three questions (leo tolstoy)
- the swimmer (john cheever)
- the lady with the dog (anton chekhov)
- clara (roberto bolano)
- a rose for emily (william faulkner)
- the trip back (robert olen butler)
- spring fugue (harold brodkey)
- the gospel according to mark (jorge luis borges)
- good advice is rarer than rubies (salman rushdie)
- the history of england (jane austen)
- a perfect day for bananafish (jd salinger)
- in the reign of harad iv (steven millhauser)
- hills like white elephants (ernest hemingway)
- the nose (nikolai gogol)
- a village after dark (kazuo ishiguro)

haven't been reading much these days. and the last time i watched a movie was i think two weeks ago. i may have been sleeping too much. must do something about this. the guilt is becoming a little bit unbearable; there is an urgent need for an absolution of sorts.

maybe i should watch ebolusyon ng isang pamilyang pilipino again this weekend, no?

close to half of the entire population of northern samar is poor.

data from the national statistical coordination board (nscb) reveal that four in every ten households in the province live below the poverty threshold.

yet the people of northern samar pay more for their supply of water, an essential human right explicitly recognized by the united nations, than residents of metro manila where the philippine capital is located.

they pay ten times more.

second part of my special report on access to safe water.