December 2010
28 posts
Happy Holidays.
Life in the angelocracy
tentacular:
A disgusted Lucifer goads the spineless, time-serving, obsequious functionary angel Remiel for siding with a totalitarian status quo. ‘What would you have done, had I won?’ Lucifer muses. ‘Told me that you’d always supported me ideologically? That you were secretly cheering me on the whole time?’
So. Vince Cable, then.
It’s for a less-than-virtuoso attempt to play Remiel’s game...
a bad sort of apology
I’m not a good liar. I never have been. I can’t ever keep things straight in my head. I slip and fall and leave windings trails of breadcrumbs to the truth, even when I don’t mean to.
***
Loneliness can make you do stupid things. When you’re alone, sometimes you find yourself latching on to people who aren’t quite right simply because they’re there....
a plug, sort of
A friend of mine developed an app for the android that lets you control z-wave devices from your phone. It’s called the Home Buddy. A little demo here.
It comes in handy especially with the MiCaseVerde hardware, which is designed to allow you to time and control various home things [lights, cameras, etc]. Basically, this means he can, say, switch his lights on and off just using his...
snippets: houses and ghosts
We moved to this fairly modest house when I was a senior in high school, from the building just next door. Prior to that, we lived in a huge two-floor edifice, with entrances on two streets, a hot tub/pool in the rather large backyard, and 17 dalmatians. A pretty place, that one, but never quite home.
I don’t remember why we picked this one and stuck with it through the years,...
i only just got here...
The Angel of Death and I seem to have struck an odd sort of friendship. He likes to see me every so often, standing stoically at the back of rooms already suffused with tears and sadness, dressed in black at quiet cemeteries. And he seems to like me best of all when I’m in Manila.
I don’t mind this passing so much. She had lived a good life, watched her children grow up and have...
i'm back.
Driving in Manila is a strange thing. It requires steady hands and solid nerves. It means always being on the defensive. Your eyes are constantly moving, taking in everything. You can’t expect people to follow the rules here. Perhaps because in practice, there are no rules.
In the time that I’ve been away, things have changed again. Little things that people here don’t...
saudade
I think this is beautiful, in a sad, aching sort of way. I wish it had a counterpart in a language I can speak. Oh yes, I am apt to fall in love with abstract things: ideas, memories, words.
**
“Saudade (singular) or saudades (plural) (pronounced [sɐ.uˈdaðɨ] or [sawˈdaðɨ] in European Portuguese, [sa.uˈdad(ʒ)ɪ] or [sawˈdad(ʒ)ɪ] in Brazilian Portuguese and [sawˈdade]in Galician) is...
in manila.
I’m a bit overwhelmed by the agenda of extensive nothingness that I have to get through today.
***
My mother has just informed me that I shall be doing a lot of cooking next week. There is a leg of lamb that must be roasted for Christmas lunch. A turkey to stuff and cook for Christmas dinner. Two kinds of appetizers for Noche Buena [traditional Filipino Christmas Eve feast]. And...
iceland?
This picture of Iceland, taken by S [she of the eponymous clothing line - look, another plug!] has made me put that unfortunately named country on my list. This coming year is already pretty full [what with Asia in Jan/Feb, and the Madrid-Portugal-Morocco trip with T in Aug/Sept] so a trip north may have to wait until 2012, but I am quite intrigued.
***
I’m still awake because A is...
“This is a town where people sleep with each other, you know. We make love to each other. It’s something we do to show we’re still alive.” —- Neil Gaiman, Bitter Gourds
He may as well have been talking about New York.
that boy, again
There was a boy I met early this year who blames me for breaking his heart. He called me a few days ago. Coffee, he said. Just to catch up, he said. I would have said yes, except I remembered the way his voice broke the last time we talked, and I thought I might injure his heart again without my knowing, so I said no.
I must be getting old. I was never this cautious with people when I was...
“The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you...”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald (via flight001)
damn you, mr. yang.
My ex, my roommate, and a good friend are all heading to Egypt for New Year’s. They shall be staying at Y’s house [who also happens to be my roommate’s girlfriend] for a little over a week, right before she leaves for Paris, where she has decided to spend the rest of winter break.
The ex and I had always talked about going to Egypt together. It’s one of two places we were...
and wish me luck
On Monday I meet with a potential agent. I’m cautiously optimistic.
I’ve become wary of these meetings. The last two wanted me to be like Stephenie Meyer, simply because I mentioned that the protagonist was female and there was a slight magical realism element. Like any half-pretentious writer with delusions of self-importance, I bolted at the mention of Twilight. [Yes, I’m...
tab-happy
Things like this have seriously put me off childbirth.
***
I first saw the front collar flip on Marcus, when he first visited, months and months ago. [Yes, he’s a dandy who loves to wear suits. As often as he can get away with, actually.] I simply thought it was one of his affectations and promptly dismissed it as a sartorial quirk. I had no idea it was a real ‘thing’ and...
and plugs
Samantha Pleet Sample Sale! Shoes, coats, capes, rompers, dresses, menswear, etc. Friday, 5-9 pm and Saturday, 11-8pm. Up to 70% off. Also, free hot spiked cider and mince pies! 181 N 11th #203 [between Driggs and Bedford], Brooklyn 11211.
***
NYU Open House at the Provincetown Playhouse, 113 Macdougal St. Historic theatre, live music [a friend of mine is playing the piano at...
the creative writing program, earning, and genre...
The excerpt/s below is/are lifted from a reader writing in to Neil Gaiman’s blog. The points she makes are certainly true. There is a very definite bias against writers of genre fiction in the academic creative writing world. Unless you go to schools like Goddard, or attend workshops like Clarion, it’s quite hard to be taken seriously when you do fantasy, or horror, or sci-fi, or,...
westchester and flatlands
I find myself all over New York this week.
Today for example. I spent the morning in Westchester, where I partook of a huge breakfast of spinach pancakes and lingonberries, popovers with creamy butter and homemade marmalade, bangers and rashers, and cups and cups of tea.
After which I took a train and a bus to get myself to Flatlands by afternoon, where I nearly froze my ass off. Bus stops in...
rejectamentalist manifesto: Update on Haiti: The... →
tentacular:
More on those false rumours that credulous natives kept believing. Leaked expert evidence might appear to very precisely vindicate what Haitians have been saying all along, as part of their long-running campaign against eating imperial shit. But those who believe this would lead to embarrassment reckon without the vatic unflappability of the UN. The international community...
In what strange universe would anyone ever have thought that I would one day be surrounded by children?! But this is the beautiful Vivi, also known as Genevieve, also known as Riley’s new girlfriend.
She’s almost half his age, of course [he’s six, she’s a shade under four], but she’s quite precocious and wise beyond her years, and has already even commented on his...
crispin et miguel
I spent last night at the Philippine consulate, listening to our emerging literary golden boy [NY Times reviewed the book in June, and now says it is one of 100 Notable Books for 2010]. It was an interesting discussion.
***
Someone asks if he hated being born rich. He pauses for a while before answering, and I can almost see the wheels turn in his head. On the surface, the question is a...
year-ender, in parts
Part One: Catharsis
Decembers are strange things.
Some of their names still haunt pockets of my virtual space, so that I can’t help but feel ghost-stalked by way of flickr albums, and facebook tags - grim echoes of stalled lives floating in the ether. Alex, Alexis, Nika, Angel, Ken-ken, Daddy Diding, Lola Ising, Jimmy, Macky… and some other names I can’t quite write down.
...
somewhere in gramercy
I can’t quite stop being awake in this coffin of tangled limbs. The fault is mine, I suppose. I’ve forgotten how to sleep so early and for so long. So I lie on his bed, quiet and still, and I listen to the city wind down and wind back up again. I watch the light from his window recede, and then advance. I feel his chest rise and fall, under and beside me. He snores ever so...
over the chatlines
M: So, what’s this new man of yours like? Me: Tall, smart, cute. Emotionally distant. M: Perfect for you then.
huh.
This feels all too familiar.
I’m slicing peppers and mushrooms, simmering stock, fluffing rice, while elsewhere in the apartment, a man is slouched over his computer, setting the controls on his digital DVR. “I’m giving you a choice between Dexter or Big Bang Theory,” he calls out as I rummage through the cupboards for a colander, or even a slotted spoon.
“I...