Waking up in the worst Saturday of your life

I woke up Saturday morning feeling quite nice even though it was so noisy because of the rain. I didn’t care much for the heavy rains even though it crushed our kitchen roof. If anything, it was just the thing that would glue me into bed. It provided me with an excuse not to get out of the house and not do anything, and do my second most favorite thing in the world: sleep. I woke at 8AM, played Mafia, had coffee and slept.

I woke again at around 12NN, and around this time I wasn’t feeling so nice. It was still raining very hard and I was upset because our kitchen roof was truly shot to shit. We can’t cook anything aside from instant noodles which my daddy had the ingenuity to mix and experiment with. I hated the rain mainly because of this terrible inconvenience, not knowing yet that elsewhere, people would not be eating until after they get rescued from their rooftops which would mean no food for them until the following day. And God knows if that’s even going to happen.

I was also annoyed because it was still so noisy and the noise drowned the sound of the speakers which I haven’t yet realized I’m lucky to be even able to turn on since we have electricity. Elsewhere, people are not only unable to hear music, they’re also incapacitated to let people of authority know of their life and death situation because there was just no way they could let people know of their dilemma since they’re very close to being obliterated by the quick rising flood, because they have no access to internet, landline or cellphone because, well, they’re about to be drowned not in sound but in flood water.

I only got to know of the grave danger that most people were in when I turned on the TV and found that Jessica Soho’s regular show was pre-empted by a special news report that aimed to inform of the country’s current situation which at that time was already nearing Noah’s Ark proportions. I was just about ready to call it a night and forget this all happened because we in the south are relatively unharmed and it was just a little too grim to take it all in, the floating bodies, the live footages of people struggling in the San Mateo River in Rizal. It was very depressing.

And then it’s Sunday and my thoughts shifted onto more practical matters, ie if there would be work the next day. Of course there would be. That’s the most brilliant thing about being in a multinational company, is what I instantly though and this is of course a typically bitter sentiment from someone does not LOVE work so much. I was hoping that maybe the bosses were themselves feeling the enormity of the situation and that they call off work for all employees regardless of position or place of residence. Of course, that is not to be the case. Even if our bosses were the most compassionate and most humane of all bosses, we all know, even I, that our work’s stoppage’s will make itself felt in the coming days. But then of course, that’s just me feeling so tamad and hopeful for the best. And so we go to work.

I got over my petty worries and am currently supposedly doing decent honest labor. I just want to make it known for the record that I understand (naks), although maybe not completely, that there are so much bigger concerns than mine. September 26, 2009 might not actually be the worst Saturday of my life but it is for many, many pinoys. I also just wish for things to get better really soon for us and that in spite of our inefficient weather bureau, the NDCC, and our president, may God still bless us.

For Chrissakes

The moment Anne Rice said she’s no longer going to write about vampires, witches and bitches, and that she would instead be writing about Jesus Christ’s early years, I knew there’s no way I would enjoy any of it even she cuts out all those hefty descriptions of Italian curtains, Greek chairs and Roman marble columns. I think I actually miss her extensive cataloguing of various furniture in her books. And it’s true, I did not fully enjoy Out of Egypt, the first in her Christ the Lord series, a series that couldn’t be more different from the Vampire Chronicles and Witching Hour. However, I’m a little disgusted by myself for openly taunting her decision to write about Jesus. While it’s true that I can’t find a single reason why I should forge and pursue this series (book 2 is already out), I think it’s a little too Satanic to begrudge a writer for writing about something she really likes. I’m not that sorry though. If you’d ever read or had been fascinated by her alternate universes of vampires taking nutrition from menstruating nuns  and ghost granddaddies impregnating granddaughters, then you probably earn the right to be a little miffed that the genius behind such concepts is now satiating the very demographic that her old series’ followers isn’t from. In short, she’s gone Chistian on our asses and there’s no turning back. I’m sorry again, that seems mean. I also realize that it’s not nice to take the effort to say how unenjoyable a book is because it’s mean and frankly, a waste of time. But the thing about Out of Egypt is that it’s a big improvement in her prose. Definitely gone are the aforementioned long descriptions of inanimate and unimportant objects, and trading that for slightly better characterization of the book’s anti-Lestat, Jesus Christ. I was worried that she’d make Jesus speak tons of Egypt’s fine sands, gorgeous Egyptians, silky smooth Egyptian hair, and ornate sandals. That was not to be the case as Jesus in this book is a 7 year old, slightly clueless boy who mysteriously but skillfully heals dead people, just as skillfully and stealthily he kills them. The only people Jesus is killing in this book, I would imagine are the old Rice fans. The goths, if you will. But if you take the time to realize the radical shift in faith it took her to write this, then it might not be too hard to accept that she just had to change and that there are other vampire books to be had anyway, minus Lestat of course. Twilight series, for example. But that would probably suck more. I’m not completely sold though. If I were to be my old spiteful self, I’d probably think that this series is Anne giving the finger to those who maligned her, her faith and her skills as a writer, when the final V-Chronicle book came out and many called her, well, a witch and other unflattering names. I was honestly not too thrilled during the whole day that I sat down and consumed this. And that’s something that could not be said of any Anne Rice book, the proverbial reading in just one sitting. I came to the Author’s Note page and that was all it took for me to have a change of heart, although still  not completely. Say what you will of Anne but her immersion for the things that fascinates her are undeniable and all we could do, the followers or followers-turned hecklers, is to wait to get amazed again, even if it looks like it’s going to take quite a long time.

Oppression

WordPress is oppressive. You can’t just plainly say anything and be done with it in 20 words or less. You have to be verbose. The white blank page that stares at you in the Add New Post page mocks your inability to fill out its entirety even if you’re completely sober. The page stretches on for eternity and it’s so huge, the space. Unless you have something really important or really  interesting to say, THIS white blank space just wouldn’t do it for you, for people who want to say very inconsequential things about their inconsequential selves. You need small but you’re not getting it here. You just have to have the word Really preceding anything to say even if all you ever say is not really. WordPress is not called WordPress for nothing. It’s not just aiming for cuteness unlike some people we know. The vastness of the available space calls for lengthy words and passive sentences, if there is such a thing, a passive sentence. It begs to be taken seriously as a tool for nonsense-speakers by limiting the amount of gimmicks. Exactly what gimmicks, I wouldn’t know since they’re limited. You can’t just simply complain and be done with it in the standard, high school paragraph-length of just 5 sentences and call it a night. No. Shit you say in WordPress have to have some depth and ‘meaning’ for it to get attention, if attention is what you aim for. And the thing about WordPress is that you can’t have it if you’re not the type who seek attention. You can have it, sure, but it will tell you soon enough that you don’t deserve it. It will get back at you by letting people know about your dormant page when you least expect it to let people know about stuff that are supposed to be secret, even though the idea of secrecy in WordPress is really just a myth. When people find out, that’s when you know that not only were you stupidly oppressed, you’ve also been humiliated and exposed through no fault of anyone but you. This is exactly the type of site that when you’ve committed words in it, you feel so very sorry about all the words you’ve said because they will be published by you, and all the words you’ve said are, in your mind, too precious to be deleted, erased from the mind of those who are embarrassed for you, that they’ve read about what you had to say about a thing they wouldn’t otherwise know or care about. And yet, you don’t go away. You can’t pretend to be speaking to yourself because you’re inadvertently linked elsewhere, without your permission or your liking, although this part about being linked, sometimes you don’t mind it very much. And they, whoever they are, they’re there whether you like it or not. Because really, if all you really ever wanted to do was to have something  immortalized in print, you’d have grabbed a yellow pad, an old notebook, a receipt, a napkin. Not website. Also people accuse you of adopting a style which should just be the thing to erase you from the face of the earth (or just the www) because it hurts to be accused of that whether true or not. I think that in my case, my co-called and totally false style pertains to those instances when I cut my sentences short. And I follow it up with another seemingly cut sentence and thought. And then I precede my statement with a sentence that starts with And, although for me, that doesn’t really count as style. It’s just that I believe that certain thoughts can not be said in a single breath. I would admit though of trying to end things in a rather abrupt way. Good night!!!

Fanne Rice

I’ve been obsessing about Anne Rice lately. I keep thinking, what if she dies already? Sorry for being morbid but, what if she does? She’s just 2 years shy from 70 and so far, at least for the last 5 years, all she ever wrote are her Jesus novels (which I prefer to get from the likes of Christopher Moore who gives Jesus hard-on and other sorts of unmessiah-like virtues) and her still in hardcover and therefore still expensive Christian-themed memoir Called Out of Darkness. I’ve been meaning to read that but I wouldn’t just yet as a matter of principle and because it’s still expensive at 800 PHP.

In college, I had obsessed even harder. In my so-called book review in the college paper, I prepared extra hard to write the most flattering, most know-it-all sounding book review of the last Chronicle to come out of Miss Rice’s most fabulous and most popular series, The Vampire Chronicles. I’d be the happiest fanboy if I could just get that ‘review’ on the paper. You know how college writers are: so eager to dazzle the studentry with their gorgeous poetry and prose, with their world-changing take on the latest popular novel as if their sad, would-be ignored, cookie-cutter reviews will ever be read by anyone other than the editors and their sad selves. As if hoping that major dailies such as the Philippine Daily Inquirer are on the look out for untapped literary talents in business colleges who will write life-changing book reviews on vampire fiction. Me, I didn’t care. I basically just wanted to show off and hoped that Anne Rice herself will one day will pick up some third world college paper from God knows where and see for herself that even in South East Asia, a fanboy named Me adores all the literature she throws our way.

As preparation for this, I’ve read every single Amazon review there is on Blood Canticle and they were among the most vicious criticisms I’ve ever read. The Anne Rice fans were short on cursing her entire lineage only because they weren’t happy on Lestat’s final book. Like your everyday fanboy who occasionally litter the web with his take on matters of extreme importance, I took this personally and I may even have made an Amazon account just to get back at the retards who called Anne a hack. Fortunately for them, the nasty reviewers for whom I was all set to impale with verbal bile, Amazon does not allow reviews from wannabes because they have a way of detecting. Joke lang. To be an Amazon reviewer it turns out, you need to have purchased at least one item in order to review. Then October came and I was finally able to read the book in all its tarnished glory.

It sucked.

In a way, I was more relieved because it was certainly easier for me to malign, hate, criticize and write lengthy accounts of something, anything unpleasant. And I know Anne Rice so it was very, very easy. And though she may never come across my beautiful but sinful writing as I wish she would, I still have the same hopes for vampire lit’s most enduring, most flamboyant, and sexiest vamp tramp Lestat. Lestat should have been given a more proper exit, a more bombastic one, any kind of exit befitting the true prince/king/rock star of vampire lit, anything but that. If you’ve ever cared for Anne’s works, you’ll have no trouble denouncing Blood Canticle as an  instrument of destruction which in its very slim (as far as Anne Rice’s works are concerned) form, took all but 400 pages to ruin whatever fantasies, hopes and dreams (of movie adaptations, musicals, etc) you may have had turned into, uh, ashes. My college self and those Amazon reviewers puzzle me now, looking back, because all anybody ever really needed to say about that tenth chronicle was that it was plainly bad. To be honest, it hurts me to even say that. But like the millions who slobbered in grave praise over Lestat, I was hopeful that this wouldn’t, because it simply just couldn’t be, the last. But it looks like it really, really is. :c

I’m surely, truly, irrevocably out of college and I have been looking for some thing to attach devoted fanaticism to but I just can’t find one as enduring as Anne Rice. She’s to turn 69 this October 14 and to be symbolic about it, I am rereading Prism of the Night: A Biography of Anne Rice by Katherine Ramsland. I have a month to finish it and even though it’s Anne Rice-novel long, I’d still gladly indulge and set aside Blackwood Farm for the meantime. I have yet to find a thing to fanatically follow so I really hope she doesn’t go soon, and that she starts revamping The Vampire Chronicles soon. A fanboy can hope.

Dear Anne, if you’re reading this, happy 69^th!!!

Briticism

If… most people buy books because they like to be seen reading rather than because they actually enjoy it, then I would suggest that you can’t beat a collection of letters by an author – and if that author is a poet, thenso much the better.

This adequately explains my feelings about reading a book about books. I think I took this passage out of context but the thought goes well with my current condition of wanting to read non-stop. I do jobs on the side but mostly I prefer to read. In Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt, Nick Hornby suggests reading a book comprised of letters by a famed writer/poet because it will imply that you do know or you are at least familiar with said writer’s works and that this exercise in pure braggery will surely ‘impress the hell out of anyone’ who will see you reading the stuff. I don’t know what to make of this suggestion except that it’s a slightly weird thing to say, coming from the writer of such a funny and impressive book, High Fidelity. But maybe all he’s trying to say is that any book of that type is good and that it’ll do anyone well to be reading Letters To/From Author type of books. As for his book, it’s doubtful if one is going to achieve impressive status by reading it, his collection of book criticisms because for one, it has a goofy, non-serious looking cover. And speaking of goofy, sometimes I feel like my desire to read isn’t pure. I suspect that some of my reasons for wanting to spend hours with a book is so that I could write about them? Which is goofier and so very purposeless. At least Nick Hornby gets paid to read and criticize. I normally find this sort of I Love Books sentiment corny but there are people who make book-loving sound sincere and Nick Hornby is surely one of them. And so after giving it much thought (not really), I think I’m agendaless after all. I don’t read to impress… I think. I  like the smell of paper and I like how books, when stacked nicely, make my room look really, really nice.