amazon amazes. the expected arrival is february 3 but lo and behold, drood arrived this ayem.
a very hefty book, still with a whiff of ink. i just wish plastic wrappers are sold here, the precut ones found in national bookstore as i don’t want to ruin the dust jacket.
and because i want to read it without any distractions, things must be taken cared of in the oven, including bhavna’s meme on facebook.
• the walking up at 3.30 in the godsdamn ayem has stopped (is this called outsomnia?) and so is the napping after lunch.
•*drood* by dan simmons in finally shipping. amazon knows how to keep customers happy – no extra charge to ship an order the moment it becames available, unlike the fucktards at barnes.
•finally braved the cold and watched charlie kaufman’s *synecdoche: new york*. the word could be “awesome” if it has not been patented by bimbos. another cinema at SoHO is a great option to angelika film center, so now there’s at least a choice.
•two current obsessions:
hope to find the nearest vendo at the post office before this becomes nevermore!
black of course. hope this and the book arrives the same day. small victories, that.
• the oven calls with a lot of insults. time to bake.
i’ve accidentally discovered something that makes torrents work faster and have currently updated the list of 2008 movies that i haven’t seen on the big screen. watched this week are:
• the midnight meat train
• deception
• august
• max payne
• funny games
• passengers
• blindness
• quid pro quo – if *kissed* (1996) is to necrophilia, this is to intentional paralysis. a very beautiful story without the need for effects, stunts, catchy dialogues. next to *let the right one in* for last year’s best. hope the cold gives a break, there’s still *synecdoche: new york* for next week.
yesterday was the 200th birthday of edgar allan poe, the man who perfected the gothic story, fathered the detective story, and because all fiction is speculative, tried to shatter every literary shackle (*annabel lee* is of course, a romance and putting fabio on the cover with a dead girl would still make it work).
i grew up on his stories and poems before i could even read – out of lack of choice as we didn’t have a teevee. my father would read to me *the raven* complete with a dramatic exclamation on nevermore! over candlelight during power interruptions which occurs often in the province.
the stories were read aloud too, with annotations and explanations which makes the terror all the more terrifying and the wonder, all the more wonderful. from the *tell-tale heart* to the *murders on rue morgue* everything was read over the course of my preschool years.
(there were other literary greats on the menu like joyce kilmer but my brother, ever the genius, cut down *trees* with a question: if it started as something environmental, why did it end as something religious? ladies and gentlemen, the other bueno boy.)
probably the best gift he ever gave aside from perfecting the short story was defining it: something that should be read in one sitting. there’s no bull unlike wordsworth’s definition of poetry, which meanders like a coward: the spontaneous overflow…oh gods. that’s not to say that he can’t do poetry. there is no recollection in tranquility when it comes to poe’s poems, just science and mathematics. to explain his poetry construction, a early 90s copy ad about the poe museum has the headline: poe predated einstein in the theory of relativity by a century. he also beat him on the hairdo.
and because he’s the man, there’s also the poe who’s the original defiler of underage girls and close cousins.
if only absinthe can be legally had, yesterday would be a good day to break two weeks of sobriety.
and i should be having some weird dreams but instead i am having my first breakfast of the day (cereals and soy chocomilk) and looking at the powder of snow drifting outside, covering everything in depressing white and muting the sounds of the sleeping city.
and i should be killing another immortal on page 9 but the my mind is fixed on a name study of what my restaurant should be named, if and when things are hurled once more to the fates and the card dealt to me is that i should have a dining place (very, very unlikely but you can never can tell). the name is COUNTER INTELLIGENCE and the cuisine is something forward thinking (like the concept of molecular gastronomy circa 1980) and the wait staff will be wearing the sartorialist clothes and elvis costello spectacles. menus will come in dossiers and the dining tables are tabletop LCD screens. all nerds come with a 25% discount (the nerdism determinant have yet to be finalized).
and i should be doing the laundry, cleaning the restroom, defrosting the tuna, vacuuming the floor, ironing the business suit, picking up the meds, borrowing books online, checking RSS feeds of porn sites, defiling some blogs, YMing people but instead the concept of a bookstore called CATHEDRAL is, to quote morpheus, lodged like a splinter in my brain. a bookstore that is catered to the geek squad with none of harry potter and twilight series but plenty of borges and ligotti and lovecraft. ambient sounds will be this mortal coil or the decemberists or mors syphilitica and every one in the staff will be wearing black of course with the welcome-but-not-mandatory tattoos and mohawks and piercings.
the oven is mocking me, saying i do not have the will to slay an immortal.
we shall fucking see.
the 3 movies last weekend never found its brake. i’ve downloaded 9 movies that were released last year and so far managed to watch bangkok dangerous, lakeview terrace, rocknrolla and transsiberian. only the last one did not suck. oh, the hours of my life i could never get back.
still up for watching are: passengers, the midnight meat train, blindness, august, and deception. i am really hoping that the midnight meat train wouldn’t disappoint mainly because it is based on a story by clive barker. but then again…
after the chores today watched the curious case of benjamin button over papaya drink and chili dog at the cineplex and slept and snored. thrice. the wife then squeezed my hand like a vice grip to prevent me from further embarrassment.
tomorrow might be the wrester or synecdoche: new york. only if it doesn’t snow as the only theaters screening these are in houston and the weekend trains are never dependable. if only these can be had through torrents.
got an email from the editors that the philippine speculative fiction volume 4 will be finally birthed next month. i love the cover with its hint of something analog. the previous ones had, in this order, a bookmark, a fairy, a european cap. no matches for a robot, these. i just wish that i could be there for the launch.
saw on the web that the annual *the year’s best fantasy and horror* is no more. what a sad, sad news. easily the most thorough of all anthologies ever. and the most prestigious too.
lastly, there’s rumor that *a different bookstore* is about to fold. fuck. this one is a pioneer in what a bookstore should be (at least in manila) where one can actually sit down, browse books, order titles not on the shelves, and have a conversation or two from knowledgeable staff who are more than willing to give you a discount on the next purchase (no loyalty cards and shit). i guess the publishing industry is taking a beating from all of these recession. *border’s* is also rumored to be devoured by *barnes* and everyone, more so the publishers, is afraid. monopoly can never be a good thing.
well, maybe it’s time for cathedral.
***
woke up to 7 deg F (-13.8 deg C) and on the way to the morning bagel, i was expecting eli to jump on the snow. i must be still asleep.
a broken dryer almost ruined my day and over leftover lunch of octopi, udon, and kimchi, i thought about how fussing over things like these only means that i should be thankful that i’m not worrying over other, more important things.
the snow is mostly melted although the muted ambient sounds that come with the cold are still here, making curling up on the sofa with a woolen blanket very, very inviting. i am getting sleepy just thinking about it.
went to the library instead wanting to read anything, *the historian* maybe or even some sidney sheldon (the man can write some good porn) and found a book i’ve been wanting to read – as usual, it’s on the cart just before it could be shelved.
on the way back, something grabbed my attention on the corner synagogue. it always contains scriptural messages except this time. weird.
now, it’s really time to open some word documents and get back into the writing.
***
today’s paper says that NYers including the governor of this empire state rallied yesterday infront of the UN in support of Israel.
i checked on the web and found out the hamas is declaring victory soon. the stats are: Israel, 13 deaths, hamas 917 deaths. this, of course contains lots of women and children that the hamas are using to cry foul after starting this very war. some people are actually stupid enough to think that wars have no collateral damage. the very same one who, after a crushing defeat, will declare victory. the very same ones who never learn not to fuck with god’s chosen few.
i’m all for slumdog, but there’s also *the wrestler* by none other than darren arronofosky. for slumdog, everyone clapped inside the cinema and this is a good thing. the bad thing is that judges would rather go for the head-scratching kind of films.
in the animated feature, *the tale of desperaux* (where pixar got their story formula IMHO) is missing from the list.
i hope it snows some more.
it is snowing for 12 hours now and as usual, we chose the time to watch a movie in this freezing weather. i felt my ears go numb braving the cold to go to the post office and find a cab to the cinema.
3 movies later, the pile was about 3 inches and if this keeps up overnight and piles up to about a foot, we might go to the park for some pictures and a much needed cardio.
tomorrow would be a week without alcohol and carbo for dinner. the goal is a 30 inch waist by march 15. i’m doing this the OC way, we shall see.
anne rice has found christianity and poppy z. brite, good ol’ catholicism.
can stephen king and mormonism be far behind?
a news story to brighten the first working day of the year:
ASTRONOMERS’ REPORT
Milky Way could hit another galaxy
It spins faster, has more mass than thought
WASHINGTON — The Milky Way, the Earth’s home galaxy, is spinning much faster and has a mass 50 percent larger than previously believed, raising the probability of a collision with another galaxy, according to a report out Monday.
A team of international astronomers, with the aid of ten telescopes spread out between Hawaii, the Caribbean and the northeastern United States, determined that the Milky Way is rotating at a speed of 161,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) per hour faster than previously thought.
That increase in speed increases the Milky Way’s mass by 50 percent, said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in research presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week in Long Beach, California.
“No longer will we think of the Milky Way as the little sister of the Andromeda Galaxy,” Reid said in a statement.
five thirty in the morning after almost nine hours in the arms of morpheus thanks to two tablets of melatonine and the city that never sleep is, contrary to popular belief, still asleep.
from the window, cars and a very lonely u-haul truck parked as only new yorkers can park them. discarded christmas trees line up the sidewalk with the rest of the color coded refuse the city folks are constantly spewing out. a couple of mexicans walking briskly to their breakfast resto jobs.
inside the house, our two bags are still unpacked demanding attention like the empty ref and joy’s business suit and leather boots. mails and magazines still litter the table, unsorted and unread. our plant is dead,unlike the trees outside that will be resurrected come spring. i don’t dare too look at the part of the desktop beyond this browser for all the things that need to be written – this week is for watching movies and dropping by at MoMA and central park. as well as reading macrumors.
i hope we can avoid the jetlag altogether.
