On Blog Banners

...

The 400 Blows (1959) Blog Banner
circa February 2009 - January 13, 2011

The 400 Blows (1959) Blog Banner [link to the movie] - I have been keeping this for almost two years. I have never attempted to change it because its mythic positioning of the Antoine Dionel's head from a focal center to the side. I imagined my blog that time to be a venue for art cinema, a boiling chamber of ideas for a more critical, more analytical venue to ponder issues on stylistics and narratology of films applying theories of David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. The film commands the entry of world cinema from the formulaic dominance of Classical Hollywood Cinema of the 1950s to the aesthetically diverse French New Wave of 1960s. This transition was aided by a group of revolutionary film critics who wanted to change the stagnant style of Hollywood. The banner pays tribute to that transition.

L'Avventura (1960) Blog Banner [link to movie] - I finally had a courage to change the banner from its previous look. The theme of this banner is a mix influence of Jacques Tati 's Playtime (1967) and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura. I also increased the font size of the blog title three times to put emphasis. I also changed the tag line from 'Films, Art, Life and Nothing more...' to 'Exploring World Cinema frame-by-frame' to launch my dedication to the close analysis of world cinema for everyone's pleasure and understanding. One might notice that the banner is reminiscent of the CANNES IFF 2009 banner. I made it that way as a tribute to one of the most memorable Cannes season for Philippine Cinema with Brilante Mendoza winning the prestigious award Prix de la Mise-en-scene for Kinatay (2009), Raya Martin's film Independencia (2009) slated for Un Certain Regard category and Raya and Adolf Alix Jr.'s Manila (2009) screened for Out of Competition. 2009 was also the year when our dearest Alexis Tioseco died and somehow this banner is dedicated to his efforts of bringing Philippine Cinema to the World cinema stage even if its costs his whole life.


I don't know if I will change my blog banner next year or the following years. But surely, if ever I did change one, it will surely meant a lot.

Ciao!
***

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER
a great new way to blogging

Breaking out of a shell --- living anew!

I was thinking hard a few days ago about my status as a blogger.

I wonder, how much have I expand? What expectations have I achieved?

In my struggle in answering these questions, i recalled my vain efforts in making this blog.

I started my blog last February with a thought that i could revolutionize cyberspace. My first post, EVERYTHING SEXY: EVERYTHING ABOUT WRITING , is my protest against the modernist world but also my support to existential positivist and post-modernist thinking as primary beacons in living social cyberspace lives. I also themed this revolution with the process of 'writing'. The 'writing' symbolizes, of course, blogging. My first post also involve my transformation from the traditional writer type to a cyberspace writer. This acceptance is validated by my acceptance of 'SEX' as a part of me, and therefore started the REVOLUTION. The allusion of the 'SEX' is to produce an transforming effect to conquer the modernism . Sex is a revolution so as my blog. With this first goal, have i revolutionized cyberspace?

I realized last night that i did not revolutionize cyberspace but instead I revolutionized myself.

With these new effort of revolutionizing myself as a blogger, I wonder, what position have I achieved?

I posted my retraction a few days ago. I know that it was an important cue that i am leading into something big. I does not only validated my position as a blogger, but showed me my direction in blogging. I slept last Monday night with a thought that my blog, with a daily number of visitors of 15 to 23 viewers, is not enough. I still have to give it a character, a self. After receiving a reaction from ____________ about my post two months ago, i shifted my perspective as a blogger. I became more aware of myself, of my presence in cyberspace. I know from that experience that my blog is becoming bigger. With this experience, i paused for a few days, to discontinue my efforts in blogging. I have to think and to plan for November, a new season of blogging.

With this introductory post to a whole new type of blogging experience, i welcome everyone of you in these efforts. This is a new revolution.

I am thinking more of art, more of films, and more of my life experiences. This is my new way. This is my new future.

Ciao! God bless!

PLURK: IS MICROBLOGGING COOL?

PLURK: IS MICROBLOGGING COOL?
comments and suggestions

My friend gave me a link via email to this PLURK website! I deleted it and considered it a spam... A few days later, he urged me to try visit the link, so i did. it's just a typical cyberspace talk between friends: one tries to understand another, and the other one, trying hard to divert the discussion to other things. Or is this just another case of a gay to a homophobe talk, i really don't know. Most of my talks with this friend of mine composed of Bryanboy, Katy Perry, and a bunch of stuff that i wasn't aware off.

So i visited this Plurk website. Clicked, clicked, and clicked. This is something that i do not like about Plurk. Where is the dashboard? where is the customize button? where is everything?

One of the basic stuff on a blog site is a dashboard. Not just a dashboard but an organized dashboard.
i mean take a look at this:

is this my dashboard?




or this?

Where the heck is my dashboard?

One thing PLURK... make it compact! every blogger needs a page in cyberspace where he or she could lessen the burden of finding the dashboard. It irritates more than anything.

What is this?

Some kind of roasted beef or a zombified pig? God! Please tell me what creature is this? Plurk is definitely a weird microblog site. I hate it for those details!

On the contary, i like their timeline theme. It just cool. A diversion that i always wanted. A horizontal view is definitely relaxing. No effort to move the vertical bar down, and your microblogs are arranged chronologically, from your very recent post. It's cute and organized.

Another thing that i like about Plurk is that it can be customized like other blog websites. And it also provides links to find those sites, so less effort on googling it up.


If you have been, by anyhow, plurking or invited to plurk, think twice. One thing that you have to think about is that you are limited by 140 characters. Which is for me a challenge, since i am a blogger who likes to keep his sentences long.

PLURK = PUKE + LURK!

isn't that disgusting?

if you are currious, google up PLURK!

Ciao! Godbless!

I ALMOST DESTROYED MY BLOG

I Almost Destroyed my Blog Page
A post about a lesson on customizing a blog page



This is what i'm talking about!

I couldn't satisfy myself. I sat after eating dinner and fingered my laptop like the usual. Then i thought, why customize my profile!

And then i search the google bar for downloadable templates and boom! i uploaded a single XML file and everything that i started with went berserk!

My blog page is destroyed! It looks like all hell break loose!

It took me four hours to bring back the old blog page and it's elements. THank GOd! I'll never do that again! And beware, all of you bloggers out there!

Ciao!

RAIN and Blogging

RAIN and Blogging
A blog about my unblogged two-day rest period



A clear sky at Casiguran last summer!
It makes a lot of difference.




Ipil Kiosk July 25, 2008. Before the rain!

It was raining outside. I thought it would be the time for me to blog about the past few days. i still want to find a distinguishing character for my blog. If this would be permanent and irrevocable, then i would consider a singular monochrome of color that would suit my idea of blogging. Food, Fitness, University Life, Engineering frenzy, study tips, photoblogging, daily journal, i couldn't think of an specific idea for my blog. It should be something distinct and original.

Any way i'll just continue this blog after watching dark knight this evening.

.......

sO I'M BACK AGAIN FROM THE DARK KNIGHT with my friend Keith. And this blog?

Well Keith says that i should write about it three days after watching it because i get so fuzzy with the details and i do not know where to start. That means this blog will not be about the Dark Knight, this will still be about the two-day rest period that i hAD.

Some junk mail updates from U.P. people:

1.) A Forum at Malcolm Hall with Law students to grind Arroyo's SONA this Comming July 28, 2008. Here's the invitation so i want you all to come to interact... Maybe i would be there, depending on my schedule. Of course i have a class and a quiz on EnE 31. But then if youre are really, really free on the said schedule, this is a must as social citizens of our country (and i do sound like a politician)!

UP Law Student Government

invites you to

"SO[ano]NA?"

a post-SONA assessment forum

July 29 (Tues), 9AM-12NN

Malcolm Theater

With guest speaker:

Ms KARINA DAVID

Former Civil Service Commissioner

Dr. LEOCITO GABO

CSWCD Faculty

JILLIANE JOYCE R. DE DUMO

University of the Philippines - Diliman

Mobile: +63917 887 58 40

Alternate Email: jrdedumo@yahoo. com

2.) Namets movie! it will be on JULY 30, I guess.... I don't know the whole story but it's about a love story over Negrenese Cuisine, food and falling in love kinda stuff! Which i don't normally watch. Practically because it's boring. Not that I hate the movie "NO RESERVATIONS" of Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart (who is also a main character in the DARK KNIGHT). But the fact that it's something that i never tasted before (No offense to some people!) is quite unsentimental! But then if you want to watch, then so be it.

3.) IBON Midyear Birdtalk: The Philippine Economic & Political situation from the People's Point of View. THursday 1-4 PM @ UP School of Economics auditorium (student reg fee 50 PhP, inclusive of snacks hmmm..) Get the hard facts of current crises and Learn the Logical Solutions. See pic bellow :

or follow the link (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg_WxSiySK12TjKzgUEwiejPfau_pGyYanafjeQCQRjq2q_tT02CUr8jJsTkkQ1dYGa2vu5OHtMPpNENCYbboDkEGKDHSegMp3BBuL3vZZFQsatUa-_7UoQG_sim4NXB-2ShlJqxBJaHCh/s1600-h/ibon.jpg)

4.) RALLY! sa SONA

Don't worry mama i won't go there!
So anyone interested in the Universiy Student Council's stride towards mendiola, join this rally.

Brutal! Patalsikin si Gloria ritual doesn't work either!

MY TABLE SETTING!

My current table setting right now is hell. Let me take a pic:

Two things: magulo at SB!

I still drink starbucks and eat a bacon twist oblivious of my weight gain for a couple of days now. So what happened for the last two days?

1.) Eating so much JUNK in Front of Physics Pav.
2.) Engineering Power Speakers Session 1
3.) Molave elections and some interesting surveys.
4.) UP College of Engineering UPCAT Frenzy
5.) Gossips from Molave (my old dorm)

Apparently, if i have time, i could spend a whole post about this stuff. But anyway, let's begin.

EATING SO MUCH JUNK IN FRONT OF PHYSICS Pav

I had this great idea, before my lab i should eat Pancit Canton in front of Physics pav. So i went there and ate my lunch. This is primarily the consequence of not having a canteen inside the dorm, you eat junk on street sides. And the most credible excuse from that is that i had a gym session a day before. What a lame excuse i have! I ate it anyway.

Preparing my pancit canton meal in a three step process:
1 Cut and Open
2 Boil
3 Filter
And that would be an hour!



Ate looking for my C2 Apple. I still couldn't believe that it's
27php this time.

Eating Junk food with my planner --- i plan things a week ahead
but food? it's an impulsive treat!



I bet i do have a flowery bookmark for my planner!
HAHA



Rooster at Physics pav: "I'm hungry, hey, is that a worm?"
reffering to the pancit canton noodle!

ENGINEERING POWER SPEAKERS 2008

I just talk there as usual. Haha! Yes, Mr. Jamandre of CAL lectured us about ETHOS, whatever that is, and 5 Steps of Public Speaking. I don't even remember each one. i'm so dumb! We had this activity where we talk infront of a group of people and each one of them would constructively critize the content of my speech and the method of dilivery. Unfortunately, this is what they think of me and it's pretty brutal!

I arrived early at Geo. eng'g Theater. Anybody here?



The comment sheet: My content was an applause but
i lost eye contact with my

MOLAVE ELECTIONS

Molave hit it! A few weeks after Ipil Elections i'm pretty excited on Molave elections, who's-who and da-whos appeared before everyone in front of molave lobby. too bad, the hotties are also posted. Check this out:

Hunks and Babes: Keisha Halili (alleged cousin of celeb hottie
Katrina Halili) topped the Babes... Pia Ubalde
(a sorsoganon) is also here.
Adrian Macrol? Who are you! not worthy!
Dapat si Pogi (former Kalay
floormate) nalang yung number one! waha

Lopez? what are you! Chairpersons are overrated!
Cainghog, sinuka! i mean sino ka?



Facilities Committee wants Keith Hernandez Cipriano!
may arrow pa tlg pababa! Obvious ba?
Si keith ang panalo sa appointee for Faci.



Blur but comphrehensive view of Molave elections tally!

UP COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING OvErPrEps for UPCAT

I mean what's the fuzz with engineering painting the walls before upcat.? It's overpreparation to the max, but gladly it's a simple validation: Engineering people have this sense of self, an inner egotistical persona who tries to prove that they have money, or more importantly we have money to boast our ass off for UPCAT takers. And hell i'm proud of it! We can manage to do this and other colleges don't even bother to clean the corridors i.e. CAL, AS, others! what does it implicates? We rule! A sorry ass for CAL (hehe this message is intended for keith)! There are only two colleges in UP: Engineering and other low-ass colleges wahaha!

Melchor hall at it's pristine!



A banner tag for engineering building!

Overpreps for eng'g: workers dutifully removes
corroded paint off the wall.




Working 3 storeys high. Do they have gears and ropes
for all these?



Hope noone dies here!



Engineering RULES!

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xoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

ISSUES, People of special interest

BLINDED ITEM:

Sino tong isang mokong?

Na alledgedly nagkaroon ng madugong tunggalian with CH[u]M?
Dahil ba sa toot! nung nag welc (as in welcga? mali, tanga!) toot! sa RH[u]M? i'm getting sum vibes pare na dis pearly guy pare is a menace optimized! bangag! haha! but i don't hate him! sorry! but i don't hate him personally! just concern with my RHUM friends' concern, okay! (redundant ba?) Mga RHUM friends, hi! So itong si pearlyguy or (sumtin) na fall guy or (sumtin) naman ng Reyna ng mga POSHangI (PoshangI nga ba? haha... What does posh mean by the way? any cono out there who can decode for me?) ay Hari din ng isang bery bery prestigious-democratic-contradicting-so-many-membered-1.75 league under the sea of captain nemo! Na Yakie din, wherein sa yakie nag welc toot sila a day after na macancel ang welc ng RH[u]M. THat would be so unfair Pearly Guy! Yakie ka pa naman, you know how this things goes! youre so concern with your palpitating-kayakie! Magsama nalang kaya kayo! No offense! Isama mo na si palpitating-kayakie na gumugulong sa takot ng SShit ng RHUM! No OFFENSE! PEACE!

Siya ay walang iba kundi si pearly as in THE-PEARLY-NOT-CURLY GUY!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox
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SWIMMING CWTS ON A SUNDAY

We had our first swimming lessons for CWTS Surivival program at Amoranto Stadium along Pantranco, Quezon Ave. It was exciting, fun and tiring. My face is white-spotted after being soaked for three hours at a 70% Chlorinated Pool. We made bubbles and some water exercises, it's tiring that's all!

inside U.P. Pantranco Jeepney!

my teammates! Excited!



other teammates looking forward for Bikini Babes!
Haha!

The pool! this is just a third of the pool's lenght.
It's an olympic size pool. We are tasked to
cross the pool for our practicals.
it doesn't look easy!




All women wear bikinis, all men wear trunks!
Cool huh!




Funny Add along the Amoranto Stadium! Weigh[t]less
Center. THey happen to have an anti-gravity room in here!
Cool huh!

Ciao avid readers!

--- >.<-----

A Touch of Occultism

A Touch of Occultism

An essay on Spirituality

There is this sense of space, sense of time that binds me when someone mentioned the word ‘witchcraft’. It was as if I massive flashback of my world when I was a thirteen year old boy. A dream-like memory encrypted in my mind fleshes (substantiate) out dozens of experiences unbounded by time and place. It was almost a wonderful memory that I couldn’t forget.

When I was thirteen, I believe I am a witch and a psychic by acquisition. It was when I felt this rush, this burst of energy that encased my body, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. I could only feel the heavy breathing. That surge of life pumping into my lungs, almost hot and delicate. This flux that I repeatedly feel was for me magical and dark, something beyond human interface, as if I was binding with the true Essence of life. I with the best interest, researched on harnessing such energy.

So, I frantically research books and internet websites, looking for answers, for methods to fit every piece of the puzzle together, thereby creating this world I call ‘My Paranormal world’. I was never a Disney land or a society of my thoughts but for me it was a religion. It was I have founded a federation in which I was the only one participating. I also created a network of believers, my friends, who are also my skeptics.

I was obsessed with witchcraft. I was a fanatic. And I was glad it was never rooted from the books I read like Harry Potter Series or the movies I saw like ‘the craft’. It came definitely from the best of my interest. As if I drove myself into believing something divine and subconscious, I scurried into potholes and blunders which I couldn’t arrange. But the only thing I knew then was that the randomness I have was because of my true nature, that I was a part of the Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire. And that structure-less world was a definitive consciousness that creates me.

I searched for books, like Lewelyn’s Guide to Wicca, or the ubiquitous Tony Perez’ Mga Panibagong Kulam, and by a sudden realization I threw it away. I dumped everything in a garbage can after my Catechesis teacher told me that witchcraft is a mortal sin and is abolished by Catholic Church. It was that very moment that I realized a new path, a new direction in which I considered now ‘my world’. I knew it exactly that moment when everything plunges into a garbage bin. I couldn’t help but wonder, why of a young age of thirteen considered witchcraft a religion and grew up to believe that philosophy, science and psychology are the fundamental reasons of living life?

I should ask myself that.

And most importantly: how, why my beautiful mind is structured to find the ‘structure-less’ most amusing?

Everything Sexy: Everything about Writing

BLOG ENTRY #1

Everything Sexy: Everything about Writing

An essay from a great writer

The Sex was very good.

At a hopeless mishap and a tired old lump on my foot I crawled out of my bed with no clothes on. I flew out of the room naked and no one, not a single soul was out. Five o’clock, ticking like a bomb, was frosted over the lamppost by the sidewalk. I blended in, on an afternoon shift by the street. People are dying here. People like Mrs. Gulliani who took her sandals away to pawn for a piece of bread. Toto, a small kindred spirit in a shape of a Rottweiler, jumped over me with his paws feed unto my shoulders. He had a very huge persona like Emily Dickenson. But for Mrs. Gulliani, Toto was one heck of an asshole. She said it with her lipstick pressed on her Monday cigarette. Smoking it.

The Sex was over, or so I write this.

I lived there, the corner of A. Roces and Masaysay street, on a fucking shapeless quarter for 400 residents. Old, aged and precious, Molave stood there gazing and gawking with a fireless face full of rotten gears and expressions. The way it seemed for Mrs. Cantuba, Molave has a hope for a renovation. But she was wrong. Molave is dead.

The Sex was there inside me.

It was very true the way I formed my sentences, the way I write my edgy introduction, that writing has evolve from its infantile facade to its very modern themes like sex and moral degradation. It was the War, the war against old modernism. I am referring to the revolution that happened before the latest, Modern Revolution. It was the revolution on Classicism in Literature. I may have been a practicing Chemical engineer, but I know the Revolutions. In fact I was there.

The sex was even better when I entered the scene when I was fifteen, a teenager who was embellished with hatred and indifference, in irony. It was the best of times, and the worst of times, it was the age of reckoning, the age of dissonance: Charles Dickens was so good at this word that I put my first writing in line with his. The marriage between two minds like this is greatest and of highly posted that every philosophy is welcomed in the mind’s eye. The way the winter looks, every cloud with snow has a silver lining. The view is much better when that silver lining disappears and everything went vague and disproportionate.

In writing, where I was entangled literally with my hand shaking and scribbling on a mad piece of parchment, I knew where I was and where I am heading too. I considered writing, when I was young, my profession, something that I am good at, something exquisitely good about me. There I was on a window pane looking at a pale picture of my back yard, the birds the Mayas beautifully sang in chorus like a dream. On the table where I kept everything, laid a pack of old written stories, mostly were fantasies and gory murder and vampire stories, I had one thing I didn’t have that time: Age. I was fifteen, young but talented. I was not accepted on a school paper because I was too critical about my writing as if it was my life, my blood and sweat. On that windowpane, that backyard in front of me, on the table, I profusely scribbled words. And during that afternoon a lot of them were CHAPTER ONES. Everything was a beginning. All, as mentioned, were chapter ones of my novels that didn’t exist on the physical world. But in my world it was a voluminous collection.

My writing was surreal and bloody, with words borrowed from the great Dickensian race, Austen was an exemption. It was not plagiarism; it was my effort in learning the way on how they put words on everything. It was a play of literally everything. The wondrous sounds of the pen, my fountain pen making descriptions of place, loathing on a loaf of bread, sinking it deeper into the pages to create a doorway into my soulless mortuary, everything was just everything. And as long as I can remember, everything was sex. Everything was a revolution.

Everything from there went very sexy…