Link Lovin’

I haven’t been suggesting blogs to read for quite some time now, mainly because I’ve been alternating between being extremely busy and extremely grumpy. I promise it’s rarely both! I’m doing this again today because I’ve been feeling generous. Or maybe just bored.

Meet Shelly. No, not that girl who wrote Frankenstein (and yet Nightdreamer’s pretentiousness rears its ugly head!) and I would think that authoring horror books is not on the top of her aspirations. She is, however, a very good artist, and by artist I mean someone who draws. I’ll give you an idea of how good she is at drawing. She drew Elena, a female Street Fighter who does capoiera with her lissome body. The artwork was so flawless that Udon Entertainment published it in their Street Fighter tribute artbook, compiled along with comic industry giants like J. Scott Campbell, Jo Chen and Adam Hughes. That’s like being considered the same league with people who drew Gen 13 and Runaways. If that doesn’t impress you I don’t know what your problem is, so I’m just going to blame it on poor taste and Arroyo.

Her blog has more of those great illustrations, plus it’s a refreshing place for those who want to read from the more artistic kind of people! She also writes about makeup, which is also a good topic (err, as I was told by my female friends). Plus, she just really likes videogames and has been playing since the Atari days. How can you not like her?

Still not convinced? Okay, how about this: she draws sexy pinups. Go ahead and tell me that that didn’t have you curious.

The Month That Got Away

It’s September 19 today, and I have only just noticed that the month is halfway done. Dang, eighteen days just got away like that! This September has gone by too quickly it’s befuddling for me to recall all of what happened, none of which are remarkable anyway, so I won’t bother talking about them. What I’ll do here is to throw a bunch of ideas that I’ve accumulated and that I have been meaning but haven’t gotten around to posting. Please bear with me if things are unpolished, because although I want a cleaner entry, the desire to update my blog as soon as possible after neglecting it for a long time have gotten the better of me.

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Before last Tuesday, I had spent a month not logging on to yahoo messenger, twitter and plurk, and not participating in any message boards too. I only used Facebook during those times, and even there I wasn’t very active.

I did such things partly because I needed to finish some unfinished businesses, like the projects that sneaked to my workload when I wasn’t looking. I also had to write longhand letters to a total of 24 recipients, and then read 5 books in a matter of a week (which I managed to extend to 10 days. The result of that endeavor can be read here).

Right now, I am almost done with writing those letters, and I feel very spiritually fulfilled. No, really, I’m serious about that. Of course, emails are easier and more practical ways to correspond. However, since typing - more than writing by hand – easily results to several words per minute, an email is also quite prone to be prolix and hastily-composed. In longhands, I try to be very patient. I ruminate before putting down a sentence. After all, when I make a mistake I either strike through the misplaced words, or just discard the entire letter and start all over again. Mistakes always look uglier on paper than they do on e-forms for rich-texts. I like the patience and the discipline longhand letters makes me cultivate.

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Anyway, I missed using those major internet social communities (Yahoo Messenger and others), but at the same time, I enjoyed being absent. Actually, the remaining part of the reason I didn’t go online for a month was so that I could get away from them. I needed some quiet, some time to reflect on what’s going on with my life, plus I think I lost my taste for the trifling small town dramas that tend to blow up on online social journal sites like Twitter and Plurk. I think that happens because many Twitterers/Plurkers take those community too personally. Oftentimes, they divulge every details of their daily lives, from the time they wake up (which is always late) to the time they fall asleep (which is always after they have watched porn and gotten exhausted as a result) and sometimes those details are just too revealing for comfort. Sometimes they join cliques and then fight with other cliques, which is like turf wars except instead of gangers it’s opposing factions of internet nerds who are fighting. Sometimes they gloat. Sometimes they speak badly of others while keeping the offender’s identity a secret, so that their “fans” will be eternally curious and thus beginning a long-standing back-and-forths of “please-tell-me-who I’ll-give-you-a-clue I-hope-it’s-not-me-coz-I-love-you Aww-don’t-feel-bad-about-yourself-here-I’ll-give-you-a-hug *omg I’m hugged by my plurk crush I’m getting a boner now* \m/” (oh yeah, that smiley with a \m/, it’s always that.) Sometimes they gloat. Sometimes they just intentionally kill people off their friends list just to stoke animosities. Sometimes they gloat, gloat, gloat, like there’s just no more way to move a muscle without writing a certificate of achievement about it. Who gives a damn how you romanticize yourself in print anyway, when it is very possible for you to think of yourself as someone entirely different from who you really are?

I’m tired of seeing all these happen. I know they happen in real life too, but in real life I don’t often have a choice to ignore and to walk away. Don’t get me wrong: select Twitterers/Plurkers are remarkable; sometimes conversations like this recent one from Sexynomad happen. On the other hand, there are jerks too, and I try to be cordial to them even if they treat me like crap; it’s really surprising because some of them are nice when you meet them, but then put them online and they go Mr. Hyde. I will never forget the time when I got involved in a Twitter drama with two bloggers I respected; they got mad at me only because I wanted to add them in my Yahoo Messenger’s contacts, weeks after they had sent short stories straight to my email without notifying me beforehand.

I just reemerged in Plurk, but I don’t intend to use it that much anymore. I’m tired of squabbling in places where you can’t even make eye contacts.

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I’m voting Mike Villar for Philippines Blog Award 2. I’m not particularly familiar to him and we’ve only seen each other once, but I’m voting him because he is an icon. You know all these brands of internet humor you often see in Filipino blogs? He is the one who have made them popular – his style is that influential. He is influential because whenever he takes a new approach at writing his funny stories, others are agape and hungry to see his new gags, so that they can then abuse those new gags. Despite all that, he consistently sounds fresh while others grow stale with their kthxbai and their “funneh” lolcat-speak.

I wanted to vote Filipinovoices too, but their Ben Paypon post was ghastly, and they have a lot of new writers and new articles (especially the ones that criticize MSM) that I’m not too crazy about. I think I have to read their 10-paged manifesto soon.

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I recently saw Wong Kar Wai’s 2046, and I love it despite thinking it as a very flawed film. I will go into details next time.

Of Chimps and Charlatans

Seeing as how arbitrarily-prefixed the word “problogging” is (where’s “conblogging”?), correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m taking for granted that it’s the short of “professional blogging”, as in “getting paid to blog”.

So, pro-blogging. Although many bloggers are into it, some decry it. It’s the same deal with why people spite bands that have stopped being “indy”, and have “sold out”. Simply put, some’s love of blogging is so peculiar, they put this craft on an altar, and they call “sacrilege” when others do it for profit.

I’m undecided about paid blogs. Yeah, it sounds spectacular - what’s more spiffy than earning without leaving home, typing while at the spacious comfort of your own sofa (if you have a laptop, that is) and not worrying about travel expenses, smog, pickpockets and traffic? You can even download movies (shh!) while you toil away. On the other hand, not everyone is capable of writing multiple commentaries every day. Some get exhausted. And I think that is happening to many probloggers - without their realizing - and is the reason their posts are becoming timeworn. Sure, some probloggers excel consistently - and many props to them - but it’s easier to find those that are flat.

But, sure, problogging is neat, and is responsible for unprecedented surge of information. I’m just not in love with it, and I can understand other jaded-souls. Problogging is so hyped, probloggers chest-bump each other until they get breast cancer, and the news is so acknowledging them like it wants to join the orgy, and Time Magazine is droning on and on in multiple articles about how problogging is the nirvana of New Journalism and that probloggers are suddenly the arthouse indy working-class heroes who can write elegiac documentary-like overviews of reality blablabla… With those noises, who wouldn’t be irritated?

Then again, you know what I can’t stand? Ignorant self-proclaimed “real bloggers” who think they’re so illuminated, they chastise probloggers, while claiming themselves as of higher art. Example? This guy.

Of Prostitutes, and Other Bloggers

-Siege Malvar

You know what I can’t stand? It’s when "probloggers" talk about "how to blog" as if they know jackshit about writing.

Real bloggers, when are we going to stand up against this mockery of the form, this exploitation of the medium?

Don’t you think this is a growing problem? People making money out of a medium we have made popularize with our skills and artistry? By our art, we have made blogging respectable! By our passions, we have made blogging authentic! By our compulsion to reach out with what we know we must share, we have made blogging alive, dynamic, vibrant!

Who are these charlatans, these pretenders to our court? Who are these apes with their skills for copy pasting?

I will continue to blog free from ads. I have always been blogging free from ads.

I mourn the sad state of blogging. I mourn the rise of the blogging prostitutes.

And even if I ignore the bad grammars (I won’t nitpick them, thank you), his ego bewilders me. I’d like him to demonstrate just what part of him is “passionate” and “artful”. This part? The only thing formidable about him is his baseball bat, and his post read more like a toiletpaper scribbles of a stuck-up yuppie scum. Nothing he says flows into why he consider probloggers “prostitutes”. And, by the way, “blogging prostitutes”? That sounds more like hookers who blog. I’d like to hear more of that.

And, ah, “charlatan”. It’s one of my favorite insults, but I’m not sure this guy understands what it means. Charlatan is when you boast of having skills you do not possess, or when you’re selling shoddy products you advertise as “the cutting edge of cutting edge”. Charlatan is the merchant who sells a spear, that he claims can penetrate through anything, and a shield, that he claims can defend from anything. (What happens if this all-powerful spear meets the all-enduring shield then?) Charlatan is when you say you have acerbic wit, and you use mass/volume when saying people are dense. And when you claim that your writing is artistic and passionate and skillful, and yet, well, artistry and passion and skill and what crackpot legerdemain aren’t even remotely near your writing, what does that make you?

Let that question besiege you, The Siege.

Bete Noire

A plagiarist is lurking beneath the shadows of Multiply, and I can’t help being speechless in a retarded kind of way.

He/she/it copy-pasted two of my blog posts: Zzz, and A Spark of Intellect (his/her/its usage of the A Spark post is hilariously out of context). That’s not all, though. Apparently that, um, creature also saw fit to make the rounds in other i.ph blogs and take their works without permission and reference. Lizette, Witssuzara, and Dowmeng are notable victims. Even the "about me" isn’t an original material. That one is from the defunct kimochiwarui.

I’m baffled. If such, uh, entity admires our posts, then why doesn’t that, uh, piddle write its own material instead while having us as its inspiration? Is it such a chore to write imaginatively? I don’t think so. I find that writing is like being a conductor, and I wallow in what I orchestrate, however horrible that may be at times.

Curious? If you have a Multiply account, you can add that twit and find out yourself. I tried that, and the twat wasn’t very discerning about adding strangers. What a stupid and desperate degenerate.

Linky.

(Thank you, Aileen, for informing me)

New Header!

I’ve had a pseudo-sketch image as a header for two weeks. Now my header is the colored version of that image, and has an appearance of being drawn/painted on wood.

That’s my last post for this week. Seriously, I mean it now. Or maybe not.

Anyway, let me know what you think of my new header. And have a happy weekend!

Dope Blog’s Getting Too Much Dope?

I just read a very compelling blog, and was going to add them to my, um, blogroll *shudders*.

Except, I couldn't. Why? I tried to delete one blog from my list (there's a crap one there. I don't even know why I added it. Find the blog with a pen as a header. Pen, no less! The author thinks itself as an amazing writer?) but that didn't work either.

What's going on, i.ph?

Anyway, Caffeine Sparks is perhaps one of the most intelligent bloggers I've ever read. I loved her pointed attack to Tim Yap, and her debunking of our unfounded fear of communism. That, and she makes me feel inadequate.

Crappy post, I know. But my life's been slow at the moment.