You know what's amazing? The number of people who preach against homosexuality and preface their entire argument with "I don't hate homosexuals! I love homosexuals!" It is amazing. It is mind-boggling. Seriously, how many times have you heard someone go "Some of my best friends are homosexuals!" and then go on to proclaim that homosexuality is unnatural and immoral and should be "treated" or "removed".

So let me just share this newsflash, to all you closeted douchebags, just because you said "I don't hate homosexuals" out loud before you claim that a same-sex relationship is abnormal and valueless and therefore not deserving to be recognized religiously and or legally doesn't mean you're not a bigot. Because that's exactly what you are. You are a bigot. And that is what you are teaching the kids you are working so hard to protect. I don't like the old pastors outright proclaiming their hatred for homosexuals and prophecy hellfire and brimstone for gays and lesbians either but at least they're being upfront about their prejudice. Do us all a favor and stop with the disclaimers. You're not fooling anybody.

I admire all the same-sex couples who still just want a chance to practice their faith and to simply belong to churches or congregations that work so hard to shut them out. It takes real strength and grace to look backward-thinking people like you in the eye and try to remind you that all people are equal, even when you are clearly beneath them.

Oh and by the way, those gay best friends of yours, whom you claim to love so much? They probably don't really like you.

I woke up today in a genuinely foul mood. I put on an oversized t-shirt, grumbled my way through breakfast and tried very hard not to punch anyone who got within two feet of my personal space as I made my way to work. And then Brian Eno & David Byrne's Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (isn't that a great title) came up on shuffle and before I knew it I was out of the funk and happily singing along. For some reason, there is no album in the world that cheers me up as well as this album can. It's a well-made album (which is no surprise since it's Eno and Byrne), one that is full of hope and determination. Take, for instance, my favorite song today 'Life is Long', where Eno uses the sound of a hundred keys and a steady brass to create bursting melodies, while Byrne sings like a man determined to find all the good things in life precisely because it can be hard and long. Soul to soul between you and me / Chain me down but I am still free.

Life is Long by Brian Eno & David Byrne

I'll just leave it here, just in case any of you need a good cheering up too.

Kurt Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922. 1922 was a very long time ago. He would have been 87 this year but he is,as they say, no longer with the living. He was with the living until he was about 84 years old, which is a pretty old age. He himself was always constantly surprised that he continued to live. He was a smoker, a heavy one, and he smoked Pall Malls which he called cigarettes for the serious smoker or the suicidal. They are much longer than other cigarettes, and what's more they are unfiltered. He never stopped wondering why his cigarettes didn't kill him, like everybody else said they would. I think it's because he had a lot to say.



He wrote a lot of books. 14 novels. 10 collections of short stories and essays. 2 of those published posthumously. I think it's weird that things can be published posthumously. Weird but wonderful. Some of his books are more well-known than others. Some of them, he felt, are much better written than others. He once gave Slaughterhouse Five an A. And then he gave Breakfast of Champions a C. He once said that he felt lousy about that book, but that he felt lousy about a lot of books he wrote. The first book by him I ever read was 'Breakfast of Champions' and I don't think it should have gotten a C. For me, it is one of those great books that makes you wish you were friends with the author so you could call him up and just spend time with him. Above all, it made me wish I knew him so I could have called him up and told him that his book, Breakfast of Champions, was the only thing that kept me sane throughout high school. All of you who have been to high school know what I mean. It's a terrible place and a terrible time. I think he would have appreciated that. I certainly hope it would have made him reconsider the C.

He was 51 years old when the book was published. 51 is not that old, especially not now. But 84 is still pretty old in our standards today. So I guess I cannot say that he was taken too soon or that we didn't have him for long enough. We did. We are out of a considerable amount of Pall Malls because of he was around long enough to smoke so many of them. He tried for a brief time to quit, but I guess you can't keep a serious smoker down. He was around long enough to have written 24 books and to see 22 of them published. I still want more but that's just me being selfish. He once wrote: "Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward." There has been no other writer who has been able to make me laugh the way he did. I think that's what helped keep me sane and why I always go back to many of his books.

In another one of them, Deadeye Dick, he wrote these words: "You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages — they haven't ended yet." That is how he ended that book. I think he would have been a great pessimist, maybe the greatest, except he believed too much in people. Despite the terrible things they did to each other he saw that they could do really great things for each other too. I think that is also why he kept on living for so long.

When I was a kid, I used to go out for cakes every time one of my favorite writers had a birthday. F. Scott Fitzgerald, September 24. Miguel de Cervantes, September 29. William Shakespeare, April 26. Jack Kirby, August 28. Kurt Vonnegut, November 11. I realize now that going out to smoke a Pall Mall cigarette may be more appropriate but I am not a smoker. I used to be but after a year I quit so I guess I was never serious about it. Neither am I suicidal. I don't want to die because there are plenty of other things I'd still like to do. Not the least of them read more books. Whatever else happens in my life, I am certain that by the end of it I will be glad for these three things: that I got to know my sister, that I met a nice boy who likes plenty of the same food I like, and that I read all of Kurt Vonnegut's books. Well almost all anyway. I am still waiting for the latest one. Published posthumously.

So instead I propose we give tribute by drawing our assholes. He did that too. That drawing of his asshole is actually now quite famous. Here I will go first.



Okay. Your turn.

I've loved you both, but after all these years, I have found myself finally able to make a choice.



Forget Bender. You're the one I really want, Brian.





Yes, I recently went back to John Hughes' The Breakfast Club. The whole time I was watching all I wanted to do was kiss my computer screen - like those rabid fangirls you see do on TV/in the movies. Help, I'm in love with Anthony Michael Hall.

Because of Sesame Street, I:

a) ordered nothing but 'bawk-bawk-bagawk' sammiches from my school cafeteria - for a whole month.
b) would laugh with a big 'mwa-ah-ah-ah!' every time I answered a math problem correctly - all the way through high school.
c) never need to make any grocery lists because I remember everything I need to buy by reciting them in a sing-song manner (a loaf of bread, a can of milk, a stick of butter).
d) didn't grow up afraid of monsters. I knew they were just like people. Some were bad, some were good. Many of them wonderfully furry and colorful.
e) understand that there is no need to talk down to kids, even when talking about the BIG things in life.

If it's there's any truth at all when people say everything we needed to learn we learned in kindergarten, then I owe who I am to Sesame Street (and later on by extension the Muppets and nearly every Jim Henson production). It turns 40 today, and someday we who grew up with the show will all turn 40 too, but something of the kid in all of us will survive, probably thanks to the gang.

The only way ‘ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife’ would be ironic is if the very next day you found out that you actually needed a spoon instead. And maybe if when you came to check in cupboards all you had were ten thousand knives.

I was thinking about The English Patient, which, for some inexplicable reason I find myself wanting to re-watch. That's never happened before. Whereas I regularly get the urge to re-watch films I love or sometimes films I found puzzling, I have never once wanted to venture a second viewing of The English Patient. It's not a bad film - in fact, when it's good it's quite great. It's well-acted, it's beautifully shot and it's full to the brim of things to observe. It does tend to run a little overly long and I remember walking out of my only viewing emotionally drained. Maybe that's part of the point, but I guess I really will have to get at that second viewing just to see. Besides, it's always fun to revisit an old movie years after it's been made and received by audiences. It's interesting to see what holds up and what doesn't. And even more, the film is also quite tragic, and that part I know I will enjoy (have I ever mentioned that I sit through Dr. Zhivago at least once a year and every time it's on MGM?). There's nothing like a screen romance fleshed in tragedy; it is, as you know, the way the best romances on screen are made.

I think though that my favorite Minghella film is Truly Madly Deeply. It's about a woman, Nina, (Julie Stevenson) whose lover, Jamie, (Alan Rickman) dies. Naturally, she is heartbroken, grief-stricken. She stumbles on, barely, unable to accept the loss of her lover and to deal with the rest of life itself. Then he comes back as a ghost. She's thrilled, of course, and they're happy. For a while, at least. Soon though she becomes disenchanted. There are ghosts in her living room, watching Brief Encounter, and she's pissed off. She grows tired and wonders about the nature of their relationship - whether in life or death. "Was it like this before?" she asks her ghost lover, "Were we like this?"


It's not as long as The English Patient and maybe not as grand in scale - but they both deal with people who live in memories and love the ghosts of their past. We're all like that a little bit, sometimes.

My grandfather used to tell me all the time that I was his favorite grandchild. True, at the time, I was his only grandchild, but never mind. I ate it up. I giggled and nearly squealed over in delight and proudly repeated it to everyone who could hear. I think even later on, when my mother's other sisters started having kids of their own, I was still his favorite. I knew because he never offered to cook anything for anyone else. Oh, he'd kindly offer his daughters, their husbands and kids something to eat whenever they came around to visit, whatever was on the stove or in the fridge was theirs to take. But it was only whenever my mother and I came that you'd ever hear him cook an entirely new dish to celebrate our visit. "Tara, mag-luto tayo ng masarap!" he'd say excitedly and set up a chair for me in the kitchen so I could watch. I don't really recall now if I had ever offered to help - to peel, slice or dice anything - but I think I must have and it was only because he never let me that I didn't get a chance to get my hands dirty. "Upo ka lang dyan, apong! Baka mapaso ka!" He used to fuss like that a lot. He always wanted to make sure that I never got hurt or even tired.

When I think back on it now, I don't think he was a particularly creative cook. He didn't have a lot of recipes under his belt, just a few stock ones he'd keep coming back to. These were probably dishes he'd learned how to make over the years, favorites of his five daughters and one son, dishes that were scheduled or randomized throughout the entire week of family meals. Ginisang upo, caldereta, adobong baboy, adobong pusit, dinuguan. Even the quick and lazy piniritong galunggong for when he was in a hurry. He used to cook me these things too. I liked his adobong pusit more than his adobong baboy, I didn't quite like his ginisang upo (I thought he cooked it too long and the vegetables lost their crunch), I was quite fond of his caldereta, and I never understood why he would dip his fried galunggong in banana catsup (something all his daughters seem to have picked up). But without a doubt my favorite thing he used to make was the dinuguan. It was just the right mix of sweet, sour, salty and spicy (he used to add extra chilis for me). He made sure that the blood was thick and rich and the pork he used to crisp up first before mixing in. I think he knew it was my favorite, although I don't ever remember telling him that it was. I ate all of his dishes readily, greedily asking for seconds or thirds though I didn't like them equally, probably because I knew this was his way of showing me how much he cared. Although the fifth or sixth serving was probably the biggest clue.

I wish now that I had tried harder (if I did at all) to get to help him. I might have been able to learn exactly how he did it. I was nine years old when he passed away. Sever liver damage due to his excessive drinking. In his final weeks, he still somehow managed to sneak out of the hospital and go drinking at a nearby bar and then come back to bed in the morning - though that's another story. I don't think I cried at his funeral or when we finally laid him to rest, but I cried later in the evening, when everyone had left and the immediate family sat down to dinner. I've tried many times to recreate his dinuguan though unfortunately I've never been a hundred percent successful. And I'm a pretty good cook too, if I do say so myself. I think I'm a natural in the kitchen (not to mention being the cook means I can weasel out of dishwashing, which is the chore I detest the most). I've come close sometimes, I think, very close, but just not quite. Sometimes, my aunts will try my dinuguan and say "Parang kay Tatay to ah!", which makes me both sad and happy to hear. Memory is a weird thing, and may be I have been able to replicate it already, but whenever I taste the dish I make it still tastes, or maybe I should say feels, like something is missing, and I think I know what it is. I guess that means I'll never be able to make it exactly just like lolo used to make.

On my way to the convenience store, I saw two kids wearing Superman and the Flash costumes. I turned to the kid dressed as Superman and told him there was no way he’d win in a race. Predictably, he took it as a challenge and demanded the Flash to race with him. I watched as they sped off into the (not so very far) distance. Yes, I am pleased with myself.

And just in case you’re wondering, the Flash kicked his little butt.

It's kind of funny how easy it is to learn how to read and write. When I think about it, I don't understand why it shouldn't be a lot harder. When we learn how to read and write, we learn to do something big and mind-blowing. We take these letters and give them sounds, and make them into words and give them bigger and longer sounds; and then we take these big and long sounds and make them into something else entirely. These dead things, these inert and meaningless things, become different. They become things that live, things that carry our ideas, things that have meaning. And even just one word can be so big; so much bigger than the sound it makes. And when we take these words and put them in sentences and make paragraphs that make our poems and short stories and books and love letters, they can hold so much more than we can ever contain. Maybe that's why we try to put them down on paper. I know sometimes it feels like they aren't enough, but sometimes they're all we've got to help make us feel that our hearts and minds won't explode.

from Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn

She said, "You are a true and mortal wizard now, as you always wished. Does it make you happy?"

"Yes," he replied with a quiet laugh. "I'm not poor Haggard, to lose my heart's desire in the having of it. But there are wizards and wizards; there is black magic and white magic, and the infinite shades of gray between -- and I see now that it is all the same. "Whether I decide to be what men would call a wise and good magician -- aiding heroes, thwarting witches, wicked lords, and unreasonable parents; making rain, curing woolsorter's disease and the mad staggers, getting cats down from trees -- or whether I choose the retorts full of elixirs and essences, the powders and herbs and banes, the padlocked books of gramarye bound in skins better left unnamed, the muddy mist darkening in the chamber and the sweet voice lisping therein -- why, life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move..."

And then sometimes it feels like there is no tool in the world that can recall, reproduce or simply just dredge up the old emotions you once experienced long ago as well as music can, not even books.