The Complete Substitute for All Forms of Sociability

Congratulations to all my fellow successful 2009 Bar Examinees! The results came out last night at around 10:00 p.m. View the complete list at the SC Website.

Bad. Bad. Bad. Really bad. Celebrity mentor is Miley Cirus. LOL The only other ray of sunshine, surprisingly, was Crystal Bowersox . She sang Janis Joplin's Me and Bobby McGee and I think it's only tonight that I finally get what the fuss is all about. I'm guessing it has something to do with the carpet. Seriously now,  Crystal. is. freakin' good. Now, on the other side of the fence comes quirky. Oh, Siobhan , you are such a...dork. But then again, when she's on-stage, she's like this whole different person. "Born for the stage" would probably describe her best. As usual, tonight, she's the one contestant I was looking forward to. She came in last with Stevie Wonder's Superstition . The performance was good, naturally. But I have to agree with Kara that it's not her best. Plus, I had a problem with her outfit. I keep recalling one of those stock characters from The Sims for some reason. XD Simon thought the performance is a bit of a...

Okay, so have you ever had an experience where you're sleepy and you spend hours in bed trying to fall asleep but you can't even though you're so sleepy you can barely keep your eyes open but you still can't sleep and it's been hours and you can actually hear the clock ticking and what's the name of that Greek dude with the sword hanging over his head? And then you get a headache from keeping your eyes closed for so long? No? Me neither.

So it should come out next week. Or at least, that's what my dad heard over Bobby Nalzarro's morning radio show. The Manila Times actually posted an online story about it yesterday, saying that less than 20% passed but that the Office of the Bar Confidant has yet to finish tallying the scores. Way to compound the stress. The way it's going, the fingernail on my right thumb isn't going to survive the week. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go shoot the zombies of Resident Evil 5 . UPDATE 8:34 p.m.: It's Friday, March 26. Nachura said it on TV.

Well, maybe a ninja in a gothic lolita outfit tonight. And sings Rolling Stones with dramatic flair and panache. Either way, it all boils down to: I love her. I really, really want Siobhan Magnus to win American Idol this season. Don't fail me, America! Actually, when you look at the Top 12 ( Lilly Scott ! I wanna make a sad face), the competition is down to only two contestants: Siobhan and Crystal Bowersox ....and between them, Siobhan is the more exciting performer. Also before Kara pointed it out tonight, people have actually been calling Siobhan the female Adam Lambert . I get the comparison but I like to think that the Magnus is less outrageous than Adam. Plus, Adam didn't win Idol last year. I want the Magnus to bring it this year. p.s. Thank god for make-overs. XD

I'm reading this book right now. I bought this book at random. By random, I mean I didn't find anything more interesting at National Bookstore that day. I would have greatly preferred a novel by a Filipino author...but I don't like reading Tagalog and the English-language short story anthology by Filipino authors that I did find were printed on poor-quality paper. I used to be not at all fastidious about the quality of the print, but lately I am. It's strange. Anyway, I think I've mentioned before that I really don't read high fantasy . I am fascinated by it but for some odd reason I don't like to read books about them. I once tried reading Tolkien's Silmarillion and The Two Towers (from The Lord of the Rings ) but couldn't even get past the second chapter of both books. I was only able to finish The Magician's Nephew from C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia by some herculean effort. I really don't know why since I'm fine with ...

Is this going to be a weekly thing? God I hope not. But I am pretty excited to see who are going to be the Top 12 and perform on theme nights. After three weeks, my preferences have changed. Where I used to tremendously like Casey James (for his looks and his "Heaven" performance), I am now gravitating more towards Lee Dewyze , a rocker, grunge dude with an apparently interesting past. As for Andrew Garcia , he did such a terrible, terrible thing last night with Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" that I am seriously worried he won't make the cut. But if he makes it, I am willing to give him another chance. He's probably having an off-night. Well, two off-nights in a row. But he will bounce back, given time. Problem is, time is a luxury he simply doesn't have. Eliminations is tonight. Yikes! If Andrew doesn't make it, I'll root for Michael Lynche . I really like this guy. Great attitude, great sense of humor and great performances...

So aside from finally updating Brilliant at 3:00 a.m. (now on Chapter 2!!) , I've been busying myself these past couple of days with new layouts for my blogs. I like these new ones. They're XML and compatible with the new Blogger's widgets. Also, tweaking the themes gave me a sort of crash course in CSS coding. heh XD Of course, that means obsessing over the whole thing to the point where I have dreams of them. Also, while I'm at it, I discovered Google Chrome . I'm still testing it out but so far so good. It definitely provides faster browsing. The only tiff I have with Google Chrome is that it doesn't have the Delicious toolbar and also the multiple search engine bar that Firefox has. But its delightful extensions might make for it. For instance, the screenshots of my blogs below are accomplished through this nifty extension called Webpage Screenshot . Really cool. If you haven't tried Google Chrom e yet, you should give it a try. ...

Yes!!! The Hurt Locker won!!! I was rooting for it right from the start. Sorry, my man Jim but Avatar is a dime-a-dozen story. You should leave the eco-films to much more proficient storytelling masters like Hayao Miyazaki. I mean, I'd rather watch Princess Mononoke a hundred times than watch Avatar a second time. Don't get me wrong. I did like Avatar when I watched it. It is a highly enjoyable film with a collective wow factor that really leaves you, well, WOWed. But, after the excitement and all the brain spasms I got while watching the movie -- after my eyes had some time to rest, I did a little thinking (yes, just a little ) and I realized that the story does not hold a lot of water. As far as the forbidden, interracial romance was concerned, Pocahontas did a better job. As far as the man sticking it out in a wild, wild world, Tarzan did a better job. As far as the environmental message it's trying to get across, Studio Ghibli has a bunch of anime that all ...

At 4:10 p.m. today, Assunta, our dog of almost nine years, passed away. She was the best dog anyone could ask for. She was more than a pet. She was part of the family. I hope dogs have souls. This was her when she was still a baby. She was so small when she first came to us that she couldn't eat solid foods yet. We had to feed her from a feeding bottle, like a real human child. This is her waiting at the gate for her daily morning walk. She likes to sleep on my father's chair for some reason. And sometimes, she likes to sleep on her back. If you disturb her while she's sleeping, she'll give you this look. Or she'll just ignore you, like you deserve. But she's gone now.

Starting tomorrow, March 5 until Sunday March 7, Crunchyroll is going to STREAM FOR FREE the world-renowned works of Makoto Shinkai to celebrate Global Shinkai Day 201 0 . Catch the free streaming of 5cm Per Second , The Place Promised in Our Early Days and Voices of A Distant Star on said dates at Crunchyroll. Click on the image below for official details of this special promo. For those who haven't heard of Makoto Shinkai, he is a fast-rising director/creator and is currently being hailed as the next Hayao Miyazaki . IMHO, he might not have Miyazaki's masterful storytelling, but he does have excellent vision that he is able to translate into gorgeous animation with emphasis on lighting and details and fantastic editing. In other news, Claymore Chapter 101 is finally out. Chapter 100, which came out last month, gave us Priscilla facing Clare once again with the latter being unable to awaken for some unknown reason. Fans were all a furor over what that reason could be. ...

textless cover @ DA | the webcomic @ SmackJeeves

In a few weeks, it's going to be Oscar night. A lot of interesting movies are on the line-up. Pretty sure Avatar is going to win the mother of it all: Best Picture. If you ask me, that movie was just eye candy. Story-wise, it was lackluster. I say Hurt Locker is a far better movie. And if we're talking CGI, Up was infinitely better. But I digress. This post is not really about my passive-aggressive disdain for the Bandwagon Culture (TM), but about this movie by Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson), oddly called The Lovely Bones . It's based on the novel of the same title by Alice Sebold and is about this kid, 14-year-old Susie Salmon (like the fish!) who was raped and brutally murdered by her pedophile neighbor, and the story of how "the lovely bones" grew around her absence. That's about as stark as I can write it. Naturally, the story is quite dark and quite intense. However, novelist Sebold makes it bearable by making Susie, the victim, it's n...