The Complete Substitute for All Forms of Sociability

I finished my February reading assignment earlier than intended. Would you believe me? I finished it one day. I would have finished it in half if real world didn't beckon. So. What did I think about the book? It's nothing like I expected. Well, to be honest, I didn't expect anything. But when I read it, I couldn't seem to put it down. It's a good thing I saw Battle Royale  when I did. There are certainly similarities between the two in that children are thrown into some kind of woodsland arena where they duke it out to the death. But The Hunger Games  has a more complete world than Battle Royale. And a far more compelling protagonist. Katniss is cold and manipulative but still likeable. No doubt about it. Katniss Everdeen is the baddest BADASS since oh, I don't know, Kick-Ass ' Hit-Girl. In short, I loved the book. I even started on the first few chapters of Catching Fire  because I couldn't wait till March. Meantime, OMG THE MOVIE!!!

Finished my reading assignment for myself for this month. Actually I started reading this book some months ago, around September in fact, but only got serious with it late last week, and finished it just now. My head's still spinning. I feel like I can't think properly, but I also feel like I'll forget all my thoughts and feelings about the book now,  just like how you forget your dreams minutes after you wake up, unless I write them all down. SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT. Kafka on the Shore  has two ongoing plots that seem to parallel, yet seem to have nothing to do, with each other. The odd chapters follow Kafka Tamura, who is described by one of the characters in the book as a "cool, tall, fifteen-year-old, lugging around a backpack and a bunch of obsessions." He starts the story by running away from an unhappy home and his father's Oedipal curse in which it is prophesied that he would kills his father and sleep with his mother and sister. At times, Kafka i...

Some good. Some bad. In as few words as possible. The Lincoln Lawyer Matthew McConaughey, Marissa Tomei, Ryan Philippe Matthew McConaughey at his charmingly slimiest as a smooth-operating defense lawyer who experiences a moral dilemma just as he is handling the biggest case in his career. While the story is nothing new -- not even a single twist in sight for the tired old legal drama genre -- the movie does well with strong performances and a solid, if a bit predictable, plot. Battle Royale: Director's Cut Fujiwara Tatsuya, Maeda Aki, Shibasaki Kou I've long heard about this movie but didn't really buy into it. It's basically about violence and moral depravity of people satirized and brutalized into a literal battleground with high school students as the participants. The movie opens strong but loses some of its cohesiveness in the middle portion before fading into a fairly predictable ending. Fujiwara Tatsuya overacts, Maeda Aki underacts, but some strong...

That's a line from Bottle It Up  by Sara Bareilles, which, for a while, has been my message tone. Anyhoo, this blog isn't going to be about my resolutions for 2012. Oh, I have resolutions but I won't post them. Instead, I've decided to make lists. 2012 is for 12 Books a Year List: January - Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) February -  The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) March -  Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins) April - Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins) May - A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin) June - Tess of the D'urbevilles (Thomas Hardy) July - Drive (James Sallis) August - The Marvelous Land of Oz (L. Frank Baum) The Awakening and Other Stories (Kate Chopin) September - Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami) October - Animal Farm (George Orwell) November - Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) Candide (Voltaire) December - Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie) The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka) UPDATED: 01/21/2012 Replaced The Marvelous Land of Oz ...

I love my Greek mythology. Let's see, I first encountered my first Greek god in Grade 5 when I read on my English Reading textbook the story of the seasons, how Hades kidnapped Persephone, the pomegranates, Ceres' despair, and all the stuff that followed. Then movies like Clash of the Titans (the original, not the idiotic, not to mention completely unnecessary remake),  The Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts (to a point) and all that heady stuff came and my love was practically etched in stone. So despite movies like Troy , which is awesome in its own right (because Brad Pitt in a skirt, yo) but which didn't feature any of the gods or goddesses of the ancient Hellenic culture, I'll always have a soft spot for anything remotely touching mythos. It's no small wonder then that one of my most anticipated action movies of the year would be Immortals, directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Henry Cavill (whom I first discovered in the UK series, The Tudors, playing the sex...

Doodles while waiting for the next class.

It's the Holidays. I'm looking forward to spending it with the family, which would be my mother, my brother and his wife, and my four nephews. My father would have to stay at our house here in the city because we don't want to leave the house unattended, what with all our dogs. We have four now, did I mention that? There's my baby, of course, Boris, a shi tzu/japanese chin or maybe japanese spitz mutant creature lol. There's Barack, whose breed I'm still trying to figure out. He's our biggest dog and the quietest (although he can be loud when he's in one of his watchdog moods). Then there's Humay, previously called "Judge," who is the basic irong bisaya. And finally, there's Boris' own baby, Crystal, the only girl and so acts like one of the boys. A dyed-in-the-blue tomboy. If Dad lets me drive my car home to Moalboal for the Christmas, maybe I can bring Boris with me, but that's a long shot because the last time I drove down th...