Friday, October 6

300



Here's the official trailer for 300, inspired by the graphic novel by Frank Miller. Depicting the battle of Thermopylae between a small force of Spartans versus the massive might of the Persian Empire. The sights within this short trailer are quite fascinating. Lots of immense battle scenes, intricate costumes and scenery, fantastic costumes and glorious carnage in slow motion.
Brings to mind the Battle of Pelennor Fields, from Return of the King... at least there, the good guys numbered at least 6,000... and they had horses and eventual relief in the form of an undead army. At Thermopylae, there were 300 Spartans against more than a hundred thousand enemy troops (granted, historically there were other Greek troops, but hey, this is the movies). Awesome stuff. Check the trailer out and get ready to pick your jaw up from the floor. This film looks like something to look forward to early next year.

Wednesday, October 4

Call me Insidio. Or Doctor Wallflower. Or maybe... Mister Whisper. GRAHAHAHA.

According to this, I'm Evil Lite. Which also may be Evil Might. GRAHAHAHA.

You Are 26% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.
Lips to Ips

After all the talk about storms and shit, how about something funny and silly and gross to lighten the mood?

A couple of weeks ago, I went over one night to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I open the light and go for my toothbrush, which was placed along with my Mom's sticking inside a cup on top of a raised platform area above the toilet. As I drew up my toothbrush, an IPIS or cockroach skittered out of the cup. I recoiled in horror and imagined that the thing may have been all over our dental care stuff, it's dirty antennae probing all over. I told my Mom about this and just resolved to buy another toothbrush.

A couple of days later, I entered the bathroom again to brush my teeth. I looked up and was about to grab my new toothbrush when- I once again recoiled in HORROR. A fricking Ipis was perched right on my toothbrush, on the bristles where you put toothpaste. The creepy little bugger was sitting pretty no doubt sucking in whatever he could from the brush. The raised position of the platform prevented me from squashing the blasted bug, but I shooed it away and then threw away the brush. This had to stop.

This was weird, of course. We were pretty tidy. The bathroom was a bathroom, but it was generally very clean. But for some reason the recent weeks saw roaches frequenting the area where we put our brushes. Perhaps it was a freak chance that I walked in and saw what I did. But now that I knew that roaches were among stuff we put in our mouths, I couldn't just stand and do nothing.
I bought a new brush with a brush head cover, and resolved to NOT put it in the cup any more. I set it aside farther away from the platform, where roaches seemed to have taken to haunting a lot.

A couple of days later, I came in to brush my teeth. I got my brush... and then ONCE MORE WITH FEELING, RECOILED IN HORROR as I saw a roach perched on the lid of the tube of toothpaste!

WHAT THE HELL?!! It was fascinating in a filthy, horrid way though, so instead of shooing the insect away, the first thing I did was grab my digicam and snap the disgusting sight (too bad I erased it, but darn it was gross) and then show my Mom just what I was talking about.

Well, since then we've taken to putting all our toothbrushes and toothpaste in personal containers (fashioned by my Dad from empty dish detergent containers) with lids to keep roaches out. My Mom has also killed a couple of roaches in the area, but we knew it was useless to kill 'em. There will always be roaches there, but at least now we've made sure we won't be french-kissing the buggers everytime we brush.

So... are your toothbrushes in a good, clean place?

Monday, October 2

The Longest Weekend

Since my last post, a lot of time had passed. I went home and came to a dark house. I had to contend with going to bed soon after taking a bath (water is one luxury we still had despite it all) Friday night. Saturday morning gave no respite, and despite all my instincts screaming for me to run off to some mall and just kill time there, I stayed at home. I stayed and slept several hours... several sweaty hours... until I realized that if I slept all day, I'd be awake all night. So I got up and walked around, read some magazines and comics from the rapidly-rising pile of unread issues. Literally, I was feeling every second tick by, and I could see the sun slowly waning and night unfurling its curtain. Thankfully, a battery-operated radio was available, so as the evening finally came in full I listened to TV Patrol Sabado and news of Milenyo's legacy and the odd murder.

Early evening found me walking outside, shirtless in the dark and sweating (darn, I felt like Rambo), staring up at the unlit lamp posts one moment, and to the lit residences of Quezon City in the distance. One thing though, that I appreciate from the time in the dark, was that I finally saw my first fireflies.

After a hurried dinner of McDonald's, I went back to bed (after a second bath) but couldn't sleep. I looked at my options for entertainment; my PSP, unused for the past week, was down to 10 percent power, so was not usable. DAMN! KEEP IT CHARGED...KEEP IT CHARGED... My Archos 700 was fully charged, but unfortunately had NOTHING in the hard drive that was watchable... KEEP IT FULL, KEEP IT FULL... And so, it fell to my sidekick Pocket PC to kill my boredom. There was still about 50 percent power left, and for a while I was choosing between conserving that power in case the next few days still saw me without a chance to recharge... or using what power I had to watch the latest episodes of Avatar. I chose to live, dammit. But luckily, in the middle of the first episode, my watch was disturbed by a familiar, yet long-missed artificial glow. LIGHT was back. I let out a yell and was jumping up and down. Alive. We're alive again.

Unfortunately, the phone lines are still dead, as is my broadband connection. So I'll be posting from the Salt Mines from now. Still, having electricity for light, PC use, DVDs and gaming is good enough for now. I can live without cable and broadband internet... for a while.

Man, I'm a fricking addict. What can you do.