Saturday, May 19, 2007

flickpicker

this will be in conjunction with the previous post i wrote (you could click on the link, or scroll down as well---and save you an ounce of effort in doing so, doesn't matter). aside from books, one of my recurring fetishes is cinema (the others, you need to figure out for yourself)---and not merely your usual Hollywood popcorns, but an eclectic selection of foreign, independent, classic and the unheard-ofs. unlike books, my penchance for DVDs and videos are current: it began with the advent of video discs. i was not lured by the bulky oversized packagings of VHS tapes (one thing also is its inexplicably off-the-ceiling pricetags, that during those days i'd rather spend on a hardback), and while i initially relied on those peddled at Quiapo (my advocacy to pirated dvds was shortlived but admittedly, they carry any title you could possibly think of), my filmic proclivities somehow got me acquainted to Amazon and the multitude of dvd merchants spread all over the wired world.

anyway, my recent dvd haul were Asian flicks that served as an impeccable source to the coursework i had to write; and a bunch of tv series/miniseries that did not actually had an impact when they were first shown:

Profit Adrian Pasdar (of the Heroes fame topbilled)
Jiang Hu Andy Lau and Jacky Cheung reunited after Kar-Wai's As Tears Go By
Tae Guk Gi Private Ryan wannabe? you decide.
JSA Park Chan-Wook's pre-Oldboy violence spree
Ultimate Oliver Stone Collection got it used.
Edge of Darkness Brit tv is undeniably impressive by being atmospheric.

Labels: buhay-kultura

latest musing of Etchie at 16:28 0 comments

Friday, May 18, 2007

fic :: hypocrisy

It began with the phrase ego te absolvo, in nomini patri, et filli et espiritu sancti…

She could’ve answered it with Amen, but for no apparent reason she didn’t. Just a muffled noise, a pursed lip, bloodied and swollen. She lay there bleeding, tears welled in her eyes, asking for a crumb of forgiveness, but at the same time she was unusually adamant.

A victim of unyielding pride. Stubborness that went the fatal distance.

The priest remained calm despite his knowledge that the crumpled heap of flesh and bone in front of him was a lost cause. He knew that, in fact he was the one who attempted to plug the puncture holes in her frail carcass. He lost count on the knife wounds, and was simply there in case there’s something he could do—perhaps to administer the last rites. The small white cloth under the neck collar served as a calming presence, the evidence of God, merciful and forgiving.

However from the way he mustered this incident, she was becoming exceedingly resilient.

Death was never distant, he mused. She merely didn’t want to accept that reality. He waited, watching her as she gasped, like a candle on the slow process of mortal depletion.

* * * * *

Manang Linda was her name, or what they assumed her name to be. She was a prey of a planned reprisal that ended in senseless violence. Nobody saw what happened and the majority simply decided it was her own doing. A good riddance case, the police might call it—same thing that normally happen to drug addicts and other social menaces—exterminated for causes unknown, possibly of vigilante doing. In her case, it was different. She was stabbed not because she wasn’t a disease that plagued the perimeter of her residence, but there were other specific reasons.

They claimed she possessed stern religious convictions. A member of a charismatic organization that didn’t want her. She was neither a believer nor a follower, but she joined anyway in the belief that it could somehow redeeem her from all the shortcomings she had done in the past. Likewise, she believed that she could use the stringency of religion as the impeccable weapon to counteract any vice in her surrounding. Probably one that reaped her sufficient number of people who despised her. Beneath all the `goody-two-shoes’ façade she exuded in her daily lifestyle, Manang Linda was the perfect vestige of character deception: she has a terrible penchance for backstabbing while engaged in routine Wednesday novenas; her tongue could pierce through the thickest barrier of personal censors, often at the pole position of rumor-proliferation.

Albeit it was how people saw her, but the flaws in her attitude compensated for a heart opened to a selected few. Perhaps that maybe a number of her neighbors felt bad about her stabbing; she was a kind human being, and merely a product of probably an uncontented childhood or a family broken by whatever force one could muster. She may not be the perfect example of an ephemeral structure, yet she did what she thought could change the world she once attempted to recreate. All the while the failure was anything but it abruptly molded her into someone a lot started to express outright derision.

It was her appropriate retribution to the surge of misgivings that went before.

* * * * *

Fr. Eliseo Lara was supposedly on his way to a congregation meet at Tagaytay when the news of the stabbing precluded him from pushing through his journey.

He never knew Manang Linda, but he was aware she knew him. Perhaps one of the usual ten people who attend his daily 5 PM mass. Since his transfer from a rural assignment in the provinces, life in the slums nevertheless posed a challenge to his capacity to renew their faith. It should be a difficult task, the monsignor in the area had once confided in him, but Fr. Lara assumed otherwise. Slum people are mainly blind in the ways of God, he remarked, and the fact that negligence on our part also contributed to that realization. When he first celebrated mass in a decrepit chapel that the people there called their parish, only five people attended. He didn’t blame them to their blatant ignorance of God, however rebuilding the entire parish was worth a certain magnitude of sacrifice anyway.

Certain sacrifice? He mused as he grasped the sweat-drenched palms of the dying woman, her fingers searching for his. He had administered the last rites, the only thing he could do except to wait for the paramedics to arrive. When he absolved her, Fr. Lara noticed the hesitation on Manang Linda’s part, only a muffed sound, inaudible for him to construe an approval.

Fr. Lara saw this as practically a blessing in disguise for most people. He heard of everything about the person lay bloodied on his lap, multiple perforations on her lavender-colored blouse, now drenched in dark crimson. He attempted to plug the wounds with a wet towel, but she continued to moan and lose blood. In a sudden influx of panic, he turned the woman over and while her stomach was ripped apart by the brutality of the attack, her intestines spilled out. He nearly vomitted, nevertheless his presence somehow contributed an aura of comfort to the dying.

He forced a deep swallow and skillfully with both hands, he lifted her head towards his lap. She gurgled blood, the only sound she could produce at that moment. Fr. Lara slowly shook his head, apparently aware that the woman would die anytime soon. He noticed a pool of tears in her eyes, now half-closed, waiting for death to come and take whatever life has upon the battered structure. As she coughed, he felt God had punished him for allowing a human being to die on his hands, and he could hear the soft wheezes of air spraying from a contracted windpipe. A gasp, a moan, emanating from a small knife hole in her chest.

She has to die. Father Lara mercifully prayed. God please let her find her peace.

He looked for someone he knew, the people stood above him, eyed him with remarkable admiration. Nobody lifted a finger to help him, knowing how Manang Linda had sullied them in the past. Just because I’m a priest? He thought, that I should accept whatever punishment God has in store for me? And the dying woman wasn’t what he could consider as a punishment for any previous mistakes he committed. More of a corporeal mortification in anyway, his mind revolted at that statement. The degree of weight such incident had imposed upon him was tantamount to the flesh-penetrating lashes those people from Opus Dei use for their daily sacrifices.

Finally, he questioned himself, why should they deserve such kind of treatment? As life drifted out freely from a multitude of stab wounds, Fr. Lara could only stare in helpless disbelief.

Labels: fiction, writing

latest musing of Etchie at 17:00 0 comments

litpicker

(or in the slumbook cliche: what are you reading right now?)

i know the idea is plagiarized from dean alfar's blog, as i'll be chronicling recent reads regularly. it'll be a series-sort-of, though it would definitely depend on how fast i finish them. anyway, books are part of my entirety, or collectively, the whole of the pingol household. yep, brianne managed to inherit my love of books and albeit she still possesses a bit of difficulty in the level of reading she is now in, it is clearly evident how books are beginning to shape her development.

my past trawls on bookshops and online merchants brought me a number:

Foucault's Pendulum Umberto Eco
Battle Royale Koushun Takami
Dark Water Koji Suzuki
The Battle Alessandro Barbero

some i bought from Amazon (one of the largest online bookseller, i'd say), and some during our occasional excursions to the nearest Barnes and Noble or Borders (which, i confess, is a far cry from bookstores in Manila- - -except for Powerbooks maybe, and that somehow remains as the ideal source of literature as far as pricetags are concerned). the noticeable lowdown in bookshops here is the inclusion of sales taxes which if you are the ultimate peso-pincher (those who never fail to impress me with their accurate knowledge of the current foreign exchange rate and the conversions they ultimately perform), you'd still conclude that Socorro Ramos did an impressive haggling.

i am a bargain person. but i am extremely meticulous when it comes to books. i'm willing to shell out a premium for a good condition (if defined as crease-free spines and non-yellowed pages, of course), primarily for the reason that i don't kink-wrap them. i honestly admit that i lack the basic mastery of covering in plastic, hence it is imperative for me that the (used) books i buy should be very well taken cared of.

Labels: books

latest musing of Etchie at 14:46 2 comments

Sunday, May 13, 2007

warfreak

a link from Dodo's blog:



it's unusally ironic that i'm the eternal pacifist.

Labels: c'est la vie

latest musing of Etchie at 16:02 0 comments

Sunday, May 06, 2007

remembering the rock

sixty-five years ago today, Lt. General Jonathan Wainwright surrendered the Rock of the Pacific to the Japanese thus officially ended any organized resistance in the Philippine archipelago.

it also signified the beginning of the Japanese Occupation and three years later American troops with the aid of Filipino resistance fighters would oust the Japs and ultimately secure the liberation of the country.

today, Corregidor stands as a lasting reminder of how Filipino-American forces stood up to insurmountable odds to delay the Japanese advance in the Pacific.


image courtesy of the Virtual Tourist.

Labels: historical markers

latest musing of Etchie at 12:55 0 comments

Saturday, May 05, 2007

bumhood redux

there is a thin line that exists between losing and quitting a job.

the culmination is basically the same, but the how of it is the one that matters.

the constant recurrence of premeditated bumming is a protracted outcome of both, to say the least. nonetheless, there is a degree of self-satisfaction present to those who quit. an inexplicable high. to inculcate the comfort of freedom versus the omnipresence of guilt and depression towards those who lost theirs.

so i made the freefall. aware of the lack of cushions that i should have prepared before the plunge.

technicalities precipitated the loss of contingencies. there were blames and misunderstandings, ultimately i could still manage to prompt some relief.







i'm enjoying myself for the moment. packing up the proper gear for a different level.

it'll be a new battlefield in the future.

Labels: c'est la vie

latest musing of Etchie at 01:19 0 comments

Friday, May 04, 2007

paris in hell-ton

sometimes the american justice system impresses me.

and the news the came buzzing out off the wires is a clear evidence that the system does not discriminate.

at least, that was how i interpeted it.

yep. paris hilton was sentenced to 45 days behind bars just for merely trying to get above the law. (the accompanying news article from yahoo would feed you the whole story, i'm merely reacting). ineptitude is forgivable, but neglect is something else. it is the irresponsibility to know where you're at, and the fact that she was clearly aware of what she was doing- - -and doing it again- - -is perhaps the concrete reason why she deserves getting locked up.

that small thing alone (that socialites are, indeed, should be in the same boat as normal people) is a caveat that is certainly lacking in the Philippine judicial system (money is the perfect tunnel to escape prosecution, they say). the analogy is inappropriate, but I had my point (was just waylaided, anyway).

somehow I could not fathom the constant idea why people adore Paris Hilton. she is not a success story to begin with (born to rich parents is tantamount to success? puh-leeaze!). to her, being successful is seeing her sorry ass on covers of magazines, hounded by the paparazzi and getting creamed by Rick Salomon. she is not a role model for the young (the way Lindsay Lohan wasted her adolescence on booze shares the similar derision i have to both of them)- - -having her own sex tape to harvest certain notoriety is undoubtedly lightyears away within the circumference of being a role model- - -as opposed to what she claims she is. the only thing that harbors Paris Hilton is the adamantly superior ego who thinks that being and becoming Paris Hilton is a big accomplishment (well, in some way, being Paris Hilton as the heir to a million-dollar company is certainly a huge reality to accentuate).

at some point in the article, i began to pity her. not because she's going to prison. celebrities and prisons are on the same highway named route to popularity. it is that tricky chicane that you have to be extremely cautious to force a turn or you'd be turtling down towards a could-be avoidable obstacle. Paris Hilton was probably mismanaged by the people around her, that in an early part of her life, she commenced on a merciless downward spiral.

but. that was the package she has/had to accept. the law does not discriminate as I had mentioned earlier. no one is above or is the law.

only judge dredd is.

Labels: buhay-kultura, smoking gun

latest musing of Etchie at 23:37 0 comments

Subscribe !

© Etchie Pingol 2005. Some rights and lefts reserved.
Designed by The Dubai Chronicles.