Babbling Point

Testing for Spam damn_spam@weaponx.org Our ALAMAT email address is now swamped by SPAM and CBR's anti-spam filter is no good. So, I created this email address as an experiment to see how fast these spam robots that are trawling the net can find this new address. Even my Yahoo email addy gets too much spam, but their filter works better. I read somewhere that it's best not to type in your email address in message boards and websites and blog. If you do have to give you email the best to leave spaces in between so that the robots do not read it as email. For example, instead of typing in as damn_spam@weaponx.org , you type it in as: damn_spam @ weaponx. org or damn_spam (at) weaponx (dot) org . Spam sucks. Damn spam.

- Overheard in the office One of the producers was on the phone and she said: “Ako? Hindi pa… no… no…. Eh ikaw, married ka na? Hindi pa? So, let’s have lunch?” It just sounded so wrong. Then again, what’s so wrong about being upfront with what you want.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ay naku... ay ewan... You spend your weekend at work. You spend the next two days without sleep. Rushing something which client eventually likes but is revised to death only to have them choose the first thing that you presented to them. You rush and rush and rush and loose sleep over what seems to be the most important project in the world and then... everything comes to a grinding halt because some doohickey-doodad from Finland didn't arrive and the "network core" (which sounds like something found only in Cybertron) will not work properly and therefore they don't really need all the things you've been working on and they're not even sure when they'll be able to find enough energon cubes to get that thingamagiggy working. AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR GGGGGGGG...

Something TWISTED this way comes! :) She’s baaaack! Jessica Zafra invades the airwaves again! Tonight at 9pm, broadcasting her plans for world-domination on NU107! (For everyone outside of the Philippines, you can tune in by going to www.nu107.com )

+ HOLY SUPER POWERS! "Imagine you’re twelve years old and suddenly discover that you’re the returned Jesus Christ. You can turn water into wine, make the crippled walk again, and perhaps even raise the dead. What do you do, what does your family do, and how does it affect you knowing that you’re destined to grow up and take part in a conflict that people have been waiting almost two thousand years for?" This is the premise of CHOSEN , a comic book by Mark Millar and Peter Gross. It's been described as "Spider-Man meets the Book of Revelations" and "Harry Potter for Christian fundamentalists". The art looks great and knowing Millar, the story will be wild (and religious at the same time). First issue arrives in stores, appropriately, on Christmas Eve. :)

:) I should have tons of material for this! Found this call for submissions at collective-blog called Elephant Still Missing . Working Title: SAWI Submission Call for an anthology of creative work This is a call to writers of fiction, poetry, and creative prose who would like to publish works on the subject of heartbreak. The editors, Bolipata Santos et al., will consider light pieces only, not serious dissertations, in English or Filipino. These pieces should not be longer than 1000 words (or two pages single-space, point 12, times new roman or similar font). The collection will be published by Milflores Publishing Inc. The deadline for submission is May 31, 2004. You may submit in two ways: by e-mail sawi_kami (at) yahoo (dot) com or by snailmail to SAWI c/o Santos, Patiño, Loredo English Department, Loyola Schools Ateneo de Manila University Katipunan Ave, Loyola Heights, Quezon City 1108

:) MR. 300 I am happy to announce that out of the top 700 advertising creatives in the Asian region, Brandie Tan ranked #319. Congrats bro!

+ + \ Con"flu*ence \ , n. [L. confluentia.] 1. The act of flowing together; the meeting or junction of two or more streams; the place of meeting. 2. Any running together of separate streams or currents; the act of meeting and crowding in a place; hence, a crowd; a concourse; an assemblage. "A new breed of adventurer is roaming the globe. Armed with a GPS and an eye for a quirky mission, these men and women are seeking out the spots on the earth's surface where lines of latitude and longitude cross. Their aim - to create a picture of the world." BBC NEWS Anyone in the Philippine with a GPS and a digicam? Maybe you can help map out the confluences in our 7,100 islands. Click here to where these places can be found.

The Prometheus Curse Or WHAT’S IN THE BALIKBAYAN BOX?! When Prometheus brought back fire from the gods, he didn’t know what he was getting the human race into and in particular, us Filipinos. I’m talking about that lovely, heartwarming, cumbersome tradition of bringing pasalubong. When I went to the United States to visit some relatives, half my suitcase was filled with pasalubong. I carried 40 pounds of hopia, balut, butong pakwan, daing, dried mangoes, Skyflakes and miniature jeepneys. I was a mobile sari-sari store. Note that some of the stuff I was made to carry was illegal according to US customs law. Not only was I a sari-sari store, I was also a smuggler—all for the sake of my kamag-anak. I half-expected my mother to ask me to hide sampalok in my socks. While in the land of milk(duds) and honey(nuts) we spent half the time looking for –what else?—pasalubong. So what if all these things we were buying were available at the duty-free shops (for convenient pasalubong s...

! TO GO Would just like to inform everyone that my pocket money now consists of dimes and quarters and I still haven't bought any pasalubong. So, don't be surprised if I just bring you those peanuts they give away in the airplane. See you all in a week. :)

:) Damn you Dino ! I've been sucked into the time sink that is FRIENDSTER !!! NOOOO!!!

~ Waiter, there's a fly in my Frappucino While waiting for Brandie at the Starbucks branch on New Montgomery Street, I noticed that the guy three seats away from me was getting a lot of attention. I was busy writing/ranting in my journal and ever now and again, someone would approach the man and talk to him. Since that branch of Starbucks was near the Academy of Art, I though he was some professor and his students were bugging him for an extension of some deadline. Then some Japanese kids approached the curly-haired, bespectacled gentleman and had their picture taken with him. I thought, "Gee, he must be a popular teacher." As I continued to write my journal entry, he pulled out his cellphone and made a call. With his deep, professor-like voice, he said, "Hi, this is Jeff Goldblum." And he proceed to ask directions on how to find a particular antique shop. I stopped writing and thought to myself, "Why does that name sound so familiar? Isn't...

:) bwahahahahhaa Thanks to Bea, we got to watch Jay Mohr at the Improv last night. Never really knew that he had his beginnings doing stand-up, so we didn't really know what his act was all about. It was a mix of observational comedy and a bit of that "angry with the world" routine. It was balanced off with his experiences of being a dad to an 11-month old son and how women have it easy when it comes to masturbating and how he's really an air marshall armed with a killer ballpen. The walls of the Improv were lined with photos of other great comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Jay Leno, back when they were younger and thinner. How long did it take them to reach the point when they finally get their own talk show, their own sitcom? How many clubs did they have to play before they became an overnight success? How many jokes died on that stage before they figured out what's funny? How do you become funny? Jay Mohr told the s...

_ glazed and confused Stayed home today. Maybe all the week's driving and walking and shopping and eating have finally taken it's toll on me. The other day, I finally had the chance to taste Krispy Kreme , something I've only read about for the longest time. I think it first found otu about this wonderful glazed dougnut from Fast Company. Funny thing is, this company has been making doughnuts since 1937, but magazines and books have been writing about it's success like it was a fast running newbie company. Krispy Kreme has been as an example of a product that generates good buzz without bombarding it's audience with tons of advertising. It generates word-of-mouth and intrigue, especially when people tell you... insist that you taste Krispy Kreme the moment it comes out of the line, while it's fresh and hot, which is something we haven't had the chance to do since we haven't visited an actual Krispy Kreme store. We bought out dozen from one ...

:) Thrilling Mwahahah! Finally found McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales in a bookstore in Haight Street. Thanks to Dino and Tonet for bringing us there. I would've bought the other editions of McSweeny's but it would have left me bankrupt. Besides, I've got enough reading material as it is.

~ Moooo! Brandie and I got to spend the day with Dino and Tonet and got to see their latest works. Dino just finished making the video for The Skyflakes , a San Francisco-based all-Filipino band. You can check out the stills of the video at Dino's site. He doesn't want to upload the complete video until they get to submit it to several festivals. But we got the special preview of the video. :) Dino was actually able to upload the whole video in his Nokai 3650. Astig! He showed it to us while were walking around the Cartoon Art Museum . Later on, we got to watch it on the big screen at his house. And if you're lucky, you might just get to see The Skyflakes music video on MTV-Asia and MYX. And if you want to see Dino with his new F4 hair-cut, just click here and look for photo a261.jpg . Of course, Dino denies knowing anything about F4 since he's not exposed to ABS-CBN's top-rating show. Well, he might just get a hair-cut soon enough. While D...

Sans Vas Been here in the US for almost a week and just noticed that the cellphone companies here don't do VAS ads. It's either I've died and gone to heaven or it just goes to show how backwards the United States is when it comes to telco. No ads about icons or ringtones or textcards or colored wallpaper! It's crazy! Most of the cellphone ads we've seen talk about cheaper rates or free calls. I did see one ad for a texting promo. The more you text, the more chances of winning a brand new car!!! Goes to show they're just getting into that. In a way, we're light years ahead of these people. They're just starting to do the things we were doing back in 2000.

~ SPLURRRRG!!! Went to Barnes and Noble today... Here's my receipt: How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen. (I know it sounds like a wussy book, but I really liked Quindlen's GUIDE TO HAPPINESS book.) Maus: A Suvivor's Tale (books 1 and 2... now I can finally return Jessica's copy) One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (Someone borrowed my copy years ago and never returned it.) Pattern Recognition (William Gibson's latest novel) Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces (which means I can finally throw away that Xeroxed copy I've had since college.) DC Guide to Writing Comics And as you can see by shopping money for this trip has been cut in half thanks to one trip to the bookstore. Might just mean drinking less Starbucks for the rest of the trip and eating more of McDo's 99cent meals. Oh well, we still have to go to Boston and my mom wants us to go by train so s...

Force of Habit Even though I'm now in the US, I still... 1. expect the guard at the mall to look into my bag. 2. think I can't take the car out on Thursdays because of color-coding. At Starbucks, I keep asking for a short cup, when the smallest size they have is a tall one. Crazy...

The flight going here was okay except for the fact I was seated beside the three-hundred pound woman who with her cute two-year little girl FROM HELL!!! Despite the fact that the woman was very apologetic of her demon child's beahvior, she just kept on shushing and cursing and threatening to leave the child everytime thath hellspawn acted up. To matters worse, we were stuck on the ground for TWO HOURS!!! So, instead of leaving at 10:30pm, we left around 1am. Good thing they started to serve dinner and showed an episode of FRIENDS. When we finally reached 39,000ft, I looked around and saw that there were a lot of empty seated and that allowed me to escape the Samoan woman and her cute succubus. Cut-to: SFO Very emotional reunion for my mom and her sis who haven't seen each other since 1996. Arrived at my aunt's home in Newark around midnight. Brandie and I slept in the living room with the family dog and parrot. The dog's name is Mene, which is short ...