I spent about an hour in front of my computer thinking of something... anything... to blog about. A blogging dry spell. Everything I started only lasted a couple of sentences before the backspace button got a "woodpeckering" from my index finger. So, instead of forcing an entry out of my head, I spent two hours making the images that follow.

Why induce a migraine squeezing out a blog idea when one can play...


Wheel...

of...

Blogging Ideas!!!



Pat Sajak: Good Evening everyone! Our defending champion blogger struggling with something to blog about is here tonight hoping to eke an entry. Alternati, please spin the wheel.

Alternati: Thanks Pat. (Bends down and spins the wheel anxiously)... Big money! (clap clap clap)

PS: Watch out for the "Hiatus"...

PS: Quite an icebreaker... Alternati, Weather?

A: The weather here in Baguio has been extraordinarily erratic. An indecisive La Nina is upon us. Mornings are usually bright and sunny... the sun can practically drag any nocturnal out of bed. Noons are excruciatingly hot. By 3 pm, like clockwork, the sky turns gray in a matter of minutes. Fog = Zero visibility, Rain = Zero dry spots on your pants. Mother Nature has gone psychotic.

PS: Indeed she has. Spin it again... (motioning to the wheel)

A: Duh... (gives the wheel a small nudge while muttering "Do I look retarded")

PS: Movies!

A: Thanks Pat, I can read... I did a Woody Allen marathon yesternight.

Appetizer: Play It Again, Sam
A movie inspired by Casablanca. I loved it when Allan Felix (Allen's character) talks to an imaginary Bogart.

Main Course: Manhattan
Every single frame of this movie is art. I have a thing for black and white movies.

Dessert: Mighty Aphrodite
(A rewatch) This one is inspired by the story of Oedipus. One of my favorite elements in this movie is the Greek chorus that does lines between chapters.

Woody Allen's movies never fail to inspire me. The typical themes of insecurity, marriage, divorce and failure are divulged in witty screenplays dripping with subtle humor and in many cases a tablespoon of Diane Keaton.


PS: I guess Mighty Aphrodite was autobiographical, no?

A: Really? ~Oh Pray, do tell~...

PS: You mentioned Oedipus. Wasn't he the Greek character who killed his dad and married his mom?

A: Yeah... (rolling eyes)

PS: Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were an item who adopted Soon-yi. And except for the killing part, Soon-yi did marry Allen... a 35 year age difference...

A: Can I just spin the wheel now?

A: I just started reading a Woody Allen biography I bought from a thrift book store months ago. This one was written by Eric Lax and published in 1992.

PS: Do you have a thing for ancient directors with receding hairlines and thick glasses?

A: Maybe... (gnarling at the emcee)

PS: On that note! A word from our sponsors...



PS: Hahaha! The bunny and the... were... Hahaha...

A: Oh grow up Pat.

PS: Touchy. touchy. *ahem* Please, spin the wheel.

PS: I bet you wouldn't have a hard time with this one huh Alternati?

A: (throws tacky name tag at the emcee)
The wheel disparages me.

PS: Care to elaborate?

A: (creates an "L" with thumb and index finger and places it on forehead)
Care to elaborate? (mocking the emcee's voice)

PS: Nice... very mature. Just spin the wheel.

PS: ... and spin it again...

A: Since we've become such ~Greeaaattt~ friends Pat, can I give a shout out first?

PS: If it can thaw your iciness... go right ahead.

A: (Looks directly at camera 2) Thanks Chase! I just got the snus. I really appreciate it. (Smiles and waves at the camera hoping this show is aired in Bergen)

PS: Awwwww... You are capable of sentiment.

A: I am equally capable of homicide (giving the emcee an icy stare)

PS: Brrrrrrr... Spin the wheel Jadis.

A: A Narnia reference... you are capable of literacy (reaching down to spin the wheel)

PS: Brace yourself audience, (mock whispering) This one can make your ears bleed with talk of TV.

**Recorded audience laughter**

A: (mock whispering) That one can make your ears bleed just by speaking.

**Crickets**

A: Anyhoo... I just started watching Brothers & Sisters and Weeds. And I am obsessing over them already. I'll save them for another post so I won't "bore" (making quotation marks with fingers) you guys.

PS: Awwwww... So considerate. A commercial break!

**Recorded audience applause**



PS: The ad was speaking to you Alternati.

A: Shut up and do what "emcees" (making quotation marks with fingers) are supposed to do.

PS: Welcome back to the Bonus Round! Our category for today... THING. We bring up our usual letters: R, S, T, L, N and E. And Alternati, give us three consonants.

A: C, B and P

PS: ... and one vowel..

A: I

PS: You have 15 seconds to solve the puzzle... go!


A: Pent...
Rent... Rental?
Genital... Genital Black?
Dent... Dental Black... Dental Block?

**Buzzer**

PS: Seriously?!

A: Bite Me...








.

Labels: blah (3x), boredomville, i-rate

I've been on an enamel paint induced high for the past days. True to the nature of most guppies and friends of Dorothy, I redecorated my room. Goodbye to the butter yellow walls, Au revoir to the familiar specks on my ceiling, and Auf Wiedersehen to the utter lack of closet space.

It all began with the installation of new closets in my room. The light oak wood stain didn't create enough contrast with the yellow walls, the wood stain brush strokes trespassed on my used to be white ceiling and there were hideous Pollockish drops of primer on the floor. I was opening a gallon of white paint and tinters as soon as the carpenters said arrivederci.

Now why would a delicate being as myself paint my own walls? It's a lesson on self empowerment. I've painted with water colors and oils in college, painting on a wall can't be that much different from painting on 11 x 17 art paper...

I was sadly mistaken.

A simple flick of a water color brush creates a distant plateau on a piece of paper, a flick of paint ain't worth shite on a wall, which coincidentally seems a whole lot larger when you use a 2 inch brush. It involves concentration and cardiovascular activity... both are no forte of mine. Imagine balancing on top of a stool AND trying desperately to control your aching arm to paint not only evenly but also making sure you don't encroach on a surface with a different color, all the while wishing you were smoking a Marlboro light because the toxic paint fumes are creeping slowly toward your brain. I ain't no Diego Rivera and I have no aspiration of being one... Painting a wall with just one flat color is hard enough, I'd be out of my head if I ever considered undertaking a Guernica.

I wonder how many ibuprofens Michaelangelo downed every hour while he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Stiffneck: check
Back pains: check
Drops of paint on face: check
Paint on hair: check
Overall longing for horizontality: check

The paint roller is by far the best human invention! I love it to bits! (If you love it so much, why don't you marry it...)

The ceiling is so pristine white, it's almost virginal. And the walls dried into an awesome vibrant teal color.


I was actually aiming for a different green...


One inspired by one of my fave books by one of my fave authors. The slight error in paint mixing was an unforseen stroke of luck. It works well with the light my room gets during the day time.

There's no high like a paint high. Nope... not the toxic fumes dummy... but the overall king-of-the-world feeling of accomplishment, and a revitalized room to boot. Whoever associated ennui with "watching paint dry" was extremely uninformed.

Ty Pennington... call me.




(Endorphin Rush... Gawd! Is anybody else psyched about The Amazing Race Allstars? I've always loved Boston Rob and Amber from the Survivor series all through their 2nd place finish on TAR. AND the premier of CSI Season 10 AND American Idol Top 24 AND Project Runway 3 AND Heroes Episode 16, although I must say the cliffhanger was a lot like Lost's Ana-Lucia shoots Shannon episode? I intentionally placed this post script in parentheses cause I myself am frightened by how TV obsessed I am)

Labels: blah (3x), boredomville

This afternoon, I did something quite unnatural (for me). I mended... I mended a couple of bags with Jamie Cullum. Mending is a lost hobby of sorts.


It's been a while since I wielded a needle. The last thing I sewed was a watermill scene during the cross-stitch bandwagon of the late 90's. My attention span didn't allow me to finish it, but I did manage to complete some comprehensible reeds on the foreground. This reminds me of Lucia, a housekeeper we once had who took an interest in cross-stitching watching my sister make cherubs, square by square.

My sister gave Lucia a simple pattern to start with and gave her a quick cross-stitching 101 course. Lucia was happily pushing and pulling her needle and thread for an hour or so when she approached my sister with a predicament. (In tagalog) "How do you sew a circle?"... My sister gave a puzzled look and upon looking at the basketweave fabric she gave Lucia earlier, my sis gave a barely concealed chuckle. If you are familiar with cross-stitch patterns, each thread color is represented by a symbol on the tabled pattern. Apparently, Miss Lucia thought she had to stitch in the thread in the "style" of the symbols. She had a couple of X's in there... amidst yellow squares, red plus signs and I was marveled at how skillfully she stitched in an ampersand (&).


(End of flashback sequence)

Saliva on the tips of the thread is still a requirement for me to be able to put it through the eye. I never saw the necessity of a thimble so I had multiple needle pricks on my thumb. My stitching may be crooked, I may have broken a couple of needles and encountered a lot of knots, but I'm truly satisfied by the results.

I forgot to take "before" shots of the bags I mended, and I even contemplated ripping what I repaired just to do so but thought... Screw it, I'm not gonna spend another umpteen hours to mend this again.

This bag's handle was torn because of my tendency to overload my bag with unnecessary baggage.


This garterized thingy that holds my laptop in place was also torn, not because of anything I did but because of poor craftsmanship.


Mending is surprisingly very rewarding. If I can mend a couple of bags then designing haute couture couldn't be THAT difficult, right? Project Runway, here I come...



Photo Credit:
Needle Eye


PS... I'm so psyched! Amazing Race 10 is gonna start tomorrow! (yey!)
PPS... Mau made it to the Top 12 of Philippine Idol
PPPS... Chikka Minute: Kris is pregnant.
PPPPS... Did I mention Amazing Race 10 is starting tomorrow? oh yes...


Addenda:
I almost forgot to greet my two officemates who celebrated their birthdays last 15th and 16th respectively:
Happy Birthday Vic! (Pizza, pizza, pizza.. yum)
Happy Birthday Dona! (Ansarap nung sugpo na niluto mo!!!)

Labels: blah (3x), boredomville

It is a particularly slow day at the office. I just finished the last drawing set of the project I'm handling, chatted with a couple of friends, did my daily Yahoo! crossword and by 4 pm, I had absolutely nothing to do. I couldn't think of anything to write about in my blog, I was awaiting 6 o'clock like a TGIF crazed (but absolutely bored) lunatic. I was staring mindlessly at my keyboard, thinking of something to do (I already consumed my Holland waffles)... nothing. I refocused my eyes and noticed that some letters on my keyboard are starting to fade.

It was sometime during the half-hearted cleaning of my keyboard, when a question boggled me. Why are these letters arranged as such? QWERTYUIOP... Google Search: "Qwerty keyboard order"...

Apparently, it IS called a QWERTY keyboard. It was invented in 1868, by Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter. The reason according to Wikipedia, was certain commonly used letters were separated to prevent typebars(?) from intertwining (aka make the typist type slower to prevent jamming). I thought the reason would be more scientific than that.

There is an alternative keyboard invented by Dr. August Dvorak in 1930 (uncreatively and narcissistically) called the Dvorak Keyboard. It looks something like this:


Who would convert to that? It took me too long to get used to typing on the regular keyboard without looking at my fingers 100% of the time (and using both hands, not all fingers though). According to Webopedia,

It has been estimated that in an average eight-hour day, a typist's hands travel 16 miles on a QWERTY keyboard but only 1 mile on a Dvorak keyboard.

Substantial difference huh. I still wouldn't consider changing keyboards. First of all, my fingers need the exercise. And secondly, I think its just pointless (so is this whole blog entry... hah!)



For all my Archi friends.
I was clearing up some files on my hard disk and found this Dilbert strip:



Liam Ball
This Yahoo! image for the new mail format is so amusing.

Labels: bloghopping, boredomville

Prepare for trouble! Make it double! To protect the world from devastation! To unite all people within our nation! To denounce the evils of truth and love! To extend our reach to the stars above! Jessie! James! Team Rocket, blast off at the speed of light! Surrender now or prepare to fight!

The team rocket credo. LOL. Jesse and James of Pokemon fame. Jesse, how do you keep your hair up like that? and James, where did you get you hair dyed periwinkle? This is one of the cartoons that my niece and nephew watch (that I actually find amusing). They collect all these creatures aka Pokemons with specific powers and have them fight ala sabong (cockfight). Anyways, I find this trio (with Meowth) very charismatic, they always lose (that's the formula of the show) and are often thrown into the skies with a "ting!"... like the sparkle effect they do for tooth commercials (I think this is a reversed Coyote canyon fall). I've always thought Jesse and James were twins (I can't quite find resources on the net to prove it)... there goes my "twin entry" intro... oh well.

I heard somewhere that 3% of all births are twins. When I'm talking to friend about someone and so and so happens to have a twin, I usually insert "did you know he/she has a twin?" like a weird Ripley's footnote. I dunno why, but I've always been drawn to twins. My current theory: I'm a Gemini. It must be so fun having a twin to do pranks with. Dressing alike and scamming people. haha.

I've noticed that twins and fame go hand in hand. Many celebrities have twins, Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson among others (Is there some twin-conception guide we non-celebrities aren't privy to?) Conversely, Many twins become celebrities like Jason and Jeremy London, 2 of the 3 Bee Gees, and most notably the Olsen twins.

Networks, I believe, have a preference for twins when it comes to TV sitcom children. Given the attention span of children, casting twins for a single role would double the taping time. The pioneer of this would be Mary Kate and Ashley in the sitcom Full House. Similar roles with twin actors are Wyatt Halliwell (Charmed), Owen Salinger (Party of Five) and Maya Fisher (Six Feet Under)

I got the list of twins from wikipedia. The section of that wiki that I found really interesting is the list of Famous People with a Twin. The following particularly caught my eye:

1. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (he had a fraternal twin sister... but imagine for example if he had an identical twin brother who got photographed holding a grenade or something like that. hahaha)
   
2. Linda Hamilton - the girl from Terminator
3. Isabella Rossellini
4. Kiefer Sutherland - of the 24 series
5. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen
6. Canadian rocker Alanis Morissette
7. Punk'd Ashton Kutcher
8. One of my fave actresses, Scarlett Johansson
9. One of my fave actors, Giovanni Ribisi
10. Vin Diesel!
11. and Elvis Presley (but his twin died shortly after birth)

I always find it weird when someone I've known for quite some time happens to have a twin without me knowing.

Labels: blah (3x), boredomville, idiot box