Man On A Street

"All art aspires to the condition of music." ~Walter Pater

One of my housemates (and two of my teammates) just returned from a five-day escapade to Palawan. As presents, she gave us fish-shaped wooden keychains and a bag of tarts. Thanks. Yep, i've tasted ones from Davao, Bacolod, Baybay . . . almost as if . . . whenever a place campaigns to make itself a tourist haven, its native delicacies invariably get supplemented by tarts. . . . I meant the food.

"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way." -- Charles Bukowski, "Notes of a Dirty Old Man"

Noted down two years ago: "If you're going to be sarcastic, it helps not to put your foot in your mouth. And if you're going to be snobbish, it helps to know at least the basics about what you're being stuck-up about." -- Guppy06 diwancioNO@SPAMearthlink.net

In Nobeoka City (Miyazaki Prefecture), old women shamans are called Totoro no Babayan . In ancient Philippines, priestesses/women shamans (and when these were in short supply, their male crossdressing substitutes) were called Babaylan .

Some people need to cling to their illusions more than others...

I'm still at the beginning of Akira Kurosawa's 1990 movie 'Dreams' (Yume). First episode. Rain falls while the sun is shining brightly. Mother tell's child: "You must stay home because in this weather, the foxes (kitsune) hold their wedding processions and will be very angry if anyone sees them..." When we were children, we were also told that in this kind of weather, the tikbalang (supernatural beings with human bodies, horse heads) hold their weddings. In some places, they say when the sun is shining and it's raining, the Devil is beating his wife. The belief in sunshowers being associated with the wedding of supernatural beings is too common to be a coincidence... But there's one belief linked to sunshowers that i'd like to be true: sunshowers are favorable for growing mushrooms... ;)

Commuter -- sitting across me in the public utility jeepney: "His backpack is The North Face while his own face is going south." Yin-Yang.

In title-making, make sure da optical distance between curved edges of letters is smaller than dat between parallel edges -- in dis case, between 'o' and 'd' vs between 'd' and 'i'. 'Foo Die,' / f u'd aɪ / in my native Waray language sounds like coño.

[For those viewing my Friendster blog:] My Facebook account is feeding off this blog. Now i'm feeding off a Facebook note . And Facebook will feed on it too ( Ouroboros -- the Celestial Serpent , feeding on its own tail -- talk about wormholes, hehe). So I won't post the whole note -- or Facebook will post the whole thing when it already has one. To read the note, just click on this link. ;) [If you're already on the Facebook notes page, just read the previous note.]

Anti-Cyber Boso Bill (House Bill No. 4315) is dangerously close to being approved as a law by the Philippine Congress. This will make it a crime to "video tape, disc record," [an 'indecent' act] or "replay" or "share, relay or exhibit the contents thereof in any form" or to simply possess any of these -- with up to six years imprisonment and Php 500,00.00 in fines. Oh, and anybody can sue the alleged culprit when this bill becomes law. Anybody can sue me if i use my cellphone to make a video of my dick. [On second thought, better make one and more than that before i lose my right to do so.] Ow gawd -- so people are allowed to make any home movie -- just don't make a home movie of you making love, or any act perceived as indecent by -- ok, who defines what's decent and what is not? The real test of decency is not clothes (or lack thereof) but motives. The office of BUHAY (LIFE)  Party List Representative Irwin Tieng, author of the bill, is...

"Each of us bears his own Hell." -- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil) via da Fortune command on the Linux command line hehe -- and when i typed 'fortune' again, i got this: Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie. Very profound.

"You're not an asset to the company." — often heard from asses to the company. Why settle for shampoo? Demand real poo!

Fortunate is one who has found work he loves, and is well paid for it. But in this less than perfect world, love is often paid with ingratitude....

On the high wall, back of my current apartment (Cebu City), grows a little Bo fig -- Ficus religiosa -- the sacred fig -- said to be the tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment. [caption id="attachment_215" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The little Bo fig at the back of my apartment"] [/caption] I don't know if anyone else has reported the connection, but i think the Bo balete is the tree that best represents Cebu. I noticed it was everywhere when i first came to Cebu city-- mostly on walls and unkempt areas -- warehouses, old residences, thriving on the city's limey soil. In Visayan, Cebu is Sugbo. While others may argue the term came from something that has to do with "current" -- as in "sinulog" , i find it more convenient to "see bo" in sug-bo. Others, no doubt have noticed this connection -- and have, in their own way, found ways to express it. I once saw a bo tree being grown as a d...

When I started earning a living I stopped having a life. . . Ouch. And so the Chinese, keen on priorities, say: Have a family first. Then build a career.

Quotation read by an FM radio jock: "A friend is one who is there for you—when he'd rather be anywhere else." So is a hostage.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." -- Charles Mackay, 1852 Extraodinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (Thanks to www.holoscience.com ;) )

"The key word for us is simplicity," Mr. Kelly said. "If you eliminate service charges and hidden fees, you eliminate most of the problems and complaints. Then the only reason for people to call is to do business. And those are calls you're eager to take." Read more at NY Times .

This is an edited portion of a 2007 email reply to one of my PCLinuxOS 2007 graphic design buddies -- gryphen (we only know each other through user names; he's a very talented GIMP artist) -- he was going to design a logo that would represent Linux: I think I have seen a similar comment over at the PCLinuxOS forums saying in effect that the penguin logo is not inspiring enough to make people migrate from Windows/Mac. I admit it got me thinking for a while, then I decided I like Tux the way he is. :) First impressions on First Impression: The black oval beside the logotype looks like a seed of a tropical fruit to me -- I live in the tropics. :) Does it represent a cosmic egg? -- a symbol for the myriad things possible with open source? The universe in a nutshell? Tux viewed from the top? I think the orange parts need a bit more outline so they will stand out when converted to black and white. Andreas Dilger mentioned a some tips that may help. At any rate, you'll find designing...