Death viewed on a precipice.

I'm going to have a major headache, or flu, or I'm just gonna be bogged down by stupor now, I think, because of the extremest of temperatures I subjected myself into today coming from the highlands of about 15 or so degrees and going off the private bus with a searing Christmas heat of the friggin city. And I’m so sweating right now, vintage James Dean on my shirt is practically licking the sweat falling off my man-boobs.

There was some major joint party that the office has to attend to in those highlands and thank God the scenery made up for it, which was kind of what I expected in a way or I really wouldn't be going. One time I was standing on a precipice -- but there was some kind of wooden fence on it -- and I really feel so one with nature looking at the mountain range, I feel like jumping. I feel like those fancy pieces of colored silk cloths attached on the poles all over the place looking so dandy, fluttering in the cold wind that could chuck an anemometer.

But of course I’m not gonna jump or else I’m gonna ruin the merriment of 100 fucking people because some jerk decided to end his life. And it’s not like I’m gonna die or something when I jump off -- maybe a broken limb or or some ribs, maybe a cracked cranium, I guess -- which is gonna piss them off anyway. My being jaded with life is not so much as death hovering above me like imaginary vultures or so ominous its familiar like the Fishers of Six Feet Under operating a funeral service business in their own house.

Nor does it anything to do, really, with Six Feet Under, which I’m watching again coz it’s the Christmas break (season 2 now) and I dunno if this is going to be an annual thing or something and SFU is not really the type of viewing for the season, but what can I do, I really get a kick out of this show, especially if you learn not to really take it so seriously. Like scenes where children, 30-something children at least, slap the hell out of their loudmouth pathetic mothers and just walk out, snap, like that.

Plus, like me, you could really learn a thing or two, or replenish elementary general information you thought you once knew like Hemingway writes while standing, or that aubergines are edible or weird things you never thought existed like death from autoerotic asphyxiation, which is really kind of funny, but then it’s really lethal, if you know anything about it. Really, that’s all, I just find the show fucking funny and no, it didn’t even occur to me to try that autoerotic asphyxiation shit.

Bush-whacked

Hahahaha, a thousand times over. Feck you Mr. President. In a bid for a graceful exit, which will never happen anyway, Bush tries a security accord with Iraq, announcing it on a press conference with premier Nouri Al-Maliki. Instead, he gets a shock of his life courtesy of a pair of size 10 shoes from journalist Muntader-al-Zeidi. For all we know, al-Zeidi could have said, Merry Christmas, you dawg.

Editorial and opinion piece of Conrado de Quiros in today's PDI are all on it. Alas, we won't be seeing shoe attacks in press conferences at Malacañang, as Palace officials say Filipino journalists are more courteous.

Drunken tambukikoy

It’s hard to swallow those two words but what a way to start the end of the year by being just that --- drunken and tambukikoy.

I really hate this time of the year because practically every fucking person is out there parading in the malls, the streets, the bars, just about everywhere you can think of. And for someone like me who’s grown increasingly intolerant of crowds, developing a vertigo of sorts in the midst of a multitude of fucking people, yuletide is the perfect bane. Convenience is the last thing on earth and falling in lines is just about everything that you can do. Good thing though is that I have an excuse to stay at home and catch up on my reading, listen to more music, catch up on my DVD list and laze around. Okay, do some household chores. I’ll try to stay home more often and avoid reunions if I can because really it’s getting too tiring already. Plus the fact that I have a non-existent fucking bonus and non-existent savings which all the more extinguishes the possibility of me replacing my primitive un-classy phone or something that I could totally be happy about.

Miraculously though, last Friday, after the inter-division party (note: the office-wide is another thing, and yes, they come up with these sorts of parties in the office, part of the bureaucratic criteria I guess), I didn’t puked in the table when I could have already, after drinking 5 bottles of that beer which promises you that’s ITO ANG TAMA, probably the result of a drinking hiatus which spanned eons. I vomited at home, but that’s after bawling over my colleague’s propensity to buy chicken skin in the midst of drunkenness, a spilled hot choco which I called Milo and made the girl at the Jollibee (or was it McDo) drive-in counter scoff at me, urinating in the midst of a passageway of the drinking compound, and being too linguistically-abnormal and embarrassingly drunk to be accompanied home.

My colleague’s mother called me, when for the first time she saw me, tambukikoy, or tabachuy, or an adjective similarly-sounding and purporting as saying that I’ve actually grown to unbelievable proportions. Or maybe that’s too humble of me. Let’s just say I’ve completely forgotten my on-off ineffective and pretentious diet regimen so that instead of getting a little smaller, I continue to pig out. Who the hell cares? That fuckable chick who wants a six-pack-ab guy riding her? She can fondle herself like Eva Fonda who’s fuckably-yummy. If living a life means getting to eat what I want to then just fuck the rest.

Bordado as peace champion.

I didn’t even notice him when he descended the stairs of the Cotabato hotel. Maybe that was part of the lackluster foray he would have to embark in being a peace champion for Mindanao. An Inquirer writer questioned the cherubic adjective I used. Well, not really question as in the sense of validity because if it were I would automatically submit to him my rash choice of word. I said I wrote for the drama. Which is really true, I wanted to write at least for this one an article that is not newsy-turgid I wouldn’t even have the stomach to read it. But really, Robin Padilla did well and I didn’t expect him to be that down-to-earth and accommodating.

Visiting peace and development communities (PDCs) in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao for the past weeks has been grueling but satisfying. Some of these stories are really inspiring I wonder they don’t make it in the news. Wait, I shouldn’t really wonder, because this is the perfect antithesis to whatever is published about Mindanao. But then hey, we’re right on track and I think we’re getting there.

Robin Padilla as ambassador for Peace in Mindanao.

Robin Padilla story-tells to elementary pupils of Broce Elementary School of Peace in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Shariff Kabunsuan.

Jayclops' top 10 of 2007.

Update: Top 10 films with few notes via jayclopsiswatching.com.

1. Control dir. by Anton Corbijn
2. I'm Not There dir. Todd Haynes
3. Once dir. by John Carney
4. 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days dir. by Christian Mungiu
5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly dir. by Julian Schnabel
6. The Bourne Ultimatum dir. by Paul Greengrass
7. No Country for Old Men dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen
8. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford dir. by Andrew Dominik
9. There Will Be Blood dir. by Paul Thomas Anderson
10. Margot at the Wedding dir. by Noah Baumbach

In the running would be: In The Valley of Elah dir. by Paul Haggis, Juno dir. by Jason Reitman, We Own The Night dir. by James Gray, Knocked Up dir. by Judd Apatow, Away From Her dir. by Sarah Polley, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead dir. by Sidney Lumet, Into the Wild dir. by Sean Penn, Zodiac dir. by David Fincher and The Savages dir. by Tamara Jenkins.

I've got to hand the best performance, or better yet, performances, of the year to Philip Seymour Hoffman. Not content on winning for Capote, he proves he's a no-bullshit actor by appearing in 3 films: as a political adviser in Charlie Wilson's War, Ethan Hawke's embattled brother in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and Laura Linney's self-absorbed brother in The Savages.