The travel journal will be posted as a separate section on Boys & Girls. I think I'd do better separating the "travel" from the "journal". Look for reviews of The Lion King and Baz Luhrmann's brilliant version of La Boheme--with pictures! Also a special insight into the strange and wonderful world of Jewish Americans, which I was privileged to visit.

It's funny. I only got to know Uncle Russ's family after he was gone. They're such funny, wonderful people, and we were delighted to meet each other. But it always spoiled the delight to remember why we were meeting. I guess that's the irony of life.

Anyway, keeping busy. Went to a dinner at my cousin's cousins' the other day, which was nice because I had fun when I wasn't expecting to have fun. And then yesterday spent the day hanging out with one of my godbrothers. It was such a relief to have some human contact.

I decided I spend way too much time indoors, so every other day I go out and get some exercise. Basketball on Friday, swimming on Sunday, and today...I guess a little time with the Discman and the sidewalk will be fun. I am obsessed with bottoms, so keeping my own in line is my first fitness priority.

Not that I know anything about fitness. -_-

Death kindly stopped at 12:05 p.m.

Friday, January 10, 2003

Well...I'm back. My pillows smell funny. X*

Why is it that now I finally have lots of things to write about, I can't find the words? I guess it has to do with objectivity. Before, there was nothing actually happening, so the blog was about feelings. I want this, I don't like this, this is what I thought about...

But now I don't know how to feel, what with all the stuff that's been happening. So let's try objective blogging for a while.

School application status: The application essay is finished. I need to call Tito Peque and ask if he can write me a reference letter. Am trying to figure out who else can write me a reference: AIU-London needs two.

Haven't gone to either Spanish or Japanese class yet. Putting it off till Mama gets home. Am not sure if it's quite so important, plus there's all this other stuff I'm doing.

Went to La Salle and put in a request for Mom's transcript and diploma. Need to get all the Christmas presents sent, too. I imagine I'll be spending a bit on courier this month.

My skin is no longer dragon scales, but it's still peeling. If New York was murder on my skin, what'll London be like?

Death kindly stopped at 08:32 p.m.

Wednesday, January 1, 2003

My Uncle Russ is dead.

He died of a heart attack on Christmas Day. The burial was last Sunday. Travel journal will come back...soon, and there will be a long entry.

I've applied to the American InterCon University. I want to go to London. It's about time I showed Tita Angie I was worth her money.

Death kindly stopped at 01:15 p.m.

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Another week without internet, another long blog. This one has dates, but just keep reading downward.

fri dec 13 10.33 pm phil

I find that even looking on previously written stories fills my belly with disgust and dread. This does not bode well for future attempts at writing. How could this have happened so suddenly?

Went and bought Tori Amos's Scarlet's Walk, partly on Mr Gaiman's recommendation on his blog, but also because I was dying for some nice mellow music in English and I love Tori Amos and her psycho-country-dreamland music. I miss Tino's O Brother soundtrack.

mon dec 16 8.04 pm phil

We leave for the States on Friday. And I have caught another goddamn virus.

I hate this. I can barely breathe. It feels like I have rubber wound around my chest. I feel like that kid in "Malcolm in the Middle"; I can't talk without gasping in the middle of it. And when they say laughter is the best medicine...IT'S NOT. I nearly passed out during "That 70's Show". Tomorrow night is "Whose Line Is It Anyway" and I REALLY hope this clears up before then.

. . .

Okay, this is bugging me. Is the beauty of a masterpiece negated by the way it came about?

There was a brilliant article about this book of anatomical paintings that was compiled and created by Nazis. The mastermind of the book, Eduard Pernkopf, the head of the University of Vienna, was one of Hitler's most devoted supporters, and personally had the school's Jewish students and faculty executed or packed off to concentration camps. The painters used guillotined Jewish prisoners as models. The paintings were so detailed that persecutors found their evidence in shaved heads and...er...lack of foreskin on certain specimens. Some of the artists even signed their names with swastikas.

But the book--or as it's called in the article, the Book--is a masterpiece. Both of art and anatomy. The colors are amazing, the linework is flawless. It's a really good book. So...would that justify bringing it back into print, if someone wanted to? I have no idea.

Look at the Sakura Wars anime. It's as imperialist as Hirohito was. It's set in the same time as WWII - the details of which, I may add, are not covered in any Japanese schoolbook. Not ANY. Okay, it's not as bad as a book of paintings of dissected Jews, but there's the same thing behind it, the sense of Our Glorious Country at a time when it wasn't glorious at all. But I still liked that anime, even if I found its thinly-veiled message distasteful. Space Battleship Yamamoto was a damn good anime too, even if it was built around a WWII destroyer.

So where do we draw the line? Should we be able to appreciate a work of genius despite the twisted idealogy behind it? Is it possible to separate the work from the creator, admiring the one while condemning the deeds of the other? Maybe I'm just biased because I'm an artist, and it feels like such a waste to see all that painstaking work banned worldwide. Then again, these were people with families, and they'd never given their consent to be laid open to anyone reading the book.

Argh! I should just stick to superficial bitching. Questions like this make my head ache. I shall leave this stuff to the poor gits still taking Philosophy (hey, Jane and Bart and other peeps), and in the meantime I need another flu pill...*keho*

tue dec 17 6.46 pm

Spent the whole day (9 am to 5.30 pm) watching CCS. Even with all the flaws in the anime, it's still one of my favorites.

Then did 15 minutes on a strange machine called a "vaporiser". No, it's not a Martian machine of doom. You put medicine in one end and breathe the ensuing vapors from a mask at the other end. Common asthma treatment. At least I don't feel like a fish out of water anymore--and it's kind of fun. I did all the classics: Darth Vader, Dying Patient Saying Goodbye, Seriously Rebellious Pilot ("McTaggert, what are you doing? You are way beyond regulation altitude!" "Can't hear you, sir, too busy saving the planet! Sir!")...it was like the original British "Whose Line...?" where they gave you a prop and you improvised. ^_^

. . .

This is SO COOL. I just got a call from LONDON. A man from The American Continental Institute of the Arts in London called MY HOUSE, just to let me know they'd gotten my question about applying. I hadn't even applied yet.

It gets better. Apparently, if you're an EU citizen (have a passport from any of the European Union countries), you don't even need a visa. They only require proof of high school graduation. That's all.

Woo-hoo! London Above, here I come!

All in all a good day, even with the asthma.

-------------------

And the present:

Updates: Check out YOWIE! strip 8. I'm afraid there won't be any updates for another month. My family and I are heading to the States and amid all the family time I don't know if there'll be any time to draw. I sure hope there'll be time to blog!

Death kindly stopped at 02:38 p.m.

Thursday, December 12, 2002

Eepie, forgot. Suddenly my little League pic morphed from a joke into an itch, and I'm revamping designs and drafting strips and thinking of putting up a little strip of its very own. Not on a regular basis like YOWIE! (if you can call that "regular"), more like as it comes into my head. I've already scripted two strips.

By the way, this week's YOWIE! strip is up. Can someone please teach me how to link directly to that page (this page, I mean) without sacrificing the layout from the main page? I confess myself clueless...

Also, have discovered a new webcomic! My Life In Blue has all my essential criteria for a favorite webcomic: It's funny, it's yaoi (more realistically gay actually, although not quite as realistic as, say, 6 Feet Under, thank goodness), and it's beautifully drawn. It's also one of the major factors that contributed to the mad idea of a League of Extraordinarily Pretty Greek Boys.

The style in particular really attracts me, being in a neo-cartoony-Greeky style. God knows I love all things Ancient Greek, even before I found out about their *hem* sexual preferences. I cut my teeth on Greek myth--literally; my mom bought me a children's version of several favorite stories, and I made her read it over and over again till I could read it myself. My favorite story was the story of "Heracles" (rhymes with "miracles". Hey, I was three!) and all those evil beasts he killed. Finding out about the liking guys thing just cemented it for me.

In short, this comic is perfect for yaoi lovers who don't want too much yaoi, just gay references, minor pining, and tons of bishounen. So go read it.

Death kindly stopped at 03:00 p.m.

Thursday, December 12, 2002

last song syndrome - fruits candy, ccs ost 4

Made a Christmas layout! I still haven't found a nice Muraki/Tsuzuki pic to make into a layout, but the search goes ever on. In the meantime, I hope you guys like this one. It's not exactly Christmasy, but ever since the family decided to go to NY for the holidays I can't stop thinking about snow. I don't think I'll feel properly "in the season" until we get there.

About Christmas...I haven't made a Christmas wish list because I want way too many things. And the more I want, the less I expect. But I think I'll forget them all when we go watch The Two Towers in an overpriced American cinema. Whee!! *waves Gandalf The White pennants* And you know, there's going to be snow. Snow can make up for anything.

As for the other Christmas list, I don't have enough money to buy good enough presents for everybody I want to buy presents for. So I'll try and get everybody something small but nice.

. . .

On a completely unrelated note,Vandread's second season turned out to be much, much more fun than the first. The shounen adrenaline is a nice balance to all the CCS I watched last weekend.

. . .

I haven't written ANYTHING for the past 3 months. I've been drawing, but even my drawings aren't all that inspired. But as far as writing goes, I am as dry as a...as a...as something that's so damn dry it can't think of a good simile even after reading three Terry Pratchett books in a row. Dammit. I thought Tripper 5 was done, but I read it over and it's bullshit. Two Wings 5 got broken up into chapters 5, 6, 7 and a side story, none of which are finished. Courtship 5 has dug its heels in and is refusing to move ANYWHERE. Either 5 is my least lucky number, or my Muse (whoever the hell he is) is off on indefinite leave. Even the critiques I'm working on for other people's fics are worthless. The only place I write regularly anymore is on this blog, and only because I can blither and whine without constraint.

I'm beginning to despair of ever writing anything good again. It's like finding runny yellow stuff in your veins where there was supposed to be blood. At least YOWIE!'s coming along okay.