[Technicolor Musings] Sam Milby Scares Me

While this isn't quite the perfect Halloween post, I suppose it sort of fits in an odd way. Then again, I've been mapping out this particular entry for weeks now and it's high time to finally getting around to discussing it.

And as the title of the entry mentions, Sam Milby scares me. Not in a horror movie kind of scares me, but in a manner that I find him disturbing in one way or another. And thus I think it's a really stupid idea that Folded & Hung paid a boatload of money (I assume) to get him as their primary local endorser for at least the quarter.



I think my feelings about him really came to a head when this particular F&H billboard came around. Every night on my commute to the office I'd be...assaulted by this horrible image. What exactly is he selling here? Does he even know how to pose? And what's up with the plastic underwear? This is a combined disaster due to whoever handled the art direction plus Sam Milby's ridiculous so-called "modeling" ability.

And yet we seem him endorse product after product, and I just don't get the appeal. Maybe I'm totally not his target market or something.

[Movies] Auntie Mame (1958)

Yes, while it is in fact Halloween weekend coming up, I don't exactly have a horror movie review for today. It just goes to show that I really haven't seen enough horror movies for me to easily pick one out from my bag of tricks for reviewing purposes. So instead I'm just going to run a normal review for the day and you can take or leave it. It's not the least bit scary, but it certainly is entertaining.

I recently went into a bit of a Rosalind Russell binge in terms of movies my partner and I spent time watching while I was home sick. She was one of those more prolific actresses with a movie and stage career spanning more than 30 years starting around 1934, which is definitely impressive. She was never the prettiest actress, but that's not what she became famous for, so I suppose it worked for her. She's probably the modern equivalent of the smart, witty yet not necessarily sexy comedy actress like Nia Vardalos or perhaps Toni Collette. Obviously they come to mind since I'm a huge Connie and Carla fan, hehe.

A friend of mine recommended this movie to me since he does tend to be a little campy at times. It's a shame that I waited so long before finally taking the time to watch this - he's no longer with us but I'd like to think that he got a kick out of me trying to enjoy this movie, which in itself is a different kind of comedy classic.

[Theater] A Little Night Music (Atlantis Productions)

When I go out to watch a movie or a play, there's a part of me that wants to have advance knowledge of what it's about and another that expects to be totally surprised. At the very least, it means that I don't like spoilers. But then I don't like going in totally blind. Or do I? It does get rather confusing even for me and it's quite the challenge trying to capture things in words.

When I opted to go see this play, I actually knew little about it beyond the fact that (1) the famous song Send In The Clowns was in it and (2) Stephen Sondheim was responsible for the music and the lyrics. Frankly that was enough to get me to go even though I had no idea what the story was about and I was totally getting the title wrong up until we actually went to see the play. So yeah, talk about limited intel prior to the mission.

Yikes, my analogies are getting all mixed up. It must be the cold meds in my system or something. My apologies.

Anyway, I'm not getting anywhere with this introduction (darn you medical side-effects!) so on to the actual review.

[Holidays] When Did Halloween Stop Being Scary?

It's the week before Halloween, and it's hard to come up with thematically appropriate blog entries in line with that. It's especially difficult given I'm not very good with scary things like horror movies, zombie-centric reality horror video games and sounds we hear in the middle of the night.


Halloween - by Guillermo Flores via Flickr.

But Halloween isn't scary at all these days. Halloween is actually mostly about sexy versions of different costumes that used to be scary. Instead of scary we now get cute. Instead of scary we get commercial, store-bought trinkets, plastic pumpkin baskets and perhaps a little make-up.

When we complain about the commercialization of holidays, the ones that usually come to mind are usually Christmas and Valentine's Day. Sure, it's bad that Hallmark has already altered space and time by creating so many days to celebrate with a thoughtful card, but we often forget that Halloween is totally not what it used to be.

Sure, I agree that kids shouldn't be too scared about things and they should be given a chance to celebrate the holiday. But apart from that, especially in the Philippines, we don't see much else beyond that. No adult-friendly scary events. No horror movie marathons at the movies. Nothing of that sort. Instead we're going to get a heck of a lot more fairy wings, cutesy devil horns and of course Plants Vs. Zombies style zombies, that clearly won't scare anyone.

Instead scary and gory is now politically inappropriate. Gory isn't safe. Monstrous is best left off network television. Instead we all want cheesy, happy, campy safe-for-TV-commercial brand costumes and cliches. It's sad really.

I'm not saying the holiday should only be about scaring folks. But it would nice if some parts of it were still scary for some of us beyond the thought of how much costumes are going to cost. Don't we deserve a little scaring every now and then?

Just a thought.

[Comics] The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Reborn

As I've said many times before, I'm not good with horror. This is something mainly focused around movies and such but it does extend to some degree to other media.

Books are deadlier from a horror perspective, I feel. With movies it just goes on and on and all you can do is maybe close your eyes to try and avoid looking at the screen. With a book you need to make a conscious decision to continue and thus any nightmares triggered thereafter are entirely your fault. Plus it doesn't help that our imaginations are capable of creating images and scenes that are far scarier than anything a big name Hollywood studio can come up with regardless of budget.

And yet despite this, I have read a few Stephen King novels in my time. Beyond that, there's one series of his that I particularly love, maybe because it's more science fiction / fantasy in feel as opposed to horror. Not that this is all happy and sanitized or anything like that - the series has more than its fair share of disturbing moments.

So when I found out there was a comic book series based on the original books, well, I had mixed feelings. But my loyalty to Roland's ka-tet is strong enough to make me take the plunge.

[Movies] The Expendables (2010)

Action movies are fun in their simplicity. Sure, the writers can come up with whatever convuluted plot lines that they want or they can have the special effects team pull off the most ridiculous sequences, but in the end they're very, very simple movies. They're just meant to appeal to men's baser, testosterone-fueled natures in as many ways as possible.

Thus action movies need macho action stars to carry the charge. They need to be guys that other dudes, bros and jocks can look up to and idolize (but no homo, right?)

Pardon the attempts at uber straight vernacular - I know it doesn't fit me, but I was trying to get into the mood of things. Anyhow, the point about these big, bulky action stars is that they tend to be successful only up until a certain point. In the same way that professional athletes reach a point when they're no longer physically able to do all the ridiculous stunts that the writers and the directors want them to, then it's time to move on.

So this movie blatantly felt like giving a mix of old and new action heroes a second lease on life in a movie so overwhelmingly macho, it defies reason.

[Movies] The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

When I was first coming to terms with my sexuality, I could never really get drag culture. I guess it's a natural part of understanding one's homosexuality - trying to find role models to emulate or mimic as a guide of some sort. And I never really saw myself as someone who'd want to dress up in women's clothing and put on make-up.

For the record, I still don't, but that's not the point here.

It's only when I started to go out and explore the local "gay scene" that I started to get an inkling of what this whole cross-dressing thing was all about. The put things overly simplistically by claiming men dressed as women probably just want to be women themselves would be horribly unfair and offensive to who they are. Sure, some feel that way, but not necessarily all.

In the same way that dressing up in a costume for Halloween can be oddly liberating and exciting, so is going drag. It's partly being someone other than you are but at the same time becoming the person you truly are. That last statement probably doesn't make that much sense, but then I suppose it's something better experienced rather than explained. Not that I've really gone fully drag either, although I did semi-attempt a geisha outfit once, hehe.

[Movies] Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)

My Friday posts are dedicated to "older" movies, which means anything released prior to 2009 (for now). That gives me a very wide range of possibilities in terms of things to write about and at times I find myself dumbfounded as to what to select from all the stuff I've watched. Sometimes I come up with themes. Sometimes it's a movie I only recently watched despite its older release date.

And sometimes I pick favorites.

So this was definitely something that I dug up from the archives - a great movie that I enjoyed a lot. It was one of the rare examples of a decent movie based around a video game franchise, although I know a large part of its success was that it wasn't live-action. Instead, it was made by the same animators who continue to work on the game franchise and thus look and feel was consistent with the overall line, but still worlds ahead of what the original game was.

I know, I know - there's a big possibility that a lot of my love for the movie is more based on the fact that I was such a fan of the original game. There is some merit to that - love for a game can influence love for a movie. But in my defense, I didn't fall in love with horrendous movies like Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter.

Was this movie that much better? Was I won over by the spiky hair and the giant sword? Let's figure that out together.

[TV] Lost: Season 6

I know, I know - this show ended a few months ago and the "hype" period is already over. But hey, I never really claimed to write these just to ride the wave of blogoshere popularity - I blog when I ready for it! And darn, it did take me a few months to really let my feelings about this final season fully form in my head and perhaps other bits of me. At the very least, I did post an initial reaction to the series finale.

When it comes to the final season of any show, it's hard to evaluate it on the merits of the season alone. This problem is even harder when you talk about epic shows who manage to get past the five-year mark (and then some). After all, the final season is supposed to be the culmination of all the seasons that had come before. This is the climax - the height of all storytelling and the realization of years of writing, re-writing and manipulating various characters, events and plot lines. All these have to come together to work somehow.

We all knew this was coming once the folks behind Lost announced that the should would definitely end. It was a bold move to give the show and end date when any studio executive holds fast to the silly belief that there's never too much of a good (and profitable) thing. But still they kept to their word and worked their way to this final ending in all its glory.

[Call Centers] Accent Reduction / Elimination / Neutralization / Installation / Watermelon

DSCF1830 by WAVA Limited via Flickr.

When the call centers first made landfall in the country, the initial training that new agents had to go through was pretty intense, at least by reputation. Regardless of your college degree or years and years of English education, you had to go through a 1-2 week course on "American Accent" with some culture and geography mixed in to boot. It certainly set the tone for the industry and with the boom of the BPO industry in the past 5-10 years (depending on when you start counting), the initial training has sort of been dragged along with it.

There are so many terms now for those first 1-2 weeks of your employment in a call center that it's hard to keep track. American Accent and Culture. Accent Training. Core Skills Training. Foundation Training. Pre-Process Training. Accent Reduction Training. Accent Enhancement Training. Accent Installation Training. The list goes on and on and on.

So I thought that it might be fun to discuss this little quirk of the call center industry in a bit more detail and it's progress over the years. I suppose it's a fitting first entry in what may become a series of entries about my experiences in the call center world over the course of the past seven years. If anything, my goal remains to be that of better informing you call center wannabes what the industry is all about and set the record straight in terms of some of the scarier rumors.

A call center job is still a job and that means you can in fact make a full career of it. A lot of folks forget this and thus they end up bombing out of the company and eventually spreading even more of the false rumors about the industry. Irony right there.

[Books] Nemesis (Magic The Gathering Masquerade Cycle - Book 2)

I have to admit that I fell in love with the Magic: the Gathering series pretty badly in my elementary days. Thankfully I had managed to get myself a decent job doing voice overs and this helped bankroll my initial foray into the collectible card universe.

Eventually I found myself taking the time to explore their slowly forming expanded universe. The best example of this was their limited venture into comic books set in the Magic: the Gathering universe, thus expanding on the limited stories we could put together with snippets of flavor texts and a lot of speculation. I really liked some of the stories that came out of this venture and despite my diminishing funds eventually killing my CCG period, I still stuck around long enough to keep up with the stories.

Now the books remain the best example of why the series worked for me over the years and it's nice to see the put a lot of efforts into expanding the back story beyond just the name of the plane, Dominaria. So now while I may not actually buy the cards anymore (but I do get a little tempted sometimes), I do have a sizable collection of the books. My thanks to our friend who was generous enough to let go of his collection.

[Movies] Red (2010)

When it comes to movies based on comic books, there are many schools of thought in terms of how this best should be done. I'm pretty sure I talked about how there are purists and those who want to see new things out of their favorite comic book heroes in the past. In this case, it's obvious this movie was more about creative freedom than just following the original story.

Adaptations are always like translations - merely approximations of the story as it was told in one medium more or less adapted to the other. It's never a perfect one-to-one relationship in any way - the end results will generally be equivalent but not necessarily perfect equal. Adapting anything well is a skill in itself - or maybe even more of an art. Despite the high risk of failure, Hollywood seems to repeatedly take this plunge over and over again since it appears to be the easier path in terms of creative expenditure.

I suppose it also depends on what kind of a goal you have in mind for such a venture. Are you trying to make a movie that might become an Oscar contender? Or are you just hoping to come up with something that makes lots of money at the box office? Okay, well that last goal was kind of silly, but you know what I mean.

[Technicolor Musings] Gay-Friendly Careers

Construction worker by San Diego Shooter / Nathan Rupert.

A few years ago I did a correspondence interview for Mega Magazine in 2006 for an article about call centers. Entitled, "Call of Duty" and the slant of the article was to examine whether or not call centers were having a positive effect on the youth. Being an industry professional myself, naturally I had to defend the call centers while the other exert statements were all about how annoying agents are when caught smoking. I think a decent job of explaining some of the benefits of the industry, but then again I may have been a tad emotional when I first responded.

In thinking about an article for today's Technicolor Musings post, my mind kept wandering back to my work. I guess it's the curse of having brought home work for the weekend and thus such thoughts are inevitable. But then it hit me - something to write about.

More than one friend has mentioned how it seems like call centers have (at least) an above average number of LGBT employees compared to other industries. And when you think about it, there may be some merit to this statement. Hell, I've more or less been able to beat down the feelings of shock and surprise when I encounter a pretty convincing transvestite in the men's bathroom because I've certainly seen it often enough.

So what do you think? Have call centers become a haven for LGBT employees?

[Blog Action Day] Water

Welcome to Blog Action Day 2010! I think this is only the second time that I'm participating in this particular blog event despite the usual demands of the work life beyond. Besides, it's for a great cause.


Victoria Hickman - 'Water shortages in Kibera' by Engineering at Cambridge via Flickr.

There's an old rhyme attributed to the naval profession that goes, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink" - a good way to capture the truth of things. Despite a planet that is mostly covered by water, many people are without regular access to potable drinking water. Nearly 38,000 children under the age of five die from unsafe drinking water and lack of hygiene every week. A number of wars have been fought over control of clean water, potentially including the conflict in Darfur.

Earlier this year, the United Nations declared that access to clean water and sanitation is now considered to be a basic human right. But making such a declaration is the easy part - the trickier part is doing something about it.

So what are we going to do about it? Sure, it seems like an overwhelming program that is bigger than all of us, but every little bit counts as long as we all pull together.

Think about the waste we generate on a daily basis. Are we recycling or do we have access to recycling facilities? We should do everything that we can to reduce the amount of waste we generate since a lot of this ends up in our rivers, lakes and oceans. Do you still use plastic shopping bags? Plastic waste is one of the most prevalent and resilient out there and this almost never seems to go away. There is a huge mass of floating plastic waste in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that stands as a testament to our wasteful ways.

Image via WikipediaThink about your preference for bottled water. Clean water is important yes, but bottled water actually requires more resources to produce compared the end result. In the US, it takes over 17 million barrels of oil to meet the demand for the 200 water bottles consumed per person per year. The water may be clean, but the plastic bottles remain and pollute our planet and linger on indefinitely.

Water is important to all processes. It takes a lot of water to produce the food we eat and even more to produce the highly synthesized fast foods that we seem to enjoy so much. Water goes into the production of energy and we consume even more of that just to charge our exotic gadgets and devices. And the list goes on and on.

To bring things closer to home, the recent Water: Crises and Choices - ADB and Partners Conference 2010 organized by the Asian Development Bank brought a lot more attention to the issue in the region. The studies discussed at the conference stress the importance of new technologies for water delivery and crop irrigation in order to increase efficiency, increase output and reduce waste.

ADB's Special Senior Advisor Arjun Thapan stated “Asia’s water world has gone past its tipping point. The challenge now is to urgently halt, if not reverse, the decline in freshwater availability." Many of the speakers agree that Asia is approaching a water crisis driven by increasing demands for food given the highly overwhelming population growth in the region. And this problem isn't going to go away on its own.

It is the responsibility of every individual to push for conservation of resources and greater responsibility in how they are used. We can't just expect our governments or major corporations to do the work for us. That's a narrow-minded and self-centered view of things that has contributed to why we're in this situation in the first place.

Everyone needs clean water to live. Think about how you can help protect this valuable resource, for the sake of our future and for those to follow after us in the years ahead.

[Movies] Resident Evil (2002)

Another video game translation, another day. You'd think that I would have gotten tired of these kind of movie a long time ago, but then we geeks are to video game movies like moths to a flame or something. It's a love-hurt relationship with a heck of a lot of hurt but then I suppose we like walking into glass sliding doors in this manner. Or something like that.

But hindsight has the benefit of being 20/20 (which totally beats my near-sighted eyes), especially with movie franchises. I recently got the chance to watch Resident Evil: Afterlife - the latest segment in this particular movie franchise, and that got me wanting to revisit the rest of the movies. And it's not because Afterlife was such an amazing movie. Instead it had me wondering how things had gotten to this point and when did the movie become so, well, I dunno. It's hard to describe how that movie ended up at that point.

Maybe some of the movies in the past that we thought were horrible at the time weren't quite as bad as we thought. We were just seeing them in the wrong light - or the wrong context. The joys of comparative perspective.

[TV] Sherlock: Series 1 (BBC) Review

What is it about the Victorian era of literature that entrances us so? The period generated a lot of good stories that have been the source of many modern epics and adventures time and time again. Heck, even the current steampunk genre of fandom is heavily based in this particular time period - and it works on so many levels. And this trend isn't limited to books referencing these older stories. The period has been the source material for many adaptations and creative variations in TV, movies, comic books and many others. The sky's the limit it seems and this is a pattern of creative behavior that I doubt will end anytime soon.

While I'm generally against most remakes and reimagination projects given the seeming lack of creativity, it's hard to apply the same standards to much older works of this nature. It's annoying when you remake something that came out within the last decade but when you're talking about stories that are about a century old or more, well, then I don't feel quite as wrong about it. As long as it is done well, it provides a new opportunity for younger audiences to get exposed to such classic tales in a (hopefully) meaningful manner. Greater exposure and awareness is key to keeping such stories alive.

This particular project was quite the delightful surprise, but then most shows coming from the UK tend to catch me by surprise, period. Still, I'm glad that this particular project was put into motion with such promising results.

[Metro] Crime In The City (A Ramble)

MRT Buendia by Allan Reyes via Flickr.

In my seven plus years of living on my own in Metro Manila, I've had a few run-ins with the less than lawful segments of the population. And I'm not just talking about your average jaywalker or cars that go down one-way streets, but actually becoming a victim of a crime. Thankfully they haven't been violent ones thus far, and I do hope that I never have to experience that first hand.

Yesterday my wallet was stolen during my MRT ride home - just snatched right out of my pocket amidst what felt like hundreds of other commuters. I understand that I should have taken better precautions given the circumstances - the very close proximity to one another during the train ride acts like a lure for any city predator after all. Despite numerous trips home on the same route without incident, this one trip had to be different and naturally I feel bad about it.

To quote a famous animated monkey after hitting a lion on the head with a stick, "It doens't matter. It's in the past" which was eventually followed by "Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or... learn from it."

So what am I supposed to learn about this, exactly?

[Books] Mercadian Masques (Magic The Gathering Masquerade Cycle - Book 1)

In 1997, Wizards of the Coast decided to change the way they produced their Magic: the Gathering card sets by introducing a tighter story told in the flavor text of the cards and even the cards themselves. Before this they had only relied on the barest of back story with the flavor text being almost random in nature at times and wildly different from one card to the next.

The Weatherlight Saga formally began with the expansion set by the same name. Thus we were formally introduced to the story of Gerrard Capashen, heir to The Legacy, along with the rest of the crew of the skyship Weatherlight. Their quest to gather the artifacts of The Legacy in preparation for an eventual invasion from the artifact forces of Phyrexia is a tale that spans many years (and thus many expansion sets) and is often referred to as the most important storyline in all of Magic the Gathering history.

While the cards weren't all that popular, the story eventually gained sufficient fame amongst fans of the series, including myself. Thanks for a friend who was willing to part with his collection, I was able to gather up most of the books in the series, thus allowing me to finally get a clearer picture of what happened behind the cards.

[Movies] Machete (2010)

The B-Movie genre is best known for being so bad that it somehow becomes good - in a cheesy, campy kind of way. And you know me, I'm a sucker for campy movies generally speaking given how it takes a certain kind of mind to come up with them along with those that end up enjoying them. Such movies are drive by bad dialog, ridiculous plots, and special effects that are laughable and yet so distinct.

When Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez first came out with their Grindhouse double feature in 2007, it was a quirky celebration of the exploitation movie genre in all its gory glory. The double feature of Planet Terror and Death Proof did well in capturing the look and feel of those older horror movies while at the same time updating it to somehow fit modern times. The movie also came with the bonus of trailers for fake movies done in the same style, and I doubt anyone thought that those trailers would ever result in anything in the future.

But in this case it did and the end result was perhaps even crazier than the original Grindhouse films. Sure, they were really more horror films in nature and they embraced that paradigm quite well. However this film was somehow trying to be socially relevant while at the same time still crazy and over-the-top in the gore department.

[Movies] Brokeback Mountain (2005)

The Geeky Guide started back in 2006, and that leaves a heck of a lot of movies that I've seen in the past but have not formally reviewed. It's always tricky to figure out which ones those are - I end up searching the Geeky Guide entries on my own in order to figure things out.

Thus for today's LGBT-themed review, I found myself checking out the AfterElton list of 50 Favorite Gay Films for inspiration, and realized that I had never posted a review for the top movie on the list. Sure, I had caught it at the theaters when it originally debuted but I never got around to formalizing my opinion about it.

It would probably be a good idea to watch it again sometime soon - I did enjoy this movie quite significantly at the time. I enjoyed it sufficiently enough such that I'm pretty confident about this review without the need to, well, review the movie in too much detail. Or something like that. Plus Jake's in it!

[Movies] The Game (1997)

We live in special times - or at least a time in movie history when special effects are really making a killing. And I'm not just talking about the action movies with all their explosions and the like. Special effects seem especially worked into a wide variety of movie genres and story types by inserting exotic locales as backgrounds, replicated a small group into an angry mob or even just making the actors look somehow younger. This can get pretty distracting sometimes and we end up with poor movies that don't have much to say since they spent all their money on effects.

And thus when you look back at older films, you can't help but be impressed with the quality of the worksmanship involved in their creation. Movies were mostly carried by the strength of their stories (and they still should, but some now argue this point) since there wasn't much else. Sure, the actig and the effects can be spectacular but it's nothing without a solid story to hold the whole thing together.

My partner was the one who got me to watch this movie - as is often the face given our on-going "cultural exchange program" of sorts between two geeks in love. He was a strong advocate for this movie and in the end I could understand why he felt as strongly as he does.

[TV] True Blood: Season 2

I've never really been particularly into vampires, probably because I do so badly with the horror genre, which is where you typically have to go in order find vampire stories. It's only in more recent years that there's been an effort to take them out of the purely horror genre into something more dramatic or even more humorous. You can trace the efforts back to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and eventually to The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris.

Sorry, I don't count Twilight as an evolutionary step forward for vampire-related stories just yet. Or ever.

The first season of this series was definitely entertaining given the nice mix of drama, dark comedy and all the other fun bits. The stories are filled with wonderfuly diverse characters with rich back stories, surprising plot twists and a very well thought of soundtrack, all put together with Alan Ball as Executive Producer. I guess I've been a sucker for his work ever since I first watched Six Feet Under and of course his screenplay masterpiece that was American Beauty.

[Games] Civilization (PC)

In the days when you installed computers using multiple diskettes, computers needed to be parked manually and have more than a megabyte of RAM and the ability to support more than 4 colors. So yeah, the old school days when booting from a hard disk was still more of a luxury than the standard.

At the time I was mostly into adventure games like Loom and the original Monkey Island and the notion of strategy games was still a bit beyond me - I was still in grade school at the time, after all. But then this massive game came along and we were totally blown out of our minds that it needed about 10 diskettes to carry all the game data, a rarely feat at the time.

Fast forward to the present day and Civilization V finally came out last week. It's been a long and bumpy road from the early days with MicroProse to the present time with Firaxis but it's nice to see Sid Meier working his magic. This post is probably less of a review and more of a tribute - after all, the game is obviously a great one, especially since it has managed to survive for as long as it did.

[Books] StarCraft: Uprising

This is the last of the StarCraft books that I have immediate access to (in other words, the ones on my shelf), and it's certainly been an interesting ride. For the most part, the StarCraft novels are pretty decent in their own right, largely dependent on the author. I can understand how tricky it is to write a story in a pre-existing franchise universe since it can be very different than what you're used to or you're inevitably going to bump into the dark, scary place that geeks call "canon" and thus they guard it with their lives.

But in other cases, the authors are able to have fun with the book and just go with the spirit of the franchise and that's when we get some pretty good entertainment.
I can only imagine how difficult it is to write for the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Talk about the overwhelming weight of canon.

I'm not sure if I'm willing to get the other books in this particular franchise - I love StarCraft as much as the next guy, but then the books seem a tad too inconsistent for my tastes.Then again, I've only read the first four books written in this particular game universe and perhaps the quality has improved over time. Maybe.

If anything, I can always go back to just enjoying the actual game.

[Philippines] The Stupidity of Fraternities

Fraternities AEGEE-Enschede by Thomas van Ardenne via Flickr.

With all the hullabaloo this week about the Reproductive Health Bill, the CBCP and all that fun stuff, the media's attention as moved away from a major news item. Just over a week ago on the last day of the bar exams, an explosion broke the peace at DLSU, injuring more than 40 people, mostly students.


But this was no terrorist attack - this was merely the latest in a long history of fraternity-related violence in the country. It's a sordid tale that includes deaths due to hazing, rumbles and more extreme cases like Sunday's explosion. It doesn't matter whether it was actually a grenade or some other form on improvised explosive device (IED). What matters in the end is that it was senseless in origins, pointless in principle and in the end achieves nothing of consequence.

So we do we continue to suffer fraternities in this country? Why do we allow the current system to continue when all we get are meaningless deaths over and over again?

[Technicolor Musings] The Contradiction Of Religion

Angel of Grief - William Wetmore Story and Emelyn Story by Francis Mariani / designwallah via Flickr.

In light of the recent back-and-forth (exaggerated) media war regarding the CBCP's stand on the Reproductive Health Bill, naturally expressions of everyone's stands on the matter has led to a polarizing of the public into different groups. And as we cut through all the usual socio-economic definitions of groups, denominations and factions, it's interesting to note how people choose to view the recent events, especially the somewhat scandalous protest of Carlos Celdran.

Amidst all the statements, blog posts, status updates and comments being posted on various websites left and right, I find it interesting to know how many gay people still identify with the Catholic Church in one way or another. I have no issues with what people choose to believe or how they define faith for themselves, but I do find it odd to still identify with a religion that (1) condemns us for how we choose to live our lives as gay men and women and (2) has obviously overstepped its bounds in terms of their role in local politics and need to learn to back down and focus on their congregation.

And thus I ask the question - how can gay people still identify as being part of the Roman Catholic Church when the Church does not recognize us in turn? Even if you try to claim some higher ground of wanting to adhere to the principles of the religious beliefs of Catholicism, that doesn't make you the kind of valued member they like to count as part of their flock.


Pride 2009 by Carine Rhoden / carinemily via Flickr.

Thus in a country that loves to claim to be the largest Catholic population in Asia, isn't it about time that we checked their math? How does one actually count the number of truly active Catholics in the country today?

[Philippines] Fed Up With Our Political Catholic Church

square the circle1 by spentpenny via Flickr.

Today marks the last day of Banned Books Week in the US. This unusual event was started in 1982 by the American Library Association to celebrate our freedom to read and the protections offered by the First Amendment. Thus history is littered with strange lists of some of the most banned books of all time, or even the Top 10 Banned Science Fiction Novels to boot. These represent the attempts of groups of individuals to impose their world view on the greater majority. Thus our continued efforts to fight for our right to free exchange of ideas and information as we see fit.

While not directly related to this US event in itself, recent developments in the local scene have been interesting given how they also reflect the efforts of a particular group to impose their views on the majority. What's worse is that we're talking about the views of a religious group, namely the Catholic Church, being imposed on the Government. We always talk about the constitutional protections that require the separation of Church and State and yet more and more it seems that this may not necessarily be the case.

More and more the Church is trying to throw its weight around in matter of public policy, but now they're faced with a President who has decided to take a harder stance against them. And I'd like to join the chorus of voices in support of the President's more enlightened view of things as opposed to the narrow-minded and irresponsible opinion the Church is trying to pass on as fact.

[Movies] Twilight (2008)

Well I never thought I'd do this, but here it is.

In line with Banned Books Week 2010, I decided that for today's movie review, I wanted to pick a movie based on a book that had appeared on the Banned Books List in previous years. Checking out the 2009 Top 10 Most Challenged Books list, I noticed this little gem as part of the entries. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it made the list - a big reason why books get on the list is mainly driven by the popularity of the title. And the books that get the most attention are either those that become required reading in schools or just become wildly popular with the younger set.

It's just ironic that this book series was written by a Mormon and yet it has gotten frequently challenged because of themes of religious viewpoint, being sexually explicit and ultimately being unsuited to age group. Irony right there.