skinnyblogcladdink

strange how i’d just mentioned Katrina again on this blog… and then i find this.

if the world is trying to tell me something, maybe, someday, i’ll figure out what that is.

probably not.

every now and then on this blog, i make an attempt to be socially relevant, such as the time i posted about La Joie par las Livres (which, i overheard during the booktalk last Feb 13, had already been saved by the time i’d posted about it). and then there was that one about Hurricane Katrina from September last year. and, of course, there was this bit, which could be more important than any of us will ever know, something i fear we may realize only when it is too late.

so now i’m linking to this wikipedia entry on what recently happened in Leyte. the entry contains a lot of information, and at the bottom of the page you’ll find all the links you should ever need to learn about what happened. unlike Katrina, however, i’ve found no on-line ways of making a contribution, so you may want to find your own way for that.

it’s late i know, my own personal crises taking precedence over what had been, essentially, happening in another world entirely, but i just thought i’d let you know that i’m not totally oblivious to the fact that there is a world Out There, and Things Are Happening In It.

google really is your friend. idiot that i am, i’d completely forgotten about the software incompatibility and solution between windows XP SP2 and the Canon MPC190, which i’d already encountered when i first downloaded SP2 onto Audrey2-0, thus causing me to create fumes of unnecessary malevolence in the past few days. it took my brother to point me in the right direction, and google to get me there.

so now, Audrey3-0 and my MPC190 are finally on proper speaking terms. which, barring any further Acts and Interventions by the Invisible Forces That Are Out To Get Me, means i am free to spend more time on this blog properly talking about things like how i Still Owe Mabel a Bamboo Concert Due To The Crappy Political Situation of the Country, and now have a New Job as Full Time Writer with the Medical Observer Starting March the First.

which is as far as i’ll go for tonight. for now, to bed, and The Sleep i Probably Won’t Be Getting As Soon As i Would Like, which would be The Moment My Head Hits The Pillow.

…do i really look this goony? but i do like the picture, taken on Feb 13, 2006, during my first ever booktalk on kids’ books, if only because it looks like my left hand is on fire. the "Left Hand of Doom" anyone? that’s Nikki Dy-Liacco to my right, giving me the "what-a-funny-looking-kid" look, apparently oblivious to my pyrokinetic abilities.  she’s responsible for the award-winning and absolutely brilliant The Yellow Paperclip With Bright Purple Spots (it’s mentioned somewhere near the bottom of the text to this link), illustrated by the equally brilliant May Ann Licudine, who also did the artwork for the Wickermoss album.  if you have a kid, or even if you don’t but enjoy truly brilliant things in the way of kids’ books, or just like pretty words with pretty pictures, pick-up a copy of her book.

Mabel got Nikki’s autograph in her Little Red Notebook, which she bought from FullyBooked for the very purpose of getting autographs from celebrity and celebrity-like people. i am not, by the way, in her Little Red Notebook.

incidentally, the book i’m inadvertently about to set fire to with my hand is Norma Farber and Arnold Lobel’s As I Was Crossing Boston Common, a book i’d found secondhand and thoroughly enjoyed as an adult, and which i wish i’d found and am sure would have thoroughly enjoyed as a child.  the surreal, almost nightmareish quality of it would have suited my temperament perfectly.  it isn’t a scary book, nor is it in any way particularly dark, but the story the book tells is loopy enough to make it seem like a bad dream.  i am, however, glad that, having found it as an adult, there’s a better chance i won’t forget about it or lose it the way we do things from our childhood.

now, i know i haven’t actually said anything about the booktalk that took place that day, but as Audrey is still going through multiple rebirth- and growing-pains and currently still driving me well past the edge of tech-madness, i’ll let the other Nikki who was present at the booktalk tell you about it instead.

the Invisible Forces continue to Align Against Me; the Forces dealt a near fatal blow a couple days ago, early on a friday morning, which is, as those in the know can tell you, the day of pure evil, second only to mondays. this time, they took a casualty that was as close to being me as they could get without actually putting a bullet in my brain. a moment of silence for Audrey2-0, and the loss of ALL my files, all those nascent dreams and promises and stories…

[silence]

[more expletives deleted]

digging into my father’s wallet (putting me further down in, among other things, moral debt), i went out to replace the drive, and so now here i am breaking in a new hard drive (Audrey3-0 is the same laptop Audrey2-0 was, a Toshiba Satellite from the Pro M10 series, only with an 80gig C-gate hard disk instead of the 30gig Toshiba piece of shit that lost all my files. i know, that’s really unfair of me, being that the hard disk lasted all of two and a half years, and it’s my fault, after all for not backing them up, but CDs are just so unwieldy, and though i kept meaning to, it was something i never got around to doing. why did i ever stop using pen and paper?). despite the extra disk space, Audrey3-0 is clunking along, so i think i’ll keep this short.

just to make sure all the other hardware bits weren’t conked-out as well, i took the first audio cd my hands happened upon and put it in the drive. appropriately enough, it turned out to be the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

well, i never said that the world and the All-Pervasive Invisible Forces were without humor.

i have no idea what the French bits say, but sounds like a good cause to me. and even if you don’t know any French, but have signed petitions of this sort on-line before, the links make it fairly easy to make your contribution.

i think.

i only hope i didn’t actually sign-up for the French Foreign Legion or something.

Some of you will know the great, international children’s libraries in Clamart and near St Michel in Paris, France  run by La Joie par les Livres and Genevive Patte.  This central library which was purpose-built in the shape of a snail in the 1970s at Clamart and inspired children’s libraries the world over,  has been occupied  for the past week to prevent its closure.   
See her  letter below .  She is currently occupying the library to prevent it closing after state funding was withdrawn without warning.  There have been articles in the press.  The full history of this library in French, and what has been going on,  is at the end of this email in blue.
As lovers of children’s books,  if you can read French, please think about signing the online petition.
Merci !
Bridget

Pour signer la pétition :
http://www.cubbik.com/petitionbibjpl/index.php?petition=2&signe=oui 

Nous occupons la bibliothèque jour et nuit. Nous avons déjà évité le
transfert des livres et des meubles qui devait commencer aujourd’hui même et
se faire en douce. (La responsable de la JPL ayant donné la consigne à toute
l’équipe de ne pas me prévenir de cette fermeture anticipée. Consigne
adoptée…) La presse nous soutient et le collectif clamartois : Pour que
vivent nos cités est très actif. Mais nous avons besoin de votre soutien.
Signez et faites suivre autour de vous.

Amitiés.
Geneviève Patte
Excellents articles dans Libé, L’huma et bien d’autres.

Pour signer la pétition :
http://www.cubbik.com/petitionbibjpl/index.php?petition=2&signe=oui 

Pour voir les signataires de la pétition :
http://www.cubbik.com/petitionbibjpl/index.php?petition=2&pour_voir=oui 

Objet: Fermeture bibliothèque Clamart
>> Pétition contre la fermeture de la bibliothèque des enfants

> FERMETURE DE LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DES ENFANTS
> DE LA JOIE PAR LES LIVRES 
>
> Fermer une bibliothèque pour enfants ou plutôt, fermer la bibliothèque pour
> enfants qui a rassemblé avec amour la plus belle collection de livres d’images
> du monde entier, des images qui parlent toutes seules même quand on ne parle
> pas un mot de français. 
>
> Fermer la bibliothèque créée en 1965 par la Joie par les Livres pour les
> enfants de la Cité de la Plaine à Clamart, des enfants de toutes les couleurs
> et de tous les pays qui aiment la bibliothèque comme leur seconde maison. 
>
> Fermer la bibliothèque qui, inventée ici, en France, à Clamart, grâce à un
> généreux mécène, a eu un tel rayonnement qu’elle a été copiée aux quatre coins
> du monde et qu’elle est visitée par tous ceux qui, au Japon, en Afrique ou en
> Amérique Latine savent que lire n’est pas qu’une activité culturelle mais une
> activité vitale qui ouvre le c¦ur et l’intelligence à la connaissance des
> autres, du monde et par ce beau détour, de soi même. 
>
> Fermer la bibliothèque pour enfants au moment où, plus que jamais, ils ont
> besoin de lieux de proximité et à leur dimension, pour découvrir les livres et
> rencontrer les auteurs, de lieux où ils existent, personnellement, et où l’on
> peut prendre le temps de donner vie à leurs lectures. 
>
> Fermer cette bibliothèque-là, qu’Annette Schlumberger, la donatrice, avait
> voulue ancrée à Clamart dans une banlieue alors pauvre en lieux culturels, et
> qui fut tellement novatrice qu’en 1972 l’état la prit sous sa tutelle. 
>
> Fermer la bibliothèque pour enfants qui est ronde comme un escargot de ciment,
> et si belle qu’elle est classé à l’inventaire des monuments historiques.
>
> Fermer la bibliothèque pour enfants dont l’aventure exemplaire est ce mois-ci
> célébrèe dans deux livres. 
>
> Il ne s’agit ni d’un cauchemar, ni d’une plaisanterie de mauvais goût, ni
> d’une fausse rumeur : le maire de Clamart a reçu en décembre un courrier du
> ministère de la Culture lui signifiant son désengagement. Le 4 février 2006,
> fermeture définitive de la bibliothèque des enfants. 
>
> Deux mois de préavis, aucune concertation avec le maire, atterré, ni avec les
> associations clamartoises, également sous le choc, aucune étude, aucune
> proposition, non, les banlieues brûlent, les belles âmes du ministère se
> désolent, les commissions commissionnent, et le ministère signe l’arrêt de
> mort de la Bibliothèque de la Joie par les Livres.   
>
> N’y aurait-il pas quelque chose de pourri au royaume de France ? 
>
>
> Ce que nous voulons. 
>
> € Le maintien, coûte que coûte, de l’ouverture de la bibliothèque aux enfants
> et aux familles. (Eventuellement ouverture minimum pendant les travaux
> d’étanchéité actuellement nécessaires)
>
> € Le maintien d’une subvention la Direction du Livre et de la Lecture, y
> compris les postes mis à disposition, en attendant un nouveau statut pour la
> bibliothèque des enfants.

*     *     *

on Monday, i’ll be attending this booktalk on children’s books, my first of the kind as an actual, honest to goodness out-of-work writer. i don’t think i was able to post anything about this earlier, so for anyone who may have wanted to go if they’d known about it sooner, my apologies.

however, in order to appease the probably not-at-all-anywhere-near heaving, but nonetheless possibly miffed, masses of you out there who may be tut-tutting at the moment for my oversight, the Philippine Chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators are currently planning a gathering of writers to meet Mela Bolinao, an artist’s representative from New York City, for March 7, 2006, 6:30 - 9pm. i believe she’s looking for fresh meat to represent. be warned, though: it’s a pot luck thing, i believe, and there is a fee.

since i’m not allowed to make alterations on the e-mail text i received, you should probably go ahead and contact Beaulah Taguiwalo, the Regional Advisor for SCBWIphilasia, for details. there are limited slots, and they’ll be closing registration as soon as the slots are filled.

just so you know, i don’t know these people, i have never met them before, but i am sure they are no worse and no better than any of us, despite asking you to feed yourselves, share your food, and pay a fee, all at once. they are, after all, offering the chance to be a represented artist in a world where art is almost as much a business as it is, well, art.

i just remembered something.

i was put-off a couple days ago when i read that "dioxin-from-microwaving-and/or-freezing-plastic" thing in the paper again.

do your own research on the matter, and trust no one. don’t believe everything you read.

and if you’re a writer like the one who wrote that article a couple days ago in the paper (which i don’t have a copy of here and can’t seem to find on the net, but will post details to here if i can find it again on or off the net), please don’t make it sound like your word is bible.

After spending the weekend and a couple days out of the City and back home, i’d thought this week would be my most unproductive yet, writing-wise. time, circumstance, and myself, proved me wrong.

First, about my time back home. i spent much of the time entertaining a "long-lost friend", Tony, my brother’s godbrother (and, i suppose, mine as well), last seen on this blog in the karting entry, last seen by me personally prior to that something like 15 years ago. i took him out to coffee and to meet some of my friends, including Mabel. on his last night, we went to see "Walk the Line". the performances i found first rate, the characters thoroughly believable, though i can’t really say how Johnny Cash-ish Joaquin Phoenix was, though physically, at least, he was able to pull off a remarkable resemblance. and if Joaquin and Reese Witherspoon did their own singing, i’m thoroughly impressed. the movie itself… well, i have my reservations. for one thing, it felt more like a general template for the life of a rock/country star, rather than the particular life of the original Man In Black. and even as a "rockstar template", it wasn’t all that great. somehow, despite all the interesting crap Johnny Cash did and managed to get into in his life, the movie felt flat. it didn’t quite grab me, the narrative kind of just dragging you along as the characters went through one thing after another. and the end didn’t quite satisfy. the dad-thing, for instance, sort of just fell into place at the end, without really feeling like the sort of thing that would naturally happen in real life. sort of like the reunion scene at the end of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which i felt undermined the philosophical depths presented by the rest of the movie, and just didn’t work for me. fyi, while i like a lot of his movies well enough, i really hate his constant insistence on turning everything into a fairy tale.

If you find yourself in the US, look Tony up. aside from being an all around nice guy, he’s living the artist’s life as a performer in musical theater (his last job was with the US touring production of Miss Saigon), and i draw inspiration from what he’s doing with his life. what he did right off the bat took me nine years to get myself to do. i suppose he must get much of the same kind of crap i get doing what i’m trying to do now, but he’s working at it, and pushing through, balls to the wall, all that. as that crazy croc hunter on Animal Planet would say, good on you, mate.

the night after Tony flew back out, Mabel and i saw Memoirs of a Geisha with my folks. it wasn’t a movie we would have gone to see in a theater ourselves, but after seeing the movie, i’d have to say i’m glad my folks got the free tics. i wasn’t too sold on the love angle, though it did its job of providing Zhang Ziyi’s character with motivation, and the movie starts out pretty slow (i had low expectations to begin with and was about ready to set up a good internal grumbling during the first few scenes), but it picks up nicely after a while, and you hardly notice the time when it does. and when it ends, you have the undeniable satisfaction of having seen a damn good flick. not that i expect i’d go out of my way to see it again.

as for the writing-side of what i’ve been doing, still the same things in the pipe. i did, however, finish a draft for something at 5am this morning, pulling an all-nighter and something like 4000 words out of my hat, which is more than i’ve ever done in one sitting (despite what i say later in this entry). but that’s all i have to say on that for now. check back in about a week or so, and i may say some more on it.

right now, i just finished writing and e-mailing a preliminary exam sent to me by e-mail for my application for a job with a news provider for seafarers. basically, the job entails condensing available news articles into brief summaries, and the test was just that. just the sort of thing i need to shape my writing up where it’s weakest (or, to be more precise, at one of the many where-it’s-weakests). as anyone who’s read the crap on this blog (or any of the other crap i write) can probably attest to, brevity is rarely ever the soul of my wit.

i enjoy taking these preliminary writing tests (i’ve taken a couple of them over the past few months), and though i haven’t exactly gotten gleaming reviews (and/or a job) each time, i find them great fun, and would recommend them to anyone who enjoys just sitting down to write things. if i could make money just taking those exams, i wouldn’t think it too shabby a thing to get into. i’m psyching myself for another one i’m scheduled to take on Monday for a medical periodical. fingers crossed. i’m writing, but i’ve yet to show i can make a living out of it, which can be depressing at times. fortunately, i’m not in that sort of place right now.

the sort of place i AM in right now, is the end of this entry.

went karting at the manila speedzone for a couple hours tonight, and our last run turned out to be the last run for the night. we went on two twelve minute runs, between which we had nachos, cheesesticks, fries and drinks, while my brother’s friend, Vic (who, after a quick search of the site, is the fourth top kart driver as of december 2005), taught me and our currently-in-between-jobs-theater-actor cousin, Anthony, both of us karting greenhorns, about the out-in-out and low-in-high-out rules. which, i would like to believe, helped immensely. by the end of the second run, i had learned four things:

1) spinning-out isn’t so bad, if you’re not so competitive and don’t mind losing some time.

2) hitting the walls only sucks because you’re not supposed to and they penalize you by remotely regulating your throttle when you do it too often, which cuts down significantly on your speed for a good portion of the run.

3) while a substantial amount of the joy i personally get from karting, as you would expect, comes from the speed, an at least equally significant bulk of it appears to come from something much deeper, and harder to define. any kind of driving generally sends me into a kind of zen, and karting seems to do it better than most other kinds, and if the buddha were a kart driver, he’d be a skinnyblackcladdink.

4) i suck at karting.

but i did show progressive improvement. each of my last 5 or so laps shaved a second off the former lap’s time. which isn’t really dramatic, as these things go, but improvement nonetheless. a good deal of karting involves guts, and the crappier your technical prowess, the greater the guts-requirement to make good laptimes. and once you’ve hit the walls and spun-out a couple times, you realize there really isn’t much else to be afraid of on the track. that may explain the gradual acceleration, since my technique IS crap.

i was put-off by the red flag at the end of the run. not enough to ruin the ultimate joy of a grand night spent speeding along with your ass but a few inches off the ground, but enough to let me know that if i had the cash i’d be blowing a lot of it on karting. though i hear after a 24 hour run, it’s not so much on the fun.

thanks to my brother Chad, friends Vic and Cyn, for taking me and our cousin Tony out on a really grand karting time. and for springing for it, since i wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise.

not a lot going on at the moment. a couple things in the pipe, moving along at a strangely languid and yet apparently progressive pace… but nothing i really want to talk about right now.

haven’t been here in a while, haven’t thought there was much point having nothing much to say, but if it’s true that people actually DO read this crap, i thought i’d drop by and post this old interview with China Mieville, if only because it’s what i’m reading on the net right now.

off the net, it’s a dance between Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, M. John Harrison’s In Viriconium, Michael Moorcock’s Byzantium Endures (thanks, Mabel), and Alastair Reynolds’ Century Rain, in no particular order. i’m reading all that to take a break from John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar and Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, both truly excellent but tiring books to read.

come to think of it, there does seem to be a lot going on after all. only it’s all in my head.

fun.

oh, and just so we’re clear, i meant that without irony.