Liv in a Life Well-Lived

“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life… Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, ‘casualties may rise to a million.’ With individual stories, the statistics become people–but even that is a lie, for people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his ...

How can you be hot and successful at the same time? It's not fair. Hmp. So, okay. I'm a bit green right now because, obviously, I want her life --- but of course, not in the i'll-steal-your-soul kind of way. Meg Cabot is probably one of the, if not the, most successful teen lit writer in the US. Almost a third of her novels are being written into scripts for TV and the big screen. And the thing that really gets me is that, her story lines are fairly simple and general. So simple that they were actually my basic fantasies back when I WAS a teenager myself. The thing is, she managed to hold on to all of the nuances and was hardworking enough to write it. I mean, hello, an ugly duckling who finds out she's really a princess? (See Princess Diaries) Moving into a new home and meeting a really hot ghost? (See The Mediator). Mine, mine too. What is amazing is that, she probably isn't even Gifted... you know, a real mediator or psychic or a medium... and I freaking am!!!! ...

I chanced upon an interesting e-book today. It’s a number of novels written by Laurell Hamilton, the Anita Blake series. Anita is an animator (read: necromancer) and a vampire slayer. And we’re not talking about Buffy here. She’s not blond and she’s not cutesy. She works on retainer as vampire slayer for the St. Louis police force because in their reality, the US has just legalized vampirism (Bush is just a few years ahead of his time then). So instead of being able to kill them on sight, they need to get warrants of arrest. As an animator, she gets paid to raise the dead so that they could perform convenient functions such as relay lost pieces of information or give last messages. It also comes in very handy if there’s a dispute over a will. All people have to do is pay (dearly, if I might add) an animator to perform the rites and they could ask the person involved to clarify things up in the flesh, which is sometimes rotting and smelly to boot. Nifty, eh? I’m already reading the thir...

I really have nothing to say today, but I'm killing time in Bicol and surfing has always been a good time murderer. Maybve I could share with you that I'm reading this absolutely funny book written by AJ Jacobs and it's called "The KNow-it-All". He's this guy who undertook reading the complete Encylcopaedia Britannica. Yes. The Encyclopedia. Britannica. Uh-huh. Upon opening the book, you'll think it's a mini-encyclopedia in itself... which it is, I suppose. Except that this time, the relevant facts are being shared to you in a hilarious mode. Facts had never been as interesting as this. Did you know that Descartes had a big passion for cross-eyed women? Did you know that the Encyclopedia Britannica (in it's 11th edition) described the natives of the Philippines as "Physical weaklings.. with large, clumsy feet..."? Did you know that your regular abalone has 5 rectums? That's a new take on "Up yours..." You could say, "Wh...

Danielle Steele novels are, like, so high school-ish. I think the last Steele story I read was Fine Things which wasn't as good as The Ring. But I'll give you this: at least the storylines and plots doesn't lump into one gargantuan mess inside my head. Unlike stories by Johanna Lindsey & Judith McNaught where they seem perfectly happy to follow the same formula over and over and over again. The only I reason I bought this book was because the premise just happened to be one of my long-running fantasies about meeting Prince William. In HRH, a princess goes to Africa to help out in an international aid organization and works with an enigmatic plain-blooded doctor. Violence happens in the camps and the princess learns about love and life as she goes through everything. Reverse the situation and that's pretty much what my life fantasy is all about. I don't know if it's any good yet. I just bought the book on a whim in Fully Booked Cubao (not proud of the price -...