Review: Philippine Genre Stories, Issue Three

The third issue of Philippine Genre Stories came out three months ago, in the middle of my busy season. While I was able to pick up a copy before mid-September was upon us, I've only been able to read bits and pieces of it between extended meetings, training sessions, and long periods of overtime. (Then again, every single month of the year would probably qualify as my "busy season" nowadays.)

This time, however, the news does not lie in what has changed since issue two -- rather, it lies in what hasn't changed. The cover layout is similar to that of the second issue, and the internal page format looks the same. That implies that the publication is starting to "get into its groove", so to speak -- it's adopting a look and feel that it will most likely have for a while.

As with the first two issues, I'm going to be reading through all the works inside and sending my comments to their respective authors. Issue three has an eclectic ensemble of writers, and ends up acting as a mixture of mystery, horror and personal introspection. For some reason, it seems to jettison the more traditional selections of high fantasy and hard sci-fi in favor of more modern-day settings. While I'm not saying that it's bad -- I welcome it, as a matter of fact -- it's a little surprising, and I wonder if this was a deliberate move on the part of the editor/s.

One thing that you'll notice with my reviews this time is a lack of additional comments at the end of each letter. I decided to leave these out and instead concentrate my reactions in each message itself; I mean, is there anything about each piece that I should keep from the authors? I'm still going to run the "personal correspondence" angle, though, despite the fact that Philippine Genre Stories has a forum for peoples' comments now.

For that matter, I'll also expect to finish this post over a number of days. It's not easy to read and review each of the seven stories in the magazine, much less write up the e-mails and copy them to this blog entry. So I'll take an alternative approach this time -- I'll re-read each of the stories in random order, then put up my comments once I've messaged their respective writers. You might want to catch up with this entry every now and then as a result; I'll be updating it until all my reviews are up.

And, as with both of my other reviews, my disclaimers still stand: I'm just a writer, I'm just a follower of the craft, and I'm just a part-time reader on the side. I'm not an award-winner, I'm not an authoritarian, and I'm not an official critic. But I do call them as I see them, I do try to see the good and the bad in each story, and I do believe that opinions shouldn't hide behind shyness, impudence or anonymity. If you agree or disagree with anything that I say, please feel free to discuss in my comment boxes; I'll try to be as civil as I can.

Oh, and... before you read, just remember: Here there be spoilers aplenty.


Twinspeak (by Elyss Punsalan)

Dear Ms. Punsalan:

I feel that your story uses a lot of elements that would normally be called "disparate": Fraternal twins who share a telepathic bond, a connection between dreams and real-world developments, and of course, the dragensik oombra. Moreover, it's told in an ambitious style that distinctly characterizes Ryan and Rina, who have little in common with each other despite their siblinghood.

For starters, I think that it's very original. I find myself wondering if the "night dragon with scholarly inclinations" is an actual mythological creature, or if its presence was spun from pure cloth. I also like the fact that the story takes place between two people with a supernatural bond -- and that an essential element involves one of them helping the other in the face of animosity. It gives the fantasy a very "human" look and feel.

I am, however, not certain if it works as a whole. I felt as though the result was a patchwork of ideas that ended up reading as a story. The night dragon, for example, didn't get a lot of background; Ryan's misfortunes could have been caused by any otherworldly creature, as far as I was concerned. The notion that one twin's "luck" could have somehow been transferred to the other is a little hard for me to believe. And I'm not very receptive towards the story's opening -- I feel that the notion of a dead cat produced some very morbid undertones that may have affected the rest of the tale.

All in all, however, it's a worthy effort from somebody who hadn't written for a while. I'm expecting a lot from your story in the Dragon anthology, and possibly some more details on a certain night dragon with scholarly inclinations...

Homer's Child (by Paolo Chikiamco)

Dear Mr. Chikiamco:

I felt that "Homer's Child" had a very interesting premise, and I felt that it was a very interesting story. On one end of the spectrum, I was a little tickled that somebody would actually try writing about animated stuffed toys. On the other end, I was surprised that the resulting story turned out so well.

To start with, I liked Basil. I felt that he was a character who I wouldn't mind reading about in further installments; I saw him as somebody who had the curiosity and the perception to investigate cases like these on a regular basis, yet who could somehow make short quips inside his head, primp himself in front of prospective girlfriends, and generally think outside the box. Ironically, I ended up liking him more than Muppet -- although it made me wish that the stuffed cheetah had a better part in the story.

Beyond characterization, though, I felt that it was a good mystery. The way I saw things, the story didn't present me with a lineup of possible suspects and slowly reveal who it was; instead, it gave me a good idea as to the actual culprit and forced me to wonder just how the deed was done. There should really be some style points involved when people realize that the fantastic premise had little or nothing to do with the physical crime at all.

I had a huge problem with the exposition, however. The story tends to ramble at odd points -- sometimes the action comes at a reasonable pace, and sometimes everything slows down just so that a little background material can be explained. Despite the fact that your piece concentrates on the concept of the Homeridae, I couldn't see it as important to the story at all. I think that you could literally cut away every single reference to them, go with the concept of an investigative reporter who solves cases with his stuffed toy companion (seriously speaking), and end up with a much stronger story. But I suppose that that's your call.

Of everything that I've read in Philippine Genre Stories so far, yours is the only story or which I would really want to see a sequel. That says something, I think.

Y (by Sharmaine Galve)

Dear Ms. Galve:

If there was anything that amused me about "Y", it was the implication that it belonged in the science-fiction genre. I don't dispute that assumption, mind you -- in fact, I fully support it. It still amuses me, though, as the story doesn't have much of the technological discussion that is normally found in a lot of sci-fi.

I love "Y" for its subtlety. If you don't mind my saying so, I feel that your story should be packaged in a textbook so that writers can somehow get educated about how to do this right. It somehow manages to throw the reader a lot of details without sacrificing the consistency of the narrative: We know that the protagonist's name is, we know what he does inside a locked room all day, and we know what his marital relationship is like. It brought all this to the point where I was able to clearly imagine how Alfred's world looked. That, I think, is quite an achievement for a story that consists of little more than his ravings.

In a way, it's actually kind of sad that Alfred would look upon life and human relativity from a purely clinical standpoint. He strikes me as the sort who believes that he can manufacture love and emotion from scratch. I get the feeling that all this is meant to touch a few nerves and make readers angry. I didn't feel anything beyond sadness, though, right up to the point where he ends up feeling an unnatural, ironic attraction towards a physical brain.

On the flip side of the coin, I feel that the story has a distinct weakness in Alfred's tendency to ramble. The style is subtle, yes, but the catch is that it seems to take forever for the story to get to the point. I felt that the whole thing was a setup to emphasize the twist at the end -- that is, the location of the second Grade A mind and Alfred's morbid fixation with it -- but its brevity was a bit of a letdown for me. I mean, I had to slog through ten pages' worth of exposition before I arrived at anything even remotely resembling a climax. It feels odd having to listed to a continual flow of statements, only to run into the break at the end.

In your write-up, you mentioned that this story was a bit of a hodgepodge of ideas. I say that you managed to blend these ideas well, but that I think you came to a bit of a bump at the end. I still think that it was a good read, though.

Tuko (by Miguel Escaño)

Dear Mr. Escaño:

A few months before the third issue of Philippine Genre Stories came out, it was "Tuko" that sold it for me. I liked the excerpt that was posted on the PGS blog, and I liked the look of the cover illustration. And now that I'm writing you this letter, I have to say that I liked the story as well.

I've only heard of the "tuko" superstition once or twice, and I feel that it deserved some fleshing out. What I got from your story was an excellent take on this, something that came neatly wrapped in creepiness and suspense without any cheesy shock value. For a horror story, it didn't scare me much... but for a story, it did keep me glued to the pages. I felt that it was compelling, and that the slow succession of events was very effective. It was, in a way, like watching a man move towards his own self-inflicted doom, knowing that he only had a mere skin-crawling sensation of the forces at work.

If there was a flaw in your work, I felt that it lay in the exposition. I just think that there could have been a more subtle way to explain some background elements in the story. When entire sections are needed just to explain why the tuko's call is so significant, or to fill in the background behind the main character's job, then I feel that it's more boring than efficient. I think it distracts from the action, and I think that it prevented me from getting the full impact of the story. I just feel that the exposition could have been done is a far more subtle manner.

Regardless of my quibbles, I felt that "Tuko" was well worth the attention I gave it. I'm happy to feel justified over a story that I wanted to read well before it was actually published.

The Devil is in the Details (by Charles Tan)

Dear Mr. Tan:

As much as it pains me to say so, I didn't think of "The Devil is in the Details" as comedic. It had a few good quips scattered around the story, yes, but I didn't come away thinking of it as a comedy. Instead, it gave me the impression of an essay that was disguised as a piece of literary writing.

That's not to say that it isn't good, though. I found it to be an interesting read -- for something as straightforward as your style was, I felt that it questioned a lot of stereotypical assumptions. I'm pretty sure that most people have asked themselves at one point or another as to what they would do if they ever met the devil face to face, and most of us have probably already come up with "solid" excuses to avoid eternal damnation. Your story gives the devil a hell of a rebuttal (so to speak), and turns the situation completely on its ear: Did we honestly think that the devil couldn't grant us true love? Did we honestly expect the devil not to offer a straight contract devoid of the fine print? Did we honestly expect that it would be offered to us in a quiet manner with some very obvious digs at time pressure?

In short, I felt that the story was quite sharp. It doesn't ask us for permission to sign the contract in blood -- it slits the nearest vein and pushes the quill into our hand.

I have my differences with the ending, if only because I could never actually figure out whether or not the man decided to accept the devil's offer. He went for true love, sure enough... but did he ask the devil for a chance to earn it? Was his ex-wife's appearance, his wedding ring's showing up, and his impending reconciliation all a part of the deal? I'm not sure exactly what happened in the end.

And finally, I did come away with the notion that this was an essay in literary format. I feel that it's meant to make us think, more than it means to tell us a story. From an essayist's point of view, I believe that the work is successful -- I mean, it made me think for a bit -- but from a storyteller's point of view I'm not so sure. The events felt a little vague for me, especially when it came to the ending.

Dreamtigers (by Robert Frazier)

Dear Mr. Frazier:

If I read my introductions right, "Dreamtigers" was first published over twenty years ago. For something that's over two decades old, I feel that it still retains a certain "freshness"... as though the subject matter and treatment haven't changed much over the intervening years.

I felt that the atmosphere was the best part of the story. The narration gave me enough details to imagine the setting and the characters, but I feel that it never gave away so much as to clue me in on exactly what was happening to Tou. I think that this resulted in a rather creepy sensation -- it implied that I was seeing a dead man walking here, and that a protagonist armed with the modern medical sciences could do little to help him. There is a constant image at work in the story -- that of a tiger on the hunt -- and this makes for some morbid moments.

I was also somewhat amused at the ending, where the protagonist takes refuge in the African lands of his memory. Does he know that there are no tigers in Africa? Does he wonder if he's truly secure in such a dream?

I did have one concern with the story, which involved the "field-journal" style of narration. I felt that the gap between entries was often too wide; it was difficult for me to read the protagonist's observations over one day, only to pick up on the next entry after a week had passed (and other events had presumably taken place in the interim). As a result I felt as though some background details had been left vague for me -- I find it difficult to identify the members of Tou's family, for example, or figure out the capacity in which Fenneman and the protagonist are involved with the refugees.

Ultimately, however, I felt that the story was beneficial in that it gave a very nice treatment for a strange, more-or-less supernatural subject. It also explored the fact that the nightmare syndrome is by no means limited to the Philippine context, and I feel that it added to the mythology surrounding the condition. In short, I felt that it was an effective story, and that the fifteen minutes I spent reading it made for a worthwhile experience. Thank you.

Muse (by John Philip Corpuz)

Dear Mr. Corpuz:

When I first saw the illustration for the writing contest in issue number two, I wondered what kind of twisted mind could possibly come up with a story for such a picture.

When the "almost accepted" entries went up on the PGS blog, I marveled at their creativity, and wondered just what the winning writer submitted in order to best those works.

Then I went through your entry, and I wondered how five hundred words could make for such a hell of a read.

I think that it was the subtlety that made it good. It didn't waste time trying to explain its setting; instead, it opted to throw the details into our faces and let us figure everything out. I ended up imagining a world where inquisitors existed, where artists could bind their own muse and leave dying words in return, and it all added up very well. The slight twist at the end was just gravy. I would have liked to see some more explanation of the habits and foibles of muses (and how they can kill under the right circumstances), but everything was already all right as it was. Simply put, it was a good read.

Now, of course, I wonder what you could possibly do with higher word limits. But that will have to wait.

The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Issue Three

As of 3:19pm SGT on November 25, 2007, I've completed all seven reviews for this issue and submitted them via e-mail to the corresponding authors.

I've mentioned before that this issue takes on a new angle -- every story in PGS3 concerns a pseudo-modern setting in some way. There are no magical universes here (save for Corpuz's work), no high technologies, no cat-girls frolicking in sugar-sweet animé-type surrounds. I'm wondering if this was a conscious decision on the part of the editor, or if this was mere coincidence.

I feel, however, that this is the strongest selection of stories in a PGS issue so far. Every entry here was of quality material in one way or another. I initially had doubts that Robert Frazier's work would either thin out the "Philippine" aspect of the publication or stick out like a sore thumb, but it doesn't. Instead, I find that it provides a remarkable counterpoint -- I'm going to be constantly comparing it against Miguel Escaño's "Tuko" for the foreseeable future.

The art is really starting to grow on me -- I look forward to seeing Elbert Or's interior work from every issue onwards, and I feel that the cover art for PGS3 is as "saleable" as it gets; this is the kind of art that makes me want to open the book and see what's inside.

I'll say that this is the best issue so far, if only because all the managing decisions seemed to have come together on this one: The art makes the book attractive to readers. The inclusion of "Dreamtigers" provides open ground for discussion. The focus on modern settings brings about the impression that one doesn't have to concentrate on the traditional sci-fi/fantasy universes in order to write for those genres.

The only catch, I think, is that it none of the entries haven't yet dislodged my clear favorite among all the stories published in PGS. But then, that's a tough act to follow.

It's been three months since this issue came out, and the next one is probably around the corner. So... while the bookstores still have copies to burn, you should pick one up and give it a good read. You owe it to yourself, I think.

The Top Shelf

I was over at the local Japanese animé-themed novelty store the other day when I noticed something interesting on one of the shelves. Well... about three hundred or so interesting things, to be exact.

By now, it should be automatically assumed that children and Pokémon products go together like magnets and iron filings. This was, in a way, what I realized when confronted with an entire set of display shelves full of tiny Pokémon figurines, each about one inch high. There were enough figurines lined up across four shelves to make your average kid convulse with glee.

I mention four shelves, however, because that number happens to be relevant to my narrative. You see, these shelves weren't stacked in such a way as to display all the figurines at equal height -- instead, they were stacked in a straight vertical formation, one shelf on top of another shelf and so forth.

As you might expect, the top shelf contained what I assumed were the most popular Pokémon creatures, uncovered and shining directly into the eyes of prospective buyers. Pikachu was obviously there, for example, but I also noticed quite a few samples of the local fan-favorites: Squirtle the turtle, Bulbasaur the plant-thingy, and Jigglypuff the weird-looking-round- thing-with-the-incredibly-massive-eyes. A forlorn sign with "Charmander" on it stood beside an empty row, so I guess the fire-elemental dinosaur was a huge seller. I actually went as far as to pick up a few figurines and shake my head at the shoddy paint jobs -- one Pikachu was actually missing an eye, for instance.

In short, it seemed that only the best sellers could possibly make it to the top shelf. For that matter, you could probably put a half-finished, colorblindly-painted representation of Pikachu up there, and it would still get snatched up in less than a minute.

As expected, the second shelf held all the hopefuls -- the creatures that were most likely fringe favorites, or which were most likely awaiting their shot at the big time. I recognized Meowth there, for one -- he's a mainstay in the cartoon, but he's in cahoots with the villains, which probably hurts his street cred. I noticed such characters as Scyther and Abra as well -- both not so popular as to sell in significant numbers, but with enough of a fanbase to bring in the money.

I had to bend over in order to glance at the selection that lined the third shelf. This one was only about two feet off the floor, and it was difficult to see the whole selection. Koffing and Ekans were there -- they're a smog pokémon and a snake pokémon between them -- and I only imagined that they happened to sell only because they were also cartoon mainstays; there was nothing cute about them at all. Also on this shelf: Torchic (a cute bird pokémon that had the misfortune of appearing when the series was already on the decline), and Geodude (er... a floating rock.)

I had to crouch just to see what was on the last shelf. This one didn't even have the figurines lined up in neat rows, much less dusted and cleaned. Instead, it looked as though somebody had thrown all the unsaleable creatures together into a single pile in order to fend for themselves.

You could make a case for any of the creatures you found here: There was Unown, for example, whose figurine could barely stand up on its own. There was Muk, who looked like a living blob of something purple and unmentionable (although I'm sure it wasn't his fault). And there was Porygon, who will forever be tied to the cartoon's seizure episode. It was a little sad seeing all of them stacked up in a messy little pile, wondering if anyone was even going to bother picking them up and dragging them to the cashier. Somehow I doubted it.

I can't help but think that there was a lesson in all that, mind you.

After observing this arrangement for a few minutes, I then proceeded to look for Psyduck. I've always felt an affinity for Psyduck, especially since his special powers all seem to involve going around having headaches at the other pocket monsters. As you can probably expect, he's not universally loved.

I didn't find a Psyduck figurine anywhere, not even on the dirty bottom shelf after a bit of digging. This didn't surprise me at all -- somehow I expected that the psychic yellow duck was a free agent of some sort, running through the cartoon universe with a perpetually bewildered expression on its face. Either that, or he was having a headache somewhere in one of the back rooms, wondering if there were any other shelves that could possibly be lower than his...

Between Blinks

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

The good news is that I'm beginning to settle in at work. The bad news is that it's affecting my sleeping habits significantly.

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

The fact is that I usually do my writing late at night. So, given a situation where I report to work by 8:30 each morning and time out somewhere around 7:00 each night, you can see where I would normally need my rest. Technically, I should be sleeping a little before midnight, more or less.

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

But I'm not doing that. Instead, I made the bad mistake of sleeping at two in the morning in order to get some writing done, then going sleepy for the whole day just to get a bit more writing or leisure in at night. It killed my productivity for a while, so I did what any normal guy would do -- I resolved to sleep early.

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

So now I doze off for a few hours, then wake up in the wee hours of the morning with an urge to do something -- have a midnight snack, read a few more pages of some paperback novel, try a bit more graphic design -- before dropping off to sleep again. At first I thought that the feeling would pass, but a week later, it's become quite irritating.

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

Something's got to give, I think. Either I change my writing schedule, or I stop staying too late at work, or I find a way to get all the sleep I want between those times. I don't think I can carry on with my current arrangement... life's hard enough without the fact that I'm the one interrupting my own sleep.

Went to sleep. Woke up. Went to sleep again.

Back to bed I go.

Political Questions

I try to avoid talk of current events on this blog. This is for quite a few reasons: First, there are a ton of other sites out there that already offer sterling commentary on such issues (professional or otherwise). Second, I don't see my discussion of current events as providing anything beyond mad rantings from a writer who is often ill-informed about them. And third, I feel that I risk eliciting controversy from my comments -- if I want to get people buzzing about what I said or did about a certain subject, then I'd rather that it involve the literary field instead of the political arena.

For that matter, I don't read blogs with a political bent either. I figure that personal opinions on the issue/s of the week are a dime a dozen, and unless I have some solid stake in the affair, I'm usually not interested in what these people have to say. If I want a political opinion, I can come up with one myself. If I want to get the facts straight, I can read a newspaper. I only dwell on independent editorials if there's a good reason for me to do so.

Regardless of that, I'm still a citizen of the state with access to newspapers, radio, TV and other forms of media. Beyond that, I'm still a denizen of the world at large; with access to Internet, e-mail and notes from the fine people who actually take time to put messages into my comments box. I still hold opinions, beliefs and modes of thinking for the issues of the day; I just don't put them up very often.

Lest you think that I would prefer to be a solitary recluse who remains ignorant of current events, however, I might as well do a round of statements here. I don't pretend to be a political expert, much less a yahoo who goes around foisting his version of governance on other people, but everything that follows is what's circling my head at the moment. I'm not willing to debate people on any of this, either -- if you want to post a scathing rebuttal to my beliefs, then feel free to post something on your own site.

1. So... this Estrada guy... do you think he's guilty?
My personal assessment on Joseph Estrada, former president of the Philippines, involves the phrases "incredibly naive", "egotistically unrealistic" and "barely tolerable". I've seen him at parties, and I've lived under his rule as mayor of my little municipality; this may or may not change depending on how much more I learn about him. For now, however, I figure that he was simply too stupid to have planned and executed an elaborate plot to gain money from illegal gambling receipts.

2. Was it a bomb that exploded in the Glorietta 2 mall last month, or was it some tragedy involving negligence and large amounts of methane gas?
I'm firmly in the "methane gas" camp. The investigative teams surprised me here -- they came up with an explanation (diagrams and live tests included) that sounded plausible to me. They'll still need to come up with some hard evidence, though.

3. Did the President of the Philippines really authorize the giving of bribe money to local congressmen over the ZTE Broadband issue?
I don't think so, and while I believe that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a highly incompetent president, I think that giving out sacks of money during House sessions would have been an extremely obvious mistake. She goes back on her words, she ignores the blindingly obvious, and she has an almost comic sense of timing... but even she would have seen this coming.

4. Did the American television networks really insult Filipinos?
The American television networks insult everybody. These were statements that were represented as the beliefs of a fictional character. Jon Stewart probably came closest to the level of "irresponsible remark", and even his presentation was clearly planned to get a rise out of people... which I feel is a far cry from Don Camus and Howard Stern's offhand talk.

5. Was the suicide of an 11-year-old girl indicative of the Philippines' state of poverty and desperation?
It's tragic, yes... but I really don't see the difference between this issue and that of the homeless who sleep on cardboard boxes in the sidewalks. Or that of the group of women who die at a stampede for a popular game show. Or that of the scavengers who get buried under a mountain of trash. Every day there is a new social anomaly that draws our attention. We can blame our feeble efforts against poverty all we want, but I don't see anybody coming up with a solution. Or, for that matter, if one even exists. Is this suicide really all that special just because the victim happens to be younger than we expected?

6. What is your take on the Burma junta's recent violent crackdown on demonstrators?
When your government has faced public complaints for decades with no sign of acceptance for your rule, then you should know that something's wrong. When your country's religious sect actually starts marching in protest of your actions, then you should know that something's really wrong. And when your solution to the problem involves killing your critics, maiming innocent bystanders, and generally thumbing your nose at the checks and balances... then you should know that you really don't care about doing a good job with the governance bit.

7. The death penalty... yes or no?
Once I was a "yes"... now I'm a "no". The spectre of a death penalty has hung over Philippine heads for about a decade now... and amazingly enough, we have shown no propensity towards committing less crimes.

8. Did La Salle deserve to win the UAAP title this year?
Why not? They beat a team that had taken fourteen straight victories this season, didn't they? Now if only our college basketball players wouldn't start so many fights on the court...

9. What did you think of Robert Redford's "Lions for Lambs" and its message on the War on Terror?
I felt that the movie was preachy and talkative, with little in the way of actual plot movement or action. While that's passable for an essay, it's not what I like to see in a movie. I actually advise people to avoid it like the plague. Go see "30 Days of Night" instead.

10. What is your take on the recent breakup between young sweethearts Christian Bautista and Rachel Ann Go?
You know, regardless of what I mentioned at the beginning of this article... there are some things that even I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

What's the Score?

For the last few weeks now, the concept of applying numbers to deeds has somehow bothered me.

I'm not a huge advocate of scoring things. I wasn't exactly the best student in college, but I'm still doing fanatical experiments in probability despite getting a B (that's a 3.0 out of 4) in the class. I may not necessarily be the best writer in the world, but getting rated a 21 out of 40 in a small literary event somehow seems off. I'm aware that I still have quite a few gaps in my English skills to fill out, but an 83% ranking in my last intelligence test feels... unreal.

Of course, I could just really be more average than I thought at mathematics, or not as good at writing as I'd like to be, or really mediocre in English. Maybe I just have too high an opinion of myself, and I just don't realize the reality. It's your call there.

And yet I'll still cringe when somebody decides to rate a movie as "3 out of 5", or adds up the figure-skating totals to make an 89.7, or distinguishes basketball players according to the number of minutes they played.

Hard numbers are good enough, I suppose; I like records. You can say that you consume a dozen eggs every morning and I'd be impressed at your stamina. (For that matter, I'd wonder if the chickens ever complain.) But the moment you attempt to tie your one dozen eggs to how strong or fit or healthy you are, then I'll start getting skeptical.

That's because ratings are relative. One man's "1" is another man's "10." And often, those numbers will change with time, experience or opportunity.

As a project manager in my previous job, I was once called upon to rate my employees every year. Now, lest you think that this task was easy, it was actually more ominous than it looked -- the idea was that, if the company would ever hit a bad patch and we found that we couldn't support multiple programmers, then the person with the lowest cumulative record would be singled out for possible termination.

Was it brutal? Yes -- there was the possibility that somebody would find themselves out on the streets because of a few numbers. Was it easy? No -- it gave me the impression that I was figuratively choosing among my children.

But was it justified? In both a technical and statistical sense... yes.

That's because the scores were there. I mean, the logic looks good on paper: If a person consistently gets bad results, then by conclusion, that person should be the most disposable of the group. It was like throwing somebody to the wolves in order to get the other passengers to safety, or drawing lots among shipwrecked sailors to see who would get eaten first.

But the system did not take into account a lot of things. It did not take into account, say, any programmer who was perpetually stuck with demanding clients or unrealistic deadlines. It did not consider extended absences due to valid leave (during which the employee in question could obviously contribute little to the company). It did not consider people who may have needed more training, or people who may have needed more experience, or people who may have just needed someone to give them a hand when they had to burn the midnight oil. You cannot allocate a score to such things.

But you could attribute a number to how many deadlines they hit, or how many client submissions they completed. And somehow this was taken as a measure of how well they could contribute to the company as a whole.

I'm glad that the company never hit a patch as rough as we had foreseen, and I'm glad that the program was discontinued after a couple of years. Otherwise I probably would have resigned from the guilt.

And yet that still does not allow me to sleep well on some nights, knowing that in some way I'm being looked at in my current job. Maybe they're counting the number of projects I finish. Maybe they're counting the number of complaining customers I field. Maybe they're counting the number of times I take a coffee break, or the number of times I pass by the bathroom to take a leak.

When the numbers are blindingly obvious, then we're talking about hard data that's presumably easier to justify. When the numbers are relative or subject to circumstances, however, then we're talking about something that doesn't necessarily sum up everything about a person or object. They're just numbers, and We. Are. Not. Numbers.

We take such ratings way too seriously. Somewhere along the line, we figured that we couldn't be bothered to actually observe people inside and out, and we figured that giving them relative scores would do just as well. Somewhere along the line, we decided that it was okay for ourselves to be branded as a five or a six or a two or an eight, never imagining how it would end up twisting our perceptions.

We're all people, darn it. We each have different takes on life, on love, on struggle and death and all things in between. We have opinions and habits and vices and prejudices. We have wants and needs and fears and fetishes. Surely we can't collapse all that into a single set of numbers. Heck, we have a hard enough time finding the right words to describe ourselves.

A number is a number is a number is a number. It is utter bull to say that it encapsulates who you are, who you were, and who you wish to be in one tight little package. Don't delude yourself into thinking otherwise.

Fiction: The Morning After

Delores collapsed into a chair, her hat falling from her head to land in an untidy heap. Whether she liked it or not, the Sabbat was over. Dawn was less than an hour away.

It had been an excellent event, all things considered. Miranda and Jacinda's impromptu seminar on charms and talismans had turned out far more interesting than anyone had anticipated. The Western Lunar Coven had reported significant progress for their research into modern curse analogies. And the servings of poached newt salad and stuffed toadstools had been delicious, despite the fact that Delores could never stand the aftertaste of amphibian. She was almost certain that she would never see another one like it in the next few decades.

She opened her eyes, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and stretched out one arm in a vague direction. "Broom," she said.

Something long and splintery tucked itself in between her fingers. It was getting old, she knew. She had to have it sanded and varnished one day.

She groaned, eventually mustering enough strength to stand up and walk in the direction of the closet. She turned her broom this way and that, trying to get a feel for the weight; after playing with it for a few minutes, she finally opened the closet door and leaned it against the back corner, picking up a pair of black shoes on her way out.

Delores crossed to the other side of the apartment and neatly deposited the shoes near the bathroom door. They needed a little polishing after the long weekend, but she figured that they could last a couple more days. She had laid out her clothes in a neat pile on top of the laundry hamper just before she had left for the gathering, and now she could see them waiting for her.

It was too late for a bath, she decided. Instead, she placed a single facetowel underneath the cold-water faucet and wiped the sleep away from her eyes. Then she unzipped the back of her black robes, shimmied out of them, and kicked the heavy mound of cloth away. She would dump it in the wash later.

She squeezed a bit of Amanita's special flouride-frogskin concoction onto a brush and began cleaning her teeth. Then, impatient with her morning rituals, she crossed over to the pile of clothes, yanked out her underwear, and pulled it on before rinsing with mouthwash.

Ten minutes later she was fastening her skirt. Delores felt that it was a bit of a squeeze this morning -- perhaps the diet wasn't working at all. That would teach her to pick up cheap books from the Sisters of the Glowing Embers' monthly rummage sales. Maybe she should have followed Jacinda's advice about the salmon entrails instead.

Now she reached under her bed, reached past the garlic and the charms and the discarded bangles, and pulled out her laptop. She fished around a little more, looking for the WiFi installer she had meant to use the previous week, and tucked it all inside a black knapsack with an inverted five-pointed star artfully drawn on the bottom in red marker.

Delores pulled the bag over both shoulders, looking over the room one more time to see if she had missed anything. Satisfied at first, she began putting on the shoes that she had originally deposited near the front door. Then she realized something, almost slapped her forehead in self-frustration, and reached into the bathroom for her discarded black robes.

It took her a few minutes to find her keys. The thing about black robes, Delores mused, was that you could never tell which side was inside and which was outside. After that embarrassing moment last year when she had told her landlord that the ensemble was all merely for a costume party, she wasn't about to lock herself out of her own apartment again.

She dropped her keys into a pocket of her knapsack and turned out the lights. Then she stepped out of the apartment, waited until the door had closed behind her, and finally walked towards the bank of elevators in the middle of her floor.

She was going to have to do something for next year, Delores mused. But in the meantime the night had already ended, and it was now time for her morning commute.

Disclaimer: November 2007

So let's say that you're a plagiarist of sorts.

Pipe down. I didn't say that you actually were a plagiarist. And even if you came here looking to be one, I'm willing to give you the benefit of a doubt at first. So stay a while and listen.

If you were a plagiarist, then that's the first thing you should notice. Plagiarism has a definite stigma attached to it. It's like lying, in the sense that one little lie will cause everybody around you to start taking your words with a grain of salt. But lest you think that you can recover from this one little lie that you tell with words or attributions, I must tell you that plagiarism is a far higher offense than what you might think.

What's plagiarism, really? Plagiarism involves the taking of somebody else's ideas, works or creations and releasing them under your own name for expected compensation. There are quite a few hee-haws about the offense, but I can break down the basics into three parts:

1. You take somebody else's stuff.
This can be for any number of reasons. Sometimes you need to write something for academic purposes. Sometimes you need to submit something to a contest or an event by a specific deadline. Sometimes you just want to put something together for a creative or technical endeavor. Whatever the case, you end up lifting the text or work that you need from an established source, and using that instead of making your own. If you feel guilty enough about it, or if you fear that you'll be found out, then you might alter or adjust the copy a little bit. It'll still come out the same in the end.

2. You release them for yourself.
By this, I mean that you effectively put your name on the acquired work. Big bold letters and small subtle ones are technically the same in this regard -- you're still passing off somebody else's stuff as your own. Pen names and anonymous attributions don't soften the blow any more than cotton balls will stop a silver bullet; you're still putting a name on something that you didn't make by yourself.

Item-sharing falls into this category as well, as do misquotes and out-of-context references. For these, you put another person's work to use in some forum where it was clearly not meant to be placed. Commercially-released items should not necessarily be opened up for public distribution without alignment from their authors; quotations and arguments should not be used or twisted in order to bludgeon others' opinions. You can give your proper acknowledgments here, yes, but you'd still be releasing them for yourself.

3. You get compensated for this.
Most plagiarists don't do it for the money. Some do, yes, but most don't; recognition is a far more common factor. People will "acquire" the research papers of others in order to get good grades or the admiration of scientific panels. Writers will "borrow" narratives from established books in order to produce illusions of skill or consistency. Unscrupulous operators will sneak out copyrights or registered names in order to gain influence within the corresponding circles. Plagiarists do it because they will certainly get something from doing almost nothing at all.

I mentioned earlier that plagiarism is like telling a lie. To put it in a better way, plagiarism is like telling a huge lie -- something that people will believe, based on your life and reputation. But the problem with lies is that they eventually get found out... and when that happens, you end up with a lot of people on your hands who will place absolutely no trust in you for the rest of your life. I mean, if you are so perfectly willing to steal somebody else's work and delude people into thinking that you placed significant effort into your own proceedings... how are they going to believe you afterwards?

I try not to fall into these traps. I learned a long time ago that I am perfectly capable of coming up with my own literary and analytical works (as compared to taking others'), and I've tried to reflect this belief in my blog.

As a result, I have personally written and executed everything on this blog. Sometimes I will post something that was originated by some other person; whenever that happens, I make sure to place proper acknowledgments as needed. I also have a standing rule around here -- if anyone so much as complains about my inclusion of their stuff here, then I take it down and return it to the owner. I try not to quote people out of their original context, and I don't post statements that are meant to mislead the general audience.

If you wish to use anything on this blog for your own purposes, you just have to ask. I am no more than a single comment or e-mail away. I reserve the right to refuse you for any reason, but you'll find -- more often than not -- that I'm the agreeable sort. I usually only ask for a link back to this site, or a fair percentage of profits in the event that you expect financial proceeds to come.

For some legal background on my rights to this work, please see the Creative Commons License at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar. We can also have a friendly discussion with my lawyer on these, but I prefer to leave that to the people who actually think that they can steal from me and get away with it. Not that that's happened before, of course. But you never know...

The Long Weekend

I spent Saturday walking around the local mall, looking for a touch of inspiration (and maybe some diversion or other). At that time I was still sifting through a number of possible plot generators in my head.

These were all "baby ideas", mind you. These weren't "adult" ideas, the kinds that arrive at your doorstep all made out and demanding that you paint the town red. No, these were "baby" ideas, the kinds that lie in a basket while you read the tear-sodden note from the unwilling young mother who probably doesn't exist.

With "baby" ideas, the basic plot is there. It looks cute, it looks workable, and it looks like it'll let you get a handle on things. The problem comes about the moment you bring it home, when it starts crying and throwing tantrums and generally messing up the place. That's when you realize that you probably didn't think things over as much as you would have wanted to. That's when you regret not having gone into this without a plan in mind.

(I'd like to take this moment to say that I have absolutely nothing about babies in particular. Bear with me on the metaphors; it's been a rough day.)

So at 3:00pm last Saturday, I decided to throw everything out of my head and start fresh. I paid for two hours' advance at a small internet café, staked out an empty spot in a quiet corner, opened this blog and started scribbling the first thing that came to mind.

About a hundred minutes later, I had a thousand words. What idiot writes a thousand words of meaningless fiction in one sitting, anyway? By that point my computer time was running out, the sky was darkening with the threat of rain, and I desperately felt like chewing on something edible. So I went home and just hoped that the story would keep my interest till at least later that night.

I was only able to get back to the story at around 10:00pm, and to my surprise, the narrative sounded fluid enough to work. So I kept at it, and by two in the morning, I had over two thousand words to my credit.

Two thousand words. You have no idea how nice that sounds. Two thousand words implies that the story is beyond a passing fancy. Two thousand words says, plainly and simply, that you decided to invest a good chunk of your life into the work, and that turning back now would result in a lot of wasted time and effort. Two thousand words is magic.

I stayed home practically the whole of Sunday. I got a nasty scare when I turned on the computer shortly after waking up, and found that I couldn't write anything. After lunch, however, I got back into my peculiar narrative rhythm, and I chalked up that morning's miscue to morbid fatigue. By two in the afternoon I hit three thousand words. By two-thirty I had a another five hundred.

Then the Pirates of the Caribbean movie came on TV, and I got distracted by Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley (not necessarily in that order). Creative movies are the bane of any writing binge; their images flood through your mind so fast that you can't tell which ideas are which anymore, and you can't shut off the stupid TV because the show is so darn compelling. I was still stuck at three thousand six hundred words by the time the sun went down, so I shut off the computer and gorged myself on Cheetos and Pepsi MAX or a while.

I emerged from my gluttonous episode sometime after dinner, at which point I told myself that I needed to finish the stupid story before I went to bed. I didn't want to panic like the last time; while panic might make for some good writing every now and then, you don't want to end up editing the results. I ended up sitting myself on a hard swivel-chair for the next five or six hours; pounding out words, phrases and sentences on a stubborn keyboard; wondering just where the story was going and how it was supposed to end.

I finished at two in the morning, a hard-bitten veteran of over six thousand words. Then, because I was also a closet masochist, I spent the next one-and-a-half hours reading the silly thing and making millions of adjustments to every tiny detail.

I did the same thing again when I woke up around noon that Monday. I can be the most obsessive-compulsive man when it comes to my stories, and once you factor six thousand words into the mix, then you get a writer who moves with all the speed of a turtle and all the grace of a house on fire.

I had bought a ream of bond paper specifically for this occasion. That gave me good reason to watch my agonizingly slow printer for two full hours while it scanned my words to paper and spat them out into a plastic tray. Between the printing, the paper, the clips, the envelopes, the application form, the formatting and the CD, I needed about three whole hours just to get everything ready. I whiled away the time by reading the piece again and cursing myself every time I encountered a mistake that I could no longer correct.

Then, because I could no longer wait to get rid of the cause of my suffering, I threw the envelope into the back seat of a car and drove it to Fully Booked headquarters. I handed it off to a polite young gentleman who obviously didn't belong in customer service, but who was nevertheless nice enough to help me double-check my requirements.

Finally I went home and collapsed on the bed.

Two thousand words will drive you. Three thousand words will spur you on. Six thousand words will leave you a wet dishrag on its way to the bottom of the sewer.

And people get impressed at the fact that I do this to relax.

Feh.

Plotting and Scheming

Work has forced me into an eleventh-hour session for the second Fully Booked contest, so I'm going to have to wrap things up by this weekend. As per Murphy's Law, my textbook's publisher has also seen fit to place my deadline around that time -- in fact, my editors have somehow timed my deadlines to coincide with every single independent fiction due date I've had for the past two months. I could almost swear that they're doing this deliberately.

Usually, when it comes to writing a new story, the first thing that I do is open up a plotline. If I have anything interesting that dangles in front of my mind at the time, then I write about that. Otherwise, I open up my archives and look through the uncompleted works that I have, checking to see if I can salvage a storyline or two from there.

There is a practice among some writers that involves maintaining a repository of ideas, and then just taking stuff from there in the event that it's needed. This, however, is different -- rather than holding a bunch of pristine ideas in my archives, I keep only failed works and experiments in there. As a result, everything that I look through happens to have been a story idea that was once approved and attempted.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I have the following plots in there at the moment. I'll even toss in some sample lines from the unfinished works:

- A description of a dystopian future where digital devices rule every aspect of human existence. (i.e. it would be difficult to find a date on a Saturday night.)

It was so quiet that he could hear his Biological Clock ticking. With any luck, he thought, it would stay frozen at half-past twenty-seven.

- A treatise on human dissection, written from the unfortunate subject's point of view.

And then something that felt like rushing water sped through his mind. It was cold and clear, and it pushed relentlessly at his rationality, to the point where it finally surfaced like a cork in the middle of the ocean.

- A hacker finds out exactly who -- or what -- really runs the Internet.

00040A5D: WARNING: Error 14-6EA65109 Improper Syntax, global.emp Line 39
00040A5E: WARNING: Error 60-47B83B11 Improper Syntax, global.emp Line 39
00040A60: WARNING: Error 61-00043C2A Improper Syntax, global.emp Line 39
00040A61: Critical Error 00-043279A1 Missing Component
00040A62: Critical Error 00-043279A3 Missing Component
00040A63: Auto Shutdown Unit AA-0432
00040A64: Error 02-77AB4110 Override failure

- Something about what happens when imaginary friends turn out to be real, and perhaps just hovering right at the edge of your vision...

“Honey,” Margaret said, her attention elsewhere, “honey, Daddy and I need to finish our Christmas shopping. We can’t buy you anything right now, but I promise that we’ll come back here after New Years’ and get you whatever you want, okay?”

- A robot who laughs.

As a result, when the first recorded incidence of MR-12138’s laughter occurred on the evening of the 3rd of May, the event did not elicit a particularly favorable response from the family.

- A drunken dragon (of the fantasy persuasion).

“I told you, I was drunk! I went around setting things on fire because I thought that the flames looked pretty in the moonlight!”

“Yes,” the knight said. “Yes, you did.”

“I picked up stray cattle and dropped them into buildings because I thought it would be funny in the morning!”

The knight seemed to stifle a short laugh. “Yes, you did.”

- A narrative concerning the first Philippine mecha (a giant human-piloted robot, that is).

Marasigan leans against what remains of a massive right leg, and lights a cigarette. It happens to be his fifth smoke in the last half-hour, despite the fact that he resolved to quit the habit earlier this week. When a giant robot falls from the sky, breaks up on impact, and crushes a substantial portion of the city under the weight of its bits and pieces, you’d probably be reaching for those Marlboros, too.

I have no intention of putting further effort into any of these stories, but I might salvage certain elements of their plots for use in other places. For all I know, I'll end up doing complete rewrites of these.

More often than not, however, I come up with entirely new plots. This is particularly the case whenever I'm writing for a publication that I know and respect, and I don't want to give what might essentially turn out to be a recycled work. Fully Booked just happens to have a few strikes against it -- first, I don't know anyone there; second, I don't know who their judges are and what they'd presumably want from me; and third, they weren't able to pick up on a serious case of plagiarism from last year. In short, it wouldn't weigh heavily on my mind if I gave them a few scraps.

This is not to say that I just pull together a half-hearted story and hand that in, of course. Whether the plots are old or new, I try to develop them as best as I can, given the time and the circumstances. Fully Booked will still get a quality submission from me, assuming that I can write something by this weekend.

Now if only I could ditch my publisher for a day or so. Hmmm.

Disrepair

Months later, his life had changed.

He knew that there had to be a turning point somewhere. It had probably occurred sometime in the blueprints of his memory. It was, after all, one of his last links to that point in the past where he once dreamt of work and steady income.

Now the work and the income were there, to be sure, but the sense of satisfaction hadn't quite caught up. The great machine had been built, yes, but somehow it wasn't working up to spec.

He found that it was difficult to do without the writing. The writing was an entire world to him, and he wasn't about to pack it up and store it in the hall closet. It was a strange solace from a faceless environment where people and places constantly asked for things. Days of work turned into weeks of support, which turned into months of wariness. The faminites proved insatiable, he mused.

In contrast, the writing never asked for anything. It was just... there.

He could give it up anytime he wanted. But what would that prove? Would he just dive into the sea of hands grasping at a piece of his soul? Would he sink further into an upholstered chair, listening to the drone of voices across frayed lines of communication? Would he bend, and break, and choke at the weight of foreign wills?

Each day the task became a little harder to bear.

There had been a turning point somewhere. At some time, some cog or sprocket in the grand machine of his plans had come loose.

After a while, he rolled up his sleeves and went looking for his toolbox. He needed a good-sized wrench, he thought. Perhaps something to the tune of five-eighths of an inch...

Nasssty Hobbitsses Steal My Pepssssi

It's been a hard week. I've got customer issues piling up on my desk, I've got overdue reports that have yet to be written, and I've got servers bouncing up and down somewhere halfway across the world.

As some means of compensation for this, I've traditionally kept a little something in the office pantry. At some point in time, it involved bowls of Cup Noodles. For a few days it had something to do with packets of junk food. And, most recently, it's been sugar-free softdrinks. Because we don't have Coke Zero around here yet, we have to make do with such things as Pepsi MAX.

Except that somebody has been stealing mine lately, and I have no idea who.

I stockpile my bottles in the office refrigerator, and although it does get cleaned out every weekend, it's a safe bet that nobody's about to throw out any brand-new bottles of Pepsi. Besides, I picked up my last batch just this Monday, and by Wednesday morning another bottle was missing.

Isn't there some unspoken moral code that exists in every office environment? Something like, don't touch other peoples' refrigerated stuff? I feel violated, somehow... if somebody's likely to just up and grab my softdrinks whenever I'm not looking (and I'm busy enough nowadays for that to be the case), then just how am I supposed to feel?

Part of me now wonders why I should even bother buying more bottles. It's a long walk to the nearest 7-11 here, and I don't want to spend too much time outside work. The more I dilly-dally, the louder my clients get.

The meaner side of me is debating the possibility of spiking my Pepsi somehow. But I'm not that evil, regardless of what some people might think.

In the meantime, I've got the bottles in my personal office cabinet right now. Hopefully I don't get stuck with a leaky bottle sometime, and hopefully no one will think to steal the ice cubes out from under my nose...

Cast of Characters

I might not have made it to the lineup for Dean Alfar's third Speculative Fiction Anthology, but apparently Dominique Cimafranca has. Seeing that this will be his first published short story in the local scene, you might want to congratulate him on his achievement. :)

Dominique joins what strikes me as a very distinguished list of authors for the book. It's got names that should now be established as mainstays in the field of local Speculative Fiction (like Ian Casocot and Andrew Drilon), wide-ranging awardwinners (like Yvette Tan and Alfred Yuson), and people who I could probably take on in a one-on-one cage match (like Joseph Nacino and Charles Tan). There are a number of notably missing names -- Vin Simbulan and Chiles Samaniego among others -- but I'm pretty sure that their works will be back in the spotlight soon.

Furthermore, one of Dean's subsequent comments tickled me quite a bit:

We specifically wanted the Yuson, and believe it belongs in the antho. We've loved it for some time. I think you'll like the stories of the authors you mentioned above - as well as a goodly number of the younger writers.

"The Yuson", he says. The last time I heard anything like that, it involved a priceless Amorsolo painting getting manhandled out of its display case. I don't doubt that we're referring to some works of art here, but I'd still laugh if I ever had to refer to a short story as "The Yuson", or "The Casocot", or "The Nacino". Or, heaven forbid, "The Sean".

What fools we writers be. :)

You Know You're an Old Gamer When...

- You remember a time when all board games involved dice in some way.

- Every board game you played was published by Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley. (Back then, entities like Renier Knizia and Cheapass Games were probably a mere twinkle in their progenitors' eyes.)

- You know what SuperTrump cards are.

- Despite the fact that you know what the terms "zugzwang" and "en passant" mean, you still can't win a game of chess to save your life.

- You can debate the merits of "Snakes and Ladders" over the more child-friendly "Chutes and Ladders".

- You balk at the thought of putting up houses on Boardwalk.

- You know how many points a Z is worth. You know how many points a K is worth. And you can somehow use them both for the same Double Word Score.

- You think that Colonel Mustard did it in the Study with the Candlestick. (And some guy in the background says, "No, dude... it was Professor Plum!")

- You've won second prize in a beauty contest. (And $10.00, to boot.)

- You don't need more than six guesses to figure out any four-color Mastermind combination.

- You suppressed your memories of that last game of Candyland.

- You still love the feeling of dropping thirty units on Kamchatka and steamrolling across Asia.

- You regret that you never learned how to play this one game that everybody else seems to know how to play. (For me, it's Backgammon.)

- You know who Rich Uncle Pennybags is. (And complained when they changed his name.)

- You've screamed "It's called Othello, not Reversi!" at people.

- You realize that your knowledge of the capital of Iceland, the meaning of the word "boustrophobia", and the only Rocky movie that starred Dolph Lundgren are all pieces of the same pie.

- You can tell what a drawing is trying to depict, without the artist having to say anything to you.

- The whole "expansion set" marketing scheme still puzzles you.

- You've played the old shoe.

- You can name the most horrid, most absolutely wretched game you've ever played... and suddenly have the urge to dig up your closet and try it again.


.

Lethargarian

I was not very productive at work today.

Sometimes you get days where you're just a whirlwind of efficiency. Those are the times when you scrawl a check mark next to each and every item on your to-do list, walk around impressing people with your clipboard and your it-ain't-over-yet attitude, and chew lunch over contracts and support calls. And then you lean back in your chair at the end of the day, holding that simple, gratified feeling that you have absolutely nothing to procrastinate about.

Today was not one of those days. It's been over twelve hours since I reported to work this Monday morning, and I feel as though I've done nothing salary-justifying, much less worthwhile. For all I know, I could have made my entire company just a little bit less profitable... but I try not to think about that.

I find that this scenario is not just limited to work. Sometimes I open up Microsoft Word intending to write something, and then end up just wasting a few hours' worth of electricity. Or sometimes I attend seminars and spend half the lecture trying to keep myself from dozing off.

Maybe it's the fact that I spent most of my weekend working. Maybe it's the fact that I was up till four in the morning last night doing freelance stuff. Maybe it's the fact that the stars and planets decided to align themselves in a way that guarantees my misfortune for the rest of the year. Lethargy isn't the easiest thing in the world to explain, and it looks terrible on your performance review besides.

I'm not about to give up my white-collar career anytime soon, of course. I've been hanging around the business world for the last seven years, and I find it woefully devoid of strange influences. As long as I can inject a little dose of myself into the stodgy office environment, I'll still be hunched over a laptop, listening to the score of the telephone.

...If I'm not being useless, that is. But some days you've got it, and some days, you don't. Today just happened to be one of the latter.

Mausoleum 618

(This is an excerpt from the work I submitted for consideration for Dean Alfar's third speculative fiction anthology. I won't be posting the whole thing here because I feel that the story is still workable, and because of that, I might be using or rewriting it again someday. Regardless, it probably wouldn't hurt to post the first page...)



Upon entering Mausoleum 618, Dr. Mahadevan saw that the caretakers had done their job well. The Victorian anteroom looked polished and comfortable; Shelves lined the walls around a single plush armchair and an antique end-table. Closets and cabinets stood among an idle collection of books and the resplendence of a red carpet. There were even a couple of smaller, less expensive chairs tucked away in the remote corners of the room – in case guests were present, Dr. Mahadevan surmised – but for now, the place was completely empty.

Empty, that was, except for a single weary doctor.

Dr. Mahadevan pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead of sweat. He hated these jobs, he had to admit. It wasn’t just the fact that he had to enter these places on a daily basis, or the fact that he constantly met scores of insufferable people during his regular rounds – there was also the fact that he felt something fundamentally wrong about the whole business.

Regardless, however, Dr. Mahadevan knew which side his bread was being buttered on. The pay, moreover, was nice – it paid his bills, kept his vices in check, and left his mortgages manageable. For the money he was getting, he would gladly have entered a thousand more Mausoleums.

His cryogenicist’s kit felt uncomfortable in his hands, and he decided to leave it sitting on the end-table. He yet clutched a clipboard in one hand, however, even as he crossed the thick red carpet.

There was a sliding door at the other end of the anteroom, and Dr. Mahadevan recognized the type. It was one of those thick, thermally-insulated doors, something that kept two completely different environments separate from each other. It was the type of door that most likely needed a retinal scan and a digital password to open, and Dr. Mahadevan gladly provided both.

Welcome, Dr. Mahadevan, the door said. It slid open.

Mist pooled around the doctor’s feet, and he shivered. No matter how many Mausoleums he had entered, or would ever be entering, he could never get used to the biting cold.

The room beyond the door stood in sharp contrast to the Victorian anteroom. Decades ago, Dr. Mahadevan guessed, the chamber would have looked pristine and antiseptic. Now the metal walls were overcome with rime and frost, and some of the granite floors had cracked from the temperature difference. The first of the fragile tiles had already shattered under Dr. Mahadevan’s first footsteps, and to the good doctor everything sounded like so much glass.

...

Disclaimer: October 2007

Gluttony
Everything on this web site is of my property. Everything on this web site was originally and completely conceptualized by me. Yes, me. It's mine, mine, all mine, d'you hear? It's all mine, except for those little things I post every now and then that were made by other people, in which case they will always come with an acknowledgement so that you'll be able to better glorify my own stuff. It's mine, darn it!

Pride
Yeah, that's right. I wrote everything here. That's almost five hundred posts spread out over three years of blogging, and I'm not going to let it go quietly. Everything here represents the best and the worst of my writing, the best and the worst of my moods, and plenty of everything in between. If you want something good to put on a paper, then you can march over there to the other side of the room and write it yourself.

Lust
Yeah, it's obvious that I write about anything. If your favorite topic hasn't come up so far, then that just means that I haven't thought of a good way to present it yet. I'm a writer, and what that means is that I don't just write -- I lie, cheat, steal, whine, wheedle and seduce, too. Most of my stuff might be about writing, but that only means that just about anything can come from these pages.

Greed
I claim rights to all the works written and posted here, and any secondary rights implied. This is my stuff, and you can't take it without asking permission. You're welcome to get down on your knees, prostrate yourself, or offer me huge sums of money to use anything on this blog, but I'd prefer that you just ask. It gives me this nice warm feeling inside -- the feeling that you're not skulking around and swiping it out from under my nose.

Sloth
That's a Creative Commons License down there on the bottom right of this blog. Read it.

Envy
I don't like it if you take stuff here without telling me. I don't like it even more if you put your name on it and become successful at something that you clearly didn't do yourself. This is not your own personal supermarket, kiddo. If there's anyone who deserves the accolades for writing this stuff, it's the guy who wrote it. Steal anything here, and it ain't my name that going to get dragged through the mud when people find out.

Wrath
And when I say that people are going to find out, then people are going to find out. Plagiarism's not a nice mark to have tattooed on your forehead. And you can bet that if you ever do take something from me that isn't yours, then I'm not just going to see to it that they brand you with a red-hot iron, I'm going to hold you down while they're doing it. And I'll laugh, too.

...

...

...yeah, I loved Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey in that movie, in case you were wondering.

4 - 0

First of all, I left quite a few demanding clients behind when I left work on Friday night. (I finished what I could, of course, and set quite a few meetings for Monday.)

Second of all, I still have to finish editing one of my textbooks this weekend. (The editors have done everything but send the hounds after me, and I think it's about time that I cut them some slack.)

And third of all, I don't play Magic: the Gathering very often anymore. (The expense turned me off a long time ago, although it hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for games in general.)

Despite the above, however, I still attended the prerelease tournament for the game's new expansion set this morning. It's obvious that the days of my youth are starting to get behind me... I was no longer the young turk who strutted around like he owned the place; Instead, I was the one-time player, the experienced tournament-organizer, and the odd working-man who slunk around with a ratty black bag over one drooped shoulder.

The folks who make Magic: the Gathering, you see, release a new expansion set every three months or so. These expansions add a host of new cards to the playing environment, and basically give players some new tools to build decks with. A week before each new expansion releases, though, the stores will often hold prerelease tournaments -- events where players can first try out the new cards before they actually go on sale.

Prerelease tournaments are held differently from other gaming events. For one, players don't build decks at home and bring them to the venue -- instead, the players at a prerelease are given some sealed product (thus a random selection of cards), from which they need to build the best deck that they possibly can. With no buying or trading allowed, and with little or no prior knowledge of the set to begin with, the event therefore tends to be an exercise in serious analytical thought.

Then there's the payout. Each player gets to play exactly four matches with their patchwork deck, against opponents of varying skill levels. For each match a player wins, he/she gets to take home a booster pack (15 random cards) of the new expansion set. Players who manage to win all four of their matches earn a nice t-shirt. (And as you might expect, there are very few players walking around with such t-shirts.)

That's all there is to it, really. You'll find no championships on days like these; It's merely a question of trying to cobble together a logical deck of cards in fifteen minutes, surviving four matches against similar opponents, and picking up scads of new cards.

I find that I'm surprisingly good at this sort of thing. I don't mean excellent good, of course, but definitely good good. On average, my record has been 3 wins - 1 loss for each prerelease I've played in. Scratch that -- my record is always 3 wins - 1 loss for virtually each and every prerelease.

I have been chasing the elusive 4-0 for the better part of two years now.

I'm told that an 3-1 batting average is pretty darn good. I suppose that it is; Most players barely manage to split their matches in these tournaments. But as nice as a 3-1 average is, it's not a good memory to consider. Not when every single tournament has brought you exactly one single moment of grief -- that time when your deck refused to work properly, that time when you made that incredibly stupid mistake during a critical play, that time when an opponent lucked out at the last minute.

One hour after I finished stitching together my deck, I notched a loss from my very first match. Darn it.

And, true to form, I won against my next three opponents. Double-darn it.

I sold my winnings to a bunch of eager players afterwards, making up for my entrance fee and then some. I'm not in it for the money, and I'm not in it for the cards. I'm in it for the play, of course -- after three weeks of stress at work and life in general, the prospect of just sitting at a table and smashing face is quite appealing.

But mostly, I'm in it for the big 4-0. Unlike most players, I don't see it as four free booster packs and a t-shirt, much less a monetary equivalent or a prestigious deal. I see it as a perfect day -- an entire tournament where you manage to figure out the deckbuilding schema correctly, avoid any errors in judgement for four straight hours, and generally just do everything right.

There are many endeavors like this. Maybe you have obsessions with some of them, yourself. Maybe you're looking to play that one perfect game of badminton. Maybe you're striving for that one landmark piece of writing. Maybe you're pushing yourself to finish that one, perhaps even one business project without any hitches at all.

It's rare. It's difficult. But it's still there, and it drives you nuts.

I will have my 4-0. And darn it, I'm not even going to be satisfied with just one. Having just one of them doesn't just give you the exhilaration of finally reaching your goal... it also implies that it's possible to do it again.

We suffer. We stumble, we fall, and we crawl into the corner and hug our knees to our chests.

But we know it's there. We know it's there, and we know darn well that we're going to reach it one day.

I have some very demanding clients clawing at my feet. I have some desperate editors banging at my door. I have age causing the wrinkles to form at my brow and telling me that I'm no longer as young as I used to be.

But I still tried today. And in three months, I'll try again.

Will you?


.

You Can't Win 'Em All, I Guess

The notice:

Thank you for your interest in Philippine Speculative Fiction
Vol.3.

We regret to inform you that we are passing on your story this year. We enjoyed reading your story but had to make hard choices.

We hope to read more from you in the future.

Best,
Dean & Nikki Alfar

The response:

> We enjoyed reading your story but had to make hard
> choices.

Er... surely you didn't enjoy reading it. Even my instincts screamed that my submission this year was terrible. :)

Ah, well... till next year, then. Good luck with the new
anthology.

Regards,
Sean

On Being Nationalist

Hi, everybody. My name is Sean, and I'm a Filipino writer.

...

That sounds kind of wrong, doesn't it?

I mean, I obviously don't fit most standard stereotypes of a "Filipino writer". For starters, I don't write in Tagalog, much less in any of the other dialects scattered across seven thousand islands. Moreover, I don't carry a Filipino ethnicity -- I am a pureblood Chinese, descended from an intellectual refugee of China's cultural revolution. I don't even have much of a Filipino upbringing to speak of -- I was born and raised in an upper middle-class family in the big city, and I attended a private sectarian Chinese school for half my life. I don't even like Filipino cuisine all that much.

Now, despite this kind of background, you might expect that I attempt to bring a Filipino "theme" into my short stories. In truth, however, I don't usually do that: My stuff is heavily plot-driven, wild-idea conceptual, and not specifically Filipino-oriented at all. I wait for something interesting to come to mind, and then write about it. If it has something to do with the Filipino context, then so much the better; If not, then it simply doesn't.

In short, if you want to be all technical about it, then my only claim towards being a "Filipino writer" is by virtue of my citizenship. I mean, nothing else that I do, say or write seems to be exclusively Filipino anyway.

But I don't particularly advertise myself as a "Filipino writer", much less a so-called "writer of Philippine Speculative Fiction". That first line of this post is the only time I've ever said something to that effect. I have a hard enough time being a plain old "writer" without any constraints of nationalism or patriotism bearing down on me.

I mean, you can't expect me to write in Tagalog (or any other local dialect) without grammatically shooting myself in the foot. My Tagalog is terrible, even compared to the hordes of casual speakers out there. In addition to this, I've found the language to be inadequate when dealing with technical or fantastic terms... and I deal with a lot of both. I simply express myself better in English, regardless of what anyone might say about the language requirement for Philippine speculative fiction.

You can't expect me to write from an effective Filipino background either, because I have little or no exposure to one. I live among a traditional Chinese community of closed associations and significant income. I get much more things like Buddhist rituals, dragon dances, and mooncake dice games, and much less things like Santacruzan gatherings, Holy Week pabasas, and walks along Luneta Park. And even then, my nontraditionalist streak means that I don't deal with the former very well.

I suppose that anyone who attempts to put together a clear identity for "Philippine" speculative fiction has the genre's best interests at heart. I do think that; really, I do. But what makes me scratch my head and start whacking away at my keyboard is the notion that "pure" Philippine speculative fiction is something that we want.

Under what circumstances would we want to exclusively read "Philippine" fiction, anyway? Do we have some strange nationalistic hunger that we should constantly feed, or something? I mean, it's not as though we've been able to pinpoint a specific quality or characteristic of Philippine fiction that makes it unique from international literature.

In fact, I think that it's the other way around -- we're in the process of producing a Filipino literary identity to begin with. To me, that implies that we haven't pinpointed a unified nationalist aspect yet. And to me, what that means is that we don't have a clear purpose in demanding tangible standards behind "Philippine" fiction, much less "Philippine" speculative fiction. At least, not yet.

I don't want to read good Philippine fiction... I just want to read good fiction. The last time I checked, that form of art was supposed to be free of international boundaries.

Under the same logic, I just want to write good fiction. Whether the results turn out to be good Philippine fiction or otherwise is completely up in the air. I don't care about nationalist standards or background or identity or other stuff like that. I just write.

To you, I might just be an immature conceptualist who has a lot of growing up to do. For all I know, there's a complete world of distinctions out there that I should be schooled on. Say what you will, I suppose. I'm willing to consider any number of viewpoints on the subject as long as they have perfectly valid arguments.

But I will say this right now, and I doubt that this statement's going to change much in the future: My name is Sean, and I'm a writer.

I'm not necessarily a Filipino writer, or even a Filipino speculative fiction writer, or even a nontraditionalist Chinese-Filipino speculative fiction writer/conceptualist/twinkle-toed ballroom dancer, mind you. I'm just a writer. I'm just a *plain*, *old*, *writer*, darn it. Life's complicated enough without being forced to drill that down any further.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's about time that I got back to work.

Third Year's the Charm

And just like that, this blog is three years old.

It's not exactly three years old, of course. "To the Tale, and Other Such Concerns" turned three years old on September 13, 2007, at a time when I was out of town on a company teambuilding activity. By some strange coincidence, I've missed every single one of these anniversaries -- for the first two years, I assumed that I kicked things off on a September 18 instead of the actual date. Now I know better, but it seems that I still can't keep a proper timeline.

As of September 13, my post count stood at 494 -- just a shade below the magical 500. That counts every article I've started up over the past year, whether I actually published it or let it remain a draft. For a month-by-month breakdown:

September: 8 (out of 17 total)
October: 10
November: 10
December: 12
January: 12
February: 11
March: 10
April: 10
May: 10
June: 10
July: 10
August: 11
September: 7

That's 131 total published posts over the last year... which is actually less than my 135-post output in Year Two. My new work life has hit my blogging habits quite hard... but ever since I imposed a ten-posts-per-month quota on myself, I've managed to regulate my writing somewhat. Nevertheless, a lot of my recent posts tend to go up at odd hours of the night.

I'm honestly not sure how I managed to sneak in that extra post last August, especially considering my current workload. Maybe something misfired somewhere. I suppose that I'll only be able to make conclusions once I see how the numbers for September come in.

The last year also saw quite a few posts that I started writing, but never finished for any number of reasons. These drafts usually remain in limbo until such time that I look through them and decide to resurrect one or two old ideas. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I did just that over the past year... only I can't remember which posts were the results of my misplaced nostalgia. I do know that I now have the following on "incomplete" status, though:

- The first draft of "The Final Interview" (which I promptly forgot about, and thus rewrote completely from scratch for submission to Philippine Genre Stories);
- The lost third installment to my series of writings on Talecraft, as well as two pieces of fiction written for the game;
- One piece of Antaria fiction;
- One piece of independent fiction;
- A essay that questioned why we bother separating "classy" highbrow writings from "peasant" lowbrow writings;
- Two scripts for short comics. To be honest, I'm still wondering who I intended to contact for artist duties here, if I was planning to contact anybody at all.

There's a lot of fiction up there, and it reflects my habit of leaving drafts alone to fend for themselves. In fact, I don't even have any intention of finishing some of the pieces of fiction up there -- at best, I'll probably post excerpts of them in later writings. For now, however, I simply have other things to write.

So now I'm entering my fourth year. I honestly didn't expect to make it this far, but I suppose that I couldn't have done it without the support and criticism of anyone who's ever read through this blog. Now I thank everyone for any number of things -- I thank you for being patient enough to put up with my wordiness, I thank you for being nice enough to tolerate alternate periods of depression and utter insanity, and I thank you for taking the monthly disclaimers seriously despite knowing how silly they are.

Now I have to get back to writing. There's still that 500th post to put together, I think. And after that, there's the question of surviving long enough to reach my fourth year. And even then, the spectre of work and life constantly lurks behind everything, waiting for the first uncertain glance, or the first false move.

Darn it, the keyboard's stuck again...

Backburner Feed

Nope, no posts as of late. This is because I've been to an out-of-town company offsite activity, had to write for a really fast deadline, and then found that my home Internet connection had suddenly stopped working.

This is a shame, because this blog has just passed its third-year anniversary. But more on that later; I'll give it its own post.

I'm caught up in work right now -- both inside the office and out in the freelance world -- and I'll have to straighten out my priorities for the meantime. I'll get back to blogging eventually, and when I say that, I mean that I still have a ten-post quota to fulfill for the month.

As you probably expect in my situation, the writing will always find a way.

One More Day

Having had to plan for a company offsite for the past couple of months in the midst of work (and having had to do constant editing for the preschool textbooks again), I found myself with much, much less time to write an entry for Dean Alfar's Spec Fic Anthology this year.

Specifically, I had exactly one day to squeeze a piece of fiction from the depths of my soul.

This is how that one day turned out:

8:00am: I wake up, and find out that I'm supposed to do the family bakeshop's accounting early this month. Apparently some financial consultant is going to be abroad for the next few weeks, and so I need to rush the darn documents to her before Monday. I frantically start crunching numbers and fiddling with printouts.

10:00am: I arrive with the rest of my family at our grandmother's place for the traditional Harvest Festival dice games. This is supposed to take place on Sunday, but for the reason that some family members are heading away on the same trip abroad, we were forced to move it one day early. I seethe at the fact that my schedule is being compromised by multiple events at once.

12:00nn: I'm still seething. Lunch is going sloooowly. It seems to me that everybody is engaging in idle talk despite my pleas for some time to work.

2:00pm: I find out that 1) The TV is busted, and 2) We're going to have to send it to the shop today. I spend fifteen minutes lugging an ancient 29-inch TV down two flights of stairs, wrenching my back in the process. At this point, I'm already getting ticked off at everybody. They can't seem to figure out why.

4:00pm: I escape to the mall with my laptop for some "alone time". Instead of setting up my laptop in a single solitary place where I can write, it takes me hours to calm down enough to get my thoughts together. The fact that I run into some friends and spend some time entertaining them (because I don't want to be any more impolite than I've been so far) doesn't help.

6:00pm: I go home for dinner. I'm feeling much calmer at this point, although I haven't written the story yet.

8:00pm: I open up my laptop and start a draft.

9:00pm: The first draft starts boring me to death, and I decide to start over.

10:00pm: The second draft is a bust. I start a third draft, telling myself that it's now or never.

11:00pm: I hit one thousand words, and am hitting a fast pace. I have my doubts about the plot development, but I have little time to think about it.

11:30pm: I hit two thousand words on the third draft.

11:40pm: I get stuck somewhere around 2,300 words. I start wrapping up, praying that the ending will miraculously come to mind.

11:45pm: I can't decide on an ending. I write random sentences, erase them for varying degrees of triteness, and write random sentences in their place.

11:50pm: I wrap up the last words and perform a spell check. I do the final word count. I open up Yahoo! Mail.

11:55pm: I start writing the cover letter for the submission.

11:57pm: I waste time editing the cover letter. Old habits die hard.

11:58pm: I send the stupid piece. I'm pretty sure that I submit this before midnight, but by now I'm too tired to pinpoint the correct time.

12:09am: I write this blog post. Seen that, done that, got the t-shirt. I'm not sure if I even have a prayer of making it into the anthology at this point.

Now I just have to worry about Philippine Genre Stories' October 5 deadline, and after that, it's Fully Booked's October 31 deadline. And even then, my textbook publisher is still breathing down my neck.

*Sigh* What a life.