Lolcats Lovecats

Karaokeology

It's no longer My Way.

Last November, an inebriated 24-year-old with the woefully apt name of Kyle Drinkwine was found by police in the back of a Wisconsin alley, his hands covered in blood. According to testimony compiled by the Smoking Gun, Drinkwine had spent the evening unwinding at Emma's Bar, a local watering hole that was hosting a karaoke night. Shortly after performing an Eminem song, he allegedly became so enraged by another patron's version of "Holy Diver"—the 1983 anthem by heavy-metal patriarch Ronnie James Dio—that he assaulted the singer and his friend and fled when police arrived. "This had started … over one's ability to sing karaoke," notes the arrest report, which reads like a Mike Judge novella.
Read the Slate story

Playboy Centerfolds. Seriously

What we need, a scientific survey of all Playboy centerfolds from a woman's pov

Updike

I brought Updike's "Terrorist" to the airport the last time I was out to confound airport security. Sadly no one noticed. I was reading his essay on golf two days ago. Now the great John Updike is gone, gone.

Meet My Current Wallpaper

The 1,000 Novels You NEED to Read

This is the Guardian List. But if you like the rest, you can aspire for the Steve Martin's Top 100. The rival Telegraph came out with a mini-assessment of modern poetry

Bolaño is now the Flavor of the Month

The late great Roberto Bolaño leads the finalists for the fiction category of the National Books Critics Circle for his 2666. The others are:

Marilynne Robinson, Home, FSG
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project, Riverhead
M. Glenn Talyor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, West Virginia University Press
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge, Random House
Poetry
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, FSG
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light, University of Arizona Press
Devin Johnston, Sources, Turtle Point Press
Pierre Martory, trans. by John Ashbery, The Landscapist, Sheep Meadow Press
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar, Copper Canyon Press

Criticism
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard, Metropolitan Books
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life, Boston Review/MIT
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds, Doubleday
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, University of Michigan Press
Seth Lerer, Children's Literature: A Reader's History: Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter, University of Chicago Press

Biography
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, Amistad
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in an American Century, Penguin Press
Patrick. French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, Knopf
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, Norton
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Knopf

Autobiography
Rick Bass, Why I Came West, Houghton Mifflin
Helene Cooper, The House on Sugar Beach, Simon and Schuster
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter, W.W. Norton
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves of Heaven, Harmony Books
Ariel Sabar, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, Algonquin

Nonfiction
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, Knopf
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War, Knopf
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Doubleday
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, Atlantic Monthly Press
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776, Oxford University Press

Books I Got This Week

These are the books I got or read this week:

The Logic of Numbers

So Cong. Zialcita as you were saying, the Philippines has no population problem because we are the ones supplying labor to other countries? So now the other countries are laying off their own countrymen so they can hire the Filipinos who are not trained properly anyway because they are busy looking for food and have no money for health and education? Is that your only reason for not supporting the RH Bill? So God will provide for the Filipinos because He loves the poor?

This is the evidence.

The bigger the family size, the harder for a Filipino to get out of the rut. Many generations ago, labor is needed for the big tracts some of us might have had then. But these land had been subdivided and subdivided. That is if you have land.

Among the Ilocanos, the impulse was to leave the land. Ilocos has one of the lowest growth rate but it could mean a lot of things. The Ilocanos were the first to leave their provinces. The manongs of Hawaii did that a hundred years ago.

We can not just follow suit and leave the land. Didn't the good congressman know that some countries have stopped hiring foreigners? There is also the global crunch to think about. Where are we going to send our people, even if we give the best education which we don't?

What is their evidence? I have watched the interpellations and I have not heard any scientific evidence given by the anti-RH.

"More than 120 are now with us. We're confident that the RH bill will not pass," said Zialcita.

There is this smugness in some of them. Can they please go back to their places and see how their people suffered?

I have covered Masville through Save The Children. That is Paranaque.

In the end, it's not the number of people that will save our country, it is the quality. And this also reflects sadly on our House.

Baguio Minute 3

Baguio was not as cold this week as predicted. Still, the price of vegetables is on a three-month slump and yet the arrival of cheap vegetables remain unabated. Sellers with disabilities called on the city's demolition team to be more merciful in their operations. Street diggings by the Baguio Water District will again add to the traffic woes as BWD announced they have extended their pipe-laying. Councilor Weygan disapproved the plan to turn Diplomat Hotel (the former seminary atop Dominican Hill) into a mining museum. Weygan also recommended that the P7 million fund to be used for the rehabilitation of the Tuba dumpsite be used instead for the MRF or the Materials Recovery Facility of the city. It is another MRF issue for Benguet as Tuba town wants small-scale miners to pay an MRF or the miners rehabilitation fund before they can operate. The Burnham Ganza park (formerly the parking area for Jadewell) is going to become a "first response center" whatever that means. Boxing champs Donaire and Penalosa are now training in Coyeesan. The drug agency netted P250 million worth of illegal drugs from 63 operations last year. But this week, more than P100 million worth of marijuana was recovered in one operation alone. Baguio internet geeks led by Gideon Omero are organizing a beer bash where the number of beer bottles bought would be equivalent to the number of trees to be planted. More than 400 employees from Texas Instruments were retrenched. The mayor changed his mind about letting all private vehicles exempted from number coding and now said that only cars of tourists are exempted. Baguio declares Burnham Park as its OTOP (One Town One Product). The Panagbenga's grand parade would be on February 28 and March 1.

Time

Ways of Looking

Philippines and Israel

Remember this? "Israel's national flag is displayed beside Philippines' national flag on the shore of the Dead Sea November 25, 2007. The two flags, both 100 meters-long (328 feet) and 200 meters wide (656 feet), were displayed together on Sunday to mark 50 years of relations between the two countries, a spokesperson at the Israeli Tourism Ministry said. The Israeli flag, which took 3 weeks to sew and weighs about 5,200 kg (11,464 lbs), was financed by Philippine businesswoman Sister Grace Galindez-Gupana and will compete for a title in the Guinness Book of Records."

Gupana, no need to apologize. Your Israel is not the Israel we have now, killing Palestinian children because they have to live. Theirs is a deranged Israel, thinking they are better than the rest of the world. They are murderers. In the OT kind of sense, they may be the Israelis of old. But someone died on the cross to take us out of that OT violence, this Israel we have now does not deserve your flag.

You Are Here

And Then Hangover Cures from National Geographic

Yes, I didn't know kiamoy...

Know Your Whisky

Here's your illustrated guide (Sorry no White Horse)

In Search for Sid Vicious

The 30-minute BBC broadcast of the most influential punkrocker ever

The Mexican Suitcase

The lost Robert Capa suitcase and the negatives inside

Bloggers to Watch This Year

Benn Ray (Mobtown Shank)

Dodge Lile (My Old Kentucky Blog, LaundroMatinee)

Edward Champion (Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits, The Bat Segundo Show)

Frank Yang (Chromewaves)

Howard Wolfson (Gotham Acme)

Jessa Crispin (Bookslut)

Jodi Chromey (I Will Dare, PaulWesterberg.net, MN Reads)

nyctaper (nyctaper)

Sean Michaels (Said the Gramophone)

Sean Moeller (Daytrotter)

Whitney Matheson (Pop Candy)

JIm J on Originality

A Time to Dance

Taken only last January 15 at the Liverpool station. Cool. An advertisement for T-mobile

Books I Bought Last Week

Buddha Powers

Pagudpud

To Dear Ada

Still...

The Baguio Minute 2

The big news is still the cold weather, reaching 7.5 degrees on Thursday morning. Residents are seen buying jackets, mittens and scarves in the ukayukays. There were fewer people going out at night because of the cold weather which started January 2 when the temperature dipped to 9.6. People are saying that Baguio might reach the record low in 1961 when it hit 6.8 degrees. In Benguet, agricultural officials say that the frost on veggies would not be as serious as in the past. The idea to make Burnham Park into a theme park ala Legopark, Disneyland or Cordilleraland was opposed by the council. The council however stalled the issue of extending SM Mall into the forest lot in front of Convention Center. Like SM, University of Cordillera also got a prank call about a bomb last Wednesday, ssupending classes from 3 pm. Instead of closing it (as reported by tourism groups last year), Loakan Airport will be funded by the government for P22 million for more "feasibility studies." The city is trying to renegotiate on their multimillion peso garbage deal with Capas and also renegotiating with Tuba about the reopening of the dump. The city is also planning to privatize the Asin hydro plants and the city slaughterhouse. The family members of Wasing Sacla, Benguet's ex-vice guv, were brought to the hospital for eating bad eggs. A girl took her mom's SUV and went on a joyride with friends until the car jumped on the lagoon in front of Mansion House. Baguio is awaiting the training of boxing champs Donaire and Penalosa in Teachers Camp this week. Ifugao will finally have a community radio station and the Minanga Tribe in Kalinga was finally recognized.

EV's First One man Show

Daly City

Home to 33,000 Filipino American residents, Daly City, California, located just outside of San Francisco, has been dubbed “the Pinoy Capital of the United States.” In this fascinating ethnographic study of the lives of Daly City residents, Benito Vergara shows how Daly City has become a magnet for the growing Filipino American community. Vergara challenges rooted notions of colonialism here, addressing the immigrants’ identities, connections and loyalties. Using the lens of transnationalism, he looks at the “double lives” of both recent and established Filipino Americans. Vergara explores how first-generation Pinoys experience homesickness precisely because Daly City is filled with reminders of their homeland’s culture, like newspapers, shops and festivals. Vergara probes into the complicated, ambivalent feelings these immigrants have—toward the Philippines and the United States—and the conflicting obligations they have presented by belonging to a thriving community and yet possessing nostalgia for the homeland and people they left behind.

Pinoy Capital

The Filipino Nation in Daly City

Benito M. Vergara, Jr.

Balatoc Mines of Yore

I got this Carmel C's facebook. She requested me to post this. Here's her notes:

"1931 Rizal Day with Igorot Laborers Camp 3 balatoc mines. "

In the picture is Guy Montague, the resident manager of the the Balatoc gold mine in Balatoc Mines from 1924-1935. His wife, Kate is also in the picture.

"From 1930 to 1935 Kate Bigelow Montague lived in the moutain provice of of northern Luzon where her husband was resident manager of the Balatoc Mines near Baguio. During that time she journeyed deep into the Igorot vilages attending their weddings, their burials and their many festivals. Her love for these people grew and after spending a year in study in Manila in 1937, she knew that one day she would write about them. "Send the Wise Wind" is that book, her first novel."

Used

It's Recession, Folks, and now's your chance to earn money. Yes, you!

Where to Watch the Double X Movie of Osang

AURORA", the controversial independent film of Rosanna Roces, will have a special one-time screening at the U.P. Cine Adarna this January 19th, 7:30 p.m. The film, directed by Adolfo Alix, Jr., was slapped with 2 "X" ratings from the Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) declaring it "unfit for public viewing." "AURORA" is Roces' first film after La Vida Rosa (2001) which gave her the URIAN Best Actress award. In Aurora, she co-stars with Sid Lucero, who won Best Actor for Selda in the URIAN and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival; Kristofer King, who made waves with his acclaimed performances in Babae Sa Breakwater, Tirador, Serbis and Angeli Bayani who was adjudged Best Actress in the 10th CineManila International Film Festival for Melancholia.

NY Nuns File $17,000 Lawsuit vs Pinoy Couple Over Tuyo and Tinapa

From CRISTINA DC PASTOR of Philippine News
01/11/2009 | 06:45 PM

NEW YORK —It may be a cultural thing, but when you're up against a congregation of nuns and your neighbors in an apartment building in Manhattan, a lawsuit would make an interesting anthropological study in ethnic tension. The Missionary Sisters of Sacred Heart (MSSH) in Manhattan has filed a complaint against Filipino American couple, Michael and Gloria Lim, over a Filipino delicacy called 'tuyo' (dried fish), and its funky cousin, the 'tinapa' (smoked fish). The case is now with the Manhattan Supreme Court.

Reports say Gloria was smoking fish outside her apartment window when the smell – noxious stench to the nuns, divine aroma to the Lims – of the salted fish wafted throughout the Gramercy apartment building. The "foul smell" was too strong the nuns suspected it was coming from a decomposing body and called in the Fire Department. According to reports, the firemen searched every unit of the building and were able to trace the source of the smell to the Lims' unit. They knocked, and when no one came to the door, the NYFD came barreling in. Gloria, a nurse, found her door knocked down and was obviously peeved. It appears the MSSH leases the unit to the Lims and may have authorized the assault. "I cook dried fish," Gloria defiantly declared to the NY Post.

The average American may find it puzzling how one can derive pleasure of the palate from dried fish. Foodie Andrew Zimmern, who has been to the Philippines and braved the "balut" (fertilized duck egg in an embryo) and Soup No. 5 (bull's rectum and testicles soup, believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac) might be able to share the gustatory experience. Gloria was referring to the "tuyo," a Philippine staple usually eaten with steaming hot rice and fresh tomatoes. Some eat theirs dipped in vinegar and crushed garlic paired with fried rice and sunny side up egg. Dried fish is not a Philippine exclusive. It is an essential in the traditional Chinese and Malaysian fried rice along with chopped spring onions, garlic and chili. Sometimes, it is pulled and sprinkled on
chocolate porridge or "champorado. " Food with a strong salty taste like "tuyo" or "tinapa" might be too intense for the morning stomach, but many Filipinos would never leave for work in the morning without having it for breakfast.

In the lawsuit filed by the nuns, Gloria was even more adamant. She was quoted as saying that "she is causing the smell by cooking and/or smoking fish, and she is going to continue to do it." The complaint appears to divide the apartment tenants, some finding themselves squarely on the side of the sisters who find the smell "potentially dangerous to life and health," and some defending the FilAm family's right to eat their own ethnic food in the privacy of their home.

"This is plain racist," comes a shout-out from a supportive blogger. The complaint says some tenants closer to the Lims' unit have moved out, and that the Lims have been warned repeatedly about the smell emanating from their 16th floor apartment unit. Gloria, a 30-year resident of the U.S., denies this. Which side to take, undecided tenants turn to what's stated in the housing rules: Cooking smelly food is not allowed. The nuns are seeking $75,000 in damages. They made it clear that they have nothing against Filipinos as a people.

The History of Reggae: a Documentary

The five parts can be found here

Nice Covers

Nice site

New Year Postcards 100 Years Ago

This is for Baguio City which became a chartered city 100 years ago

Menino, the Opera Singer

Hardest Literary Quiz

Telegraph treated its readers recently with a very hard but interesting literary quiz. One of the hardest I encountered considering I won the university-wide literature contest when I was in 2nd year and has been beating Jeopardy rivals, virtual or otherwise, when the topic is "Literature." Here are the questions:

1 Which literary character's first words to whom are: "How are you? You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive?"

2 Who was the first British writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature – in 1907, if that helps?

3 What's the only book for children by James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming?

4 Who is the only person to have been both shortlisted for the Booker Prize and to have played a girlfriend of Ken Barlow's in Coronation Street?

5 What did Jane Austen's father do for a living?

6 To which public figure is Austen's Emma dedicated?

7 What was the first novel by E M Forster?

8 What is the title of John Betjeman's blank-verse autobiography?

9 In Wodehouse's name, what do the P and the G stand for?

10 What is Jeeves's first name?

11 Whose first two novels were Hideous Kinky and Peerless Flats?

12 Frederica, Venetia and Black Sheep are among whose Regency romances – a genre she's generally credited with inventing?

13 In which language did Franz Kafka write?

14 Who, in the 1950s, wrote the highly influential food books French Country Cooking and Italian Food?

15 What is the main title of the Bill Bryson book that is subtitled Travels in Europe?

16 What was Thomas Hardy's first profession?

17 In his later years, what was the geographically significant name of Thomas Hardy's dog?

18 Which classic novel of the Second World War begins: "It was love at first sight"?

19 In which war did Lord Byron die?

20 In Homer's Iliad, who kills Hector?

21 Name all five of the Famous Five.

22 Which Enid Blyton character was described in Encounter magazine in 1958 as "the most egocentric, joyless, snivelling and pious anti-hero in the history of British fiction"?

23 What kind of animal is Beatrix Potter's Jeremy Fisher?

24 Who is the most famous literary creation of Jean de Brunhoff?

25 What is the only Shakespeare play with an animal in the title?

26 In the novels of John Mortimer, how does Rumpole refer to his wife?

27 Which 19th-century literary character marries Isabella Linton?

28 In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, how many times has the Wife of Bath been married?

29 John le Carré's breakthrough novel was his third, published in 1963. What was it called?

30 Which country is the main setting for le Carré's The Constant Gardener?

31 Name any Iris Murdoch novel with a colour in the title.

32 In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, how is the nightmare totalitarian future reflected in the way beer is served?

33 Who wrote the dramatic monologue, originally for television, A Cream Cracker Under the Settee?

34 A taste of which foodstuff prompted the Proustian rush?

35 What is the third word of the poem To Autumn?

36 In 1819, who became Keats's fiancée?

37 Which Keats poem contains the line, "And no birds sing"?

38 Which phrase was written, at his own request, on Keats's tombstone in Rome?

39 With which novel did Ian McEwan win the 1998 Booker Prize?

40 Which literary novelist wrote the first ever episode of the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs?

41 What's the name of Sherlock Holmes's older and even more brilliant brother?

42 Which 12-novel sequence is narrated by Nicholas Jenkins?

43 Name any book in Philip Roth's original Zuckerman trilogy.

44 Which British Nobel Prize-winner's first novel was The Grass Is Singing?

45 What event of July 1986 was the subject of the poem The Honey Bee and the Thistle by Ted Hughes, the poet laureate at the time?

46 What is the only Shakespeare play whose title contains an English place name?

47 To the nearest thousand, how many direct descendants of Shakespeare are thought to be alive today?

48 Who is the most famous literary creation of the Reverend Wilbert Awdry?

49 What's the first phrase of Virgil's Aeneid (in English or Latin)?

50 What was Alice Sebold's bestselling debut novel?

51 Which of his novels did Dickens say was his favourite?

52 Which Dickens novel has a plot that centres on someone leaving money to his nephew's lover's guardian's brother's youngest daughter?

Christianity is the Root of Slow Scientific Progress

Here's the chart. Make your conclusions:
1. Without Christianity, we would be colonizing the galaxy
2. Christianity makes us dumb
3. Just coincidence

50 Special Effects that Paved the Way

Here they are from Metropolis to Day After Tomorrow
The SFX that took you off your seats

What Happened to Baguio (1)

Pres. Arroyo gave Baguio media a happy new year by leaving earlier than expected. The inauguration of the BSU Vegetable Noodle Center was canceled because of this. Many people in LT however were saying that last summer's strawberry shortsell incident was the cause. Remember when the presidential entourage picked strawberries in the Holy Week and Benguet forgot to pay the poor farmer who then told his story to Bombo Radyo? PGMA met up with Midland and a local cable in an exclusive interview (questions screened) and among the news were the rushing of Halsema Highway MP section up to this year; granting Burnham and Rizal Park and Maharlika back to the city. Mansion House is 100. Because of the PGMA vacation, the garbage deal with Tarlac was extended till January 5. After that is the issue of the rest of the year. Moises Cating, the great Baguio Political survivor, is back in the Baguio Water District board. Last Jan 2, temperature dipped to 9.6 degrees because of amihan; the lowest this year so far of course since it was only the 2nd day of the year. There were 30 percent more tourists in the Holidays compared to last year. The DOT thought that the cold is the reason and they now have a new buzzword: frost tourism. Watch the wilting lettuces live! Watch the shivering natives! A young DH from Bauko was strangled dead inside a motel along Kalantiao St. Because they don't want to give credit to Gov Baguilat, the Ifugao provl board urged Asian Devt Bank to cancel a P100 M fund for a hospital. The Fisheries Bureau gave tuyo and daing to Mt. Province people for Xmas, apparently to prevent goiter. Fifty mountaineers gave a new meaning to High Mass when they held a mass last Dec 28 on the summit of Mt Pulag. Lilibeth Ratcliffe won the womens division of the Ilusorio Cup in country club but it was her 8-yr old Mark who was more impressive, winning 2 years in a row in the junior division. A mock IED was found after SM Baguio closed Sunday. It opened at 12:30 pm the next day.

Watermelons and Bananas. Dangerous! Don't Try This At Home

The Best New Yorker Stories in 2008

Roberto Bolaño: “Meeting with Enrique Lihn.”

Donald Antrim: “Another Manhattan.”

William Trevor: “The Woman of the House.”

Daniyal Mueenuddin: “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”

Edwidge Danticat: “Ghosts.

Jonathan Lethem: “Lostronaut.”

Wells Tower: “Leopard.“

Roddy Doyle: “Sleep.“

Yiyun Li: “Gold Boy, Emerald Girl.“

Daniel Alarcón: “The Idiot President.”

Andrea Lee: “Three.“

Aleksandar Hemon: “The Noble Truths of Suffering.”

Daniyal Mueenuddin: “A Spoiled Man.”

Alice Munro: “Face.”

Janet Frame: “Gorse Is Not People.”

Tobias Wolff: “Awake.”

Joshua Ferris: “The Dinner Party.”

Roberto Bolaño: “Clara.”

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: “The Teacher.”

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum: “Yurt.”

T. Coraghessan Boyle: “Thirteen Hundred Rats.”

Alice Munro: “Deep-Holes.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “The Headstrong Historian.”

Vladimir Nabokov: “Natasha.”

Janet Frame: “A Night at the Opera.”

John Updike: “The Full Glass.”

Julian Barnes: “East Wind.”

Yiyun Li: “A Man Like Him.”

Roddy Doyle: “Bullfighting.”

Sana Krasikov: “The Repatriates.”

T. Coraghessan Boyle: “The Lie.”

Ha Jin: “The House Behind a Weeping Cherry.”

Jeffrey Eugenides: “Great Experiment.”