Carols hypnotize! Cover your ears!
Halloween is the best time of the year. Period.
In Christmas, I only get to become Saint Nick. Not that everybody isn't Saint Nick with or without the jiggly red satin wrapped belly, the unruly beard, and the inevitable hoe-hoe-hoe-camel-toe spill. It's a fact: we all get under the hypnotic spiel of the sadly sang carols, the repetitive and characteristically poorly-constructed rhyming lines, the plight of its long-dead characters, of giving unless you want to be left out since it is after all a season of giving and only giving. Not just taking as taking does not count. Giving! So give!
Give for your chakras to pulsate, for your hair to naturally flow, for your scalp to not have dandruff for all eternity, for you to have a great career in front of you despite you screwing up your previous 17, for your babies to grow up within the path of the just, for you to not grow bald at earlier than 60, for you to still get a raging hard-on at 70 by natural means, and for you to sustain it for more than 2 hours if need be.
It's the season for your folly, um, or was it fanny, or did that go like, um, sex... nevermind!
The songs. The carols. They're the real culprit. Their real message reverberate at a low frequency, not noticeable to most human auditory senses, saying buy all the crappy little paper caddies, paper-clip dispensers, coffee mugs, coaster sets, magnets, pens, photo frames, this-book-belongs-to-the-library-of-blank stickers, 3-for-P100 hankies, lighters, note-pads, personal pocket diaries, mouse pads, fancy earrings, yada, yackity-yack, yada. And yes, your peers might not even use them but it IS the season of giving. The carols do not whisper give something meaningful and close to your heart and something which you think they would actually need! No. It merely said give. So give we'll do.
We do it year in and out. In a vicious cycle we can't seem to get our asses off from. We do it because the carols say so! Believe me! The next time you go into a store and start hearing some in-or-outro to a supposed subliminal song, hum a track, say a rock song, or, if you are keen enough, fish out those mp3 player earphones from your pockets and crank up the volume to anything at all! Even those lame emo songs! Anything to keep those waves from planting seeds of purchase-inducing thoughts into your pitiful mind!
Trust me on this. For the love of everything you consider to be true and of pure intentions. Do. Not. Listen. To. The. Carols.
Period.
Labels: Humor, Opinions, Vertigo
Children: In this place, we are the monarchs!
At a considerable distance from the amusement park's paved lot, we could already make out about a dozen or so various trade-name buses neatly tucked in the diagonal parking slots. Did all schools in this part of the country declare today, of all days, an EK Go-Fest?! Come one, come all! Seeing the buses and anticipating a crowded venue was one thing but being with the elementary school kids takes the matter up a whole different level.
One thing is them all going berserk and clumsily running amok.
Then there's the noise that only little kids could make when they all talk simultaneously. It's not so piercingly shrill but, in unison, it could make walls crumble, metals bend, and Gatorade drinks lose all its ions.
Then, there's the smell. That distinct smell only humans in the 6-to-12 age-range are capable of effortlessly emitting. Add all these three observations and you could already imagine how it nauseatingly felt to be surrounded by critters while waiting in line for our turn on the rides.
What the f*ck are we doing in an amusement park on a weekday, anyway?! Taking a leave from all our otherwise grown-up and busy work-lives to be child-like and juvenile and possibly face the fear we wet our pants with when we were younger. It's the children’s Free Country. The Neverland of the masses and the here-third-world born youth of supposedly both the physical and mental aspects (as claimed by the young-at-heart in an effort to devise a work-around to them, or us, rather, aging).
Ok, so it was evil to pass judgement on the critters but years make me forget of the ways of awe and thrill and carefree-ness all bundled up in a beautiful human state of life that's only just beginning to unfold. The nexxus we have all broken free from either by brute force, choice, or natural means.
The realization, though, does not negate the fact that they all stunk like they were sun-baked by the sun-god Ra himself! Falling in line with them was more vertigo inducing than the ride! Hell, more than the Space Shuttle or the Anchors Away rides combined!
God, forgive me!
Labels: Opinions, Vertigo
Photos from EK taken from the RAZR V3X
Mobile phones in the market have long advanced from plainly being able to receive and make calls to having multimedia capabilities giving even the most technologically challenged the capacity to take pictures and make short movies out of their otherwise mundane daily observations. We now have 3G and, believe you me, the experience of making and receiving video calls could make you feel like you have just been teleported to some futuristic world that a year ago may seem to only exist in scifi movies.
Having come from being dependent to the almost infinite capabilities of a PDA phone and downgrading to a plain handheld phone could also have its perks. My phone prior to the
RAZR-V3X has been the
O2 XDA2. I missed browsing in HTML, being able to sing karaoke anytime and anywhere, watching videos of virtually any format in
"wide-screen," and having a host of other applications available at the click of a download button. My new phone, however, has video-call capabilities, a 2 Megapixel camera for better image capture, a more than modest multimedia player that delivers better audio output, mp3 ringer tone capability that enabled me to assign music alerts to key persons in my phonebook requiring minimal memory space, plus its hell-smaller-than-the-XDA2 discreet size does not scream
"steal me, please!"To share just one of the V3X's great features, below are some images I took recently at
Enchanted Kingdom. They may not be SLR-quality photographs but they are also way above the common mobile-phone image captured pics you would see being spread around via MMS or internet upload. Beats having to bring along a separate camera when you are out enjoying a spontaneously decided road trip with friends.
Rides featured are the
Wheel of Fate,
Grand Carousel,
Bump N' Splash (taken while on the Wheel of Fate), and the
Space Shuttle. Click on the smaller ferries wheel photos for a larger view.
Do not let the quality of these photos persuade you on buying a V3X if you are planning on getting one on this basis alone. It may just be that I am a very talented image composer and you may be shell shocked that you could not, for the life of you, get your phone to function as well as mine. There are, after all, things that money can't buy.
All images in this post are proprietary to the author. Copyright 2006 by Fritz Tentativa.
Labels: Gadgets, Photography
Would the brains behind the concept of an anime series even go through a small detail like the design of a mobile phone used by one of its main characters to suit the series' fashion forward central theme? I was watching Paradise Kiss over at Animax when the thought hit me. They must have gotten the design from an already existing phone unit that may never reach our shores because Japan telcos use CDMA vis-a-vis our GSM. It is unthinkable, and therefore marginally impossible, for something as eye-catching to never see reality.
Them getting riduculously intricate isn't that far-fetching, actually. The Gankutsuou series did something similarly ambitious by getting Anna Sui to design its characters' costumes. Probably, making a concept phone and actually using the series as a marketing vessel might have done it for the mobile manufacturer and Paradise Kiss. Mutual benefit.
I was all speculation. No facts. Not even a single solid evidence to prove the mobile phone's actual existence.
I had to find out. I told myself that even if this thing is devoid of sophisticated features, I would have to get one for myself. Eventually. If it actually exists on our plane. Well maybe never, but I have a sibling in Korea who, after reading this, might have made a mental note for future gift-reference.
OK, so, what's so special about this phone that Paradise Kiss spawned, anyway, that got me all thinking? I did a few searches and came across the site via the link with the picture below. The mobile phone actually exists---with a color scheme for male users. And, it does not only make calls and send text messages. Browse the site and see what other cool features this 11mm thick candy bar has in store. Note that the white base attached to the phones are cradles which are detachable and would therefore not lag around with you when you are mobile.
Now I can stop speculating. I want one. The black and white tiled one called Ichimatsu. Y'all may take your pick from the other three: IF the antennae does not turn you off, that is.
Labels: Anime, Gadgets
Girls in the office and me
This conversation just happened. Everything is presented "as is." As a backgrounder, this girl is heart broken. I had asked her out for lunch early that day but something came up:
Girl 1: HARI NG KAGALINGAN... the "ex" just asked me to lunch.
Fritz: Whoa! Grab it! Dali!
Girl 1: YOKO NGA! Eh di hindi naman kita maka-date! hahahahahaha! promiscuous itoh!
Fritz: Kaw bahala, pero suggestion ko eh you let him have the chance. Pero expect less.
Girl 1: Don't expect at all. He could've asked me for dinner. Eh lunch daw eh. Hmph. Kinuripot na ako.
Fritz: Pag hindi kayo eh lunch lang kasi back to a regular colleague ang status mo!
Girl 1: Ganun ba un?! kasama ba yan sa C-policy?!
Fritz: Yep, sa Commitment-policy kasama yan. Ni-ratify sa isang part ng nakasulat sa Vienna Convention noong May 22, 1969 and later on strengthened by a detailed two-paragraph article sa Charter of Paris noong November 21, 1990.
Girl 1: naks! napaka-believable! grabe!
Fritz: Ganyan pag magpre-present ng argument. Supported by facts! Vienna Convention was started in May 22, signed on the 23rd, and was put into force on January 27, 1980. Wag mo na itanong kung bakit ang haba ng panahon before sya mai-enforce. May gap-filling and clarifications kasing naganap kasi international treaty sya. In any case, covered ka kasi nangyari kayo ngayun taon and hindi pa na-lift or na-revise ang mga nakasulat sa mga ito!
Girl 1: kasamba-samba ka talaga! IDOL!
Fritz: Naku, wag po. Isa lang akong hamak na writer-genius disguised as some accountant. I don't deserve, nor do I solicit, praises.
Girl 1: SINONG NILOKO MO?? If I'm correct, I'm sure you bask in other people's praises and high regard for you! Hhaaaahhhhaaayyyyy....
Fritz: Let me tell you something that happened recently. Isang beses habang dumadaan ako sa area ni Girl 2, nahuli ko syang nakatingin sa akin habang naglalakad ako.
Fritz: Bakit?!
Girl 2: Bakit ano?
Fritz: Bat ganun tingin mo sa akin?
Girl 2: Wala no! Bakit? Parang ano ba ang dating sayo ng tingin ko?!
Fritz: Yung tingin mo parang pupurihin mo nanaman ako!
Girl 2: Ganun naman pakiramdam mo sa tingin ng lahat ng tao sayo!
Fritz: Minsan lang.
Girl 1: NYETA! Nakakainis!
Labels: Humor, Vertigo
