Category Archives: sad

Lydia Purple

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So yesterday, there I was surfing around the Net and posting fun stuff to Facebook (and why wasn’t I posting to my blog more than an amusing, if mindlessly felonious, internet quiz? you ask, for lo you are very perceptive. Because a blog post takes between 1.5 and 7 hours on this computer, depending on how it’s behaving, and clicking Share On Facebook takes about ninety to 180 seconds instead, and BTW the PressIt bookmarklet won’t work with this Windows 98 setup so I can’t post it to WordPress instead, that’s why thanks for asking) when I ran across this.

Lydia Purple.

From the comments on the YouTube it appears that the Collectors later lost their lead singer and morphed into Chilliwack, or maybe their singer left and he fronted Chilliwack or something; all I know is, going from Kits Beach to Chilliwack is what’s generally thought of as a comedown, at least to those who’ve been in both locations. I mean, Chilliwack is very nice for a small town with condo metastises on the fringes, but one of these things smells like cow shit and one of them smells like ckOne if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

In any event (the pole vault? beaver eating? three day?) there I was…well, HERE I was, right here behind the keyboard, and I was wearing my purple sweatshirt. The one Lydia gave me. The one with Lydia on it, only Lydia‘s not purple (neither in person nor on the sweatshirt except in the spots where the transfer didn’t cover) Lydia is generally rather pale pinkish except on the sweatshirt, where she is white and green (which she never is, even after a heavy-duty Bacchanal not that I’d know anything about that) and, yes, a bit of purple.

So (t)here I was wearing my purple Lydia sweatshirt, watching Lydia Purple. I wasn’t actually sweating, but it would have been nice for narrative symmetry purposes I suppose.

And here it is, a Wet Coast version of Eleanor Rigby:

Spot the Vancouver locations: Kits Beach, the West End, the Pacific Centre atrium (who knew it was that old?), Planetarium, English Bay, and is that not Spanish Banks?

Lyrics and additional details below the jump: Continue reading →

quiz: which felony are you?

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Oh good heavens, I don’t know where this quiz came up with such a terrible thing to say about me! Golly jeepers I just can’t imagine! And besides, I was buying toys for orphans at the time…I put it on my Facebook Status!


You Are Stalking


You tend to be very obsessive. Once you focus your attention on something or someone, it’s all you think about.

You are also very secretive. People don’t know much about the life that you lead.

You are attracted to weak people. You may want to prey on them, but you also may just want to help them.

You need attention, and you can get desperate if you aren’t getting attention from the right person. You’ll do about anything to get noticed.

Steve Irwin, reincarnated

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Enough wit de intellectulolz! i luvs dis hooman!!!1

cat

The Atene Button goes dark

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Sigh.

Oh, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. And it’s not like I didn’t expect it to happen again. Actors are … actorish, and this is what they do. They’re like cats on the doorstep…I want in…I want out…I want in…but unlike cats, you can’t exactly stick your foot under their butts and decide it for them. For one thing, most of them are bigger than you, if you happen to be me. For another, the whole virtual butt-kicking thing works much better in fetish DVDs than in motivational emails.

So I’ve heard.

But fame or no fame, actor or no actor, I’ve been down this pixel trail a time or two (dozen) before, and frankly, you can’t push people. They come or they go, and it can mean a great deal to the “audience” or it can mean nothing at all, but that makes no difference whatsoever to whether or not the person returns for the long term. I’ve seen people come back for twelve hours. I’ve seen people come back for just long enough to register a digital avatar trail and say “see, I went.” I’ve seen Brian Atene come and go and come back and go again over the course of a couple of years. But it’s the same process and we are just exactly as impotent.

I could email. I have his email. But I don’t for a second believe he’s playing coy: I think the man is honestly backing off, and that nothing is creepier than opening your email to see a mass of zombie grab-hands springing out from it, trying to draw you back. I’ll leave him be. If he returns, he returns; if he doesn’t, I hope he’s making shitloads of money and eventually sends me that autograph he owes me, which, no, I don’t think I’ll ever see. I’m like that myself, you see, and the list of things I owe to people I’ve never seen in the flesh is longer than I am tall. Even if I were, like, tall.

And if you think this is just about Brian Atene, you haven’t been paying attention at all.

The Last Days of the Tambo Mudflats

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Tambo Mudflats

This is re-posted from the Multiply site. I know that this is a tragedy not only on ecological, but on sociological grounds as well; for every dollar a casino brings into a community it costs $1.60 in social services.

The Last Days of the Tambo Mudflats

By Tina Alejandro, WBCP founding member

I still remember creeping up to a Black Crowned Night Heron chick as it was sitting as still as a telephone pole hoping I won’t notice it. It was alone and defenseless and reachable. It had nothing to fear from Robert and I and we were just euphoric at seeing a chick up close. In a comic sort of way, we humans and the chick were all motionless.

We were amidst an unimaginable number of nests in the center of the city and the birds were relatively undisturbed. Sticks of dry grass towered over us making it impossible to see just how many of them there were. The noises too were not familiar and at one point, I had visions of each one of us being snatched one by one and vanishing into the vast grass maze.

Untouched, unnoticed except by the wildlife, this was just a few meters across from a condo constructed across Manila bay. Such wonders we discovered amidst mundane looking roads and buildings.

These days you can see any one of these species in the area: Purple Heron, Little Egret,
Little Heron, Rufous Night-Heron, Black-crowned Night-Heron, Yellow Bittern, Philippine Duck, Barred Rail, Common Sandpiper, Tringa, Spotted Dove, Zebra Dove, Lesser Coucal, Collared Kingfisher, Common Kingfisher, Barn Swallow, Pacific Swallow, Yellow-vented Bulbul, Clamorous Reed-Warbler, Bright-capped Cisticola, Zitting Cisticola, Pied fantail, Long-tailed Shrike, Asian Glossy Starling, Chestnut Munia, Scaly-breasted Munia,and Terns.

We hear it is the last days of the mudflats. The government is turning the whole area into a casino complex… Pagcor city. My being sad is an understatement. Not just as an environmentalist or as a relatively decent person am I sad but also as a Filipino. These birds are what make us different from other nations. Casinos? Is this what we want to make our mark in the world as? We cannot compete with Las Vegas or Carlo but we can certainly compete in the area of biodiversity.

When I was in England for a month, I was hosted by a simple (yet well-heeled) retired couple. Knowing I was a naturalist, they hied me off a few streets away to a village lookout. It was a little wooden hut facing a pond but the one side was a one way mirror. You could see the ducks, geese, sparrows and such enjoying the tucked away corner of the bush garden. It was such a refreshing sight and unspeakably soul-enriching.

The insides of the hut contained illustrations coupled with information on the kinds of animals you could unobstrusively observe from its confines. The place was unattended, no guards to collect maintenance fees or locked gates to keep out unwanteds. It was a free for all sanctuary built by a private citizen to be shared to the community.

How glorious would it be if we had places like this in the city? It would do wonders for our world weary urban dwellers and it would teach so much more than mesmerizing pull of a roulette. If I were an influential person in government, I would ask what kind of a people do we ultimately want to be? The kind who places money above everything else? This is a self-destructive logic.

Though it may be a lost cause, I still hope for Filipinos to see the abundance that surrounds them, the riches they have which they do not value, one of the most (if not the most) diverse places per square inch in the world. I’m convinced we have the cure to the incurable right in our own backyard.

The last days of the mudflats are only a microcosm of the what’s happening all over the country, unless more of us open our eyes to protect what the good Lord has freely given us. Fingers crossed, earnest prayers said, may this not be paradise lost.