Blogger’s been fucking up lately. I’ve been having trouble accessing my settings and templates. Yes, plural.

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I’m pissed that some Star channels are gone from Destiny, our cable provider. The evil Satan that is Sky is trying to get the Star channels exclusively by paying them an ungodly amount, and then letting their poor subscribers shoulder it in increased monthly fees. I should know, we used to be Sky subscribers. But thank GOD that I still have my Star Mandarin. I cannot live without it. It is the most important channel to me, who no longer gets to watch television despite having no regular job and no school. Whenever I do get to use the TV I just click on over to my trusty Star Mandarin and I can almost always relax to whatever they’re showing… especially if Shu Qi’s in it.

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Got Stardust tonight, thanks to Neva and her valuable PowerCard. I’ve been wanting to get and read this baby for a long time, so I dearly hope it’s worth the wait. But I’m still in the middle of Enki Bilal’s The Nikopol Trilogy so it’ll have to wait. Nonetheless, it’s difficult resisting the temptation to peer at the lovely Charles Vess paintings. I pity the poor people who have this only in its prose form. They’re missing half the experience. And paid for it too. If you want a copy, get it at PowerBooks. Regular price P819. With PowerCard, P738. More good news: they’ve finally got copies of Coraline coming, and they’ll retail for around P655 each, less expensive than Not Page One’s P800+.

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Saw Tape with Neva last Sunday. Liked it. Really interesting. The entire movie takes place in a motel room, with just 3 characters, no music whatsoever, and it’s never boring. These kinds of stories, with a few characters in an enclosed space and minimal props, tend to be plays (Tape was adapted from a one-act). Character studies. I’m reminded of movies like Get on the Bus, or The King is Alive, Reservoir Dogs, even Dog Day Afternoon. It reminded me of this plot I wrote in high school, a movie set during the First Quarter Storm, with the same tropes: small cast, enclosed space, minimal props. Emotional pipebombs. Let the characters glance and bounce off of one another. See sparks fly. And you have your conflict. In the last six months I’ve also been toying with an idea for a filmic experiment for myself, Quark, and Chris, with three characters and, again, an enclosed space with minimal props. But there are several ways the experiment could go, and I don’t think I want to divulge any details just yet…

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Last Friday, I went to a wake. One of my classmates in grade school, his mom passed away. I went with my other classmates, including Quark and Neva. It was nice seeing them again, though not in that context. I felt ridiculous even going, since I’d barely seen this classmate since we’d graduated, what? Ten years ago? I remember bumping into him once or twice in malls, but that was it. And yet here I was, looking at his dead mother’s body in a coffin. She was 49. Kind of young for a mother, and it’s terrible to think about. They saw it coming, at least. She had breast cancer, and though it was in remission, it had moved to her liver. Worse, she died on her husband’s (the father’s) birthday. Worse still, the father had a heart attack Friday morning, and was in the ICU with our classmate when we arrived at the wake. So we never even got to see our friend and properly give our condolences. In the span of a few days, he’s in danger of seeing both parents go. I’m not a particularly religious person, but I hope things turn out well for them, because they’ve been through enough as it is.

Inevitably these things lead you to thoughts about your own mortality, and that of your family. I really do hope that my parents die when they are past 100. They’re already in their late 50s. They got married when they were 30 (age difference of a year), had me, their eldest, at 34, which is pretty late, considering. And of course, my siblings aren’t immune to accidents. Any one of us could go, just like that, and it would have no meaning, make no sense. As much as I sometimes hate my family, as much as we are at each other’s throats a lot of the time, as much as the five of us seem to come from five wholly separate families, nay, cultures… I still love them and wish no harm would befall them. They’re family.

So hug your mom next time you see her.