Making Magazines with Conch and Joey

Uploaded a new article on Pulse.ph: it's an interview with Clarissa "Conch" Concio and Joey Dizon, on their experiences as editors-in-chief of two major local music magazines, BURN and PULP. They gave pretty interesting answers.

Special thanks to Mari Arquiza for the great picture of Conch in performance. :)

The Adventures of Jobless Bunny, Revisited

So after over a year of working at a 9 to 5 job in Makati, I’ve gone freelance again. (Please don’t cry, Mom.) To commemorate my joblessness, I’m posting links to my old Jobless Bunny comics.

See, one night, two and a half years ago -- after I had left PULP magazine and before I started working at the Supreme Court -- I stumbled across a create-your-own-comics site called gnomz.com and quickly dashed off three installments of the adventures of an unemployed lagomorph (yes, I learned that word from Sam & Max). Never wrote any further episodes after that night, but I still look back on these three with some affection and amusement. But then of course I would, wouldn’t I?


Read part one of The Adventures of Jobless Bunny!


If you have even more time to waste, please peruse part two.


And finally here's part three. Yay!

Stop DJ Worship

Freaking hilarious. You must read: The Trancecracker. Now.

"But... we... glowsticks..." "How else do you think I lost my eye?" HAHAHAHAHA. Jack Chick tracts make the perfect template for making fun of so many things.

Balut Rules; or, We're Number 1! We're Number 1!

Read: The 6 Most Terrifying Foods in the World. I'm going to spoil the suspense for you right now: in a list that includes maggot-infested cheese ("This cheese is a delicacy in Sardinia, where it is illegal. That's right. It is illegal in the only place where people actually want to eat it,") and wine with dead baby mice in it ("Do you wince at the thought of swallowing a tequila worm? Imagine how you'd feel during a session on this bastard,") the NUMBER ONE MOST TERRIFYING FOOD IN THE WORLD is none other than balut.

I'm actually really happy that we ranked number one, if only because it makes us look like culinary badasses. ("[Balut is] enjoyed in Cambodia, Philippines and the fifth and seventh levels of hell. They are typically sold by street vendors at night, out of buckets of warm sand. You can spot the vendors because of their glowing red eyes, and the faint, otherworldly sound of children screaming.") And what's great is that even though this article is on a humor site that should ostensibly have little concern for being P.C., the writing is funny about the food described without actually implying that the people who enjoy it are idiots. Cracked.com is without a doubt one of my favorite humor sites right now.

Also, I find it interesting that we're so used to the idea of balut that I find every single other item on the list more terrifying. (Except for the "buttery and slightly nutty" escamoles, which I would totally try.)

"Live without fear. After all, you've already eaten a goddamned duck fetus."

Picked by Preview

Yvette and I are very happy indeed to be featured in the October 2007 issue of Preview magazine, on this year's "Creative 'It' List." :) According to the feature's intro, the list "rounds up a list of 26 bona fide talents that have earned distinction in their respective fields, and helped set the standards for artistic excellence." Woo hoo! We're especially delighted to be in the company of many people we genuinely admire, such as dynamic duo Marcushiro and Bru (a.k.a. Electrolychee), musical genius Malek Lopez, director Marie Jamora, production outfit Furball, singer Sitti, and some long-haired filmmaker named Kidlat de Guia, among many others. Thanks to Preview and to everyone involved!

Welcome to Dystopia

There's a a fun list up on At the Movies now: The Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. I've only seen about half of these, so I guess it's time for another trip to Makati Cinema Square. In case the ranking makes you scratch your head, please note that it's based on averaged-out IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes scores as opposed to, say, the workings of a single rational mind. Hence I Robot ranks higher than Logan's Run or Strange Days or Idiocracy. Still, great list, though. And I can't argue with A Clockwork Orange, Brazil and Blade Runner coming out on top.

And speaking of Blade Runner! There's a great Ridley Scott interview up on Wired, about Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which I really really hope they will show in some nice theatre here when it comes out.

Finally, on a related note, there's this interview with Cory Doctorow about his short story "Scroogled," which depicts a frightening and all-too-possible scenario involving the misuse of the world's most popular search engine (read the short excerpt in the sidebar; it will ensure that you pause and think for a moment before punching in your next search query). Doctorow recounted:

I had a really interesting meeting a couple of years ago with some of the [chief information officers] of Danish ministries. We sat down to talk about data interoperability and document retention. Document retention's a really thorny one, because hard drives are cheap, and governments don't really understand why they shouldn't just save everything. Who knows when it will be useful? I started to talk to them about this, and a gentleman put his hand up and said you know, you may need to talk to people in other countries about this, but you don't need to talk to the Danes about this.

Because after the Nazis occupied Copenhagen, they went down to the police station and got from the files all the addresses of the people they wanted to round up and stick in boxcars, and they took them away. We don't retain anything here. As soon as we're done with it, we throw it away because we understand that you can't always predict how information will be used, and the only way to ensure it's not misused is to get rid of it when you're done with it.

I think it's important to note here that what makes Google Google, what makes them such a good target for this stuff, is that they make the best search product on the market. They are so important to all of our lives that it's vital that we start thinking about what they mean and how they work, and what it could mean to have that much power concentrated into just a few hands. And what will happen down the road if the company's culture changes.