Waaaah! Nakakaedit ako! With sound!!! Ang saya-saya ko! Kanina walang sound!! Ngayon meron na!!! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Yahooooooo!

Sorry a. Kanina kasi nababanas na talaga ako, ayaw talaga ng software na kasama doon sa cam na magrecord ng audio. Tapos bumili pa kami ng Adobe, hindi ko naman alam kung paano gamitin.

Tapos sinubukan ko yung Windows Movie Maker. Iyun pa yung gumana. Nyeta. Nagpakahirap pa ako. Yung pinakasimple pa yung gumana.

Mahirap yung course namin, kung akala mo lang. Kumuha ka ng Philippine Cinema, o Communication Theory. Tignan natin kung hindi sumakit ulo mo. (Nagpapatama raw, parang nagbabasa naman siya nito. Hi Tony!)

O iyan. Makaedit na nga.

Halloween na nga pala. Tignan niyo yung pic ng tabulas ko. La lang.

Hmm. Ang weird ng control panel 'pag naka-linux. Walang editor. Meh. Klah.

 Anyhoo, heto na naman ako. Kailangan kong manood ng tatlong pelikula para sa Film 102 Philippine Cinema paper. Walang tulugan, sigurado. O siguro mga dalawang oras lang, parang noong Monday. Drama for six straight hours. Hindi ko talaga maiwasang gawin 'to sa sarili ko. Ang tamad ko talaga. P

atapos na yung Magnifico. Namatay siya. Sad. Pero natutuwa ako. Magaling nga paggawa niya. May pagka-OA lang. Pero lahat naman e. Tapos medyo walang point yung relasyon ng kuya ni Magnifico saka yung isang babae. Danilo Barrios kasi e.

Ayan. Kumanta na si Gary V. Next.

edit: Update! Haha. It's 2:30 in the morning, and I'm still watching Bata, Bata Paano Ka Ginawa? and it's making me giddy. Or it could be just the lack of sleep. Wooooo!

(From Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. It's long, but funny. Trust me)

Whatever we call it--mind, character, soul--we like to think we possess something that is greater than the sum of our neurons that "animates" us.

A lot of mind, though, is turning out to be brain. A memory is a particular pattern of cellular changes on particular spots in our heads. A mood is a compound of neurotransmitters. Too much acetylcholine, not enough serotonin, and you've got depression.

So, what's left of mind?

It's a long way from not having enough serotonin to thinking the world is "stale, flat and unprofitable"; even further to writing a play about a man driven by that thought. That leaves a lot of mind room. Something is interpreting the clatter of neurological activity.

But is this interpreter necessarily metaphysical and unembodied? Isn't it probably a number--an enormous number--of brain functions working in parallel? If the entire network of simultaneous tiny actions that constitute a thought were identified and mapped, then "mind" might be visible.

The interpreter is convinced it's unmappable and invisible. "I'm your mind," it claims. "You can't parse me into dendrites and synapses."

It's full of claims and reasons. "You're a little depressed because of all the stress at work," it says. (It never says, "You're a little depressed because your serotonin level has dropped."

Sometimes its interpretations are not credible, as when you cut your finger and it starts yelling, "You're gonna die!" Sometimes its claims are unlikely, as when it says, "Twenty-five chocolate chip cookies would be the perfect dinner."

Often, then, it doesn't know what it's talking about. And when you decide it's wrong, who or what is making that decision? A second, superior interpreter?

Why stop at two? That's the problem with this model. It's endless. Each interpreter needs a boss to report to.

But something about this model describes the essence of our experience of consciousness. There is thought, and then there is thinking about thoughts, and they don't feel the same. They must reflect quite different aspects of brain function.

The point is, the brain talks to itself, and by talking to itself changes it perception. To make a new version of the not-entirely-false model, imagine the first interpreter as a foreign correspondent, reporting from the world. The world in this case means everything out- or inside our bodie, including serotonin levels in the brain. The second interpreter is a news analyst, who writes op-ed pieces. They read each other's work. One needs data, the other needs an overview; they influence each other. They get dialogues going.

INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I believe that's because the shoe is too tight.
INTERPETER ONE: Checked that. Took off the shoe. Foot still hurts.
INTERPRETER TWO: Did you look at it?
INTERPRETER ONE: Looking. It's red.
INTERPRETER TWO: No blood?
INTERPRETER ONE: Nope.
INTERPRETER TWO: Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.

A minute later, though, there's another report.
INTERPRETER ONE: Pain in the left foot, back of heel.
INTERPRETER TWO: I know that already.
INTERPRETER ONE: Still hurts. Now it's puffed up.
INTERPRETER TWO: It's just a blister. Forget about it.
INTERPRETER ONE: Okay.

Two minutes later.
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't pick it!
INTERPRETER ONE: It'll feel better if I pop it.
INTERPRETER TWO: That's what you think. Leave it alone.
NTERPRETER ONE: Okay. Still hurts, though.

Mental illness seems to be a communication problem between interpreters one and two.

An exemplary piece of confusion:
INTERPRETER ONE: There's a tiger in the corner.
INTERPRETER TWO: No, that's not a tiger--that's a bureau.
INTERPRETER ONE: It's a tiger, it's a tiger!
INTERPRETER TWO: Don't be ridiculous. Let's go look at it.

Then all the dendrites and neurons and serotonin levels and interpreters collect themselves and trot over to the corner.

If you are not crazy, the second interpreter's assertion, that this is a bureau, will be acceptable to the first interpreter. If you are crazy, the first interpreter's viewpoint, the tiger theory, will prevail.

Cyberstalking! I'm not quite sure if the "blah this person has viewed your profile blah" feature is still on Friendster, and if it is, twenty or so people will find me uncomfortably creepy. (More people to add to the list!) At least my visage (*wink* *wink wink*) is kept in the dark, thank gahd.

I'm waiting for my beloved SLR to return, so I can do something else over the break. Reading, using the PC, and watching TV, all entail the action of lazing around on your ass the whole day, so getting up and actually doing stuff will be a major improvement, and will keep me from getting fat. Or maybe not.

The other thing I do mostly is play around with my viola, and I can now pull off a respectable (my hearing is questionable) Aeris' theme from FF7. Hahaha. I'm getting around to doing the Silent Hill 1 theme. And I even bought a pitch pipe! Which has the A and D pitch mixed up. Idiots.

 

You know what's great? Cooking shows. Love them. Beats real cooking (which I plan to learn, sometime soon...) Nigella Lawson rocks, y'all.

Chinese? Japanese? Korean? All look same?

Take the TEST!

I got a 10 out of 18, which is above average, imo.

What I'm interested in, is whether the three races (whatever "race" is) know if someone from the other two races is one of them.

Tip: I have a theory that Chinese people have a tendency to look more like us. Seriously. And it's not just because of the whole Tsinoy thing. When we went to Hong Kong, people were talking to us (in Chinese), and we're all, "what? we don't speak Chinese." (italicized for no reason at all.)

I, on the other hand, have a tendency to look Korean. Meh.

Meanwhile, in the Bottomless Pit of Boredom, I have deluded myself into thinking I will look better with a fauxhawk, or, with cornrows, if only to elude all the Harry Potter/Korean comments. Help me.

eta: Wait, I took the test also out of boredom. Oh well. And I used "delude" and "elude" in the same paragraph. Jeepers!

And here we go again. Typing this dam!#$^&#muth@*@$f%$%& entry. Gah.

 

Yeeeeaaaah.

So recently, I got back on the (mostly poetry, maybe short fiction) writing train, and I figured, why write crap when I can get them critiqued, and write even better crap!

I found this online poetry workshopmajigger, and--holy crap!

>>Apply for Membership
Writing: Include three of your best poems to fulfill the writing portion
Critique and Analysis: Submit a critique of one [so-and-so poem of so-and-so writer on the site]
Technical Proficiency: Write a poem according to these criteria: write a villanelle or sapphic stanzas
About You: Finally, tell us a little about yourself>>

I admit that I don't take my writing that seriously, which I guess is my problem, and why I thought about applying in the first place (and, overitalicizing a bit.) But fuck if I can remember from my English11 class what a "trochee" or "dactyl" are. ...Is? Crap. See?

I might consider joining, when I actually have the guts to propagate (like... making babies?) my material. Not that I haven't. It's just that they're pros, ya know?

In other news... there are no other news. This is the uninteresting, mindless, bored rut hole at the end of the world wide web. Well I tried uploading this kickass animated gif as a usericon, but it wouldn't cooperate. Klah.

 

Okay, I typed this up all over again, so you better read this. You don't have to comment, so then again, it won't really matter. And jimps, would you mind giving me the fiction site you go to? Thanks bunches.

We are the emotion-, cam-, and attention-whores of the net! Shame on us!! Shaaaaame!!!

 

 

 

 

And scene. *bows*

 

The average Filipino internet user is male in his 20s-40s, from the middle class, had a college education, and has a high-income job. If you do not fit this profile, why are you here?

If we could make babies via networking services, we could probably overrun China. But not the US. And maybe not Japan and Korea. Hell, I'm just pulling statistics out of my ass.

So this entry will not be a waste of time:

eta: My Nerd Score: "Not nerdy, but definitely not hip." Okay.

eta, again, because the editing process never ends:

(Blog of) Jessica Zafra! The... er... intellect-whore?

San Sebastian Church, the beautifulest church in Manila!

Oooh, the top is wider than the bottom (...or is it?)

Stained glass!

Translate "sex," as in the act of, to Filipino. The only words I can think of are kan**tan, and pagtatalik. I'm sure there's more, but do any of them actually mean just "copulation," or "intercourse?" Kant**tan is vulgar (thus the censoring asterisks), and pagtatalik is a euphemism, and makes it sound like it's on the news.

So "sex" to Filipinos will always be vulgar and taboo, unless we get a more technical, more correct term for it. Of course, "kopulasyon" and "interkors" could be possible candidates.

And, as always, I astound myself and my readers (you lucky few, you) with my idiocy (courtesy of the Uninteresting Bored Rut Hole at the End of the World Wide Web). Anyway, feel free to give more Filipino translations of sex.

 

Took the test brought to us by jimperio, and with my score of 0, I am convinced that I am actually a robot. No wonder I can't find my birth certificate. Carlo R, I empathize with you (assuming robots can still have feelings).  (used the robot smilie!)

...What I was really going to write was that I was a near-perfect human being. Because I am. Score only goes to prove it.

 

This is the part where I make another shameless (shaaame!) request. I'm sure some of you guys have some p2p file shareware, tell me what they are and why they're good. The crap I listen to is getting stale, and CDs are too expensive.

Currently listening to: Melancholy Requiem from Silent Hill 4
Currently reading: Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby
Currently feeling: melancholy

No matter how many exclamation points you put, they won't make your statement less idiotic than it already is!!!!!!!!

An ellipsis.. has.... three........ periods.

Contrary to what you might think, ?!, and its variations aren't really punctuation marks?!!!!?

Smilies aren't punctuation marks either. ^_^  (<-- What the hell is that, anyway?)

'Single quotation marks' should be used within "double quotation marks," and aren't their substitute's.

 

A panda walks into a bar, and orders his lunch. When he is done eating, he gets his gun, fires it into the air, and proceeds for the door.

The bar owner asks him what his problem is.

The panda then says, "Look me up in the dictionary," and tosses him a dilapidated book.

The bar owner looks him up, and under the definition of "panda," it reads,

"The panda eats, shoots and leaves."

 

If you feel this was an attack on your intellect, please disregard that feeling of yours, because I'm still awake and writing this out at 2:30 a.m. I just found the blurb (which I paraphrased) of Eats, Shoots and Leaves funny. I also the think that the idea of a whole book (about as thick as any pocketbook) on bad punctuation also funny.