Discworld Review of sorts

This came out yesterday. There're a bunch of grammatical errors and misspelled words (particularly the butchery of my daughter's name!) But overall, not a bad article. Enjoy.

Writing Workshop Poster Ad

IAFT Acting Workshop Poster

International Academy of Film and Television TV ad

Father Blues

It was weird and simple, but ultimately quite profound. I haven’t seen my daughter in a month and she was excited to see me. I was surprised by this. Usually, she only cares for her Barney and Dora videos and sees people as a means of getting them.

But when she saw me, she got incredibly excited, as I said, jumping up and down and embracing me like I was the purple beast from Imagination Land.

But that’s not what’s weird. What’s weird was what happened while we were alone. I was of course watching her run around, the rambunctious toddler that she is, and getting mildly irritated over her seemingly inexhaustible exuberance. At one point, I raised my voice and called her by her nickname, Mimi.

Now, usually when I utilize this tone, nothing happens. I’m used to nothing happening. She would go on doing what she liked and I go on being all flustered pointlessly.

But this time, she stopped at her tracks—actually stopped!—and turned to me with inquiring eyes. “Yes?” she seemed to ask. I was stunned. I forgot my frustration and instead this nervousness took over me. For a brief second I didn’t have anything. I recovered quickly enough, I asked for a kiss. She kissed me and resumed her running about.   

Right. I know it’s not a big deal to a lot of people. I’m not sure why it’s such a big deal to me. But it is. There is a profundity in the situation that I cannot put my finger on. It was like… well, don’t laugh. It was like realizing that I mean something to this girl, this girl who had always ignored me except when it’s time for her bottle or time to change her diaper, and I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The funny thing, or the not-so-funny thing, is that I’m terrified of this girl. She scares me like you wouldn’t believe. If I screw up, I can mess up her life before it even began. I could be the reason why she would require therapy when she turned thirty, neurotic and crazy and mixed up in all the wrong relationships. I fear that she’s my karma and I’m not cut out to be a father.

Whatever I do, I’m screwed. 

Knowledge Channel AVP (2004)

Knowledge Channel Summer Plug

Knowledge Channel Adverts

Something's gone terribly wrong with the color but you get the idea.

Daliri by Florante

I love this song. Florante is a god among musicians, especially the Pinoy type!

Pagans on Parade

It's mine so it's weird to say I love this article but, what the hey! Self-love is NOT overrated.

Update For Not Updating

Well, haven't updated in like forever. I'm really not a good blogger. I'm not disciplined enough nor do I have the time or the inclination to go rummaging on the Internet for crap you may have already gotten through your junk mails anyway.

Nor am I as angst-ridden as I once was to vent about stupendous nothingness. The unbearable lightness of being has finally become... bearable.

So, I really don't know why I'm blogging to begin with. I suppose it's a way to have my presence felt online. Everyone's got one, after all, so why not me? But whether it serves a specific purpose other than make me feel guilty I haven't updated, I don't know. I like that if I feel like it, I can write down a quick note about how I'm feeling about the world in general. But some of the stuff I want to express don't really make sense to express online, you know? And some stuff I don't want anyone to EVER EVER read.

Besides, who's reading this crap anyway? I don't know if any of it matters.

But I don't want to close this down. It IS free. And I'm really not being pressured to deliver any goods, not really. And I like that I can point to this if I need someone to see sample works or sample chapters or whatever. I don't know.

I do not know.

Paris Hilton For President

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Laughed my ass off. She's got my vote!

Meanderings

I am, of course, not a stranger to myself. I’ve met me a long time ago and while I didn’t like me at first, I have grown on myself—an acquired taste really—forgiving the transgressions I had unjustly inflicted on myself. I sometimes wish I was someone else. When I look at the mirror, see the ugly contorts of my face, the asymmetrical gaze, the bloodshot eyes, the flaring nostrils, I would frown and wince in disgust. And then, a voice, shrill and annoying, would say, almost protesting, “It’s what’s inside that matters.”

This makes me laugh out loud. And what insides are you talking about? Have I ever shown you honor and integrity worthy of love and admiration? I have always—without exception—always taken the easy road. What was it that blind colonel played by Al Pacino said in Scent of a Woman? Ah , yes. “I’ve always known the right path but I never took it because it’s just too hard.” I paraphrase but you get the point.

Now, I am a father, petulant still and mature, unchanged by time, changed by time, unrepentant and repentant, regretful and not so regretful. A duality that is my being. I am soulful and soulless.

One of my fears is that my daughter will grow up to discover that she didn’t have a father she could be proud of. You know those types who only visit once a year, and only to steal from their children. I can be one of those. I could be to Dimity what my mother is to me, useless and a burden and someone whom I do not feel any love for whatsoever.

Whenever Dimity smiles—and she smiles a lot—all doubts melt away. The weariness is lifted from my shoulders and I become, for a time, content to float in her unconditional joy. But this too, powerful though it may be, is fleeting. And I wake up at night, tears soaking pillows, body profusely shaking, knowing, knowing that her smile is not eternal. Someday it will end. I may walk away from her or she from me and once again the world is bleak and dead and pointless. What kind of a fucker thinks like this? Why must I subject myself to this torment?

I am, of course, not a stranger to myself. I know who I am, or think I do. I have bad thoughts all the time. My head is always going to places I don’t want to go. I hate this about me. But no one else will accept me for me except me.

Get Cracked

Over at Cracked.com: There's something very wrong about this. I didn't find it hilarious ha-ha but it's okay.

The Dark Knight Reviewed

Understand that I am biased. Know that this character shaped my childhood and his stories are as much a part of me as, say, my knees. So everything I say about The Dark Knight has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

That said, I don’t think you’d be surprised to know that I simply adored this film. This is my new favorite movie of all time. I will try not to sound too much like a little girl screaming her head off in a David Cook concert.

Here’s my review of The Dark Knight. Apologies in advance for the hyperbole:

First of all, take away the comicbook references. Forget for a moment that it’s about a man who wears a batsuit and beats up people at night. Forget the batmobile, the James Bond gadgetry, or the outlandish over-the-top villains. Forget even that it’s a summer film. Is it, at its core, a good film period (or question mark)?

The answer to that is, well, abso-FUCKING-lutely.

Is it a good police procedural? A grand heist film? A good crime story? A hostage drama? A terrorist-on-the-loose thriller? A psycho serial killer flick? A love triangle? What about just plain-old-action-type film?

Yes, on all counts.

This is the best of the best. The. Definitive. Summer. Film. The person I was with when we went to see it on Imax called it a two-hour multiple orgasmic love-fest with clowns and cape (well, she said two-hour multiple orgasms, I added in the rest). And it is. It is. It definitely feels like a two-hour climax.

The plot is simple enough. There’s this guy, right? He likes to prove a point, and the point is this: Chaos. This gangster cum terrorist cum psycho is blowing everything up and killing people and the authorities are doing all they can to stop the blood from drowning the city. See, when you look at it that way, removing all the entanglements and the trappings of comic mythology, it can star Robert De Niro and you wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

Right.

The plot is so simple it’s clever. One trick after another, every trick better than the last, with unexpected twists and turns. It’s a damn good film by that merit alone. It’s all crescendos. It picks you up, grips you by the balls and doesn’t let go until you squeak like a mouse on meth. Reminiscent of Michael Mann’s Heat, it’s all action. But not mindless action, mind you. Every action scene is built on a foundation of Story, and the consequences of these action sequences (that rhymes!) are actually, well, consequential. It’s not just things blowing up. If a building explodes, know that it’s for maximum EMOTIONAL effect. The plot might be about chaos but not the action. Everything was carefully planned and it looks impressive. Everything was calculated to achieve ecstasy. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. I did apologize for the hyperbole in advance.

Now, let’s go look at it as we would a comicbook film. First the characters:

There is no doubt that the Batman is one of the most complex, nuanced superheroes out there. This isn’t just a guy who beats up hoodlums in the night, using the bat as his animal totem. And this film highlights that. Batman (or the Batman as he’s called in this film, maybe because it feels less ridiculous if you add the The before the nom-de-plum) wants to quit, feeling like he’s not doing enough or just plain exhausted at the sheer pointlessness of his actions. Christian Bale has got this character down no problem. He’s so good at playing all at once, Bruce Wayne, the public figure, Bruce Wayne, the private person, and the Batman, the Dark Knight. Bale plays these aspects of the character distinctly. Bale’s Batman knows he’s no hero. He can’t be a hero and this makes his quest or mission all that more pointless. Yet, he rages on, doing what has to be done, not because people will love him for it or because it’s the right thing to do even, but because no one else can do it. It’s a thankless job but, like taking out the trash, as the old cliche goes, someone’s got to do it. And Bale also delivers this aura of nobility in Wayne that makes the character ultimately admirable.

Bruce Wayne, the tragic character, with all his money and power, is a lonely one. He’s not like Spider-man who has Mary Jane Watson to go home to at night, after he puts away his work jammies. Which brings us to the Maggie Gyllenhaul character, Rachel Dawes. I don’t think Katie Holmes is a bad actress at all. However, Maggie puts so much more into this character than Holmes ever did. The few scenes she was in, she was able to turn this token love-interest into a real person. She’s so real in fact that, in one scene, her moment in the film, you just wanna reach out to her and hug her. You cheer her on and root for her and want so bad for everything to turn out okay in the end. You want the Spider-man 2 ending for her, you know, she and Batman kissing on the rooftop with a bright full moon looming in the background. Sadly, and I don’t think I’m spoiling it for anyone to say this, this is not Spider-man. There will be no holding hands or waiting for the hero to come home once the never-ending battle gets its temporary reprieve at the end of the film.

I think, of all the characters in the movie, Gary Oldman’s interpretation of James Gordon will be the most underrated. Yet, he is a far more important supporting character than all the rest combined. This James Gordon is lifted directly from the comics. The best part is that he’s utilized here more so than the first one did. And Gary Oldman got to act to. I mean, seriously act his heart out. All the characters have their moment in this film and James Gordon’s moment is one of the most powerful.

Aaron Eckhart plays Harvey Dent. The thing that was impressive in his performance is that, yes, you know he’s going to turn into Two-face near the end, yes, he will lose everything he’s ever worked for, yes, he’s a tragic character. BUT for some reason you still hoped, while watching him, hoped that he’ll make it in the end. He was that good, that real.

Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are perfect in their roles as the Dark Knight’s advisers. Two sides, two perspectives. One of them thinks Bruce Wayne can do better. One of them thinks that he’s going too far.

And then there’s the character that everyone is talking about and will be talking about in the coming months. Everything that needed to be said about the Heath Ledger character had been said. I don’t know what I can add to it. Was the performance his best ever? Was it really as good as everyone claims it to be?

Yes.

More Loki than Pan, this character is malicious, creepy, vicious, brilliant, insane, almost magical in his menace. The ultimate villain. My companion said her skin crawled in every scene the Joker was in. I believe her. It was the same way for me. I cringed, actually cringed, every time he showed up. You forget completely that this guy died of an accidental overdose. Heath Ledger disappeared into the role and you’re left with a character far, far more memorable than Hannibal Lecter or—shall I say it? why not?—Darth Vader.

Over-all verdict: Let me just say that this is I believe the best comicbook movie ever. This is it. This, ladies and gentle-geeks, is our Godfather 2, our Citizen Kane, our Apocalypse Now. This film will be remembered as one of the most brilliant, most shining, most stunning, most shining examples the superhero genre has to offer.

I have no doubt that Heath Ledger will be at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the Academy. To deny him that would be tantamount to indicting all previous and future winners. If the Academy Awards is meant to celebrate the best in the industry, they CANNOT not acknowledge Ledger’s performance here.

This film also deserves, I believe, nominations for Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Director, and Best Picture. It really is that good. If this one doesn’t take the Oscars next year the way The Return of the King had a few years back, nothing in comics’ arsenal ever will.

Ghanda’s Tale, A Space Drama: Chapter One Excerpt

Part One: The Empress and the Storyteller’s Tale

Chapter One:


The room is not infinite. But it is large enough that the difference hardly matters. The ceiling is a deep purple and so high that looking at it gives you the sensation of falling. The horizon, where the ceiling marries intimately with the floor so that you do not know where one ends and the other begins, the color is darker, colder. Almost black but not quite.

They say, if you walk, it will take you twenty lifetimes without stopping to sleep or eat to get from one end of the room to the next. They say it is bigger than a world, perhaps my world?

They say this but I do not believe it. It is a fairy tale they formed because they are the kind of people who like to exaggerate or minimize for the sake of story.

I believe if you start walking by the time you are born until the day you die, stopping only once to sleep and eat, you can cross the room. You can cross it regardless how long your lifetime lasts because it is not infinite. It just looks like it.
#
I am in the middle of the room. It is cold here and I am wearing nothing more than the traditional handmaiden’s gown made of a fabric that is almost silk but not quite. It is light and transparent enough to see my soul and I feel the coldness touch my back like a rough lover on a bad night.

I did not walk all the way to the room’s middle. I do not have half a lifetime to spare. Instead, I arrive at the middle the same way everyone does it. I have used a door that appears and disappears in the middle of the room.
#
In the middle of the room. Yes. The middle. I know this is the middle of the room because She is here. She is always in the middle of the citadel. That is her place.

She is Her Highness, Her Majestic, Queen of all the known Galaxy, Goddess of the Stars, Empress X’un Tchai.
And I am Her Highness’ storyteller.

Where there used to be a throne, there is now a bed. It is regal and large enough to accommodate an orgy of a moderate size (and indeed there were many moments in the past that it had been the site of many a debauched acts).

I stand in attention, on the end of the bed and I wait, patiently, for Her Majesty to speak. She has been silent since I came into the room. It appears that she is thinking a thought so deep that she is completely immersed in it; drowning in it. This is unusual. She almost never appears to ponder in front of her subjects. For her, it is a sign of weakness. She always knows what to say, how to react, always on her guard. She is always ready. Always.

For the first time since I entered, she turns her eyes to me, and I await her orders. She frowns as she studies me, curiously, as if seeing me for the first time. It is as if she do not know why I am standing before her. And still I await her orders.

“Ghanda.”

She mentions my name like she is testing a new word, a new flavor in her mouth. She smiles, recognizing me finally.

“Sit on the bed.”

I hesitate. She sees this.

“You are thinking of traditions and protocols. The what-to-do and what-not-to-do in the presence of the Empress.”
“Traditions and protocols, as you so say,” I answer, bowing my head low. “The council would strictly frown upon a handmaiden touching the Empress’, er, items, so to speak.”

“The council is not here. I am. And I gave you an order. Would you disobey me to please the council?”

“Please pardon your humble servant’s transgression.”

Reluctantly, unable to know how exactly I would go about doing it, I sat on the very edge of the Empress’ bed. She reaches out her hand. It is old, like the rest of her, wrinkled and frail.

“Take my hand.”

I do not move for a moment. As far as I know, no one has ever touched an Empress. They say if you do, your death will not be swift. It will be slow and agonizing. They say you will live the fullest of your life but you would rather it end.

“You do not have to,” she says as if reading my mind, “but I am asking.”

I reach out my hand and I touch hers. I am surprised, in spite of myself. What have I expected? Something electric. A current running down my spine. I have expected a sensation of unfathomable bliss or pain or misery. I have touched God’s hand. I have expected almost anything except the touch of a frail, old woman, slightly quivering as if surprised by the warmth of my hand As if it is the first time she was ever touched by someone other than herself.

“That feels good,” she says, smiling.

In her hand, I feel the cold metal of her galactic ring. Inadvertently, unable to stop myself, my eyes fall on the ring. I regret it immediately.

“You are looking at my ring.”

“Yes, your grace. I apologize. I did not mean to…”

“Come now,” she says, seeing my reaction, “we have violated many formalities thus far. What is one more?”
We are silent for a while. The Empress falls back to her deep thoughts and we do not let go of our hands. After a while, she turns back to me.

“I am Empress of the Galaxy,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“You are.”

“Who am I?”

“You are Empress of the Galaxy, Goddess of the Stars. Queen.” I affirm. This is an automatic answer, something I do not have to think about.

“I am.” And she laughs. A healthy laugh. A laughter that did not come from an old woman but someone who once was young, who once was not queen.

She says after her laughter, “Do you know that with a snap of a finger, I can destroy billions of worlds. With but a whim, I can order the extinction of entire races? I have so much power. Absolute power. They say absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you believe this?”

“I… I cannot say, milady,” I answer.

“You cannot say or you are uncertain? Tell me, Ghanda, are you scared of me?”

I should say yes but for whatever reason I do not.

“I should be.”

“Why aren’t you then?”

“I should be,” I repeat. “Because of what you just said. In your hands, you hold my life and billions of others.”

“But you are not scared of me.”

I take my bow, avoiding her emerald eyes, unwilling to betray myself.

“You were staring at this,” she shows me her ring. “The galactic ring. The symbol of the Galactic power. Whoever wears this holds absolute power to everything. Whoever has this ring is God with the powers of God. Are you frightened of this instead?”

“No.”

“And well you shouldn’t be. In itself, it bears no magic. No power to turn men to dust and order starships to soar through the stars. But it is a symbol. A very powerful symbol. It is important but not as important as the Empress who wears it.”

Again, silence. Her thoughts once again flood her inexorably until her entire being is lost, the life behind her eyes gone, momentarily fleeting.

“Who are you?”

I look at her, for a moment thinking she has gone mad. But looking into her eyes, I understand the question fully. And I stop. I do not know the answer.

“I am,” she says when no words come out of my mouth, “I was born in the magnificent waterworld of Nas Liip. Under the raging currents of the seas, in my home city of Arrdiktd, my birth was anticipated by my people. I was taken from my mother’s womb, wet and slippery with her placenta, by the High Priest of Shrgig, raised me up for all the millions to see, spoke the holy words of Dhartish and anointed me as queen. So you see, from the moment of my birth I was already queen. If I was not queen of the galaxy, I would still be queen. To a lesser extent, yes, with far fewer subjects and lesser powers but queen nonetheless. I do not know how else to exist except be queen. Do you know what that is like?” She pauses and looks at me. But I remain silent. “Of course you do not. How could you? Leave me. I want to rest.”
#
I am in my apartment, staring out into space. I have that luxury, to watch the stars at my own leisure, to ponder their existence. What are stars? When I was a child, my mother thought me a poem, which I would sing whenever I see them in the sky or their five-point representations in school. How I wonder what you are. Sometimes, when I look at the stars, I ponder about my existence.


“Who are you?” The Empress had asked. Not out of madness.

How I wonder what I am.

If I want to, I can sleep. That too is my luxury. But I do not sleep. I rarely close my eyes these days. I feel closer to the darkness when I do. When I close my eyes, I see visions of a two-year old stout boy. I watch him tramping around me, still unsure of his own two feet. But I am there and I will catch him if he should trample. I watch him laugh and shriek with joy. He has his arms open and he is coming towards me. And laughing, all the while laughing. He jumps up, into my arms he flies, and I hear his voice, so tender and loving. His brown, smooth skin pressed against me. He looks at me with bright wide eyes and in the black of his eyes I see my reflection. This is when I wake up, sweating despite the cold, and I cry once again. I cry. Just like the million times I cried before, I cry.

It does not get easier.
#
I take a walk now through the cosmos, galaxies swirling above, below, front, back, on both sides of me. In the distance, I see a star explode into a supernova. The light it produces is tremendous. It spreads across the universe until only white envelopes me. And though I could not hear it, the blast must have produced a sound that resonates to all the eternity. When the bright white light clears, the dead sun folds into itself to produce what many call a black hole. It absorbs everything, the hundreds of planets around it, its neighboring stars – not escapes the blackness of the hole, not even light.

This is an illusion.

In reality, I am walking in the grand halls of the citadel, situated in the middle of a star ten times the size of my homeworld’s Sun. The creators of the citadel were an arrogant lot, believing in nothing but their own ego. They wanted to show just how clever they could be, how brilliant, how majestic – hence, the illusion of walking through the cosmos. Hence the light display. But in truth, I am unimpressed and quite bored. One does not need prodding to see the majesty of the stars. One needs only to look up at the evening sky.

But an evening sky implies a world from which to make the observation. In space there is no such thing. There is darkness, perpetual and encompassing. I have not had a world under my feet for a long, long time.

Approaching me, walking on space as well, is the High Priest Laan. His face is arrogant and he looks at me through contemptuous, beady spider eyes. He is eight feet tall with the face of a salmon. I do not mean this as an insult. I mean he does have the face of a salmon.

“Greetings, Storyteller,” Laan says, his salmon mouth uttering my title like a cancer. He clearly does not like me. Me and my favored position with the Empress.

“Greetings, o lord,” I say, raising my right hand to touch my lips and then my forehead. A sign of respect among equals. I pretend not to hear his grunt. He does not consider me an equal and hates the fact that I do not fail to remind him that I am.

“How is our Empress doing?” he asks. If he is human, I would imagine him sneering and gloating.

“She’s becoming stronger now. She’ll be back on her feet in no time at all,” I say. I lie. He is amused by my lie. He knows as well as everybody else what the empress’ real situation is.

“Really? This is not what I heard. I heard she is dying. How very imaginative your mind is, storyteller. You are truly a gifted and loyal subject of the empress. I shall take particular pleasure in your servitude once I am emperor.”

He does not hide the fact that he is eagerly awaiting the empress to die. Everyone believes he is the most likely inheritor of the galaxy. He knows this. He is certainly old enough and powerful enough and has been waiting long enough. And I shudder at the possibility. He sees the fear in my eyes. It pleases him.

“When I am emperor, you shall… have to prove your worth, storyteller.”

He reaches a slimy tentacle to me cheek. I move my head back to avoid his touch.

“When you are emperor,” I say, the toxic poison in my voice audible even to me, “you may tie me up in chains of iron and rust, on any rock, on top of the highest peek of the farthest planet in a desolated solar system of your choosing. You may leave me there to be eaten by creatures that soar above or lurk on the ground. You may do this when you are emperor and I would have no objections. When and if you ever become the emperor.”

“Such hostility. What happened to you, storyteller, that you have forgotten your true self? You used to have such humour about you.”

He walks away, smirking. With him, he takes his condescension and his pity. I stand in the middle of the cosmic display and none of it registers in my head. I see millions of pinpoints of lights in a grand blanket of darkness and yet I do not see them really. A memory burns in my head, the face of child with shiny matted, black hair and eyes, a smile, greasy cheeks and nose. I see him running in a field of tall grass, so tall that he is almost impossible to see (but I see him perfectly), towards me, arms spread open.

This is when the memory turns into a dream. We embrace, tightly, so tightly that we become one being. I feel his heart beating gently against me. This part, this dream, is such a cruel one because I know it has never happened and therefore can never be a memory.
#
The room is not infinite. But it is cold. So cold that infinity hardly matters. It is as cold and as final as death. Once again, I am seated on the edge of the empress’ deathbed, serving her with my company.

I find that lately the empress and I have reversed our roles. She is content in telling me her tales and I am content to listen. She is unraveling, all the pain, the joy, exasperation, anger in her slowly seeping out. You can feel them in the air. She is giving them away. Everything that gives her life meaning, she is giving away one by one.

“Who are you?” she asks as soon as she stops talking about her brief but eventful interlude with the nefarious tyrant of Grosyom. She asks this of me almost always now. And either I answer in silence or I mutter that I do not understand the question. I always beg her highness’ forgiveness.

“I am dying,” she tells me.

“You will recover from this, your highness,” I say, not really believing it, but refusing to hamper her hope.

“Do not lie to me, Ghanda,” she says, stirring uncomfortably in her bed, “I do not want lies. For years I have made lying the cornerstone of my empire. I lie. People around me lie. When I ordered the genocide of the K’quec, I told the council it was for the greater good. Twenty billion people dead. An entire solar system, with all its planets and all the ecosystems in them. What possible greater good would justify such a slaughter? But the council spared my life not because I was right but because they believed my lie. We tell each other soothing fictions and tell ourselves it is for the good of the empire.” This last remark makes her laugh out loud. It is a hoarse laughter, filled with pain and phlegm.

“We lie even to ourselves,” she says, tears flowing freely. In all my time as a handmaiden, not once did I see milady cry. It is disconcerting, to see her so vulnerable and weak. “Always we lie. I am dying, Ghanda. I do not wish to fill my remaining moments with futile lies.”

“Forgive your servant,” I say, bowing down, “I shall lie to you no more.”

“Even here, in my place, in this room, I hear the whispers outside. I hear what my subjects are saying. ‘The empress is dying. The empress is almost gone.’ They are merely waiting.”

“They expect Laan to be the next ruler of your domain. And Laan is walking around like he is already king.” I do not know why I mention this. I surprise myself, acting like a frightened little child, running to her mother to save her from the big bad wolf. Could it be that I am looking for her to indeed rescue me from the wrath of Laan? But what can she do, once she is gone? Everything she has ever done, the next ruler can easily undo. No rule can she make in life that he could not unbind when she’s dead. What can she do? Except perhaps elect someone else to be ruler. Still, I do not mouth these words. I do not say what I so desperately want, need to say.

“And this upsets you.” This is not a question. It is an observation. “When I am gone, Laan will bear more power than he has ever had before. His influence will be wider and his faithfuls will be countless.”
I take in a deep sigh. It escapes from me, without my approval.

“But he will not be emperor.”

I turn to the empress and look at her eyes to see if I indeed heard what I heard. I survey her face to find a trace of humour in it, to see if she is joking. She is deadly serious.

“Does this please you?” she asks, smiling but not without twitching. The pain is all over her body now, like an irritating itch you cannot ignore.

I nod, despite myself.

“Good. Something less to think about, hmmm?”

I do not answer.

“You have had a hard life,” she goes on to say. “I can tell. How old are you in your personal time?”

“I… I stopped counting a long time ago.”

“You do not know how old you are?”

“No. I do not.”

“And you do not wish to know?”

“It… it does not matter. It stopped mattering a long, long time ago.”

“I see.”

Could she really? I doubt it. I doubt if she could ever truly see.

“Tell me a tale.”

Ah. My appointed task. I think for a moment of a story worth of the empress. There are many stories in the known universe and there are many that I can speak of. I position myself closer to the empress.

“Once, this happened such a long time ago, in a place far from here…”

“I do not wish to hear fairy tales this time,” she says, looking deep into my eyes.

I stop talking altogether.

“Tell me a true tale. Tell me about your life.” She holds my hand tightly. It is cold and almost dead. I fear that her wrinkly trembling hand would crumble into dust any moment now.

I do not answer. I do not know how to refuse the empress.

“As a final token from the storyteller to the empress,” she says, almost pleadingly. Finally I nod.

Why not? For the empress. For one final time.

“There are places,” I say, beginning again, “there are places in the known universe that can only be described as perfect…”

Is It Here Yet?

I got Imax tickets for Dark Knight and I couldn’t be happier. The ONLY film I’ve been excited to see since the last Batman film (and I didn’t even watch that on Imax!) All the hype! Reviewers are talking about Oscar awards and box-office success. I think this is it. The big one. The one that will definitely cement comics as a legitimate source of serious material for the silver screen. Like books but with pictures. (wink wink.) God, I am salivating like a dog.

Holy Bat-mania!

Is this going to be the best movie of the year or what? I’m so freaking stoked I can barely breathe! I, of course, will be watching this on IMAX! That is, if I can get bloody tickets!

Fuck Your Mom

This is unbelievably funny. I wish I could get my act together and make a short.

What's in a Name?

Someone pointed this out to me. I thought the first variant was apt.