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You should be watching this.

Opened in Manila last Wednesday, 26 August.

All I knew about it was the name above the name above the title. It was enough. Clever, inventive, oddly touching. And political.

Some of my friends got headaches after watching Up in digital 3D. Bernard-Henri Not Levy says the trick to not getting a headache is not to tilt your head. The screen is polarized, so if you watch it with your head on your boyfriend’s shoulder, you see the image double. Headache! Maybe you and date could sit in different sections of the theatre.

The first message I got upon waking was from my friend saying, “Reserve all your friends copies of today’s Philippine Star. I myself bought three copies. Tell you the complete story later.”

So I looked at the front page of the Star. Clearly he meant this.

US Special Forces training in Zamboanga in 2002. Photo by Val Rodriguez.

So my friend was in the car with his mom. He picked up the Star and was immediately hypnotised by the front page, and I don’t mean the story of the mango that had just made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

His mom looked straight ahead at the traffic.

After several minutes of silence, he was moved to say something.

“Ang laki ng mangga,” he said. (That’s a big mango.)

“Oo nga,” his mom replied. (Yes, it is.)

End of story.

My friend Ernie has decided to give up the comparatively carefree existence of a tenant and buy himself a condominium. I cited the advantages of renting over owning, but you cannot deter a gay man on a real estate quest. I’m not in the market myself—basic poverty—but I tagged along in case I ever need to write a case study for a journal of psychiatry.

For perpetual singles, the decision to buy a domicile of one’s own is the equivalent of getting married. Some of us simply cannot commit: What if I have to move to Budapest on short notice, what would I do with my flat? What if Marat Safin is suddenly available and he insists we live in Moscow? Those who do take the plunge have to vet their options as if they were getting a husband: condo ownership lasts 99 years, which is longer than even the best marriages. . .

Veal Estate in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.

New(ish) from Anvil Publishing: Cory: An Intimate Portrait, a collection of first-hand accounts by the people who knew and worked with President Aquino, edited by Margie Penson Juico. The writers include former occupants of the Premier Guest House where Mrs. Aquino held office, cabinet secretaries, heads of government agencies, members of the legislature, local government officials, ambassadors, soldiers, the religious, representatives of NGOs and charitable organizations, and friends.

Cory: An Intimate Portrait, is now available at all National Bookstores.

You can win one of five copies of this book in our Alternate History Challenge.

The premise: What if Cory Aquino had gone back to Boston?

What if, after her husband’s funeral, Tita Cory had returned to her comfortable old life? What if she never entered politics?

What would the Philippines be like today?

We will accept your answers in all literary forms (sonnets, screenplays, stories, literary essays, fake news reports etc), genres (science-fiction, horror, comedy), and media (including video, just send us the link).

Submit your entries by 10 September 2009. (I find that the less time people have, the less they can overthink their entry and the more interesting the result.)

You retain all rights to your work, but do acknowledge where the idea came from. My blog post on Nexus’s 100 percent voter registration program was picked up by a major daily—never mind that the source was not acknowledged, as we are used to that, but the information printed was erroneous. I thought print journalists were supposed to have more rigorous standards than bloggers, or at least better fact-checkers.

Readers who join this competition are automatically invited to the Good Ideas forum.

Covers do matter. We prize books for what’s inside them, but the way they look can influence our decision to read them. It’s not simply shallowness: books are still physical objects, subject to design principles. (If you prefer e-books, this is not your problem.)

Consider the Penguin Classics Deluxe editions. Whenever I go to Fully Booked I have to remind myself that I already own a copy of Pride and Prejudice and really do not need another one even if it is pretty. But it’s a struggle.

What is it about Jane Austen? There’s an entire publishing sector devoted to spinoffs of Pride and Prejudice: P&P as told by Mr. Darcy, the diaries of Mr. Darcy, the adventures of the Bennett-Darcy kids, P&P + Zombies and so on. Bridget Jones’s Diary is an hommage and so is Metropolitan, Clueless is a modern-day version of Emma, and I’m surprised no one’s doing Persuasion in modern dress. To think that critics have always sniped at Austen for ignoring the political events of her day (Napoleon does not turn up to knock Bingley off his horse). Could it be that that is why we love her?

Today at National Bookstore I spotted this:

The Winchester Austen—new editions of P&P, S&S, Northanger Abbey and Emma that look like large Moleskine notebooks. I had to back away from the shelf.

This is my philosophy of class, I only wish I’d said it.

Who said it? (Easy.)

You get no prize but the satisfaction of knowing you are right. Which is all we live on.

* * * * *

Conclusion: Being right is its own reward.