Street artist fra.biancoshock installed an ingenious antistress station in a Milan bus shelter consisting of bubble wrap sheets in three stress relief dosages: 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes. via Laughing Squid
Offices could have a padded cell in which stressed-out employees can scream their lungs out, punch the wall, or break a set of cheap plates (bit more difficult with padding).
We wrote an ironic geek rom-com with Mike Alcazaren. It hasn’t been green-lit or cast yet, or funded, but these are the actors Mike can see in the roles. (He designed the poster; we have nothing to do with the color pink. We tried recently but it didn’t take.) Let’s just say it involves comics and Kawaii Idol. It would’ve covered tennis too but we agreed that that might be too crowded.
Click on the poster to enlarge.
Expect a surfeit of girls starting a wave at a concert or dressing like Lady Gaga. How unique. What about
1. Trying out as ball girls at the US Open. The little kids will probably kick your ass but it’s about working up the nerve to do it. If you make it we’ll pay you extra to “accidentally” kick certain players in the face as you retrieve their balls.
2. Spending a couple of weeks in the foreign country where the language you’ve been learning for years is spoken—and speaking only that.
3. Building a particle accelerator, armored exoskeleton, jetpack or other science project. Science high school students: You can get funding for your more outré ideas—without having to write a grant proposal, before you even publish in a peer-reviewed journal!
4. Self-publishing a book you and your best friend wrote.
5. Making a movie. P500,000 is the same amount as a Cinemalaya grant.
6. Starting a non-profit organization for literacy, safe water, or a cause you feel very strongly about.
7. Auditioning for spots with the Kirov, the Joffrey Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey or Martha Graham. For dancers naturally.
8. We would enroll in an Archaeology course then join an expedition. Always wanted to be Indiana Jones.
9. We would go to Space Camp!
Eighty people showed up. Massive relief as we expected ten. (Admittedly the ideal number would’ve been zero. We don’t like parties. Crowds in general make us go into lockdown unless it is a concert.) To ensure attendance we considered inviting celebrities but decided to keep it amongst ourselves. This party was for our readers; we don’t know if those people read.
Our fifth anniversary event was hosted by Jump Experience Center, a showcase of convergent technologies from PLDT and Smart and a high-visibility platform for strategic brand marketing and communications. Thank you, Jump, for hosting the party. We really liked the bar chow.
Since our site has turned five we presented five awards to friends and readers, beginning with Best Transition from Old School to New Media to National Bookstore. National Bookstore continues to make books easily accessible and affordable to the general public while building up its online presence and preparing for the next stage in the evolution of publishing. The award was accepted by National Bookstore’s Xandra Ramos Padilla and Miguel Ramos.
We handed the Awaaard for Best Use of Digital Technology to Raymond Lee, executive producer, writer, and tireless promoter of the surprise indie hit Zombadings 1: Patayin Sa Shokot Si Remington. In the photo: Raymond with our friend Jerome Gomez, managing editor of Esquire, whom we hijacked on his way to his birthday dinner. Happy Birthday, Jerome! As Raymond noted, his birthday is on the 10th day of the 11th month and he has 12 digits on his hands.
L-R: Stella, balqis, listbonne and Brewhuh23. Brewhuh23 is the recipient of our Best Online Stalker Researcher award for her unparalleled skill at rooting out people’s deep, dark secrets. If you have a crush on anyone, Brewhuh23 will find the information that will de-crush you instantly. Seriously, we’re going to open a detective agency. Note hoop earrings so large she can never wear them on the MRT.
The Readers’ Choices for Best Subject/Columnist and Best Commenter were determined through online voting. For Best Subject/Columnist you picked our indefatigable agony aunt Auntie Janey, who will not show her face lest those who have followed her prescriptions chase her with an ax. For Best Commenter there could be only one: Momelia our resident tattooed badass.
With his super-sight Momelia spotted an interesting-looking guest. “Si Sam Milby ba yon?” he demanded. (Brewhuh23 thought it was Joem Bascon.) It was in fact one of our LitWit winners, Evan, who is also in our Reading Group for The Sense of an Ending. Talent scouts, please leave your contact information in Comments.
Class picture: The last to leave the party. Thank you for showing up. Socializing in large groups wherein we are the featured entertainment is not one of our favorite activities, but you make it comparatively painless. Special thanks to Jackie O for the wine. And Miguel for the signed Walking Dead, Kim for the book (We confess we never liked Sylvia Plath and prefer Ted Hughes actually), Stella for the Eye of Sauron and Jules for the Kahlua.
Thanks to Smart for the raffle prizes: the Netphone 701 went to the chronicler of boredom and the Samsung Galaxy Y went to our friend, journalist Stella Arnaldo. We swear that the raffle was not rigged. When we saw their names in the fishbowl we tried to avoid them but they kept coming up.
The FEU campus in Manila
The Lamp, the official publication of the FEU Institute of Nursing, invited us to give a talk on writing to its editorial staff. We’ve given many talks, some of them quite eventful (People bursting into tears), some underscoring the fact of our irrelevance (“What do you have against tweeting that we went to a Mini Stop and had a Coke?”), some laugh riots (Teachers are an easy audience, esp if the speaker is the child of a teacher). The worst talks are the ones where you feel like you’re blabbering in a vacuum and everyone is having an out-of-body-experience from sheer boredom. We never want to be part of those again.
So before accepting the invitation we requested that we be made to talk for 5-10 minutes, and then answer questions from the audience. That way we’d be certain that at least one person at a time was interested in the topic under discussion. This turned out to be an excellent format.
Thank you to the alumni and staff of The Lamp for the invitation. We enjoyed the talk so much we’ve decided to give more talks to students—provided we follow the 10-minute speech followed by 1 or 2 hours of questions format. Here are some of the things we talked about.
If you’d like to invite us to give a talk at your school, please contact Michael Jimenez, mychael@hotmail.com.
The floor of the College of Nursing
Kong Hei Fat Choy! Welcome the Year of the Wabbit with the Daily Gazette: a picture of Gaz posted every day for no good reason. Witness a vast range of goofy expressions, silly tricks, vanishing clothes, general hunkiness, and declarations of man-love. We provide the photos, you tell us what you think. Yes, let’s make it all about you.
Members Only for now. (Gaz doesn’t think anyone would be interested. We like a little doubt in the good-looking.) To register, drop us a line in Comments and we’ll email you an invitation. (Please check the address you used to register on this site.) We only have 90 invitations, so sign up immediately.
Photo: Rejected Facial Expression #43-B
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We will be unconscious between 3am and 11am so if you want an invitation, please email Brewhuh at angelagenevieve@gmail.com. We have shifts!
Warning: NSFW.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>