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As promised, we met with the winners of LitWit Challenge 3.11: Stabbed In The Heart to present them with their prizes. The prize was a hardcover Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. As two winners were declared, we needed another copy of the Collected Lydia Davis. Unfortunately the bookstore had run out of copies (I had forced friends to buy them when they first came out), so we had to find an acceptable substitute.

Sum: forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman is a collection of vignettes by neuroscientist David Eagleman. The reviews have been rapturous, and the book has been compared to the work of Italo Calvino and Alan Lightman. So we got a copy of Sum, and since Cacs arrived on time he got to choose between the two books. He picked Sum.

The winners of LitWit Challenge 3.11: Stabbed In The Heart, Cacs and Momelia, with their prizes.

Momelia has some intriguing tattoos.

“What fantastic tattoos,” we said. “When did you get them?”

“I used to hang out in a pool hall,” said Momelia.

“What does that one mean?”

“Fire and Passion.”

“How do you know it’s Fire and Passion and not Pyre and Fashion?”

You don’t.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by our friends at National Bookstore.

Roger Federer defeats Rafael Nadal 6-3. 3-6. 6-1 to win the year-ending ATP Tour Final for the fifth time.

This is only their second meeting of the year. Nadal won the previous match, in Madrid.

It has been an extraordinarily good week for the acquisition of earrings. Our taste in earrings is very specific. We are not interested in expensive jewelry. We like odd, eccentric, bizarre.

Like these Scrabble tiles.

My name will beat yours at Scrabble, unless your name is Jessiqa.

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Recycled tubes of instant glue. It’s a rugby joke, get it? The glue and Scrabble earrings are by Anak ng Kwek Kwek; Raymond found them at Cubao Expo.

Ricky gave me these trompe l’oeil chandelier earrings from ac632.

Crocheted earrings Noel bought at Resurrection in QC (second floor of the building that houses Black Soup and Van Gogh is Bipolar).

And the latest in practical/ornamental brilliance from James Reyes: earrings made of garment fasteners.

While wandering around the bookstore I spotted a stack of books by Charles Bukowski. Charles Bukowski*. In National Bookstore. Will wonders never cease.

They had Slouching Toward Nirvana; Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way; Pulp; Women; and others. This title jumped off the shelf.

I opened the book at random and the first poem I read was about a dog who had been hit by a car. Dammit I couldn’t leave the book after that, it would be like leaving the dog bleeding on the street.

So now I use the book as an oracle. I ask a question, open the book, read out the first lines I see, and there’s my answer. For instance: “Love is a Dog from Hell, what about people who want to write?”

Love is a Dog from Hell said:

Click on the image to read the poem, I’m too lazy to type it out.

Excellent advice.

* If you’ve never heard of Charles Bukowski, he’s the guy Mickey Rourke played in Barfly.

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Cacs and Momelia, don’t forget our coffee at 3pm. I’ll be the one in the weird earrings.

Roger Federer trounced Novak Djokovic 6-1, 6-4 while Rafael Nadal beat Andy Murray 7-6(5), 3-6, 7-6(6) to set up the dream final at the ATP World Tour Finals in London.

For this LitWit Challenge, Conversations in restaurants, we asked you to write a story in the form of a dialogue with the young man in the photos.

The Yucch-meter wants to know when you plan to submit your stories because she has not found a real one among the entries posted so far. She sees transcripts of the authors’ (pedestrian) personal fantasies, atrocious imitations of British speech, irritating knockoffs of American indie movie dialogue, cloying simulations of Star Cinema romantic comedy drivel, and other forms of masturbatory activity.

Writing is not about having sex with yourself. Writing is about having sex with language. Try again.