krazykuya's Xanga

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 02:11:54 GMT

a watershed moment in american cinema, and perhaps the greatest of van damme's illustrious acting career.

http://host31.ipowerweb.com/%7Edialerwo/images/vandamme.gif

Monday, February 21, 2005

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:51:28 GMT

i've decided i want to produce an all-Filipino Broadway rhythm and dance revue and call it "Bring in Pinoys, Bring in Da' Funk"

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 03:21:30 GMT

Ash Wednesday. “Remember man that thou art dust and to dust you shall return,” the priest says as he traces the form of a cross on my forehead.

Dust to dust...

I was a gross anatomy TA for all of January. Day after day, dissection after dissection, little by little, scalpel in hand, I cut away for my curious students at what remains when life leaves... take away the skin... fat and fascia... take away fat and fascia... muscles, arteries, nerves, veins... take them away... bone...

It seemed at times that there in the lab I did no more than the work of nature and the grave... deconstructing... disassembling. In my hands, not a name, but something once attached to a name... I was aware of how truly a piece of matter the human body is when life leaves it… cold, silent, unaware... dust. And yet in life, that very dust was more precious than diamonds, gold, or anything else in the world... It laughed and loved, was treasured and adored...

The words “thou art dust” ring true to me. I know and I've held what this body and those of my patients are and will one day be. And rather than sadden me, it reminds me that the material me is made important and valuable by the immaterial me… the me that hopes and dreams, feels and prays… and the same is true of those people I will take care of when I'm given that responsibility one day. May I never forget to care for the person while I treat the body, lest all my work turn only into dust.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 05:09:01 GMT

Mike: "What are you giving up for Lent?"
Friend: "Carbs."

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Sun, 06 Feb 2005 05:35:42 GMT

I love writing letters. But one doesn't get a letter in the mail too often these days and I think that's to be lamented. The letter... and i do mean the handwritten letter... not the typed business letter one gets informing them of their excellent credit or acceptance into college... the handwritten letter is a dying art, an anachronism of a romantic age supplanted by the modern... by email, instant messaging, and texting... hi-tech couriers that can transport a message across the distance of a street or ocean in less time than a single breath. Admittedly, there is not only a convenience but a benefit to this immediacy. As a conversation is being sustained electronically across the distances, so too a friendship, with all the simple ease of typing a few witty words and pressing send. When such correspondence can take seconds, what need have we of letters, then, when they can take days and even weeks?

My former girlfriend and I used to exhange letters frequently in seeming ignorance of the fact that we spoke daily by phone, by email, and by instant messaging. It wasn't that there was something to be said to each other that wasn't said in our day to day communication, for all things of importance were said with the immediacy that modern life affords us. No, there was never anything new said in those letters we would write. But there was something in them that could not be conveyed in any other way, something that exists in the deliberateness of each pen stroke, in the crease of the paper, in the ink, in the waiting and anticipation of that envelope's arrival. A letter carefully crafted is a labor of one's heart that says to whom it's written, "For you I'm making a gift. I've taken an afternoon or an evening of my time and devoted it only to you, to thinking of you in a quiet place and choosing carefully every word I'm using. And I've used my hands the way a sculptor or a painter uses his, so that what you've opened is something special as you are special to me."

But I think my explanation is not nearly so eloquent as this one, taken from a letter the male lead in A.R. Gurney's play "Love Letters" writes to explain to the woman he loves why he chooses to write to her...

"... This letter, which I'm writing with my own hand, with my own pen, in my own penmanship, comes from me and no one else, and is a present of myself to you. It's not typewritten, though I've learned how to type. There's no copy of it, though I suppose I could use a carbon. And it's not a telephone call, which is dead as soon as it is over. No, this is just me, me the way I write, the way my writing is, the way I want to be to you, giving myself to you across a distance, not keeping or retaining any part of it for myself, giving this piece of myself to you totally, and you can tear me up and throw me out, or keep me, and read me today, tomorrow, any time you want until you die."

Friday, February 04, 2005

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 00:49:17 GMT

... a conversation I had recently about Valentine's day...

E----: "I'm actually kinda glad that Valentine's falls on a Monday this year."

Mike: "Why's that?"

E----: "Well, it'll just feel less lame if I stay in on a Monday night than if it were a Saturday night, like last year, you know? Cause I wouldn't feel like everyone, regardless of whether they have a Valentine or not, is out partying except me... which would be more the case on a Saturday."

Mike: "I see. Well, ya know.... Valentine's Day isn't really a day you should go out, anyway, ... It'd be sacrilege."

E----: "Sacrilege?"

Mike: "Yah, ya know.... St. Valentine's Day is really a religious observance... I think you should stay at home, pray, and meditate on the life of St. Valentine, the 1st century Christian martyr who was beheaded by the Roman emperor and who the day is named after. Don't let the lovey dovey stuff take away from you that day's solemnity"

E----: "He really got beheaded?"

Mike: "Well, yah... that's what Valentine's Day has always been about... losing your head."

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:28:23 GMT

those of you who are catholic or went to catholic school may remember that today is the feast of st. blaise... that's right... the "blessing of the throats" in which the priest takes two crossed candles and places them against your neck as he prays for your health...

there are some catholics who only go to church twice a year, on christmas and easter...

then there are those that go to church twice a year, but only when stuff is being given out (i.e., ashes and palms)

but there is yet another group that comes only once a year, and only on that special day when they get to stick their necks between two candles... who knows why... the candles aren't even lit... where's the thrill in that?? ... although, when i was an altar boy i tried to convince the priests that they actually should light the candles, but no one seemed to like that idea as much as i did....

Monday, January 31, 2005

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 00:56:53 GMT

Am currently watching "the Scorpion King" on tv starring the Rock and Kelly Hu. Some people remember where and exactly what they were doing the moment President Kennedy was shot or the Challenger exploded. Me, I'll never forget where I was the first time I saw the episode of Growing Pains where Kelly Hu played Mike Sever's Hawaiian love interest. Such are the moments that define our lives.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 07:47:48 GMT

i'd like to meet and date a girl with the name Grace Papaya.

... guess you'd have to be a new yorker to catch that reference.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 07:46:03 GMT

returned yesterday from my interview in DC. took the train, my favorite mode of travel...

... i think there's a certain romance to train travel... like the start of an old movie... the protagonist silently gazing through the windowpane, towns and countryside passing by as he stares beyond them, towards some memory that grows more distant by the mile... and you, like him, have not yet decided whether the train is going somewhere or leaving something...