Time for love

Aug. 16, 2005

right now, you're single. and happy - you tell yourself. you really are - you assure yourself. and then you see a couple walking by, holding hands and being sweet and a part of you betrays how much you long for a constant companion too - someone to share your life with, a person who would willingly share their life with you as well, and be your witness (taken from Susan Sarandon's line in the movie Shall We Dance?). and then the tougher part of you justifies that not having another person (apart from family) to exclusively love is fortunately not fatal. and the world being as it is - more people not all that serious or committed or sincere or loyal - finding that one special person to love with all your heart and with all your might is definitely difficult. are you being too choosy when there are already some choices? have you pushed yourself to remain single? yes. because there is a choice. to be with someone you really love and would grow to love even more. and since a relationship is between two people, both parties have to agree on the same thing: being in love with, loving, and continuing to love the other. and not just portions. life is quicker-paced today but a balance must be struck to get to know your (potential) partner better and to keep the strong feelings you have for that person. one: you should really be in love. your life makes adjustments to factor in your partner. and love does not diminish, it develops positively. two: you should be responsible with your commitment. you can't just call it quits. or were you really in love in the first place? do you love the person or do you just want to be with someone? love is shared. and it's not directed towards ourselves but outwards to everyone we can share it with- be it one single significant other, our family, friends, or other people. it would be nice to have a partner to spend the rest of your life with, with whom you can be weak and you'll hear 'it's ok, i'm here, things are going to be alright.' and you're hopeful for that. as you're hopeful that life can be lived as productively, lovingly, and happily with or without a witness. love goes on.

International sexbomb girls?

From China! This one's just amazing. Stuff you could do with a score of female limbs... From Russia! This one's not so amazing. And not as many female limbs. Similar concept?

Movie Madness

It's been a wonderful summer (end-of-summer here in the Philippines) for movies. First, we get the movie adaptation of the musicale who took a lot of the songs of ABBA and weaved a story with them. Applause, applause! Meryl Streep did a wonderful job, as usual. I really like her. The movie was fun. And that's all. 3.25 stars out of 5. Crazy fun! But then the Dark Knight came. With the Joker in tow (May Heath Ledger rest in peace). And tons of box-office records shattered at his wake (pun) - fastest to $100 million, $150M, $200M, $250M, $300M, $350M, $400M, top day grosses, top July grosses, top weekends grosses, etc...
It's been embraced by moviegoers and critics alike, amassing generous reviews especially for Ledger's performance. I would easily give it a 4.75 stars rating. And I would go on to say that the movie has a shot at the Oscars; Ledger too. The following poster puts into a graphic how I see the movie as- to me, it's more of a suspense/thriller than an action/adventure-run-of-the-superhero-genre. And that's why it's so fresh. After the movie Wanted, Angelina Jolie would do very well as the Batman nemesis Catwoman, don't you think? And just a month into its screening life, the tills and buzz about the next movie are as active as ever. Go see it one more time. Cray-zee gooooood!
And now a not-so-good adventure: the third installment to the Mummy franchise. It was ok. I could've missed it and everything would still be alright. So like Indiana Jones, protagonist and wife now has a son who has to share in the adventure. And since the timeline is in the 1940's, son could grow up and find another mummy somewhere to wake up who would try to take over or destroy the world as we know it and time it in the 1960's and Brendan Fraser could play the son-all-grown-up role again. Of course there'll have to be pictures of original dad Brendan Fraser lying around the house for the audience to see and use to make the connection with. I think one of the very few amusing scenes was when this skeleton warrior holding a shovel turned around and accidentally hacked another skeleton warrior's head behind him off; then he tried to pick it up and put it back on his bones-y colleague. And then the ending with the dust forming into the faces of the ancient Chinese lovers together was like the stake-through-the-heart that killed it for me. 2.5 stars I think is enough. Crazy.

Positive Illusions

Feb. 20, 2007

Reading Marc Buckingham's book on managing, leading, and succeeding, entitled "the one thing you need to know," I came upon a section that discussed the one thing you need to know about (a) happy marriage. It was just a parallelism to what he's going to tackle in the book but it had a very strong point in itself. It can also be applied to life, in general. And it supported some of the beliefs I subscribe to. To rephrase what Mr. Buckingham offered, the one thing you need to know about happy marriage, or I'd like to replace it with the term commitment, is that you have to give the best, most generous, and positive explanations for your partner's characteristics and behavior. It's a positive illusion. It may not totally be true but you have to believe in it. And if you think about it, yes, if you will maintain a positive outlook towards your partner and relationship, it will affect you just as positively. Notice how people and their relationships start to sour once they notice, keep noticing, and dwell on something not so likeable about their partner or the relationship they're in. Notice how quickly we get dismayed or depressed when something doesn't go as we planned it or when we hear something not too nice about ourselves. It's a natural reaction to feel bad and to not ignore when something isn't to your liking. But if play up the good things more and keep on believing in those things, life may seem better and easier too. It's pretty basic actually - just "think positive" or "look on the bright side" but it's not that easy to perform. Why else do you think when we were children we'd ask why it's so much easier for adults to see our mistakes rather than the good things we do. Well, if you're a parent yourself now, you'd notice you're doing that to your children too. But you still might not have the real answer as to why. No, it's not because we want our kids to be good and behave well and become better citizens when they grow older. Well, it's not exactly the reason why we notice the bad things first. So, I think, once we commit to someone, we'd have a better chance for that relationship to last if we keep on believing the positive things that we saw in our partner in the first place and that made us fall in love. Sounds a bit too idealistic? Sounds impractical, huh? What would you do if you find out your husband cheated on you? That could be a subject of another post but if we were to follow the positive illusions principle, I'd think what you'd do is ask yourself if you want to save the marriage and if the husband is repentant and if you think everything can still be saved. Ask yourself what is important to you and how much do you love your husband. Anyway, there are exceptions to every rule but this particular idea of positive illusions can be very helpful. To a child with no one to encourage him, he can still believe in himself to try to best in something he wants to do; to a spouse who catches her husband cheating on her, she can still believe that who she married is the man for her and that man commited a mistake he's sorry for and that man is still the one she sees herself spending the rest of her life with; to the ordinary man who works hard and yet just barely gets by each day, he can still believe that a brighter future waits for us all if not at least for the next generation, and that more and more people will help to ensure that future. These things may be positive illusions now but they can also guide us so that we can make them the reality very soon.

Pon and Zi

Jeff Thomas is an incredible young artist! I've just come across his site and art and I had to promote it here at my lowly site immediately! The words and the art are both touching. This one I'd like to dedicate to my doodiebear... Aww. If you like his art, you can save it to your computer- just follow the rules, ok. Head on to his main site (he also has MySpace and deviantART) at http://www.azuzephre.net or click the title of this entry. And to clarify, the yellow one is Pon, the blue one is Zi.