I’ll be there. If you hear someone squeaking lines nervously into a microphone, that’s most probably me.
Let’s say hi to each other.
Spread the word!
Category: plug
Usually, when I review prose, I review anthologies, full issues (if a magazine), or a novel. But I’m making an exception for Ken Liu’s brilliant novella, “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”. It appeared in Panverse Three and is available as a PDF download here.
It is a time-travel story, but it has the most unique, most intriguing premise among all the time-travel stories I have encountered so far: Chinese-American Dr. Evan Wei, along with his wife, Japanese-American experimental physicist Dr. Akemi Kirino, develop a controversial technique that will allow people to travel back in time and experience history firsthand. Wei demonstrates this by traveling back to 1940 Harbin, to witness the atrocities committed inside Unit 731. Unit 731 is a research facility of the Japanese Army responsible for fatal human experimentation during World War II. Wei gets hit by critics for bringing relatives of the Unit 731 victims instead of professional historians. The critics contend: How effective is a firsthand historical record if the events are witnessed behind an explosively emotional screen?
In any event, the relatives, being untrained observers, did not make great witnesses. They failed to correctly answer observational questions posed by skeptics (“Did the Japanese doctors wear uniforms with breast pockets?” “How many prisoners in total were in the compound at that time?”). They did not understand the Japanese they heard on their trips.
New on bleepthisblank!
Jaykie talks about Jeremy Lin.
…getting assigned to defend Lin pales in comparison to getting assigned to write about him, because there’s very little one can say about him that hasn’t already been said.
You know all about that, right? Odds are you’ve followed the Linsanity, the SNL skit, the missteps regarding race, et cetera. Otherwise you would have likely bolted as soon as statistics came up. So, since you’re still here, bear in mind that I won’t be writing about any of that stuff (nor will I be engaging in Lin puns, of which there are several). Rather, I’ll be taking a look at Jeremy Lin’s rise to success from a fan’s perspective.
In defense of Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey received a lot of flak after her “disastrous” Saturday Night Live performance, but hell, bad publicity is still publicity. I have not heard of Lana Del Rey before news spread about what happened over at SNL, but it got me curious. I watched her SNL performances on YouTube and checked out her other live performances as well. I didn’t think the performances were as horrible as other people have described online, but when I finally got the chance to listen to her album, I saw what the critics meant. You can’t help but compare. Compared to her recorded songs, she sings at a lower register and drops notes she should be sustaining when she performs live. She also appears to be very nervous.
Read more on bleepthisblank (“Ear Candy”).
And check out: Online Finds.
better living through xeroxography 2
The Blinds issue of PANTAS, which features my poems “Notes” and “Architecture”, will be on sale at BLTX2 this Friday.
Better Living Through Xeroxography or BLTX is a small-press expo now on its second incarnation, the first one a success by indie standards: 30 small press publishers and 200 buyers on a rainy December day in 2010.
The goal of BLTX is simple. Bring together independent self-publishers from Metro Manila (hopefully from elsewhere, too), in a one-night event that will allow them to sell their wares: books, yes, but also zines and other printed materials like shirts, postcards, posters. It’s about selling, but also about meeting like-minded individuals who believe in literature and creative work that might not ever get into the mainstream of commercial bookstores and galleries, but for one night is the star of the show.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go, but if you’re in the area, do drop by okay?
Sources: curiouscouch, speaking in hushed tones
bleepthisblank
So J and I are responsible for this:
http://bleepthisblank.wordpress.com
About the Site
bleepthisblank contains reviews of anything that catches the authors’ fancies. Consider this a space for recommendations: watch this show, try this restaurant, read this book, play this game. Bleep this blank.
About the Authors
Eliza graduated from UP Diliman in 2007 and now works in Makati. She has won two Palanca Awards, and her fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications here and abroad. She loves the Oxford comma, is ambivalent toward the semicolon, and hates the ellipsis.
…
Hates it.
Jaykie is taking up a masters degree in Applied Mathematics (Major in Actuarial Science) in UP Diliman. If you are in need of an actuary, you’ll know who to contact. He enjoys gaming, be it tabletop, online, board, or card (esp. Magic). If you are in need of an actuary and a dungeon master, you’ll know who to contact. Could make for a very interesting game.
They met sometime in 2009. Together they enjoy watching films and TV series, drinking on weekends, and playing a round or two of the Game of Thrones boardgame.
Contact
bleep.blank[at]yahoo[dot]com
For our first post:
With Peter Berg confirming that a Friday Night Lights film is in the works, we think it’s high time that we revisit this series.
We just finished watching all five seasons of Friday Night Lights, which certainly deserved all the praise it got in its five-year run. It is set in the fictional town of Dillon, Texas, and concerns the struggles and victories of its football team, its football coach, Eric Taylor, his family, and the close-knit circle of the football players. It is heartwarming, engaging and sincere, and we’d recommend it to anyone, football fan or not.
Personally it got me interested in watching football, though don’t ask me to explain the rules to you. I’m actually planning to watch the Super Bowl for the game, and not just the halftime show.
Anyway. FNL makes for excellent television, but it’s not flawless. It has plot holes large enough for Smash Williams to charge through, and the show has the tendency of dropping character arcs and characters just like that.
If you haven’t seen the entire series, stop. SPOILERS!
(Visit us from time to time. Okay?)
PANTAS folio + The Cabinet + other publication news
Christian Tablazon, poet and educator, invited me late last year to submit poems to the literary folio, PANTAS. I’m happy to hear that two of my poems – “Architecture” from my collection Maps, and “Notes” from Reportage – will be appearing in its pages. The folio, Blinds: PANTAS Tomo IX, will be out next week!
You can now read “Architecture” on The Cabinet.
The Cabinet is a Laguna-based independent multimedia arts collective established in 2011 to foster emergent and liminal forms of storytelling and produce and distribute works that cater to the said principle.
Click here to view and “like” their Facebook page. Several pieces are already online for your perusal.
In other news: I’ll have two stories out by July. “The Mechanic” will be appearing in Kaleidotrope, while “Fairy Tales” will go live on Daily Science Fiction.
Eliza Victoria 