Wanted: Slasher Flicks

For once in my life as an employee I face an interesting dilemma: having almost nothing to do. Yeah, ever since I finished cheking all the papers of the sophomores, there's little else left to worry about. Grades have been recorded, all that waits is to encode them in Excel for submission Monday. No big deal since only the Final Exam results need to be encoded, I can do that in ten minutes.

So basically, I'm bored stiff. Coworkers have no doubt seen me doze off a couple of times over the past few days. It's the polar opposite for some of my other pals. Angelo has just found a new job blogging for B4media. Carla is neck-deep in paperwork (don't pull your punches!). Migs is looking for work. Anthony is busy doing whatever it is he's doing, and Eda as usual is perpetually looking for new work to do and acomplish (how she keeps from idling out is a mystery to me). Even Diana has found work abroad.

As for me, expect me to be working for another school come May. I'm officially leaving SR on April 10. come May 10 I will be working for St Scholastica's College Westgrove. Ironically Carla seems more excited about this than I am, Kate certainly isn't holding her breath. But hey, a job is a job, and it's honest, fulfilling work.

What have I been doing in the meanwhile? Well, downloading lots and lots of anime. I'm on a Gundam downloading spree right now. Another thing is looking forother poetic insiprations. As of late all of my poems have been mushy, sad ones. Well, there's a very good reason for that--however, I wish to write more conventional, angry poems as well, but cant really find the anger to write them with. watching Gundam isn't helping. can anyone tell me of any good splatter flicks for inspiration? I may be losing my edge (the little I had anyway).

So that's it for now. the post is a bit erratic. It can't be helped when findng things to do is difficult in itself.

1. If there's one thing good about the anime Fushigi Yuugi, its that everyone in the whole freaking show died. The only good love story is one where there're a copious amount of deaths. Here, only the two main characters live. Granted, it would have been better if they died too, but since the anime was authored by an albino woman one could speculate that she did not want to make it all tragic.

2. That's why the best anime director of all time is Yoshiyuki Tomino. a lot of ignorant morons in the Philippines know him as the producer of that overrated super-robot show Voltes V (yes, I called Voltes V overrated, sue me). In reality, his real contribution to the anime world is not that piece of shit Voltes V but the biggest mecha series of all time, Gundam. Oh yes, now there's a mecha show so innovative that it's been called the StarTrek of Japan.

Gundam's perfection comes not from its scifi roots. It comes in the fact that it explores the tragic nature of human life in times of war. Cliche maybe, but when the show first came out hearing of these themes in a mecha anime was unheard of. Now i can hear the Voltes V fanboys saying that Voltes V and Combattler V came before Gundam. True. But Voltes V and Combattler V did not really come off as war stories. They were generic robot shows where evil aliens invaded the Earth and some big-ass robot repels the aliens. They weren;t about fighting wars, they were about repelling aliens.

Now Gundam was about humans fighting against each other, humans with their own ideals. None of these ideals stand more correct than the other. In the end, these ideological struggles boiling down to whoever had more power, not moral authority. Voltes V never had that. The aliens were evil, period. Prince Zardos was misunderstood, but he was still clearly in the wrong. One could not say that of the Zeon forces in the War in the Pocket, nor the AEUG freedom fighters from Zeta Gundam who through no fault of their own severed ties from the Earth Federation.

Still, there's one thing that made Gundam, and Tomino, a true master of the anime art. The show had love subplots, but they would all end with tragedy. In the original Gundam 0078, lead character Amuro Ray kills his own love interest because she happened to be fighting for the other side, not because she was evil. Z Gundam's Kamille Bidan watched each and every woman he evere cared for die before his eyes: his mother, and two pilots who turned out to be working for the enemy. His childhood friend survived, but if love stories have taught us anything childhood pals don't count. Besides, he did not really like her romantically. She was actually a nuisance pilot who was useful only for trashing her mobile suit. Hell, all the female characters in Z Gundam except Kamille's childhood pal died.

Tomino made a lot of anime in his lifetime, in nearly all of them the shows ended in mass genocides of the lead characters. Hence, he earned the nickname "Kill 'em all Tomino." For that I consider him an anime god. What's more realistic than death?

Lament From The Realm of Helios

Is time really so fleeting?

My stay with you quickly goes flying
Inadequate is the moment passing
Sepulchral--the periods after our meeting
So desolate, deathly, and depressing.

Yet absence is inevitable--sadly,
Oftener will you not be with me
Unity a treasure, priceless rarity.