Tuesday, March 30, 2010

101 small pleasures

coloring (yes, grown-ups can do it, too)
crisp cotton sheets
soft skin
old family recipes
the first daffodils of spring
sleeping in
an exercise endorphin high
window boxes
a perfect cup of coffee
a genuine compliment (giving or receiving)
the way babies smell
a handwritten letter
waking up in a good mood...for no real reason
singing in the shower
finding a couple forgotten dollars in your pocket
doing something nice for your neighbor
a home cooked meal
laughing
movie theater popcorn
playing hookey
a bubble bath
swimming
an afternoon nap
street musicians
your favorite song
saying thank you
helping someone in need
old fashioned photo booths
fresh whipped cream
inspiring blogs
a glass of wine
rainy afternoons
the funny things kids say
a novel you can get lost in
finding the perfect piece of clothing...on sale
clean laundry
the wind in your hair
treating the person behind you at the drive-thru
sharing an umbrella
the smell of lavender
a long walk that clears your head
a bear hug
The Beatles
smiling at a stranger
eating with chopsticks (Chinese food optional)
butterflies
staying in your pj's all day
singing along to the radio and knowing all the words
fresh herbs
ordering in pizza
happy endings...even if they're fictional

flying a kite
puppies
root beer floats
holding open the door...
...or having someone hold the door for you
fountain soda
white, fluffy towels
sunshine
spending an afternoon at a museum
really great advice
green lights all the way home
the sound of rain hitting the windows
sitting in a booth
holding hands
a great hair day with no effort
building a fort with your kids
when someone falls asleep with their head on your shoulder
fireflies
the perfect taco
geraniums on a windowsill
slow dancing
the smell of fresh-baked bread
cheesy, uplifting musicals
great stories
the smell of gasoline
the cold side of the pillow
love letters
old friends...
...new friends

a pull-through parking space
a baguette -- crisp on the outside, airy on the inside
when a dog licks your hand
sitting at the counter at an old-fashioned diner
using your favorite dishes

reading your child a bedtime story
Girl Scout Cookies
flossing
kissing someone you love
the smell of onions and garlic cooking
hot chocolate
jumping in puddles
old photographs
birds hopping on the sidewalk
Ella Fitzgerald
a spoonful of peanut butter straight from the jar
your softest t-shirt
a new magazine in the mail
fireplaces
having exact change
bacon and pancakes cooking on Saturday morning (bazinga!)


http://shine.yahoo.com/event/makeover/101-small-pleasures-you-can-enjoy-every-day-1125425/

what to do with a dumpster

make a community park

float in your own pool

pretty cool.


crap. i just want it to be vacation already.


Thursday, March 18, 2010

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Le Baiser de L'Hotel de Ville by Robert Doisneau

i'm a sucker for really romantic, possessive kisses. :( sigh
P.S. I want this photograph!

i don't see the point in...

government officials putting up those signs that say the bridge/road/clinic/building/blah was put up by pres./cong./coun./mayor. trapo. first of all, wasn't that your job? i don't go around putting post-its all over my work saying i did it. it was what i was paid to do. second of all, my money put that up, you asshole.

everyone needs superheroes


the little girl committed.
the baby? cluelessss.

heads up, i'm gonna swear!

OK Go's music video "This Too Shall Pass" is fuckin' fantastic!

my house will have a closet like this



what i wouldn't give to be in this room with aircon, a good book and the afternoon sun


You are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring

The Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009 by Paul Hawken posted May 27, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seat belts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages,campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making that moment possible. www.paulhawken.com







i'm sorry i'm being me.

shudder


it's getting too hot to breathe


Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Gibo Teodoro for President? His take

Highlights of the Philippine Star Villar Profile:

ADVISORS:
Economic: Joey Salceda, Chavit Singson (?!), Peter Favila.
Foreign Affairs: I have some experience and constitutional knowledge on that.
Security & Peace: I have a clear idea where we're headed.
Politics: Partymates.
Media: Mike Toledo.
Health: Esperanza Cabral, Francisco Duque.
Education: Jesli Lapus (this guy isn't even making it to the meaty parts and he's already a fail. I can honestly say that this guy is not doing much for education except take credit for projects that started way before he came and effed things up even more. Bologna Accord may not have been his doing but not flagging it? Big FAIL.)

Environment: Tony Oposa (mini-save. Atty. Oposa is great!)

ECONOMY/TRADE/FINANCE:

  • Will increase FDI and local investments with long-term plans, peace and order, easy to follow policies, reward investor friendly LGs.
  • No model for economic development. Philippines is unique.
  • To lower power cost and improve energy security, firms should be allowed to import generation units tax-free, wave penalties for firms with own generation units, discover alternative resources, look into nuclear energy, but not BNPP.
  • Alternative energy policy can be pursued in the long-term.
  • Communications, all-weather roads in growth regions, more air and sea ports will be infrastructure priorities, funded through BOT.
  • New taxes and priority tax policies: excise, specific and consumption taxes, but not income and corporate taxes.
  • Agriculture, post-harvest facilities as complement to agrarian reform are priority economic sectors for development.
  • Agriculture, marine resources, mineral resources are sectors to be protected/subsidized.
  • Tourism, Education, services like lawyering are sectors to be liberalized.
  • Foreigners should own land for certain residential, some tourism, industrial and commercial land but not agricultural, mineral or marine resources.
  • Middle class to be expanded through quality jobs and more services.
  • No open pit mining.
  • Make us an investment destination, reduce cost of doing business, improve communications and transport facilities, ease tax rates, high-quality qorkforce, review tax incentives.
  • Subsidize farmers, establish post-harvest facilities, easier access to markets, irrigation.
  • Ports of entry should cater to cruise ships.
  • Make beneficiaries agro-entreprenuers. Mechanize, go slow on acquisition.
  • Give leeway to corporations as long as they disclose material information.
  • Incentivize customs service to stop smuggling.
  • Allow government employee-inventors to keep ownership of invention and charge royalties.
  • Institutionalize role of Anti-Money Laundering Council and enforce law.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS:

  • China, Japan and the US are vital to the Philippines. But also Middle East, EU and Australia.
  • Economically, China is a big trading partner, big source of potential tourism and foreign investments. In security, they have spent a massive amount on unlimited military build up and no clear intentions on foreign security policy.
  • No travel for first 6 months.
  • Strengthen ties with EU, South America. Revitalize the BIMP-EAGA (?).
  • Pursue claim on Spratlys due to baselines law.

ENVIRONMENT:

  • Relocate informal settlers in vulnerable areas, provide employment opportunities in those sites to deal with extreme flooding. Construct a Paranaque spillway to drain Laguna de Bay. More elevated mass transport systems like the LRT or MRT in case of evacuation.
  • Implement Clean Air Act. Institute lifestyle changes. Have SWM. No open dumpsites.
  • Map the remaining natural forests in the country. Logging ban for natural forests, regeneration of trees in wooded areas.
  • Implement an old law that each barangay should have rain water catchments.

HUMAN RIGHTS:

  • focus on crime prevention and solution.
  • Remove internal security from the AFP. Sustained deterrence against insurgents.

NATIONAL SECURITY:

  • Peace in Mindanao must be solved under local circumstances, like the local peace and order councils, because each area has distinct customs and traditions.
  • Communism is legal but can't advocate with funs.
  • Additional funding to maintain AFP capability upgrade/modernization.
  • Give president discretion for term of AFP chief.
  • Dismantle private armies.
  • US military aid is important.
  • Closer military alliance with as many countries as possible.
  • Military should not intervene in political issues.
  • Private watchdogs in AFP.

EDUCATION/CULTURE/ARTS/SPORTS:

  • introduce literacy in preschool, including in native tongue. P1.5 billion a year in teacher training. Set up special student loan fund in SSS.
  • Additional years.
  • Do away with degree consciousness for promotions. (?? I'd rather have a manager with a Master's than one with none at all)

HEALTH CARE:

  • Universal participative healthcare.
  • Respect moral choice but government must help support the choice.
  • Promote medical tourism.
  • Provide incentives for local medical manufacturers.

JUDICIARY:

  • Restore definition of judicial powers under old Constitution.
  • GMA should not appoint CJ.
  • Provide judiciary with more resouces by appointing qualified appointees.


CORRUPTION: full disclosure of any transaction except on national security. Create a culture and attitude against corruption in bureacracy.

STANDS ON:

Cha-cha: Yes, if transparent, constitutional convention.

VFA: continue.

Right of reply: some sort of reply.

Death penalty: against.

Divorce: already in Muslim laws.

Marriage expiration: that's crazy.

Gay rights: should be talked about objectively.

i will buy myself flowers and cheer myself up!


i did not get to watch this... =(


boo to you people for not wanting to go with me!

Monday, March 1, 2010

imma rant in this hot, frustrating day


pet peeves:
1. people asking other people to tell me what to do. thereby making me feel stupid when i'm asked to do something i have no idea about. give me a heads-up please! i can do it but I'd like it if you asked me straight.
2. able-bodied guys who are wide awake and do not offer their seats to women, children or the elderly. way to be gentlemanly. and yeah, i gave up my seat. did you?
3. people not saying thank you for favors. especially work favors. especially work favors not within your job description.

currently obsessed with the wicked soundtrack

Hands touch, eyes meet
Sudden silence, sudden heat
Hearts leap in a giddy whirl
He could be that boy
But I'm not that girl

Don't dream too far
Don't lose sight of who you are
Don't remember that rush of joy
He could be that boy
I'm not that girl

Ev'ry so often we long to steal
To the land of what-might-have-bee
nBut that doesn't soften the ache we feel
When reality sets back in

Blithe smile, lithe limb
She who's winsome, she wins him
Gold hair with a gentle curl
That's the girl he chose
And Heaven knows
I'm not that girl

Don't wish, don't start
Wishing only wounds the heart
I wasn't born for the rose and the pearl
There's a girl I know
He loves her so
I'm not that girl

major ouch.