A Discourse On Vampire Years

Marco and I are into vampire stuff. We especially like Anne Rice and True Blood (Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series). He sent me a PDF of this old-school RPG called Vampire: The Masquerade which I didn’t read much, since it was more like a guide book of vampire myth and legend, which I found boring (boring because it generally tells you what you already know). I’ll read it soon though, after I watch a DVD that Marco gave me. It contains the eight episodes of the first and only season of the re-imagining of Vampire: The Masquerade called Kindred: The Embrace which aired on TV in 1996.

I was watching the first episode this morning and observed that Julian Luna, the Prince of the San Francisco vampires, is young. The following debate ensued.

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How does it feel to have a dead man in your house?

There is a house that I pass by whenever I go in or out of our subdivision. It’s a medium-sized house, recently built and painted in warm beige and dirty white. Right now there’s a gazebo set up in the middle of the street in front of it,  squeezing the traffic in the morning and completely cutting it off at night, when people drop by to play cards or mahjong at the tables. It could be just another Pinoy wake, except that it has been going on for almost two months. There has been the same dead man in the same coffin in the same house for sixty whole days.

Now I’m not what you’d call squeamish. I mean, I’m not the person who has to deal with the dead man everyday right? I just pass by his house. Besides, I’m sure he’s saturated with all the wonderful chemicals he needs to keep from decaying into nice patchy clumps of flesh or stinking up the place. I just think that it’s a little too morbid to keep a dead man from being buried for that long and not even showing signs of changing your mind soon. You have to sleep with him being dead downstairs, you have to eat with him hanging out near the dining room as dead as a doornail—really. How does it feel to have a dead man in your house? I’ve never had one.

His relatives have a reason of course. They’re waiting for the dead man’s children to arrive this Christmas from the US. This is cool, I guess, the whole family thing. But if I were the dead guy, I want to be buried ASAP and one hundred children be damned. They can look at my pictures and read this blog if they miss me.

WebSapient is full of bullshit

WebSapient ripped off Marco’s works and blatantly put them under the site’s Portfolio section—ALL of the designs under their Portfolio is Marco’s. The “experienced and well established web design company” stole another designer’s bread and butter and is trying to earn money from it. I know this kind of thing happens over the Internet all the time, but that is no reason to condone it. I hope that when someone Googles “Websapient” this little post will turn up and expose this company’s bullshit.

Marco’s (the real owner’s) portfolio 

WebSapient’s STOLEN portfolio  

 WebSapient steals other people’s designs. It’s hard to believe a word they’re claiming on their website:

Our CompanyWebSapient is an experienced and well established web design company specializing in website design and e-commerce development. We have designed, shaped and launched hundreds of successful websites since our beginning, for many different types of businesses around the World.Our team comprises of the most brilliant and skillful people in the industry with collective experience in Designing Web 2.0, graphic design, website development, Flash animation, Search Engine Optimization, Link Building and e-commerce programming. …our web designing & development team have the capacity to appeal to your sense of style, the training and knowledge of current web standards and practices, and the ability to turn your dreams into reality!
Our clients range from small businesses needing a basic web presence to large corporations requiring complex web applications. We invite you to review our website design portfolio and read our client testimonials.

 

When apparently they haven’t even done any real work. They are full of bullshit.

PS— Check out the design of WebSapient’s website and compare with the designs included in their fake and stolen portfolio. Ang layo kaya! Their website’s design looks cheap and weak, so world’s apart, that a smart potential costumer should immediately notice the difference.

PSS—Why do I feel strongly about this? Whenever Marco is proud of a new design project, he shows it to me. I see all the effort and love that he pours in his work. He labors over details and loses sleep over the slightest imperfection. For this evil thing to be done to him is unforgivable.

A Dream

I had an interesting dream last night. My mom took me to the US for the very first time in my life. Naturally, I was excited and happy, eager to explore, but I forgot a lot of important things at home. I didn’t bring any nice clothes, I only had one pair of shoes (my brown boots), and worse, I forgot my Mac. We stayed in a place where my mom had business, some charity thing, I don’t know exactly. We were picked up by a bus in the morning and brought to a church (or is it an orphanage). I didn’t want to join her because I wanted to look around, so I asked for some money and promised to come back later. (more…)

Liking Things

I live a relatively happy life. I always get what I need and I usually get what I want. I am with someone who is difficult to be with sometimes but we work it out with minimal fuss. My parents are supportive of what I do (whatever it is at the moment), and have been since I was born, although they are unreasonably strict when it comes to me going out to parties and events—I’m freakin’ twenty, for crying out loud. I get good grades in the university even though I’m lazy, and if I work hard enough this semester I might graduate cum laude (tough luck, don’t bet on it). Obviously, it’s not a perfect life. But I like it a lot.

I don’t think there’s a lot of people who can say the same, that they like their respective lives. I’d like to think that my life is good because of all the good choices I made in the past, but honestly? I think it’s sheer luck. I’m lucky to be born to loving and supportive parents, not to be in any major accidents or have a really terrible disease, not to be murdered, and so on. As Vampire Bill told Sookie Stackhouse, everyday we are alive is magic. Cheesy, but considering the innumerable bad things that can happen to any one of us at any moment, it’s magical that we (you and me) aren’t dead yet. Well, some people DO die, but we’re not them. Yet.

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