Tuesday, October 02, 2007

11:54 PM | Things That Can Give You a Headache

[1]

I was browsing around pep.com, when this photo series on local celebrities and their homes caught my eye. Actor Yul Servo's house is a nightmare of interior design, something dreamed up by nouveau riche ickiness. Elaborate baroque furniture everywhere. Frosted glass fixtures of astonishing kabaduyan. Gold-plated dinnerware. Bric-bracs masquerading as objet d'art of varying sizes and grotesqueness. Horrible, horrible. It is the absolute definition on how money can never buy you class.

[2]

I was browsing in National Book Store when I stumbled on a book of bad poetry, titled I Saw the Master in My Dream and Other Poems, by a certain Sr. Felicidad Lipio. Yes, a nun. I almost went mad when I went through one poem and then the next: it was torture of the fascinating kind (the way we find ourselves sometimes lured to become osyoso to a terrible accident). It was like encountering Arnel Salgado for the first time! (Unlike Arnel, however, a major imprint -- National Book Store itself -- actually underwrote the publication of this book. I suspect it was meant to be inspirational poetry, but Lord knows it has ended up being only merely irritating.)

The good sister writes of her book: "It was during [a] vacation in St. Dominic Academy, Pulilan, Bulacan that I started to write these poems. Actually it was just accidental. I was taking some private computer lessons with [named withheld], a seminarian who was on Regency period, when I discovered that I could write poems." Sister, you should have stuck with the computer lessons. The book is -- que horror -- already in its second edition. Which means people actually bought copes of the first edition (enough to merit a second printing), and lapped up its trite diabetic imagery, and horrible, horrible verse. Perhaps the only good thing one can get from this book, enough for anyone to buy it, is to use it as a manual on how not to write poetry.

I need a dose of Advil now.

Labels: rants

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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