2012

A rumor, brewed from the West, reached our village. The world would end. And the giant one would tell us how. It was a long and heated debate. Friendships were lost. In the end the elders decided to send three villagers to the giant and report back how the world would meet its fate. I was one of those three.

Thus, on Tuesday, the 17th of November, we journeyed south to the giant. The journey was hard. We braved strong winds and heavy rains in order to reach the giant. It was as though a force hidden beneath the winds and rains wanted us not to know how our world would end. But we were determined. We were brave.

The sun has long since hidden itself by the time we reached the giant's place. The moon shone brightly without a hint of the heavy rains during our journey.

The rumors were real. The giant one knew the world was about to end. And he knew how it would happen. But beneath the amazing detail of his story, a ray of hope. Some would survive. The world would be destroyed, but not completely. It was good knowing there would be survivors, even as I know none would come from our village.

We journeyed home. I presented our report to the elders. The elders presented it to the village. We said our goodbyes.

Okay, above was a writing exercise. Below are my thoughts on the movie 2012.

It was surreal watching the planet being destroyed swiftly and in a detailed way. As I watched the monk being swept away as he tolled his last gong, I said to myself, Charlie was right to stay put. There's not a lot that anyone can do. I saw no Filipino aboard those arks. And a computer simulation showed the Philippine archipelago getting buried underwater. I suppose there's nothing I could do in that situation. I'd just wait for the gigantic tidal waves to approach me and tweet my last: I see the waves coming towards me. I guess this is goodbye. #apocalypse. But by then, the fiber optic lines connecting the interwebs would have been destroyed long before I'd get my first glimpse of the giant waves. I'd see in my TweetDeck Twitter Status: Problem with all feeds. In the end, when the waters have long subsided and future archaeologists study a solid state drive once belonging to a startup called Twitter, they'd see my actual last tweet to be: Woke up early to the news that America has started evacuations. I see the sun outside. Hope the waves never come.

Paper cut

I didn't plan to see this movie. For this week, I was keen on seeing only two movies, and both have numbers in their titles: 2012 and 500 Days of Summer. I saw 2012 last Tuesday. And I saw New Moon late last night. And it was only because several friends from the office wanted to see it, and being in bench I have nothing better to do, so I said what the heck, count me in.

I was not a fan of the first movie, Twilight. But I'd say that it was a better movie than this sequel. A year ago, I wrote that Twilight was really a love story more than it was a vampire story. The first one tells a story. This one doesn't tell much. It was all about setups. And I'm not sure if it was trying to setup a story or just an audience reaction. But considering the events that took place in the movie, I lean towards the latter.

The very first setup, said it all. And set the tone for the whole movie. I've never seen a paper cut produced that amount of blood before. And certainly not from opening a wrapped gift. For one thing, gift wrappers aren't notorious for giving paper cuts. They're very easy to tear apart. That's what makes them gift wrappers. If they're hard to tear, then we'd just call them paper and won't bother coining a term for them. But Bella, for some reason, got a nasty paper cut, spilled blood, made Edward ran away from her to protect her from, well I don't know, more paper cuts, perhaps, which resulted into a very long act of Jacob and Bella getting closer, which made me check my watch and wonder where the heck was Edward? Seriously, the Jacob-Bella plot got so long and tired that I really asked myself, where the heck was Edward? And not because I'm a fan, but I knew that in order for the movie to end, he needed to show his face again. And indeed, he showed his face again and the movie ended--- in an allusion to Romeo and Juliet, the title of the book shown at the bed of Bella Swan at the opening of the movie.

New Moon. Not much story. All setups. And it all started with a paper cut.