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I was waiting for a taxi in Salcedo Village. A taxi stopped a few feet away from me and a bald white guy got out. “Bye!” he told the driver. I hopped in.

—Napa-Ingles tuloy ako! the driver laughed. British daw siya. Mabait! (I had to speak English. He said he was British. Nice guy!)

—Talaga? (Really?) I said. I try to avoid chatting with cabbies because the conversation inevitably goes to politics, and I’d rather not have an angry person at the wheel.

—Saan ba ang London? Sa Europe ba yon? (Is London in Europe?) the driver said.

—Oho. (Yes.) I put on my headphones but the driver would not be stopped.

—Nag-asawa siya ng Pilipina. Masuwerte ang mga Pilipinang nakapangasawa ng taga-Europe. (He married a Filipina. Filipinas who marry Europeans are lucky.)

I shrugged noncomittantly.

—Kung Pilipino ang mapangasawa nila, lasenggo na, bubugbugin pa sila, he went on. (Filipino men are drunks and wife-beaters.)

I pointed out that there were also European drunks who beat their wives. He thought about this.

—Oo nga, pero at least nasa Europe sila. Mas maraming opportunity! (Yes, but at least they’d be in Europe where there’s more opportunity.)

We call this stiffing stoon logic.

Surrealist Compliment Generator

Es demasiado tarde, pero te ves guapisimo.
You are as frightful as an engine developed solely for the countenance of sexual innuendo by country music.
I would gladly eat chamberpots of your sickled beans and thalassemic rice.
Your raw sensuality flusters me as the dog sneezes into the ventilation fan.
You salivate strongly, like a platoon of army engineers trapped in a fit of malaria.
Il mio cuore batte per te come un trattore al minimo.

Or is he.

Someone should start a Trekkies Party List. I might actually go out and vote.

J.J. Abrams is directing Star Trek IX. It will reportedly delve into the origins of James T. Kirk and Spock. Too much information. I don’t need to see how they met and fell in love. I suppose there’ll be a love triangle with Sulu. Wish they’d given the movie to Joss Whedon.

Book Day 2007, originally uploaded by Koosama.

Nominees for the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the year’s oddest book title:
-How Green Were the Nazis?, by Thomas Zeller, Franz-Josef Bruggemeier and Mark Cioc
-The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification by Julian Montague
-Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan, by Robert Chenciner, Gabib Ismailov, Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov and Alex Binnie
-Di Mascio’s Delicious Ice Cream, Di Mascio of Coventry, an Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans
-Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium
-Better Never To Have Been: the Harm of Coming Into Existence

Previous winners include Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice; How to Shit in the Woods, an Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art; and Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers.

Pulitzer Prize finalists leaked! 

In your teens you read The Catcher In The Rye, and for a week or so you sound like Holden Caulfield. You read Hemingway, and you begin to speak in very short sentences. After Bukowski you try to sound like a drunken old madman who eats typewriter ribbons. Reading can alter your speech patterns, often with hilarious results. Ever hear someone attempting the voice of a Trainspotting character with an Ilocano accent? Or Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments in Visayan? From hereon we’ll probably hear Herodotus in our heads with a Scottish accent.

Ige on Pinoys with English accents: “Nausukan lang ng tambucho ng British Airways, nagka-accent na.” I have a friend who picked up an English accent by reading P.G. Wodehouse and watching reruns of The Avengers.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s second most famous export turns 80. Shakira must be third.