JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Photo: James Cameron on the set of Avatar. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

The director James Cameron is six feet two and fair, with paper-white hair and turbid blue-green eyes. He is a screamer—righteous, withering, aggrieved. “Do you want Paul Verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?” he shouted, an inch from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face, after the actor went AWOL from the set of “True Lies,” a James Bond spoof that Cameron was shooting in Washington, D.C. (Schwarzenegger had been giving the other actors a tour of the Capitol.) Cameron has mastered every job on set, and has even been known to grab a brush out of a makeup artist’s hand. “I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt,” he says. “It saves so much time.”

Read Man of Extremes by Dana Goodyear, a killer profile of James Cameron in The New Yorker. It brings up one of the reasons I am a fan of his work (though not over-fond of Titanic): His movies have strong women, and he marries them.

The piece mentions that when Kathryn Bigelow finished the script for her amazing movie The Hurt Locker, the first person she showed it to was her ex-husband Cameron. The Hurt Locker opens today in Metro Manila! True, the people who want to see the Hurt Locker have probably seen it already. It was, um, available here even before it opened in New York. But we still have to watch it on the big screen.

Art professor and author Denis Dutton asks, Has Conceptual Art Jumped the Shark Tank? Is a medicine cabinet or a shark preserved in a tank of formalin a sound investment, or are the prices attached to these works by Damien Hirst more impressive than the artworks themselves? Does craftsmanship still matter?

We ought, then, to stop kidding ourselves that painstakingly developed artistic technique is passé, a value left over from our grandparents’ culture. Evidence is all around us. Even when we have lost contact with the social or religious ideas behind the arts of bygone civilizations, we are still able, as with the great bronzes or temples of Greece or ancient China, to respond directly to craftsmanship. The direct response to skill is what makes it possible to find beauty in many tribal arts even though we often know nothing about the beliefs of the people who created them. There is no place on earth where superlative technique in music and dance is not regarded as beautiful.

* * * * *

A couple of months ago Raymond dragged me to an exhibit at Mo’s in BoGlo (what we call Bonifacio Global City). It was called There Is Something Left To Be Desired, and the show consisted of mauve bamboo sticks placed all over the furniture store and arranged on the gallery floor.

My reaction was, “Can we go for coffee now?”

On our way out we saw this stunning installation.

“Magnificent,” I said.

“Provocative,” Raymond concurred.

“It denounces the tyranny of criticism, reducing art into its most practical form,” I cried.

“If I had a house I would sell it this minute and buy that,” Raymond declared.

Actually it was a rag in a plastic container. The janitor had left it.

Attica! Attica! Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon

Monday morning I get a call from the head of corporate communications at Globe. She admits that there are technical problems with their broadband product and asks to meet me.

I know what you’re thinking, so I’ll save you the neural traffic.

You: Jessica, you’re a media person so they have to talk to you. What about us ordinary consumers, are we going to get calls from corporate communications?
Me: Yes. No.

Around 4pm I meet with two managers from Globe. They are already aware of my complaint, and offer copious apologies. Essentially they admit the service is crap, though the word is not used.

You: You’re scary so they have to agree with you. What about us ordinary consumers who do not threaten Red Army Berlin 1945-scale wrath?
Me: Yes. I don’t know.

According to the reps, Globe systems were gravely damaged by typhoon Ondoy, and they are currently making repairs. They call it “recovery work”. They say this accounts for the slowness or nonexistence of a signal.

You: Yeah, right.
Me: Things I might’ve been told when I first made my complaint, thus heading off the unpleasantness.

And what of the disappearing load? Ah, the crux of the matter. It is supposedly the same problem that afflicts Globe postpaid subscribers who surf the internet with their phones, unaware that they are being CHARGED PER KILOBYTE. The charge is P5 for 15 minutes IF you are in Time-browsing mode. However, the Prepaid kit is automatically set to charge you PER KILOBYTE. You have to text TIME to 111 to have them change this to Time-charging.

Who charges per kilobyte?!?! The Globe reps say gamers prefer this as it saves them money. (Could a gamer confirm this, please. Update: See comments. A gamer explains why this argument is crap.) Why, when I installed that new prepaid SIM, was I not informed that I am being charged per kilobyte? (My postpaid SIM is on Time-browsing mode. I had assumed that prepaid, being presumably for the budget-conscious, would offer the more customer-friendly option. Na-ah.)

Nowhere in the package does it say, “We’re automatically going to charge you per kilobyte!” In the printed materials that come with the SIM, there is a section, “How you will be charged”. It goes on to say, “P5 for 15 minutes.” There is no mention of having to shift to Time-browsing.

The Globe reps say they need to work on educating the public about the difference between the two rate options.

For starters, they could print it on the package so users are not “inadvertently” suckered.

So. Official explanation as to why I was charged P165 for 12 minutes of a bad connection: kilobyte charging. But I couldn’t access anything in those 12 minutes since the connection was averaging 0.00 kbps!

The Globe reps say it all goes back to the recovery work that is being done on the systems damaged by typhoon Ondoy. They add that by early November there should be a dramatic improvement in the service.

You: Eyebrows shoot off the top of your head and go into orbit.
Me: So it’s true that the service right now is crap, but it’s supposed to get better in early November. This does not fully explain why the gadget works efficiently with my postpaid SIM, but we’ll see.

Then the Globe reps give me a new broadband kit, SIM, and prepaid cards to replace my vanished load.

You: Well, where’s my replacement kit, SIM, and prepaid load?
Me: File under “intrinsic unfairness of life”.
You: What, no Titus Andronicus even?
Me: Face it, anything less than a bloodbath will disappoint you. However, you now have the urge to check out Shakespeare’s lesser plays.

I’m going to test this new unit, then observe whether there is an improvement in the service by the first week of November. However, I cannot stop you from fulminating about worthless pieces of crap that you have shelled out good money for. Send me the horror stories, I will send them on to those who should be horrified.

* * * * *

22 October. Yesterday we received three comments in a row defending Globe and denouncing the manner of my complaining as “bastusan”, “You made us look like angry teenagers”, “kinda harsh…they didn’t exactly force you to use their products.”

Readers are entitled to express their opinions, but the arrival of three consecutive pro-Globe comments from members who only recently registered on the site, all using gmail addresses, and their admonition that we be kind to a huge corporation that spends millions in advertising the product in question, makes us suspicious. Also, they are clearly new to the general tone of this site.

If we are wrong and these readers are genuinely concerned (or just genuine), lashings of apologies. Rest assured that your opinions have been delivered.

Rolex occupies a strange place in Philippine history. In 1972 before President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, he handed out Rolex watches to the members of his inner circle.

On October 19, 2007, an explosion at Glorietta Mall killed eleven people and injured over a hundred. The real cause of that explosion has never been made clear. Some say it was a bomb, some say it was a biogas explosion—literally crap blowing up.

On October 18, 2009, a day short of the second anniversary of the Glorietta blast, armed men attack the Rolex store at another Ayala establishment, Greenbelt 5.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Material for a hell of a Conspiracy Theory? Absolutely!

Yes, this is the Rolex Greenbelt 5 Robbery Conspiracy Theory Contest! Post your Conspiracy Theory in Comments before the end of the week. The most convoluted and all-encompassing Conspiracy Theory wins a prize!

Who were the armed men in military Bomb Squad uniforms who robbed the Rolex store in Greenbelt 5 on October 18, 2009?

Photo: A great conspiracy theory novel—Gravity’s Rainbow.

A. A military Bomb Squad
B. Robbers pretending to be a military Bomb Squad
C. A military Bomb Squad pretending to be robbers pretending to be a military Bomb Squad
D. A military Bomb Squad which had received reports of “something ticking at the Rolex store”
E. Some guys on their way to a costume party who wanted to see if their costumes would fool anyone
F. Members of the Roger Federer Fans Club who wanted the same watch The Fed has (Although the store claims no actual Rolex watches were taken, just “cheap” Tudor watches).
G. Henchmen of a political candidate raising funds for the 2010 elections AND rehearsing what they’re going to do to the Filipino people once their candidate gets elected.
H. Method actors researching their roles in an upcoming indie movie—each one was carrying a handheld camera.
I. Post your very own Conspiracy Theory right here!

The truth is in here.

Re: ongoing issues with GLOBE PREPAID TATTOO, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. If you have posted comments actively urging people to switch to its competitors, I regret that they have not been published. Globe will have no cause whatsoever to claim that this ongoing tirade was fueled by its competitors.

No one put me up to a damn thing. Anyone who claims otherwise had better start reading up on the Russians storming Berlin in 1945. True, I don’t expect people stupid enough to claim that they can trigger or stop me to know crap about history. So here, read a Berliner’s eyewitness account of the annihilation. “As the noise got closer, we could even hear the horrible guttural screaming of the Soviet soldiers which sounded to us like enraged animals. . .It was a terrifying sight as they sat high upon their tanks with their rifles cocked, aiming at houses as they passed. The screaming, gun-wielding women were the worst.”

Ooh that sounds even more petrifying than Titus Andronicus, and it really happened.

Globe corporate communications has requested a meeting. Let you know what happens.

Montalban as Khan in Star Trek.

The Straight Dope explains why some songs get stuck in your head and play over and over and over until you want to run screaming into traffic. It’s often called Last Song Syndrome. The Straight Dope calls it Earworm, from the German Ohrwurm, because the Germans have a word for everything, and everything just sounds more serious in German.

Earworm may be a mild musical hallucination, even if it sounds like something Ricardo Montalban tortured Ensign Chekhov with in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan.

I’m glad someone has attempted to explain this phenomenon, because “Let The Good Times Roll” by The Cars has been playing in my head for 20 hours and I’m not even a big fan.