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The vet emailed us that Drogon had been neutered and bathed and we could pick him up. We had planned on watching three Sineng Pambansa entries yesterday, so we asked the clinic to keep him another day. And then we decided to pick him up anyway, because he’s been at Pendragon for a week and we don’t want him to feel that we’ve left him. We’ll watch the three movies today.

Unlike our cats Koosi, Saffy and Mat, who turn their backs on the vet, refuse to come out of their carriers, and shriek “How dare you!” when anyone tries to touch them, Drogon was very friendly with the clinic staff. It takes three people to administer Saffy’s shots; Drogon bore his treatment with great forbearance.

When Koosi, Saffy and Mat have to ride in cars, they carry on like they’ve been abducted by Bolsheviks. On the way home, Drogon sat quietly on our lap and watched the traffic through the window. What a lovely cat he is. What a terrible parent we are. If we had human spawn they’d probably be articulate but constantly suspected of demon possession.

When Drogon arrived at our house he nose-kissed Mat and Saffy. Mat didn’t mind, but Saffy ran away and hid in the bathroom. Koosi woke up from her nap, looked at Drogon, and went back to sleep.

Drogon required no toilet training—he knew immediately what the litter box is for. At first he thought he was going to go back outside and hang with the strays under the parked cars, but he soon figured out that he is living indoors now. He took a long nap with Mat, and then stretched out on our table with Koosi.

His full name: Drogon Lockheed Pendragon Z. Targaryen-Targaryen.

We didn’t fix the red-eye in his photos. Makes him look more like a dragon.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, doorstop-size trade paper edition from Top Shelf, Php1548 at the recent National Bookstore Cut-Price Sale, Php1935 regular price.

We’d call it the greatest graphic novel in the history of the world, but we haven’t read everything.

We saw the movie adaptation starring Johnny Depp and Ian Holm many years ago and found it quite entertaining. Having read the book, and even in the knowledge that cinematic adaptations require some futzing with the source material, we now feel horrendously cheated. Whatever it was the Hughes Brothers made, it was not From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.

There are many theories as to the identity of Jack the Ripper, the brutal murderer of at least five women in London in 1888. Suspects have included a member of the British royal family, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and, oddly enough, our national hero Jose Rizal (who was also rumored to be the father of Adolf Hitler). From Hell is based on a particularly fascinating conspiracy theory involving the British royals and the Freemasons.

This is not a simple whodunnit—it does not rely on the unmasking of the killer for its thrills. We already know what is going to happen; it is what we discover along the way that is truly unsettling. From Hell is ambitious, massive, and so densely-layered it demands several re-readings to process its ideas about how ancient history, the Female and Male principles, Masonic rituals and other esoterica are encoded in the architecture and geography of London.

Moore and Campbell have created nothing less than a socio-political history of Victorian London—a dark, filthy place where to be poor and especially a woman was to be in hell—and a prelude to a new century bathed in blood. In some of the novel’s most amazing sequences, the killer has visions of the 20th century, and he recognizes it as his spawn.

Alan Moore’s prose is majestic, his research meticulous, his insights staggering. Eddie Campbell brings it all to life with his gritty, evocative pen-and-ink drawings. This graphic novel is not for the weak of heart or stomach. For sheer ambition, it makes other comics with mythological-historical associations look twee.

Compelling, harrowing, a work of genius, From Hell should be required reading in literature courses.

What is the greatest graphic novel you’ve ever read? Tell us so we can look it up.

P.S. Watchmen isn’t small potatoes, either.

Abel iloko fabrics, handwoven in Ilocos Norte, Php650 per yard. Inquiries: Rene, rene.guatlo@gmail.com.

Queen-size abel iloko bed covers, Php6000 each. If that seems steep, compare with other dealers. Inquiries: rene.guatlo@gmail.com.

Sleepyheads edition. Mat is the white cat, Saffy the black-white-orange.

Ang Kuwento ng Haring Tulala is Marlon J. Sales’s translation of Cronica del rey pasmado (The King Amaz’d: A Chronicle) by the famed Spanish author, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester. A project of Cacho Publishing House in collaboration with the Embassy of Spain and Instituto Cervantes, Ang Kuwento ng Haring Tulala will be launched today, 6pm, at the Henry Sy, Sr. Hall of De La Salle University. The event is open to the public.

Published in 1989, the novel is set in the Spanish court in the 17th century. The king is consumed by the desire to see his queen in the nude, but this is forbidden by the customs of court. To deal with his urge, the king visits Marfisa, the most renowned courtesan in Spain. This encounter makes such an impression on His Majesty that his face becomes transfixed in a permanent expression of astonishment.*

Meanwhile, war looms against the British and the Dutch, a giant snake roams the land, and a crack appears in the streets, spewing sulphur. This well-loved novel, adapted for film by Imanol Uribe in 1991, is told from the point of view of court gossips and assorted spectators. It is a comic tale of sex, tradition, ritual, and politics set in the Spanish Inquisition.

Author Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1910-1999) was a novelist, essayist and playwright who received the Cervantes Prize, the most significant literary award in the Spanish-speaking world, in 1995. Marlon J. Sales is a translator, researcher and professor of Spanish whose previous works include translations of Gabriel Miro’s Our Father San Daniel (2011) and The Leprous Bishop (2012).

In his foreword, publisher and book designer RayVi Sunico notes that “Translation is a valuable tool not only for the forging of a national language but also for the refinement of a national culture and sensibility. We only need to think of the image of our own archipelago as a shattered earthenware pot to see the need for bridges that will connect the islands and communities now separated by water, distance and history.”

Ang Kuwento ng Haring Tulala will soon be available in bookstores.

* So that’s what pasmado means! When we were kids our parents would warn us not to wash our hands after writing or make faces in front of an electric fan—”Baka ma-pasma ka!” As in frozen stiff, dumbfounded, stunned.

To Saffy it’s a snack dish. To us it’s a handy weapon to have around the house—nice weight, good balance, easy to grasp, made of good old iron. To people with culinary skills, it’s a tiny Mineral B Element iron frying pan by De Buyer, manufacturer of cooking and pastry utensils since 1830. It is has an organic beeswax-based protective finish with no chemicals or coating added, and has natural nonstick properties.

De Buyer, Kuhn Rikon, knIndustrie, Shun, Swiss Diamond, Mori, Barazzoni, Rosle, Spring and other cookware brands that cause gastronomes, epicures, and culinary folk to hyperventilate with lust are now available at KitchenWorks on the lower ground level, East Wing, Shangri-La Mall, Mandaluyong.

KitchenWorks had a media launch last week—what we were doing there we have no idea, we are useless around the kitchen, but those are the most beautiful pots and pans we’ve ever seen.