JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Illustration by Brian Rea for the New York Times

In a lab experiment, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love. Yeah there are variables that were not considered, and we don’t like to think that humans are so easy, but let’s say it worked. Basically the subjects sit face to face in a quiet place and answer 36 increasingly personal questions. Then they stare into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes.

Disclaimer: Embark on this experiment at your own risk. We are not responsible for any foolishness that ensues.

Here’s the first set of questions.

1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?

2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?

3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?

4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?

6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?

7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?

8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.

9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?

10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?

11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.

12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?

Read To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This in the New York Times.

Translated into English and annotated by Benedict Anderson, Carlos Sardiña Galache and Ramon Guillermo, Ang Diablo sa Filipinas (1886) unfolds as a dialogue between Isabelo and his friend Gatmaitan. They hear that a directorcillo in Bulacan, well-known for his library, has died. (The directorcillos were the secretaries of the Spanish administrators. They handled all official documents, which made them very powerful in their towns.) Isabelo and Gatmaitan rush to the dead man’s house to ogle the local girls, enjoy the buffet at the wake, and look at the famous library. Of particular interest is the “Little Book”, said to possess magical powers.

But the Little Book manages to hide itself from the two men, and they end up passing the time by reading from the missionary chronicles they find in the library. For instance, there is Aduarte’s account of a demon that played pranks on men who went into the forest alone. This demon would bring the man some creatures who resembled women. These “women” would lure the man into some thick shrubs, where they proceeded to play pelota using him as their ball.

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

Ooh, more Victorian monsters.

Is Billie Piper’s Irish accent still alive? The Bride of Frankenstein doesn’t talk, does she?

A Writing Workshop
January 22, 29 and February 5, 2015
6 – 8 pm

Anyone can write, but can they write well? Whether you’re working on your college entrance essay or The Great Filipino Novel, a comic book or the screenplay of a future Cannes winner, the standards of good writing apply. Before you can experiment with the craft, you have to know the craft.

The facilitator will conduct a practical writing workshop for aspiring writers, weekend writers, and writers struggling with the dreaded block. The workshop consists of two intensive two-hour session on two Thursday evenings. At the end of the workshop, participants will have finished writing a short story.

The Facilitator

Jessica Zafra is a writer based in Manila. She has written two collections of short stories, The Stories So Far and Manananggal Terrorizes Manila, as well as a dozen collections of essays on film, literature, travel, rock music, popular culture and politics. Many of these pieces appeared previously in her highly influential column Twisted, which appeared in the newspaper Today (1994-2004).

Jessica’s essays have been published in the New Yorker, Newsweek, the Hong Kong Standard, and The National. She was editor-in-chief of Flip: The Official Guide to World Domination, and the annual literary journal Manila Envelope. At present she is a columnist at InterAksyon.com and at BusinessWorld.

Outside of publishing, Jessica has hosted talk shows on the FM stations NU-107 and K-Lite and the TV show Points of View, and managed a band. She is an executive producer on Norte, Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan (Norte, The End of History, Lav Diaz, 2014) and screenwriter of Esoterika: Manila (Elwood Perez, 2014).

Fees

The workshop fee is P 7,000.00 inclusive of handouts, materials, snacks, certificate, free admission to the museum and one day free access to the library. Payments can be made in cash, check, or through credit card.

For inquiries, call Marj Villaflores at 759-8288 local 25 or email villaflores.md@ayalafoundation.org or visit www.ayalamuseum.org.

It’s an old cop trick to mask the smell.

The most insane deaths seen by an NYC medical examiner
by Maureen Callahan

When Judy Melinek was considering where to begin her career as a medical examiner — New York or LA? — she was given great advice.

“If you really want to learn forensic pathology, do a rotation in New York City,” her chief resident said. “All kinds of great ways to die there.”

Including, but not limited to: plummeting down a manhole, attack by egg-roll machine, miscalculating the tensile strength of cable cord and scaffolding collapse.

In Melinek’s first week on the job, the tone became clear. As one novice began describing the case of “a man who was shot by a lady,” Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Seymour Hirsch corrected him.

“Shot by a woman,” Hirsch said. “Ladies don’t shoot people.”

Keep reading. Thanks to Jackie for this cheery Monday reading.

We know from experience that Saffy should be treated like Hannibal Lecter: restrain or get your face bitten off.

Saffy, our feline housemate who is almost 15, has a toothache. How do you know if a cat has a toothache? If they drool, their breath smells worse, they make horrible faces and noises while eating (like they’re trying to dislodge particles caught in their teeth) and keep batting their cheeks. Saffy kept swatting her face so much, her cheeks became raw. To prevent her from wounding herself we cut her claws, an operation which takes at least three people—one to hold Saffy, one to wield the nailclipper, one to hold the other front paw or she’ll take your eye out. There were just two of us, and Saffy split our upper lip so we had duckface for a couple of days. (Drogon allows us to cut his nails. Mat spends half the day buffing his claws on cardboard so we don’t need to cut them.)

Yesterday we took Saffy to her vet, Dr. Mayem at Pendragon Clinic in QC. Mayem extracted four of Saffy’s rotten teeth some years ago—we’ve kept them in a sealed vial, in case we need to cast a terrible hex—and is familiar with the little monster (some of the staff still bear scars). But this time, the vets had something to prevent Saffy from maiming them: a cat grooming bag, or as we like to call it, a straitjacket for crazy cats.

Thanks to this genius invention, Saffy got through her blood test without fuss. Her liver and kidney are fine, so she could be sedated for a dental exam. The vet found an abscess in her gums that was causing her pain and prescribed an antibiotic and a cat-friendly analgesic. No extraction, although we will have to bring her back in a couple of weeks to have her teeth cleaned.

We got a cat grooming bag/straitjacket so we could administer Saffy’s antibiotics without bloodshed (ours). Cat grooming bags are available at Pendragon, Php1,288 for the medium-sized one. Call Pendragon, 0922-VETHELP.