A Time for Firsts

I read this paper yesterday at the first networking/meeting event of the group Writer’s Block.

The invitation was to talk about firsts, and seeing as to how I have just released my first independent book which has with it a number of its own firsts, my talk will be mostly about that. But first a quick trip down memory lane.

Books as Experiences (Presented at the Future of the Book Conference

I feel that I only began to truly love books when I felt their scarcity.

When I was a kid, books abounded. I was a member of the school book club. For a time I worked at the Glendale public library. When the library would get new editions of books, the old librarian would allow me to pick through and take home old editions, before throwing them out. I was really uncool obviously, but that was offset by what I perceived to be the cool ability of reading lots of books, which I felt would be an important trait in my future which I envisioned had something to do with the science fiction that I was always reading.

Reactions to Disconnection Notice

Disconnection Notice, an art exhibit at LARK gallery in New Manila, opened on the 7th, and it’s there that I continued my birthday celebrating post-launch with the Lacuestas, Sarge and Mookie, and other guests at the exhibit. Disconnection Notice takes the works Sarge and Mookie, Luis Katigbak, Carlomar Daoana, Larry Ypil, and, uh, me, and then interprets them into installation art.

Disconnection Notice: Exhibit Opening

Hey all, after getting wasted on the eve of my birthday, I invite you all to go to this exhibit opening, organized by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

V for Vendetta and Anarchy

Gave this talk at the UP Samahan sa Agham Pampulitika ACLE a couple weeks back, but have been so busy that I only had a chance to upload it now. I was writing it in a kind of white heat, blazing through words at 2 in the morning trying to finish the paper, so not sure how much sense it really makes. In any case, feel free to argue: