NaNoWriMo 2012 Winner

If you check the handy little sidebar that I have on the right hand side of my blog, you'll notice that there's a little box there that says that I "won" the NaNoWriMo. Well, winning isn't really that much of a correct term to use to describe someone who has successfully gone through the trouble of churning out fifty thousand words in a matter of thirty days, because if it is, then everybody who finishes a five kilometer run would be considered winners. I know some people who might consider successfully forcing themselves to traverse five kilometers in a row on foot to be "winning", but I disagree.

Anyway, my novel, PH:2086 is far from finished, and also very far from having a well-strung together plot. To be honest, after the time and quota pressures of the NaNoWriMo was removed from me like a bomb collar on my neck, I have noticed that I am not really up to adding more stuff into the novel anymore. Or maybe it's because I've recently taken up drumming and I'm very much occupied with practicing at every spare moment that I can get.

I'm not a fan of leaving things unfinished, though, so I will set some personal goals for me to pursue so that I can manage to rack up to eighty thousand to one hundred thousand words, which is the average and most accepted word count for most novels. I have the feeling that I won't be able to compress every bit of the story into one novel however, so I'm thinking of making a sequel once I finish the manuscript.

I also have another novel in the works besides PH:2086, and it's something that I have been working on way before the NaNoWriMo. Hopefully I can get that done as well. Perhaps some excellent time-juggling is in order.

NaNoWriMo 2012

Today marks the first day for the National Novel Writing Month of 2012. Actually, that was yesterday, but I did plan writing this post earlier though I procrastinated by watching a couple of very well-made films made using the Source Film Maker on Youtube, and so I digress. Don't worry about the name though, NaNoWriMo is actually international. There's also conveniently a community of WriMos in the Philippines, which, of course, I immediately joined.

I took on the challenge of joining the NaNoWriMo this year because I find that it's a perfect challenge for me to pursue on my road to self-improvement. 50,000 words in 30 days. Not a pretty hard challenge to do especially with me being a man of dedication and perseverance.

I've been concocting a faint idea of my novel for a while, as I rode my commute from school to my home, a period where I am strangely more creative than usual. It's the story of a young girl who lives in a dystopian Philippine society of the future where the entire country was ruled by an autocratic theocracy. And that's basically an explanation of the story in one line.

I plan to license my novel using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license once I finish it, so that I can distribute e-book copies of it for free here on my blog, and just earn revenue through the sale of physical books, similar to what Cory Doctorow did to his book, Little Brother. I don't really care about book royalties, I'm more concerned with delivering a message.

I'll keep you guys posted on my progress. Right now it's the second day of the NaNoWriMo and so far I've done 7700, according to my last word count update at the time of writing. My estimated time of completion should be somewhere around the middle of November, if not, a few days after mid-November.

How the Philippine National Police took the title “World’s Slowest” from Slowpoke.

It’s official guys, the Philippine National Police has officially taken the title of “World’s Slowest Retard(s)” from its previous title holder (who managed to hold it from, say, the beginning of time, I might add), Slowpoke.

This guy.

You see, there happened to be a recent hostage taking that took place somewhere in the Philippines, as you can read here, here, and here. If you’re too lazy to click on those authentic links to real news sites, see the full coverage of the “event” and you just lazily wrote “TL;DR” in the comments, let me narrate the sequence of events to you, in my perspective.

The Crime

Apparently, some pissed-off cop who was recently kicked off-duty from the police force a year ago got tired of not being a cop and all, despite all his friends and family telling him that everybody hates cops. So instead of going into therapy session with other ex-cops and transforming himself into a metrosexual (as most of the squeamish would do), he stood up, put on some massive balls of steel, grabbed an M-16 assault rifle, three magazines, maybe a grenade or two, then went outside.

Everybody ignored him and all his gear because everybody assumed he was a cop, stolling around the streets more armed to the teeth than Duke Nukem. He stopped and thought what would he do to “impress” the folks at the camp and get them to get him back. A tour bus carrying Chinese nationals arose from the distance, and he thought, “Oh well, might as well take this bus, there’s a lot of cover inside plus, I fucking hate Chinamen.”

So he tried to pull the bus over, and it did. The bus driver looked at the cop before him and thought, “Oh great! A cop! Just what I needed! Now I can mindlessly drive around while masturbating and those MMDA folks won’t give me a ticket because I have someone with an automatic rifle on board!” They cruised through a little bit. The people on board noticed that someone who took a time machine to the present from the Vietnam War have boarded the bus, and seeing how much Vietnam war-machines hate people with slanted eyes, the tourists on board immediately shit their pants and put their asses on Guantanamo Bay mode.

Some folks outside saw the bus stopping all of the sudden and some guy with a powerful assault rifle inside, so after a little bit of hesitation deciding whether they were seeing some simulated airsoft match or a real hostage taking, they called the police, who happened to arrive in just a nick of time.

No, not really! The hostage taker actually had time to take a nap before the cops arrived.

They had time for a little bedtime story, too.

The “Negotiation”

When the cops did arrive, they barricaded the place and in a 1970’s Munich Olympics scenario revival, they let the press flood in. You know, people with cameras and crap who tell other people that someone just hijacked a fucking bus.

The hostage taker demanded a lot of things from the negotiators before he lets the hostages free. First he asked for some coffee, because he feels groggy after a long nap waiting for the cops to arrive. Secondly, he asks them to clear his criminal records, the same records that kicked him out of the force in the first place. Lastly, he wants some real policemen to come and get him, because those who came to apprehend him appears to be geeky cosplayers trying to look like Counter-Terrorists from Counter-Strike.

The cops just hanged around a bit, because they were waiting for their “superiors” to make the call. While they were having a pretty quiet excursion in the park in front of the Quirino Grandstand (it’s a nice place by the way), the hostage taker’s brother, who’s also a cop, appeared on scene and tried to approach the bus, where he was promptly taken down and got a nice dosage of ass-kicking.

Seeing on the bus television that his brother was having a bad case forced nightstick sodomy, the hostage taker flipped out, and began to empty his entire magazine into any motherfucker he sees inside the bus.

He must have called them cock-a-roaches too while he was at it.

After that, the cops called in the big guys, and began to barge in and kill the asshole who tried to do a Tony Montana on the Chinese tourists. Just joking! They just lied around the park watching the action.

 

The “Action”

The Philippine National Police must have big love for nighttime rescue missions, because they actually waited for night to fall before they send in the big boys, or, in other words, men with tiny balls wielding guns too big for them to even carry.

Armed with bulletproof vest, kevlar helmets, flashbang and teargas grenades that would make a COD or CS player cry in joy, these guys surrounded the bus to do – you guessed it – absolutely nothing, if you think posing for the cameras while in full gear is doing nothing.

Philippine SWAT team: We may as well look cool for the cameras while we make complete fools of ourselves.

They had a problem though: they had to get inside the bus, but the wise-ass hydraulic door would not break down, even when they tried tying an end of a rope on it, the other on a truck, then pulling it with machine force. They found an emergency door at the back which they could break into, but realizing that they left their tiny balls in the freezer again, they didn’t go in, and decided that chucking in flashbang grenades and tear gas was the only way to go.

The hostage taker then got bored of having his senses consistently disoriented by the endless barrage of flashbangs and teargas being thrown at him, so he stood up, and decided to do the Tony Montana again, this time with shit in his eyes and ears. He did manage to hit some random passerby outside, though.

After all the fun whirling around in circles relieving the scratch on his trigger finger, some wiseguy sniper, who probably earned his job by playing endless hours on Special Force, shot the hostage taker square in the head. That’s right kids. All those hours killing each other with AWPs in Counter-Strike will land you a good job as one of the Philippine’s greatest snipers.

Where sniping legends are born.

The Aftermath

So far, about 13 passengers in the bus made it out alive, but the remaining ones were dead, along with the hostage taker who attempted to play Grand Theft Auto: Philippines Real Life.

Also, the Philippine National Police earned two titles. The first is “World’s Slowest Retard(s)”, where, as mentioned previously, was previously owned by the Pokemon, Slowpoke. The other title they achieved was “World’s Shittiest Police Force”, where they beat the Nigerian Police Force out of number 195.

As for the Philippines, International tourism marked the entire country as “The Best Place to go to when you have a death wish”, and “The Best Country to experience a full hostage experience”. The country earned itself a sweet spot in the trending topics of Twitter, and the front pages of the biggest news sources in the world. Great job, guys!

Hacked the entire layout

So, here it is, folks. Sulatang Tapunan has finally gone minimalistic. This is a huge redesign since most of the eye candy that were present in the last layout are now gone. No more of the annoying, common sidebar that most blogs use. That one’s getting old, and it’s a reminder of the web design of the 90’s, no matter what we add on them. Youtube widgets, translucency, Javascript and all other forms of 21st century Internet effects won’t make website sidebars better. That had to go.

Also, this typography style blog template that uses the “Georgia” font family is so elegant, that it feels soothing and relaxing. It helps the reader stay focused on what they are reading on the blog and will not get distracted by any unnecessary element in the website.

The template itself is focused on text. I wonder how it does for images…

 

Ah, it does the picture beautifully, just as I wanted it to. Take note that I am writing this post in the very awesome Windows Live Writer. It automatically adds the subtle shadow effect on every photo that I add while I write my posts. However, I can always choose to use other effects, but WLR does drop shadow by default.

Also, I hate color. Colored blogs hurt my eyes. Black text on colored background makes my eyes watery and tortures them in the process.

Reactions

Google added a new feature into Blogger called "Reactions", where readers can express their reactions through preset expressions given by the blog writer/administrator. To use Reactions, you just tick one of the tickboxes on the bottom of each blog post to conveniently express your reactions. It's easy right? This should help me get some criticism, constructive or not, when people are too lazy to write something on the comments box.

A second person narrative of a Tropical Storm Ondoy survivor

To explain the scenario I'm going to picture, let's play pretend. Suppose you are a regular Filipino citizen, waking up at 4AM in the morning, either ready to go to class in college or you're fresh from a blackout from the nearest cockpit. When you look outside the window, you realize that it's raining. And it's not regular rain, it's raining hard, as if God decided that the Philippines is some sort of a toilet to piss on with rainwater. You shake it off, reminding yourself that this is another of those Philippine phenomena you can't find anywhere else, and conclude that the rain will probably stop in less than twenty minutes or less.

Two hours later, you are on your way to work, and still the rain has not shown any signs of weakening.

Curious about the current weather situations, you tune in to the radio and hear an announcement that a tropical storm is about to cross the mainland. You turn off the radio and breath a sigh of relief that it's only a tropical storm, not a hurricane. To you, and the majority of society, a tropical storm, when compared to a hurricane, is a 12 year old, 200lb, asthmatic boy with red hair, pale skin, freckles all over the body, oversized glasses, enjoys World of Warcraft and wears a t-shirt with the words, "Mommy's biggest boy" in big, bold letters.

You sit down on your computer, begin typing worthlesss papers your professor told you to type on your computer, when suddenly your noisy roomate bursts in your privacy, in his face, both the expression of happy and shock. At first glance you thought he was just going to tell you about his peephole session last night, but today, his subject was a bit different. There's a fucking flood outside. And no, it's not just a "flow that drags garbage and infants", it's a "gigantic flow that drags cars and stupid people with the minds of infants".

You were very relieved, for probably your professor and his frail body would be dragged by the flood and disappear forever without a trace. You tell your roomate you are going to party it out by pubbing on DoTa. You start to log-in to Garena, when suddenly, it failed to start, because the Internet was out.

You sigh, because you couldn't show off to the world how much you suck at playing DoTa. However, you found hope when your buddy told you tha you're just going to fight with each other mano a mano. You fire up Warcraft III when suddenly the your computer monitor, together with the whole dorm, was covered in darkness. The power was out.

Wh3r3 m4h d0t4 g0?

Your roommate proceeded to scream, "Holy shit", in Filipino. You facepalm yourself, overpowered by the regret of not being able to play DoTa today. You open the windows to let light in your room. You see the scene outside and let out a gasp of horror.

You see different kinds of objects being carried away by the raging flood water - clothes, appliances, even cars - moving in the flow of the liquid as if the streets were turned into an angry river. There's the occassional retard being carried away by the flow, and, in really rare occassions, some of those retards even enjoys the ride.

This, minus Michael Bay CGI.

Suddenly, your thoughts were shifted on your friends outside. Are they ok? You take out your one thousand peso Nokia N93 chinaphone ripoff and sent out a group message to all of your friends about the flood. One by one, the messages failed to send, due to two reasons: (1) You don't have any prepaid credits left and (2) There isn't any cellphone signal.

You cuss at your cellphone failing itself, and decides that it could serve the purpose of being a wedge later whenever the situation comes. You and your friend sit down on the torn, dirty couch you stole from the lounge, thinking about what to do next. Your thoughts were interrupted rudely by a threatening sound that came from downstairs. It was the front door, and it just blew open like a SWAT team inserted some breaching bombs and blew the explosives.

You and your friend cower in fear, lest it was drug law agents searching for the stash of shabu you hid under your bed with your dwarf brother. The threat came up the stairs, only that it did not emit sounds of footsteps and officers radioing for backup. It sounded wet. And angry. Your friend screamed and pointed at the foot of your door. Water flowed underneath the door. The rainwater spread throughout the room, destroying everything unlucky enough to not be on top of some sort of support.


Four hours later, after living on a couple of leftover potato chip snacks and refusing to drink any water (lest it's piss), the flood inside your dorm room has reached knee level. You and your roommate proceeds to the roof of your two-story dorm, where getting bombarded by tiny droplets of water for hours is way better than being tormented by one whole body of water threatening to drown you.

You find other people experiencing the same fate as well - families and households holed up on their roofs, watching in horror as their possessions - televisions, refrigerators, their worthless laptop computers, being towed away by the flood, as if God took them away and said, "Hey, nice stuff. Lemme have it" while giving the family the finger in the process.

This is the situation of the Philippines during September 26-27, 2009. Tropical Storm Ondoy, a regular typhoon destined to only go around the Philippines and wreak havoc on Taiwan, decided to be a dick and went through the mainland. Also, instead of just passing by as a regular nuisance, he decided to be a bigger dick by showering the South-Central Luzon with heavy rainfall, much like mobsters enjoy raining their targets with plenty of .45 calibers from their tommy guns before disappearing from the scene. To meteorologists in and out of the country, this is a once-in-a-lifetime disaster. To the victims of the calamity, it's a huge "fuck you" from God, probably because Pinoys spent too much time betting at cockpits or DoTa games at various computer shops instead of being at church worshipping Him.

God makes more awesome "signs" thes days.

Others who were lucky to move out of dangerous places were holed up in makeshift evacuation centers, where at least a hundred families are forced inside school buildings (Hint: School buildings in the Philippines are roughly quarter the size of a hospital). They fight over resources and attention that bored volunteers give them, probably because their schedules of beating the shit out of each other were interrupted by the sudden outburst of weather.

Pictured above: Evacuation center without the usual in-fighting.

Today, the receeding rain has lowered the flood levels to knee deep, but still, the people are devastated for the loss of their clothes, belongings and shelter. Moreover, they're depressed about losing a day of not wasting their lives playing DoTa and/or texting on the phone. I guess that's the positive effect of this massive fuck-up, despite the whole country labeling this as one of the worst disasters of the year.