Comics | Blackest Night

I used to collect DC comics during the 1980's, back when The New Teen Titans was popular. I don't remember exactly why I stopped, but then again, I thought most of the DC superheroes were just too cheesy, with their brightly-colored costumes with capes and stars, plus codenames frequently ending with either "man", "woman', "boy", or "girl", LOL. I never read any DC comics again after that.

Until now.

I was intrigued about the Blackest Night crossover when I first heard about it, as the concept seemed unique, mixing traditional superhero stories with space-faring alien races and horror. In a nutshell, Blackest Night features the Black Lantern Corps, composed of dead superheroes, supervillains, people, and assorted aliens throughout the DC Universe. Obviously, Green Lantern figures heavily in this story, with an old enemy of his called the Black Hand triggering events that lead to his creation as the first Black Lantern.

Soon afterwards, an eerie rain of black power rings go shooting out across the galaxy, zooming towards buried graves and crypts, and bidding the dead to rise. And rise they do--as Black Lanterns: rotting, animated corpses filled with menace and power, targeting the people who knew them best, and literally ripping out their hearts.

While the major characters in Blackest Night mostly concern Green Lantern and the Green Lantern Corps, the events have major repercussions in the entire DC Universe, as dead heroes and villains are resurrected everywhere. I didn't know that a lot of familiar and well-known DC superheroes were already dead until I read this series--Batman, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Firestorm, Hawk and Dove, and many more.

Writer Geoff Johns, who did an awesome job in restructuring both Green Lantern and The Flash, is in fine form here, further strengthening the Emotional Spectrum concept established in the Green Lantern series. Actually, I find all those Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, and Violet Lanterns a bit cheesy, but what the hey, they do fit well within the Green Lantern mythos.

Blackest Night started last July, and will end in early 2010. No major DC superhero will be left untouched by the Black Lanterns, as they'll menace Superman, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, the Flash, the Titans, the new Batman, and others. Can't wait to see how it all ends.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is a yearly competition jointly held by the Natural History Museum in London and BBC Wildlife magazine. It's considered as one of the most prestigious photography contests, culminating in a public exhibition of winning and commended entries that showcase the best of nature photography.

Veolia Environnement is the title sponsor for this year's competition, which saw 43,000 entries submitted from 94 countries. The winning photos are posted on the Natural History Museum website, which include the following images:

The Storybook Wolf by Jose Luis Rodriguez

The Storybook Wolf by Jose Luis Rodriguez from Spain was the overall winner, and no wonder--it's a simply magnificent shot of an Iberian Wolf leaping across a gate, with a face that almost seems to smile. Jose used an infrared camera trap to shoot the photo, and the result is just pure awesomeness.

Starling Wave by Danny Green

Starling Wave by Danny Green from the U.K. was the winner in the Nature in Black and White category. This spectacular shot features hundreds and thousands of starlings flying across the sky in a sweeping, wave-like path as they hurriedly try to escape a predatory peregrine falcon. The monochrome nature of this photo is nothing short of stunning, and it almost looks like a pencil sketch at first glance.

I'm not really into photography and all, but these awe-inspiring shots truly deserve every bit of praise bestowed upon them. Forget model and still life photography--wildlife photography is the shiznit. Since most of the subjects can't really be controlled, it takes a true master to be able to come up with amazing shots like these.

Music | Matt Bianco - Ordinary Day

When the trio known as Matt Bianco released their debut album, Whose Side Are You On?, in 1984, the music blaring over the airwaves at the time was filled with British "new wave" bands, so their blend of latin jazz music stood out from the rest.

But I liked them from the start, as I enjoyed the smooth jazz movement that briefly became popular here during the late 1970's, and their music was a refreshing change of pace from all that boring typical Britpop dreck. I remember buying a cassette of this album, and constantly playing it over and over until the tape started to sound worn out, LOL.



The original lineup of Mark Reilly, Danny White, and Basia Trzetrzelewska split up after the first album, leaving Mark Reilly with the Matt Bianco name. Basia went on to become an established solo singer in her own right, with Danny White collaborating and producing her material.

Basia retired from the music industry in 1998 for a short time, but returned in 2004 to join Mark and Danny for a Matt Bianco reunion album, Matt's Mood. This album sounded more like a spiritual successor of their debut album, and was filled with great songs, including Ordinary Day, a bouncy tune that incorporates latin jazz, samba, and bossa nova, all the trademarks of Matt Bianco--it's like they never split up in the first place.

Unfortunately, the reunion was intended for just one album, and Basia and Danny once again parted ways with Mark to work on Basia's comeback album, but I hope these guys get together again every once in a while, as the music they create is just awesome.

Goodbye, Gray

Since I was a little kid, we've always had a lot of stray cats hanging around our house; while most of them were just passing through, some of them linger on and stay, eventually becoming completely domesticated, with some even giving birth to litters of kittens and expanding their family at our expense, heh.

Gray, during one of her lounging around moments
Gray was one such cat, born to one of the female cats that stayed in our place, and sister to Combi, another of our memorable house pets. She was named "Gray" because of her color, and she reminded me of a dark gray striped Abyssinian cat. Unlike Combi, who was gentle and mahinhin, Gray was the opposite--she was energetic, agile, and somewhat aggressive. She was famous for leaping and jumping to high places that seemed impossible for other cats to reach, and she was an expert mouser, catching mice or rats that made the fatal mistake of wandering into our homes.

Aside from that, she was also quite um, fertile--it seemed to us that she was always pregnant or giving birth to a new litter every quarter or so, LOL. But we loved her just the same, and she knew that; every once in a while she'd come jumping through my room window, then go running downstairs to our dining room, where she would just lounge around until she had enough, then she'd exit the front door.

Recently, we noticed that Gray looked like she was dizzy--she'd walk like she was drunk, then she'd lie down, but she seemed okay. Two days later, my aunt told me the bad news, that she found Gray lying still in their kitchen back door area. I was really saddened by this, but at least she didn't pass away outside or far away from home. My nephew Patrick, who took good care of Gray when she was still a kitten, buried her somewhere in the garden, notably beside her sister Combi, who died 2 years ago.

While some of her kids are still living with us, we'll really miss Gray...me especially--no one's gonna come leaping through my bedroom window anymore. Goodbye, Gray!

Force Majeure

The past two weeks have been pretty disastrous for the Southeast Asia/Pacific region, as Mother Nature decided to show everyone who's boss and went running amok, sowing chaos and mass destruction everywhere.

On September 23, the residents of Sydney, Australia woke up to find their city engulfed in a red haze that lingered for roughly a day, turning the cityscape into something that resembled the surface of the planet Mars. While this unusual dust storm didn't cause any widespread havoc, it seemed to be the portent of worse things to come.


Weather satellite image of Typhoon Pepeng (Tropical Storm Parma)
taken on October 2, 2009 at 6:30pm
Three days later, we were hit by Typhoon Ondoy (Tropical Storm Ketsana). While we were quite used to typhoons, we were not prepared for something like this, as the rains seemed endless--on and on it poured, causing massive flooding, death, and destruction in Metro Manila and its surrounding towns. Homes of friends and family were submerged in rising floodwaters, as we all scrambled to deal with the worst disaster to hit the city in 40 years. Ketsana continued on its destructive path to Vietnam, and then to Cambodia, causing grief and misery everywhere it went.

A couple of days later, an intensity 7.9-8.0 level earthquake shook the islands of American Samoa, triggering a deadly tsunami that wiped out everything in its path--people, cars, homes, and more. Barely a day afterwards, another earthquake hit, this time in Western Indonesia, causing untold damage to life and property--the death toll is now being estimated to reach thousands.

And just last weekend, Typhoon Pepeng (Tropical Storm Parma), dubbed a "super typhoon" slammed into the northeastern part of the Philippines. Most of us were still recovering from Typhoon Ondoy's wrath, so we dreaded the arrival of this new storm. While it spared Metro Manila this time, the storm managed to cut a path of death and destruction in the country's northenmost provinces.

What's going on? Signs of the impending apocalypse? Or merely the result of a drastic, planetwide climate change caused in part by our careless ways of gradually polluting the Earth's resources? I'd like to think it's the latter, but earthquakes are never directly caused by climate change; they're just the effects of shifting tectonic plates. Which brings us back to the apocalypse...and that's something I'd rather not think about at all.