Tropfest

My thanks to Roslyn for sharing this clip.

It's an entry to Tropfest Australia. As a background, Tropfest is a short film festival/competition and is staged in various cities across the globe.

Right now, I'm having a good time watching entries in Youtube, many of which are so good. Like in everything else, a lot of things happen when you're forced to be sweet and concise in your works. Mediums such as the short story and the short film are perfect examples of this observation.

Salt

In the movie Salt, the final scene involves Evelyn Salt and agent Peabody engaged in a tense conversation on board a helicopter. Salt relays to Peabody the truth behind the Russian sleeper spies and convinces him to let her go. Peabody does so and Salt jumps out and into the Potomac river.

What made Peabody risk his career by letting the protagonist go? He believed in the heroine and, furthermore, he believed that she was the only one who could track and shut down the other Russian cells that his government had never detected.

I'm just thinking about this in relation to the pork barrel issue. What if a citizen just went on a mission to kill all the members of Congress who are implicated in the scam? Like Salt, he'd simply be doing what is definitely in the minds of the public right now. What if that citizen had nothing to lose, similar to the character of Frank in the movie God Bless America?

What would be the reaction if he, in fact, succeeds? Will he be regarded as a hero? A villain? A vigilante who chose to commit the sins that we only dream of doing? An outcast who's lost his faith in the system?

These are indeed dark times. 

Copycats

Disappointing.

Just watched The Company's performance in the ABS-CBN concert Kanta Natin To.

In an event meant to highlight Pinoy music, originality, and talent, the group sung Pentatonix' Evolution of Music (Something I wrote about in another post).

Actually, I've got no problems with them singing their own version of a foreign group's hit. But they could have simply performed OPM.

Instead, they became copycats for the night.

They're probably thinking right now that no one would notice. Well, to that, I honestly think the original version is way better than their rendition.

God Bless

Yes, I'm aware that I'm fixated at what should be immaterial stuff. 

Back in college, Ma'am Riza had shared to us her favorite pique: the statement "God Bless". Being the grammar guru that she is (and also the Humanities Division Head at that time), she could not let this slip away. 

According to her, the verb "bless" is a transitive verb and, thus, requires an object which, in this case, is a person. So it should not be "God Bless" but "God Bless You". That's in keeping with grammatically correct English.

Being the obedient student that I was, I promptly looked for opportunities to chastise my fellow students. In truth, I relished the moments when I said, with Solomonic authority, to my peers: "It should be God bless You."

Of course, I didn't know then that I was being a hoofed mammal of the horse family for doing so (let's keep this post clean, shall we?). Eventually, I think I grew tired of this game and began accepting, instead of correcting, these verbal niceties in life.

Soon after, I had a change of heart. 

The statement is in fact "correct". God is God and what is otherwise an incomplete statement is rendered full by its subject. Perhaps, the greeting is meant to be what it is, not a simple greeting that Divine Providence bless solely you but that He bless everyone, not only you but the entire world. In this case, "God Bless You" is but an artificial artifice which detracts us, limits us, from the immense encompassing power of the statement "God Bless". "God Bless You" is the antithesis to the affirmation of God's unbounded generosity.

Okay. Off to bed now. Good night. God bless.

Finally, A Reason: Why We Talk Too Much About The Insignificant And Inane

Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change

- Poul-Henning Kamp

Ahhh. The things you find in the Internet.

Ever wonder why chatters are the loudest when the issues being discussed are so small? Just think about all the showbiz shows you've watched. Or the minute changes in the city that the local government is trying to implement. Or the choices in your wardrobe that has to pass through the critical eyes of your entire band of friends (or frenemies).

Always, when the issue is small, there are a lot of opinions bouncing around. But when the opposite is true, hardly anyone musters a reply. 

I remember back when I was in my first company and we were in the process of reviewing and revising our brochures. After we've done a draft or a copy, I'd pass it along the sales team for possible comments and recommendations. I dreaded that part, not because I was frightened of the team, but because I knew dozens of revisions would come my way: each had their own say about our work.

I'm guilty about this too and you could probably notice my prior rants on the seemingly mundane dotting my posts. But when it comes to the big stuff? The stuff that really matters? I'm silent.

Such is human nature. That's why I'm grateful to have come across an Atlantic article giving a rational explanation as to why we do this after all.

Here's the link: Why We Can't Help Ourselves from Caring About Things That Don't Matter