My Interview With Style Icon Cecile Van Straten

(Vote for Cecile as Samsung's Style Icon.)

MEET Manila's one and only authority on fashion, Ms. Cecile Van Straten.

###1 okay, first off, let's talk about you and your husband, how long have you been married to Jeroen? 5, 10, 15 years?

Jeroen and I were married in 2000, so that would be 9 years in Nvember.

###2 Girl, human beings gracing the international internet-s are talking about your styyyyle! Who/what defines YOUR style?

What defines my style? I guess no color, neutrals, comfort and interesting patterns.

###3 You suddenly took a big leap,from designing clothes to writing...did you ever tire of designing?

I got tired of working with sewers and going to Divisoria, and I got tired of “the industry”. Food industry is friendlier and easier.

###4 Now you have a huge FANBASE here in Manila (and they all had altars erected in honor of chuvaness)...do you have plans to release an all out how-to book on styling anytime soon?

No plans on book, but I’m collaborating with a clothing store. Pieces should come out this year.

Send Cecile some love at chuvaness@livejournal.com
visit her website at http://www.chuvaness.com/

SUCK!

OK. So people suck. THEY suck.
They'll suck you real bad homez, they'll suck 'ntil they leave you for dead--

They'll suck you until your naught but a masterpiece of bruised limbs and fractured bones. They'll embarass you if they have too. They'll frudge you if they have too. And you wouldn't dare nascent because you fear the second round.

Pride's the one to blame homie.

They'll suck you at the least expense. They'll suck you when 'them screwballs have nothing better to do. They'll suck you on the train, on your front porch, in school, hell, they'll suck you in front of your grandmother.

Society is the one to blame sister

And when they're done, you wouldn't spend a day wondering why it'd been you who got sucked out. Think: there are over six billion people on Earth. Six-fucking-billion. Out of six billion worthy souls, you'd been the one chosen.

Now, now. You, my friend, should be thankful.

Sontag on ART

"Whatever goal is set for art eventually proves restrictive, matched against the widest goals of consciousness. Art, itself a form of mystification, endures a succession of crises of demystification; older artistic goals are assailed and, ostensibly, replaced; outworn maps of consciousness are redrawn. But what supplies all these crises with their energy -- an energy held in common, so to speak -- is the very unification of numerous, quite disparate activities into a single genus. At the moment when "art" comes into being, the modem period of art begins. From then on, any of the activities therein subsumed becomes a profoundly problematic activity, all of whose procedures and, ultimately, whose very right to exist can be called into question."
--Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will (The Aesthetics of Silence)

I live and breathe literally "on silence". I do go out from time to time, but there's no better a jit than to be locked inside a four-walled heaven, towering with books, poems, paintings and music from the eighteenth century.

Call me weird.

Beware the Man With AIDS

From the jungles of a place called Nueva York--

"H.I.V. infection rates have risen substantially among young New York City men who have sex with men, indicating a shift in the population most vulnerable now to contracting AIDS, city health officials announced today.
Over a five-year period, the number of new H.I.V. diagnoses in men under the age of 30 who have sex with other men increased by 33 percent, to 499 in 2006 from 374 in 2001. During the same period, the infection rate for men over 30 decreased by 22 percent.
The group with the fastest-growing rates of H.I.V. infection was made up of men between the ages of 13 and 19, for whom H.I.V. diagnoses doubled during between 2001 and 2006, according to preliminary data from the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. "

--So what are you implying? That only men [who are sexually attracted to men] are the only ones susceptible of contracting the disease?

How 'bout the women from Lesbos? The gooks? The Chinese? The Straight ones? The annoinnnnted ones?

The pansexuals?

Or how about Alan Cumming?

Subtext to the Filipino People

The Filipinos are a diverse people ;with a culture so rich and a tradition so old, it's begun to chafe.

**
In the informal study of society, it'd be best for one to see passed the subtext.

BUT WE WON'T. because WE won't

The People Subtext (Part 1)
1.The truculent, whose ass-hairs were shaved not too long ago. The smell, in spite of stringent cleaning friend, will still be there--

--because it's the ass. you dipshit

The twenty-first century Vaudevillian whose idear of fashiiiiiiin is to dress in plaids and uber short "panties" are as visceral as their principles...only those don't come in glutia.

The Goth whose way is to go no way...liken them to a package, only that package comes with an abattoir wrapped in stupid.

The Chick-lit mi adoradas whose hands, feet, and vaginas have been dedicated to the altars of Stephenie Meyer's Religiun de Cliche...may you one day see the light.

The DSLR-iers whose SLRs never fail to make an appearance. Whether, such was done in representation...or not, Thy digital chutzpah can be found hanging just right above their breasts.

--These are the people who inspire me. If you know of any one better, hit me with semen.

Fucks in the Bookstore

Powerbooks, Fully Booked, Bibliarch, National, and Booksale...Powerbooks, Fully Booked, Bibliarch, National, and Booksale...Powerbooks, Fully Booked, Bibliarch, National, and Booksale...

Oh Jaysus.

Where'r the independents? For a city who loves books so much...where'r the independents?

Powerbook's prices are soaring way up. Fully Booked is stuffed with wasteful machismos. Booksale has the worst tenders in Galaxy 666, and National, well National's policy on "loooooong shelf-lives" isn't even the worse of it.

Oh and don't get me started with Bibliarch. Please.

What the city needs are independent bookstores. INDE-FUCKING-PENDENT bookstores where the [albeit] voracious reader can spend, spend, spend on five books at a time, for no more than a dollar. Booksale's books may be "affordable", yes, but the costs of which are far from bargainable.

Think about it.