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After a week of being fed false information that Silent Hill would be showing tomorow, it finally hit Philippine theaters today. I was willing to splurge and watch the movie at the more expensive Greenbelt 3 cinemas - the Silent Hill series is one of my favorites and the trailers looked very promising. Unfortunately, the cretins seemed to think Silent Hill unfit for Greenbelt 3. Pat and I had to settle for the more plebian Glorietta 4 theaters.

If the Silent Hill game frightened me so much that I couldn’t play it at night, the movie version requires you to sit next to a loved one so that you might have someone to cling to in moments of terror. It’s the kind of film that might look like just another horror movie for one who has never even heard of the game. As a fan of the series, I had a great time watching Silent Hill on the big screen. It wasn’t just that the monsters were terrifying, the overall visuals made me shiver, and the tense atmosphere kept my heart pounding for two hours. The fact that there were (convincing) flesh-and-blood actors instead of CG characters made me experience the sheer what-the-fuckness of the situation they were in - something that the game has never really given me.

Silent Hill gave me more than just my money’s worth and a wonderful time. I even picked up a couple of life lessons from the movie:

[1] Never adopt a kid, unless you know every single detail about his/her family origins. For all you know, your adopted child might be more demonic than the average kid in more ways than one.

[2] If you insisted on adopting a kid anyway, and you find that your kid sleepwalks and has dreams about a haunted place, do not take your child to the said place. Put him/her in a hospital instead. Or tie him/her to the bed at night. Or something.

[3] Always carry a weapon of sorts with you, be it a rock or a lead pipe. You never know when you’ll stumble upon a nightmare of a town crawling with monsters.

[4] When dealing with religious fanatics, keep in mind that you’ll always lose because you can’t reason with the stupid.

[5] After going through such an earth-shattering adventure, life will never be the same. No matter how much you try, things won’t go back to normal.

When I got my Siamese cat Kylee about seven years ago, I didn’t know that we had the kitty neutered way too late. Neutering a tomcat is supposed to reduce their tendency to mark their territory by spraying their piss, their aggression to other cats, and the tendency to roam around the neighborhood. Although getting my cat castrated made him stop urinating all over the house, Kylee still enjoys gallavanting with the neighborhood cats, defending his territory from other strays (the front lawn and the back yard), and picking fights with other toms.

My kitty’s nighttime excursions wouldn’t be such a problem if he didn’t bring home unwanted vermin from his feline friends: fleas.

They seem to like the taste of my blood because my sister and my mother never seem to get bitten. But what’s particularly irritating about flea bites is that they tend to leave disgusting dark marks on my skin after the swelling subsides. My feet are the primary feeding spots of these bloodsucking creatures and I never wear strappy sandals because the skin on my feet is pockmarked with stupid flea scars. The scars do fade after a long while but if Kylee’s fleas aren’t consistently removed, new scars will soon replace the older ones.

Defleaing my cat is a task that requires three people: one to hold Kylee down (my mom), one to control the removable shower head and calm him down (me), and one to remove the fleas (usually the maid). The cat is snatched up from his comfy perch and tossed unceremoniously into the shower area. Upon removing collar and wetting cat, my mother rubs flea-killing shampoo all over his body; the instructions on the bottle says that the fleas should die within five minutes.

While we wait for the shampoo to take effect, the maid and I start removing fleas from his body. Or rather, I point to where the flea is at, and the maid removes the flea and drowns it in a small tub of water. I suck at prying fleas off cat fur because I always keep my fingernails short. That, and I already spent too much time pulling fleas sucking on my feet during the several months we got too lazy to bathe the cat. Once, I was answering a quiz in my terror Theology class when I saw a flea crawling across the paper. It’s just too much for me to have to touch the damn things on the cat itself.

After about five or ten minutes, the poor cat is rinsed and the surviving fleas are picked out of his fur. Except for the occassional growl and angry meow to prove to us humans that my kitty is still vicious, Kylee remains cooperative throughout the entire thing.

The cat is then dried with an old towel and released from the bathroom. Kylee goes off to an inaccessible part of the house, usually behind the fridge or underneath the dining room table, to sulk and clean himself with his tongue. The whole process is repeated two weeks later, or whenever I start noticing fresh bites on my already abused feet.

At the anniversary dinner of KATIPUNAN magazine last night, one of my friends told us a story about a run-in he had at school with a certain Theology professor, who happens to be a Jesuit. Now, this professor is notorious for being difficult to please and his overall unpredictable, eccentric behavior. He’s the kind of guy who would bring down the wrath of God on you for making the smallest noise in class or for getting a panic attack during oral exams. I myself had the misfortune of taking his Theology class during my junior year. Man. I have never had a more miserable time in my life (not since high school, anyway). I pulled my first all-nighter because of that class - not because I was motivated to learn, but because I was deathly afraid of being humiliated by him during our final oral exams.

Anyway, this friend happened upon the Theology professor/priest while he was walking around the hallways at school. To my friend’s surprise, he saw that the professor was smoking. There’s a rule in Ateneo that says you cannot smoke anywhere else in the campus except for pocket gardens. But here he was, breaking the law for all to see.

My friend approached the professor and said in jest, “Father, bawal yan a!” (Father, that isn’t allowed in here!)

The professor merely smiled and said in reply, “I am a living, breathing institution at the Ateneo. I can do whatever I want.” Then he walks away.

At this point, everybody at the table cracked up at this seemingly heart-warming anecdote and started talking about what a great guy this priest was. I just sat there, pretended to find it cute, and said to myself: “Wow. This guy is a real asshole.” Think about it. He basically said that he is entitled to break rules that apply to all students, faculty, and staff members because he attained a certain level of godhood in school. I suppose that’s why he doesn’t think much of yelling at his students like a master would to his slave. What a jerk.