Faute de Mieux

2010-08-14T11:01:00.002+08:00

Goddamned spam. Chances are good that time to fix this thing up the way I'd really want it to be will be hard to come by. For now though, this is alright.

It took me 3 hours total to clear out all the spam in all my e-mail accounts - all 6 of them. Why I have that many is none of your business. What I do find funny is that yahoomail, Gmail, and even Roadrunner (a pathetic excuse for a company) all block my mom's chain letters from getting to my inbox. Fortunately, she never does ask me if I ever got them.

2010-08-14T10:23:00.009+08:00

I love screencaps. We also need to mention that he tried to add me on three separate occasions before I accepted, so his lines about liking attention, and wondering why I keep commenting on his delusional posts are hilarious.

No, I didn't and am never bothering to block out this douchebag's name on the image. It is beyond me how one can practically claim to be God's gift to free thought amongst so many other things when obviously being an egotistical parasite who ALWAYS deletes points of view that don't feed into his warped sense of self.

That's right. He deleted them. This is the kind of person who aspires to LEAD you. And judging from his fawning gang of nitwits, a lot will lap it up. Chutzpah is not brilliance, substance, nor competence, people.

Noynoy eh?

2009-11-08T10:02:00.002+08:00

Is it just me, or are most of the arguments for Noynoy logically fallacies that smack of a belief in Eugenics and Dynastic rule?

Is it just me, or is Kris probably more qualified because she definitely has more life experience?

I for one can't believe Noynoy when he says he knows nothing about the things going on and things that went on in Hacienda Luisita.

What would Lolo Pepe Say?

2009-08-29T21:46:00.003+08:00

The following is the first draft of my entry to the "What would Lolo Pepe say?" essay writing contest on Jessica Zafra's site, jessicazafrarulestheuniverse.com. I only had a little over an hour to make this, so I am not really 100% satisfied with it. The one I actually submitted (the 15th comment) is a bit shorter than this one, since the contest rules give a 500 word limit, which is a shame because I like this more than the one I submitted. Enjoy!

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Truly, I did not dream for an independent Filipinas to turn out this way. In fact, never had I dreamed that the Philippines would become independent in the lifetimes of many of my peers. Representation in the Cortes was what I had fought for but in the end what we have accomplished as a country has turned out very differently.

Where should I start when there are so many things to say?. After centuries of tyranny from without, we have managed to allow it to be replaced with tyranny from within. Oppression has and still takes many forms- a lot of them unchanged since my day. The illustrados of my generation, as is the middle class of today, were and are by and large scornful of the masses that have made their comfort and positions in life possible, though not as openly perhaps in these days. What else you one expect when it is considered an insult for one of the middle or upper classes to be compared with a maid or a driver? Even with all the modern conveniences that are now available to us, things have not really changed.

It is distressing how we are still stuck to outward appearances. Many would still rather be white, than yellow, or brown. We no longer have the ability to understand subtext and satire, even while we are vicious at picking out typographical and grammatical errors. It is unfortunate, as I liked the sort of humor that relied on satire and wordplay. How ill-fated Chip Tsao was to find himself in the middle of a barrage of arrows shot by the very people he was trying to point out (unfortunately only through implication, which few of us understand these days) were the equals, and not the inferiors of his countrymen?

Another point. Since I was shot at Bagumbayan, the education has had highs and lows. It is clearly in a rut. To see our motorists and pedestrians, is to lose your faith in their ability to comprehend simple road signs. Perhaps it is too much to expect they understand satire or things that provoke thought. What a pity that millions of young minds that could help this nation take its place in the world are being rotted by noontime variety shows and by a diploma mill instructional system.

Also, I had not wished that Tagalog would be the language of all the Islands. I know it is called Filipino, but as a tongue for unification of the myriad peoples of our country, it has been an abject failure and has only helped propagate Tagalog culture. Those from the other corners of our nation who cannot speak Tagalog as well as we in Calamba or perhaps Manila could, find themselves the target of insidious oppression. The fact that to be called “Bisaya” is now considered to be a slur upon one’s honor brings an egregious shame to myself as a Tagalog.

I have traveled to Dumaguete and Dapitan, Nueva York and San Francisco, Japon and Hong Kong, to Europa and other points beyond the so called “Metropolitan Manila” which distressingly seems to illogically always stand in for our very diverse nation, and have found good and gentle friends wherever I went. These sorts of class and culture discrimination HAVE to end, though it doubt even it will take 6 generations time, at this pace.

I was not exactly popular with my peers, and our Lord knows that many of my so-called friends in Madrid thought me haughty. It surprises me that I am now considered to be the greatest hero our country has produced, even while some say it was only the Americans who have afforded me that status to achieve some colonial gain. I do not know. I never set out to please anyone. I had never set out to be popular. All I ever did was to do what I thought was right. And what they did to me then, they will still do to anyone who tries what I did now.

Musings of a Sepultura Fan

2009-08-08T12:55:00.010+08:00

I didn't follow Sepultura in high school and in college. I didn't exactly dislike them either. While I did like a few of their more accessible singles, I never bothered listening to an entire album while they were at their zenith. I was into other kinds of music at the time and I guess a lot of factors kept me from getting that deeply into any sort of metal.

This is more than a decade too late, but after eventually listening to the almost the whole discography (and re-listening to it about a month ago), Sepultura probably could have unseated Slayer (in my psyche, at least) had Max stayed on. It simply ceased to be the Sepultura that captured our imaginations when he left. The next incarnation(s) didn't exactly suck, but they weren't up to par either. And when Igor left-- taking his awesome Afro-Brazilian inspired drumming prowess with him, that's when I started getting indifferent.

Here's a cover of Refuse/Resist, a Sepultura fan favorite. I've seen this video tens of times and it's still awesome.

Soulfly is gay, btw. Not saying they aren't heavy or anything.

How I Choose My Friends

2009-07-10T13:48:00.015+08:00

I am far from being a nonjudgmental character. Pigeonholing is something I, and a lot of people do. In my own defense, I give people at least a chance to prove themselves, as I know firsthand how it feels to be judged based merely on one's outward appearance.

As a consequence, I have learned to make friends with all sorts of people. Not a lot of people, mind you. Suffice to say my pool of friends is nothing if not diverse. I've also learned to generally choose quality over quantity, and it seems that people who match my particular definition of quality are not easily found.

Now how do I define quality? It's a very difficult thing for me to explain. No one is perfect, least of of all myself. But most of us, my self included, are able to look past quite a lot of things about a person. Most of my friends will differ from me in many fundamental ways, even if we do agree on a lot of things. Many of them will be unable to stand each other if they're forced to be in mixed company.

I have friends who believe all sorts of things. I have friends who are quite involved in political activism, and I have friends who helped candidates cheat in the elections. Some of them believe in same sex-marriages, some don't. I count amongst them Muslims, Bible-thumpers, part-time animists, hardcore-atheists, and of course people of more conventional beliefs for this country at least. Some can even be outright assholes.

Personally, even if I find the beliefs you hold or the political leanings you do have repugnant, I am usually able to let things slide most of the time provided you are not overly pushy and obnoxious. Hell, if you're witty and make decent points, I can usually take obnoxiousness.

I however, for the life of me, can never truly be close with anyone who is not truly passionate about anything other than themselves.

Passion is what drives people to create, even if there is no necessity to give birth to it. It is what drives people to excel, even when adequacy will suffice. Had the human race not been gifted with passion as well as logic to make sense of it, not only would we be unable to progress beyond being animals but we would also cease to be human.

Passion is the most beautiful thing I have seen and experienced in others. When paired with rationality, it becomes part of a combination that is beyond the sublime.

So I like passionate people and I apparently gravitate towards the geeky (after all, geeks are nothing if not endowed with a surplus of enthusiasm for specific things). Big deal. Why would I not really be friends with those that are not? Why can't I be friends with those who are apathetic, or just let whatever ever happens pass over their heads without a care?

This will be a bit complicated but let's first try to put things into perspective. If you lack any longing to create or excel in anything at all, how could you consider yourself to be truly alive? How are you better than an animal in that sense? How would it seem if you are unable to love anything enough to want to do something great with it?

Speaking for myself, it does not matter really whether or not you achieve something that you are reaching for. What would matter more is that you have the desire, and at least try to take a shot at getting it. From what I've noticed, people with real (as opposed to idle) aspirations have either a joy for living or a better understanding for things that can rub off on you or be learned. This seems to hold true, no matter what their personalities or actual achievements are.

It seems a shame to be apathetic about things that do not seem to directly concern you. There is so much wonder in this world, and so much to experience beyond mere distractions and it seems such a waste to just not care about them, or not care about a single thing beyond what is immediately had.

To my mind, to be apathetic without at least trying to understand and explore things, is a mark of someone who is perhaps, a little less than human.

People without passion allow mediocrity to be the status quo. Those without it let others make their decisions for them without a fight. Those without it seek only distraction and mistake it for fulfillment. Those without passion are never at all responsible for any progress, and are almost always inevitably responsible when regression takes hold. Those without passion are filled instead with apathy and allow the wicked to hold tyranny over them and take innocent lives with nary a complaint. And to top it all off, they're boring.

In the end, the choice I made to choose friends who have at least some sort of intensity or zest in them was the right one even if it was also a choice that will leave anyone with very few close relationships.

There are many good things to be said about choosing friends that lack passivity in them.

First and foremost, they are always entertaining to some degree. Everyone likes being entertained, but like the elitist douche I am, I've got standards which people who care for nothing but themselves rarely ever seem to reach.

Second, being with them is almost always an educational experience and one can often learn life lessons not easily found in any classroom or even through a Google search for that matter.

Third, they make me grateful to be alive because ever so often, you can almost feel the love that they put into their endeavors. When for instance, you see someone express themselves through their work in a way that shows that what he does really means a lot to them, the experience is something not easily forgotten,

Fourth, our passions help forge our identities. it's no surprise that those who are apathetic are quite often easy to predict and are so easy to pigeonhole. This is likely because they lack a sense of identity that is singular or even merely remarkable enough to set them apart from most other people. Passionate people are splashes of color on an otherwise gray field, if you would forgive this cliched analogy.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, passionate people will more likely than not care about things deeply, even things that might not be their overriding specific interests. Quite often, one might see that these passions extend towards concerns involving social justice or towards just making the world a better place.

Consider the fact that quite a lot of people who are well known in a particular field are often known for doing something else, most often helping others or helping make the world or part of it a little more tolerable to live in. I know this isn't a scientific observation, but surely one will notice that a truly spirited person will more often than not, have insights to the world a consistently passive one will not. It's no coincidence that many if not most artists, who are often considered to be paragons of passion, are into social causes of some sort. Even those with highly developed interests in technical fields, from Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein to Andrei Sakharov and Bill Gates have heavily invested in social causes, giving up their personal lives, giving their their talent or wealth, or all of these. I for one do not believe this to be coincidence.

People with this sort of drive have always been in perpetually short supply. Sometimes, it feels like they are more scarce these days. They are the ones I choose to surround myself with, even if they're not always the most reliable or the most available. I choose to be close to them because people who care enough to create and to excel even when they do not need to are those responsible for enriching the human experience. And as I have learned first hand, they seem to have the greatest capacity to love.

Generation Whine

2009-07-07T23:09:00.014+08:00

Lomo, Electronic music, Social Networking, faux 80s culture... these are among the things that many kids from where I live at least, are interested in these days. While I can appreciate most of these things to some level, I can't help but scream "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND A GODDAMNED THING" inside my head way more often than is healthy. Everything old really has become new, yet again. But with crucial differences.

As a college graduate and as someone who has hit my mid-20s, I've realized that I've become too old to be part of the things most young people today are involved in. I feel that as a crotchety oldster, I now have the right to sneer at the youth, especially when I subconsciously realize they might be enjoying things more than I did or are more privileged than me in some ways. i do not relate to them as well as would be expected.

I was born in 1984. Generation Y, or the youth of today are said to be those born after 1980. But that only applies in the Western World. More accurately, I am at the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y, mostly because Globalization had not reached the breakneck pace it has today and cultural adoption from the outside took a lot slower than it now does. I feel more kinship with those born in the mid-late 70s up to around 1986.

I can say with absolute certainty that I feel a somewhat wide generation gap between myself and those born just 3 years later. It's strange, but it's just too true. Most of them have no memory of Cory as President, or of the coup d'etats, or constant power outages, or the essential bits of popular and unpopular culture that was around. Even if it was only three stinking years, you had to be there. You had to be there when porn meant buying a tabloid instead of going online. You had to be there for those 3 extra years that you didn't have cellphones. You needed to have been there for the blue two peso bills with Jose Rizal on them. You needed to have been there for those 3 extra years that it actually made sense to purchase cassette tapes. Kids seem to have it so easy these days.

But after considering things a bit further, we need to realize that despite their better grasp of new technologies and their unheralded access to information at this stage in their lives, things are not going too well for them.

Most of the things that have come to define the youth culture of today are borrowed from the extinct or barely present youth cultures of decades past. Perhaps these youth cultures might not even have anything significant going on, aside from the fashion and by-the-numbers music. There is a definite 80s revival going on, and there is a resurgence interest in all the kitschy things that most people found cause to despise or find inconvenient, like porn star mustaches, trucker caps, and shutter shades.

Fashion, and perhaps the adoption of cultures and counter-cultures, is indeed often cyclical, mainly because people get bored of being exposed to or using the same things over again and emergent youth cultures will often have likes and dislikes contrary to the generation that preceded them for one reason or the other.

However, if you think about it, almost every new wave of youth culture has had something new to offer. I can't for the life of me think of something that is truly revolutionary that has been linked to the youth in the past 10 years.* There's been an explosion in the number of internet users, most of them young people (a broader definition of young that would include myself), that much is sure. But the internet has been around since the 1960s in the form of ARPANET, and the World Wide Web has been around since the late 80s, so this particular development and everything else related, including file and media sharing is more evolution than revolution. In any case, you can't give this generation full credit for the internet, even if it IS called the Net Generation.

Lets put things into perspective and use our powers of overgeneralization. Youth culture as we know it in the Western World and countries heavily influenced by the same (i.e. the Philippines) became significant in the 50s, following the baby boom and the fact that marketers recognized that the emergent youth not only had buying power, but a set of values different from that of their parents.

Of course, there always have been misfits in every era that had values very different from the mainstream. The short and often accepted story is, American kids with more spending power than was readily available to them before started to get influenced by the then alternative cultures represented by beatniks, bikers, jazz, blues, and country music, marijuana, and blue jeans started expressing themselves in a way never before seen. They were also crucial in the creation and popularization of Rock and Roll and the things associated with it. America, being the greatest cultural imperialist the world has ever seen, then laid down the path that much of the world eventually followed.

Let's overgeneralize things again, without considering the young people outside the so-called Free World. The youth in the 50s created the rocker archetype, among other things. The youth of the 60s created the hippie among other subcultures. The 70s had glam rockers, disco, emergent electronica (which had its roots in the 1920s, no less), and punk rock. The 80s had all sorts of metal, new wave, rap and hip-hop, techno, rave, and cassette culture, and more merging of ideas than was previously common. The 90s had grunge
(which was definitely not possible without the merging of influences), the blossoming of hip-hop and R&B, and it also brought forth internet culture. Almost all the significant movements arose as a reaction to preceding cultures and technological developments but they always created something of their own.

What did the youth, (arguably) my generation, create in the 2000s? Emo? Even that is arguably something that was already around in the 80s. Wide-scale independent music distribution? 80s still. Plaid and flannel? 70s through the 90s. Pretension? Since forever.

In fact, there is a corny 80s revival movement going on. However, instead of the innovation and reactionary politics that had been a hallmark of that and the other decades, it seems that this particular wave of young folk has reduced the things created by previous generations into a mere palette of fashion and music choices. It almost always seems that only lip service is given to the fundamental ideas behind the movements of previous generations. It seems that no one is creating anything new in a sense as vital as it once was.

What is sort of new, even with its roots in the 90s, is the proliferation of internet memes. Instant funny if you will. No need to add context either. This decade has shown that way too many people have too much time on their hands and more people than previously imagined, spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things just for the heck of it. And a lot of the time, it's hilarious. I agree quite a few of these memes are genius. But when it comes to things that matter, like the protection of freedoms or for the awareness of things that are happening, or effecting positive change, the youth of this decade has fallen really flat.

Generation Y culture here and abroad has been marked by an selfishness and apathy so obvious yet so insidious it makes me fear about what will happen in a future where those in charge will be people who currently by and large do not even care about the world beyond themselves. A generation that is resigned to let things happen as they will. Compare youth activism here and in the States (where a lot of our current youth culture ideas originate) to what it was 25 or 30 years ago, and the difference is obvious.

Even with the available technology and the potential to make a positive difference, the will to make this difference happen simply does not seem to be there.

Why? I seriously don't know for sure. Perhaps the oldsters have gotten too disillusioned with attempting to make a change and this rubbed off on many of us. Perhaps technology instead of encouraging people to be take action, has encouraged docility and perpetual escapism.

But I do believe this. The way I see it, the youth of this decade have contributed nothing significant or worth emulating. They are unlike previous youth cultures: one that does not long for change, but longs for escape. It is not one that by the very force of its own movement, breeds invention to reinforce one's identity, but rather breeds a despicable sort of passivity. It is not a youth culture that encourages its members to look at the past as a source of inspiration but instead causes its members to look to the past as a mere source of fun kitsch. For many young people, life is now lived as a means toward the next distraction, which is an awful shame as life as a young person should be something better than that.

*if you can think of something please comment

Philippine-American Friendship Day

2009-07-04T15:27:00.004+08:00

I just remembered that today is Philippine-American Friendship Day. I suppose this shows you can still be buds with someone who essentially raped you. By the way, waiting until most of our World War 2 veterans were already dead before you properly recognized their efforts? Classy move.

Cheers!

An Incomplete List of Things I Like

2009-07-04T14:32:00.003+08:00

After hearing Julie Andrews sing about her favorite things one too many times on Winamp, I've decided to give in and make a list of things I like, as well. Lists, personally speaking are what happen when I feel like I want to write something but feel to lazy to make something substantial and consciously coherent. A list would after all, help you compile several ideas around a particular theme without the effort needed to create a traditional article with paragraphs and complete sentences and all that sort of nonsense. Very few (or none of you) may recall the stupidity that ensued the last time I made a list, which by and large outlined the things I often noticed about people I dislike.

I'd like to be a bit more positive this time. These are but a few of the things that I like and I can't really explain why I like most of them.

Simple yet elegant solutions to problems.
Simple but effective musical motifs, like the Jaws Theme, or almost any song by The Ramones.
Nifty shoes.
Classy looking basses and guitars.
Seeing women I like in plaid skirts.
Cowboy hats and boots on the right people. Pretty hard to arrange, I guess.
Plaid button-down shirts. Preferably flannel. Any sort of cut that fits well is ok.
Naturally worn-out jeans.
Bakelite plastic like they used in old telephones and radios.
Three-man/woman bands. There's just something about a lot of them that appeal to me.
*Almost* exact symmetry when it comes to designs that do not have practical considerations that require perfection. Generally speaking, I don't like things to look too perfect.
Field Jackets. Especially M-65s.
Items made out of tortoiseshell.
De Stijl color schemes, or any color scheme that makes use of a limited palette effectively.
Conservative paisley prints. I can't really explain what I mean by that.
Food with multiple flavor notes.
The internet
The Torrents :D
Conversations where I don't have to explain myself every two minutes or so.
Sound engineering that does not resort to massive audio compression.
Teaching people stuff on guitar or bass.
Our Sharp R-340F Microwave Oven. Best appliance ever!
Corduroy
Meeting people who are truly passionate about something other than themselves.
Free food.
Swimming.
Good potato chips.
Audiophile equipment.
Seeing people get what they really deserve. X(
Punctuality
GOATS. I love goats. Seriously. Goats are awesome.
British humor

I'll stop here. I think I've bored you enough.

I am Alive

2009-06-18T01:27:00.008+08:00

In between moments of unbounded directionlessness, indecision, and existential torment that seem all the more tormenting due to the sense of clarity one gets, many of us find fragments of time to live in. The feeling that you don't merely exist in space does not necessarily consciously hit you, but there it is.

Without music, I'd find considerably fewer of these fragments of time to hold on to. You would merely feel like any other mass that occupies a place in space-time... no better than a coffee mug or an end table. Fully aware yet helpless, with time passing all the while. All you could do is keep regretting about all the opportunities you didn't take. Sometimes, we knowingly make stupid decisions without having any idea what just happened. And it can kill us inside. The purely rational mind (or one attempting to be) can be cruel- especially to the owner. Because it is painfully apparent how pathetic we all really are in the final analysis.

It's funny how the wrong balance of serotonin, dopamine, norepinepherine, endorphins, and other chemicals in your brain can determine whether or not you are able to be whoever you or other people think you should be. And it's interesting that music can help keep your brain's juices stay in a more manageable proportion, all while helping you to think, feel, and experience whatever the music is trying to convey. That is the way with all our experiences. Every single thing.

Even though I don't believe that we have souls, I do wish that one of these days, I would be presented with an argument that does not require me to blindly believe anything without proof. But I still cling on to the illusion that perhaps, even merely as the wonderfully complicated masterpieces of evolution that we are, we are able to have a sense of self that has meaning. A sense of self that believes that somewhere along the line, our ability to appreciate the finer things in life-like love, passion, or the more sublime pursuits- is linked to some power greater than ourselves... Not a sense of self that further propagates the delusion that there really is free will and that we are able to do whatever we want if we put our minds to it.

The music I listen to and appreciate, the disposition I carry, the food I like, the type of company I keep, the kind of jokes I enjoy, and most importantly- the kinds of choices I make, are all things that help define who I am. But how did this all come to be?

So that we are able to explain things a little better, we first have to tackle the idea of choice and address the concept of free will.

If you did your homework and weighed the facts, you would realize that there is no *true* free will. Rarely is our will as free as we often believe it is. We are all hardwired to do certain things. We do have a degree of control over what we do, true. And it is essential that we hone our rationality to make use of the degree of freedom we do have. But our views on ideas and the extent that we are able to make decisions is severely limited by several things. Mostly the sloshy stuff that leaks out of freshly fractured skulls.

Our upbringing and conditioning will help develop our ability to decide as well, by changing the very structure of our brains, as has been long known by modern science. Learning shapes our minds in the most literal sense.

However, consider the fact that we are born into cultures, religions, and households that we would not be able to choose. We are indoctrinated or educated in one system or another before we are even able to read or even understand how decision making even works. You could easily have been someone else altogether.

Most of these aren't new observations either. They've been around ever since the Age of Enlightenment, and arguably since the dawn of organized thought. I still hold on to the wish that we can have complete control over what goes on with ourselves. But hard science and common sense continues to prove otherwise.

Our ability to create and appreciate music and other forms of art is perhaps the greatest barrier to my acceptance that I am just a few specks of dust in the entire plane of existence. Yet, time and again we see signs that this aptitude is once again directly and conclusively linked to our brains. People who have great aptitude for the arts will invariably have brains wired quite differently from those that don't.

The case would be similar for anyone with certain aptitudes for other things. We also know for a fact that our neurons are able to establish and develop connection differently depending on the types of experiences you've had. Or even the chemicals you take in consciously or unconsciously from your food or other sources. Your grey matter got to where it is through a combination of genetics, environmental conditioning, and not a small amount of luck.

The argument for true free will can stop right there. If the structure of our brains are the determinant of everything that goes on with our interests, personalities, quirks, and choices AND since there is no possible way you can consciously control how it gets to its present state, then to say that free will is perfect is not only quite a stretch, but an impossible opinion to defend, especially if your sort of debate is the one that involves hard facts, and not stuff that is assumed to be true based on blind faith alone.

If you think about it, it's a pretty big deal. It may somewhat lessen the implicit and explicit responsibilities that we feel for our actions. It also removes so much of the drama that our species seems to be conditioned to enjoy. We are all essentially machines, with our individual imperfections and defects being the things that make us different from each other. It might be hard to accept since we have all developed over millions of years to believe that we truly have dominion over everything in this planet, even our own destinies.

In the end the ideas of "self" and "true free will" are by and large, illusionary. A mere byproduct of our millions of years of progression into our present forms. If you've never considered this all before, perhaps it's time to take yourself down a notch. With our concept of self and will tied in to our brains, there can be no soul in the way most of us see it. No afterlife with a continuing sense of self. No harps. No angels. Or if you're my sister, no fire and brimstone.

Personally, I'm more than a little bummed that my sense of self was all due to cosmic coincidence and that I never really was in complete control in almost all of the cases I thought I was. I feel disappointed, quite frankly. But there are other things to think about.

The knowledge that this is all we have puts into perspective how many of us are pointlessly wasting our lives on some fool's errand or another. What's worse is, that there are people destroying other lives on account of these illusions of control and permanence. Illusions that also happen to be what makes us who we are.

The answer to the question of "what" we are is the same: we are the most complex and the most amazing machines any force or confluence of events has ever created. We are machines so complex we are able to create impossible-to-solve self-referential logic loops concerning our very sense of existence. We are nothing short of lucky, and that's not too bad.

Knowing these things has made me appreciate what is there. Knowing these things has allowed me to develop an outlook that demands I treat everyone in a way that I would like to be treated. An outlook that demands justice in the present, because there will be no afterlife to punish anyone. This outlook enables me to look at the hard facts without prejudgment and to be more fair to everyone I encounter. It is a point of view that treat everyone as equals in a fundamental sense. It is a way of looking at things that lets you assess people on their merits and their character while allowing you to attain the most use out of the little free will that is actually allotted to us.

I now look at the world in a way so clear, the sharpness of it all can cause one to feel pain. But because things are so clear, it just makes me want to experience everything that I possibly could. I am no longer as afraid as I was. I want to experience different things. I want to see how different people see things, in their own unique way.

It makes me want to live.

An Argument For Laziness, and For Doing Stuff You Actually Like

2009-06-11T16:52:00.006+08:00

One of the central tenets of society is that we should all try to work and toil so that we are at least able to to support ourselves and not be a burden to everyone else. This is often taken for granted, perhaps as a form of social contract that is implicitly, yet deeply persistent in society.

This also holds true in cultures where freedom of choice is given at least some lip service. However, if we were to look at things a bit more, we shall see that these are things which are often taken for granted but may be seen to be incompatible.

Let us all be clear on something. None of us chose to exist. Whether you are a captain of industry or a tenant in the poorhouse, not one of us has planned our own existence. At least two people planned (or didn't plan) for you to be. By default, in the vast majority of cases, we become part of the greater whole, regardless of any thoughts we are to develop on the matter.

Freedom of choice may not extend to your freedom to be, but it can extend into your freedom to continue being... however you wish to look at it.

Supposing true freedom of choice*, you can always try to disassociate yourself from society in whatever way you wish. This can run the gamut from killing yourself to becoming a hermit, to just keeping the company of a trusted few, or just saying "to hell with work!".

It is the last example we shall discuss. Why do many of us kill ourselves working? Many of us feel a responsibility to support others and ourselves. A lot of us have put it in our minds that suffering is good, and the denial of pleasure is virtue.

There are a number of things very wrong with these assumptions. First, pain and suffering are nature's ways of telling us something is not right. You put your hand in a fire, it burns. You work 14 hour shifts 5 days a week doing something you hate doing, you dread waking up for work. You do something you don't like or something your body finds unduly uncomfortable (or both) and you will always of course, want to stop; especially if there is no greater reward in sight.

Pleasure is of course, the opposite. Even with regards to pleasures that are ultimately harmful. Their consistent denial can make you one unhappy bird. This is almost invariably true if there is no promise of anything better in return. **

Here, we have caught the lie. Most nations that are known to have a culture of valuing work above self tend to be countries with the most unhappy people. In fact, we Filipinos (mostly outside Metro Manila, which has a different work culture), have a notoriously live and let-live attitude towards work and life, and are often considered among the happiest people in the world. We all know wealth or productivity do not necessarily make most people happy or secure. And as any philosophy professor worth their salt will tell you, the point of life, with no other things supernatural being considered, is always about being happy, or trying to be happy.

In the Philippine urban setting however, many people, especially the upwardly mobile youth, work in fields that may pay well, but are not in line with their true passions. Here where the attitude towards work ethic is more in line with outside notions, people are markedly less upbeat. This is the consequence of both the lack of job opportunities and the lack of support for fields that do not promise maximum returns on investment. There is also an attitude of selfishness and survivalism that would make Ayn Rand proud. After all, times are tough all around. But are they so tough that it is no longer worth taking the risk of doing something that makes you happy?

The answer to that question can only really be answered by you. But how many kids really wanted to be nurses, salespeople, account managers, or be warm bodies to fill out cubicle farms in call centers and other Business Process Outsourcers? It is undeniable that many of us, myself included, have been drawn into fields we do not desire, out of necessity or (sadly) due pressure exerted by others, including our parents.

As a result, many of us no longer know, or will never know how it is to work to live. Instead, a perverse attitude of living to work has become the norm.

If the purpose of life is to be happy, then this perverted attitude has rendered many lives meaningless.All is well and good if you like your job. The last time I checked, this is not likely to be the case.

Having a bad job may not be so bad with a good support network of friends and family. But what about those who are without it? And do you really want to spend the rest of your life knowing that you had a chance at having it so much better, but you never took it? Are you sure you'd be happier doing what you are doing now than if you did nothing at all or something else entirely?

Of course, the funny thing about working is that if we choose to stop earning anything altogether, someone along the line will have to support us, in most instances. It may be friends, family, the state, or whoever else.These external players choose or feel obligated (or ARE obligated) to support us if we do not or are unable to support ourselves.

The choice is then up to you on how you should repay those that support you, or it will always remain a choice if you want to work at all. There will always be the inalienable right not to do anything if it behooves us. We did not after all choose to exist in the first place. Why should we conform to the standards of a society we had no choice in joining?

In any case, I don't think we should all start bumming out. On the contrary, I think almost everyone can benefit from doing something meaningful. I also happen to find life to be a wonderful thing, well worth financing by any means possible.

It is apparent that today, especially in most places considered to be developed and modern, that there is a huge deficit in happiness. We are not only less happy as a whole, but some would say our we have lowered our standards for happiness.

For many, dying may be the easiest way to escape a life not worthwhile.

*which I do not believe in, but that's a long story.
** even S &M falls under this. Pain for pleasure.

Sources:

http://www.nscb.gov.ph/ncs/10thNCS/abstracts/Invited/43%20Economic%20Accounts/10thNCS_Abstract_RAVirolaJOEncarnacion.pdf

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1029896,00.html

http://dss1.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/dataresources/newdataresources.cgi?term=42

Something

2009-04-07T02:51:00.001+08:00

I just want to do something REALLY worth doing.
.
.
.
But I can't.

On Being Unhappy

2009-03-10T01:11:00.009+08:00

Ah... To be happy. Isn't that what life really is about? There really is nothing else.

There have been very few truly happy moments in my life. So few that if I objectively considered it, it would be fewer than the fingers on one hand.

The first of these was before I even started going to school, before my dad was heavily into the affair that broke our family apart. When I was a kid, maybe 3 or 4 years old, I used to sleep between my mom and dad on their bed, because there weren't enough beds to go around just yet. I liked being there right in the middle. I felt so safe and secure, between my mom and dad. There to make me feel even safer was my own special pillow, shaped like a cat.

My mom took care of me a lot more than my dad, since my dad was always at work and she stayed at home with me. She always read me stories from all sorts of books. Sometimes she sang to me. She taught me how to write, though I always wanted to use pencils for drawing rather than writing.

Then for no reason I could understand back then, my dad would disappear on for days or weeks on end. Then for no reason I could understand, my mother stopped reading me stories and she would do nothing. She would then cry all by herself and sleep the whole day, leaving the run of the apartment to me until my sisters went home from school.

Sometimes, my dad would come back, for a few days or sometimes, a few hours at a time. I loved my dad a lot more back then than I do now. I never questioned anything he did. I adored him. Whenever he was back from wherever he went, he always spent a lot of time with me. He taught me all sorts of stuff. Like how cartoons are made. About trains, planes, and automobiles. About hydroelectric plants, Star Wars movies, basketball (if you know me, you'll find that funny), computers, typewriters, aswang, chess, and many more things I still find interesting. He brought me toys, and we all know how much these sorts of things can make a kid happy. More importantly, he was there.

But at that point I knew something was definitely wrong. My parents talked to each other, but seemed distant altogether, even if they slept on the same bed. Then one day, my mother had to go to Manila by herself for a few days.

I couldn't sleep as well as I used to. I was used to sleeping without my dad there, but not without my mother. Even with my dad next to me, I simply couldn't stand being in the dark without my mother.

Then something happened that I would never forget. He turned on the bed lamp. I asked if we could leave it on while I tried to sleep. He said yes. I still couldn't sleep but I felt a lot better. Then after sometime, we began to talk. Leaving that lamp on was the best thing my father ever did for me. After what seemed to be the shortest time, I saw my first sunrise. It was the first time I saw the sun peeking that way through our screen window. The light was weird and it felt unusual to see the room bathed in the purple-gray light of dawn, with the bedlamp shining on me. It was at that instance I felt I had everything, and that nothing more could make things any better. I would not feel that way again until I met the love of my life, just a few years ago.

My dad moved out of the apartment for a good just a few weeks later, after admitting to and refusing to end his affair. June of that year, I started going to school.

As I grew older, I began to understand people, including my parents, a lot better. And after I had relationships and problems of my own, I finally understood how my dad could have done such a thing. It could not have been easy. He was making a conscious decision to make himself happy, perhaps at the expense of everyone in his family. The pursuit of happiness is not necessarily without victims.

Happiness is hard to come by, and so much harder to keep. That's why some might pursue it, no matter the cost to others. That's not something I think I'd do easily. I hope I'm never put in too many situations where I will have to choose.

What's more, the more you know, the more difficult everything is. For example, my sisters hated my father for having his affair a lot more than I did, simply because they actually knew what was going on and understood what was happening, because they were older.

I've long realized that people who sometimes wish they didn't know what they knew or wish they were stupid, would more often than not, wish they were dead or didn't exist. It's just that there are things to do and things to keep doing, and people to keep from being sad, and people to keep from disappointing. Even when we are unhappy, we still want to see what goes next. It also seems we are still often unwilling to take happiness from certain people even if we ourselves are unhappy.

Feeling happy for keeps is hard. Even for those with religion or strong guiding principles in their lives, I'd bet. This is quite a difficult situation as feeling truly good about everything, even for a brief moment is something we all want. Taking advice from people who are already sickeningly chipper is sort of a crapshoot. Not only don't they always get you, there simply is no one way to it. I wish I could find my own.

For many such as myself, the challenge is to simply feel. Anything. Or to be in control. Or too simply experience something new. We will take anything we can get, if there is anything to take.

As for me, life's a show and it's been ok so far. Not that great. I just want to see what happens next.

Francis Magalona's Shirts

2009-03-07T10:22:00.005+08:00

I'd rather not talk about how Francis Magalona lived, or about what he left behind when he died. There are far more who knew him better and who could write better on those things.

Instead, I'd rather talk about his line of graphic tees and apparel. Goddamn. I really think he made some ugly shirts. I respect his musical legacy. His shirts, a lot less so. From just an aesthetic point of view. Nothing personal. I'm sure lots of people wear his shirts because of the message or whatever. I don't care. Still ugly.

Checklist for Identifying Douchebags.

2009-03-04T19:05:00.013+08:00

The world is full of douchebags. You might even be friends with some of them. Probably because douchebags CAN be funny, or cheerful on occasion. However they tend to be a pain to coexist with for extended periods of time. But these people are so entrenched in society that it can be hard to tell which person is a douchebag and which one is merely an asshole. There is one good rule of thumb, though- generally speaking, assholes tend to be smarter than douchebags and tend to have better taste. Douchebags also tend to like sports a whole lot more (since assholes are generally smarter).

Fortunately for those whose stereotyping skills are not quite up to par, I will present a list of items that will help identify who is and isn't a douchebag, in the Filipino setting. Unfortunately, while there are female douchebags, this list is primarily geared for dudes. Some items are still applicable, though. Add one point for every item unless stated otherwise.

Wears pink.
Somewhat buff arms and torso, totally out of proportion with the rest of said douchebag's body. An obvious beer belly in addition to these is a dead giveaway.
Overly cluttered and fancy graphic tees. Especially if the graphics are off center. Plus 2 points if the shirt has a picture of a guitar that the wearer could not identify.
Tight golf shirts. Any tight shirts, really. Especially from Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle, or Hollister. Add one point if the items are from SM Surplus. Add 2 if items are pink. Add 3, if a collar is popped.
Plaid shorts. Especially clamdiggers. Non-plaid clamdiggers might be indicative of a slightly out-of-date douchebag.
Likes Akon. Or Li'l Wayne. Add 10 points if applicable. Add 20 points if they own a CD.
Uses more than one facial care product.
Wears shuttershades or Oakley style sunglasses.
Wears any sort of sunglasses in a mall or at night.
Has graduated high school but has never read a book without pictures.
Wears hats with stickers on them. Add another point if hat is sideways.
Wears fedoras with a t-shirt, or anything that isn't a good button-down shirt and slacks.
Is obsessed with basketball.
Wears shitty Adidas sandals, especially when playing sports.
Excessively gelled hair. 5 points for a fauxhawk.
Drinks San Mig Light and insists that Pale Pilsen is for old people.
Wears chains.
Wears baller ID wristbands or anything like them.
Wears jewelry that actually spells out stuff.
Wears white crosstrainers/ basketball shoes with casual shorts
Doesn't wear socks.
10 points if they have a motorcycle with really loud speakers that play really shitty music (see item on Akon and Li'l Wayne)
10 points if they modified their motorcycle with aftermarket parts that don't make them look any better.
Buys cologne at least 4 times a year.
Erroneously calls eau de cologne, eau de toilette, or aftershave, "perfume".
Unwilling to acknowledge that UFC and MMA generally LOOK gay.
Wears scarves when it isn't particularly cold, or isn't mandated by religion.
Buys anything that is pre-distressed when brand new.
Looks like Willie Revillame
10 points if they describe themselves as artistic.
Has the conversational skills of a PE teacher

If the person being analyzed for douchebagginess is using a fake item (Hulister, Oakey, Abercomie, etc), please multiply the number of points on the appropriate item by 2. Except if they own an original Akon or Li'l Wayne CD, or actually bought tracks off iTunes or wherever. In this case, please send me their address so we can send a death squad.

Topsiders or boat shoes might indicate the presence of either a douchebag, or someone who just doesn't care one way or the other. Please inspect the perp more thoroughly and see if other items apply. Other borderline indicators include Rayban Wayfarers and Aviators, Vans shoes, playing airsoft, and working in a call center.

Please also note that shopping at Penshoppe, while not a direct indicator of douchebagginess, has been linked to poor douchebags.

Please also note that this is a partial list and is subject to change. List does not always apply to foreign douchebags.

Please compare the total score with the table below.

0 points : Not necessarily a good person. But at least: Not a douchebag.

1-2 points: Normal range. Has some annoying quirks. Getting there.

3 points and up: Definite douchebag.

If subject has any sports-related items scored: Possible Besketball Dork, a specialized subset of douchebag. Common in families with seamen.

15 points and up: Willie Revillame

Filipino Identity and Imperialism

2009-02-08T12:59:00.015+08:00

Relatively few people in the NCR realize just how deep the roots of cultural imperialism are. And I'm not just talking about Big Macs, Louis Vuitton, and HBO. It is a kind of cultural imperialism many here would be surprised to find actually exists, given that all Filipinos are victims of the same to some extent.

But before we can even discuss what is and isn't imperialism in the Filipino context, we first have to answer the old dog:"What is a Filipino?". The answer would be, to be trite about it, someone who is a citizen of the Philippines, or ethnically tied (a tenuous term) to it. Alright. What does a Filipino speak? If you answered "Filipino" you would actually be in line with what many people (including many so-called educators) think or want to believe. But you would be wrong.

Filipinos come from several ethnic groups, and speak several languages and related dialects, a result of our colonial heritage. None of these groups were able to create an internationally recognized state through self-determination. Whether you are Waray, Ilocano, Tausug, Tagalog, or any ethnicity that is tied to being Filipino, you are a Filipino simply because the Spanish, and later the Americans were able to control the area where your ancestors were born. You could very well have become Indonesian or Malaysian had the Dutch or the British controlled that little parcel of land where your ancestors lived. The problem essentially began thanks in large part to the fact that Filipino peoples (note the plural form) were not able to practice self-determination.

Marianas Islanders, Guamanians, and people from and the Caroline Islands and Palau would have been Filipino today too, had the Spanish not sold off these to Germany during the Treaty of Paris and had not the Americans decided to administer the Marianas separately when they finally took it from the Japanese (who had taken it from the Germans by the end of World War I). They were part of the "Greater Philippines" under Spanish rule and were administered from Manila, not unlike all the other Spanish holdings in the Philippines.

The answer of what makes a Filipino is something many Filipino nationalists have some fundamental trouble with. To be a proud Filipino is to be proud that you were lumped in with other similar yet fundamentally disparate peoples without the chance to determine one's future and one's place among other nations. Essentially, to be a Filipino nationalist is to be proud that you are in the same shit bucket as everyone who has become a Filipino as a consequence of history. You can never say you are a proud Filipino unless you have accepted your colonial past.

And this is something I can live with. I love the Philippines, my country. I am proud to be a Filipino. I am proud of what we have managed to achieve, in spite of the circumstances. But I am an Ilonggo first. I do not call "Filipino" MY language. My language is Hiligaynon. I call "toyo" "patis", and "patis" "Rufina Patis". Where I live, a "pating" flies, and isn't an aquatic apex predator.

Of course, as a Filipino, and as someone who has been subjected to the Filipino educational system, I've been instructed in "Filipino", our so-called National Language. There are several problems with the language and the status quo. For one thing, a nation(technically speaking) is a group of people with a common ethnicity and history, and is different from a country or state, which have sovereignty, government, territory, and international recognition. And for another thing, it is pretty lame to pretend that the Filipino language as it is is anything other than a dialect of Tagalog. I, like most Filipinos, am not Tagalog.

So, having established that there are several peoples within the Philippines, the concept of a Filipino nation is arguable, ESPECIALLY if one chooses to disassociate the country with its colonial past, which would be disingenuous, to say the least. The only way we can can actually call ourselves a nation is to acknowledge our colonial past and history. By extension, because our country is comprised of so many peoples, a "National Anything" will always be a difficult thing to achieve without some controversy.

"Filipino" as a language however, was first conceived as a way of unifying the country. It was supposed to be a mix of all the most widely spoken Filipino languages, with Tagalog as a base. However, in practice, it has failed miserably, as do most artificial languages not used for programming computers. Even Ricardo Maria Nolasco, former Chair of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino has stated that "Filipino" is nothing more than Tagalog as spoken in Metro Manila. Yet, for several generations, it has been taught to all Filipinos in the Philippine school system, regardless of the failure of the language to evolve to its desired, egalitarian state.

Instead, it has become a tool of Tagalog cultural imperialism. Now, this might sound ridiculous for many of you, especially if you live or grew up in the NCR. But many of us, especially those outside of Luzon, very much resent the fact that Tagalog (let's stop pretending that there really is a viable "Filipino" language), has become an identifier of what makes one a Filipino. All the rest of us have been left by the wayside.

Philippine media broadcast and distribute material in Tagalog, with a Manilacentric slant, without much regard for local sensitivities. Even the national anthem is in Tagalog. History lessons, especially topics concerned with resistance to colonial rule, are even centered around Luzon and Manila, with very little attention paid to movements in the Visayas and Mindanao that in many cases were actually more successful.

Even before the struggle against the Spanish was concluded, Tagalog imperialism had already taken root. Andres Bonifacio even referred to the whole country as the Katagalugan, a term many outside the actual Katagalugan found, and still find illogical, not to mention insulting. Just think what would happen if the French started calling the whole of Europe, France. A lot of non-French Europeans would be understandably upset.

NOW, this would not be so bad. We Filipinos could use a common language to communicate, and Tagalog is as good, if not a better language than any. What really cheeses a lot of us off is the perceived superiority complex that Tagalogs (and many other people from Luzon) have over people from the Visayas and Mindanao.

For example, calling someone "Bisaya" carries with it several negative connotations, not the least of which is that we are all uncultured and stupid. Whenever someone in a Pinoy movie or television show speaks Cebuano, Hiligaynon, or anything other than Tagalog as it is spoken in Manila, it is already understood that the writers intend it to be funny. Even people who aren't Tagalog but are simply from Luzon have learned to be relieved that they are not from the Visayas. This kind of backwardness had already been abandoned DECADES ago in other countries, yet it lives on here.

What is funny really is the fact that people living outside the NCR have almost always been disenfranchised to some degree. The provinces produce the majority of the nation's real, unleveraged wealth but get back only a fraction of the share of tax money. Metro Manila always has and always sucked up most of the money, which is why a lot of people in the provinces support Federalism. Why is this even funny? Well, if a schoolyard bully takes your lunch money and then makes fun of you for being poor and hungry, then it's pretty damn funny.

People outside of Manila are often resentful of Tagalogs because of how oblivious many of them are to their own sense of superiority. I was chatting in Hiligaynon with some workmates after hours when coworker from Manila once asked me "Ba't hindi ka marunong magtagalog? Pinoy ka ba?"(Why can't you speak Tagalog? Are you Filipino?"). It was a joke of course. But we were in Bacolod. People here speak Hiligaynon. I resisted the temptation to punch his face in, but then told him in Hiligaynon "Ikaw ang ara diri sa lugar namon. Ikaw ang matuon maghiligaynon" (You are in our place. YOU have to learn to speak our language). I made it clear that I wasn't pleased, through my tone.

It also annoys many of us here in the Visayas that a lot of people from Manila think that we are all the same. Cebuanos, Ilonggos, Aklanon, Waray, Boholanos and all the other peoples of the Visayas have distinct languages; none of which are mere dialects of Filipino, and unique cultures. What do you think a Scotsman would feel if you kept calling him an Englishman? You'd probably have a fight on your hands. Many in the NCR have no such sensitivities. They've never needed them, from where they are, after all. And the brilliant collection of mishaps that is our country has an ingrained system that keeps it that way.

I have been learning Tagalog (or Filipino, if you want to keep pretending otherwise) all my life. I hear and read it everyday. Despite most never having formal training in their native tongues, most people outside of Manila manage to be trilingual, or even quadrilingual. Most in Manila only know Tagalog and English can't even speak any of those correctly. It was my coworker, not me, who used the word "Tagalog" and associated it with being a real Filipino, through implication.

I've encountered this situation with Tagalogs more than once. Here in Bacolod (of all places), several times in Manila, and several times online. Would you be less a Filipino if you did not dance the Cariñosa? When it is even implied that I am less a Filipino because I choose not speak a cockamamie language that is essentially owned by another people who by and large, do not respect me as I am, you cannot really blame me for wanting to disrespect that people in kind.

I am not saying Tagalogs are evil or whatnot. My most favorite person in the world, my significant other, is Tagalog. I'll bet she finds this funny. We Ilonggos are also guilty of our own wrongdoings, as evidenced by our treatment of Negritos and the overtly racist Dinagsa, Dinagyang, and Ati-atihan festivals. After all, they used to own the land, and now they are reduced to caricatures in displays reminiscent of darkie and blackface shows during less enlightened periods in the United States. And yes, many of us don't like Cebuanos all that much, and would get annoyed or outright angry if we were mistaken to be from their part of the country.

However, I would have to venture that only the propagation of Tagalog culture has been institutionalized by our government itself. Many people people with Visayan or otherwise non-Tagalog roots have been conditioned inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally, as no one seems to be stopping it) that they, or other people, are inferior. For many, it is not merely a question of fairness and equity, but one of pride and identity.

As a matter of fact, this suppression and belittlement of identity, along with the perception among many non-Tagalogs that they are considered by people in the NCR and Luzon to be less Filipino, or indeed, just plain LESS than than they are, is more than enough to make many cynical about the the whole shebang.

What's worse is that the mastery of English, which has become a great equalizer in the provinces' fight for equality of opportunity, is being actively disparaged by misguided “nationalists” a colonial language. Any Filipino who's any good at any native language and English but not at Tagalog, is treated as an outsider in the capital. A foreigner in their own country. As a matter of fact, real foreigners are treated better than people from the provinces, even if their English isn't a strong point. Ironically, I have to point out, it seems people from the capital are quick to be judgmental when it comes to things like accents or grammar in ENGLISH, of all languages.

The fundamental disrespect for OUR diversity is something that we should ALL try to change. So long as things stay the way they are, it will be difficult to keep to the ideals of a true Filipino Nation. It certainly is a stretch to consider our so-called democracy and our politics mature, given this very fundamental problem.

I am Visayan. I am Ilonggo. I speak Hiligaynon. And I take pride in being Filipino.

On Updates and Writing

2009-01-18T13:55:00.008+08:00

I haven't written a much as I would like to on this blog. Some things are just too sensitive. I've been going through quite a number of personal things and was in the midst of a work-related crisis for the past few months.

Well, the latter is mostly over now. I have resigned, effective January the 15th. Overall, it was an educational experience. Not to mention a frustrating one. The money was good, but not good enough to keep me staying.

The former? Well, there are some developments here and there, but no real solutions in sight.

I've written about these things, though. I keep quite a few notebooks around, and I find it unlikely I could ever put what I wrote down in public. Despite what people think, my life isn't THAT open for scrutiny. I may be blunt and forward, but I could keep my mouth shut if I have to. Namely, in situations where it won't JUST be my neck. And as a general rule, I don't like getting people in trouble unless they deserve it.

I actually envy people who can write about what goes on in their lives, without any inhibition whatsoever. I envy them so much more than writers with a wide vocabulary or impeccable grammar. I envy those who write little, but with honesty and forthrightness in their output, moreso than those who are technically dazzling and prolific.

This kind of courage is a gift. Or if you wish to look at it another way, it is a kind of recklessness and is a curse. However you look at it, it can't be denied that this sort of this keeps people interested.

Let me use Kris Aquino as an indirect example. I'm not a fan, (though my sister is) but consider the fact that nothing about her is secret, at least as most people are concerned. Even her sexual habits are a matter of public record. She's done a lot of things that people wouldn't hesitate to condemn in most circumstances. Nonetheless, she is able to hold our attention, for better or worse.

Good writing is often purely incidental or in many cases completely divorced from content. Just read any boring-ass Tom Clancy novel and see for yourself. Material gets read or gets attention a lot of the time from the power of the theme or the subject matter, not necessarily because the writing is good.

This even applies to all kinds of art and creative endeavors. Sometimes, having good content will make people think that you can...you know... WRITE. Which really isn't the case a lot of the time. But when even mundane subjects meet good writing, a kind of magic happens that is so rarely read these days.

I feel vulnerable enough as it is writing about some of the stuff I do write down here. It's just I really don't think I have the guts to do what a lot of people do when they bare parts of their soul that are just not meant to be shown to the whole world. They can bare how they've cheated on a lover, or how they were taken advantage of when they were children, or about all sorts of things they do that society would consider deviancy.

When it comes to a lot of things, I'm still pretty much a coward. But who knows? Maybe eventually I'll finally find it in myself to say the things I know, in the best possible way to say them. To write about what is most telling about one's self, or even anything at all, and to tell it well, is something all writers should try.

My Mother

2009-01-13T13:39:00.005+08:00

Something occurred to me a while ago while I was chatting with a friend online

Dana Lutfi: watcha doin up so erli?
Arthur Piccio: early???
Arthur Piccio: hahha
Arthur Piccio: i had to buy meds
Arthur Piccio: i hate skype
Arthur Piccio: because my mother calls every time I'm actually listening to music
Arthur Piccio: ARGH
Dana Lutfi: looolz
Dana Lutfi: then dont go on it???
Arthur Piccio: i have to. she's my mother.
Dana Lutfi: :D

I dread these Skype conversations. She always tends to assume the worst about me. Every problem I have is because of my own damned fault and never because I was just unlucky (I don't need to be told this really). I also have to keep repeating points I already made because she already has her own ideas about what I should do that she wouldn't be swayed from. Everything is just open to enforced and reinforced misinterpretation.

This is why I've learned to never tell her if I have any real problems. Because she never makes me feel any better about them. If anything, she sort of makes it worse by over dramatizing things or willfully making the wrong inferences and drawing the wrong conclusions. The fun part is that these conclusions are ones that are outright ridiculous AND hurtful at the same time.

Typical Skype conversation. "Musta na da? Break na kamo ka miga mo?"

No prompting. No previous information given. Just an assumption of the worst based on no new information whatsoever. And the assumption that I don't know how to do anything right, of course. Even if the above situation were true, there would be more appropriate ways to ask this sort of question.

It was worse when I was at school, because she kept comparing me to my cousins who were veritable overachievers in I-don't-give-a-rat's-ass. I was always being prompted to take up Nursing, a fad course that means nothing whatsoever to me and does not fit my personality and aspirations. Fortunately, she pursued this issue somewhat late, after I had already been enrolled in my course for over two years, otherwise I would have had a tougher time saying no.

It doesn't help that we have opposing world views. For one thing, I'm agnostic(something she's convinced isn't true I guess, because she asks me if I went to church when it's certain days of obligation or whatever) and she's deeply religious. She thinks the Philippines is a dump with no redeeming value, to be avoided at all costs, I think it's a country that could be saved and made great. She wears shoulder pads, I think they're hideous. The list goes on and on.

It's kind of awkward to say this, but we all feel this way sometimes. My mother can make me feel homicidal in a way no other person can. No other person I know can be as tactless or as ({un?}intentionally) hurtful as she is. I could be on top of my own world or in the midst of escape and it's all too easy for her to bring me back to her own version of reality where I am the constant screw up and where my poor non-believing soul is cursed to such an existence simply because I don't go to church every Sunday or read enough Joel Osteen books.

The only reason she can hurt me the way she does is because I love her. And the only reason she's so hurtful is because she cares. Or at least that's WHAT I HOPE the reason is. Only the people we actually care about can hurt us in such a deep way. I guess this hurt and aggravation is just the paid price for being valued and loved.

On Being Mugged

2008-10-28T09:17:00.010+08:00

I was nursing a bad cold and got up at 1:30 in the morning to get ready for work. I watched the Powerpuff Girls on Cartoon Network then started to get dressed. Then around 2:20, I walked 75 meters to where I wait for jeepneys.

I was at the spot where I wait for jeepneys to commute to work and elsewhere. I've waited at this spot at this hour, hundreds of times. Then the guy with the gray or off-white ski cap and jersey stepped off the motorcycle and I knew I was screwed. When I tried to walk away, he showed me his gun, a cheap-looking chrome plated revolver that he had tucked into his shorts.

It all seemed so weird at the time. I didn't actually feel afraid. It was more of an "oh shit" feeling than anything else. He was a small guy, maybe a teenager, maybe not. He didn't have any stubble or facial hair. It was hard to tell his age with his ski cap on. When he threatened to blow my head off if I didn't give him my cellphone, he actually had a very soft voice, one that you would not expect from a mugger.

Like the idiot I was, I actually asked him if I could keep my SIM card. Surprisingly, he said yes. While I was taking out the SIM card out of my phone, he asked me why I was crying. I told him I had a cold. He told me to give him my wallet, but like a moron, I actually told him no.

By then, i had my phone disassembled in my hands and had extracted the SIM card. Then another guy I hadn't seen took the battery and cover off my hands. Then They sped off in their motorcycle. I didn't catch the license plate and all I know is that it wasn't bright colored, was kind of old, and wasn't a scooter. There might have been three of them, but I really could not be completely sure.

In seconds, I was hailing a tricycle to report it to the police. When i got to the police station, I told the officers on duty what happened. What followed was almost two hours cruising the Libertad Public Market and the surrounding area in the police pick-up, violating human rights of people who happened to be wearing jerseys, shorts, and ski caps. They informed me that the usual modus operandi of these people was to stay in dark, empty lots and when the time came, cruise the area until people like me showed up.

The fact that the pick-up was constantly going into the direction opposite of what I told the cops was distressing. I started to feel my sweat run cold everywhere. They left me at the station while they looked for their contacts. I spent an hour watching some Kevin Costner movie. Then I borrowed a cellphone and tried to call various people with my SIM. I called the sick hotline to work and told them what happened. The desk officer then helped me file the report and let me wait until the RMG guys came back from getting to their contacts.

In a few hours, I was breaking into a fever and I had started to feel paranoia and actual fear. It wasn't like I thought it would be. It was less distressing. Work can even be more stressful at times.

By the time the RMG guys came back, I was as sick as a dog turd. My eyes were getting blurry from the fever-hat and my sweat had started to run really, really warm.

By 8:00 am, the cops told me I could go home and they would contact me in case anything happened. I'm doubtful. I took a trike home and dragged myself to bed, unable to sleep. Then I called up my coworkers and bosses again to say I definitely couldn't come in. It'd probably be a black mark on me, even if I was actually a victim, but I doubt they would care.

Given the fact that my phone is pretty rare, I think I can probably manage to find it in one of the more notorious fencing places in the city.

I'm now wide awake, unable to sleep, sweating profusely and zoned out. Too tired to be mad. To tired to care.

Late Again

2008-10-23T02:11:00.002+08:00

Commuting in Bacolod is more painful than it really should be. Jeepney drivers are just so uniformly stupid. what most of them really need is a kick in the teeth.

Read to Judge

2008-10-19T09:03:00.003+08:00

I'm at a crucial part of my life and no one else knows it. Something important to me can very well end and there doesn't seem to be any real way to replace it. All that's left to do is to dream of a better life and to fail at making dreams reality.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just stop time and fold space so we can be anywhere we want? But even if I could, I wouldn't know where to go exactly. Maybe to some mistake I made so I could correct it. I could push people off rooftops and in front of passing trucks with impunity and just go off to someplace else.

I've been extra fake and extra irritable these days, a consequence of being in hiding, I suppose. Being in hiding is a lonely proposition, even if it keeps you protected somehow. Being this way is not the way I want things to be. It's like I can't help but hurt people, but all the time, I want to be hurt more.

I want to stick my head in a gutter and have a bus run over it. I want the people inside the bus feel a bump in the road, right at the moment my brain and skull is flattened into a pink, gooey, slurry on the side of the road. I want stray dogs and rats to eat the uncollected pieces of grey matter that get left on the street after the clean up crews do a botched job of collecting everything.

I want my head to collect the stray bullets that cops fire off into the air on New Years. It'll probably happen when I'm all tucked into my bedsheets. I can just imagine my corpse being left undiscovered in my room for a day or two until they come to collect the laundry.

I want to use a grenade like a telephone after the pin had been pulled out. I'd cradle it close to my head, knowing that thinking of folding space and traveling through time would be all moot in a matter or seconds.

Silly, but...

Bites

2008-09-07T19:41:00.005+08:00

On the days that we do manage to get out of bed and interact with people, we will often accumulate quite a number of interesting anecdotes from those around us. I can't say for sure that they're all true, but I believe them (enough) to repeat them. Here goes.

After having known this particular person for almost a year, I heard from a mutual friend of ours that he was actually a personal friend of Eddie Vedder, the lead vocalist for Pearl Jam, one of my absolute favorite bands.
/
On the way home from work, I decided to take a ride on a jeepney because it was too hot to walk home. I sat in the front seat, next to the driver. We passed by quite a number of familiar landmarks, including a felled concrete post on a sidewalk. This post and the debris had been there for years and the city had never bothered to clear it up. I had no idea how things came to be that way. Then, the driver, who had been silent ever since I got on, explained that there was an accident about a decade ago wherein four people inside a pickup were reduced to hamburger when their vehicle hit the concrete post at high speed.
/
A workmate of mine got through college on a tennis scholarship and had spent her youth in and around tennis courts, doing odd jobs like collecting tennis balls. Oddly enough, she didn't like tennis. Go figure.
/
A well known chain restaurant's local franchisee used kamote for some potato based recipes. This story reeked of bullshit, but the sheer crappiness of this particular chain's local branches back in the day made it easy to believe.
/
Another workmate once worked as a volunteer firefighter. I asked him what his worst experience was. So in a very calm and detached voice, he tells me the story of this apartment fire a few years ago. They were told that there was a child trapped in the second floor. Despite the fact that visibility was almost nil from the smoke, he and his colleagues rushed inside the still burning building to look for the child. He reaches the room where they were told the child would be. He couldn't find anyone in the room because of the thick smog. So he sort of shuffles around. Then he feels something crunch, give way, and get smooshed underfoot. He had found the kid and was in fact literally on top of him. He had just crushed the already-dead child's skull with his boot. And guess *when* the smoke decided to clear up...
/
And oh, you can actually use a cigarette butt as a temporary smoke filter in case of a fire. Just grip it tightly in your lips and breathe through your mouth.
/
Members of what was probably Negros Occidental's premiere rock band hate each other, but are forced to stay together because they can't do anything else. Sad, since the stakes are so small.
/
2Gb Sony M2 memory cards will range between P850-P3,200. An excess of 300% difference in rates means that something is definitely not right, especially when we're talking about the same product.
/
The Snackee mascot is NOT based on Ronald McDonald. Really.
/
Thanks to one of my ...um... drinking buddies, I've met these twins in passing. They're from my friend's neighborhood. They're middle aged and what struck me most about them was that one of them was wearing an army jacket and the other one was wearing the matching fatigue pants. It was cute in a twisted way.
/
According to a friend of ours, he knew someone who actually still thinks Vanilla Ice is cool, in a non-ironic way. Word to your mother.
/
Everyone I know who has used nunchakus (including myself) for more than a day has hit himself in the testicles. yes, I've never met anyone with two X chromosomes who knows how to use nunchackus.

I've run out for now. These are just the things I remembered from yesterday. At least, I've got something new in here, so quit bitching.

Regarding Nirvana: Unplugged in New York

2008-07-06T22:46:00.011+08:00

Yesterday, I got myself a DVD of the previously unreleased, unedited video of Nirvana's groundbreaking appearance for MTV Unplugged. I dithered at first. After all, I already have an original CD and a tape of the event. I also have the edited MTV Unplugged version on a bootleg DVD. Getting this DVD would cost me almost a day's pay. I wasn't too sure that the DVD extras and the lack of editing would matter all that much.

However, I was feeling quite down, so I decided to splurge. After all, this particular performance is one of the things my dad and myself agree on, musically speaking.

I watched it this afternoon and...

...

... I was completely at a loss for words. There are very few things that I could say that would do justice to this groundbreaking, yet very intimate performance by what may very well have been the most influential band of its generation... And I thought I had heard it all before.

I've had an (edited) copy of this event on audio CD for the past 9 years, have listened to the songs on tape shortly before then, and had seen in passing video replays of the performance on MTV well before then, and have a copy of the edited version. I've also read books and quite a lot of literature about the set. Before I bought the newly released unedited version, I doubted quite a bit if my purchase was really worth the expense, seeing as how familiar I already am with the material. I was so wrong.

When I first borrowed a CD copy of Nirvana: Unplugged in New York, way back in 1997 (long after it happened), it was an event that changed my life from that point on. Listening to it was a revelation.

Before then, I just took music at face value. Something that was there in the background that could change your mood if you wanted it to. Something that can keep you from getting bored. Something that was merely candy for one's ears. I also thought that if you wanted to make good music that you had to be really, really good, just short of virtuosic if you wanted to make something great, that you had to play extremely clean if a piece had to be worth anything. In other words, I knew shit.

Listening to the performance all those years ago made me realize that music does not merely change your mood, nor keep you from getting bored. It is not merely candy for one's ears and quite surprisingly, I found that virtuosity does not matter all that much in the final assessment.

On the contrary, I found that music, no matter how simple, can not only change your mood - it can move you. Music can be food for your soul, not just candy for your ears. I realized that even something with so many faults could be so impeccably beautiful.

What happened that evening in New York on November 18, 1993 was nothing short of magic. A band (and of course, a man) known for making music out of sheets of sonic fuzz and fury made themselves vulnerable by doing something completely new for the very first time. The fact that the concert was not completely "unplugged" or acoustic was irrelevant. The band showed that they were capable of so much more than everyone (including themselves) expected.

Seeing the interviews, the gig banter, the jokes, the rehearsals, and seeing how the band and their guests interacted with the crowd was not only quite satisfying; seeing those things put the entire event into perspective. Only when I saw these things did I finally realize that the band was winging it. For instance, they decided to let Kurt do a song that they had practiced and messed up an hour earlier as a full band - solo. The last few songs (arguably the set's highlights) were just played at the spur of the moment. They even jammed to Sweet Home Alabama!

They (especially Cobain) were putting themselves in a very risky and awkward situation. They really were going against the grain. Most bands playing in MTV Unplugged just went through all their biggest hits, going along with the expectations of MTV and their fans.

What the band did was really something else. None of the songs on the set, save one (Come as You Are) were really big hits for the band. In fact, most of the songs were covers. People expected an acoustic version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, and they also expected the band to bring in Neil Young (the so-called grunge godfather), or maybe even Eddie Vedder as their special guests. Everyone was expecting this big grunge-fest.

Who did they bring along? The Meat Puppets... Who? Exactly. That the Meat Puppets never had any sort of major acclaim with the general public was irrelevant to the band; what mattered was that they were trying to honor their influences. On the DVD, you could see and feel the crowd getting disappointed with the choice of guests.

However, as things turned out well. Really well. The performance became legendary and has transcended the vision of the show and had likewise demonstrated Nirvana's ability to make music that was way beyond the ordinary. MTV, in the final analysis, had nothing to worry about and they were right not to interfere, even though studio heads wanted to on more than one occasion. Interfering would have been like telling Michelangelo to paint the Coca-cola logo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. There was simply a feeling in the air that night that this performance was going to be extraordinary.

The performance would also turn out the last time the band did anything like it. Nothing like this will ever happen again. Times have changed, people have moved on to other things and any attempt to recreate something like the event would be kitschy and quite frankly, patently dishonest and against the spirit of what made that night truly special.

Regardless of what kind of music you listen to or what influences you have, this is something that really should not be missed. If there was anything that could demonstrate the painful beauty that comes with being true and with leaving one's self vulnerable, watching Kurt Cobain perform on this very special night would hit the mark very closely.

I R Proud Owner

A Strange Dream

2008-06-13T10:21:00.002+08:00

I had a very strange dream last night.

I dreamt that I was lying down on our old sofa. Then, when I looked up, I saw my Habanero pepper shrub being suspended over my head from the ceiling. The whole plant seemed to wriggle. So I looked closer and I saw shrimp crawling all over my plant like wet, gray, caterpillars. They came in all sizes that you would expect shrimp to come in. They looked exactly like the shrimp you would find in any wet market. Except that these crustaceans were quite skittish and animated in a very creepy way. They left slime all over my shrub and they gave off a very distinct rotten, briny, kind of scent. I could hear the lot of them munching on my plant.

It all seemed very logical at the time. It was like it wasn't at all strange that I would be on a sofa that we haven't owned for a decade looking at a plant that I've only had for some months, and observing sea critters that would normally be quite dead crawling quite contentedly over the same. The sights, sounds, and scents of the entire episode were as real as the teeth inside my head.

I only thought it strange when I woke up.

ARGH!

2008-06-11T23:04:00.001+08:00

kailinit nga adlaw. daw magago ko sa mga matapobre nga maupod ko. bay-i da ah.

Yan Yan

2008-06-07T00:21:00.011+08:00

This is a pack of Yan Yan. They're salty biscuits that come with a sweet dip in different flavors. It's been an entire decade at least, since I've had them. Probably more. I bought a pack with chocolate dip at Robinson's Place Bacolod for around P27.00, for old time's sake. I really did not know what to expect. The package is completely different from how I remembered. The shade of red was darker, and the plastic dip receptacle was dark brown instead of white.

Upon opening, the pack, one thing became clear. The chocolate dip is a lot thicker than I recalled. The whole thing smelled just the way I remember it, though.

I take out a biscuit and to my surprise, there was something printed on it. At first, I really didn't... well... "get" it. Did all Yan Yan biscuits with this sort of thing? The package should've given me a clue that there were things printed on the biscuits. Oh well.

So I ate that first biscuit (they taste just like I remembered) and took out another. I suspected that all the new Yan Yan biscuit sticks had this weird "animal + concept related to the same animal" thing going on. This stick put an end to that idea. It WAS obvious though, that there was this "Engrish" thing going on, which was pretty cool.

So I took out all the sticks, balanced them on my pant leg, took in the overbearing cutesiness of the whole thing (there are even small cartoon animals on the sticks), and took a picture. Afterwards, i put them back in and started eating in earnest.

They were all gone in about ten minutes. I took time to really savor each stick and made sure that I evenly distributed the chocolate, more or less, for each biscuit. When I was a kid, I was forever putting way too much chocolate dip on the first few sticks I ate, expending my chocolate before my last few biscuits even had a chance. Now I know better. I might buy a few more packs this week.

Things I Wrote In my Notebook

2008-06-05T20:36:00.001+08:00

No one knows who Rainbow Brite is anymore or remembers a time when noontime variety shows were just an hour long.
/
I'm starting to meet people who've never even seen Serg's Chocolate bars.
/
Back when in the old days when I still enjoyed those things, I really thought I'd have done so many neat things by now.
/
Real life can drag you down to the bottom faster than a pair of concrete shoes.

Are Complete Words Passé ?

2008-06-04T23:16:00.005+08:00

Whenever you shorten "you" into "u", "when" into "wen", and "that" into "dat" (among other words) when there is enough time available and character space left in the text box to make your point, you make yourself sound and look like an idiot. Same thing goes for those who overuse l33tspeak. While sending messages like these is fine when you are communicating with other morons, it simply won't do when you communicate this way or in other ways like these to other kinds of people.

/
Look, it's NOT COOL, OK? I'm generally fine with the occasional grammatical lapse and I don't think a propensity to create spelling errors is a direct indicator of intelligence. I happen to think intelligence is not THAT important in the greater scheme of things. Heck, I make a lot of mistakes myself. But these kinds of intentional misspellings are just lazy and are quite often just plain capricious. Overly fancy-schmancy typing with uPpEr nd lWer cAse leturs n (da faek l33t) N10tionly mangled spelling is even worse. I've never met anyone who typs lyk dis n order to luk hip to be someone really worth getting close to or even sharing a jeepney ride with.

/
Of course, some abbreviations like LOL and others like it are almost always acceptable in a casual context, provided that both sides have already established clear boundaries on what is to be considered acceptable when communicating. Heck, I have to admit that typin lyk dis can be acceptable if both sender and receiver have established that they are both fine with it. This is why it's OK for some people to use it, precisely because they know when NOT to use it.
/
However, using retard-speak or shortcuts that are barely even justifiable on SMS for most other situations demonstrates that the sender does not really respect the recipient. And if the recipient does not feel respected or thinks you are an idiot for sending them these kinds of messages, then we can quite readily see how the indiscriminate use of this sort of communication isn't so good for you nor is it all that great after all.
/
It's funny how many people now use "textspeak" or some other cutesy writing system in situations where the use of such is absolutely inappropriate. I've seen college essays and business communiques written in this way. I can no longer recall how many times I've seen this. Believe me, I've seen this thing happen too many times. I feel for all the teachers these days who are fighting a losing battle against this kind of socially-reinforced idiocy. I can just imagine how much of a pain it would be to check the typical high school or college essay these days.
/
We also have to take note that whenever someone has to ask for additional clarification with regards to what someone else actually meant on an email or on an SMS message (or even on something written on real, processed-from-a-dead-tree sheet of paper), due to their less than desirable use of abbreviations and what-have-you, time, and quite often-- money(!) is lost. Maybe we're just too casual these days when it comes to the things that actually matter.
/

Besides, how many times have you seen anyone say anything really profound or interesting when they communicate this way? Right. NEVER. And if you say you have, you're either lying or don't know any better. In the latter case, you should read more. You'll find literacy isn't as overrated or outmoded as most dumbasses want to make it seem.

Pants On Fire

2008-06-03T20:26:00.006+08:00

It just happens, I guess.

I'm a compulsive liar. If I feel that someone is asking me something about my life that I really don't want them to know, telling a lie is as easy as putting on my pants.

I sometimes feel compelled to lie about everything, especially to people who are unlikely to be of any consequence to my life. I know I'm not the only one.

And I sure as hell ain't paranoid either. I've caught people in a lie and have called quite a few on whatever they have said.

HOWEVER, it's a heck of a lot more fun to just let people trap themselves with whatever they've said. I'm sure that other people do the same thing to me when they've caught ME lying. Why shouldn't They? It's fun!

I know this guy who ain't so hot when it comes to a lot of stuff and he happens to be significantly challenged when it comes to intra-personal issues. He is/was literally a pariah in a course (Interdisciplinary Studies in the University of Saint La Salle- Bacolod) that was chock full of pariahs. He's like Napoleon Dynamite with more acne and without any endearing qualities whatsoever. We're fairly confident that this guy's fucked in the head. Now, I may not be a doctor but you don't need to be a doctor to be able to tell that this particular rube has something definitely wrong with him.

I don't talk to him much, but even a deaf person can tell that he's a compulsive liar. Moreso than I am. At least, I'd never willfully lie to my close buds.

His stories are never very consistent either. If you believed everything he said, then he's had more adventures than the Rat Pack in spite of the fact that he obviously has no friends. I feel sorry for him actually. He obviously needs help.

Um. Well. I feel sorry for him *sometimes*. I find it fun to humor him to see what he can come up with next. Quite a few think the same way I do. However, a lot of other people I know are outright pissed at this guy because he never follows through on anything and his lies can be pretty insulting to anyone with an IQ above 80.

The key to making fun lies is making sure that they are believable, even years down the road. Lies of omission or lies that technically aren't lies thanks to some deft use of language are particularly satisfying. It's an exercise in imagination, logic, and practical psychology. Not all lies will work with all people after all.

Without ego, I'd say that I'm fairly smarter than most people and I can read people fairly well if needed, and that makes it so much easier to craft a tall tale that someone who isn't very wary would believe. That does not mean that I don't think that there aren't people out there that aren't smarter than I am. On the contrary, I assume that people are smarter than I am when I want to make a really good fib. Assuming that everyone is as smart, or smarter than you is the key to a good lie. When you get caught (you probably will), you wouldn't want to be in a position where it is obvious that you insulted the intellect of the one you lied to. You want to be sure that even if they get pissed that they will at the very least appreciate the perverse respect that you afforded them. If it's a good lie, they might even appreciate your moxie.

Speaking of getting caught, it usually doesn't take a very smart person to catch you. One only needs to be smart enough to see through whatever you made up, and if you aren't very careful when constructing your untruth, "smart enough" may not even be in the range of a Bacolod City Jeepney driver plying the Shopping-Libertad route/s (most of them are retards on downers, I swear). I have no illusions. I've been caught lots of times, and I haven't been called on all of them. I'm a big minnow in a sea full of sharks.

Lying for no good reason other than to see how much you can get away with is one of the more affordable pleasures in life. Most of the time, anyway. Believe me.

Are They Even Trying?

2008-06-03T19:19:00.003+08:00

Something we found in Lee Plaza in Dumaguete.

On Some Things I Heard Today

2008-06-02T22:26:00.003+08:00

My day became a heck of a lot more tiring AFTER I finished my shift. And I didn't even walk home this time. Did you ever experience finding out something that hit you so hard that you become sort of numb to everything? Of course you have.

I've heard quite a few things today that didn't make me feel too good. I kept a poker face, but I actually felt physically ill after hearing everything. My legs were wobbling like jelly on the way home. It has nothing to do with me (directly), but I guess by hearing these things, I get to have a better understanding of people in general. At least there seems to be nothing wrong with anyone at the moment. I really can never say anything to anyone about what the heck I am talking about.

We have to be REALLY obtuse here, believe me.

Intentional?

2008-05-21T08:43:00.003+08:00

Phrasing means everything, man.

Guy!... Mann!... Dude!

2008-05-06T22:45:00.009+08:00

Guy Mann-Dude - Paint it Black (Rolling Stones Cover)

This is, bar absolutely nothing else, the absolute worst cover of a Rolling Stones song I have ever heard. This is exactly why I love it so much. This cover is insane. It is probably the most ill considered arrangement of a popular song that I have heard from an artist with a budget and I am freaking loving it.

What I love about this is how he obviously recognizes how silly and stupid Rock & Roll (and its thousands of bastard children) has to be if a truly "rockin'" quality is desired. Guy Mann-Dude also obviously has a sense of humor when it comes to his craft which is/was a point in his favor.I mean, just look at his name! You can never go wrong with a name like "Guy Mann-Dude". I swear I might name my first son after him.

The 80s of course, had no shortage of technically astounding guitar monsters and this "Guy" was just one of many. The thing is, he isn't nearly as smokin' or as tasteful as most of the other similar acts. Yngwie Malmsteen, he isn't. I read somewhere that he was once Joe Satriani's student. I don't know how true this is, but his lovably shitty arrangements are definitely not something befitting of a Satriani student.

By 1989 (the year this video was released) glam and power metal and instrumental acts were getting dated, with acts like Guns N' Roses, Megadeth, The Pixies, and Public Enemy on the scene. Mann-Dude's shtick was simply not the sound of the present and it was not at all the sound of things to come. Why'd you think Pantera switched over from glam metal to a more heavy sound around this time? Because they knew that the had to reinvent themselves if they wanted to be relevant. They had to move forward if they wanted to grow musically. And of course, they had to do what they did if they wanted respect and recognition. Which is basically saying they sold out their spandex and hairspray roots for something more current.

It's interesting to know that Guy Mann-Dude's whereabouts these days are shrouded in mystery. I wouldn't want to know what happened to him, really. It'll make him a lot less interesting. Pantera might have faded into the same kind of obscurity were it not for their very timely change of musical direction. Of course, having oodles more taste to go with their talent helped them out quite a bit.

In a manner of speaking, there are a lot of other Guy Mann-Dudes out there today. It's sad to expend so much time and effort on to something that would most likely be a dead end.

I Blue Myself.

2008-05-04T19:08:00.003+08:00

A new look, for luck.

Yet Another Shaggy Dog Story.

2008-05-02T11:34:00.009+08:00

I went to SM last month to watch a movie and my dad asked me out to buy siopao from Bob's when I was done. I'm not at all a fan of Bob's signature siopao. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But what can I do?

Anyway, when I got to SM, I was no longer in the mood to watch anything. So I decided to just buy the siopao instead. I was told it would take a few minutes to prepare, so I proceeded to find a seat. And to my surprise, I saw the only professor who ever flunked me (I also failed my first Political Science thesis, but that's another story).

The flunking was kind of a farce actually. The registrar messed up and gave me Tax 2. It turns out that I still needed to take up Accounting 3 and Tax 1, subjects I was still a long ways off from taking. By the time I found out that it was all a mistake, it was already midterms and I was already having a hell of a time keeping up with everyone. Everyone else was barely getting through the whole subject and there were other students even worse off than I was. It didn't help that the instructor was what we Filipinos call a "terror".

My professor made it clear that I was a moron for not taking note of the situation sooner. He told me to get things cleared up with the registrar. I was then supposed to get a form that essentially cleared things up so that the whole incident will not reflect on my transcript, which he would sign. The subject would then not appear on the transcript.

I did this of course and proceeded to quit attending his classes. Then I learned from one of my classmates that he was pissed for not attending his classes. "So what?", I reasoned. It wasn't going to reflect on my transcript anyway (despite my inability to get a refund). Besides, I was failing the heck out of it anyway.

After the finals, I learned that the bastard went ahead and failed me anyway, sullying my as of then, unsullied record. Turns out he didn't submit the little slip of paper that would've cleared things up. Would've taken him all of 30 seconds. Instead, he went through the additional trouble of calculating my grades through the midterms and my null grade through the endterms for a subject that I was not supposed to take and he submitted THAT.

In retrospect, It probably will not matter all that much in the greater scheme of things. But damned if it wasn't annoying the heck out of me at the time. For some reason, we never encountered each other all that often in the corridors, probably because he was in another part of the campus most of the time. When we did meet, I would sort of raise my hand slightly to greet him and he'd give me a look, and nothing more. He did however, compensate by giving me a look dripping with the contempt that I doubt I deserved. I still think it was pretty funny.

Now, 4 years later after the whole Tax 2 incident, I was in yet another situation where it would be rude not to acknowledge him. And I'm never rude on purpose.

Physically speaking, he was quite grotty looking, even if his clothes did seem clean. It'd be hard to find a one word concept that could encapsulate that man's being. "Antisocial" would be an understatement. Old accountants who happen to be confirmed bachelors aren't much into social niceties, so it would seem. He was alone and hunched over a bowl of soup, in a part of the restaurant where it would most unlikely he would have to interact with anyone.

In other words, he was in my spot.

I greeted him cordially, in the same way I did back in college: with a slight arm raise and a forced smile. He let out a slight grunt, along with a glance that lasted for but a small part of a second. As if to say, "I saw you. Now leave me alone."

No wonder everyone had at least a few bad things to say about him.

Man, he's cool.

200 Peso Bottled Water?!

2008-04-28T13:25:00.009+08:00

A few weeks ago I spotted a bottle of imported mineral water in a supermarket that would set you back more than P200.00 for around 500ml. The bottle was really, really nifty looking to say the least. The packaging and the presentation was nothing short of impeccable. I won't say which brand it was, but I will say that it wasn't even carbonated. Heck, the bottle wasn't even made of glass! It was also displayed far away from other lesser brands of bottled water.

It occurred to me that I've never had water this expensive before. I sure as hell wouldn't want to find out then and there. I just tried to convince myself that people who drink this stuff must be kidding themselves. That it's all about the conspicuous consumption of wealth that our left-leaning professors back in college have told us about. The high set price is all about making the brand aspirational, as one of my marketing teachers once pointed out in a class discussion I wasn't sure anyone else was listening to.

So I mulled things over. I had about P 500 at the time. I was planning on quitting my job, so I decided not to do anything as stupid as to spend 2/5s of my money on a purchase of dubious value. I'd probably end up eating a lot of instant noodles if I did buy it.

So I didn't. When I got home I practiced some Google-fu and found the product reviews needed to sate my curiosity. On one side, there were reviews by brand fanatics who swear that they wouldn't drink anything else. On the other, there were reviews by those who think that people who are fanatic about this particular brand of water are deluded or pretentious.

Whom should I believe? Obviously I don't know these people and I wouldn't be able to decide on the basis of character judgment. By and large most people think it's overrated. Then again, the majority isn't always correct. in fact, in matters of taste, they hardly ever are. However, I did find out that this particular brand definitely DOES NOT taste like ordinary water. So what we might have here is a question of preference. That is, if brand perception was not taken into account.

So here I sit, still continuing to wonder what this water tastes like. What it would be like to shower with it. To flush my toilet with it. How much more sense it MIGHT make to donate my P200.00 to charity instead. Come to think of it, even if this water was all THAT great, I'd still be pretty resentful of rich folk who consume several liters of the stuff everyday. NOTHING could possibly be that great. Or could it?

It's Nice To Know

2008-04-26T21:56:00.006+08:00

The very air around me feels so heavy.
Every little thing takes too much effort.
Even sleep.
When they say that you could get so tired that you couldn't even sleep, they're not kidding.
Being in bed... even for the entire day will do nothing for you.
Sleep can be a relief, if you can get it.
But it's always too abrupt for any lasting kind of comfort.
You can't talk to the people that you want to talk to and you do not feel like talking to the people that you could talk to.
You don't feel like talking at all to anyone.
You wouldn't feel that they'd understand you, even if you know they could.
Though in most cases, you'd be 100% correct.
I swear, the air is so heavy i could feel it pressing up against me like some thick, invisible cloud.
It's a kind of 'heavy' that has got nothing to do with gravity.
Nothing feels real.
You might do things just for the sake of doing them.
Getting started on things takes so much from me.
But at least, things start to look up when you get started.

Other times I feel like I get much TOO involved with things.
Everything is a kick in the head.
In a good way.
I feel like I could do whatever I want without having to suffer for it.
And usually, it's true.
I become an jerk.
But still I've got flavor.
But it doesn't seem too bad, especially when you get to do nifty stuff.
Assholes get all the chicks.
They have more friends.
Or that's how it seems at times.
At the very least, they get more things done, though they might get hated for it.
They can even excel.
After all, cream isn't the only thing that rises to the top.
Shit can float purdy good if it's just the right density.

Some days, I can let little gnats of annoyance pass me by with hardly more than a cursory neural impulse relaying the whole thing somewhere in the back of my consciousness.

When the same things happen on other days, a curtain falls in front of my eyes and changes the way things seem to me and I act on the first thoughts, words, and actions that come to mind.
Things that really should be kept well under check most days.

Thankfully, it's probably all temporary.
There's so much that could be done.
Though it doesn't feel that way.
Though I don't really feel all that thankful.
Though I'm not really doing too much about it.
Still.
It's nice to know.

On Hearting Charlyne Yi

2008-04-13T03:01:00.003+08:00

I've had this huge crush on Charlyne Yi for the past few months ever since I saw her in 30 Rock. You might remember her as the stoner girl Jodi in Knocked Up. I really, truly think that this girl is... well, if you know me, you can very easily do the math. Unfortunately, she's Michael Cera's S.O. right now. That guy's one lucky bastard.

Walking and the Things I Put On My Feet

2008-02-14T01:20:00.006+08:00

These are some of the footwear that I own. I might own way too many shoes for a guy. However, in my case, I'd like to think that it's justifiable, seeing as how walking is a hobby of mine. With the exception of the slippers, 3 out of 4 of which were given to me, every piece of footwear, including the dress shoes in the picture is pretty much worn out.

I try to walk at least 10 km or more 4 or 5 times a week, but I'll take whatever kilometrage I could get. I try to get them in the street and I try to get them in shopping malls and whatever places in the city that I could stretch my legs in. I'm probably a relatively familiar fixture in all the bigger shopping centers here, though I hardly buy anything other than food or maybe groceries and office supplies. I get paranoid that the employees that I keep encountering all the time might think I'm insane or whatnot. I tend to do all this walking this alone.

I might have someone with me say, every 10th time I go out. It's nice being able to talk with someone while walking for a change but usually, I feel a lot more comfortable being alone. Walking helps me to think more clearly and it gets me to wherever I want to go in this city for free. I don't get to think for myself all that well when I'm with someone- no offense to people I've gone out with. Being with someone also tends to make things a bit more expensive for me. I don't know. For some reason I always end up buying stuff when I'm with someone.

I'm not a health freak or anything. It's just that I find walking to be something that can calm me down. As people who have known me for quite some time know, I tend to get pissed off about things quite easily. I'd like to think that I do a good enough job of keeping things under check, but I know that this is not always the case. This makes it so much more important now that it seems that so many things are are conspiring to keep me from getting a sense of groundedness and security.

Why do I have these many shoes then? Surely, four or five can suffice? Well, yes and no. I could get by on just having 3 t-shirts, but I really wouldn't want to. Besides, shoes are so much more than just protection for our feet, they can also make or ruin the rest of your...um...get-up. It's not that I'm really into fashion or that sort of thing, but I having more shoes to go with your pants and shirts can be handy and keep things from being too boring.

Up until 4th year high school, I pretty much only had two shoes- one for school and a pair of sneakers. And these shoes were not only fugly (my mom chose them, of course), they never fit right, namely because I never had a hand in choosing them. As soon as circumstances allowed, I started buying my own sneakers. First, a cheap pair of Adidas sneaks (take note that there was actually a time that the so called classic models cost between 500 and 1000 bucks), then a pair of canvas low top Converse Chuck Taylor basketball shoes (which would comprise the core of my collection) which cost around P450, back in 1999.

Back in those days, chucks and other canvas shoes were simply NOT cool in the least. At least, not in my school. I liked them because they were cheap and because Dimebag wore them. I was actually made fun of for using these shoes. After Nike bought out Converse in 2003, they started this marketing campaign and damn near everyone started to wear them and prices shot way, way, up. Meh. Go figure.

Now I have all the shoes that you could see in the picture, and there are quite a number of pairs that I'm still interested in. As you could see, I'm a solid colors kind of guy. I'm not really a fan of designs that look too cluttered and I did a bit of DIY work on a few of the pairs. I wouldn't buy anything that was too loud per se, but I would buy something plain with the intention of making it loud, if you catch my drift. Call me stupid, but it feels more honest to do it this way, for some reason. I refuse to believe that personality can be bought off the shelf.

I guess I'm pretty lucky that Bacolod City is relatively friendly to pedestrians as compared to many of the bigger cities in the country. I would never want to have to move anywhere where walking to and from places of interest and importance would be impractical. I wouldn't be able to justify having these many shoes then. And I'd be really, really sad when that happens.

---
outdated piece in a similar vein:
http://yarrr.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/2005/11/a_winded_explan.html#comments

Feb 14.

2008-02-14T00:53:00.001+08:00

I was conceived on this day, 24 years ago. Or so I was told. Funny story really.

Happy Birthday Rene Requiestas!

2008-01-22T02:42:00.000+08:00

Rene Requiestas is without a doubt one of my favorite Pinoy comedians. He had impeccable comedic timing. This little ditty is from Elvis and James 2.

If he did not succumb to tuberculosis in 1993, he would have been 51 on this very day. I wish him well, wherever he is.

The La Corona Coffee House

2008-01-17T19:28:00.000+08:00

Picture Courtesy of Paolo De Ramos

This is an interior shot of the La Corona Coffee Shop near Burgos Public Market in Bacolod. As you can see, it's a tad dark. It's more or less always this dark during the day. Their coffee isn't bad. In fact, it's pretty good, though I've had better elsewhere. They tend to be a bit poor when it comes to consistency.

The best thing about this place is the native delicacies that are occasionally being sold here. The ibus is pretty good and I'm not sure if I've had better ibus anywhere else. You really can't tell what kind of sweets will be available when you get here, which is kind of a bummer.

There are vendors that occasionally come inside in order to sell all sorts of native sweets and pastries, some of which, I'm not too familiar with. They come from outside of the city and they occasionally consign some of their stuff here. I once bought kamote turon from an old lady who passed by and it was absolutely fantastic. That was over a year ago. I've been back dozens of times since but she's never come back.

I used to hang out here with some of the people I know back in college. In my last year of college, I was here almost every other day. Now I'm there every other week. The place has its share of regulars, not a few of them are among the people "in the know" in Bacolod, if you catch my drift. Frankly, they terrify me.

I'd recommend that anyone visiting Bacolod visit this place for at least fifteen minutes for a cup of coffee (a fair to middling dark Excelsa), a smoke (if you're into that kind of thing), and in order to get a sense of what Negros Occidental's famous sweets were actually like before they got all commercialized. Make sure to visit soon, as their selection seems to be becoming narrower every month.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... DON'T DRINK THE WATER. Be prepared to encounter nosy street kids and an old guy who just won't quit asking you if he could shine your shoes.*

*he does a VERY poor job of it but dammit, I like his attitude.

On "Good Old Fashioned Loverboy"

2008-01-06T22:25:00.000+08:00

This is the best Queen song never to make it big. I firmly believe that there is no other better song in their catalog. I freakin' love this song. It's hard to explain. It's solid evidence of the magic that is "Queen". The song is sexy, innocent, and ambiguous all at the same time. This is early Freddie Mercury at his most charismatic. I swear Freddie can actually make me SWOON with this song. This song can cheer me up instantly, even when I'm in a foul mood.

This is one of the few songs I consider to be absolutely perfect. Everything just falls into place. The drums, piano, bass, guitar, and vocals all meld together so well. AND the lyrics. they're innocent, playful, sexy, earnest, ambiguously gay, AND smart all at once. Truth be told , I rather prefer this song to Bohemian Rhapsody. There's no hint of bombast or pretension whatsoever. I couldn't care less that the bassline rips off Pachelbel's Canon in D Major.

Hmmm.

2008-01-01T00:25:00.000+08:00

I don't feel any different. Maybe I should wait.

Somehow, I Wish I were Kicked In the Nuts Instead

2007-12-17T23:20:00.000+08:00

Of my over 60 Gigabytes of mp3 files meticulously arranged alphabetically by album, artist, and year, only 2.3 Gigabytes remain, due to a disc error. Thanks fate!

On Change

2007-12-07T02:09:00.000+08:00

I watched Disney's take on Aladdin a few hours ago. I remember that this was the last movie that my entire family watched together. That was back in 1993. It was strange really, my dad and my mother weren't even talking to each other then, and they wouldn't talk again until 6 years later. They lived in the same houses (we moved a couple of times) but always slept in different rooms. Talk about a poisonous atmosphere.

Anyway, back to the movie. What can I say? It still holds up. I found myself enjoying it immensely, probably even moreso than that night 14 years ago. It's definitely better than the other Disney animated features that followed it, except perhaps for The Lion King (which COMPLETELY ripped off Kimba the White Lion). I've seen each and every Disney feature up until that Atlantis: The Lost Empire, because I didn't care anymore at that point. I actually regret not watching it though because I heard that it was pretty good in its own way.

The reason I decided to stop watching was because all the Disney movies had lost their magic for me some time after The Lion King came out. The other Disney Features that followed left a bad taste in my mouth and didn't do much of anything for me at all. The magic was lost. The only animated film that really did it for a long time afterwards was the criminally underrated (and box office flop) Iron Giant. I loved that movie to death. I still do. And of course, it was not Disney.

Disney just came out with dog after dog. It's like they decided to just phone things in. It's never good when anyone (or any company) does that. It makes me feel that someone or something dear to me died and I didn't know when.

I've had this feeling in other situations as well. It's like what would happen if a close friend you know dearly just ceased to exist and this dry facsimile took his or her place. It may look like your friend but it isn't the same person anymore. The realizations that come when this happens are never pleasant. These realizations are something that I in fact... dread.

The loss of familiarity can just be as tragic as any other loss. We've all had this kind of thing happen to us. Whether it's a major studio losing its familiar touch or when your friends suddenly become alien to you or when you graduate from five years of college or when your family becomes irretrievably broken, it's kind of difficult to immediately accept that things have changed and can never be changed back. 'The change' is sometimes kind of slow to register.

You may sort of know that things can never be fixed when these things happen. Just sort of. In my case, I find that it's hard to really, really know for sure. Then, eventually you just give up and move on.

Perhaps the time between 'the change' and the 'moving on' is the cruelest time of them all.

On The Manila Penninsula Hotel Incident, Thursday, Nov. 29 2007.

2007-11-29T17:26:00.000+08:00

As I'm writing this, Sen. Trillanes and the other leaders of the group that just took over the Manila Pen earlier today have agreed to surrender, following the spraying of teargas and the Philippine National Police's ramming of an APC into the hotel's lobby.

What I find most remarkable is that the government did not even attempt to negotiate. I really couldn't think of any reason why this should be the case as clearly the lives of civilians were at stake. If the government had wished to avoid bloodshed, clearly it would not have done what it did. It's as if they wanted to force a showdown where a few of GMA's most pernicious critics could be silenced for good.

Take it as you will. But the fact remains that the government has came across as exceedingly desperate here. Why should this be so? Just let that sink in while you check your Friendster account or illegally download music.

Best Friends Forever!

2007-11-18T21:41:00.001+08:00

For non-Hiligaynon speakers, the first part of the line means "Mango and Ginamus". These two together are considered to be quite the treat in these parts. If you're not familiar with Ginamus (also spelled Guinamos, Ginamous and whatever else way you could think of), you could Google it, since you're probably already online.

I just wanted to do something with the computer that didn't involve much typing. Anyway, I've wanted to make this a shirt with this design ever since I heard the line "Ketchup and Mustard are best buds" in a movie somewhere.

I Exercise Coffee Reviewing Muscles Now!

2007-11-13T22:54:00.000+08:00

I find that I do not have much time for myself nowadays, hence the long period between this blog entry and the last. But whenever I have a little bit of free time in the morning, I find myself going to Libertad Public Market for some brewed coffee.

Kape Mabuhay (that's the name of the coffee shop I go to. I don't like the store's name for some reason though. it just grates my ears; I just can't explain) has been in business since 1950, according to the sign out in front. For good cheap coffee, this is THE place to go in Bacolod. It was once this really dark hole in the wall where kargadors get to rub elbows with local leaders and businessmen. It's had a facelift a few years ago but the place is still pretty dark, almost dank, with minimal lighting. They are well known in Bacolod for their house blend, which is marketed as the Menci variety .

I asked the owner, a lanky fellow in his early fifties who usually can be found minding the store, what beans they used for the house blend. He said that they were a variety of Coffea excelsa beans, a species that isn't much appreciated outside of Negros Island and some remote places in Africa, or so he says. Anyway, I believe him. Whatever. No sense getting all skeptical in this situation. They once sold Barako coffee (a cultivar of Coffea liberica) and native grown Arabica and Robusta blends but the owner said he discontinued selling these due to low demand. The people want their Menci I guess.

Upon Googling Coffea excelsa, I found that less than 1% of world coffee output are species other than Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta and considering there are quite a few other species of coffee plant, I guess it would be safe to say excelsa comprises a lot less than 1% of the world's coffee production.

The first time I had the Menci blend, I remember smelling contents of the cup a busboy gave me. I really did not think too much of it. The smell was not too strong at all. But after tasting it, I realized that the kargadors I was sharing space with were on to something. I really can't say it was the absolute best brewed coffee I've ever had, but it's definitely way up there. Definitely something I'd choose any day over the ordinary blends all the fancy schmancy coffee houses sell. And it's only 8 pesos a cup. The rent in Libertad must be really, really cheap.

It's so cheap it's insane. This coffee definitely hands down gives me the absolute most value for my money. And if anyone mentions instant coffee, I will punch them in the nose. If Starbucks sold this blend for 200 pesos a cup people would buy it, I'm totally convinced. The whole upscale coffee thing is mostly marketing, from what I've experienced.

This dark roasted house blend in my opinion is best taken as it is, with no milk or sugar. But whatever floats your boat is fine, I guess.

Unlike many of the much more expensive blends I've experimented with, excelsa coffee (not that I'm an uber expert) seems to lack texture in flavor so to speak. There aren't that many notes, so it's a bit boring. Plus you don't get too much of that pleasant coffee aroma. But the notes you do get. Man oh man. I buy a kilo of grounds from Kape Mabuhay every month for 75 pesos. I'd probably still buy it if it were double the price. I like it that much.

AAAHHH!! PEEDO!!!

2007-10-18T23:28:00.000+08:00

I've been watching clips of Monkey Dust on Youtube every chance I get, lately. It's all so weird and so brilliant and at the same time, so 'veddy British'. It's the best animated take on skit shows I've ever seen.

The Paedofinder General is just one of the regular characters. You can see a lot of the other animated skits and characters on Youtube. They're ALL good. I've never seen one that was a dud. The satire can often reach heights John Stewart can only wish he can reach; though Stephen Colbert can and does reach this level of intentional"so stupid it's brilliant". The whole show is so brilliant that it's exclusionary. That's why you'll never see it on Philippine TV. Not even on cable in the foreseeable future. Because there simply won't be a big enough pool of people who'd understand who would get it.

AND it hasn't been officially released on DVD yet.

Anyway... Thanks Youtube!

Our Keyboard Be the Shiznit

2007-10-11T21:59:00.000+08:00

BEHOLD! Our Microsoft Natural Keyboard. We got it back in 1995. We took it out of retirement this week because the keyboard we were using was all busted. It just gave up for some reason and nothing we did could ever get it to work.

The first thing I noticed when I took it out of the box was the weight. It weighs probably thrice as much the other keyboard. My guess is it still uses solid/hard integrated circuits instead of the more usual flexible silicone film circuits today. It also takes up a huge amount of space. It's also made in Mexico, because back in the day, China DIDN'T make everything.

This particular model has the distinction of being the first to feature a "Windows" key and that funny little "menu key". It doesn't have the Power, Hibernate, and Standby keys many keyboards today have. The Num Lock key on the keypad also allows you to use the keypad to move the mouse cursor. It's pretty much a pioneer. I know this isn't the first so called 'ergonomic keyboard', because I know I've seen keyboards that claimed to be ergonomic even back when we were still using DOS, back in the late 80's and early 90's.

It's actually pretty comfy. It does work as advertised at relieving wrist fatigue. The keys are pretty stiff, though. I mean they are STIFF. And the number '6' is on the wrong side for touch typing. Overall, the Microsoft engineers had a great concept but botched execution.

The stiffness and the fact that it took up a lot of space were the reasons we replaced it. First with a Logitech knock-off of this keyboard. That one wasn't as comfy (the angles were all wrong) but the keys were a whole lot smoother.

But it's a good thing we kept it around, though. We must have had 4 or 6 keyboards in 12 years. And whenever those broke down, we reverted to using this very keyboard for a couple of months before finally replacing it.

Personally, I love this keyboard. Precisely because of its quirks and flaws. The first time I ever went online, back in 1995, I used this very keyboard. I made my first long-ish writing compositions on this keyboard. I'm not the fastest typist by any means, probably because you really have to type slow on this one. I've actually used typewriters with smoother action on the keys and I'm not even joking. I feel my unique, unnecessarily hard and loud typing style was necessitated by this keyboard and has become a habit that has been very hard to break.

When I hack out sentences and paragraphs with this keyboard I feel a connection with the era of old-timey manual typing and I have this delusion that it helps me channel all the greats who busted their asses on typewriters (we did too, back in school. But that's another story).

This is without a doubt, the most human piece of hardware we have.

If I Had A Pizza Tux, I'd Wear It

2007-10-09T18:03:00.001+08:00

What else can I say? He's awesome!

A Word To The Wise

2007-10-03T20:58:00.000+08:00

Last week I got a dental check-up. It was my first visit to a dentist in maybe 15 years. I can't really go into the details of why it took so long but I finally had the state of my teeth evaluated.

The first thing I was told was that I needed braces. I guess a dentist of all people would have a vested interest getting people to put on braces, but in my case you don't need to be a dentist to know that I do. Second thing was that I needed to have my wisdom teeth removed because they were severely impacted and as a prerequisite for braces.

Next, I was told that my lower left wisdom tooth would have to be removed even if I didn't want braces anyway because it had a cavity on it, and they don't usually put root canals on wisdom teeth. It was impossible anyway, in this case. It was my only cavity; my teeth were remarkably well kept considering how difficult they were be to clean, being crooked and all. I was told to get an x-ray and to come back for analysis and scheduling, which I immediately did.

From the x-ray, it was obvious my wisdom teeth were cartoonishly impacted. My lower 3rd molars were coming in sideways at a very slight DOWNWARD angle. There were just two very tiny off-white specks (actually the sides of my wisdom teeth) at the back of my lower jaw to visibly indicate that there were indeed teeth trying to erupt. They were otherwise completely buried in gum.

Badly drawn representation of my teeth, courtesy of ME

The dentist was taken aback for a bit and said the operation would probably be more complicated than usual. The price was P10,000 for removal of both lower and upper left wisdom teeth. After talking on the phone with my dad, the dentist agreed to do it for P8,000. I considered my self fortunate since I know people who had just one wisdom tooth extracted for 12k or more a pop.

So last Tuesday I went back to the dentist to have my left side wisdom teeth removed as scheduled.

I didn't know what to expect. i figured having wisdom teeth removed isn't as bad as most people make it out to be. It couldn't possibly be that bad. I was wrong.

It was terrifying.

I wasn't the least creeped out by the needles and the anesthetic and the drills, which most people people say are the worst things. I don't know about them, but it was totally different for me.

He gave me a local anesthetic first and asked me if certain parts of my mouth were numb. When I said yes, he began in earnest. a cut here, some drilling there. It was all interesting and not at all that unpleasant. Then he motioned to the nurse to hold my head in place. That's when my brain went :" Oh, sh..."

THWACK!

The hammer and chisel were the worst parts of the whole thing. He called the pair an Osteotome, but I know better. Every time he would bang on the chisel with the hammer to break the bone around my tooth, I experienced the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life.

Every time the dentist came at me with the hammer and chisel I was *this* close to peeing my pants. I was almost crying. I might actually have been crying like a baby but I was in too much pain to notice it. He kept telling me to keep my mouth open and to relax. I was trying the best I could but dammit if it wasn't impossible at the time.

He kept telling me "Dali na lang." but it was a lie. Between the umpteenth time he said it and the time he finished, it felt like forever. I could almost stand the taste of my powdered teeth and antiseptics, but the pain that came from whenever he used the hammer and chisel was unbearable. It felt just like it sounds. That and the sharp sensation of an icepick being stabbed into my left eardrum every time the hammer met the chiselhead. I found myself hoping against hope that I'd pass out.

Three times, with painful interludes of instrument manipulation in between, he picked out a bit of tooth from my mouth and I kept hoping it was over. No such luck. Countless hammerblows and drillings later, he picked out the last piece. He told me the lower tooth was done. I excitedly stamped my foot a few times on the floor from a lying position in joy.

Then he said he had to check for remaining pieces and he started poking around again. This time, he hit a nerve that he had managed to avoid since he started.

"AAAAHHH!!!" I went. He was visibly amused.

Most people are lucky. 3rd molar extraction of most types usually take an hour to less than 30 minutes by the dentist's estimate.

Well, I'm not most people. My kind of horizontal impaction was rare and was less than 4% of impacted 3rd molar cases. That's what the poster in the office said, anyway. And the whole ordeal for the lower tooth alone took a little under 2 hours 45 minutes.

Then anesthetic was applied somewhere at the back of my upper jaw. I had the whole trepidation thing now, given the experience I had mere minutes ago. He then took out something that looked like a pair of pliers, only it was more evil-looking. He then extracted my upper wisdom tooth. It was out before I knew it. I didn't even feel it come out. It took less than a minute. Only a few seconds, actually. Waiting for the anesthesia to act on my upper jaw took longer than it did to extract the tooth.

After the whole thing I sat on another chair in front of his desk and gave him an envelope with his fees in it and waited for my prescriptions to be filled out. I was told that my tooth and bone mass was extremely dense. He said he actually wore out a drill bit on me; I wasn't sure if he was joking but i just wanted to get the heck out of there. He then said did not expect the whole thing to take as long as it did; he estimated the whole thing to be two hours at the most.

I then asked the nurse for my tooth fragments. She gave me a resealable plastic bag with the requested contents. Most of them anyway. She misplaced on of the lower tooth fragments, to my annoyance. I decided not to complain. I then thanked everyone in the office and went home by trisikad.

To the dentist's credit, my jaw didn't swell to any extent that I'd noticed and I've all but fully recovered less than 3 days later. In fact, I'm having more trouble with the friction burns on the edges of my lips from the tools the nurse used to hold my mouth open than from my now empty gum sockets. Overall, he did very competent work and I've had no complications and he was really nice. It's just that now he looks like Josef Mengele to me.

When I got home, I gave my dad my prescription, spit out the bloody dressing they put in my mouth and tried to get some sleep. I realized that if I were to be tortured, I'd probably break down in a minute. If I were part of a revolution or something, all my comrades would be royally screwed if I were captured. Then the phone rang. It was my mom, telling me to inquire how much braces will cost because she'll pay for them.

That means eventually, I'll have to go through everything again.

omigodomigodomigodomigod.

A Reverie Tangentially Related to Oscar De La Hoya

2007-09-30T00:36:00.000+08:00

When I die, I want someone to rush over to my room and plant objects and media of such indescribable perversion and ludicrousness that people will be talking about it for years. I’m talking about inflatable goats with electrified nipple clamps weird.

This person will be sorta like a "reverse porn buddy".

And butt plugs... There should be a liberal sprinkling of vibrating butt plugs, harnesses and rainbow-colored feather boas. To get people talking.

Of Goats and Clown Shows

2007-09-24T15:19:00.000+08:00

I saw a clown show in the SM Bacolod foodcourt the other day. Clown shows are of course, for kids and there were a lot of those there. Kids, I mean. And by kids, I mean human children, not young goats.

There was an old goat present though. And by old goat, I don't mean an over-the-hill horned mammal of the pellet-pooping persuasion but an elderly man.

The old man was way up front, and what was strange was that while most of the kids looked bored with the clown's act (indeed, some of the children looked scared witless), the old man was absolutely enthralled at the proceedings. His eyes were smiling and unlike his body, full of life and vitality. His toothless mouth was agape in wonder. He in fact, looked more child-like than the children.

It's times like these that make you wish you had a camera.

What exactly are we dictated by norms to feel in a situation like this? At first, I felt like laughing. After all, humor is derived from the deviation of what is expected.

And that was pretty damn funny.

Late Review for Sugarfree's Tala-Arawan

2007-09-24T14:18:00.000+08:00

Sugarfree just came up on the radio. I like them. They are much better than many people realize. So much better than most would give them credit for. I bought "Tala-Arawan" last January and have been intermittently itching to give it a review since I got it.

"Tala-Arawan" is their third and possibly last album, did not make significant waves in local music. It's their least popular 'Pop' album yet. The band makes very 'pang-masa' but surprisingly clever songs, in contrast to what most consider to be 'pang-masa'. I won't get into the down and dirty details of describing and reviewing each song, and I'll say why in a bit.

Ebe Dancel's songwriting and vocals are so earnest and heartfelt that I can't help but get completely involved in whatever he is trying to convey. The songwriting is definitely a step above the already excellent songwriting of the previous two albums (well, not so much the second). In this outing, he is almost as good as, if not as good as Morrissey when it comes to bringing on the introspective angst.

The replacement of the old drummer did not make as much of a difference as I thought it would. One of the reasons I love Sugarfree is their tight rhythm section and though it's not as 'meshed' (I'm probably hallucinating) as it was previously, the result by my estimation is completely acceptable within the context of the entire album.

The themes are nothing weird or out of the ordinary. They are in fact all pretty familiar and universal. Family, friends, love, that sort of thing. The track with the most unusual subject would be "Ang Pinakamagaling Na Tao sa Balat Ng Lupa", which is a witty and sarcastic swipe at a know-it-all. then again, it wouldn't be too unusual because we all know people like this.

The album as a whole is a finely engineered, supremely melodic, gut-bustingly honest piece of work, from beginning till end. It exceeded my expectations by a mile.

Now, back to why I couldn't review each song. Two reasons:

First, I'm kind of lazy and this room doesn't have air conditioning.

Second, I think this album is perfect. Each song is right where it has to be on the track listing. Every track properly segues into another track in a way that feels as if you are actually reading a 'tala-arawan' (Diary? Journal? correct me if my Tagalog fails me). To try to use any of the album tracks as a single would not work very well. Take 'Dear Kuya', the song I heard on the radio. It wasn't a smash hit, though it had fair listener recall. If I had not heard Sugarfree's prior work and just heard that song, I wouldn't have bought 'Tala-Arawan'.

But I'm glad I did.

"Tala-Arawan" might very well be THE overlooked pop masterpiece of our generation. A proof of genius that will be largely unheard and eventually forgotten.

"Planet Terror" Review

2007-09-19T13:41:00.000+08:00

Last Tuesday, I went to watch "Planet Terror" the first half of the Robert Rodriguez /Quentin Tarantino double feature "Grindhouse", which has been split into two separate screenings in the Philippine market, thus negating the whole 'double feature' idea. Upon entering the theater, I noticed that there was exactly ONE person inside, a patron, who gave me an uncomfortable look. There was no need for an usher in this case, it would have been totally moot in this situation.

I found an aisle seat near the front so I could take in the entire screen. Having read a few reviews in the past few months, I knew what to expect more or less. There was a reasonable expectation that I'd be entertained. I'm no movie nerd or whatever, but the presence of Rodriguez and Tarantino is the only reason I watched. I had, in fact, planned to watch this early LAST year when I knew they'd be making a double feature together.

Not to sound intentionally elitist, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino make some of the stuff I love the most but their films don't find a wide audience in this country. True, the local literati often find time to give these directors (especially Tarantino) praise both deserved and undeserved. But still, the masses would rather watch a formulaic love-team flick.

Remember when Tarantino came here a few months back? The local cinema crowd, some of the media and Malacanang went all out to give him a welcome. But most people here don't 'get' him. I tried bringing up the visit as a conversation topic but most people here I talked to, even the ones who I presumed would understand where I was coming from didn't understand why I thought his work was so different from most current 'mainstream' directors. Tarantino's recent movies have all been homages to pieces of pop culture (ergo grindhouse and exploitation cinema), both American and foreign (to Americans) as filtered by situations present in the US during Tarantino's early years.

This is the same case with Robert Rodriguez. In fact, 'Planet Terror' is a culmination of his love for zombie exploitation cinema, flavored with a generous dose of B-movie related humor.

Filipinos who aren't exposed to the percolated culture that influenced the makers of 'Grindhouse' through the lack of direct experience and/or reading/movie-watching simply can't be expected to understand his films and all the in-jokes present. Especially when you consider the fact that the majority of people in the Philippines are under 30 and read very little. Most are simply too young and too ill-read to understand 'Grindhouse'. And 'Grindhouse' (the half I saw, anyway) was all about in-jokes and foreign pop-culture references from the 60's, 70's and early 80's that are quite removed from the wider Filipino experience. Plus quite a large number of people of all ages couldn't tell when some things are made to be taken as jokes, homages, parodies.

Predictably upon release, this combination of intentional awfulness, bad timing for the release and lack of audience understanding most likely led to poor word of mouth and in turn, poor attendance. This despite the glowing reviews I read in local newspapers and blogs. I'm pretty sure piracy did it's part too, but then again they affect all movies, so piracy can't completely explain why this particular film's run was so dismal.

Which brings us back to the movie proper. I was grinning from ear to ear the whole time. The fake trailer at the beginning was awesome; we should hope someone gives Danny Trejo a line of Charles Bronson-type movies. The movie itself was head-splitting. It's intentionally bad, for fun. And if I didn't have fun, I have no idea what I had. It was an endorphin dose that's gonna last me a week. But still I wonder how it would have turned out if the filmmakers had a budget similar to the movies they were parodying/making a homage to.

All things considered, I haven't been this entertained AND bewildered in a long while. I let out geeky giggles and snorts now and then whenever I understood an in-joke or whenever something willfully stupid and outrageous happened. It was like the longest Late Night with Conan O'Brien sketch that I've ever seen, only it was injected with a lot of grim segments unpredictably scattered all throughout.

In the end, I loved most of it. Quentin Tarantino's vanity appearance in his buddy's movie bothered me the most. He's a great director but a terrible actor. Which works in this context, I guess.

After seeing the entire thing, I went outside to warm up. The lack of bodies in the theater make for a VERY cold movie watching experience. As I was stamping my feet and rubbing my hands together like an idiot in the lobby a question came to mind: Why did they release it here in the first place?

If I were some bigshot movie distributer here in the Philippines, I wouldn't have released "Planet Terror" as widely. Definitely not in Bacolod. I saw the low appeal for Filipinos the minute I knew what 'Grindhouse' was all about. Hell! Most people I knew didn't didn't get what Kill Bill was all about and you sure as heck didn't need to know the exploitation movie references to enjoy it.

To whichever movie distributor had the bad business sense to have this half of 'Grindhouse' released in Bacolod, thank you. I really mean it. I hope you'll continue to give market forces the finger and distribute the other half.

Rain, Pants, and Zombies

2007-09-18T08:53:00.001+08:00

The five day weather forecast on Yahoo predicts a 60% chance of scattered thunderstorms all throughout. It's been raining buckets for the past 4 days and the skies have been mostly overcast for longer than that.

Everything is saturated in atmospheric moisture. Even things that are kept far from the windows have become half-wet, half dry and some things have started to become 'icky' to say the least.The pages of the paperback I've been reading have lost their dry, old-timey crispness and taken the texture of communion wafers. The stack of old newspapers in a corner kept around for the odd project have taken on a musty smell. Taking Leleina out of her box is something I haven't done for a week; her strings and hardware would surely start to corrode after being exposed this air. Madeleine and Eunice aren't so lucky since they lack cases, necessitating daily oilings and wipedowns.

I am also beginning to regret an experiment that I've undertaken. But before I can say what it is I have to explain some things first.

There's a pair of old jeans that I found while snooping around the house 8 years ago. They were left behind by some boarders from a few years back and since nobody's claimed them, I kept them for myself. For some time, they were my only casual pants. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, since I don't go out much. But when I was 4th year high school, I flunked Filipino. That meant I had to show up for summer school, which was scheduled six days a week for six weeks. That meant 36 days of sweating my ass off in one pair of jeans, since back then, I rather not go anywhere if I had to wear shorts. More than 36 actually, since I often had to go someplace on Sundays.

I literally wore the same pants without washing for that entire period. As a concession to hygiene, I'd hang them up in the sun to air out every week or so. But that really didn't help much. They smelled like dead rats and blue cheese no matter how long they were in the sun. The intensity might be lessened but the smell was always there. But when finally I had them washed, the fade was pretty. Really pretty. It's times like these I get convinced my mother raised me to be gay.

Now more than five years on, I'm doing the same thing again. I've resolved to wear those pants at least thrice a week until New Year's Day 2008. This time I don't HAVE to do it. Besides, I'm a guy and I'm allowed my fair share of hygienic indiscretions. I just want to see what will happen. The backside and the crotch have holes in them, which for the sake of propriety, I patched up. The knees are really frayed now but I plan on patching them up as well, when they get torn through.

They REALLY stink now. The rain and the resulting moisture have all contributed to create something that smells like a wet Rastafarian hanging on a chair beside my bed. There has literally been no direct sunlight over our place for the past few days which means all the nasty fungi or whatever sunlight-averse thing that creates musk smells has free reign of the house and my pants.

Anyway, on an unrelated topic, I plan on looking for a dentist today. And catch the first part of 'Grindhouse' , 'Planet Terror'. Not only has the Philippine release of 'Grindhouse' been long delayed, it's been cut up into two for the local movie going market. There also isn't any guarantee that local distributors will choose to show the second part, 'Death Proof'. Perhaps in this case, movie pirates will once again prove their worth.

For the want of 10K

2007-09-17T00:44:00.000+08:00

Sasha, our pitbull has heartworm. For those of you who've never heard of of this before, it's an infestation of a certain type of mosquito-borne parasite that literally eats mammalian cardiac muscle tissue. Fortunately, these critters can't survive in humans. However, as any serious dog owner can attest, they can be a dire threat to pooches.

We've known Sasha had heartworm for almost a year now. We took her to the vet to have her checked for a fungus and the vet mistakenly gave her a heartworm test intended for some other dog. The test result came back positive. The treatment was to be a series of injections that would cost around 2k each, with an estimated 4-5 necessary injections. Another caveat is, there was no guarantee of success. Funny thing is, heartworm is easily preventable with dirt cheap monthly meds. But when your dog DOES get it, it can be expensive to treat.

Precisely because it would set us back 10K, we didn't have her treated. We need that money to live, not to mention my dad still has a helluva lot of things left unpaid. Besides, my sister Melissa, who technically owns Sasha, isn't willing to help with some of the cost. I considered using my savings to have her treated, but without the guarantee of success, it wasn't something I was willing to do, given my lack of employment.

We knew what was eventually going to happen. She started to become more and more sluggish; a consequence of her circulatory system not functioning as it should. Then she started aging prematurely. Now she just sits in a corner of the house the whole day, with just her eyes looking up to people passing by and just the occasional wag of her tail. Once, she would relish greeting people she knew, the way dogs do, even if those people were gone for but a few minutes. But unlike other dogs, she has this curious habit of grunting like a pig and then howling at these events. She rarely barks.

We're thinking of having her euthanized now. It feels awful to have to consider this. She really is a sweet dog. And I mean that in every sense of the word. She's not what I expected a pitbull to be.

When she gently but deliberately rests her muzzle on my lap and looks up at me with her brown eyes while I'm using the computer or sitting outside drinking coffee just so she can get a scratch behind the ears or a kind word, I just melt. Her face has this... i don't know how to put it. Not all dogs have this quality. I'm one of the last people I'd expect to anthropomorphize animals but her face just begs for her to be loved. To be touched. To be recognized as something that needs; as something that feels.

I have to admit, when she was brought here last year, I was not taken to her immediately. She was kind of vicious to other dogs, though she seemed to like humans, even strangers, more than most dogs did. She was scared of a lot of things. Plastic bags. Jackets. Lit candles. Turkeys. Geese. Electric fans. Drinking straws. A/C vents. Loud noises. Lots of stuff I can't recall. The point is, she was and is kind of neurotic. And like I said before, she rarely barks. She's never barked at anyone that I can recall. She's more likely to run away than to attack an intruder and hence, made a terrible guard dog. But other dogs were a different matter. She could cow Max, our 100lb rottweiler when she was little more than half his weight. Whenever she met a strange dog, she has the disconcerting habit of moving more deliberately, furrowing her brow and becoming another animal entirely. One that was full of purpose and a frightening knack for putting her teeth into other canine's jugulars. She looks kind of demonic when this happens, actually.

But then the sight of her when she was just being her silly, clownish, cowardly self changed the way I acted towards her. We have to admit, cowards are hilarious.

Sometimes when she's on the floor lying down, I'd lie down beside her and give her a hug. A real one. The kind where you squeeze until it almost hurts. She'll ALWAYS grunt with appreciation, like a pig (I have to note that i always bathe after doing this) and she'll always seem disappointed when I stop. Don't ask me what a disappointed dog looks like, ok? It just seems that way.

She also likes being scratched under her chin for some reason. Whenever she's scratched there, she would literally plop down with a 'THUD' on the floor and roll on her back with her head held rearward so you could better scratch her chin.

Now I see her lying in one corner, constantly hyperventilating, her tongue pallid and her brown eyes barely responsive. It makes me tear up to think of how she's suffering. She's given us her love unconditionally. She deserves better than what she's getting. But she's just a dumb animal, right? She doesn't really know what's happening; surely she can't love. Or so I'd like to think. Because I know damn well what's happening. It's killing me a bit inside.

...

Barely Interesting

2007-09-08T03:48:00.000+08:00

This is the B Phrygian Mode. I like playing around with Phrygian and Phrygian-Dominant scales because they make me sound a lot better than I actually am. No foolin'. On a side note, a big "up yours" to all those guitar players who won't teach the concept of modes and scales because they're afraid of newbies getting the best of them eventually. Yes, there are people like that out there. I've met some of them. I hope you guys burn in hell. But don't die until I get my myself a JCM800. So I can beat you to death with it. Well, I would. But I'm kinda scrawny. So....

This Ride is Whack

2007-09-08T02:51:00.000+08:00

Wouldn't it be great if you could use plastic surgery on a white horse, so that it would look like a unicorn? That'd be sweet! Granted, it won't be a 'real' unicorn and it won't require virginity or purity of heart to see, but what the hey.

If that happened, it would be too awesome for words. No... Wait... There is a word. Pimp. Yes. It would be so freakin' pimp to go downtown on top of your white unicorn.

There the only thing more pimp than a unicorn, and that's a PINK unicorn. If you can afford a horse and associated costs of plastic surgery to make it a unicorn, surely you can afford enough pink dye/paint to color it. Or at the very least, you could buy an economy sized pack of unsweetened strawberry Kool-Aid for that purpose every few days or so.

Then if your unicorn could take it, you could have a 15,000W sound system installed on the saddle packs. Now, you might be thinking "but everyone has those these days!"... Not on a pink unicorn, they don't! When most losers cruise around at night with their audio systems on full, many people they pass by often find themselves wishing for their slow and painful deaths. When you're on a pink unicorn, they'll be so stunned they won't realize you've actually been playing 'Extasi Extano'.

What would even be more nifty is if you owned an entire barangay. Then you'd have people who could throw rose petals ahead of you when you're strutting around, looking pimp on top of your unicorn. You could make your ka-barangay push objects and other people out of your way. Now not only it that pimp, it's gangsta!

Man. I sort of wish I wish I were black, now. Then I could use 'pimp' and 'gangsta' without sounding stupid. I'm painful to listen to when I say those words, believe me. It's even more cringe-worthy than Ali-G, I tells ya!

Bah.

I'm Lousy at Making Titles

2007-09-08T02:12:00.000+08:00

That means exactly what it says. I should hang my head in shame. The last title to this blog was "They Should make Guns Out Of Chocolate More Often". I mean, how stupid is that? Well, pretty stupid, I guess.

I was renting a computer in an internet cafe when I opened this account and was pressed for time. I simply couldn't think up of a good title. Incidentally, I read a Jack Handey one liner about chocolate guns and stuck with it. If you haven't heard of Jack Handey, you should look him up. Teh Google is teh shiznit on teh intarweb machione LOL!!!111!

Now the title is 'Faute De Mieux'. It's lifted from a line I read in Naked Lunch, which means 'for the lack of anything better', so you can put two and two together* and understand why I decided to use this title instead of the other one. Besides, the stuff made by William S. Burroughs is probably more highbrow than Jack Handey's**. See? That goes to show how unoriginal I really am. Thankfully, no has deigned it appropriate for their blog title.

It's apt, for now methinks. I really thought the previous title was stupid, and so did quite a few other people but I never found the time to change it. I did have the time, but blogging isn't really my priority these days.

Now I have a non-catchy but somewhat less stupid title. And it it's in Français! Any classier and you'll probably have to wear a tux when you read this.

*the answer is four, moron!

** I personally don't think so.

UPDATE! Googling for blogs with 'Faute De Mieux' as a title has turned up a Blogspot account titled 'Faute-De-Mieux'. Dammit! Well, the owner might be dead or something. it was last updated 2005. But STILL! ARGHHHH!!!

The "I's"... (Dammit. Syntax, most likely incorrect)

2007-08-31T00:55:00.000+08:00

I live in an insignificant little town, in an insignificant little country. While I'm relatively well off compared to most of the human race, I still find time to whine. I can't stand people like me. I can't stand teenagers. I can't stand standing. I can't stand not doing anything. I can't stand doing too much.

My Motor's Running.

2007-07-27T02:59:00.000+08:00

I am convinced more than ever that 'My Sharona' *IS* pop perfection.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY can make two guitars, a bass, a drum set, and a couple of harmonizing vocalists work better than what The Knack has managed to do.

First the drums draw you in and keep you in. Then a simple bassline slides in, complementing the drums for that "holy shit, this is catchy! I can't keep my head from bopping!"effect. Then the guitars come in. First just one, then another. Then the vocals. They're not great or anything, but the playfulness and earnestness works really well. The lyrics are pure rock and/or roll, without a hint of pretension. The harmonized parts (the "MYYYY SHARONA"s for instance) come at only the times that they will prove interesting and they're too catchy for words.

Then the guitars start to take on more defined roles with one doing riffs and rhythm parts that follow the bass and the other one just sort of hangs around and does some amazing lead work at the only best possible times in the song. It and the other instruments only play parts when they are needed. The very fact that that this piece subtly uses the absence of certain parts and indeed, a few complete pauses underlines the sheer genius of the piece.

And the guitar leads. Almost a third of this song is made up up guitar solos. It's not easy to come up with good guitar leads. This song has two. Without these, The Knack could still have come up with a song that was no less catchy and no less immortal. I've heard two different radio edits with substantial cuts to the guitar solo that prove my point. But the song is a whole different thing compared to these sacreligious edits. It becomes truly perfect. It's long but it's done with taste and it's fun and listenable the entire way.

When was the last time you heard a guitar solo that was over minute that didn't bore you to tears? If you did come up with one ( I doubt it) I'll bet you had to think that one through. It's a fine combination of taste and technical virtuosity that is rarely found. You might find it thrice in Joe Satriani's entire catalog. It's easier to find records by ultra-fast shredders who can play extremely difficult technical pieces but you'd bore yourself to tears in less than an hour trying to find something as catchy as you would find in My Sharona.

The instruments, with the guitar solos being no exception, complement the lyrics. Hence everything has this one 'feel' to it. It's all geared towards just just this one concept:

A cool, yet very slightly obnoxious guy wants to make it with Sharona, presumably out of her pants.

Now THAT'S Rock and Fuckin' Roll.

If you're under 50 and you say you don't like this song, you're probably lying to maintain some stupid image. Unless you don't like it because you're deaf or brain damaged, in which case I'd be compelled to feel sorry for you. Otherwise, you should go drown yourself in a clogged urinal or something. We don't need you!

Maybe I'm Just Bitter I Don't Have a Digicam

2007-07-26T14:35:00.001+08:00

I looked at some other blogs. Then I looked at my old one.

I have no pictures.

I have officially alienated everyone who reads at a primary school level.

Contact

2007-05-08T20:30:00.003+08:00

I'm on Facebook. Maybe you've heard of it. Look me up. I'm also on Friendster. DON'T look me up there.

About

2007-05-08T20:26:00.001+08:00

I generally don't stay at the Young Adult section in book stores.