Monday, April 23, 2007

Everything's downhill from here.

For about a week now, my father and stepmother have morphed into owls. They have adapted night-shift jobs that require them to be awake from evening to dawn. Along with some of our neighbors, if not marauding the quiet streets and pasting on walls, they are either clumped in the nearby sari-sari store preparing election paraphernalia. With the searing heat nowadays, it makes sense that they do the plastering and literal messing of public walls with photoshopped faces of candidates when the sun is out. Practically, when everyone is asleep and no one is aware that the gang just plastered their candidate's face on someone else's. It's a dog-eat-dog world mi amigos.

It's not actually what worries me, Papa plastering faces on walls, but him ending up this way. For the past week, he hasn't accepted any painting contractual jobs. In fact, after he resigned from his laboratory work in one of the biggest cement corporations in the Philippines (now owned by a Swiss magnate) some 10 years ago, and after the stupid business venture went kaput, finding a decent job has been up to no good. In fact, life has been up to no good for him, which means life has been up to no good for me and my siblings also. Oh fuck it. I hate where this is going so I'm gonna shut up now.

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Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a f—king big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose a three piece suit on hire purchased in a range of f—king fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the f—k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing f—king junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, f—ked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?

Renton, Trainspotting