and so it ends.

Ohmygod I'm dreading to do this but here I am in front of a pc in a half-filled internet cafe that's usually full and usually noisy. If the two deaf people in front of me were actually making sounds out of there words instead of sign languages, there would be some semblance of noise but so far the whirr of the aircon and the occasional shrieking of the welcome door is by far the closest thing. I've tried to stray my mind on Facebook and doing all kinds of stuff like reading Quark Henares's top 50 musical LPs of the decade, which is kind of fun and informative in a way or the usual checking of awardsdaily.com, which I give a lot of shit about, but like diarrhea I have to let this crap all out. Like fucking get rid of it fast or it would stink or I'd shit in my pants. Remember that shitty feeling or mood or whatever it is I always find myself entrenched in during these times of the year I mentioned in the previous blog? Well it's still up and it's been a while. It's been taking up a lot of time. I wish it would go away because I previously said that I like New Years because it's something new, which garnered a sarcastic remark from my friend who said that it was supposed to be "new" that's why it's called new year. Well, I don't really mean it that way you know. It's like when Jakesully and Neytiri say "I see you" but then it's more than literal sense of the phrase. Silly me, I thought the second viewing of Avatar would make me all giddy-up and prepped up like a schoolboy for the new year but alas, it's just a piece of entertainment I'd escaped to for more than a couple of hours. It was cool by the way, the other day when I watched it with my colleague in this steaming new theatre which costs more than double of the usual and it was a treat so I wouldn't really mind. There's this reclining chairs, less crappy people, which I really like, good sound, but that's just really it. No 3D whatsoever. We here have really been deprived of a lot of stuff only found and experienced in Manila. Not that I give a a lot of shit about it though. It was just fun to be in that theatre for a coupla hours. I was supposed to go to an afternoon-and-night-long party with my batchmates in college but then there was that cold feet and all. I decided I should really finish this crappy evaluation of ours in the office which should take my mind off it for a while. Not that the evaluation was some kind of big deal or something, it's crappy I say. Then people started texting on where the fuck I was and some were inquiring on the details, which finally got me thinking that I shouldn't anymore hint of some kind of a get-together next year unless they do it first. The previous night few of my classmates showed up and we had dinner and all that stuff and we had coffee and a few laughs but when a suggestion of a follow-up came, I felt like it was too tiring already. I had a little chat with one of my classmates saying how much fun they had and I thought they wouldn't really care if I wasn't there or that I didn't show up in any of the venues they went to. I made up a stomachace reason but the real problem was that I'm fucking broke. Remember I told you I find myself in utter destitution? I'm not some hotshot like them who only spend for themselves or who have amassed huge sums of money and Christmas bonuses from their hotshot careers or from working abroad. I'm just a fucking slave working my ass off. I'm cool with that by the way. In fact I miss them to bits but I wouldn't be caught dead anyway if I just walked home and deprived myself of the fun. I had a perfectly reasonable excuse anyway, it's just that I lied. Anyway, while doing the crappy evaluation I told you about, I counted three quakes that really knocked my brains out. I don't like quakes but that time I had three, in less than 15 minutes while sitting and doing my stuff on the computer. I was alone in the fucking office because my colleague left a bit early and so it was me and the guard. It was scary as hell and I could've died alone in the dark cold night should that have been a really destructive quake. I remember this 30 Rock episode where you have Tina Fey choking alone in her apartment. I couldn't imagine myself dying in the office for chrissakes and so I headed home, quickly finishing the whole thing off. In short, I still end with this shitty feeling I always refuse to label as some kind of a crisis or whatever becuase I really, really don't like that 3-word phrase they use to label to people who've reached 25. I dunno; maybe I'm Jakesully who will really find himself happy in the extremest things possible, or that only the cinema, or James Cameron's wild imagination, could've concocted. Or perhaps because I'm re-reading Salinger's classic for a couple days now. Well not really re-reading it in the complete sense because I left a few chapters and bailed out on it few years ago because I can't stand reading it as e-book. You think that's a bad idea, me reading the book on such a joyous time of the year? It's like me watching episodes of Six Feet Under last year or the year before that prior to the New Year. Someone told me not watch it on these times but then I picked up Salinger on my colleague's shelf. Maybe that hinted all the bullshitness you've just taken in from me, or the language. I hate it to throw something like this to you but like I said I needed to take my crap out. It's something like a New Year-ish thing for me to do. I've been warned not to be jaded and all and that all I need was a really good shag but jeez I can't fucking help it. What should I really be doing is be optimistic about things. Oh I am, I truly am. But then I'm some kind of a bipolar on this like cynical-optimistic or whatever. I said to one classmate of mine that I think something grand will happen to me this year, like it's a milestone or something. So see, I'm not really a major pain in the ass. Unlike Holden, I find the word grand to be just okay especially if I have to look at and expect good things. I always expect grand things; in fact you can even see that in the blog description. But I guess this time or this year, I should really work my butt off so that I can move on. Jeez, I hope I haven't cornied it up for you. I wish I could be that writer of 500 Days of Summer who's so adept at not cornying things up when you expect it to be really corny. It's just painfully true. Perhaps that's what this is all is. A painful truth I have to at least deal with. And work on. So I'm just gonna quit yakking now because my fingers hurt already from the stinking hard keys and that my time is up. Jeez, I have to actually pay fucking 20 pesos so that I can neutralize my insanity or a quick glance at depression? Jeez. At least I'm not gonna be checking into rehab soon and be injected with all this shitty medicine that supposed to psychologically balance you out like the rich slobs who actually think its cool. Adios people, I think I'm gonna watch Julie and Julia instead. And, okay, Prospero Año Nuevo.

weeweechu

Can I just pause and actually believe it? It's freakin' Christmas. The only indication of its coming-atcha mood only came a few days ago while waiting for a taxi that would lead me to the inevitable office Christmas party, which obviously plenty of us go laboriously through. Not even the office party would make me go giddy-up with joy and anticipation. For a moment, I thought all the taxi drivers in the world went to North Pole to offer themselves as reindeers to Santa. Or that by some random universal mechanical mishap all their automobiles went kaput. For 30 minutes or so I stood transfixed and fuming at the same time. From where usually hail taxis or ride jeeps, it's already unusual. And so it's Christmas na pala. And people suddenly troop to wherever to constitute the busy-ness of the season. But I'm still working my ass off like right now, which is actually okay anyway, rather than I endure the compulsory tasks propelled by the commercialism of the season. Lining up in counters, picking your brains on gift ideas, and just about every pronounced pleasantry the holidays would require one's self. This year, I find myself in utter destitution. Unlike last year, I haven't bought anything for my inaanaks. Guess I have to go through the TNT stage at least once in my godfather life. And boy do these children multiply every year! I am avoiding get-togethers and I find them to be such a cop-out sometimes. I haven't contributed anything to the noche buena table to which I cannot really call a noche buena because it ceased to be buena a long time ago. I haven't bought a single decent gift for myself except probably food, not that it would actually appease my usual helpless, lackadaisical mood during these supposedly joyous times. Kate Bosher said: "Isn't it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don't know what exactly, but it's something that you don't mind so much not having at other times". My colleague said I'm slowly becoming a grinch. There's always a Christmas rant. Perhaps I should really count my blessings noh? Oh how I wish I could be little drummer boy and just be nonchalant about everything. Well, whatever. I can't help it. We live in such perilous miserable times. And so I end this with something from George Bernard Shaw, and hope next year I would have something that would best fit describe whatever remnants of joy this season supposedly give out: "Christmas is forced upon a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press; on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred."

That's me, feeding my finger to little drummer boy himself. Photo taken the other week at Plaza Pershing in Zamboanga City. The lights there are OA but fun. It's as if all the Christmas lights were harbored by the city government and plastered it in their city halls and parks.

Show me da Manny!

Okay, I think I have to cave in to the much-ballyhooed win (which fight isn’t anyway?) and throw my slight disdain towards his minor bullshit-ness over the window. When you’ve got fame and power at your disposal, why not bullshit around right? To rub the already clichéd term more, Manny is really something—he’s unlike any Filipino not just in strength but in the ubiquitous charm. He’s a slap in the face to Filipino bourgeoisie. To the poor, he’s an icon of triumph; a testament to that elusive luck, which we Filipinos have grabbed onto so tight we forgot to do anything else. He’s “the great hope” as TIME magazine would put it.

I can very much recall my very first participation to the communal Filipino act (by now it should be some sort of a Filipino tradition—a kind of phenomena that depletes traffic flow in the streets and diminishes crime rate to almost nil) of watching a Pacquiao fight two years ago with complete strangers. It was in a department store and there was some exhibit of which I was a part in. It was a Sunday, as usually the case, and there was a large-enough TV with the Pacquiao fight. As long as it was on, it did not take more than five minutes for the entire vicinity to be filled with excited onlookers (I sat down on the floor for convenience), as if the TV is some kind of medium channeling a modern-day deity. During the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, I watched it with a room full of my colleagues, around 30 people. So imagine the fucking noise it created when Hatton was pummeled to an unconscious state in the second round. Everyone looked as if they won the championship themselves, a beaming smile and pair of delightfully-lit eyes.

The media is overflowing with words and the TV is replete with footage of the said communal act. For really, it does move mountains and Manny can move the nation into such state which we are so quick to call as unity—we are so damned united. We feel our brothers same excitement. We feel truly proud. We feel we are living like patriotic Filipinos rooting for their hero. Dare I say that never have we felt a sense of Filipino pride so strongly than with Manny’s bouts, especially to those whose idea of the EDSA revolution is that of the history books. This sense of unity is commendable, the sense of pride inevitable. How can you not be? I am proud.

But see, while Manny’s victories we claim as ours, while we unite as a nation and feel an overwhelming sense of pride, what of after? For what? We go to our daily goings-on, be bums, be corporate and bureaucratic slaves, be pessimists, be optimists, be friends, be enemies until the next Pacquiao fight. We wait for that glimmer of hope, that façade of victory we always wanted to have a taste of—but unlike Manny we seem to have lost the willpower, alright, the “firepower” and we go back mired in empty promises of relief from misery. If Manny so reflects our country, then it would be that, this country has always struggled but success (power) has always remained to be in the hands of the few. So, after the fight, we go back to being a country in disarray, our goals and ideals in shambles, prone to crime and corruption, wallowing in poverty, with a continuing exodus of people abroad, we go back to bitching about the traffic, until the next Pacquiao fight finds us in each other’s company again.

existentially beleaguered

They call it microblogging but for whatever purpose it may serve to other Facebook users but the ubiquitous box wherein you place your thoughts is for me the most easiest I can get to a rant, or an outlet. So thanks, Mr. Zuckerberg, whom I just read in GQ’s men of year as, what else, 2008’s “Boy Genius”. (Jon Hamm who’s terrific as Don Draper is on the cover.)

But back to the FB thought-box. So I was posting that I was kind of “existentially beleaguered”. Besieged was the first word, but mukhang OA. That mood kind of pervaded for around 2 weeks, which is actually kind of long already (sometimes a different thought would appear the next day, or even within a day as sometimes I post good quotes from books, novels, personalities and from wherever I get these pretentiously sensible crap. The thought posting is actually kind of fun, eliciting a plethora of reactions and what-have-yous from friends.

A colleague asked why was I “existentially beleaguered”. I can’t provide the answer, to my surprise, and I had been placing it for around 2 weeks. When I heard the first bout of Christmas songs wafting in the commercialized air of the yuletide, that’s when it hit me. I always get this mood, which is actually a shitty kind of mood to feel given that everybody’s all giddy-up for the season. I felt this last year, and just like the universe’s many inexplicable mysteries, I dunno why I give a shit. Or maybe I don’t really. I still like the Christmas songs though. But maybe I lost something, or what? Christmas is not for me, its for the corporate slugs and people who have fat pockets after the season because of humongous bonuses that seem to pile up their already humongous paychecks. I need to have some fun, right? I’m just fucking thinking too much probably.

The First Lines.

Yielding to a request from Heidi M, the world's great undiscovered photographer, I am finally posting the first lines of some of my favorite novels, starting with my most favorite seven, then randomly. I realized it's quite a lot, but I really liked these, for some reason or the other. The list is pretty gender-biased; the absence of a female writer except Alice Sebold. Some passages are not exactly one sentence, but I added as to what I deemed appropriate, or that which I feel would completely embody the thought of that passage, i.e. The Stand, American Gods. I encourage you to do it also. Kind of therapeutic while I compiled these in a small notebook yesterday afternoon.

“The boy with the fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon.” Lord of the Flies, William Golding

“ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.” – American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

“My suffering left me sad and gloomy.” – Life of Pi, Yann Martel

"We were fractious and overpaid." – Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

“The play—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.” – Atonement, Ian McEwan

"Later than usual, one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sublight thorugh a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around the roof.” – Vineland, Thomas Pynchon

“The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.” – Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates ------
“In those days apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.” – Sophie’s Choice, William Styron

"I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” – Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

"The American handed Leamas another cup of coffee and said, “Why don’t you go back to sleep? We can ring you if he shows up.” – The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John Le Carre

“So you’re all set for money, then?” the boy named Crow asks in his characteristic sluggish voice. – Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

“In eighteenth-century France, there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.” – Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Suskind

“Mason City. To get to there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, the day we went up it.” – All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren

“My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me as Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name.” – Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

“The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.” – 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

““Sally.” A mutter. “Wake up now Sally.” A louder mutter. Lemme lone. He shook her harder. “Wake up. You got to wake up!” Charlie. Charlie’s voice. Calling her. For how long?” – The Stand, Stephen King

“She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teacher was my mother in disguise.” – Portnoy’s Complaint, Phillip Roth

“Charlie Croker, astride his favorite Tennessee walking horse, pulled his shoulders back to make sure he was erect in the saddle and took a deep breath… Ahh, that was the ticket…” – A Man in Full, Tom Wolfe

“Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident.” – Crash, JG Ballard

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – 1984, George Orwell

“Back in the late 1970s, when I was fifteen years old, I spent every penny I then had in the bank to fly across the continent in a 747 jet to Brandon, Manitoba, deep in the Canadian prairies, to witness a total eclipse of the sun.” – Generation X, Douglas Coupland

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.” – A Separate Peace, John Knowles

“Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough, and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough, that his biggest problem was killing time.” American Gods, Neil Gaiman