Killing Me Softly With His Phone

(If you don't watch Glee, watch the commercial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v0G8KdMc3w)

Everybody watching the US Match Airing of Glee on ETC will see what I see: a commercial for some newfangled text promo from Smart, which starts with a bunch of girls fawning over this guy who passes them. After going all "Squee!" over him, what do they do? Do any of them even continue talking with each other about the guy, or even about guys in general?

Of-frakking-course not. Instead, they all whip out their cellphones, and start trying to out-class each other by broadcasting who they'll be forwarding this entirely insignificant piece of trivia (that trivia being "Ang cute ni Joe!") to: the first texts some random name, the second calls some other random name (read: "classier" than texting, supposedly because it's more expensive) and the third blurts out, "I'm gonna text my Facebook!"

I'M GONNA TEXT MY FACEBOOK.

Then the hoopla about the promo comes around. The flashing images, however, no matter how gaudy, are nothing compared to what has just happened, and what effect it has on a student of communication. It is a travesty of  the entire process: the choice to simply text a random social network, no matter how famous said network is, over actual human contact, whether verbal or nonverbal. Thoughts about a person near you, transcribed into text then broadcasted into what could probably be called a pseudo-imagined community, instead of going through the simpler, more sensible, more "human" process of translating it into phoneme and utterance and broadcasting to people around you, even if not to the person you really want to talk to. Instead of breaking down walls, as is supposedly the philosophical rationale behind all these advancements in communication technology, we see new ones being erected by no less than ourselves.

What happens after the images are the salt to the wound, though: cute guy Joe's friends receive the Facebook status update, and they joke around with him for being called "cute" and all, revealing that they were connected to the girl in some way (hence the Facebook "friendship" prior to the event covered by the commercial).

End commercial.

People who would rather go and display their exhibitionism in front of a pseudo-present audience? Is this what all this communication technology-related compatibility is leading us to? Will our sons and daughters grow into an age wherein everybody will become even more introverted than ever, for by that time it will be more the norm to broadcast to pseudo-present audiences than to present ones? A future where, simply put, posting a status update will become more important than actually speaking with another person face to face, all verbal and nonverbal signs considered?

Of course, you may chide me for seemingly over-reacting to what is nothing more than a cellphone commercial that probably would not even last a year. But remember that television commercials, moreover ones that come with really popular (hence, commercial-laden) television shows, come from the minds of people living in the now and reflect the value systems of people living in the now, therefore having the potential to influence the minds of people who either already live in the now, or want to. And if this is what stands for communication nowadays, I sincerely fear for the future of my future children.

Long Weekends are Never Long Enough

For time doth grow its leathered wings
To fly through warm and balmy winds
That only long vacations bring
To thy worn shell of human will

Alas, respite thy doth lack still:
Time speeds only to be eclipsed
Till naught remains of all thy flings
Except regret's godawful stings

Or, as Parokya ni Edgar sang, without the frilly iambs and quadrameters:

Tatlong araw lang pala
Ako naging maligaya
Di ko man lang napuna
Tatlong araw ko'y tapos na

As a Daft Punk album cover can so easily remind us that we are Human After All

Regalado (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) wrote a large number of short treatises, many of which he disguised as free-verse poetry, on what appeared to be a seasonal form of depression, a gnawing emptiness which would only emerge either near the end of a collegiate semester or during the week-to-month long break that followed it, the temporary halt in academic affairs possibly hearkening back to the days when Jewish craftsmen who, in honor of the Sabbath, would put down their tools and snore in the timbre of a Latino siesta, creating a cacophony that would make even the most clueless postmodernist proud of his clueless-ness. The time-defined nature of his depression appears in the fact that most of the entries in the browned and blackened pages of his websites coincide with the latter parts of a conventional University of the Philippines semester, as well as with the break that follows one.

It perplexes the mind, however, to note that the author of these treatises, who possibly wrote them for the posterity of the phenomenon leaving him as he left the life of a college student, was discovered to still be beset by the very same wave of gloom that always seemed to have arrived right on schedule every time. Not only this, but the depression seemed to evolve along with him, adapting to the three-semester schedule used by the school he taught in instead of the conventional two-semester schedule his insomniac eyes used to read, write and study to.

Amidst these discoveries, it is to no small wonder that the author of these treatises has always sought sabbatical, sought Sabbath, in all manner of ways, from harboring all sorts of inanities and insanities to comfort foods and to writing even more treatises on his condition. His latest treatise is one that is all about his previous ones, as well as about a phenomenal depression which beset him as of the time of this writing.

REFERENCES:

Regalado, Franco Antonio. Turris Eburnea: Ivory Tower. Retrieved from http://francoocnarf.blogspot.com. Blogger: 2005.

Regalado, Franco Antonio. (no title). Retrieved from http://ocknarf.multiply.com. Multiply: 2007.

Postmodernpostmortem

(for AJ)

Death, such an amalgam of ironies: departure and gathering, silence and noise. The latter: every solemn moment is punctuated by the chugging of the diesel motor and the clanking of the tractor as it hauls trailer after trailer of dirt into the grave site. The dirt itself is a hodgepodge, a mass of brown dirt, gray rock, black and white pieces of what appear to be the same marble and porcelin used to adorn other gravestones, mausoleums and columbariums.  Thus, it is not only his father who is buried with each pathetic tear and each apathetic shovelful; he is covered and sealed into his resting place alongside bits and pieces of other people's lives and deaths, a mass grave that is gravely un-massive.

Enduring all this unceremonious ceremony in the infernal heat, Alvin says to himself, only half jokingly: "I want to be cremated when I die."

Clear-Headed Zombie

Can't sleep, pumped up from last night's and this night's Coke. And as I have said time and again, the boon and bane of these zombified nights is that it gets a person to thinking. And when things get me to thinking, I get to writing.

Oh well. To quote the vegan zombie: GRAAAAIINSSS... (munch on a granola bar)

- Funny how reading a piece for the second or third time rarely gives you the exact same impressions as the first, especially when you're going through a piece that's so prone to multiple interpretations. Take the Salvador Lopez piece Literature and Society, for example: read the piece first during fourth year, as something I was hoping I could glean quotable thesis stuff from. First reading gave me the same impression most probably get with their first skimming: writing must be done with the improvement of our society in mind.

Discussed the essay with my fourth year students as part of their World Literature curriculum, which meant I had to read it again. Second reading gives more elemental results: when you write (and by write, I don't mean the stuff that you put in your journal, the stuff you don't really want others to read), keep in mind that people can and will read it, whether it is mushy poetry or some heated exhortation against a present evil in society. Whether it will relate to them and whether they will appreciate what is written, though, will be another matter. Might as well, then, give them something to look relate to, so that in your own little way, you've sort of contributed to somebody else's learning, and to the overall progress of the human race as well. Simply put: writing for yourself with the intention of being read will probably cave into itself, so might as well write with others (and what is society but a bunch of Others, colonialistically speaking?) in mind.

- Sometimes, I feel like I'm better as student than as a teacher, which is probably why I like treating my students as more like classmates I simply have to deliver a report to. Besides, there are few things in life that are better than a class where learning doesn't exactly feel like learning, right? (I can hear you nodding, BACA batchmates.) Hence, perhaps, my lack of drive to constantly quiz my students on what they have or have not learned from my prattle. (Sucks that there's a minimum required number of quiz points per semester, else I'd simply have asked for an arseload of papers instead.) Oh well, there's still my dreams of a degree in Law, as far as studying is concerned. Guess I'd sometimes rather be soaking up all the information than dishing it out, I guess.

Not to say that I don't like teaching, though. There is, after all, nothing quite like the flow of chi, ideas and information through an active classroom, an exchange of energy from listener to speaker and vice versa equaling those mentioned in those New Age pseudo-philosophies. Problem comes only when chi is blocked, usually by somebody failing to read the materials that are to be talked about.

- I miss writing. The creative sort of writing, that is, and not the sort you need for quizzing 3rd Grade students on things like figures of speech. Rocket Kapre's got submissions for some Filipino fiction anthology of sorts by the end of the month, and I've got a story which just needs revisions (and more pages to make it to the word count minimum) in line. Hope I can at least start getting it up to speed this week. Bulols, after all, can only say so much.

- Weird that I had a headache just a few hours ago, and my head's as clear as a field in Quezon right now. Guess my body misses the occasional zombie night as well.

Calliope! Clio! Erato! Polyhymnia! Thalia! GRAAAAARRRGGGHHH!

post-Max's gluttony: thoughts on sin, the stomach and the bottomless

Up in Mountain Province, legends tell of a man who ate too much and danced too hard as the origin of the lights in the night sky. Until now, people search the sky for this man named Matakaw, forever reminded of the dire consequence of gluttony: your body becoming so rounded that once you spin, you gain lossless momentum, until gravity itself loses its grip on you, leaving you to do the dizzying twist through the heavens, your crown and beads thrown off your body to shine for eternity as the moon and stars, respectively.

Gluttony, after all, is a sin. One of the Maleficent Seven, even. Yet one that capitalism loves to take advantage of, using the illusions of satiation grandeur brought about by the buffet and the bottomless. Everyone is lost and googly-eyed at All, when everybody really needs to focus on Can. Sure, they can further distort things by calling it an Eat All You Want or a Drink All You Want, but no amount of desire can stretch a stomach, no amount of willpower can turn back the hands of a ticking clock. You are no Hiro.

But who's to blame? In the world where every movement can easily be broken down into costs, profits, statistics and other numerical whatnot, merely the chance of a glimpse into the infinite is an alluring illusion, whether or not our heads themselves end up spinning into space after eating or drinking more than what our minds and stomachs can usually hold.

a professional crastinator

So I promised myself that by one o' clock, after lunch, I'd either be checking papers or making new exams for the kids. Yet it's already past eight, and I've done nothing...

Of that sort, that is. Instead, I've done a hasty pictorial of the different Optimus Primes in my toy collection, emailed a few pics to a tita who wanted them, had several YM discussions with some friends on topics from saving face to high school life to card games, played a game of Starcraft, writing this down, and a load of other things that have no connection whatsoever with what I have to be doing. Strange, how efficient we sometimes are with the many little nothings in our lives, as opposed to the big things we should be focusing on. ADHD, I say again and again. This is probably why though the amount of creative content all around the world has increased exponentially (thanks in no small part to the Internet as well), creative masterpieces remain few and far in between.

It is so easy to dismiss this as nothing more than the most extreme form of procrastination, but with such theories such as those of Multiple Intelligences, postmodern fragmentation, oh-so-elitist-when-you-call-it-loss-of-mental-focus-yet-oh-so-bakya-and-so-layman-when-you-just-call-it-stupidity and other what have yous, things are simply not as simple as they used to be. Add another layer of complications when you try to explain why, as I have written above, some people can be so efficient on what they do not have to do, yet so uninspired with the other side of the fence of priorities.

I currently have neither the time nor the resources to look into such a deeply obscured area of psychology. Suffice it to say, I just want to ask: is there any reasonable explanation of this, whether psychological, socio-cultural or what have you?

Full Moon Festival (June 26 2010)

It is these

It is when you wake up in the middle of the night and look out the window, only to find out that the stars have decided not to shine for you anymore.

It is when your one passenger leaves: she unfastens her seat belt, steps out of the car, taps on your window, waves goodbye, and fades away into the darkness, leaving you as the lone target of all the air-conditioning vents, spewing the frost of solitude at your face, your hands, and your heart.

It is your bed, staying unmade from morning until night and back again, because you are too occupied with the thoughts of waking up and falling asleep.

It is the unfortunate morning: you wake up, yet you are unable to face the coming sun and the day that it brings, the mere thoughts of these forcing your body into a sickly shiver which forces you to fold your blankets back onto yourself once more.

It is a plan: how it is made, and how it, sooner or later, falls apart in the face of the fickleness of human nature, which no plan, however how painstakingly crafted, can account for.

It is being left out in the rain: the water pelts you with sharp little slivers of cold, penetrating skin that only wanted the touch of another's fingers and a few whispered words of comfort, nothing more.

It is the night, and man's fight to suppress it, to turn it into a time for sleep and idleness, in its attempt to ostracize the vampires, the lunatics, the lycanthropes, and all the other nocturnal spirits on this earth.

It is sanity: hanging by a single, fragile thread, one that can only be strengthened by the immoral fibers we call vices, excesses, dares (as opposed to truths) and sabbaticals.

It is purpose, and its faltering: how quickly men stray from one god to another, testing, teasing, tasting, as if faith was a currency one could budget on one or more items at a time.

It is life: so much, as the old saying goes, like the arc in a wheel, up one moment and down the next, following the statistics of circumstance, which state that the only way from the top is downward, either straight or spiraling.

It is destiny, and the thought of what there is to aspire for in this wretchedly monotonous, yet unchanging state of things.

geekery and the postmodern geek

When I went off to LB, I left almost all my geekery behind. After all, there was no L5R community there, no decent Magic: the Gathering one during the first few years of college, and definitely no specialty toy stores to sate my hunger for Transformers (to be fair, there was what looked like a specialty store near the Math building, but I think it only dealt with Gunpla and Zoids). The only geekery I was able to bring with me was what was at the time an addiction with DotA, which I was able to spread to my all-male dormmates. Probably the reason why I went into hardcore drinking sprees, dirty dancing (but only during the freshman year) and seasonal (read: in between semesters) emo shit about the Diaspora of it all. Sure, there was a time a few dormmates and I returned to old-school favorites Starcraft and Diablo 3, and that brief period wherein I dipped back into Magic: the Gathering (I played a format called Vintage, which very few people in the area could play since it often required a mix of powerful cards both old and new), but that was basically it.

Now I'm back, and a lot of things have changed. For one thing, the L5R community is, well, a bit more serious and, should I say, "hostile" than what I was used to when Hobby Haven, our local hobby shop in Katipunan, was around (RIP, HH). I'm starting to get to know quite a few people in the toy collector business, which is always a good thing because you will always need contacts to find the harder-to-find stuff at decent (read: not scalped) prices. Somehow, I feel the need to insert myself back into the communities I left behind when I did my five years in the mountains; these, after all, are made up of some very good friends, and friends are a resource that should never be wasted. Trying to get myself back to playing competitive L5R, and I hang around the toy shops in Greenhills when I can (read: when I have money and time to spend).

Going back to the old motions of talking about deck types and card choices over a few shots of leftover The Bar, or helping a friend transform a toy he bought cheap but without the instruction manual, I feel that I'm recovering something that I buried deep inside myself when I went and became the hyperactive, intellectually masturbating blabbermouth I was when I was in LB. It's as if there's an entire side of me that can only frolic amongst the tables of a hobby shop and the display cabinets of a toy store for so long before he hides again. Perhaps keeping it repressed for the most part for quite a long time has been the reason why I write this now.

The modern (or might I say, postmodern?) geek, after all, is a far cry from the stereotype. Today, most geeks live lives too normal for the now old-fashioned term "basement dweller". As with everything, though, there still a few of them, but nowadays they're more the exception than the norm. Today's geek is an honor student who plays basketball, a personal trainer, a professional comedian. Heck, even some of the salespeople in department store toy aisles, whose jobs are to spout spiels about how nice this action figure would look on your shelf, or how nice a gift it would make, will maintain a small collection of Transformers: the Movie figures at home (it never hurts to ask them). Simply put, they're just your everyday member of society who, as Neal Stephenson puts it, just happens to "geek out" when they meet a kindred soul. Thus the recent phenomenon of a "coolness" factor that is not associated with geekery.

This is the age of multi-everything (-tasking, -media, etc.) and fragmentation, after all. Kudos to you, then, who have enough brain power to juggle more than one world--heck, more than one universe, in your mind. To actually quote Stephenson: "This is how knowledge works today, and it’s how it’s going to work in the future: no more Heinleinian polymaths; instead, a web of geeks, each of whom knows a lot about something." And in the end, "We're all geeks now."

*stops this blabbering to watch moar Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann*

On Big Dipping, and on not voting

Recurring rant: I miss the days when Multiply was THE network. It prompted people to actually try and write stuff, and try to make their lives more exciting and interesting to read. Facebook, in all its multimedia-ness and gaming apps, is just too lazy for me sometimes. At least I can get some consolation in the fact that I see quite a few people returning to good old blogging, whether in the Blogspot (I don't think mine catches the auto-update feature of my Multiply blog anymore) or in the Wordpress. That's a good thing, right?

Tagged along with Biboy and his officemate to the opening of The Big Dip Diner last Saturday, mainly because of the lure of alcohol at p21 a bottle, which always sounds good if you haven't had a good drink in a long time, even if you're dragging along a huge plastic bag containing a huge-ass Megatron toy to the place. Was pleasantly surprised when I found both old and new friends amidst all the booze (HANNAH, ASAN NA YUNG PICS? JEJEJE!). All of it reminded me of a time when I was at LB Square at least twice a week, drinking myself wasted along with other freshman and sophomore pasaways. It also told me that if I wanted to be comfortable in the metro again, I'd have to start socializing again, big time. I mean, LB as fun, but I don't want to be stuck in that mindset forever. And Ateneo was never a friendly environment for socializing IMO, what with the average batch equaling the total number of students in your standard learning center. Imagine my surprise, then, when I learn that most of the people there at the time were Ateneans of different batches in the place.

Somewhere along this entry, you might an expect me to say something about the elections, since they're the obvious topic to talk about. But I'm not going to say anything, because I don't believe I have the right to. Because I DIDN'T VOTE. To cut a long story short, I was pretty busy going back and forth to LB during the registration period, and I stupidly banked on the rumors of a COMELEC extension that never materialized in our city hall. Ergo, no vote, and no rant about the results. The only thing that pisses me off more than being more than a civilian than a citizen at the time (watch Starship Troopers to get the joke) is when people talk about "could haves".

Sample comment on FB: "I didn't register, but if I did, I would have voted (insert name here)"

Fact of the matter is, you didn't register, so nothing you say will make your intent to vote count, idiot. It's a lot like what Ma'am Espinosa, our World Literature professor, would say: "If you didn't finish the book down to the last page, please leave. You have no right to participate in any discussion, since you didn't finish the book anyway."

Not drunk but still wasted YM conversations are fun. Still not sure if I'm free Friday night though.

Mikey Munsayac: i have 3 cases of red horse in my house
Franco: haha
Franco: kung free ako friday night ubusin natin
Mikey Munsayac: left over form the party
Mikey Munsayac: so many people backoput i was annoyed..
Mikey Munsayac: thats the plan actually
Franco: siguro they had their own graduation plans and all
Mikey Munsayac: not the graduates
Mikey Munsayac: other people who were my frieds..
Franco: malay mo, they had graduating bros or something
Mikey Munsayac: nope
Mikey Munsayac: i contacted all of them,
Mikey Munsayac: they forgot or were getting laid..
Mikey Munsayac: the gettign laid i understand
Franco: probably the former
Franco: the heat does things to your brain, you know
Mikey Munsayac: yes yes well at elast we have a lot of beer
Franco: beer also does things to your brain
Mikey Munsayac: well we only need our brain for a 40-50 more years
Franco: point taken man
Mikey Munsayac: if were lucky 20..
Franco: nah, I wanna live old
Franco: yung tipong makikita mong professor emeritus yung pangalan mo
Mikey Munsayac: im a preshool tecaher that will never happen
Franco: and having enough cash to not worry about anything when you spend
Mikey Munsayac: that i want badly
Franco: see? oldness is fun
Franco: aside from the diabetes and high blood my family has a history of
Franco: the baldness i don't mind, it'll make me look like lex luthor
Mikey Munsayac: true true 

Congrats-ing and Condolence-ing

It's weird, really, how life seesaws from high to low and back again, all within the few milliseconds it takes for the vibrations in the air caused by your snapping fingers to reach your ears and be comprehended by your brain as such, how life is, like they say, like a piece of debris stuck to the wheel of a vehicle in motion: ascending half the revolution one moment, descending the other half the next, rinse and repeat, until everybody is all lost in the shuffle, blurry image after blurry image passing by with such speed that one appears to bleed into another.

It goes like this: while I am at my phone, sifting through messages that congratulate the step into the next major phase of life (my favorite one coming from my ninang, saying she owes me a toy as a grad gift; how many ninangs are willing to do that for 20-ish year-old inaanaks nowadays?), I receive a text from a fellow Transformers collector, saying that one of our older collector friends (46 is a pretty ripe age for a collector, considering the hobby is populated mostly by twenty- and thirtysomethings) passed away at 11AM this morning due to a sudden heart attack. All of a sudden reality strikes back, and I am right smack in the middle of the irony that is tagging about a hundred smiles worth of photos of last night's pomp and circumstance as the reality that a fellow toy collector and good friend has just left this world sinks in. The multimedia does not help either, as while I text our friend's son to ask how he's coping, looking through the faces as I tag people can't hep but make me smile and be happy that my five-year academic ordeal is now over.

RIP Alvin Asuncion aka Bigdaddy of Cybertron Philippines. You will be missed. Condolences to AJ Asuncion and family.

Happy graduation BACA 05 (fellow leftovers, at least) and especially UPLB batch 2006. Congratulations to us.

Back to reading, and Y (no, not the piece by Douglas Adams, and not the Last Man either)

It is nothing short of a comfort, the first time one is able to do some pleasure reading. By this, I mean that time when you go to your bookshelf, pile of bargain hauls from the nearby Booksale or other hole-in-the-wall, or stuff scattered around your floor, picking a book whose title, cover or blurb appears interesting enough (let us all whisper a little word of thanks to Sir Dennis to showing us how important these parts are), and sitting or lying down and taking the world of the word in, with no framework to keep at the back of your mind, no theory-ascribed patterns to watch for when a particular narrative device appears pregnant with meaning.

Reading up on nationalism, magic realism, postmodernism, criticism of Filipino novels in English and magic realist novels themselves can get stale after a while, especially when that while almost stretched to its second year.

Anyway, the whole rhetoric about reading for pleasure was to make way for my latest piece of pleasure reading: Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee. Not bad, if not overy laden with speeches about history and the human condition at times (I say this only loosely, as this is the first Coetzee I've read).

It presents several interesting things, though I only have space and brainpower to present to the few people who still read these far and very few in between blog entries one of them, in my opinion the most important piece of intellectual masturbation in the book. It goes like this: according to the book (and possibly some historians out there), the original root of the Humanities and of textual analysis was in order to understand the Bible, God's Divine Word. Because it was presumed that in order to gain true understanding of its messages, one would have to know the language/s the original/s was/were written in (Greek, Hebrew, etc.). Also, one would have to be able to understand the way the Word was written (literary study), the culture (anthropology) as well as the historical conditions (history) under which it was produced, in addition to the above note about language (linguistics).

And it didn't stop there. As it would be theorized that the Bible was written to elevate people, to guide them away from some wretched state of things, people then felt the need to understand the conditions that the Bible was supposed to address. Hence, the turn to whatever literature we could scavenge from the ancient Greeks, which in time, became an end unto itself as well, as the study of the Classics.

Thus we are castaways, adrift in a pedantic sea, with nothing more to cling to, as the true motivation behind our efforts has vanished into the horizon long ago. We cling to the pieces of literary driftwood that pass by us, creating little causes to justify our existence.

Why, then, do we continue?

Playtime Invasion: Iron Man 2 Toy Launch

Went over to visit the Iron Man 2 Toy Launch even though I wasn't into the line, for two reasons:

1. For the off-chance there still might be some Transformers stuff in there (the nearest I saw were the TF/Marvel crossovers. Bleargh)
2. Because some of the people on the forum scheduled this as a Playtime Invasion.

Didn't get anything except for an Animated Soundwave a friend just held on to for me, but I did get to hang out with lots of toy collectors again. :)

Today, I murdered a bed

Too many bukbok in it already, so Pa decided to have it broken down for firewood. Doing things like this reminds me that splitting wood has the most satisfying feeling to it. And hacking at things with a crowbar and an axe is fun.

on recycling stories, fairytales and the future

On Writing: Recycled means getting something that has outlived its use, and either thinking up a new use for it, or turning it into rawer material that would be more useful than that something's original state. In essence, it is putting something back into the cycle of use and disuse (hence, re-cycling).

Recycling, then, in the context of writing and telling stories, is much more comparable to "revising" than "getting a random high school or early college writing project from my archives and pretending that it is a recent piece of story work". But of course, who would find out if you did the latter, right? Certainly not a bunch of people pretending to be writers and critics who appear to be way too trusting for their own good. And the problem arises then and there. It becomes an issue of trust, of whether or not you can bare your most honest efforts to a bunch of people that, no matter how snooty or how big of an ass they are, still do what they do because of nothing more than the purest desire to help a fellow writer out. No matter if the effort is below the acceptable page minimum, not everything is a writing contest after all.

Submitting an unrevised story to a writing workshop, no matter how informal, is something that wastes not only your, but other peoples' time as well: people get together and bare their souls for the benefit a soul that was never bared anyway. Truth is, it doesn't even deserve to be called "recycling". To think that it is being done in an attempt to enter an organization that thrives on having people bare their souls on a weekly basis only appears to add insult to injury.

***

On Fairytale: For some reason, I'm really, really happy I finally got to watch Enchanted. Karize was right, James Marsden does have a good singing voice, and "That's How You Know" is THAT LSS-worthy (even more so when you watch that part of the movie over and over again). Funny, too, that the recent crop of animated princess-y fairytale flicks feels so women empowerment-ish (and to think The Princess and the Frog is coming), while the Prince Charmings are now demoted to narcissistic airheads. I blame Gaston for starting the trend, and Shrek's Charming for bringing it over the bordering-on-gay-metrosexuality edge.

Who can resist a Disney movie marathon, after all? If I didn't have to cook dinner and all, I would've probably sat through Ratatouille (all over again) and Bolt. I've gotten sick of High School Musical though, one can only hear "Breaking Free" so many times before people start getting Pokemon-worthy seizures.

***

On Future: In the silence of what could be called lunch, Dad asked me if I ever considered working at GMA. Just like that, out of the blue. I ask why he asks, and he spouts all sorts of crap about him having friends in high places, needing to think about the future, and if I even know how to make a resume, the latter to which I reply by saying that I had to submit mine for every writing contest and freelance job I did. Moral of the story: when it's hard enough to listen to you, don't make things even harder by sounding like you're spouting off a sermon every time you break the silence.

Hapi Balentayms

Hehe.

(pic made by me 'cause I was bored)

got published in Sunday Inquirer Magazine today. Go check it out if you have the time. :D

Lukewarm Coffee, Addiction and Sleeplessness

Today, I rekindle my love affair with coffee.

Nothing fancy, just a pot of barako dregs from the early morning coffee my parents and brother take before rushing off to school. Probably explains why it's a bit too watery for its own good. I did experiment with using chocolate milk to sweeten it, though. My proportion: a little more than half milk, a little less than half coffee, making you sleepy-full and caffeine-jumpy in equal proportions.

Back then, it was a blender, a tray of ice cubes, a pack of instant Nescafe and whatever ingredients I wanted to play around with that time. Before I even tasted my first Starbucks frapp (which was a bit too sweet for me anyway), I was trying to be a drink-mixing genius on my own. I even went so far as reading Dad's old bartending books, which I quit eventually: being a barista is one thing, but being a bartender means having stocks of every drink you want to experiment with, plus a lot people to experiment on, something that didn't coincide with my introvert nature back then. But back to the blender, where I tried mixing crushed ice, milk (fresh or chocolate) and coffee with M&M's, bananas, peanut butter, Reese's pieces, Curly Tops, Flat Tops, mint leaves, cookies n' cream ice cream, Kahlua, creme de menthe and Chocnut, which I always made my parents try (Papa would always say it's okay, Mama would always say it was too creamy and heavy on the stomach). And after everything, Mama would scold me for putting coffee into my drinks again, saying that too much coffee is bad for me.

Ahh, Caffeine, the legal drug. Now that I think about it, I was always into any legal stuff that didn't involve smoking (caffeine in coffee, caffeine in Mountain Dew, alcohol, etc., no cough syrup though). It's fun stretching the definitions of what counts as bad for you and what doesn't: during the dress rehearsal of the "Tao" production, I downed a Biogesic with a sachet of water mixed with Extra Joss and a glass of Coke to get a fatigue-induced fever off me. I was able to perform the choreography, which involved lifting a person and stuff, a bit better. Needless to say, I literally crashed that night.

Am at my fourth cup now, as I write this line. Darn, this is getting addicting again. They did say, though, that life is a continuous chain, one addiction after another, whether it's the high of caffeine, a sugar rush, the satisfaction of buying something you've been wanting for months with your 13th month bonus, the feeling of others' attentions focused on you, the afterglow of sex, the rush of adrenaline when watching an MMA fight, the titillation that comes with falling in love, the rush of blood to the head when hanging upside down, the warmth that comes with doing charity work, and many other exhilarations in life.

Epilogue...

Me: "Darn, you're not going to get any sleep tonight, are you?"
Myself: "All the better to write with, my dear."

*laugh*

Why is it that the easiest things to do are the ones you don't have to, while the hardest things to do are the ones you have to?

When did your thoughts start feeling just a little shorter?

I've heard more than one person rant about the fact that they used to be able to write at least one decent or, at the very least, pretty long-winded post in their blogs in a week. Nowadays, though, people simply tend to stare at the screen for too long before reducing all the things swimming through their heads into a simple status update, if not a note or something even shorter.

This effectively preserves all the vagueness a longer piece of writing cannot, for the longer your writing, the more your are bound to say, and this applies even if you're saying the same thing over and over again but with different words. Thus, more of the mystery is preserved, which requires more creativity on the reader's attempt at interpretation. This goes two ways: either the reader concedes that he/she does not know enough and disregards the piece, or the reader forms in their mind a scenario which may be applicable to what you have written, but which may or may not be correct.

What does this compression of thought bode for us, then? Does this mean that we are more economical with our words nowadays, that we can't be bothered to write more than a sentence or two because doing so would be a waste of time and thinking effort? Does this mean that we, as readers, are more impatient because of this entire phenomenon, and it simply carried over to our writing? Does this mean that our thinking itself has already been affected, that we are already thinking in compartmentalized fragments without intending to do so?

Enlighten me, please. Any thoughts, no matter how long or short, will do.

Van Gogh is Indeed Bipolar

Surreal experiences are rare and far in between. And tonight's dinner at the uniquely-named Van Gogh is Bipolar was definitely one of them.

I'll admit, I'm no food critic. The only research I get on the subject is by watching too much Iron Chef and Yakitate Japan (that obscure anime series about bread and baking), and remembering that old man in Ratatouille every now and then. Sometimes, though, there are some experiences that just get you to writing. After all, the actual eating is but one aspect of the entire experience of eating out, hence the admiration I have for restaurant reviewers who can literally take everything in, from the music to the lighting to the food itself. And this is what Van Gogh is Bipolar is about: an entire experience built around the high of happiness, that emotion that appeared to have eluded this little restaurant's namesake. Indeed, Jetro, artist and owner of the place, calls it his sanctuary, and invites everyone who is feeling depressed (or, should I say, emo even) to drop by and find out how it feels to experience the bipolar feeling of shifting from depression to near-manic happiness. All, may I add, in the span of but a single evening.

This hole in the wall is tucked away in a little corner of Maginhawa Street in Diliman, with only enough room inside for around twelve people and tables outside for probably another ten. We were lucky, then, that Lola had the place reserved, and the ever-accommodating Jetro allowed us in even if there were fourteen of us.

From the door, the place shows you its character: the only thing that tells you that you are at the right place is a shirt with the restaurant's name on it hanging beside the door, and a slipper that tells you whether the place is open or not. It is on the inside, though, where the apparent madness of the place bursts into an organized chaos of life: random bric-a-brac, from a pillow that proclaims the effectiveness of tea against depression beside the teapots and jars of the FruiTEA-MinTEA table, to the numerous photographs and postcards lining the walls to the red-painted corner (dubbed as the "red meltdown wall") that is free for vandalism, all lit a motley assortment of lamps that give the place the feeling that this is what the dark corner that is present in everybody's minds looks like.

Of course, some people will tell you that they will not care how good or bad a restaurant looks, as long as it serves good food. Heck, you can be eating goto in some cart beside a busy highway, as long as the food proves itself to be good enough. It is in this category, though, that this Van Gogh does indeed show us just what wonderful works of art he can cook up. We were lucky to get the place on a Sunday, which meant that it was "The Great Bipolar Thanksgiving Sunday", er, day, and this meant that the place would be serving turkey, which, as Jethro told us, has been proven to be a good antidepressant food. In fact, Jetro's entire menus are structured around foods which have shown either antidepressant or happy-hormone releasing properties, or both: in addition to the turkey, his entrees include black mountain rice, cucumbers, mangoes, strawberries, chocolate, nuts, honey, alcohol and all sorts of other happiness inducers, combined in ways you wouldn't believe. Take, for example, the aptly named Mel Gibson's Darkest Sin, a dessert composed of nuts, vodka, wild honey and dark chocolate, all carefully layered into a shot glass. Or the fruit beer Jethro brews himself (and dubs as something along the lines of "Jetro's Spicy Expensive Beer") that, in addition to being lighter than any commercial light beer, gives you a burning sensation at the back of your throat that only leaves you wanting more. This is creative madness at its culinary best, all for a glimpse of that eternal goal, happiness.

No wonder Lola couldn't answer when I asked her what kind of food they were serving there:

Me: "What kind of food do they have there?"
Lola: "They're going to have turkey, with lamb or salmon, and this wonderful black rice, and..."
Me: "No, what I mean to say is what kind of food do they have there? Indian? Thai? Indonesian?..."
Lola: (is silent for a few seconds) "...basta. They're going to have turkey, with lamb or salmon..."
Me: "So it's fusion?"
Lola: "Basta nga."

True enough, the food, consequently the entire experience itself, defies any conventional description.

(photos by me and Jali. More photos here and here.)

That Dark Corner of Your Mind: Van Gogh is Bipolar

A little writing about the place here.

Van Gogh devirginized me, and I am basking in its afterglow.