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.

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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.

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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.