Friday, September 30, 2005

Vacation!

As I was eating awesome chinese chow with Pammy and Pepe last night in the office, I thought to myself that I can really genuinely say that the reason why I'm doing all these is because it's tons of fun, and it's making me really happy, and I get to spend time with these great, nice people.

*

And a while ago me and Ernest did our usual Friday roam-around-eat-anywhere-talk-about-everything and we were saying that as the sem ends this week (and even if we keep on saying how we want the sem break to start) and we're going to be gone for a month, we're gonna miss every single bit about UP that we have reaaaally loved these past months.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Two Days and the Next Ones



1. A conversation with The Bowling Coach.
Coach: O, Gabrillo, two weeks ka hindi pumasok, tapos hindi ka nag-finals. Ano gagawin ko sa 'yo?
Gabrillo: Umm.. Coach 'di ba ako naman favorite mo?
C: O, ito, 1.75.
G: Coach naman, ako best player sa lahat ng classes mo. (Hahahahahahahaha)
C: So?
G: E 'di i-pull up mo naman yung grade, sige na Coach kahit konti lang.
C: O sige. Ito, 1.0.
G: Wow, ayos!!!! The best ka talaga!!! (Hahahahahaha)
C: Pero hindi ko ibibigay sa 'yo ito ngayon. Bibigyan kita ng isang linggo simula sa Lunes--kailangan mahanap mo ako sa buong UP. Kung nagawa mo yun, ibibigay ko sa 'yo itong uno mo na class card.
G: ...

So yes, that's what I've been doing for the past two days. I've been harrassing guards, other coaches, and strangers to TELL ME WHERE DIZER IS!!!!! Migo and Abi have been tagging along in this search, and I'm really extremely thankful. Pepe said in his blog that UP has a way of kicking you in the ass. Haha I guess this is mine, and I wanna fight back!!

PLAN B is to find out his cellphone number and then Abi texts him that she need his help for an "emergency."

Tapos bigla palang he's on vacation.

2. Went inside the Big Brother house with Fuzz and the director, who's an awesome person. It was extremely surreal. Everything is set-up well, and the whole production's really great. It's cool how we're able to appreciate the show much more after seeing how it all works.

Sorry too lazy to resize right now.

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3.It's Tuesday night and I'm studying for a Thursday exam. Huwaw. That's a first this schoolyear.

4. Me and Anna are joining a quiz bee tomorrow. Hahahahaha oh wow. How nerdy can this week get.

5. Because this Friday is the last meeting for Math class, I'm forced to be brave and to finally approach someone in the class that I like. WATCH OUT! Hahahaha.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

WEIRDOMAG

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Mumball

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Right now in here in Nina’s house is a small gathering of people that I really really love. Drinks, isaw, tapsilog, DVDs, cuddling and awesome conversations about diverse topics—and one of them’s still bugging me right now. Wacks told us a few minutes ago, “So I was reading Newsweek a while ago and apparently we live in a culture that values not only youth but also growth and development, and believes that this growth continues throughout life. Isn’t this all crap?”

Wacks, you’re right, it’s crap. The word “growth” is most accurately used to describe physical growth. To use it in the way that Newsweek suggests is an abstraction, not to mention a delusion. A construct grounded in wishful thinking, betraying the basest sort of longing. Physical growth is real. Children start out very short and get taller. They literally grow up. Their feet get bigger. Their arms get longer. Their teeth come out. New teeth come in.

Endless growth, like endless youth, is not to be found in nature. We live in an era enthralled by nature, obsessed by it, worshipful of it, yet at the same time entirely unwilling to accept its reality. If nature is not reality, then what is? Perhaps it is not really nature that people love. Perhaps it is not really love. Perhaps it is a myth. A canard, a fairytale, a lie.

You cannot kill an elephant. An elephant. We now value elephants very highly. Because we’re not allowed to kill them, we can’t use their ivory to make piano keys. We have to keep them, even though, in my opinion, for the elephant it could only be considered a step up to become a piano. You cannot make a piano out of an elephant anymore. To me it is testament to man’s ingenuity and inventiveness that we ever thought to make a piano out of an elephant to begin with. I personally know that if I had looked at an elephant I would not have seen a piano. I’m grateful to the person who did. This is what humans are for, to see an elephant and make a piano.

We now live in an era where you’re not allowed to make a piano out of an elephant. That we could ever could, I’m awe-struck. That we no longer do, I’m sunk in despair. An elephant should be happy that it can even be a piano. I personally do not think an elephant would ever have thought to make a piano out of man.

Do we prohibit the killing of elephants because we love elephants so much? Because we love nature so much? Because we loathe pianos? Or because when it comes to nature we have decided to make certain selections so unnatural that they come close to achieving the condition of art? We love elephants in their natural state, but abhor people in theirs.

People wholly unable to form a single coherent notion seem to have no trouble at all entertaining diametrically opposed points of view. Save the whales, get rid of the gray. Old-growth forests, new-growth hair. Organic tomatoes, silicone breasts.

Perhaps it is not really the elephant’s life span that concerns us. Perhaps we have decided that it is easier to deal with the elephant’s mortality than it is to deal with our own. It is, after all, easy enough not to kill an elephant. You simply have to not kill an elephant.

What could be simpler? What could be more humane? What could be a greater tribute to our empathy, our compassion? All of which we have for elephants, none of which we have for ourselves. Gray, wrinkled, hardly lithe, the elephant is a thing of beauty, the first wife, a thing of the past.

I’m just mumbling here, or I just really drank a little too much.

Time to watch the 10 Things I Hate About You DVD!

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Heroes/Misfits


Have you ever wondered how yesterday’s heroes will move through today’s world?
I’m scattering ten of my one million favorite misfits/heroes of all time.
A new kind of soapbox for the historically thwarty.

Gertrude Stein
Always the hostess, cubist writer, and literary leading lady, turned her Paris home into a Mecca for experimental artists and writers, survived Nazi persecution

Nelson Mandela
Previously serving an indefinite jail sentence for his fight to end apartheid in South Africa, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, first democratically elected South African president

Kurt Cobain
Born in ’67, took adolescent angst and anguish to the bank after birthing the grunge-rock decade, swallowed lead and died at the mythical rock-star age of 27

Mahatma Gandhi
A misfit within today’s hyperactive, reactive, violent, and overactive society, separated himself from the masses through passive resistance and nonviolent force

Salvador Dali
Spanish painter of the surrealist movement, some questioned the soundness of his mind, but I completely think otherwise

Rosa Parks
Known as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” Parks paradoxically made a stand by sitting, refusing to move to the back of the then-segregated Birmingham, Alabama bus

Nina Simone
Musical misfit and diva, cannot be classified in one genre, used anti-racist energy to charge her voice into overdrive

Abbie Hoffman
Frequently rebelled against corporate culture and the Vietnam War, led 50,000 people to surround the Pentagon to try to make it levitate, later arrested for selling cocaine, went on the lam, had plastic surgery to evade capture, wrote a book designed to be stolen

Henry Miller
Author of Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, plus Sexus, Nexus, Plexus trilogy, his erotic works were banned in the US for nearly 30 years, but eventually hailed for their literary merit

Joe Strummer
Front man of the Clash, brought a political consciousness to punk, fused ska with hard rock, rocked against racism, was the White Man in Hammersmith Palais, will be greatly missed

Monday, September 12, 2005

I’ll Give You Hands-Free

Majority of the days of the past two weeks, I’ve intentionally left my cell phone in a drawer in that desk inside my room. And it felt incredibly relaxing—it was great to say, “I am not available.” No tone, buzzer, or bloody tinny rendition of a pop hit disturbed my serenity. When I was happily strolling through the school’s greens, watching a movie, or Sato crash into Schumacky’s Ferrari, taking the train or a bath, I was not available. When I was eating, drinking, cuddling, thinking, I was not disturbed by a random pal sending me a rainbow quote. I just realized that what can be so urgent that it cannot hold on until I have returned to base? And this isn’t about not wanting to be a technophobe: I’ve an e-mail address; I’ve recently started the Mac habit and a bunch of useful digital devices, but enough—I’ve decided I will resign from the 24-hour surveillance.

Were I to rob a few banks or mug a couple of pensioners in some First World bla, chances are a judge would decide that I am a menace to society and must have an electronic tag put around my leg to track me wherever I go. Well, a mobile phone is little more than a self-elected tracking device, for which you pay a bill at the end of the month. It’s easy—any time, anywhere, everybody’s got your number, you’re always on call. If you’re a call boy, doctor, drug dealer or drone, sure, you need a mobile. If not, then join me and let us declare our independence by cutting the string to our personal cocoa tin.

My main objection to mobiles is that they have become a shrill interjection into precious time off. But there are plenty of other reasons to feel superior for not succumbing to this tawdry invention. Do you know how silly we all look walking down the street mumbling to ourselves like lunatics? Do you know how rude it is when somebody interrupts a face-to-face conversation with a real person to talk to a machine?

Yes, there’s an off button, but do we ever use it? How much grief do we get for having our tracking device switched off when somebody “important” wants to contact us? I was telling all this to Sab a while ago and she asked me, “What about emergencies?” If I were planning to climb an untamed Andean peak, then I would take some kind of communication device with me. But a stroll along the street is not a threatening experience, where you have to report back every few minutes. I’m doing this because I think I’ve fallen into the trap. If the mobile is such a vital, life-saving tool, how were people able to get through life unscathed 15 years ago? Deep down, I know that my phone is just another way of making my work longer and harder, keeping me in touch and in line. Another buckle of the straitjacket.

So let’s screw it and be happy!

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Slinky-Hipped, Sleazy-Poetic



I finished watching MYSTERIOUS SKIN with Carl, Lala, and Rain two hours ago. When the credits started rolling, you could not feel or hear anything inside the room. This went on for about 15 minutes, and even when Lala broke the silence with, “Oh my god! Oh my god!”—we still felt that it would take so much effort to get back to steady mode.

I cannot tell you really how much it has affected me. The best grabe. Try to get a copy and don’t miss it.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Ron The Tube

We did a rewording exercise a while ago in class. I know, exciting nu?

(Hearing Prof's voice in my head: "More Pinoy! I want it more Pinoy this time!")

This is what I chose. If you've read this already, then hop and go watch Chan.72. Enjoy!

How sitcom dads make all men look bad

I was watching a DVD of the third season of Malcolm in the Middle and in one episode, Malcolm's father dreads visiting his own family so much that he wets the bed. Dominated by both wife and children, the affable wuss has finally plucked up the courage to confront his own unapproachable father and demand that they have the first serious conversation of their lives. At this point, his father suggests that they consult "Mister Tickle" and begins working his fingers around his 40-something son's rib cage, until the "kid" collapses in paroxysms of laughter. The bed-wetting scene follows shortly thereafter.

Any man who identifies with this guy's plight is probably not going to enjoy reading this. Not today, not in the coming months, not ever. Fussbudgets, nerds, and men resembling Adam Sandler in Anger Management should look for their laughs elsewhere. This is aimed at boys who enjoy being boys, who do not apologize for being boys, and who are in full control of their urinary tracts. It is not aimed at Neanderthals, survivalists, or bullies. But it is certainly not aimed at guys who wear sun hats, carry walking sticks, and rent Meg Ryan movies to keep peace in the family. Men who have been domesticated, defanged, pacified, or gelded should read somebody else's work in some other class.

And that starts with the guys who write Malcolm in the Middle. Why do I make such a big deal of it? Because popular culture surreptitiously frames values and popularizes repugnant stereotypes. Gangsta rap fosters negative views of young black men, Christina Aguilera's videos present the slut as a positive female role model, and Malcolm in the Middle depicts fathers as castrated dinks who are emotionally unequipped for adult life. If Malcolm were the only enormously popular television program to do so, this incident would hardly be worth mentioning. Yet it is not the only one. It isn't the only enormously popular television program to depict fathers as castrated dinks in sitcoms available in Starworld, available for download or available in Metrowalk.

That same night I watched the knucklehead father in King of the Hill get forced to ride bitch by his overbearing wife as they motored out of the annual biker rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. Take that, Lorena Bobbitt! Meanwhile, Homer Simpson was making a fool of himself at rock 'n' roll fantasy camp, much to the amusement of his family. And over on The King of Queens, Jerry Stiller, playing a revolting father-in-law, was reviving his addiction to nasal sprays while his son-in-law was in therapy, dealing with his porcine eating habits. In each of these cases, the matriarchal figures came off as being strong, resourceful, and intelligent, while the fathers were pathetic schmos. The fact that most TV programs are written by young men suggests that a lot of TV writers have serious emotional issues. Or they have serious schmucks for fathers.

Let me make it clear right up front that I do not expect television to perfectly reflect society. I recognize that television, for purposes of entertainment, regularly showcases characters that are crude parodies of real human beings: the hideous monsters on Buffy, the venomous psychopaths on Arrested Development, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson.

Look at virtually any sitcom, drama, or animated feature on television today and you will find a dope, a dork, or a doofus vainly trying to run the family. On That '70s Show, Kurtwood Smith plays a brain-dead couch potato and all-purpose prick who takes every opportunity to make his son feel like an idiot. And on Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray Romano plays a slightly out-of-touch, ferociously passive father whose popularity is largely based on the fact that he does not seem terribly bright. Meanwhile, his father has spent 70 years on the planet without learning anything useful he can pass on to his son.

It is true that the useless, disoriented, or cretinous father has long been a fixture of prime-time television. But these failed fathers were not all on the airwaves at exactly the same moment. Today, whenever you turn on the television, some lard-ass numbskull is trying to extricate himself from some ridiculous predicament while his bright, unexpectedly gorgeous spouse looks on. Strongly suggesting that the only way to land a smart, beautiful wife is to be a fat, dopey loser. I thought the catchphrase was good in bed, not food in bed. And that was a very corny joke, yes.

In saying all this, I do not wish to create the impression that I pine for the days of yesteryear, when dreary, pious programs like The Brady Bunch disseminated their cornball homilies to an unsuspecting public. But what I do wish is that perhaps the solons who run the industry might adopt a gender-balancing policy stipulating that if every program has to portray the father as a ding-dong, the show should also depict the mother as a slut. Fair is fair.

Are there any prominent series that do not feature the father as fuck-up? Probably 7th Heaven, but I'd rather watch Oprah while the Taliban went to work on the crown jewels with electric prods than look at that creepy show.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Psyched!

Movies I Watch On a Bumday

Scoot and get copies too!

L4YER CAKE
After a thousand Lottery-funded disasters, a Brit gangster film you’d actually pay to see. Expect the usual—jaded drugs dealer takes on one last shot with energy and an unflinching eye. Great.

SHAOLIN SOCCER
High-energy football/martial arts silliness. Kung fu student trains up football team on Shaolin lines. Will they trash Team Evil (yes, really) in the Super Cup final? Amazingly, you’ll actually care.

SAW
Two men captured by a serial killer are told to fight to death or they both get the chop. Oh, and they’re manacled to the floor with nothing but handsaws for company. Sadistically brilliant.

THE FORGOTTEN
There’s barely enough plot to fill an episode of The X-Files, but if you’re missing Mulder and Scully and you’d like to kill 90 minutes with a mix of mind-games and fuck-me shocks, you’re in luck.

CONSTANTINE
Demons are loose and only Neo can cross between the real world and the hellish Matrix to stop them. Oh facuck, that’s another film. Not that Keanu noticed. Weisz is great; it looks amazing; makes no sense at all.


Club-by-Club Round Up of the Season Ahead

Up the Arse
Arsenal
It’ll be tough, but winning every game one-nil should bring a glorious quadruple while having their entire team banged up—apart from goodie two-shoes Henry. However, I expect Graham Poll would somehow contrive to send him off at Old Trafford, where we’ll have to make do with a nil-nil draw and a couple of slices of pizza.

The Liverpool Way
Liverpool
Will probably do a hell of a lot better than last season—they won’t allow finishing below Everton again. Mourinho needs bringing down a peg or two, and at least he won’t be able to keep calling himself the ‘European Champion.’

There’s Only One F in Fulham
Fulham
No one’s expecting ‘little old Fulham’ to take the Premiership by storm, but they underperformed badly last season. They should hold their own, if the talent isn’t sold off this summer. Because of the ridiculous financial clout and bullying, they’d probably love to see Chelsea self-implode.

Winner!
Chelsea
Will walk away with the title, probably win the European Cup, as well as the FA Cup and hold on to the League Cup. It would be nice to see Carlo Cudicini come on in the finals so he gets some winner’s medals. They’re not looking forward to Liverpool away—40,000 Scousers with high pitched voices screaming and bleating on about winning the Euro Cup five times (yawwwn).

Rad Red
Manchester United
They have the ability to go on lengthy unbeaten runs but they’re unpredictable these days. They need Roy Keane’s doppelganger now and Chelsea to go bankrupt.

A Love Supreme
Sunderland
Anything above 17th place will be like winning the league for them. Nobody is under any illusions that they’re going to have an easy ride in the Premiership, and the bookies are reflecting that by making them among the favorites to go down. They’ve got a decent squad, but they need new signings to improve for the top flight.

Who will win the FA Cup?
Chelsea
Man United
Arsenal
Liverpool
Everton
Man City

Which gaffer will get the chop first?
Graeme Souness
Alan Pardew
David O’Leary
Martin Jol
Sir Alex Ferguson

About Me

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NintendoDS and pencils. That's all I need.