this is why i'll die of hunger

the room/house i really want to have is hugh grant's in about a boy. because of the cds. that's a dream life really, but we know it was boring, you know the crap. and actually, put the cds anywhere and it'd still be the most amazing room ever. well, for me.

there's something about cds that's almost charming. i know they'll be extinct one day, like dodos extinct; everyone downloads everything from the net now. jesse mccartney is huge in amazon (or itunes whatev) but his latest album doesn't sell. not a fan of his music. just read the news on yahoo! or somewhere which was about exactly this, the end of cds. i'm more a fan of jesse as, what, a thought, maybe an idea. right.

i was saying cds charm me. it's one thing listening to the songs you download that's like knowing the story of a book without having read it. having the actual thing in front of you, there's something there. this is useless. i'm a poor describer of the abstract.

bought four cds today. three were jonis, two would complete the four joni albums i always wanted to have. the other two i got as a christmas present from my friend tetel. i need more tom waits cds. i'm not a huge fan if i only have mule variations.

my first cd ever was jagged little pill. or the unplugged one. that or come on over. i of course grew up and learned one must not write shania twain in one's profiles if one thinks of appearances. which doesn't help at all because in the end when one is essentially unlikable, that's it. nothing changes.

non-bohemian, non-poet

if you really think about it, the new year shouldn't change shit about you, as a person, as a freaking living human being, because. but that sentiment is overused, and no one really cares anyway. it's fun and freaky and you're expected to do a lot of things: open doors, figure out what the next year brings, my mom says i should eat, turn on lights, clean the house.

i've no plans, one cannot plan bumming around. well, that's still one plan alright but plans are detailed and specific so maybe my plan does not qualify as a plan plan. roberto bolaño says poetry is homosexual; he goes on describing poets as sissies, faggots, fairies. it was one of the best pages of a book i've ever read. happy new year to me. and it's jd salinger's 90th today, happy birthday!

22 days na lang, jobless na ako!

nasa manila na after ng lima, anim na araw na bakasyon. trabaho na ako ulit bukas/mamaya. medyo nakatulog ako sa bus kaya di pa ako inaantok. summary ng pasko sa beach:

1. para akong turista kasi parang department of tourism sina alanah, well, si tita eva talaga. ang sarap lang ng pagkain. nakakamangha ang ham at bacon na di galing sa mall.

2. naglakad sa beach. kaso walang banana pancakes. nakatulog ako ng matagal nung pupunta sana kami para magbanana pancakes kanina/kahapon. kaya wala na. pero masaya sa beach, ang drama lang ng sunset.

3. natulog ng napakatagal. ang haba pramis. ang tawag pala dun, tulog-mayaman. yung matutulog ka ng alas-dose tas gigising ng alas-dose ulit.

4. eto ang di dapat mawala: inuman. may tequila rose si alanah. kahit na pagirl, medyo inaantok din kami pagkatapos uminom. kulay pink sya. mukhang lasang calpol pero masarap naman. mukha lang lasang calpol. rumedhorse pala ako sa inuman sa beach. o ha. dalawa lang naman. wala rin naman akong abs ganyan, beer pa.

5. nagyosi kami tita sa labas ng bahay. kaya lang eto ang masaklap, di ko pa nauubos yung isa, nahilo na. grabe na lang, kala ko ang cool cool ko na. e nahilo. wala, jologs.

6. nanood ng sine, magpapahula sana, nag-plaza, kumain sa plaza, may batang gusto mang-agaw ng ice cream ko sa plaza.

7. nagupload ng piktyurs sa multiply, kummoment, nagfacebook, nagblag, meron pa yatang iba na nakay-vylett pa. nasan na ba kasi yung usb na yun.

ps. masamang pangitain (hala, pangitain) yata yung naloko ako ng taxi driver sa bus station. pero ako naman yata yung nagpaloko. e yoko na maghintay ng ibang cab kaya sumakay na ako kahit ayaw magmetro. mahanap nga yung manghuhula dito sa teachers village. pangitain pala ha. four years na yata na laging malas ang year of the tiger. kawawa naman.

what's your favorite word?

to force myself to write the paper i have to submit tomorrow, i am in the nearest starbucks, and have paid a hundred bucks for wifi even though i have net connection at home. i slept all day, and one more hour of sleep before twelve noon tomorrow may lead to some illness; i firmly believe in the research findings about oversleeping being bad for the health. also, i have to finish the paper. when i'm home i see the old dvds and i watch them. i wish i could write a paper and watch a show at the same time. technology prevents it, i guess.

i was in coffee bean earlier but they've no power outlet, not one, so i had to go somewhere else. wasted two hours talking to alanah, because that's who i am, i cannot write two hours straight without some break or something. see now i'm blogging. another wasted hour. i don't know if my paper makes sense, i get it and i know what i'm talking about but i'm a bad writer and i always need good editors.

a funny/embarrassing thing happened at work two days ago. the blog entry i edited had a title that was so grammatically incorrect i can't even decide if i should laugh or cry. i started reviewing past articles i've written and i found out that i've used the word "fake" like a million times. this is bad. end-of-career bad.

apocalypse later

five-time academy award winner kirk lazarus: check it out. dustin hoffman, "rain man," look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. counted toothpicks, cheated cards. autistic, sure. not retarded. you know tom hanks, "forrest gump." slow, yes. retarded, maybe. braces on his legs. but he charmed the pants off nixon and won a pingpong competition. that ain't retarded. peter sellers, "being there." infantile, yes. retarded, no. you went full retard, man. never go full retard. you don't buy that? ask sean penn, 2001, "i am sam." remember? went full retard, went home empty handed.

when tom cruise did that horrible horrible movie vanilla sky i was convinced that the guy's a, well, a monster. only a terrible actor, or person, could really fuck a cameron crowe film like that. jerry maguire is a great movie because that was the pre-tom cruise tom cruise we were seeing there. and even then you could fault the acting.

almost famous is that film which i think is closest to my heart, the scorseses and the altmans need all your faculties, so the only explanation i could give myself about vanilla sky is that it's one of those magic realism moments you read in books, where you have no idea what just happened, except it did. and to you. horrible.

so that was my story, until an hour ago when, watching a ben stiller film, i realized i was charmed by the tom cruise performance (it's the performance, not the actor, let's make that clear) and thought i might consider taking back the monster description. watch tropic thunder. the hiphop dances, i swear; do i have a low mp3 somewhere. and then robert downey jr. those three words. the movie with tobey maguire was just genius. if i were the oscars he'd receive not just five; give the guy thirty, please. everyone's smart in tropic thunder because everyone plays the fool.

and we all liked jay baruchel, oh so cute. he was in almost famous, too. small role, but he was there. there's another tom cruise movie i liked, magnolia, but i don't think he was acting there. by the way, which came first, was it magnolia? or vanilla sky?

my life as a groupie

because. sir danny started this online campaign. and i had a sudden urge to write about college. and i really love this badge designed by ate kate. so.

i have two maskom stories here. or narratives. story seems a little restricted. they're about my life as a groupie. groupie as defined by penny lane in almost famous, that should be clear.

the first one is about the struggle for the favorable regard of the professor luis teodoro. the overused phrase "reputation precedes him" would always have a place in the lexicon because there's no other way of saying it. the mind has to discover the subtleties but language unfortunately has its limits. there. reputation: übermensch. and i learned that several days before i actually met him.

he gives me a 3 in the first class assignment. better than 4.5 or, well, 8 (either i saw a paper with this grade in it or this is the most vivid dream i had ever) but definitely not acceptable. the opinion article fared better, but the sem ended with a 2 on my class card. the struggle begins. i enrolled in another class under the professor teodoro (trust me, the the is not so korni when you're a student slash groupie) and when he quoted albert camus i made sure i submitted a paper with some reference to the absurd. i did my internship in a community newspaper. to be different (at least that's my story).

and then. opinion writing class. the professor in his usual lecture mode, the subject is capital punishment. he remembers an essay by albert camus. he looks at me and asks, "you know reflections on the guillotine, mr soriano?" yeah i died.

the second story is about the other celebrity (as we've already used the word groupie, whose meaning we defined earlier), yvonne chua. she gives fifty assignments every meeting, they say, and thirty of those get a 4; the remaining ten maybe a 2.75. i'm exaggerating. it's not really fifty, maybe forty or something. ok, it stops there.

oh, i loved the assignments by the way. in a weird way, i did. i almost cried (almost because i don't want to say i did cry) when the storm milenyo damaged power lines and caused a blackout and my laptop's battery was empty and there's not an open internet café near my house. i can't remember how i finished everything but i did.

it doesn't end there. she picks my thesis proposal one semester later, she is to be my thesis adviser. friends flooded my phone with text messages that range from genuine concern to more creative crap like pag pumasa ka maganda nga thesis mo pero wala ka nang kamay. the appendages would change. again i can't remember how i finished everything but i did: 1.25.

these are trivial stories, this is a trivial entry. but that is the point. i'm not in the position to be preaching about what i learned (learned seriously) because ironically one of the things i learned in cmc is that the application of learning is more important than learning itself. i graduated just last year. i've no right to be talking about the purpose of life or the meaning of my past experiences. i'm still trying to figure that out. so i take refuge in nostalgia. but that nostalgia, i'm sure, helps me figure things out.

ps. my favorite luis teodoro joke is this: "i saw a sign that says, 'keep this door close'...and your enemies closer." i never believed i lost weight until professor chua told me in one thesis consultation session: "just pull a chair. we'll talk in my office (she shares it with professor simbulan). you're slim naman e."

lesson from hannibal

i have a fascination with reflexivity. without it there'd be no musicals, adaptation would be all about flowers, postmodernism would never be possible. of course i'm writing this at three in the morning; i didn't do much at work today but still, this hour has some logic-twisting crap so maybe i'm wrong. about reflexivity.

here's the point: sylar telling claire "that's disgusting" is the funniest heroes line ever. and it's not even morbidly funny, i laughed because: 1. the question was unexpected and absurd, therefore funny, and 2. the answer was either supersmart or superoutofcontext, which made it, well, funny. no more f word from me. reflexivity's the point.

so sylar and peter and nathan are brothers (in a beauty contest nathan would win, at least for now). angela petrelli's really some woman. what happened to west? is that it? gone forever? ali larter has the coolest power (three am, three am). ando's going to kill hiro in the future. mohinder? hank mccoy?

by the way is it really called reflexivity? or does that word mean something else? now i'm confused.