Today, I added

around 9 new blog links to my Google Reader account and have read 165 entries from different blogs. Eight full hours of nothingness. Sarap.

Yes, officer, I was in the office that whole time.

People are paying me to do nothing.

I don't have a problem with that. I guess you do, though.

Today, I wanted

to tell you to stop...telling...me...what...to...effing...do. When you made that last crack, I just wanted you to have it. You are not the boss of me. And you have to accept the fact that you will never be.

Today, too, I realized

that it's so easy to point out other people's flaws. People who feel good about themselves diss people who don't. People who believe in a higher power smirk at the ones who can care less.

So honey, when you tell the world how good and blessed you are, leave the other half of that equation out of it. In this lifetime, the only wrong answers are the ones we so adamantly profess are right. I hope you know that by now.

Today, I also came to the conclusion

that most of the time, I seem to want to eat more than I can chew. After office hours, P and K and I went to Festival's Food Court to grab a bite. It was a fantabulous street food fest and I loved it loved it loved it. I hope I can get to do that again.

Today, when we were waiting for K,

P and I headed out to National Bookstore. This will sound pathetic but I haven't done anything spontaneous in a looooong time. And believe me, the trip to the bookstore can be categorized as just that! I didn't get to buy anything and guess what, I never even knew there was a constant sale going on in there. Jesus. Who would I have to kill to get these kinds of information? I'm just so glad P asked me to tag along or else the whole day would have seemed more humdrum than it already was.

Today, I would like for you

to read this. It will inspire you. Oh yes, it will inspire you.

I am a creature of want.

All the things I want translate into things I need. I do not know if this poses any real danger of any kind since I've been this way my whole life.

Especially when it comes to books. When does one ever not need books? The thought is ridiculous. So when he told me earlier that I shouldn't buy any more books because I still have a lot of unread ones dying to be used, I felt slightly annoyed. But I didn't let on because I remember asking him to help me control my spending habits (prolly a week ago) because my budget's pretty tight right now. It's just weird 'cause no one has ever told me to not buy books. My parents would have maimed anyone who controlled my book-buying. But it's irrational to feel angry since I was the one who asked him to help me out in the first place. So whatthefuck, right?

Missy, a lot of people are angry

not because they want to seem cool, not because they want other people to admire them for how detached they seem. Some people are angry and sad and think that the world's unfair because some things that you can't even imagine happened to them.

I'm not saying that you're wrong. No one is. Just be a bit more compassionate. Then maybe, just maybe, you can convince some of us to live in your world's terms.

Oh, and have I told you

that I've already gotten those eye glasses that I've been waiting for for quite some time? It's uber-kapal and makes me look like a total geekazoid. Which I like.

Pictures to follow. Hehehe

Sometimes, it takes real effort to not expect anything in return.

I steel myself against all these bad vibes but here it is. Here is the disappointment, followed by the what-ifs. Regrets come last. They always do.

I have been happily loved as a child.

I seldom felt neglected. I did not have to live up to anyone's set standards (until now, baby). I do not know where this hatred is coming from. I tell myself that the world is not so bad. There are still plenty of satisified people so it can't all be hell and damnation around here. But why do I feel so down and out most days?

I hope that you feel better.

And oh yes, that other thing, too.

Do you forget who you are
when you're the last one in the bar
and then morning unfurls
on the wallflower,
wallflower girl?

My brother tells me he misses me by saying that he needs money for the weekend.

I tell him I miss him too by texting him a long message regarding the importance of money and how he should learn to save up for times like these la-dee-da.

It is strange how we do not know how to say the right things. And how we know so well.

****

Hurts like something godawful. I miss my family.:(

This picture is seven months old.

What I would give to see him again, paddling behind the tricycle I am riding in. The wind blows stronger in those parts and I can still feel it rushing across my face. It is an old friend, reclaiming me, asking why it took me so long to return.

I remember this boy following me, peddaling furiously as if he believed that if he relaxed, even a bit, I and my fancy carriage will be gone. And I don't know what that meant to him but I didn't want to think of that because it meant falling back into the old rhythms of self-absorption. I do not know how he found me or if he sought me out or when he decided to go on this crazy pseudo-voyage. What I know is that it felt like summer and a young boy was following me on a bike.

We stopped at the port's fish market and the smell of fish was so strong, I felt like licking my fingers because it seemed that the smell rested on them, too. I took a few pictures and everyone went all agog. Perhaps it is rare for people to go there on ordinary sunny days to expressly ask them to pose next to their wares. This kind of inactivity was probably unthinkable for them; it somehow did not equate. Before I knew it, many of the fish sellers wanted to have their pictures taken. They never even asked if they could secure copies. They just wanted to be a part of a stranger's day and I was so grateful for having found kindness and openness in a place brimming with life.

Afterwards, I took pictures of old remains of boats that were left on the shore. And that was when I asked him if I could take his picture. He did not know how to reject me. Instead, he put one hand up and covered his face. But you can see that his eyes were smiling and that he was happy.

It is odd to fall in love with people this way. But I do, over and over again. And I never regret this vulnerability, this tenderness that I hope to keep. It's what preserves my sanity, what makes me realize that it's okay to go on living.

It was taken in the morning, first thing. All that
I remember of this day makes me laugh out loud. That day, I had
to be roused from my bed. I imagined that when my
mother turned her back to me to head downstairs, she
had that worry crease on her forehead because I had forgotten
something as important as this. My father was the first to go.
He seemed so brave all of a sudden, my meek father who never
raised his voice to the woman he married even behind closed
doors. He stepped in front of the blue backdrop and was asked to
put his foot on a stool. His eyes, I knew, were looking
at the person behind the lens. I knew this because
he once told me that he did not respect instruments. What's
important is the great mystery behind everything, he said. I'm sure
he wasn't thinking of that moment but was dreaming,
instead, of my mother, 20 years younger
in a red sundress. Then it's my mother's turn and she
preens in front of the camera, as if she is convincing someone
that she is leading a different life, that this is
who she really is. It is sad in an awkward
way and I drift off to somewhere safe -- to
that day when I was three and she was making a peanut butter
sandwich and stopped and stared at me for 15 seconds. I forget
that she is a body that is apart from my own, that
the cord has been severed since day one and
didn't even exist two decades ago. Then after what seems like a long
year, I am asked to step in front of the lens. I am unsure about
what I should do in front of it, of
what I'd need to know. The intricacies of this
activity is something that wasn't taught to me
or to anyone else, really. My parents are no
longer in the room; perhaps they thought I'd be shy and
self-conscious going about things if
they had stayed. I fix my eyes on that object and
shiver a little because I'm so ready for it. And after that,
everything else blurred into one and the same thing. You say that
you feel cheated, you were expecting something more personal, more
romantic. But don't you see me? I am staring at you
full in the face. I am alone and my hands are younger
than they've ever been. That is exactly who I am.

From Possession by A.S. Byatt:

He saw, or thought he saw, how those qualities had been disguised or overlaid by more conventional casts of expression -- an assumed modesty, an expedient patience, a disdain masking itself as calm. At her worst -- oh, he saw her clearly, despite her possession of him -- at her worst she would look down and sideways and smile demurely, and this smile would come near a mechanical simper, for it was an untruth, it was a convention, it was her brief constricted acknowledgement of the world's expectations. He had seen immediately, it seemed to him, what in essence she was, sitting at the Crabb Robinson's breakfast table, listening to men disputing, thinking herself an unobserved observer. Most men, he judged, if they had seen the harsheness and fierceness and absolutism, yes, absolutism, of that visage, would have stood back from her. She would have been destined to be loved only by timid weaklings, who would have secretly hoped she would punish or command them, or by simpletons, who supposed her chill look of delicate withdrawal to indicate a kind of feminine purity, which all desired, in those days, at least ostensibly. But he had known immediately that she was for him, she was to do with him, as she really was or could be, or in freedom might have been.

I would like to be good. I would like to be someone who believes in something greater than the mythical silver lining, these small blessings. I would like to look at a child and love him because he is a child and he knows nothing of the world and this love would push me to do great things. I would like to look at women and not feel obliged to forgive them of their weaknesses. I would like to run into a man on a common street and then forget him the moment I turn the corner. I would like to be strong enough to be able to turn that corner. I would like to see my brother and realize how hungry he is, how he is collapsing into deceptive versions of kindness, time and time again, finding out that he has exchanged his eyes for something far less miraculous. I would like to seek out my father, who has been drunk all his life but never lets on. I would like to see him and I will run my hands gently over his face to let him know that I am a child, still, but with strange, almost incoherent needs. And I will suppose that he will understand and recognize me, inspite of his old rage, for he is more me than I am. I would like to visit my mother in her crumbling solitude. I would like to tell her that everything is not what it seems, that the world has turned me into something she might not be able to see fully. And in that warm and familiar place, I will nestle my head on her shoulder, the way I did when I was so much younger, when there was nothing else but love and warm soup on the table. I would like to skip the apologies and move on quickly to something true. I would tell her this and I hear her talk softly about herself and her body would assume the blank spaces of what we've all forgotten, what we need to accept. This time, I would listen. I would be good.

"You're like the drummer of REO Speedwagon. Nobody knows you."

-Russell, Employee of the Month

Is anonymity necessarily a bad thing?

Is it something that would kill you eventually or would make you stronger?

Is being a complete nobody saddening for someone like you?

I guess not.

I guess not.

He's building bombs in the bathroom
The man who lives right next door
Why don't you go round and ask him
If that's what all this noise for.

He's building bombs in the bathroom
Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

The time of my first suspicion
When I first became aroused
Well the smell that came from his kitchen
Almost made me call the council round.

He's building bombs in the bathroom
Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

Right next door to me
His bomb factory
Not how this country used to be.

It seems like years ago
When everyone you know
Would live the good life
Just like you and me.

And it's you, and it's May
And we're sleeping through the day
And I'm five years ago and three thousand miles away.

Earlier today, I visited their Friendster profiles. The first one already has a wife and two kids. The second one has a kid who looks like him. The third one hasn't had a girlfriend in 7 years but he has one now. He does not mention her in his blog but he mentions me. Reading one of his entries has made me realize how different I am now. Let me correct that: each of them knows about or have been with different versions of me. This makes my heart break. I want to apologize but I can't pinpoint,really, what I'm sorry about.

I've always had dreams where I was falling. You probably have had those too but I've been having them a lot lately. The best advice that I've been given is to consciously brave those dreams out and see them through. I'm bad at trying to control circumstances occuring in my dreams. I never even thought it was possible but I've already tried it twice so it is, after all, possible. But it's hard to do and I end up with a headache.

This morning, I tried to look up what the dream meant. I clicked on the very first link that I saw and here's what it says:

Falling dreams are another theme that is quite common in the world of dreams. Contrary to a popular myth, you will not actually die if you do not wake up before your hit the ground during a fall.

This is true. Else, I'm a zombie.

As with most common dream themes, falling is an indication of insecurities, instabilities, and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life. This may reflect the way you feel in your relationship or in your work environment. You have lost your foothold and can not hang on or keep up with the hustle and bustle of daily life.

True as well.

When you fall, there is nothing that you can hold on to. You more or less are forced toward this downward motion without any control. This lost of control may parallel a waking situation in your life. Falling dreams also often reflect a sense of failure or inferiority in some circumstance or situation. It may be the fear of failing in your job/school, loss of status, or failure in love.You feel shameful and lack a sense of pride. You are unable to keep up with the status quo or that you don't measure up.

You understand, this is all an euphemism for: Buckle up, loser.

According to Freudian theory, dreams of falling indicate that you are contemplating giving into a sexual urge or impulse. You maybe lacking indiscretion.

Stop right there. Maybe lacking in indiscretion. Now this is me, right down to the period in the end. Maybe what I need right now is indiscretion and I'll be alright.

So here's my Be Indiscreet: Get a Good Night's Sleep Project:

1. Blatantly cheat on the boyfriend. Ask a lot of men (and possibly women) to call me up during the wee hours of the night. When asked where I'm going, say, "With someone you don't know." Wink while saying it to heighten suspicion.

2. Strategically place computer on cubicle. Enable total visual access for everyone. Let officemates and top honchos know that all I do all day long is surf the net, looking for things that interest me.

3.Tell mentally challenged applicants to shut up forever.

4. Tell people about my college escapades during non-exclusive parties. (Like one time, in EIC camp...)

5. Pick my nose in public.

6. When wearing a skirt, don't forget to splay legs as far apart as they would go.

7. Dance to the Stones' Beast of Burden. On the street. At rush friggin' hour.

8. Spill all the secrets I know.

9. Laugh boisterously in a library.

10. Run for office.

What I have always found mysterious is why Gotham City folk are such suckers for disaster. Whenever there's something major going on, Gotham residents go to the city in droves. Oh shoot, is an evil and terribly twisted person planning to bomb the city hospital? I'll be damned if I miss that. Oh is there a crazy ass clown who is on the lookout for people to kill? I'll have to see that for myself.

And why are they all... still... in Gotham? It's been nothing but chaos and destruction in that sick city since God knows when. Why are they still living there? Someone should tell these people that the world is a big place and since most of them are probably American citizens (I did see a Chinese guy in one of the scenes), they'd have easy access to all the other places.

Have you noticed how Gotham City is so much like the Philippines? The similarities are so uncanny, it kills me. We hate everything, we complain about everything, we vote for a hero only to find out that the hero is a villain after all and we complain about that, too. We have a lot of drug syndicates going on and people are so quick to turn against each other. And let's not forget how similar the ferry dilemma was to the recent ZTE catastrophe all of us witnessed. And yes, all the good ones have been turned to two-faced freaks.

And like those lovely Gotham residents, no one really wants to fucking budge. And the people who do get out say they never really wanted to go. Weird innit?

At this point, it must be pretty apparent to you that I've already watched the Batman movie and boy-oh, that was the best Batman movie ever, hands down. I was able to get over the icky love stuff because Gyllenhaal's character redeemed herself (by dying) in the end. Why is it that whenever I look at Maggie Gyllenhaal, I think slut slut slut. Which is why she was perfect for the lawyer role.

The movie is definitely in the watch-in-cinema category. And yes, Ledger was very convincing as Joker but he surely would not be winning any awards because of it. If the Academy Awards committee is bent on giving an award to anyone, they should give one to the Gotham City people. For misplaced optimism, if not for anything else.

Today, I shall personally show you my top 17 favorite books. However, I'll be presenting them in no particular order because my books are all extremely sensitive and might feel more than a little slighted if they think they've been underappreciated and might run off with the milkmaid first chance s/he gets.

So, here they are:

The Blind Assassin. If anyone ever so much as undervalues this book in any way, I will come after you. Oh yes, I will come after you. And that's that, really. I'll just follow you around, like the good stalker that I am.

The Book of Illusions. Paul Auster. No explanations necessary.

Catch - 22. Climb, you bastard! Climb, climb, climb, climb!"

Einstein's Dreams. Alan Lightman, make sweet love to meeehhhh!!!!!

Fear of Flying. I panted my way through the entire thing. You would, too. (wink, wink)

Fight Club. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version. Edward Norton was great in the film version.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I am in this book. Every orphan is.

Henry and June. Anais Nin will seriously rock your world out of kilter.

The House of Mirth. I cried a full 30 minutes after I read this book. Amazing. Wonderful. I'm running out of trumped up adjectives.

Lord of the Flies. I will be eternally grateful to my Comm II teacher, Beng, for encouraging me to read this book.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Swear that you'll read this. Swear.

Possession: A Romance. Last year's Best Book Read By Someone Who Rarely Reads Anymore. Possibly even better than The Blind Assassin.

Sputnik Sweetheart. I fall in love with this book over and over again. Went to bed with it the first time I finished it. Gets better everytime.

Tarantula. Bod Dylan slays me. He slays me until I am nothing but a big sighing heartbeat.

The Bell Jar. When I was in college, I almost lost my mind because I thought I lost it. Was a necessity for me during my EIC days for LB Times.

The Reader. Possibly this year's best book. It has yet to be rivaled. The film, they say, will be out by December this year. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet. Wouldn't miss it if I were you.

White Teeth. Zadie Smith is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers. A lot of great insights in this book. Keep out of children's reach.

Well, that's it for now. All of those, and more, make me a happy and healthy girl (until the drug tests prove otherwise).

In my dreams, it is always summer

and the boy in those dreams is always picking pockets. He

never tells me why. My mother, she

does not know this boy

but he looks a lot like her. I am waiting for him to step

up to me and say On my watch, you're never

going to die. And I dread that day but in my dreams,

everything is still in place so I try not to be too afraid. The dreams

aren't always about the boy. Some of

them are about how the wind

makes the red kite fly. The kite is a miracle

making zigzag patterns on a sky

that is overcast with sadness.

I think I've never seen anything lovelier than that, except maybe for

the boy's hands, how small and

insignificant they look. I'm sorry,

I could've sworn that the dreams were not all

about him but they were.

Strangely, he moves me. The kite never has, honestly. Like

many things, it acts as a disinterested constant, floating around and

doing nothing spectacular. But the boy was fast

and careful, always

making someone's load less heavy. In today's dream,

I see him lifting the sun out of someone's

beach bag. For a moment, he

makes believe he is stealing from God.

But I know he is not; I know he knows the truth for

God is not here. He is in someone

else's summer dream,

picking someone else's pockets with

bright, small hands.

Now that I've grown considerably older, I can admit that I was never Holly Golightly. Never. I did spend a lot of years deluding myself into thinking that the movie character that best represented me was the character that Audrey Hepburn played that no one forgot. I never had a serious penchant for glamor. If anything, all that debauchery makes me want to throw up. I think diamonds are useless; they don't taste good and you can't really count on them if you want help losing weight. On top of it all, I have zero ambition. So I just have to accept facts. I have never been and will never be Holly Golightly.

Who I have always been is Janeane Garofalo. It took me some, um, 3-5 years to accept that painful fact but there it is. We have the same superhuman ability to look like total nerds next to our good looking best friends; we even look like we have a bad hair year every year.

Consider Exhibit A:

This is what seems to be Ms Hepburn's highschool photo. I'm not sure but it looks like it could be one. If it were, I'll tell you now that I have never looked anything like that in highschool. My idea of hair care was shampoo and water. I went to prom dressed like a character from a Tim Burton movie. I ate all the food, too.

Exhibit B:

Now this look is really more my speed. Note the chasm of difference between the two pictures. This is me on a very, very good day.

Exhibit C:

See? Notice the starved, crazed look around the eyes. The hairbrush stuck on my head is not for mere posterity, ladies and gents. The lip bite is not intentional. No, it's not, you ass.

Now I know the topic was not about looks at all but more on the differences between the characters these two icons have played in the past. But characters' looks have as much to do about the part as the way they act out the part. As an interviewee so eloquently said: I am not a cow. I don't have a confusion about the bush.

As I was saying, I have always been the Janeane Garofalo type. Since grade school, I've always belonged to a three-girl group. And there was always one very attractive girl in the group. And you guessed it... it wasn't me.

I'd like to make it clear that although I've made my image issues apparent in this entry, I've never boo-hooed about it. Having an attractive friend is something that I've always taken in stride. I guess that's why I studied extra hard so that I'd have a sort of edge. I always had to be the smart alecky one or else, I'd be no one, really. Because believe it or not, wit can be developed through years of solving complex, nearly incomprehensible math equations. Over and over again. If character is all you're hoping to have, make sure that you'd have loads of it so that you'll never run out until the day everyone is old and gray and looks like everybody else.

I remember a classic college story. My friends and I were freshmen then. A always got to be invited to freshmen beauty pageants and such and such and she was clearly the most attractive person in the group because B looked too thin and miserable and I could only be described as staunchy.

We all went to the same history class (blockmates!). Now there was this guy, I believe his name is Charles, who was in that same class with us. He wasn't distractingly attractive. I guess he was just very nice and accomodating and had that kind of smile that could blind you if you stared too long. Everyone liked this guy. Seriously. But he never seemed to realize how appealing he was and that... that was the best thing about him.

Imagine my (our) surprise when he walked up to me after a class and asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him. All I could say to that was: EEEEKKK *^(*^*%&^&^R^$#^!!!! Anyway, gibberish, balderdash, then I said, Yes, of course, I'll go with you, Charles. (To the ends of the earth! To the ends of the earth!)

He bought tickets to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Which he picked, of course. Well, this is romantic, I thought. Nothing like some intergalactic shit to get a decent conversation going.

At the start of the movie, I informed him that I was happy that he's a Star Wars fan and all but I wasn't and I warned him that I'd be asking him questions throughout the entire movie. I knew guys hate the way girls blabber their way through good movie parts but I wanted to let him know that I had a genuine interest in what he was interested in. I had to establish a connection. And he was so nice... he explained almost all the parts that I didn't understand. So we watched and laughed. It was fun, in a completely wholesome way. It was terrible.

Then, at some point (and this is the part that's still as clear as day to me), he leaned closer to ask me something. I was beside myself with juvenile joy. This guy likes me, I thought. Not A. Me. And at that moment, this notion that I devised all by my lonesome did wonders for my ego.

Then I heard him. His voice was suddenly so clear. He was asking if A had a boyfriend.

I said, "No, she doesn't." I was aware of how horribly deadpan my voice sounded but I no longer cared. At that point, I had kissed coherence goodbye.

Then he said, "You think she'll like me?"

"What's not to like?"

And he went on and on about A and all the things he noticed about her. He was as bad as a girl with a crush. He was as bad as I was 5 minutes ago.

And the worst part was, he asked me if I could ask A if she wanted to go to the dance with him that was happening the next day. I said, sure, of course I'd tell her. And when the movie was over, he took me back to my apartment and the first thing I did was call A. I tried so hard to sound nonchalant (which was a tough feat, I'm telling you.) and she just kept squealing with joy.

So yeah, I'm so Janeane Garofalo. But I never really get the guy in the end. Let's just say my life feels like a movie, sometimes, and I'm playing a Garofalo character but my endings are almost always the My Best Friend's Wedding ending.

Well this is all sufficiently saddening. I hope I made you feel better about your life. Toodles.

Did'ya know that Glen Hansard also acts as the vocalist in the band called The Frames?

Taken from Wikipedia because it's 8am and no one expects anyone to explain anything coherent at 8am:

The Frames is an influential Irish band based mainly in Dublin. Founded in 1990, the group has released six albums and appeared in numerous music videos. The band's ex-bassist John Carney has become a film director, writing and directing the award-winning 2007 film Once, which stars the band's singer/guitarist Glen Hansard, who wrote much of the music for the film.

I really like their version of one of my favorite Van Morrison songs:

Here's the original version:

One of my favorite Woody Allen movies is undoubtedly Annie Hall. I'm a sucker for conversation pieces but I consider this Allen hit the best of its kind because it's very unsentimental, honest, and easily relatable. It's to the 1998 version of Great Expectations as borsche is to chicken soup.

And it ends with this line: “This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

So true.

Song preferences are extremely subject to a couple of things.

Well for one, the melody/lyrics should be interesting enough to strike you, and by strike I don't mean a mere bop on the head. I mean serious cranial damage, I mean a whole World War happening inside your already overwrought brain connectors. Seriously, it should blow you away.

More importantly, though, it should be relevant. If you haven't noticed yet, people are big on relevance. The song should be something that they think can unravel in their action-packed, monotony-free lives. This is why there are songs that we liked in highschool that we won't ever tell anyone about now. Songs are like husbands and wives -- they're easy to divorce as long as the severance is discreet and everyone's still alive.

There are also songs that you've never noticed before and one day, you mistakenly hear it on your Ipod and it magically turns your heart around. Suddenly, tears are running down your cheeks. You are a pool of regret and self-pity. The next day, you put it on repeat so that the agony can continue.

This is not that kind of song.

This is a song I liked so much in college. And yes, back then, I put it on repeat and thought about all the boys I liked that I failed, ever so harshly,to attain. I liked the way my heart constricted and died and revived itself the whole 2 minutes and 24 seconds this song played.

But yesterday, I listened to it and I screamed.Who the fuck changed the lyrics on me? What kind of insensitive brute would make this song so blatantly senseless, so utterly un-cynical? This is murder, I'm telling you.

And I listened to it again and tried to sing along. I got everything right but I was different.

My head is reeling and I just woke up.

Let me repeat that... my head is reeling and I just woke up. There absolutely was no point in repeating that, I just wanted to play the words in my head to see if it really was something true. And it is.

Last night, I went to bed after posting the final entry that you'd see down below. And now, I'm online again. I don't think it's a good idea, really, wasting my time like this. I'm on leave today and am supposed to do other, more relaxing things. But I don't seem to want to.

Yes, the blogging addiction is back. And it's taking it's toll on my dwindling eyesight. My head is reeling and I just fucking woke up.

I've always had poor eyesight. I had my first pair of glasses (started out at 350 for both eyes) when I was in third grade. My mother blames this on the genes I've inherited from my father and my propensity to lie down while reading one book after another.

As a kid, I was a voracious reader. I'd lug around about 7-8 books around the house and try to finish them all before nightfall. I was a silent kid, was never really allowed to go out much because I was allergic to practically everything -- pollens floating around, dust, the heat from the sun, possibly other people. Probably the picture I presented to her back then -- quiet, studious,observant -- gave her hope that I'd be something larger than life.

Boy, if she could only see me now... haven't been promoted for a year now, stuck in a job that can only be described as routinary, and filing leaves just to post this kind of gibberish. Also, I don't get to read that much anymore. I sort of carry around 2-3 books during weekends and I just stare at them. I will myself to muster enough enthusiasm to learn something new and that's the moment everything goes downhill. I'm lucky if I get halfway through a book.

I still go crazy in bookstores, though. I buy around 5-6 books and psych myself up silly. But now I have a pile of books that I don't get to read and bad eyesight to boot. Gah.

This is not the way to start the day. Definitely not.

This song makes me feel inordinately young, for some reason. Whenever I listen to it, I want to bash car windows up, send a spitball sliding down from the fifth floor, eat a vat of greasy french fries at 3am, and tell you that I want you, I need you, oh Baby, oh Baby.

One of these days, a poem will come to me. Most probably, it will be during an ordinary hour, with ordinary minutes ticking around inside it. And during one of those minutes, I will think of a word, which will undoubtedly be followed by a lustrous string of other words which might make up an entire coherent phrase. But alas, during that moment, I'll be conducting an interview with a person who looks this:

And of course, I'd excuse myself, telling him I'd be back. It's just that a literary emergency has come up and this person will no doubt understand how inspiration works since he himself is something imaginary and fragmented. So he'll let me go ahead. He'll say Take all the time you need. I'll walk away thinking how gruff and deep his voice sounds.

Then I'll sit at my tiny cubicle which looks like all the other cubicles in our floor. I'll take out the Post-Its that I bought last January. All the Post-It pages are unused. This give me a sense of vindication because they are clean and devoid of any meaning.

Finally, after many months, I'll be writing a poem. I'll be immersed in all its goodness and its hefty love. I will forget about the world and this crazy year and my insane life. I am buzzing with meaning now and understanding and gratitude. I am a reservoir of words, all possibly American, enriched by thought-up derivations and differing meanings. I am neither happy nor intelligent, I can stand apart from emotions and stereotypes. I am a reservoir of words then just a word then just a letter then the air.

After an hour or two, I'll be done with the poem. I will fold the pages neatly and carefully and will put them inside my small drawer which can be locked by a key I carry around with me.

I will not notice the silence at first. But when I return to the room I left an hour ago, I will find that he is gone. And so is everyone else.

They say that around three o'clock in the pm, they were already noisily hedging around the sofa to see if I were still alive. Catatonia around these parts is unacceptable, they say. But since they could not fully explain why it was bad, they weren't successful in getting me fat bodeh out of the couch.

I am a firm believer of nonsense. There wouldn't be enough living without it; there'd probably only be a generous amount of serious conversations and predictable drama and haywire neurosis. And that's not a life, my dearly beloved and intimate friends. So whenever I have a lot of time on my hands, I try to catch up on all the nonsense that the world has to offer.

So today I watched entertainment news, cartoons, sitcoms and was lucky enough to watch three hours of Pageant Place. That's a whole lot of useless shit, I'm telling you. It'd last me well into the decade.

Pageant Place is a product of an MTV-Donald Trump team-up. It's a new American reality series that will follow current Miss Universe Riyo Mori, Miss USA Rachel Smith and Miss Teen USA Katie Blair as they live together in a New York City apartment and represent their different crowns. There are the usual catty and ultra-dtitzy scenes but I really liked Rachel Smith. I think she's really purty and she's smart to boot so she was really all I looked at during the entire show.

I am woman who is quick to admire other women. I am also very vocal about it, so much so that some people at the office have asked me if I actually preferred women (wink, wink). Do I really have to, erm, prefer women to be allowed to say that I appreciate them? Come on, let's not be immature skanks about such a simple thing as that. Don't get me wrong, though. I also don't like many kinds of women. Let's just say that from where I'm standing, I think my appetites are still fairly healthy.

Anyway, if you still don't know what she looks like, here's a picture:

Nice, right? Anyway, that's it about my tres interesting afternoon, I guess. I better get out of here before I sound like a total pimp.

This just in: I just discovered that Ben Whishaw, who played Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume also starred as Spud in the movie adaptation of Enduring Love.

Note to self: have to find the Enduring Love adapatation.

Choosing to Think of It

Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someone
removed from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home. The sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves--suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening, the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.

Everyone has fantasized about being stalked, at some point. People rarely talk about it but I believe that people think about it, and more importantly, are intrigued by the idea. We hide under our suspicious suppositions, our traditonal upbringings and raise umbrage when we feel that our privacy is being disregarded. But secretly, we are tickled pink whenever we notice that someone is paying more attention to us than is usual, than is appropriate.

Stalking, like anything else, varies in depth. From the simplest to the most complex stalking cases, one can see that there is an evident need for something. It may be the need for information, acceptance, answers. It may be love, jealousy, hatred.

For the more "normal" populace, we accept and understand that we can't choose the people whom we love. Stalkers believe they can.

Now I don't appreciate stalkers. I am not writing this to champion their cause, whatever that may be. But I do recognize the underlying reasons and in a completely warped and sick way, I can sympathize.

My real reason for writing this is to ask you to watch Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. It's a movie that I managed to see earlier this week and I can't get over it, really.

Do try and watch it. I think you can still catch it at Star Movies.

And because it's the weekend, you can try reading this and checking this out.

That night was supposed to be an ordinary night. I could've mapped it out as if I were psychic: will arrive at venue at 9pm, listen to a couple of nice renditions of first world angst at around 11, head home at 2 or 3am, grab a bite to eat, get home at 3 or 4am , then sleep. No one expected that that would happen, except you, of course, you sentimental oaf.

After the band was done with the second song, you announced that someone would be singing with you on stage. It was really easy to inch closer to where you were since there were a lot of empty tables that night.

Then there she was. By the way her arms stiffly remained by the sides of her small body, you could tell how shy she was, how new at all of this she seemed. But she kept her head up, her gaze never wavering from yours. It was as if at that point in time, we did not exist. She had on those little cream-colored boots that made her look steady on her feet. Then the song started and we were all lost in this picture: you, bending your head close and inviting her to come closer, to not be afraid. And she was not. She was not.

I have known that kind of love. Distance does not lessen it, or make it dry up and wither eventually. That's the kind of love that will help you bear many things, the only kind you'll ever honestly be thankful for.

I happened upon this piece of news today:

Unpublished Pablo Neruda poems highlight last romance

A series of unpublished poems by Chile's late Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Nobel prize for literature, are shedding light on his last romance with his wife's niece, who was more than 40 years his junior.

Collector Nurieldin Hermosilla said the 14 poems were found in a book titled Black Island Album, after the house in central Chile which Neruda, his third and last wife Matilde Urrutia and her niece Alicia Urrutia shared.

The lawyer and Neruda collector said he bought the book recently from a book dealer, who in turn had acquired it from an anonymous seller.

The poems are handwritten in Neruda's traditional green ink and are "a direct and definitive confirmation from the poet's own pen of his love for Alicia," Mr Hermosilla said.He said Alicia Urrutia decided to go public with the poems after years of keeping silent about her affair.

"I think she decided to confirm her love with Neruda and put this book on sale to lend herself some legitimacy and put an end to the myth," he said.

Read more here.

Honestly, this doesn't make me feel good. Of course the poems would be edited then published for the curious public's perusal! Of course movies about the love affair will follow! Then faster than you can say hippopotamus, the poet will be fashionable again, the way Bob Dylan became fashionable because of that disgusting OC soundtrack and the film that was released last year. People will come to bookstores in droves to get their hands on Neruda's anthologies; he will be quoted in blogs and more and more people will post lines from Neruda's poems as YM status messages.

Just thinking about it gives me the willies. Alicia, Alicia, how I'd love to wring your lucky, lucky neck.

I so love Zooey Deschanel. Not much of an actress, really but I do like the way she looks. And the hair! The blue eyes! Gush gush gush!

She has the kind of voice I prefer. Listen to this:

What I'm really into these days is the Google Reader. I know it's kind of loser-ish (to borrow P's term) and sad to actually come out and admit that but I do like, no, love blog hopping and Reader makes my surfing activities loads easier.

Best of all, it's not blocked in purgatory. My take on that is this: because of his special love for me, God puts a glitch in our tech systems every time those wonderful IT guys at the office check for the most visible sites. Thank you, God, for being so double-standard about things.

I've always liked reading about other people's thoughts and/or experiences. I'm a total information whore. Don't psychoanalyze me, please. I wasn't left out as a child and I don't really have trust issues (harhar). I'm just unusually interested in other people, that's all.

My Reader account hosts different kinds of blogs. There are writers' blogs, bloggers' blogs, and some informational blogs. Admittedly, I like the writers' blogs best. Nothing else in the world can make me feel as shitty as a really good, well-thought out post can. Someone totally whack once told me this: where there's shit, there's potential for growth. I never really got it then but now, I guess it kind of makes sense, in a truly warped and gross way.

What I'd like to do is write non-stop for long stretches of time. I'd like to fill this blog up with insightful and terribly touching stories that would make you scream with insecurity. But I can't. I feel sometimes that I just keep repeating ideas and nothing really, erm, progresses, you know? I need something new, I'm telling you. I need something more.

And here's where you'd say, Come off it! You were just talking about Google Reader then here you go again with that self-depreciation shit. Who cares, honestly? Who cares if you don't write in a million years anymore or if IT does eventually block everything? This sadness doesn't make sense! It doesn't make sense!

Oh yes it does. It does. So if you don't mind, I'd like to crawl into a car now and bawl my eyes out.

Then God said, "A pox on both your houses."

This time, the author is not going to apologize for the intentional misquote. For all you know, frog face, he really did say it first. Shakespeare took himself too goddamn seriously, anyway.

If you consider yourself an observant person, you will discern, just by reading the first four sentences of this really pathetic piece that the author thinks is "post-able" (which says a lot about the author's standards, really), that the author had a very rough week and by rough the author doesn't mean rock-rough or stalagmite-rough or old lady skin-rough because by rough the author means sticking it out in purgatory, which is office-slang, of course, for, well, the office; coming home and watching underwater music videos completely by accident, you understand; having conversations with lady officemates about what kind of underwear the author would like to buy after she gets out of the office at exactly 5pm and here you are trying your damndest to read a very long running sentence that does not seem to make any tangible reference to the author's real thoughts and feelings but is, rather, the author's weak attempt to sound smart and artistic even if all she ever does, really, is lug around 6 or 7 random books to let people know that yes, she knows how to read, and more importantly, can understand what she is reading, which is a lot more than she can say about most people who are so smug about Foucault you'd think they've slept with the man and at this point you are thinking this is the right time to put a period in because you, the reader, are fed up with the author's limited vocabulary and her unoriginal metaphors but the author says to hell with that and all the other things that are occupying her mind right now like how much she has to spend these days just to go to a job she sucks at (is it the job or is it the author, really? your thoughts), how many minutes she actually thinks about going home while she's at work, how much some people hate her because she likes different and no one else really does but no one will really admit it, how many hours she thinks about her main problem, which is this: she thinks she's such an individual and she wants to get over herself but she can't, really, because she can't stand feeling mediocre and in her heart she knows she is not but she never says it out loud; she just posts her frustrations online and says it all in a long-winding sentence that doesn't know when to stop; it only knows that the word because has been used in it approximately five times and she begs you to contest that; she wants to know if there are really more because that's all she really wants: more.

Is it a sin,
Is it a crime
Loving you dear like I do?
If it's a crime than I'm guilty
Guilty of loving you.

Maybe I'm wrong, dreaming of you
Dreaming the lonely night through.
If it's a crime then I'm guilty
Guilty of dreaming of you.

What can I do
What can I say
After I take on the blame?
You say you're through
You'll go your way but I'll always feel just the same.

Maybe I'm right
Maybe I'm wrong
Loving you dear like I do.
If that's a crime than I'm guilty
Guilty of loving you.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
and you hear me from far away and my voice does not touch you.
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
and it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth.

As all things are filled with my soul
you emerge from the things, filled with my soul.
You are like my soul, a butterfly of dream,
and you are like the word Melancholy.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.
It sounds as though you were lamenting, a butterfly cooing like a dove.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice does not reach you:
Let me come to be still in your silence.

And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations.
Your silence is that of a star, as remote and candid.

I like for you to be still: it is as though you were absent,
distant and full of sorrow as though you had died.
One word then, one smile, is enough.
And I am happy, happy that it's not true.

When one uses another's words in wooing a lover, does it count?

When the whistling part comes on, listen carefully. That's Dave Eggers right there.

Little Tornado
Aimee Mann (and who would have thought it, Dave Eggers, too.)

Little tornado
Bane of the trailer park
Lifting houses to leave your mark.

Little tornado
Noah can build his ark
But he will never disembark

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

Little tornado
You and the hurricane
Close your eyes and go campaign

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

Oh no, no we don't
No, we don't know.

Little tornado blew out the window pane
Left the inside to the rain.

Make it go faster,
Baby go faster,
Make it go twice the speed of you and me.

When you reach a certain age, you'd recognize the effort that you exert in remembering things. It was yesterday, yes it was, when you were telling a group of friends a story that your mom told you four years ago. Now you strain to recall what it was, careful in separating what you remember from what truly happened.

The day when fiction becomes fact is the same day when you'd feel the slow waning of the years, the soft solitary footsteps of their leaving.

Here are some things I remember:

1. my aunt says I was 2 years old when I said my first English word. the English word was dead.

2. the smell of sampaguitas after we've mixed them to make bubbles

3. a strip of sunshine landing on my uncle's face some random afternoon

4. mothballs in my father's closet

5. old and rusty gold-rimmed glasses on a bedside table

6. cold green bathroom tiles

7. a storybook that I wrote for myself about two girls who went around the world and never came back. the illustrations were horrendous.

8. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a red lunchbox and a thermos of hot milo

9. a boy named george who made faces at me during recess.

10. my 1st grade uniform: moss green skirt and a cream polo with moss green piping.

11. a small blackboard with the alphabet written on it backwards

12. two wooden doll's houses, one smaller than the other. both had two floors. the bigger one was better furnished because it had more rooms.

13. Ura, an old crazy lady who walked around the city with big plastic bags tied to her skirt and a purple bandana around her head.

14. the taste of Tita Magdalena's mechado.

15. the lilting way my mother pronounces English words

16. my mother facing her vanity mirror, looking blankly at her face

17. how steady my mother's hand was while she clutched my arm when i was almost taken by a sipay(rumored pirates who kidnapped children in the early 80's. possibly an urban legend but someone did try to take me.).

18. a yellow box with a golden lock, a memory of folly and forgiveness attached to it.

19. my mother's maimed middle finger

20. the smell of a Perry Ellis perfume wafting in rooms my mother has occupied

21. Frank Sinatra singing on a Sunday.

22. soft, sweet pilipits (squash sweets)

23. combing my father's hair

24. the unsolved mystery of the broken vase

25. secretly unlocking my brother's room whenever he's punished for something

26. my grandmother's spaghetti

27. Ate Glenda's laughter when she was very young

28. someone throwing a fit over paper doll cutouts

29. Max's fried chicken after Sunday Mass. they don't make 'em like they did anymore.

30. selling stationery, P1.00 a piece for the small, square ones and P1.50 for the page-length ones that smell good.

31. eating Serge chocolates while lying on new sheets, reading a book.

32. the smell of new books

33. a pack of Bazooka bubble gum, the comic strip wrappers

34. Santa Claus and my last memorable Christmas

35. reunions at Lolo Ramon's boat-shaped house in Antipolo

36. the heat from stage lights

37. Cyril Maano

38. my mother's shame at something I told our relatives about over dinner

39. Perfect Strangers and the sound my father's rickety rocking chair made during commercial breaks

40.going to school without taking a bath

41. a red dress and a sailor hat

42. smoke from cigars; a group of men wearing fedoras

43. my father's shiny Knights of Columbus sword

44. laughing with Anthony over Pugad Baboy comic books

45. the gift of a small lab set

46. scores erased from a pink examination notebook

47. tricking our family driver into buying me Scramble after school lets out

48. balled up handwritten letters thrown from school buses

49. my Jeffrey fixation: Jeffrey Gaggalang (1st Grade), Jeffrey Sarmiento (2nd Grade), Mark Jeffrey Querubin (6th grade), Jeffrey-no-last-name, a waiter from a pizza store, Jeffrey Tam (2nd yr. highschool)

50. Sam, then Theresa

51. brown suspenders hanging from a coat rack

52. a perfect, blue sky from my bedroom window

53. playing hooky

54. a spelling bee; the word chaos

55. Felix the Cat and an early farewell to innocence

56. Stephanie's mom's Fusilli dish

57. Kuya Boy singing Besame Mucho in the dark

58. My father's voice; my father's stories

Just recently discovered McSweeney's. It has done my dyslexic heart a world of good.

Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite McSweeney stories:

PROUST DISCOVERS

LIVEJOURNAL
BY SUMMER BLOCK KUMAR

I spent the morning in bed, my sleep so heavy as to obliterate utterly my consciousness, like a man who falls asleep on a fast-moving train, letting a well-worn novel slip from his hands and onto his lap, and whose dreaming head remains throughout his long journey through quaint country towns wreathed with memory; countless hours pass and the sleeper stays motionless, his interior vision turned away from the markers of civilization outside his window and inclined instead toward his interior existence, like another man, who, tormented by the practice of a hidden vice that alienates him from his fellow man, seeks sympathy in the forgiving eyes of simple beasts, and the first man awakes with a jolt to find his head has slipped onto a stranger's shoulder and he is drooling.

I've been spending a lot of time in this room lately; I should do some redecorating. I've heard good things about cork.

Location: My room

Mood: Pensive

Music: The whistle of a country train muffled by a passenger's gentle weeping

Tags: memory, trains

- - - -

I spent the morning sleeping again; in the space between dreaming and waking, I found myself wandering in the distant country of memory and recalled again a succession of the comfortable bedrooms of my youth, where I would recline, weeping, on a counterpane embroidered with nodding daffodils and wait for my mother to come up with a plate of toaster pastries; then I shifted in my sleep in response to the remonstrance of an aching joint; the nature of my rest changed and, instead of my lovely mother, I saw the patterned wallpapers of the different darkened rooms where I had played as a child, and I awoke two hours later disoriented, like a young man who falls asleep at a failing seaside resort and wakes to find the sun has set and the tide gone out, all the hotel's many windows have grown dark, and someone has stolen his beach umbrella.

Today's Amazon recommendations include someone named Joyce. I should look into that.

Location: My room

Mood: Contemplative

Music: Dashboard Confessional

Tags: memory, weeping, Mother

Read the rest here.

Do, do check it out.

In the movie Loser, there is a scene where Mena Suvari takes Jason Biggs to a Lost and Found Station to get him a new hat because the hat he had on was really ugly. That scene left an impression on me, honestly. I mean, before that day, I never knew that it was possible to get anything absolutely for free anywhere. It's so simple it's ridiculous!

So this morning, when the facilities manager sent an email to the entire site regarding the company's lost and found stuff, I was beside myself with joy. It's high time I did some indirect stealing.

Here are some of my top choices:

1 Shade

Pond Facial Watch Silver

1 Red Hunky

1 Unbrella

Biader Paper

2pcs Head Set and Carle

106 Pcs Unbrella

Medical Polyclinic Diagnostic

Wallet or Coin Porse

Blue Ponch

Mod Station

Rhaki Jacket

Ooooohhhh... nobody told me it would be this tough. Everything sounds so wrong, they're right! Can someone help me out purty please?

we will always have paris

I used to think that the act of walking away from something was a sure sign of cowardice. Not enough love, I said, if love were the main factor. Not enough interest, I said, if the situation pertained to a job or career choices. All those final scenes in movies showing lone women boarding planes, walking away with other men, their images fading out or cut short -- these were women whom I immediately tagged as weak and unworthy of another chapter.

Tonight, while watching one such movie, I realized that it takes gumption to walk from Point A, a decidedly familiar and cozy place, to reach Point B, which is strange and cold and wrought with projected fears.

The trouble with movies is, no one ever sees the main characters after they board their departing trains; we haven't a clue whether they are happy or sad about the choices they've made or whether they will eventually return to the exact spot they've left. We are merely observers; we are not allowed to go any further.

A genius once wrote this famous line: We'll always have Paris. Meaning the movie continues in everyone's minds. It has to because intelligent movies do that. They make us realize that life allows us to devise our own repectable endings.

Here's an admission: many a time, I've prayed for enough courage to leave some things behind. Most cannot be named here. Baggage weighs you down after a while; harbors become prison fixtures, reminders that there is no such thing as a turning point where you are. So tonight, I'd like to say that I respect you for finding a nameable truth in your heart and you were faithful to this truth, despite everyone and everything that may have blocked your path. I still believe that it takes a lot for someone to stay. But you risk everything you are in leaving, one foot after another, out of a story you once knew by heart.