digital love

900 pages of the handbook on tarrif and customs code for review is completely read, 95% of which is covered in yellow highlites...whats the use of highliting it if you are going to mark everything as relevant anyway...the past few days, it takes me 3 hours from the time i lie down to the state of slumber...my mind is in perpetual thought and overlying what-ifs...eyebags are now very evident...this stupid eyecream is no use...the post-its are now covering the right side of my cubicle...an official of the Bureau of Customs will get 1 to 10 years in prison if caught accepting bribes...in which idealistic reality?...my lunch consists of 2 garlic breads and 4 spoonfuls of pasta...its pathetic, the ratio of meal to side meal is not proportional...the idea of having 5 glasses of wine from last night would probably help me get some much needed sleep...tipsy and drowsy but still not happening...my next course of action should be melatonin...and then probably some pot...if that still doesnt work, im completely fucked...decided to bug my neighbor til 4am in the morning...she was half asleep and slurring during the last hour...my shoelaces have all been destroyed on the account of my cat...acting very catlike lately...not been doing yoga the past few days...coming up with every excuse not to go...maybe i should today...let me write that in my post it and stick it to the wall of things to recall...organized chaos is a bitch

young folks

I've been having the most vivid dreams the past few weeks, this was probably due to the lack of nicotine in my brain therefore clearing some space for all my unconsioucious frustrations and guilty pleasures. I had acheieved that pathetic state of looking forward to sleeping every night knowing that i'll experience what seems to be a hallugenic drug overdose of your choice.

Last week, i dreamt of being in a late 80's tagalog comedy flick. Im not sure which one, they all seem to follow the same formula. Poor guy courts rich girl..rich girl is also being courted by rich evil guy..rich girl gets charmed by the poor guy due to the fact he does a "harana" in the tune of either richard marx or michael learns to rock...evil guy gets pissed and proceeds to kidnap the girl. poor guy saves rich girl and beats up poor guy and his goons with his punches complete with delayed sound effects...and then the always entertaining beach scene

So my role in that particular scene was that of one of the backup dancers during the part where the actors suddenly break out into a song and dance number. I was wearing your typical cycling shorts with neon orange stripes on the side and was sporting a mullet for some reason. We were dancing to a rick astley track- i recalled this because roderick paulate was part of the cast in my dream and you cant dance to "together forver" without roderick paulate singing front and center. I was also approached by rita avilla at what point and told me he just broke off with jestoni, and then asked me if i can teach her the"roger rabbit dance move".

It was right after that part of the movie where one of the lead actors friends approaches what seems to be a pretty girl in a bright bathing suit with her back facing the camera, only for the former to find out that she is zorayda sanchez...that i woke up with the blaring ringing of my fone, i answered saying "let me sleep for 10 more minutes, im about to get lucky with rita avilla"

keep the car running

my thumb is already on defcom alert 4, the pain threshold on which you can barely make it functional. The cause of this injury?..too much playing space invaders extreme for the nintendo ds-its a remake of the old videogame classic you used to play on your atari-that of the "always worn out joystick and the adaptors electrical shock that never fails to get you when you plug the it at the end of your tv" fame-but now its more extreme... if they had put the letter Z in the end of the title like extremeZ, then it could have warned me earlier of its painful implications...just like the 90's pinoy guilty pleasure band of choice- the introvoyZ and people who say "yeZ" instead of yes- that underrated consonant warns you of the risk of experiencing too much of it has the potential of causing permanent injury.

The turtle asked me while waiting for our ride during our always extended lunch breaks, if i ever clean my bellybutton. I said of course i do, but not daily and not with a passion--i always had this fear of cotton budding that chasm until it unravels the innards of my belly and subsequently i would bleed to death..surpisingly, she had the same silly apprehensions. The whole conversation of bellybutton maintenance lasted for around 20 minutes-i told her of this fascinating technique of saving precious time in the morning...what you do is get 3 cotton buds and place it between your fingers, you then proceed to use each one for both of your ears and the topic in question-its multitasking in its finest- the old way of getting one cotton bud at at a time is so dated. She thought it was so crazy that it must work. The first thing i did when i got to my office is to google "death by cleaning of bellybutton", fortunately... there were no known cases of this fictional phemonenon. I should write to mythbusters and tell them i went ahead and busted it.

I had my cat spade last week, so i had to leave her at the vet for 3 days. When i finally came to get her, the poor thing was drowsingly lying down and looked liked she had undergone her own version of kitty hell- i was bearing with guilt the past few days while she was undergoing the operation and dreamt of the cat calling PETA to air her grievances and telling them that they file a criminal case against me(in the same dream i was found guilty and punished by eating her cat food). The moment i grabbed keizer-she looked at me then meowed as an appeal to pity..she then proceeded to stare at her veterinarian and started making cat noises on her, as if to convince me that i should have the vet spade as well. Keizer is fine now, judging by the way she is back to her usual shenanigans of tearing up toilet papers, destroying every shoelace and clawing her way to my shoulder ever chance she gets. I am now considering to change her name to keizerZ.

burning down the house

It was champs farewell party last night, and i had no idea what i was up for. There must be around a hundred different individuals cramped into my small place at one time or the other. It was a blessing in disguise that the body heat of all these people have made my living room a personal sauna, thus making the place- borderline intolerable to stay for more than 30 minutes. Other people we're smarter, they made way into my bedroom which the airconditioner was like an oasis in a desert.

He had rented this thing called "sober club" which is a service that comes with its own bar and bartenders and shotglasses with of a variety of alcoholic mixtures filled to the rim. The rows of different colored drinks we're a fascinating sight to behold(picture here) and the guests we're just gulping shot after shot after shot like it was crack. Naturally, a few of them were already completely drunk and making a fool of themselves even before midnight. Champ kept worrying about the disaster potential of my place after the party, i told him that whats important that we give you a proper sendoff and that everyone is enjoying themselves--but you have to clean up all apparent vomit afterwards...i don't do vomit

It was a revelation that this guy had so many friends, always thought that the poker quorum constitutes 90% of his posse. We were actually the minority, our common friends dissappeared into a mob of strangers. Most of which are his college friends, media people and a few who approached yoga rockstar mentioning her name and making small talk, only to tell me that she cant recall how she knows them--yoga and alcohol does damage to your memory center.

Our regular rockband group had created a small following of clueless fans after playing a few songs on the machine. Those clueless fans then started to turned against us- after getting tired of playing vicariously thru is for an hour or two, they inititally, asked nicely that they want to actually play the damn game and then when they felt that we aren’t easily going to give them the opportunity to be the crowd-drawers, they eventually grabbed our plastic instruments when we weren’t looking. So these posers started their attempt at imaginary rockstar glory...in the middle of their songs, someone playfully screamed "thats not how you sing that boston tune! the song is called 'more than a feeling' for a reason!"

Everyone had loads of fun nevertheless. Got to meet a lot of fascinating new people bringing with them interesting conversation. Carol brought her new british friend, who by the middle of the night has accumulated several groupies on the account of her accent-it came to a point that they were making her read out loud anything that they can grab to.

By the time the 2 boxes of pizza, 3 platters of coldcuts, 4 bottles of vodka, close to a thousand shots of mixed aloholic drinks and a a guest who slept thru the party because he got wasted way too early dissapeared , I asked champ if he enjoyed his party, he says he sure did despite being a little bummed that the people who he expects to be there, namely colleagues from his line of work. I say "fuck them" , these are the finer moments that you know who your true friends are and probably they're just extremely jealous that your going to be in a whole different level when you get to new york and eventually make it big there, most people in your industry seem to be pretentious assholes anyway.

Cheers champ, here's to the few of the all around nicest guys i've ever met...now clean up that vomit in the bathroom

S.O.S.

We finally got to see mamma mia, the movie that everyone with an ABBA guilty pleasure seems to be raving out. The plan was to watch it with the whole family and we couldnt be more excited that we're bringing my mom along for the ride. My mom is the ultimate ABBA fangirl. She worships at the vocal stylings and bellbottoms of bjorn, benny and agentha and anti-frid...I can still remember all the embarassing parties that we we were forced to perform at when we were kids using the worn out minus-one tape that my mom would always bring with her (minus one machine included)--I had "thank you for the music" as part of my solo act, my sister had it worse, she was assigned the unfortunate melodies of "chiquitita".

Circa 1980, we had that whole family movie weekly thing in full force, i can still vividly evoke thoughts of the old quad moviehouse, wherein the the theater price comes in 2 flavors-orchestra and balcony(it was actually 3, if you count Standing Room Only) or depending if u want to have a stiff neck either by staring at the screen upwards or downwards. Also there was something fascinating with old school extra laden transfat popcorn, the smell of which can be experienced all the way from the parking lot.

My dad used to have this peculiar habit of wanting to go in the theater 30 minutes after the movie starts...we then proceed to sit thru it, wait for the credits to roll, stay patiently inside the theater while the projectionist plays some music(it was usually something by kenny rogers or even worse-bread)while he waits for the first part of the reel to come in, watch the previews and then leave at the part of the flick that we initially gazed our eyes upon. As kids, it was an almost futile act of comprehension and problem solving.

After the movie, my mom was still hyped up and was singing and dancing to "waterloo" all the way to the parking lot while we all keep our distance fearing that people might think we're with that crazy woman. She told us that we should revive the weekly movie tradition again and that she misses us terribly. the ultimate abba fangirl then asked me to sing my opus with her--i thought about it, then i sang the first few lines..she then said "ok, stop it..you are trying to embarass me"

maps

Tonight was the quiz night at murphys, we had one week to accumulate an unwavering determination that we had to improve our pathethic 2nd to the last finish. The team didnt dissapoint

...we finished fucking 2nd place!!!

and the thing was-we almost had it, but as a team that comprises of 2 film majors, 3 lawyers, a chef and a gambling consultant-all in our late 20's-early 30's, was certainly no match against the winning team, which from our acute assessment was a bunch of 50 to 60 year old guys who have been joining that event ever since it inception.

It was so close, at one point-we were almost dead even, but eventually lost to 7 points in the end--stupid US election category, by the time the quizmaster was giving out questions relating to the 50's US political landscape (jfk succeeded what president this, vice president of nixon that)...we knew that you have to be at least breathing during that era to get the questions correct...and the eventual winners were probably already participating in balagtasans and zarsuellas in their local plazas when the events occured.

the turning point of the night was during the early rounds, wherein the question "what animal kills it victims by spraying a poison in its prey's eyes" came out during the animal category. "Its the spitting cobra!", miguel answered with half conviction and half silliness. We were laughing at his almost too good to be true bullshit response, but eventually we put it because we cannot come up with any good guesses anyways. the fucker turns out to have the correct answer all along,...we earnestly believe that we were the only ones who got it right, judging by the sighs and moans of frustrations from the other teams.

So, we won a bottle of cheap red wine for all out trouble, and we all decided to keep the bottle in the establishment so that we could all drink it for our attempt to finally win it all at the next quiz night. Last week was absoultely pathetic, but tonight was a revalation that we could actually beat this game--we figured it was easy to get in and not impossible to rise up...

thats what she said!

blister in the sun

the pimple invasion has begun..i first suspected that the cause of this is due to the added stress and increased irritation due to quitting smoking...but then i noticed that the extent of coverage is only visible on the right side of my face. I can imagine myself getting paid for an ad where they show a face split right in the middle with the effects of using brand x on the left side and brand y on the right side --obviously, brand x is the winner-go buy it now.

The acumulated dirt and other unwanted particles from the makati smog resulting to this disaster could be it --i refuse to accept that the time, effort and disposable income i have used to wash, clean, exfoliate, moisturized, sunblocked, anti-aged, eye-creamed, clay masked and cold masked my mug(and that doesnt include the weekly derma treatments) is all for naught . Friends who have seen the sheer selection of chemicals in the bathroom counter declare that its narcissism at its finest or that i need psychological help.

It also couldnt be from my pillowcases where i sleep with my whole face pressed smacked right into it nor it could be from the amount of ubitiquous bite sized chocolates courtesy of balikbayans from my side and spyders which i have been binging for the past few weeks--both of these instances should have rendered the whole face with random spots of atrocity.

I was talking to a friend over my cellfone and mentioned the facts i had presented above and with her powers of dedeuctive reasoning came up with the simplest conclusion. "Are you hearing my pretty voice over your right ear with your whole fone touching your face?"..."You are a genius" i uttered. simply amazed by the simple logic of it all

I am still on the fence whether or not i should get one of those bluetooth headsets that i simply loathe...there is nothing more annoying and self indulgent, than seeing someone with the stupid device on their ear while talking like they are the hi-tech shit. But in reality, the accessory reeks of a fashion disaster of epic proportions.-- but so are unwanted spots covering only one side of your visage.