Because I was stupid

someone is now the new owner of a lovely N93i. Knock yourself out, bitch.

Point is, I will need to get another phone, not to mention another freaking number. So yes, I am currently out of service area, cannot be reached, unnattended, etc, etc, etfuckingc.

Have a nice day, everyone.

The you'll-never-see-in-Cosmo Quiz

What is your geekoid factor?

1. My hair is ______
(A) Short and well-combed.
(B) Longer than acceptable.
(C) Necessary to keep my brain warm.

2. Glasses or Contacts?
(A) Contacts! Definitely more flattering.
(B) Glasses. No fuss, no muss.
(C) Glasses. They don't make contacts in my grade.

3. I don't leave home without __________
(A) My cell phone.
(B) My laptop.
(C) My TI-92.

4. Binary code is ________
(A) Something I will never use.
(B) The law that makes bigamy illegal.
(C) My mother-tongue.

5. Do you enjoy alcohol?
(A) Yes, once in a while.
(B) Yes, everyday.
(C) Yes, I like to disinfect every so often.

6. Boxers or briefs?
(A) Boxers. I like to move it move it.
(B) Briefs. Tightie-whities for the family jewels.
(C) Depends on my mom. She still dresses me.


Star Trek or Star Mall? Just how geeky are you? Check the comments section for analysis!

Zero is a perfect circle

Because we fear being by ourselves
Yes became the language of love
And so we walk around wounded
Veterans of the splitting
That occurred in some philosopher’s head
Await the only answer but
Forgo the question and the quest

connect the dots.

It's nearing 5:30 and I am still in the office. This is not bad, as I arrived past 10. But my brain, like the PICC aircon, automatically shuts down at 5. Below, 5 proofs of purchase.


*****
Random Question

F: 11 + 16?
A: 21.
F: Hindi kaya.
A: Ay. 17!

*****
Random Thought

You know how the phrase "blood drained between ___ legs" means so much different when you change the pronoun? Disgusting, yes. But I do have a point:

1: His brain stopped working as blood drained between his legs.
2: Her brain stopped working as blood drained between her legs.

*****
Random conversation in another time

F: Pero alam mo, if I could travel anywhere in the world, I'd go to Athens. Ikaw?
A: Prague na siguro.
F: Siyeeet...

*****
Random Chismis

P: Huy, nakita ko si J____ sa Gateway nung weekend.
A: Ows? So near my house!
P: May ka-date nga eh.
A: Ako yu--
P: Lalake.

*****
Random Phonecall

A: Hello, may I speak with the secretary of Senator ________?
S: Ay, sorry, wala siya dito ngayon.
A: Okay. Ano po yung pangalan nung secretary? Para siya na lang po ang hahanapin ko next time.
S: Ah, hindi ko alam eh. Basta hindi ako yun.

*****

Yun lang po. Bow.

Empty Chair

This is how you can be stupid sometimes:

Sitting in a café, and the chair next to you is empty.

A stranger approaches you and your empty chair. He smiles, makes small talk, and you shoot the crap around for a while. You laugh; he gestures enthusiastically; you make it as if you’ve known each other for a gazillion years. Now, he laughs at some thing you say and you think, he’s actually pretty cute.

Finally, the moment you’ve been dreading comes. You almost see it in slow motion: He lays his hand on the back of your empty chair, asks if he could sit down and join you for a while. He smiles again—he is one good-looking asshole.

You feel the apology arrange itself on your face. You say that you’re waiting for a... friend, and that he is coming anytime soon.

The stranger removes his hand, a slow and controlled maneuver—not unlike how you made sure to enunciate the “he” that’s supposed to arrive soon. Now, he takes a step or two backwards. He says this has been good, that he really has to go anyway. That it was really nice talking with you, though.

You say the same thing, maybe with a little regret. There's nothing left, so you force a wave and he walks away.

You pay attention to your coffee now, maybe light another cigarette. You stay another hour or so, smoking, watching people go by.

And the chair remains empty right until the moment you get up to leave.

Death becomes her

Every story has a beginning. This one, too. But how to begin with death? And why?

As a kid I loved the game show. How the answers were asked and the questions were the answers. What is jeopardy?

*****

I am writing this a month after I had turned 27. I am fascinated with November: How, in temperate countries the cold really begins to take hold, the leaves already falling, and everywhere almost a dead grey. Here, the weather remains the same: a series of sunny days or a week of typhoon rains or thick oppressive clouds that refuse to fall. Nobody really notices the weather. It’s the same day after day after day, until it changes. A different sameness.

Here November, too, is a month of death. Not that of the newly dead, or the dead that grow back with spring. Here, the old dead whose names have been said over and over in prayers, whose souls wear thin as nothing remains of them but scars on whitewashed stone—they are the dead we celebrate. The dead who can never come back.

I began this journal two weeks ago, on a morning I found myself with no sleep, awake at dawn, walking to church. It was a Saturday, the mass was for the dead. The priest kept on asking for prayers for our dear departed, our faithful dead, our dear, our departed, our dead. So I prayed for my brother, two grandmothers, a grandfather I had never met. The homily was on Jesus raising a dead man, and it told how all who witnessed feared Jesus; how later they praised him. Hosanna, hosanna on high.

Everybody prayed for their own dead. And nobody noticed the dead woman in the corner, kneeling, then standing; listening, then singing the hymns. And nobody feared what they did not know they witnessed.

Myself, I hadn’t noticed when I died. I was alive for a long time. I could have been dead for a long time. It was the same day after day after day. Until it changed into a different sameness.

==========================================================

A little something I had started working on late last year. And after the (uncalled-for!) remarks by L. and D. that I might actually be a closet fictionist, the monster is half-way out of hibernation. Let = sleeping = dogs = lie?

The trouble with torture

is that it comes in entirely too many forms. And definitions change from one person to another.

Today, at the office, it came in the form of the "all-new" Journey with Pinoy Pineda on vocals (not that you can tell, he apparently is very good at karaoke), especially "Open Arms," played on loop. Three times now, since the past hour.

Good luck to my sanity, may it enjoy its travels elsewhere. I sincerely hope to see it back by the end of the day, when the last strains of "Don't Stop Believing" fade into the oblivion of the has-beens, that "highway run into the midnight sun" while "wheels go round and round..." Whatever.

Apparently, you can say L-S-S many, many times over, and without your toungue tripping.

*****
If I were more of an opportunist, I'd be charging a rental fee for my headphones, and by the fucking minute. I'd be rich, with my co-workers offering to pay twice the going rate for a 10-minute relief. But self-preservation comes first.

*****
It comes first, but obviously not fast enough.