Menthol-Guy

Neglect

My life seems to conspire against my blog–they (referring to the aspects of my life: friends, acads, orgs) loathed it, that they use every stratagem and subterfuge known to man just to go against my blogging, just to stop me from doing a three-year habit (should I still consider it as such when it had been washed away from my system ever since I entered college?)–but I’m still doing it.

I wonder why.

This semester looks pretty tight with a theater and a critical writing class, though I can’t help but feel proud that I could still afford to drink (a bit), in the midst of reading short stories and the academic mishmash. I quit jogging two weeks ago, no wonder my stomach bulged (as if I had abs to begin with) once again. I have been neglecting my facial hair for three weeks and running, have been neglecting the luxury of reading books (my recent purchase would be One Hundred Years of Solitude for 150 pesos from Booksale!), have been neglecting my camera and the guitar as well (as if–though the phrase might sound overused–that I have guitar skills to begin with).

Ultimately, I have been neglecting writing (creative-wise) for so long. It pains me to know that even if I considered it as something precious, I neglected it from the juggles and shuffles–whatever that means.

Noche Buena

December is nearing, and though the trend of installing Christmas lights and decors has immensely decreased through the years (I couldn’t blame practicality), I’m still hoping to have a nice Christmas with Dad and… the maid. Of course. I’m thinking of grilled T-bone steak marinated with nothing but salt and pepper, buttered corn and carrots, some simmered asparagus, and tossed Caesar salad. How American, I know. It reminds me of that traditional Thanksgiving dinner (it happened May of 2008, when I last visited my Mom and my sisters and my niece in New York; my sister told me it’s a Thanksgiving dinner since we’re still… together).

Spaghetti is too heavy for the appetite (steak’s just fine for me; even better since it’s not easily spoiled, and can be fried again with garlic as salpicado, oh my), and we usually eat the traditional hamon in New Year’s Eve. I’m not fond of pancit (except pancit bihon guisado), not fond of speared hotdogs and marshmallows, too.

Wait, that doesn’t even count as something you’d prepare for a Noche Buena.

Damn it, I’d rather eat sardines and fried rice for Noche Buena (fine, pass me that platter of sausages) if Mom and my sisters were there, eating with us in the small round dining table we have. It would be very fine if my brother–if ever his third detox in the rehab worked and those ten years of drug addiction behind him–would be eating with us, too, for Noche Buena. Then our maid, Jenny, would be preparing a bonfire to burn our one-foot Christmas tree she bought in the marketplace for forty pesos in replacement of a towering one, adorned with the balls and thingamajigs dressed in this red-and-green Christmas attire, and that gold sash you usually see in beauty pageants. At its feet I’ll find a simple, heartfelt gift: a pack of Royce chocolate-coated potato chips. Fuck yeah.

What I’m saying here is that I don’t really care about the steak or that plateful of corn and carrots. Heck, it even reminds me of my family in New York! What I would really like to happen is this scene you see on local TV channels (thank goodness I don’t watch TV anymore–it might depress the hell out of me), those station IDs with such a delusional Filipino family eating Noche Buena. Together.

But if it ever that scene comes true, with the sardines and Mom and my sane brother and all, I would prefer Spanish sardines better than the canned stuff. Pass me that mashed onion-and-tomato combo soaked in patis and suka, please.

Yeah, baby. Caption this picture if you can.

What’s awesome with French is that you have to pronounce it nasally as possible. As if you have colds. Of course I have colds almost all the time–damn those pollens. (My favorite French sentence is je suis perdu. It means I’m lost. It means a lot to me, I dunno why.)

My notepad is swarming with things to blog. It says:

I have so many things to talk about, to write about, but it seems like all those things just go away when the situation calls for it. Like that kid in Rocket Science, all the stuttering (mine has to be a mental case of stuttering). No matter how much I’ve composed the things I want to write, it goes off all of a sudden.

My search terms are making me curious. It’s full of Menthol-guy PANTAS or PANTAS UPLB. Oh well, I was just… I’ve just become. I’m now (the grammar whore in me suis perdu!) a member of PANTAS (Pandayan ng Talino at Sining) UPLB, a writing organization in the university. If you guys are interested in writing or reading, just leave a comment and JOIN! It’s fun. Really.

Since I’m on my semestral break already, I went back home last Friday. For three days, I hibernated. My Notepad says:

My room makes me feel fucking whitewashed, and only the balcony–overseeing the roofs of the neighborhood and the trees and everything–makes me sane when I’m home.

You guys must be having an idea with what I’m typing in my Notepad. Anyway, I have just arrived in Los Banos to HAVE FUN with the Internet connection we have in the apartment, plus the company of my friends. I think I hear someone shouting “LET’S DRINK!!!” somewhere. I should check them out.

I’m reading Vintage Amis, a collection of short stories by Martin Amis (there’s also Vintage Didion and Vintage Murakami, both are pretty interesting). He’s hilarious. His writing seems very masculine (so far). Not really Hemingway masculine but I think you’d get the point.

The thing is: I want to talk about a lot of things. We could talk for an entire night and end up around 6AM at Mini Stop. It’s better if I could share cigarettes with you. The best place to start a conversation is in a coffee shop, the one with a veranda where you could see the merge of the sky and the street, in the middle of the snaking outlines of electric wires.

In this blog I don’t think I could talk about anything here. It either gets pretentious or very careful, the words very select. But in real life, we could talk about anything and everything with coffee in one hand and a cigarette on another.

-

What I’ve been wanting to make is this short story–or probably a vignette, or a snippet of my mind–about how people would react to death eighty years from now. It’s about meeting this guy telling you that some Samantha you both know died, and that he said it so casual you would wonder why.

Eighty years from now, people must have been living in Mars or wherever. Death must have been so usual because typhoons last for two weeks, dry spells last for almost a year. Maybe religion has been dethroned of its original power, for science has successfully made a pill for eternal life. Maybe the use of cryogenics on people through submerging them in liquid nitrogen for preservation has been introduced.

The point is that the duality of life and death, by that time, has been insignificant enough.

Thus the lack of appreciation with life, that certain ticking of time on top of our heads gone for we know we will last forever. Our goal is to live forever, not to create something that will. What could be the driving force for something eternal to exist, other than the fact that something benefits from it?

I would probably hate it when life would lose its suspense factor.

On music

Give Jay-Z a chance, I told myself. Lately I’ve been open-minded to listen to any kind of music, and so far, I’m appreciating every song (though some are bullshits, but at least I gave them a fucking chance). You don’t have to chew the song for days; giving it a try (just a single play) is harmless, though.

End of semester

Plans?

1. Three days in Boracay with my Japanese friend. Dad approved about this. He wants to go to the beach and a one-night-stand experience. I told him it’s indecent. He told me he was just joking. Joke my ass.
2. Read novels. I’m planning to read ten or seven!
3. Watch movies. I’ve been listing interesting movie titles for a week! They’re about twenty of them. Which reminds me: how can I balance my time watching and reading novels at the same time? Tough choice.
4. Cook. Since I haven’t gone home for a month (with the exception of Ondoy; yes, I was stranded, and yes, I DIDN’T MAKE A POST ABOUT IT!), I want to make fruit salad, cook pesto, caldereta, and all the food I wouldn’t like to think now ‘coz I’m about to hit the sack.
5. Haircut? My hair has reached its longest, I think, this year.
6. Beer-drinking. I haven’t had any beer-drinking session since time immemorial (i.e. a month ago).
7. Book shop! I miss the local Booksale.
8. Renew my VISA. If Dad won’t let me, I’ll kill him. Mom wants me to go there (in New York) for Christmas (they’re separated like that), and though it’s perfectly fine if Dad wants to show up, too, being the pride of the family, Dad hesitates.
9. Lose more weight. This is in conflict with number 4.
10. Meet with my High School friends. I just miss them.

Just because

My blog post about my shifting to BA Communication Arts last summer (and the practicality vs. passion thing I wrote) is one of the finalists for this year’s Philippine Blog Awards under the category Top Ten Posts of the Year.

This is beyond sanity.

Awards night this Friday, and I don’t think I’ll make it. A tight friend is celebrating his birthday this Friday, and from the look on his face when I told him about the event I’ll be attending this Friday, well, I don’t think I’d risk his disappointment. Besides, I don’t think my post is going to win, given the other contender’s topics ranging from political to statistical analysis; the list even made me wonder how the hell my post ended up fucking there?

Anyway, thanks for the visits and for the appreciation! :)