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The fossilization of memory. Sounds too scientific, too pedagogic. Very much like the notes I used to write in Zoology, only in a sentimental context. Note that this blog is a hole in my failing consciousness. Should you leave this blog wondering about things, e-mail me at utakgago [at] gmail [dot] com for questions, job offers, and for-the-lack-of-a-breather e-mails. Subscribe via RSS.

A fresh bouquet of unpretentious parentheses ((()))

(The title comes from J.D. Salinger’s Seymour, An Introduction. This can also be titled as: What I Talk About When I Talk About Boredom.)

I drank from Wednesday to Sunday Monday and my liver felt groggy after all the hullabaloo and the debts I had to make at Greenbelt last Thursday night just because of their overpriced tequila shots and the leading fact that we didn’t drink in a bar (we drank in this restaurant at Greenbelt 3, and if I’m not mistaken it’s Mr. Rockefeller). In the first place I was wondering why we had to go all the way to Greenbelt just to get our tequila shots (a friend proposed it “for a change” of environment). Plus that dinner at TGI Fridays and at Bizu! My fucking god, why do I have to go there when I lack money.

I suppose this post doesn’t make me an alcoholic. I think alcoholics have their craving times and sentiments; in my case it was pure teenage whim, and it’s summertime anyway. (I do have addiction to something I wouldn’t like to spill.)

Then last night I had to suffer a bout of impacho after eating my third dinner, though at first I took it as food poisoning, because of the accompanying wave of nausea which I felt for the first time (because I always suffer from impacho, especially in those Cuban restaurants in Hoboken). So I groped all the way to the attic and asked the maid to call Dad and ask for some tablet and shit. Though I half-wished I was poisoned since I miss the feeling of being hospitalized, at some point it could be life-threatening (thanks to that news Dad and I have heard about food poisoning in pochero because they made a mistake with the salt and a chemical I vaguely remember as something-nitrate) and the maid was telling me I’m paying for my gluttonous habits.

I say, I don’t care if I’m obese. Heck, there’s nothing wrong with being obese. But I’m not, young sir. I’m definitely not.

  • The Woman Who Had Two Navels, by Nick Joaquin
  • Strange Pilgrims, by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez
  • Be More Chill, by Ned Vizzini
  • The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
  • The World of the Short Story (Anthology), edited by Clifton Fadiman
  • Fiction (Anthology), edited by R.S. Gwynn
  • All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
  • The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
  • Raise The Roof Beam High, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, by J.D. Salinger (currently)

My list of books I have read this 2010 swelled from 3 to 13 books in two weeks. Boredom talks this way. Imagine, The Grapes of Wrath in three fucking days! I mean, fine, I take pride on finishing this bitch (I tried reading it last 2008 but gave it up due to its epic [form- and language-wise] characteristics; for me, it’s like reading Biag ni Lam-Ang, though Steinbeck never disappoints me) but it is one of the many sole tickets to be named a bum, and that hurts. (I was eyeing on Norman Mailer’s Harlot’s Ghost, all 1300+ pages of it, but decided not to for the fear of dying in between those pages.)

I haven’t watched any movie this summer except for Valentine’s Day and Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (which is awesome). My laptop was busted (again) and I’m still bargaining with my Mom about a new laptop (hopefully my tactics back then would work, but considering the incident when she caught me smoking on Facebook via my sister’s paparazzi powers, I’m about to consider this mission as futile as licking my elbows with my tongue).

Last Sunday I was so bored I exterminated a colony of ants creeping up on our walls. (I’ve been doing this every vacation.) Who would like those red ants when they usually cling on towels and bite my balls and shit when I’m inside an passenger FX? Much to my delight I caught their queen ant (how could I know it’s the queen ant? Simple: worker and soldier ants carry it and she’s the biggest of them all) and crushed her belly (?) until she was begging for help, and I hope I could publish the picture here. She was already dead when I woke up this morning.

So right now I overeat, exterminate colonies of ants and wolf down books. I’m also doing my creative thesis (a collection of short stories!) as early as now; my adviser is cooperative enough to initiate a “regimen of reading and writing exercises” this summer, and a bum loves deadlines.

This entry was written by Kevin, posted on April 19, 2010 at 8:43 pm, filed under 2in1, Events, Formspring Answers!, Pensive shits, Sentemotional and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Blue screen of death

Monday last week I was doing back-ups of my pictures because I had a hunch my laptop’s about to screw up. And it did. Right while I was doing back-ups. The notorious blue screen of death (in Wikipedia it has its Tagalog translation, which is funny) at 12MN and I was hissing my cuss words, and then I was sweating while thinking of three projects I still have to do with my laptop.

Fuck, right?

Then my cellphone has been malfunctioning for a month. I initially thought it was Globe’s fault (lately they have been very much the cause of arguments and hotheadedness for a lot of people) but I switched to Smart and I don’t even have a goddamn signal. I was thinking about staying at the foot of a cell site (in my wildest attempt to text people) but it’s probably my second hand Nokia.

So I ditched my cellphone for a while and relied on word of mouth.

As I type away this post I’ll be leaving Los Banos in a few hours. I’m planning to leave at 4AM because: a) no traffic at all, plus if I’ll get on a train in Magallanes it’d be perfect; b) I have this tendency to hate bus rides while awake because it’s goddamn boring–even with a book in hand and music plugged in my ears–because at the back of my mind I’m doing it for killing time’s sake; c) just in time for a big sausage-and-egg breakfast at home.

As always I’ll be reading books at home to compensate my inadequacy in allotting time for book-reading this semester (or ever since I’ve shifted to BA CommArts). Books to read include:

  • The Woman Who Had Two Navels by Nick Joaquin
  • Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Naked Lunch by William Burroughs

I’m currently listening to Mason Proper and toe and I have to say it’s perfect for bus rides. Especially toe (and their album For Long Tomorrow)! Japanese post-fucking-rock! No to Japanese and Korean boy groups! This is one good shit I dug out of last.fm which could somehow par the greatness of Explosions in the Sky.

I’ve also updated my Project365. I was about to give up this project when my laptop went bonkers. But it’s challenging and I love every day of it (though I’m a cheater, really; it’s not really daily pictures, but daily uploads, so fuck that).

Ask me a question! I’d love to hear from you.

I hope I could update more frequently this summer since Mom e-mailed me about Internet subscriptions for our house just so I would prefer home than the apartment. Hell yeah! :D

This entry was written by Kevin, posted on March 30, 2010 at 12:58 am, filed under 2in1, Books, books, books, Last song syndromes, Photos. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

That elusive Noche Buena scene

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.

This entry was written by Kevin, posted on November 25, 2009 at 1:38 am, filed under 2in1, Baaaack then, IRLs, Life at UPLB, Slang and random. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

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